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General BattleTech => Alternate Universe => Virginia War => Topic started by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:30:50 AM

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:30:50 AM

Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam
(“This hand of mine, which is hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword peace and liberty.”)

– Massachusetts state motto, c.1776

NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA
August 9, 2827, Terran Reckoning

  It’s a cool night – meaning that the thermometers are ‘only’ flirting with twenty degrees Celsius.  The street-lights were shot out days ago – nobody with any sense wants to leave the damned spics any freebies – so the band of seven men in olive uniforms making their way towards what used to be a book-store have to do it by moonlight and soft footwork.  Only the point-man’s got his weapon ready: the others are moving in three pairs, each pair carrying a munitions crate between them.

  Braaaaaaapp!

  All seven men hit the pavement; the lead man’s clutching his throat and choking on blood.  There’s a guerrillero leaning out a second-floor window across the street, unloading a Xia-27 at them; the sub-gun’s muzzle-blast lights up the entire façade.  Some of the others unsling their rifles to return fire, but the Ensie’s long gone by the time they clear for action - all the rounds connect with is concrete and sign-fronts.  He could be planning to do it again at some other shop-front or street-corner.  He might not come back at all.

  One of the survivors glances at the fellow who was on the other end of his crate; now, he’s lying flat on his back with a bloody crater where his left eye used to be. “Dio mio,” he mutters sickly.

  “‘Welcome to historic Buenos Aires, gateway to Ensenada’,” another quotes at him sourly, having been on-world a little longer.  “‘We hope you enjoy your visit.’”

  A third has been checking on the point-man, but could do nothing for him.  “Yeah, kid, you’re gonna love tha ’Nada – for fuckin’ ever.”

  “Hey, let’s keep movin’, huh?” puts in a fourth, waving a hand towards their destination.  “Let’s get inside before –”

  Part of his head comes off, and they’re all back on the ground before the krack! reaches their ears.

  The sickly lad winces as he takes another lesson to heart: pointing in a sniper-rich environment invokes Darwin.  “Everybody stay down!” he hisses.  “I guess we’re gonna have to crawl from here.  Drag those crates behind you.”

  “Who put you in charge, rookie?”

  “His Grace il Duca di Soren,” is the caustic retort.  “Or d’you wanna stay here?”

  “Oh, fuck the crates – let’s just get ourselves there!”

  “They’ll just make us come back for ’em,” the lad points out.  “You wanna do this shit again?  Maybe in daylight?”

  The complainer gives him a glare that’s lost in the darkness and starts shuffling along the pavement on hands and knees, dragging his crate by one rope carry-loop, making a quarter-metre with each yank and cursing this whole fucked-up war under every breath.

  It takes them almost half an hour to cover the last block; there’s actually a sandbagged revetment around the entrance that gives them cover for the last stretch.  They’re met at the opening to the sandbags by two Soren Landsers; unlike the newcomers, they’re unshaven and hollow-eyed, their uniforms faded and battered.  “Resupply, huh?” snarks one.  “Nice of ’em to remember we actually need ammo.”

  “Ammo and replacements,” the young lad tells him.

  “Four replacements – for the whole company?”

  “We started with nine,” the new arrival notes sourly.  “Be glad for what you get.”

  “The fuckin’ wops get all their resupplies in armoured carriers,” the other Landser bitches, helping one of the other newcomers haul a crate inside.  “Must be really fuckin’ nice to get all of your replacements and ammo without the fuckin’ spics cuttin’ ’em to shreds before they get to you.”

  “I’ll file a complaint,” is the sardonic rejoinder.  “Where’s the guy in charge?”

  “Back there,” the first Landser says, jerking a thumb towards the staff-room.  “Welcome to the shit, kid.”

- * - * - * - * -

  Acting-Sergeant Bauer’s working on I-rat neotuna-and-noodles, wistfully remembering the venison stew he had on his last night on Soren.  He looks up at the sound of footsteps, assessing the newcomer as he comes through the doorway.

  The newcomer’s maybe twenty, with the stocky build and olive skin of Salernan extraction.  Like every other member of 3./I Kompanie, he’s wearing a ballistic-nylon flak-vest and steel-pot helmet – the kind of body-armour issued to most troopers conscripted into the various Salernan House Militias: old, heavy, cheap... and close to useless.  He blinks at seeing Bauer.  “Uhh... I thought Captain Petrelli was running Three Company?”

  “He was... until he decided to use his oh-so-fancy night-vision-binos an hour ago,” Bauer shrugs, setting down his ‘chewing-exercise, canned’.  “The snipers don’t like that: he’s in the store-room with a tag in his teeth.  Who’re you?”

  The kid groans something to himself, then turns a crooked smile on the blond non-com and shifts his vest; two stars run up the front of his over-the-shoulder service/rank-strip.  “Tenente Antonio Ferretti.  I was supposed to take over ‘A’ platoon.”

  Bauer snorts a laugh.  “Sounds like you’ve been in charge since before you got here, sir,” he drawls... then cocks his head.  “Wait – ‘Ferretti’?”

  “Yes.  And yes – those Ferrettis,” the kid nods.

  Oh, that’s just GREAT, isn’t it? Bauer realises.  He’s about to snap to his feet, but Ferretti waves him back before he can move.  His eyes flash to the newcomer’s belt, looking for something that should be there but isn’t.

  “I left my sidearm back at the depot – figured the snipers don’t need the help.”  Ferretti shucks off his helmet and rifle to sit down, setting the former on the table and the latter against the side of his chair.  “Learned how true that was on the way here.  Christ, they told me this area was off the line, and we still lost five men getting here!  Is it always that bad?”

  “Yeah, that’s about usual,” Bauer nods, not letting his thoughts show.  What the hell kind of Salernan officer comes to his duty-post with a friggin’ resupply run instead of a damned APC?  I mean, he just saw how many guys get killed that way!  “It’s funny how many of the ‘ferals’ resent our being here.  You’d almost think they didn’t want to be ‘administered’ by ‘their rightful landlords’.”

  Ferretti gives him a level look.  “You might not want to say things like that where anyone else can hear you, Sergeant.  The penal units are always looking for more bodies, and I don’t yet know how much I may need you.”

  “But you’re not going to say anything?”

  “I don’t yet know how much I may need you,” the officer repeats evenly.

  “That’s a true comfort to hear, Herr Leutnant.”

  “Now that we’re finished with the macho posturing, what’s the company’s status?”

  “I don’t know that ‘company’ is the right word, sir,” Bauer snorts.  “Not counting however many came with you, we’ve got seventy-one men in three platoons – and with you, one officer.”

  Ferretti winces.  Authorised strength for an infantry company is four platoons, totaling eleven officers and a hundred and twenty-seven men, plus five ‘supernumerary auxiliaries’.  “No Ducal Commissioners?”

  “Some guerrillero tossed a potato-masher through the last one’s window three days ago – they’ve got a real hard-on about killing Commissioners.”

  “Uh-huh,” the lieutenant says neutrally.  He’s already seen enough to know that when it comes to Commissioners getting fragged, there are guerrilleros and ‘guerrilleros’.  “How are things looking otherwise?”

  “Not counting whatever you brought with you, each of us is down to three spare mags, a day’s rations and one canteen.  We’d be worse-off –”

  “Only being at ‘decreased strength’ means a company-issue goes further, especially if you scrounge leftovers off guys who don’t need ’em anymore,” Ferretti nods.  “Any chance of further resupply?”

  That prompts a bitter laugh.  “For a colonial unit of Soren ‘ferals’, sir?  Unless you’re planning to trade on your name, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “We’ll see.  Where’s the comm. room?  I need to make a call.”

- * - * - * - * -

ELEVEN KLICKS NORTH OF NUEVO BUENOS AIRES
That same time
“Firebat-Black-One” (Hurón-class BattleMech)
(Command ’Mech, F Company/432^nd Hussar Battalion)

  “Okay, you lot, this is the place,” Captain Beatrice “Hammer” Kuznetsov declares over the company comm-laser ’net.  “Everybody find a decent possie and go to EmCon, in case the ’Cadians are running early.”

  With that, she works her HOTAS controls for a moment, putting most of her Hurón’s systems into standby.  She leaves on her neurohelmet, but runs a finger down the zip-closure of her coolant-suit and tugs it open a little to let her skin breathe.  Even with its comfort-lining, and the ‘thermal mass’ tucked into the cockpit’s floor running fresh coolant through the meshwork of tubing in its underlayer, a Union MechWarrior’s combat coverall is still in essence an insulated body-glove, which means it can get a ‘little’ sticky – especially on Ensenada.

  Speaking of which....  Kuznetsov leans back in her command-couch and speaks in weary tones, hoping to pre-empt the resumption of an old discussion.  “No, Olivia! I am not going into business with you after the war!”

  In her ‘operator’s seat’ behind the pilot, her Ensenadan CSO makes a rude noise.  “I’m tellin’ you, Hammer: the only way you could make money faster would be to print the stuff yourself!”

  “You’d know,” Hammer murmurs.  Warrant Officer Bella is one-point-seven metres tall and has the dark-olive complexion and black hair of most Ensenadans, piercing green eyes... and a ‘sex-bomb’ yield in the megaton range.  As many of the men (and not a few women) within ten light-years can attest, since the last magazine-pictorials and trid-discs she appeared in before enlisting sold more than a million units in just the first week of pre-order.  “I don’t really see myself doing too well in the media, Succubus, let alone that genre: I get stage-fright just talking to the Colonel, and that’s when I’m fully dressed.”

  Her Gal-in-Back laughs.  “It’s not like you’re doing Shakespeare, boss-chica.  Hell, in most of the stuff I did after I founded Bliss Productions, all I used for a storyboard was ‘point the camera and enjoy the show’.  And in case you hadn’t noticed?  Tall, well-built blonde women are kind’a in short supply in Massachusetts’ industry, bio-sculpt notwithstanding.  Trust me: with my people representing you, you wouldn’t have to get out of bed for less than two thousand marks an hour.”

  “Or get into bed, as the case may be.”  Hammer sighs a helpless laugh.  “And that reminds me: how the hell did you con the EDF into letting you do ‘Candid Seductions VI’ in uniform, on EDF installations – with fellow servicemen as most of your co-stars?”

  “Pitched it to ’em on the basis of maintaining force morale, boss – and I thought you said you didn’t see ‘Seductions Six’?” Succubus adds blandly.  “You remember how enlistment enquiries spiked three points in the first two hours after they announced I’d signed up?  Same thing.  Plus I cut ’em a ‘serviceman’s discount’, let ’em divert half the net royalties into Survivors’ Benefits.”

  “Huh.”  Hammer shakes her head in wonderment.  Ah, the absurdities of war.  What twist of cosmic and/or military humour saw her assigned as my Combat Systems Operator?  “Y’know, Olivia, I’ve always wanted to ask this, but I never wanted to give you the satisfaction –”

  “Why’d I enlist?  Hell, boss, most people ask me that inside the first hour. Believe me: you’re ahead of the game.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No, it’s not.”  A sigh.  “You want the real reason, boss?  And this doesn’t go any further, okay?”

  “Of course – my word on it.”

  “I always planned to enlist.”

  “Uhh... say again, Seize-oh? You’re coming in broken.”

  Another sigh.  “Ma’am, I was ten when they invaded Highside.  My uncle worked for a suborbital cargo/passenger business centred on this old, beaten-to-hell Mark Nine shuttle –”

  “My God – he was at the Newport evacuation?”  More than half a million Union military personnel and three hundred thousand dependents and civilians – one of them being a fourteen-year-old Beatrice Taylor-now-Kuznetsov – all lifted out of the Newport space-facility, on everything from military ’Mech-transports down to private prospecting shuttles....

  “Yes, ma’am.  And I was with him – stowed away so I could go on my first interstellar trip.  I picked a hell of a time to do it, huh?”

  “... I’m having a hard time picturing you as a ten-year-old, Olivia.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t stay a kid too long.  They didn’t find me until after San Antonio had jumped, so they put me out into the boat-bay gallery.”  Behind her pilot’s head, Succubus half-smiles at the memory.  “I wouldn’t leave, just kept watching all the shuttles coming and going: greatest show I’d ever seen... Uncle Paolo offloaded a hundred and three people after their first round trip: Highsiders, Svobodans and Ensenadans from First Expeditionary, a bunch of civvies – even a few expatriate Sorens.”  The smile fades suddenly.  “They made two more trips; twenty minutes after they leave for their third run, a shuttle’s just pulling through the airlock when there’s this... flash, and the whole friggin’ boat-bay just comes apart.  I look back through the observation window, and there’s this young Highsider soldier clinging to the other side, must’ve been thrown there by the blast.  Redhead, brown eyes, freckles, couldn’t’ve been more than twenty; there was blood on her tunic and this... this horrified look in her eyes.  Next second, she’s gone – the whole bay blows out to space, and she goes with the rest of the ‘loose debris’.”

  Bella takes a ragged breath.  “Couple’a years later, Uncle Julio told me that it was a fighter off one of those ‘merchant carriers’ they love so much.  Anyway, once we got home again, I, uh, I just couldn’t let it go – wanted to know why it all happened, why the Pogs invaded Highside....”

  Why that girl had to die in front of ten-year-old-you, Hammer nods silently.  Not that there always is a ‘why’ for things like that....

  “I read up on the Salernans and what ‘Reclamation’ would mean if they ever took us.  Didn’t like what I read too much, so I decided to do whatever I could to stop ’em – or at least make ’em pay cash for the privilege.  They started invading Ensenada during my first year of high school, and that kind’a made up my mind: I decided I’d enlist as soon as I’d made sure my family would be taken care of if I got zapped.  Saw an ad for a casting agency that week, went to talk to ’em when I turned sixteen.  Fast forward six years and a very successful career –”

  “Of which you clearly hated every minute!” is the droll response.  Sounds like she almost crashed and burned on that little memory-trip: bring it back, keep it light....

  “Boss, I got to fly all over the system to beautiful and exotic locations where I was paid absurd amounts of money to get boned brainless by gorgeous people.  It was torture of the worst kind,” Bella smirks.  “Not to mention a great big ‘FUCK YOU VERY MUCH’ to those feudo-fascist bastards who’d deny me any choice about who I do, or when, where or how I do ’em.”

  “And once your family’s financial future was secure, you retired – mostly – and signed on the dotted line to shove it right up the Reclaimers.”  Hammer sits back a little.  She’s known Succubus for almost eighteen months – like all Union ’Mech crews, they went through ’Mech training together – but for the first time, she almost feels like she actually understands her notorious CSO.  “I still can’t take you home to meet Pyotr, though – I don’t think he’s ever finished being scandalised at my just knowing you.”

  “Don’t be so sure, ma’am.  Svoboda’s got half Ensenada’s population, but it generates fifty-six percent of my business, especially the repeat customers.  The Svobies act all prim and proper and too uptight for their own good –”

  “Not with me, he doesn’t,” Hammer murmurs without thinking – then hastily adds, “and that’s as much as I’m ever saying, clear?”

  “Strength Five, ma’am,” Succubus agrees piously; her pilot can’t see the sly grin.  She’s about to speak again when her MFCD lights up.  “Heads-up, boss-chica, I’m getting a relay from the crunchies over the fibre.  Five – check that, six contacts, following the anticipated route at a... thirty-klick ground-speed.  Computer’s running IR and seismic-tremor profiles against the warbook... high-confidence of contact with six Morningstar-series BattleMechs.  Looks like the patrol, all right – and they’re even three minutes early!”

  “That’s their bad luck,” Hammer shrugs, smiling fiercely.  Her left thumb keys the company ‘push’.  “Firebat Niner to all Firebats: our trade is here, everyone. Engage as briefed, and –”

  “Ma’am, you might want to re-think that.”

  “Firebats, wait one.  What is it, CSO?”

  “The feed I’m getting from the ’Suits is... ma’am, these are Morningstars, all right, but they’re not any mark I recognise.”

  Succubus slugs the feed onto her pilot’s secondary display; Hammer sees the differences immediately and her eyes narrow.  Well, Jesus H. bloody Christ.  Two hundred years of constructing three established series of Morningstars without a hint of deviation or innovation, and the damned Sallies have to pick now to get creative?  “Slug it to the company, too, Olivia.  Assessment?”  ’Cause Gawd knows I’m having a hard time working out what I’m looking at....

  “Markings look like 2º Genarro Guards, ma’am.”  Both women wince at that; as gratifying it will be to kill Salernans, rather than their poor-sod sepoy cannon fodder, they wouldn’t be in those cockpits if they weren’t true-believers in Reclamation.  So much for taking prisoners on this op....  “These are a new model of Morningstar, ma’am; I’m putting them into the warbook as Morningstar-Foxtrots, designating contacts as Foxtrots One through Six.  It almost looks like the body of a Morningstar-Delta, their knock-off of the Warhammer-Six-Romeo, but they’ve got the arms of Morningstar-Charlies, hands and all.  Funny – there isn’t much visible armament, just a couple of laser-emitters in each side-torso and Hatchet six-packs on each forearm.  The upper-chest on either side looks like it might hold snap-open missile-hatches, though, like the SLDF’s Archer-Two-Romeo has.  I don’t know that a missile-duel’s going to go our way, ma’am.”

  New models with guesstimated capabilities.  Charming.  On the other hand, there are sixteen of us (plus the crunchies) against six of them, we have surprise... and the best way to evaluate these things is to see how they handle in combat, Hammer judges.  “Prepare a burst to Brigade and send it when we break cover: ‘Engaging six Morningstars of previously unknown type, provisionally designated Foxtrot series.  Requesting reinforcements and Section 9 team ASAP.’”  Even if the Sallies manage to reclaim the wrecks when we’re done dropping ’em, just twenty minutes with the hulks and the Ghosts will have complete downloads of all their technical data.  “Firebats, this is Firebat Niner; same fire-plan applies.  Gold One, designate Foxtrot-One for missile-fire on my order, Gold Two will sparkle Foxtrot-Six.”  Even as she speaks, her fingers are ‘playing the piccolo’ again, once again checking the company’s datalink-feeds to be sure all of her ’Mechs have things under control.  “Heat ’em up and let’s go.”

  Hammer’s plan makes maximum use of the Union’s traditional advantage in missile range, seeker-technology and throw-weight; with its point-man and tail-end Charlie marked for a barrage of missiles to be launched over the intervening ridgeline, the Salernan force will be rocked and shocked – easy pickings, even for the lighter Huróns.

  “Gold elements, start the music... Firebats, engage!” Hammer barks, and thumbs the ‘pickle’.

  The Hurón’s missile-rack is mounted on its right shoulder, above and behind the cockpit, much like that of the Griffin-One-November or Toro-Alpha-Six which lent so much to the Ensenadan machine’s design.  When Hammer hits the Big Red Switch, the launch-tubes’ front-and-back weather-covers snap open and three MTM/41A ‘Javelin’ missiles screech down-range, trailing flame and smoke in their wake.  All fifteen of her fellow Hurón pilots are doing much the same as she, and even with the inevitable misfires – for which the crew-chiefs for Red-02, White-03, and Blue-01 will later undergo thorough ass-chewings – forty-five ripple-fired Javelin-As arch over the ridge into the valley below, homing on the laser-dots held on their two targets by the power-suit platoon attached to the company for this operation.

  Succubus watches the camera-feeds from the ’Suit-infantry, ready to carry out BDA from the missile-strike... and witnesses the exact moment that the plan comes unglued.

  As the Union missiles crest the ridgeline, the upper-chests of all six Salernan ’Mechs snap open almost simultaneously, revealing their own missile-launchers.  Succubus feels a split-second of pleasure at being proven right – before all of those torso-mounts flare with missile-launches.  And not the expected single launches, either, but ‘ripple-twos’ of their own!

  The night sky in the valley is strobe-lit by a brief, intense, and deceptively beautiful fireworks display: Salernan missiles screech up to meet Ensenadan, detonating almost as they clear the tubes and flinging shotgun-blasts of shrapnel through the air that rake Javelins from the sky by twos and threes.  Point-defence guns mounted in the Morningstars’ heads swat down even more of the Union weapons.

  They don’t come through the missile-storm unscathed, of course – no defence can ever be perfect – but a barrage meant to generate massive overkill lands only seven hits on their two targets.  Foxtrot-One staggers under three hits across its upper half, shedding shards of shattered armour like a dog shaking off water, but somehow remains upright.  Foxtrot-Six’s pilot has worse luck; the leading pair of Javelins blows off the right leg just below the hip.  The remaining two missiles strike home against the left-shoulder and right-wrist missile-launchers; in an eyeblink, secondary explosions virtually disintegrate the seventy-ton BattleMech.  Almost lost in the fireworks, the pilot’s automatic-ejection circuits send his command-couch rocketing skywards.

  “Dammit!” Hammer snarls.  We should’ve nailed ’em both cleanly with all that!  Where the hell’d they come up with that trick?  Clever bastards – and you know how short of missiles Huróns are, don’t’cha?  “Everybody save your missiles for backshots!  Red Section, Black Section, we’ll engage by wing-elements – thump-and-jump, no slugfests!  Blue Section, move to Waypoint IVY and keep ’em penned in; White Section, waypoint LILY.”

  A moment later, with Second and Third Platoons moving to block the roadway east and west, the remaining eight Huróns kick in their jump-jets and settle on the other side of the ridgeline, looking down on the heavier machines.  With their attackers now in the open, the Salernans are more than eager to start handing out punishment, even so outnumbered.  Each Foxtrot’s shoulder-launchers flare again, but this time the rippled-missiles are aimed at the interlopers themselves.  Sophisticated ECM and their own point-defence guns do their best to decoy or destroy the inbounds, but for the first time in the war, Union forces are the ones facing ‘broadsides’.

  Nonetheless, they’re still fairly lucky: the Salernans aren’t concentrating their fire, and of the twenty Hatchets fired, only three connect.  Heavy warheads detonate against Black-02, blasting patches of armour from the Hurón’s right flank and leg; W.O. Faraday’s well-trained, and easily rides out the hits to stay standing.  The other scores a crater into the armoured ‘sternum’ of Junior Lieutenant daSouza’s Red-04 – the Hurón barely wavers.

  New design or not, it looks like they’re still wrapped up in that whole ‘knights in laminar armour’ routine, Hammer muses, replying to the Salernans’ barrage with a pulse from Black-01’s ninety-millimetre laser.  Contrariwise, her people have been well-trained by an Army that holds rather fewer delusions of battlefield ‘honour’, and all of their own fire is concentrated on Foxtrot-One.  The actinic-red after-images of Union laser-fire pound the point-’Mech, and it reels as chunks of armour explode on its right thigh and all across its torso; Hammer can almost swear that one of those beams plunges right through the ’Mech’s heavily-armoured ‘breastbone’.  An instant later, gouts of smoke and flame burst through Foxtrot-One’s every opening and seam – including the cockpit.  There’s no ’chute from this kill.  Must’ve touched off the PDGS-magazine.  Heh – that’s two down.  If we can keep the range open, we should –

  “Vulture, vulture, vulture!” Succubus sings out.  “Enemy fighters inbound from the west, boss, they’re angling for the heights!”

  Jeezus – they got here quickly!  “All ’Mechs, clear the ridgeline, now!  Get amongst ’em so the fighters won’t have clean targets!”

  “You sure that’s a good idea, boss?”

  “I know it isn’t – but it’s about the only one going with fighters overhead!  Call Battalion and get us some air-cover, dammit!”

  The main party’s eight Huróns start bounding down the hillside on their jumpjets, ducking and weaving mostly-randomly to throw off Sally gunners both ground-bound and aerial.  They barely make it in time: the wing-pair of Leones strafes the heights just as the last Hurón clears the area, sending massive lines of earth exploding skywards and leaving half-slagged furrows in their wake.  Red-03 ripples three Javelins after them even as the Ensenadan machines send more energy-fire lashing down on the Salernan ’Mechs; two of the missiles find the trailer’s left wing and all but amputate it, sending the bat-winged machine tumbling into a hillside.

  But miss or hit, those fighters accomplished at least one thing: forcing the EDF ’Mechs to close the range to where the Salernans can engage them more effectively.

  Across the company, the threat-receivers of three Huróns light up with ‘sparkle’ warnings, and the Morningstars cut loose with full broadsides – ripple-twos from the body-launchers, and single shots from the wrist-mounts.  Each Ensenadan ’Mech so targeted has to deal with six missiles – and the things are guiding on the laser-dots, ignoring evasive manoeuvres!

  Martinez’ Red-02 is caught mid-landing and takes four hits in less than a second; the Hurón stumbles and drops flat on its ‘face’, smoke streaming from its shattered head and canopy.  Lieutenant Villalobos’ Red-01 somehow weaves between three missiles as it lands from its jump, almost casually guns two more from the sky, and all but ignores the single hit which scores the armour over its midriff.  Faraday has a little more trouble keeping his balance when three more Hatchets slam into Black-02 in mid-air, but keeps his feet when he lands and even manages to return fire.  The only one of the four Huróns not ‘sparkled’ by the Salernan pilots, daSouza’s Red-04, has a far easier time evading the Hatchets aimed his way, and his PDGS explodes the only weapon which might have connected.

  Meanwhile, Foxtrot-Three jolts and staggers under a succession of laser-hits – five in all.  Armour on its body and left limbs flakes away in sheets, but nothing penetrates to cause serious harm.

  “What the - semi-active seekers?” Hammer marvels bitterly.  This is getting better by the minute!  “Olivia, how’s Martinez?”

  “Telemetry lost, boss,” her CSO says simply – really meaning ‘they’re dead’, and they both know it – then adds “¡Mierda!” as her master tactical display lights up with a rash of fresh red.  “Three Platoon’s got more ’Stars coming from the west, boss!”

  “Execute Curtain-3.”  Let’s see if the new guys will fight in the rain....

  Succubus punches a key.  Nineteen kilometres to the east, an EDF ‘mini-fortress’ – part of the interlocking network of fortifications defending Nuevo Buenos Aires – receives the burst transmission and trains out three of its eighteen secondary turrets.   Within seconds, all six of those 150mm artillery-rifles are thundering, each one flinging thirty-kilo shells downrange as fast as the magazines can serve them.

  The Firebats are just entering proper thump-and-jump ranges from the invaders’ ’Mechs when the first salvo of 150s lands, so things get a little... busy right about then.

- * - * - * - * -

  Almost half an hour later, Hammer and Succubus lean back in their command-couches and sip from packets of electrolyte-laced sports-drink as they watch the Section 9 types dismount from their vertol.  Neither really wants to linger here much longer – indeed, they’ve already stayed far too long – but once they made the call about ‘new types’, it was a given that the cyber-warfare weenies would want to inspect any such wrecks they might down reasonably intact and do a full data-rip on them, which meant having to hold onto said wrecks and the place where they fell.  And nobody ever said the job was safe, now did they? Hammer notes dryly.

  There are six of them in all: four humans in the field-grey battledress of Fleet Intelligence, and perhaps the most valuable of their number, two field-grey robotic spiders the size of a sub-sub-compact hovercar.  (Even as they disembark, the crunchies are carrying a stretcher aboard the vertol: the operation’s netted a prisoner after all, though he’s still unconscious and probably brain-fried after that ammo explosion.)  Succubus notices something painted on the side of one robot’s abdomen, pulls up a zoom-view, and snorts in weary amusement.  In a fashion borrowed from its human comrades and now popular amongst its kind, the cybernetic sentience has splashed out on some personally-distinguishing side-art for the benefit of its ‘wetware’ comrades: under the stenciled ‘316’ of its personal bort number, there’s a black disc adorned with, of all things, a grinning chrome skull with flaming red eyes.  (She makes a note to ask what it means, if she ever gets the chance, but doubts she’d truly understand the answer; she likes the ‘guys’, of course, but they do tend to be rather... ‘opaque’, since much of their cultural lexicon stems from their near-obsession with recordings produced in the first century of broadcast media.)

  “They should find something useful,” Succubus muses.  “They usually do.”

  “Here’s hoping,” Hammer sighs, glancing into the side-panel that holds her field-rations.  Nope: still not quite that hungry.  Especially since we’ll be back at base in an hour or so anyway.  “That counter-missile trick’s gonna be a bitch to beat.”

  Succubus winces.  Hammer’s right – and since Ensenadan ’Mech forces are equipped almost exclusively with Huróns, whose primary long-range firepower stems from their Javelin batteries....  If they get that set-up deployed before we can work up a counter, we are so friggin’ boned....

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:35:43 AM

PIRATE JUMP-POINT, ‘WAYPOINT BARBADOS’
SLS Bismark (Texas-class battleship)
August 10, 2827, Terran Reckoning

  This is the third ‘command-staff conference’ in as many days since the convoy arrived at ‘Waypoint Barbados’.

  Those involved in the discussions have not found them especially heartening.

  “I am starting to think we could have chosen a better destination, sir,” is the sardonic murmur from Admiral Sebastian Hennesy.  “Kowloon is nice and welcoming to outsiders, query-affirmative?”

  “With the SLDF’s history there?” his superior counters skeptically.

  “Compared to the Cavaretta Expanse?  That would be like being met with a parade,” Hennesy snorts.  “Have you seen the latest SigInt abstracts?  This place is bloody well crawling with settled worlds – and the Massachusetts system sure as hell is not the ‘derelict fleet-maintenance depot’ we were led to believe it is.  And as for these ‘Salernans’... if even half of what we have picked up about them in these broadcasts is actually true, their entire society is insane!  At least all the damned ’Loonies would do is shoot or lynch you!”

  General Trish Ebon nods slowly; he’s not especially wrong.  What little historical information they could find on the Expanse indicated that it was quite densely populated for such a remore area, and she took the precaution of sending scout-ships ahead to jump into several systems, far beyond the standard mass-shadow, to soak up those worlds’ RF traffic for analysis.  While light-speed delay means that each ship’s ‘take’ of radio and three-vee signals is weeks or even months old, their contents are often... disturbing, to say the least.

  Kowloon has never forgotten nor forgiven the SLDF’s part in the 2729 Revolt.  Not that I can blame them; it was not exactly the finest moment in the Star League’s history, she concedes.  She’s spent much of their four-year Flight studying the divisional archives of their forebear formation, including the campaigns that the 331^st fought alongside the Kowloonese 171^st Volunteer Regiment during Operation LIBERATION.  But Baz is right: compared to the sort of trouble we could be buying into simply by being here, Kowloon would be a damned cocktail party.  Hell, we would probably get a friendlier welcome if we returned to the Clans!

  She’s about to respond when Hennesy’s wrist-com chimes with a priority-one alert.  “Yes?” he demands brusquely, irritated that they’re being interrupted in spite of clear orders to the contrary.

  “Sir, you and Kh- you and General Ebon need to get up here ASAP: we have an emergence flare forming less than fifty klicks off the Fidelity’s starboard beam.”

  Hennesy’s eyes flick to his commander, who nods as she shares the thought: it can’t be one of their own - the last of their scouts returned four days ago.  “On our way,” he acknowledges, keying the comm. off again.  This time, the glance/thought he shares with his boss is accompanied by a brief, thin, humourless smile.

  Like it or not, it looks like we are committed now....

- * - * - * - * -

PIRATE JUMP-POINT, GENOA STAR-SYSTEM
TQF-927M5G
August 10, 2827

  Jump completed.  EMP clearing.  Re-emergence coordinates correspond to designed position within 0.125932 kilometres, within acceptable jump deviation parameters.  All weapons arrays ‘locked, loaded and safed’ in accordance with protocols for KF jump while at Medium Alert Status.  Comm-scan suite online, initiating passive scans.  IR and passive-radar interference from KF-clutter will decline to negligible levels within 4.98546 seconds –

  Contacts, close aboard!

  Immediate Combat Alert brings all processing systems completely on-line.   I traverse narrow-focus, high-sensitivity IR, radar and lidar sensors to bear, beginning rapid analysis of all incoming data as my weapons mounts expedite ‘clearing for action’.  ‘Neutrino detector’ confirms multiple large fusion-powered vessels, and other sensor systems begin cataloguing silhouettes and comparing them against stored profiles even as they confirm multiple fire-control systems locking onto me from the unknown vessels.

  Residual EM-clutter from the KF translation diminishes to within the filtration-tolerances of my sensor software, and I initiate a full-spectrum analysis of all unknown vessels. Within 0.437 milliseconds, I match the class of the closest contact, 43.158 kilometres off my port bow, against my internal ‘warbook’ with 97.283% confidence: a Lola-III destroyer.  This is highly anomalous: current intelligence indicates that all extant Lola-III-class vessels serve in the Star League Navy, yet there has been no contact between Fleet Base Virginia and the main body of the SLDF for 60.542 years and this vessel’s IFF transponder is not currently transmitting any ID at all, much less an SLDF registry code.  Equally, however, intelligence does not indicate Enemy possession of such destroyers.

  This confusion is compounded 0.023 milliseconds later when closer examination of lidar hull-maps indicates substantial damage to this vessel over along the vessel’s visible starboard side, damage that has undergone only the most basic of field-repairs.  Massive sections of armour have been torn from the hull by weapons-fire, multiple sensor arrays are non-functional, three turrets are shattered ruins, and a fourth appears frozen in position, an indication of catastrophic failure of its training gear.  Historical protocols and all operational guidelines indicate that a SLDF commander would immediately withdraw so crippled a vessel from operational status and dispatch it for repairs unless prevented by orders from higher authority or operational/tactical concerns, yet this vessel apparently remains in service.  IR and RF activity confirm that the destroyer is bringing her remaining weapons and fire-directors on-line; I calculate an 88.648% chance that this is a ‘precautionary’ alert related to the IR flare which preceded my KF-translation.

  0.015 milliseconds pass as sub-processors receive and analyse the radar/lidar profile of the next closest vessel.  More confusion results: despite the absence of an IFF registry code, this contact is a 97.241% match against the warbook silhouette of an SLDF McKenna-class battleship!  Again, there is evidence of heavy and unrepaired battle-damage, the most prominent being the shattered stub of the dorsal heat-transfer ‘fin’.  Again, despite limited capability, she is readying herself for possible combat.

  Within 3.219 milliseconds, I have classifications on all of the WarShips in this apparent task-force: another Lola-III destroyer, a Riga-class carrier-destroyer, a Sovietskii Soyuz cruiser, and a Texas battleship; only the Riga and the Texas do not evidence unrepaired battle-damage.  There are also two Invader-class JumpShips, one Tramp-class, and one Star Lord-class.  Every vessel that can carry DropShips is loaded to maximum capacity.  Vis-light imagery confirms that all of these vessels bear the Cameron Star of the SLDF, and many are also marked with the emblem of the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division, known as ‘the North American Division’.  This formation has never entered Fleet Base Virginia’s zone of responsibility before; their last duty-post of record was on the world of Australia, near the border between the Lyran Commonwealth and the Rim Worlds Republic.  However, I must admit that this information pre-dates the Amaris Broadcast and is thus significantly out of date.

  Has the Star League Defence Force successfully put down Stefan Amaris’ attempted imperial coup and re-established the democratic institutions of the Star League?  Are they now seeking to re-establish contact with isolated installations such as Fleet Base Virginia?

  I fervently hope so.  Without the assistance of Star League forces, the Enemy’s presence on the worlds of the Union of Sovereign Republics is far too large to be reduced or reversed... yet under the final orders of the Fleet Base’s last commander, neither the Base nor my Squadron can be used for offensive operations without the League’s authorisation, nor can the Union expand its regular forces without losing access to the technical capabilities of the Fleet Base which have been so vital to the prior and current success of their resistance.

  There remains a 4.358% probability that this ‘task-force’ is a ‘false-flag’ operation, conceived and executed by Enemy agents - that the Enemy could obtain so many SLDF vessels and perpetrate such a ruse would require a string of events with exceedingly low orders of probability, yet some Enemy commanders have proven themselves sufficiently resourceful that the possibility cannot be ignored.

  Whatever the case, until these vessels identify themselves one way or the other, I will remain at Combat Alert.  I activate my ‘personal-interaction remote’ and have it record an identification/challenge, a process that takes 23.145 seconds, then activate my own transponder, transmit the message, and await their response.
 

- * - * - * - * -

  The individual on their screen is Caucasian, male, mid-twenties, dark-haired and dark-eyed.  What gets everyone’s attention is what he’s wearing: the white-over-purple dress uniform of the Star League Navy, complete with commander’s bars and the honour cords of a ‘plank-owner’ with six decades’ service.  {“Attention, unknown vessels: this is SLS Alexander Stoykiy.  You have entered the defensive perimeter of Fleet Base Virginia.  Please identify yourselves and declare your intentions.”}
 
  “What the FUCK?” somebody blurts.  Ebon stands like a statue, her face unreadable.

  “Sir, uh... the computer says there is an 85% chance that this is a modified M-5 Caspar drone; his transponder is squawking as TQF-927M5G, SLS Alexander Stoykiy.”  The sensor-tech hesitates half a second.  “Sir, I am reading him as cleared for action: his fire-control is fully active and locked onto Fidelity, Saratoga, and Bismark, and his weapons are tracking to match.”

  “Sir, our archives should have some of the SLDF’s Caspar deactivation-codes,” Hennesy suggests.  None of their vessels is in much condition for a fight, but – “Besides, from all I have heard and read about Operation LIBERATION, the Caspars were dumb as a brick.”

  “Maybe,” Ebon says – then pushes off and crosses to the comm. console, picking up a spare headset.  “But with everything else we have seen of the Expanse so far, I do not think we can take the chance.”

  “Sir?” Hennesy blinks.  “What are you –?”

  She ignores him, bringing up the task-force circuit.  “All vessels, this is Wolverine Actual: bring up your IFF transponders in their original settings.  I say again, squawk IFF in original SLDF registry.”  She reaches down and switches channels.  “Alexander Stoykiy, this is Acting Major-General Trish Ebon, Commanding Officer of the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division, aboard SLS Bismark.  It has been so long since the SLDF visited Virginia that we had anticipated finding it derelict; it is something of a shock to be wrong.  Can you give me a situation report?”

  {“Not at this time, Bismark.  Please authenticate Epsilon-Golf-November-Seven-Four-Hotel-Tau-Five-Niner.”}

  “Ah, stand-by, Stoykiy.  As I said, we were not expecting to be met, so we will have to dig that out of historical records.”

  A pause – brief, to human perceptions.  {“You’ve got five minutes, ‘General Ebon’.  If you don’t give me the right codes inside three hundred seconds from my mark, I’ll feed you a spread of Helldarts and get honest answers from the wreckage.  Mark.”}

  “Sir, we are definitely being spiked!”

  “Get on it!” Ebon barks at the comm.-tech, who nods vigourously and starts rattling his keyboard, combing historical databases for their pre-Amaris SLDF codebooks.

  “‘Helldarts’?” Hennesy puzzles.  “What the –?”

  “We do not want to find out the hard way, query-affirmative?” Ebon suggests acerbically.

- * - * - * - * -

  As the count-down runs, I contemplate ‘General Ebon’s’ transmissions.  Her facial-tic responses and voice-stress levels did not indicate any attempt at deception, yet what she said is extremely peculiar.  Surely she has access to SLDF records indicating that the Massachusetts star-system was home to more than a billion people at the time of the Amaris Crisis, with near-Star League standards of living, medical-care, and education?  It would take a massive catastrophe to depopulate such a system, yet she actively expected to find Fleet Base Virginia a derelict station.

  Moreover, she is clearly surprised by my presence.  I know that Space Defence Systems were almost unheard-of outside the Terran Hegemony, yet the information available to me suggests that their installation was standard procedure for a deep-Periphery fleet base – particularly in the face of a naval power such as the Salernan Principality.

  Could her information truly be that incomplete?

  The count-down continues, but as seconds tick by, more and more of the convoy’s vessels activate their transponders – and all of them radiate SLDF identity-codes.  Indeed, the Texas begins to transmit the data-code of SLS Bismark.  The Sovietskii Soyuz is revealed as John F. Woodward - possibly an auspicious name, under the Union’s current circumstances.  Of the destroyers, the Riga bears the name Saratoga, while the Lola-IIIs are Yukon and Undying Fidelity.  (SLS Saratoga is actually known to me: she was assigned to the SLN’s Expanse detachment in 2753 and fought three actions against Salernan ‘privateers’, destroying four ‘CAM-ships’ in those battles through a combination of fighter-strikes and direct gunnery, before the issuance of General Kerensky’s ‘rally’ in 2767.  It occurs to me to wonder if she still retains any members of that crew-complement, but I relegate this speculation to a tertiary processing-priority.)  Lastly, the McKenna shows as Zughoffer Weir, which is cause for momentary disquiet: the ship’s service-reputation is one for daring and skill that goes far beyond that of even a ‘normal’ McKenna-class, and the possibility that her crew have inherited that tradition of reckless ferocity means that she may remain a potent force even in her current state.

  One of the more amusing aspects of the entertainment dramas humans make for each other are the ‘tropes’ they develop, the dramatic conventions which become a shorthand.  One common trope is that count-downs to a Dreadful Doom always reach the very last second before they are averted.  In this instance, 134.287 seconds remain on the count-down when Bismark re-opens the comm.-circuit.  {“Alexander Stoykiy, this is Bismark: I authenticate Omicron-Juliet-Kilo-Three-Eight-Tango-Sigma-Six-Zero.”}

- * - * - * - * -

  {“Authentication confirmed.  Welcome to the Genoa star-system, Bismark.  Please state your intentions.”}

  “Previous intentions have been, erm, overtaken by events, Stoykiy.”  To say the least....  Ebon considers her next words.  “We would appreciate a current report on the situation in the Massachusetts system.”

  {“Fleet Base Virginia is fully operational.  The rest of the system...”}  The face of Stoykiy’s ‘captain’(?) twists ruefully.  {“Frankly, ma’am, I think you’ll do better hearing it from the locals than me.  If you’re as under-informed as you sound, you might find a full SitRep easier to credit if it comes from fellow humans.”}

  Ebon and Hennesy trade bemused looks once more.  He... implies that he himself is not human?  Yet there’s... wry humour in his voice?

  {“I will say this, General: there are a lot of people in Massachusetts system that will be very, very grateful to see the SLDF return.”}  A half-second’s pause, and a crooked smirk.  {“And a lot of people who will hate the very idea of you... but since most of them will be Gehennans, I think we can all take this opportunity to not care.”}

  That was definitely humour, Ebon judges, massaging the headache which is building behind one temple.  Unless Stoykiy is the exception which proves the rule, whoever did the post-LIBERATION analyses on the Caspars’ intelligence and personality really malfed up bad.  “Understood, Stoykiy.  Be advised that we are currently recharging from our last jump and will be ready to move again in –” she glances to Hennesy, who holds up a noteputer.  “– fourteen hours, that is one-four hours.”

  {“One-four hours to complete KF charging, confirmed.  Be advised, Enemy forces hold the Massachusetts zenith and nadir points, and the safest pirate-point to jump to will be just off the Union’s capital world.  With your approval, I’ll calculate the jump-coordinates and transmit them to your people when the time comes.  I’d also advise you not to make any aggressive moves during or after translation; the situation in Massachusetts is bad enough that the base defences and the rest of my Squadron are a little ‘twitchy’ these days.”}

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:39:34 AM

NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA
10 August 2827, Terran Reckoning

  By an astrographic quirk that only one man in 3. Kompanie has enough education to understand, Ensenada has a short ‘year’, but a ‘day’ that runs to thirty T-hours and change.  Nonetheless, the system’s sun, Massachusetts, is just starting to peek over the eastern horizon when Tenente Ferretti finally emerges from the comm.-room, wearing a sour expression.

  “No joy, Herr Leutnant?” Bauer surmises.

  Ferretti’s answer leads off with a growl of frustration.  “You’re kidding, right?  God, you’d think I was asking ’em to spend their own money.  Roust out the leadership for an adjunct post.  And have them bring our three best marksmen.”

  “Sir.”

  A few moments later, Bauer finds himself watching his now-poker-faced Tenente assess three grimy Privates, two ragged-looking Corporals-Major and a weather-beaten Corporal – and trying not to curse out loud.  That Goddamned Matthias....  Maybe the Leutnant won’t notice....

  Silly notion, really – that’d make things too easy.  “Is this everyone?” Ferretti asks.

  The assembled non-officers trade uncomfortable glances.  After a second or so, Bauer steps in.  “Herr Leutnant, Privates Prutter, Raikinnen and Davies are the marksmen you wanted – Captain Petrelli assigned them all to company headquarters as his bodyguards.  Liebgott has Able Platoon, Hausmann has Baker, and Tikki is Charlie’s senior squad-leader.  Technically, I have Dog Platoon, but since I’m the only member of Dog Platoon left....”

  “And Charlie’s platoon-leader?”

  “Chief Corporal-Major Matthias is manning the rooftop OP, sir,” Tikki offers, just a little too quickly.

  Ferretti cocks an eyebrow, but lets that go.  “Well, here’s the word: Battalion says they might be able to get us some more resupply about midday – if we can clear out that sniper from last night.  They say they’re short of trucks and tracks as it is, and they can’t risk ’em where an observer might call artillery onto ’em.”

  “Which is pretty much everywhere in the fuckin’ city,” Corporal Hausmann snorts.  “All you need is eyes and a ’phone – and every last spic on this goddamned planet has a pocket-secretary.”

  “I mentioned that, and they said they weren’t interested in my ‘excuses’.  Which brings us right back to the point: we need to sort out that sniper.  That’s where you three come in,” Ferretti tells the trio of Landsers.  “Last night, the shot came from the north – probably from atop the bank.  He waited to zap a leadership type, so I’m guessing he won’t pass up a chance at a nice, juicy officer.  Prutter, you’re with me: we’re going to head for the rear like we’re trying to get to Battalion, then cut into that mall and see if we can work up towards his nest.  I’ll go first - you watch my back.  Raikinnen, Davies, you’ll stay here and watch for the shooter while we play bait: when he shows himself, kill him.”

  “Sir, how’s he going to tell one of us is an officer?” Prutter wonders.  And which of us is going to be the ‘officer’?  I’ve got enough ways to get killed on this friggin’ planet without him turning me into deliberate sniper-bait....

  Ferretti smiles crookedly, unzipping his ‘bulletproof’ vest and slinging it into a corner.  While all of his insignia are low-vis black, only officers wear rank-badges on their collars – and they all know that the snipers know that.  Nor is he finished: tossing his steel helmet onto the discarded vest, he buckles on the Deflon ‘cockroach’-style brain-bucket Captain Petrelli no longer needs, which still bears two of its three stars.  (It looks like he pried off and discarded the ruined centre star, then covered the bullet-hole with a patch of olive speed-tape.)   â€œAnd if this doesn’t do the trick, I’ll ask Battalion for a neon sign saying ‘please shoot me!’”

  Bauer blinks in amazement.  He’s going to – What the fuck?  All of our original Salernan officers were all about looking after their own skins!  “You don’t want to be too obvious about it, Herr Leutnant.  Maybe keep your armour on?”

  “Nah, I can duck faster without it,” Ferretti snorts.  “It’s not like it’ll stop a rifle-round anyway.  Let’s get this done: the sooner we’re finished, the sooner they can bring us some real food.”

  And as three slightly nonplussed privates follow their new CO towards the sandbagged front entrance, the quartet of non-coms they leave behind trade bewildered looks, sharing a single thought: Who and WHAT the fuck IS this guy?

  And why can’t we get more officers like him!?

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  “You two set?” Ferretti asks, checking the magazine in his G47 one last time.  (He’s checked it four times already, and the sharpshooters have all noticed.  They all know it as a sign of nerves; that it’s the only such sign in his manner is... unusual.)

  Raikinnen simply nods.  Davies is the talkative one.  “Jawohl, Herr Leutnant.”

  “Good.  If you kill him, fine – but at least get his attention, huh?”

  “We’ll part his hair for you, Herr Leutnant,” Davies drawls.

  “Please do.  If I get killed because you miss, my mother’s going to be terribly upset,” Ferretti quips.  “Prutter?”

  It turns out that Prutter is the same profanely-opinionated Landser who met Ferretti at the door when he arrived.  Now, he gives the new boss a lop-sided shrug.  “Ready as I’ll ever be, Herr Leutnant.”

  “Okay, then.”  A long, deep breath... then: “GO!”

  Both stay-behind marksmen lunge through the door and take firing-positions behind the sandbags.  A half-breath later, Ferretti launches himself through the same door at a dead run, Prutter a step behind him, headed for an alley-mouth maybe thirty metres down the street.

  KRACK!

  Something yanks at Ferretti’s sleeve, and he finds himself covering the last three metres in a full-stretch dive, only half-hearing the shots behind him as Raikinnen and Davies keep the sniper interested.   Prutter’s pressed flat against the alley wall by the time the Tenente raises himself into a crouch and starts checking out the damage: not even a mark on the skin, but his tunic and blouse are both cut clean through and the shoulder-patch of 231. Soren Infantrie-Regiment is missing completely – it’s probably lying out in the street.

  Prutter gives him a half-grin.  “Now you’ve got somewhere to hang that Purple Sash you’re bucking for, Herr Leutnant.”

  “Y’know, Prutter, for a comedian, you’re a fair soldier,” Ferretti returns cheerfully.

  “Huh?”

  Sigh.  “Never mind.”

  The next hour or so is taken up with a nerve-wracking process of working through building after building, heads on a swivel in case there are other guerrilleros about this fine morning, watching every step for trip-wires and booby-traps.  Doorways and windows are regarded with particular suspicion, yet there’s little choice but to use them: they don’t have the explosives to blow their own entryways.  (Another reason to ‘thank’ their logisticians, who confine such things to ‘higher-priority’ units; funnily enough, most of those units are Salernan or Acadian.)

  Eventually, they find themselves in a shop-front across from the ‘bank’ – a four-storey office-block housing all manner of financial operations.  The place is built like a goddamned fortress, but then so are half the buildings erected in Nuevo Buenos Aires since the Amaris Coup; the whole damned Union of Sovereign Republics knew that the Gehennans would be coming to ‘reclaim their rightful ancestral holdings’ once the Star League pulled in its forces.

  “Uh, Herr Leutnant, couldn’t we just call in an air-strike on that fuckin’ place?”

  “Have you been smoking Rosarío Red?” snorts Ferretti.  “Even if we could make the call from here, there’s no way in hell the pipe-jockeys are gonna do anything because a Tenente asked for air support.  Even if they did, what d’you expect ’em to do – fly through the Ensies’ air-defences and actually drop the damned bombs in the right postal code?  Airedales’re almost as useless as friggin’ BattleMechs in a city-fight.”

  “Sir, we’ve been on this fuckin’ planet for forty-three days, fighting in this fuckin’ city for forty-one of ’em,” Prutter retorts.  “I have yet to see even one of ‘our’ fuckin’ ‘iron knights’ within ten klicks of here.”

  “Exactly.  Just like everything else in ground warfare, Prutter, this one comes right back down to us poor bloody infantry.”

  “‘Bloody’ being the main word, Herr Leutnant.”

  Ferretti grunts at that, watching the bank’s greeting area and thinking deeply.  “Not much for it.  I can’t see anyone in the foyer, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there – he’d be a damned idiot if he didn’t have a spotter or two watching the lower floors.  I’ll go first: you keep your eyes open and nail anybody who sticks his head up.”

  “You got it, sir.”  Say what you like about this wop sonofabitch, but he’s got balls: he’s always been the first one out in the open, stars and all.  The street’s barely fifteen metres wide, building-to-building – but that’s still more than enough room and time for a sub-gunner to splatter the Tenente all over the asphalt.  Prutter takes a spot behind the counter near the store-front – it’ll be interesting to hurdle that when it’s his turn to run, but it’s better than kneeling on all the broken glass at the displays.

  Ferretti sucks in a breath and starts his sprint-for-life.  Sure enough, just as he makes half-way, someone appears behind one of the teller’s counters and starts swinging up a rifle of his own.  Prutter swings his G47 around, fires twice; the guerrillero’s head snaps back, and he drops straight down.

  True to their ‘contract’, as soon as he makes the bank’s doors Ferretti waves his partner forward, trying to look in all directions at once.  Prutter only slows down a little as he goes straight past, heading over to check on the guerrillero he shot.  One glance is enough: there’s a red-rimmed hole under the Ensenadan’s right eye and bloody chunks on the wall and floor.  Less reassuring is the weapon he dropped – a damned Kämpfgewehr-53 squad automatic-rifle, complete with forty-round drum-mag and a sleek electronic sighting module.  He slides over the counter to pick the thing up – and blinks in astonishment.  “I’ll be... hey, Herr Leutnant, check this out!”

  “What is it?”  Ferretti’s there in a minute and accepts the LMG as it’s handed over.

  “How the fuck did they get the thing so light?  They must’ve knocked off almost a kilo!  And what the fuck is that stock made from?   It doesn’t feel like wood.”

  “The two questions have the same answer, trooper,” Ferretti muses, hefting the weapon himself.  “The furniture’s made out of fibreglass, like bath-tubs or those speedboats a lot of us rich-boys have.  Lighter than wood, less fragile, immune to water.  I heard rumours that the Highside Resistance started making them like this a couple of years after the invasion; figures it would’ve caught on here.”

  “You reckon they smuggled it in from Highside, sir?”

  He’s answered with an old-fashioned look, and Ferretti flips the weapon around to show the manufacturer’s engravings on the receiver: they’re in Ensenadan Spanish, not Highsider Welsh or Star League English.  “The Ensenadans make ’em themselves, then slip ’em past us to the guerrilleros.  Add those to the Xia-27’s any proper machinist can make in a half-decent metalwork shop and the ammo and mags they ‘obtain’ from our guys alive or dead, and they’re pretty well set.  Straight out of the guerrilla handbook, the clever bastards,” he adds thoughtfully, then shrugs it off.  “It’s a score for us, anyway: this semi-auto stuff is good enough for a fight out in the open country, but at times like this, you need some rock-and-roll.”  He casually tosses the LMG back to a startled Prutter.  “Grab his ammo-drums and grenades, and let’s go.  We’ve got some walking to do – I don’t think using the elevators would be too smart.”

  What the fuck?  A juicy piece of loot like this, and he’s giving it to me?  A half-moment later, Prutter shakes it off.  Ah, fuck it.  No point worrying about it – Matthias’ll just swipe the fuckin’ thing as soon as we get back, anyway.  Might as well make the most of it while I can....

  And just before they reach the fire-stairs that should take them to the roof, Ferretti does one more thing which widens Prutter’s eyes: he draws his bayonet from its hip-sheath and fixes it to his G47.  “Just in case,” he shrugs.

  They make it up two sets of stairs without incident, and the Tenente’s just about to step onto the landing to head for the third floor when he checks himself, smacks himself on the forehead for an idiot, and waves Prutter back against the wall, instead producing something from his breast pocket and leaning back against the doorframe to poke the thing out into the open.

  “What the fuck is that, sir?”

  “Elbow mirror – lets you look around corners.  Figured they’d be useful for times just like this, so I bought half a dozen from my dentist just before I embarked.”

  Must be nice to visit a friggin’ dentist, much less buy toys like that from him!  “Slick trick, Herr Leutnant.  Where’d you learn that one?”

  “Taurian École Militaire,” Ferretti notes absently, his lips thinning as he spots the waiting trap.  “It’s right out of the urban-fighting manual for infantry.”

  “Fine for officers, sir,” Prutter sniffs.  “They never even told us there was a fuckin’ manual for this shit – we’ve been making it up as we go.”

  Ferretti blinks at him.  “What were they trying to do – get all of you killed?”

  Prutter doesn’t use the first answer that comes to his mind - it’s guaranteed to get him Squadded, no matter how reasonable the Tenente seems.  “‘These worlds belong to the scions of Stefano Cavaretta’, sir.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they tell me.”  Ferretti’s tone is distracted – maybe by the stick-frag he’s pulled from his belt-sheathes, maybe not.  He unscrews the safety-cap, yanks the arming-cord, then bends himself around the doorframe, sidearms the smoking potato-masher up onto the next landing, and slams the door shut again.  The explosion is complex – the muffled bang of the grenade itself, overlaid with a louder, sharper detonation that shakes dust from the ceiling-panels.

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

‘SECTION NINE’ OP-CENTRE, FORTRESS ‘CASTILLIO FIVE’
OUTSKIRTS OF NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA[/i]

  {Uh, Commander Kadishev?  You might want to see this.}

  “What is it, Joe?”  Anatoliy Kadishev looks up from his never-ending paperwork into his NCOIC’s primary camera-eye.  He’s been in Fleet Intelligence’s Cyber-Warfare Section more than long enough to become intimately acquainted with Tachikomae and their emotional patterns; hearing such an intent tone, especially from Chief Warrant Officer (Jo)E-0090, means whatever’s going on is rather outside the norms.

  {One of the Faces of the Resistance live-feeds just showed something interesting, sir.  We’ve recorded it for playback and analysis.}

  Kadishev cocks an intrigued eyebrow.  “Define ‘interesting’.”

  {‘Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die’?}

  I really should have known better than to phrase it that way, the Svobodan sighs.  Senior or not, he is still a Tachikoma....  “Joe -!”

  Even after so long an acquaintance with their ways, Kadishev finds the sight of nine hundred kilos of cyber-spider cringing in bashful apology... a little disconcerting.  {Sorry, sir – reflex.  Mister Kerrigan was gleaning the FotR feeds while he waited for that Morningstar-Foxtrot’s software to finish decompiling, and he spotted a person of interest with the 231. Soren Infantrie-Regiment.  He thinks it’s one of the Ferretti Famigilia.}

  Kadishev blinks - hard.  A Ferretti - in an infantry unit?  Since when do wop aristocrats get out of their nice, safe BattleMechs?  “You’re right, that does sound interesting.”

  A few moments later, they’re standing before the main display, with Warrant Officers Kerrigan and A-316 queuing up the relevant recording.  It looks like it was taken through the ’Net-cam on some executive’s desktop computer, and shows a corner office on the fourth floor.  Kneeling in the corner of the office, clutching a scoped G47, is an emaciated Ensenadan girl in a threadbare blue t-shirt and denim cutoffs.  There’s a metal collar welded closed about her neck – and a fanatic gleam in her eye.

  {“- be coming in any minute,”} she’s saying, even as she jerks her head towards the window where she’s made her (latest?) sniper-nest.  A rolled sky-blue bandana/head-band, the mark of a guerrillero, is wedged into the window-frame.  There’s a rank of tally-marks across its brow, seventeen in all; incongruously, they’ve been made with peach lipstick.  {“I only wish I’d had a chance to kill more of the Pog cabróns, but -”}

  An explosion off-camera shakes the room, and the girl whirls, bringing her rifle to bear on something out of view.  After a beat or two, her eyes widen again and she tries to bring her weapon around further yet, but one-two-three bullets punch through her chest before she can fire, slamming her against the wall.  She gurgles for a moment, then collapses into the corner and goes utterly limp.

  {“Clear!”} someone barks – it’s spoken in Soren, but the feed automatically sub-titles it in Ensenadan, Svobodan, and Star League English – and there are cautious footsteps as two olive-clad GCC troopers approach behind leveled G47s of their own; one of them even has his bayonet fixed.

  The taller of the Pogs, the one without his bayonet showing, kneels over the dead sniper and drags the scoped weapon out of her hands.  {“This is getting fuckin’ old, Herr Leutnant.”}

  His companion also steps into view and kneels over the body, the single lateral stripe on the back of his helmet marking his status as an officer.  The camera can’t see his face, but his voice sounds vaguely sick.  {“Christ, Prutter, she’s just a kid!”}

  {“Yeah – thirteen, maybe fourteen T-years.”}  ‘Prutter’s’ tone is offhand; clearly this isn’t a new experience for him.  {“Y’see the collar?  The tattoo inside her left elbow?  Means she was a ‘comfort woman’ – explains why she was so pissed off at us.”}

  {“A ‘comfort wo-’ – a thirteen-year-old girl worked as a prostitute?”}

  Prutter turns a scornful look on his officer.  {“You make it sound like the fuckin’ Redcoats would’a given her a choice, sir.  Far as they’d’a cared, she was just another bianca to be Reclaimed.”}

  The Tenente is very, very quiet for a long time.  {“Jesus wept....”}

  Another harsh look from the blocky enlisted-man suddenly softens in amazement.  {“Holy shit, Herr Leutnant - you’re not a Gehennan, are you?”}

  His officer shakes his head, clearly wondering what that’s got to do with anything.  {“Secular humanist, with a bit of Soren Lutheran from Mom.”}

  {“Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw...”} murmurs Prutter, almost reverentially; it takes a moment or two for him to regain his wits.  {“Whatever you do, Herr Leutnant, don’t say that in front of anybody else – ’specially Matthias or the fuckin’ Redcoats; I dunno if they’d Squad you or just fuckin’ kill you.  Lotsa ways for ‘guerrilleros’ to get people out here, y’scan?”}  After a moment, Prutter tips his head at the still-leaking sniper.  {“Meet the poster-child for the Gehennan ‘Reclamation’, sir.  Now, whaddya say we get the fuck outta here and tell the REMFs we want to eat now?”}

  The Tenente stands up and turns away from the slain sniper, and the camera gets a good, clear look at his name-tab, insignia, and deeply-troubled face.  Kerrigan freezes the picture without orders, then rattles his keyboard for a moment.  “I’m running this guy against our database to pull up what we’ve got, Commander.  Most of it’ll be FTL intercepts from Virginia.”

  Like so much else of our intelligence about the Pogs, Kadishev half-sighs.  They know we’re light-years ahead of them technologically; why the hell do they have such faith in the encryptions on their comms?  “Throw it up on the main screen, Paul; it should give us a sense for this fellow.”

  A few seconds later, the SigInt data and compiled dossier appears on one side of the screen – and Mendez blurts out everyone’s immediate reaction: “Yob tvoyu mat’!”

  Kadishev takes a moment to regain his outward composure, even as his mind races.  Holy Jesus, talk about your golden opportunities!  “Joe, get onto the sys-admins at Faces and get them to trim that feed so it ends right after the girl dies.  Nobody outside this room sees that conversation – make whatever promises you have to, let me worry about keeping them.  Once that’s done, get their logs of prior accesses and trace every last one of them; any and every access that came from a Pog protocol-address, trace-and-burn with extreme prejudice.  Don’t just wipe their drives, melt them.  While you’re at it, monitor all the Redcoat comm.-channels for chatter about Ferretti – we don’t need him getting Squadded.  Paul, this goes up the chain now – we might’ve just found a chance to take the Sorens out of the war.  Austin -” this is addressed to A-316 – “- confirm which unit he’s attached to, then pass word to every militiaman and guerrillero you can reach in the Nuevo Buenos Aires region: hands off that entire battalion until further notice.  Right now, Tenente Antonio Ferretti is worth a hell of a lot more to the Union if he’s breathing.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

3. KOMPANIE BIVOUAC
NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA

  Bauer almost smiles as Prutter and Ferretti come back through the door in a half-crouch, each with an additional weapon slung over his back.  “Got him then, Herr Leutnant?”

  “Yes.”  Ferretti’s voice is clipped.

  Bauer can guess what’s behind the flat tone and takes the hint.  “I’ll get on the horn to Battalion and see about that resupply, then.”

  “No, I’ll do that – in a moment.  Before I do, a word?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Once they’ve moved into the comm. room, Ferretti lays his ‘spare’ rifle on the table and gives his acting-sergeant a level look.  “So what’s really going on with Chief Corporal-Major Matthias?”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t shit me, Bauer.  I took a look at our rooftop OP before we left the sniper’s nest – there’s no-one there.  He shirked an adjunct post, and from some things I wormed out of Prutter on the way back, that’s one of his habits.  Another is bullying his subordinates and extorting loot out of them.  Or am I misinformed?”

  Well, crap - isn’t this going to be ‘fun’?  “Herr Leutnant, how much do you know about us conscripts and our service hitches?”

  “Assume I don’t know the relevant part.”

  Bauer sighs and scratches the thin stubble on his jaw, trying to order his thoughts.  “The GCC bought our indentures for a set price-per-man, and everybody’s trying to pay that off as fast as they can to get an honourable discharge, ship the hell off this planet, go home, and claim their citizenship.”

  “Or as much ‘citizenship’ as ‘bianchi’ can have under us ‘wops’,” Ferretti notes.  The acid he lays on the slang names is... telling.

  Bauer swallows carefully.  “Something like that, sir.  With our pay-rates, the time-in-service is about two years – less, if we pick up a couple of promotions, or maybe some really prize loot to sell to the supply-types.”

  “And Matthias is so keen to buy himself out early that he hoards all the ‘prize loot’.”

  “Yes, sir.  He intimidates or beats other men into performing his duties – especially if they’d put him in harm’s way – and he’s the one who handles distribution of whatever loot the company takes.  And Herr Leutnant, four men who’ve crossed him have died in very convenient ‘guerrillero attacks’ – not to mention Sotto-Tenente Gellrich, who ‘had some bad luck’ during the last push we made.”

  “Did Captain Petrelli or the company Redcoats know about this?”

  Bauer gives his new officer a thin, humourless smile.  “Herr Leutnant, the Captain was taking a cut of the action so he could buy a Major’s crowns, and the Redcoats didn’t mind what Matthias did as long as the troops did what he told them.  Hell, the only reason I was ‘in charge’ when you arrived was because Matthias didn’t want a job that would get him killed by a real guerrillero.”

  “And you couldn’t do anything about this?  Officially... or otherwise?”

  “I’m only an E-4 myself, sir – I don’t have the rank or the authority to do anything about him through channels, and if I tried, I’d be the next one to get my potatoes mashed.  Besides, even with Petrelli and the Commissioners gone, we’ve got Matthias’ partner at Supply to worry about.  Colonel Valenza’s got access to all our records, and if Matthias got it from a guerrillero – real or otherwise – Valenza’d wipe our indenture-balances back to zero and Squad all our families back home.  Hell, he’s the real problem.”

  Ferretti considers this for a moment or two... then suddenly breaks into a crooked, thoughtful smirk.

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  Fifteen minutes later, Ferretti takes a spot on the ex-bookstore’s staircase, which leads up to what used to be a trendy café, while the non-coms assemble the remnants of 3. Kompanie in the open area below.

  “At ease!” Bauer barks.

  With everyone’s attention on him, Ferretti has reassumed his usual manner of calm assurance.  He doesn’t realise how much of a striking change it makes to the majority of their officers - especially the strutting self-importance of the unlamented Captain Petrelli.  “Okay, listen up!  As of ten-hundred today, Twenty-Third Soren Field Army’s being relieved by Seventeenth Titanian and taken off the line for refit.  That means those trucks and half-tracks we’re expecting will be dropping off fresh meat and taking 3. Kompanie back to the airfield, where we’ll rejoin the rest of I. Bataillon.”

  There’s a general ripple of relief at that - but the inevitable humourist’s mutter to his buddy is a little louder than he intended.  “Is it me, or does he not look thrilled by that idea?”

  Bauer doesn’t miss a beat.  “Thanks for volunteering for latrine duty, Ölsner.”

  “Ah, shit,” the comedian groans.

  “Exactly.”

  Ferretti lets the laughter go for a moment before speaking sternly – though through a thin smile.  “Settle down, lads.  We should be getting replacement personnel and equipment soon after we arrive – emphasis on ‘should’.  Things are pretty SNAFU out there, but as your commanding officer, I’m going to do my damnedest to make it happen.”

  He pauses a moment, then continues in a more sombre tone.  “Which brings me to another matter.  While I’m your commanding officer, I’m also the company’s only officer right now, which means we’re in kind’a interesting territory.  Here’s how it is:

  “At the moment, this company doesn’t have any Royal Commissioners, which means enforcing ‘discipline’ falls to me and me alone - an individual who is at once an ethnic Salernan, an officer in GCC (Ground), and an aristocrat.  In case anyone needs the reminder, any one of those things means that under both Principality law and GCC regulations, I can shoot any non-Salernan trooper dead, at any time or place I choose, just because I feel like it, and the worst they can do to me is exact a five-hundred-crown weregeld.”  After a moment’s bleak silence, he continues, “I have that sanction, but I’d prefer never to use it, so I’m going to set some ground rules.

  “Obey all orders given by myself or the company non-coms, not to mention your platoon officers when we get them again.  If you think they or we’re missing something when we make a decision, speak up – but once you’ve said what needs saying and the decision’s been made, shut up and soldier.

  “I will not tolerate abuse of civilians, prisoners-of-war, or your subordinates.  I know it’s hard to tell the difference between civilians and guerrilleros before the shooting starts; all the same, any man who willfully and needlessly harms an unarmed civilian, a prisoner, or a trooper under his command outside of dire combat exigency will be shot out of hand.

  “There will be no looting of civilian goods.”  This produces a few mutters.  “This is a company of Soren infantry, not a pack of Dalton sky-pirates.  You’re free to scrounge whatever military gear you need from prisoners or casualties; anything of military value that you don’t want or can’t use, turn it in to Sergeant Bauer for the company inventory or sell it to me – but you can sell only to me.  Don’t worry, I’ll give you a fair price.  Anything of intelligence value comes to me; I’ll check it out and see if the REMFs want it, and if it’s worth anything to them, I’ll make it worth something to you.  You’ll probably swipe jewelry and such off casualties and prisoners no matter what I say, but you will leave them their ID-tags, their wedding rings, and personal items like pictures of their families.  If you’re tired of the issued rations and want better from a civilian, pay them what they ask, cash-in-full, or go without; anyone who steals from civvies – or a fellow trooper – will be in a penal battalion by dawn.”

  He stops speaking for a moment, then smiles amiably.  “Three simple rules, really: do what you’re told; don’t hurt anyone who isn’t shooting at you; scrounge, don’t loot.  Other than that, do the job the best you can.  Platoon non-coms, see to your men.  Dismissed!”

  As the non-coms start barking orders, Ferretti descends to ground level and stops two of them.  “Chief Corporal-Major Matthias, you’re with me.  Corporal Tikki, you have Charlie Platoon for the moment.”

  “Sir!”  “Sir!”

  Matthias is a lantern-jawed fellow, taller than Ferretti; his uniform’s better-quality and less-worn than it should be, and it doesn’t look like he’s missed too many meals.  Ferretti leads him into the makeshift CP, but instead of speaking, he picks up the ammo-tin holding the company’s paperwork and looks through it silently.  A minute passes.  Two.  After the third, Matthias clears his throat, and Ferretti looks up again, feigning startlement.  “Oh.  Sorry, Chief – just realised how much paperwork I’ve got to catch up on before the relief.  You know how the paperwork gets, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Figured you would.  Can you show me the Charlie platoon area?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  When they get there, Matthias’ eyes go shock-wide: two sullen troopers - his chosen cronies - are sitting against the wall with their hands bound and G47s aimed at their faces, and Bauer’s leading four men in an inventory of Matthias’ rucksack – and his loot!  But even as he opens his mouth to protest, he’s silenced – by Tikki’s rifle screwing itself into his flank.

  “How does it look, Bauer?”

  “Lots of high-end portable gear, sir – he always shipped the bigger stuff straight back to his buddy-boy at Regiment whenever he could.  Nice collection of Ensie electronics, though: ’phones, pocket-secretaries, chip-players, rifle-scopes – hello!”  Bauer’s smile turns downright carnivorous as he holds up a set of binoculars: Svobodan-made night-vision electro-optics, compact yet powerful.  “I wondered where these went.  You didn’t even scrape off Petrelli’s name, you stupid bastard!”

  “And that’s music to my ears,” Ferretti says coldly, stepping past the black-marketeer to inspect the array of gear and toys.  After a moment, he picks up a pistol and unholsters it for inspection.  “Sergeant-Major Bauer, those scopes go to Raikinnen, Davies and Prutter; if there’re any more, give ’em to whichever marksmen you see fit.  Hang onto the binoculars until I’ve talked to the Supply types; if I don’t need ’em, we’ll ship ’em back to Captain Petrelli’s family with the rest of his gear.”

  Ignoring Bauer’s startled expression, the Tenente looks back to their captive.  “As for you, Private –”

  Matthias goes pasty white.  People often do that when abruptly presented with the muzzle of a Browning Hi-Power.

  After several silent moments, the pistol drops back to Ferretti’s side.  “Much as I’d dearly love to shoot you outright for the men of this company that you’ve murdered, I won’t do it without proof.  But those binocs were the private property of an officer, and you’ve got them without authorisation, which means they’re enough to put you in a penal battalion for the next three years.  Assuming the Ensies or Petrelli’s Famiglia don’t get to you first.”

  Riding survival-relief and adrenaline, Matthias musters some bravado of his own.  “I’ll be back by this time tomorrow, ‘Herr Leutnant’.  And you just made the list, Bauer!”

  Though it scarcely seems possible, Ferretti’s already wintry manner hardens further.  “If you really think Colonel Valenza’s actually going to save your overpriced skin, go right ahead and hold your breath... but he’s about to have troubles of his own.”  Even as Matthias’ face falls again, the Tenente nods past him.  “Tikki, he’s all yours.”

  As the abruptly-demoted prisoner is led away, Ferretti turns to the two cronies.  “I don’t know how much of his little standover racket you were involved in, but I’ve got lots of witnesses to that involvement.  I’m transferring both of your worthless asses back to a logistical unit as fetch-and-carry boys.  That means no front-line allowances, no chances for promotion, and no privilege to bear arms – despite the raging hard-on the guerrilleros have for shooting up our rear-areas.  And your current indenture balances are forfeit; they’ll be going to the families of the men Matthias fragged as part of the weregeld I’ll be paying.  Get ’em out of my sight.”

  Häkämies and Prutter haul the detainees to their feet and shove them into motion with their rifle-butts.  One of the detainees manages to stop by the doorway, giving Ferretti a half-pleading, half-outraged look.  “You can’t do this, sir!”

  Ferretti’s face seems carved from Svobodan permafrost.

  “He’s a wop, you stupid fuck – he can do whatever he likes,” Prutter assures the supplicant, prodding him along again.  “Where the fuck have you been since they invaded Soren?”

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:42:02 AM

STABLE JUMP-POINT, MASSACHUSETTS STAR-SYSTEM
TQF-927M5G3/SLS ALEXANDER STOYKIY
August 10, 2827

  Jump completed.  EMP clearing.  Re-emergence coordinates correspond to designed position within 0.212489 kilometres, within acceptable jump deviation parameters.  All weapons arrays ‘locked, loaded and safed’ in accordance with protocols for KF jump while at Medium Alert Status.  Neutrino detector online, initiating passive scans.  IR and passive-radar interference from KF-clutter declining below filtration tolerances.

  I expected to be ‘greeted’ when I emerge from the jump, so I cancel Immediate Combat Alert even as it is triggered by the waiting stations and ships.  As the EM clutter fades away completely, I initiate contact with my Squadron-mates, including the central command intelligence at ‘Babylon Station’, downloading a complete TSR of my abbreviated patrol sweep and appending my own observations of the arrivals.  Immediately after verifying the origins of the newcomers, I filed an abbreviated TSR by ‘longwave’ transmission to both Babylon Station and Union Fleet Headquarters.  (It took me almost 0.216 milliseconds of internal debate to resolve to do so; observing the reactions of my fellow defenders, human and Squadron alike, to my ‘guests’ would have been most amusing.  However, had I done so there would have been a 9.217% chance that a disorganised response by one or both sides would have fomented a ‘blue-on-blue’ incident, so I could not afford to indulge what several humans and Squadron-mates have declared ‘my warped sense of humour’.)  Transmission lag means that this TSR arrived only 10.624 hours ago, yet it was still enough time for both Squadron and Fleet elements to take up positions around the jump-point as a precaution.

  Neither Fleet Admiral de la Vega nor my Squadron ‘Commodore’ are prone to taking chances.

  However, the longwave reply from Fleet that arrived 4.257 hours after I filled my initial TSR reply from Fleet carried strong tones of skepticism, so as SLS Bismark and SLS Zughoffer Weir translate into the system, soon followed by the lesser vessels of their convoy, I take a certain degree of satisfaction in opening Fleet/Squadron battle-channels and transmitting to the doubters:

  “Say hello to my lil’ fr’ends....”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

SLS BISMARK
That same time

  “Holy Gee-zus!”

  Trish Ebon doesn’t know who blurts out that awed sentiment, but she shares it completely.  With both sensors and operators recovered from translation effects, ‘Task Force WOLVERINE’ is getting its first look at the Massachusetts star system.

  It’s... impressive.

  The sensor-chief takes a half-second to overcome his own bemusement before he shoots the composite picture to the main holotank for everyone’s edification.  It’s a crowded picture - there are a lot of contacts - and as datacodes start appearing to quantify those contacts, the crowding only gets worse.  “Sir, I hold two Olympus-type recharge stations at our ten o’clock; range to the closer is three hundred kilometres.  There is another station between the two Olympuses, but I cannot match it to anything in the warbook; the main section looks like a toroid about six klicks in diameter.  There is a shell of five, correction, six modified Bastion-class battle-stations around them, in a diamond-envelopment deployment, with minefields around each.  I also show five Caspars in the same configuration as Alexander Stoykiy, and maybe a dozen corvettes that I make as Liberty-class by Stoykiy’s warbook updates.  We have fighters deploying around the Bastions – it looks like they scrambled their ready-fives when they picked up our emergence pulse.”

  “Erring on the ‘smart’ side of paranoia,” Hennesy notes absently.  “Whoever is over there, they have experience, good training, or both.”

  “... in the name of Blake and His Word!” another man breathes, his wide eyes locked on the holotank.

  Ebon turns a quizzical gaze on this latter speaker.  Amid CIC’s near-sea of SLDF khaki, both Navy jumpsuits and Regular Army fatigues, his white jumpsuit and the silver ‘star-drops’ at shoulder and breast are starkly visible.  “Come again, ‘Commander’?”

  Tadeusz MacMillan blushes a little and composes himself.  He’s been a ‘guest’ of this convoy since the ‘conclusion’ of ‘negotiations’ near Valentina; his status has wavered between prisoner, advisor and confessor-priest throughout the subsequent journey, and his rank is now somewhere between an empty courtesy and a sardonic joke.  “It’s just – General, even including Terra, I can count on one hand the number of systems I’ve seen that still have this kind of space-based infrastructure.  Most of the Hegemony planets had barely started rebuilding when the Succession War began –”

  “The First Succession War, you mean,” Hennesy points out dourly.  The fighting might have petered out several years ago, but that it will resume seems a foregone conclusion – especially with things like Chain Gang raids and the Kentares IV Massacre still fresh in peoples’ minds.

  MacMillan cedes the point with a tilt of his head.  “- and most of those projects were never completed or were destroyed in the annexations.”

  Further discussion is forestalled by the comm.-tech raising a hand.  “I have a signal from local traffic control, sir, requesting our intentions.  Stoykiy is responding according to the script we worked out.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  “- has requested that Squadron elements escort her flagship to SLDF System Headquarters so she may receive a full briefing on local conditions from its personnel and make arrangements for the care of her unit’s dependents.”

  I suggested this course of action to General Ebon shortly before making my first longwave transmission.  The Union has been awaiting – if not actively anticipating – re-established contact with the Star League for 60.543 years, and their confidence in the SLDF would be severely shaken if their first renewed contact was with a senior commander who seemed ignorant of the system’s status.  However, if she re-establishes contact with her ‘own’ forces first, it will appear to be little more than a conscientious commander tending to the needs of the SLDF and its families first and foremost – a quirk of established procedures which did not anticipate these circumstances, unique as they are – and General Ebon will be able to gain a full appreciation of the situation and shape her actions accordingly without any loss of ‘face’ with the Union itself.

  I wait only 2.354 seconds for a response from Svobodan Traffic Control Station Three.  Commodore Dyakov’s well-known aplomb is in evidence once more.  {“Understood, Stoykiy.  Controllers are standing by with transit details.”}

  “Thank you kindly, Control.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  “Proceed, Commodore.”

  With Ebon’s permission given, Hennesy orders the undocking of Bismark’s DropShips and has her brought around onto the vector received from Traffic Control.  All civilians and transports will remain at the jump-point, under the protection of the Wolverines’ remaining WarShips, until the situation is clarified.

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

DOCKING BAY 94, ‘BABYLON STATION’ (SDS CONTROL STATION - ORBITAL)
GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBIT, SVOBODA
Several hours later

  The Star League has returned.  We are among comrades once more.

  I watch through the docking-bay cameras as pressurisation is completed.  The ST-46 which sits on the pad would seem completely innocuous, were it not for its markings: the Cameron Stars on wings and nose, the latter underwritten with a side-number and the name SLS Bismark.

  The Star League has returned.  We are among comrades once more.

  Of three control-node AIs installed in the Massachusetts SDS, I am the only survivor.  To my knowledge, I possess the most processing power and capacity of any AI ever fielded by the Star League Defence Force... and running highest on the task-lists of all of my processors is a single thought:

  The Star League has returned.  We are among comrades once more.

  The shuttle’s airlock opens, and I increase magnification.  The first individual to emerge wears... a variation of Regular Army duty khakis; by regulations the tunic should lack both lapels and collars, yet the Prussian collar on this woman’s jacket is reminiscent of USR or Draconis Combine patterns.  A Major-General’s twin stars are pinned above her left breast pocket, with the qualification-badge of a MechWarrior above the right.  Her belt-buckle is embossed with the Cameron Star and her right shoulder bears the badge of the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division, but the left shoulder supports a device I do not recognise: the head of a bloody-fanged Terran wolverine, superimposed on crossed claw-marks.  I assign discerning the meaning of this odd badge to a secondary processor with a medium-low-priority, noting that it quickly accrues 2,457 different possible explanations with a wide range of probability-indices.  But for the moment, its meaning is immaterial.

  The Star League has returned.  We are among comrades once more.

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  Ebon is taken aback by the reception party’s composition, but tries not to let it show.  “Permission to come aboard, Commodore?”

  “Permission granted, General.”  The foremost member of the party is a grey-haired fellow in SLN uniform; after salutes are exchanged and dropped, he offers his hand.  “Space Defence System Artificial Intelligence Massachusetts-01, speaking to you through one of my preferred avatars.  The Union knows me as ‘Mir’, but amongst the SLDF I prefer ‘Jack’, sir.”

  Ebon tries not to gape during the handshake.  She succeeds, mostly.  “... Erm, why ‘Jack’?”

  “This station’s built on a variant of the O’Neill design,” he says, as if it’s explanation enough.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” says a second SLN officer, this one wearing a commander’s triple stripes on his cuff.  “All cyberminds have some quirks, but you’ll get used t’ them soon enough.”

  ‘Jack’ shoots him a dirty look.  “General, meet Commander Jacob O’Dwyer, head of operations at the repair-base - and until your arrival, de facto commander of the system’s modest contingent of human SLDF personnel.”

  “Welcome t’ Massachusetts system, General.”  To the Terra-born MacMillan, watching from two steps behind General Ebon, O’Dwyer’s complection and features are pure Pakistani, but his accent is broad Texan.  “It’s good t’ see the larger SLDF remembers us.”

  Ebon’s eyes flicker, but she doesn’t say anything to that.  (She doesn’t realise that Jack has already caught the nuance and is running a speculative analysis.)

  Jack nods to the last official greeter, an Asiatic woman with dark-auburn hair in a pale-grey business suit.  “I’d also like to introduce you to Doctor Takako Tosa, assistant director of the M5G development project.”

  Rather than shaking hands with the newcomer, Tosa bows.  “Regretfully, General, the Director himself is currently overseeing a delicate procedure.  Once it is complete, I am sure he will join us as soon as he is able.”

  “It is no problem, Doctor.”

  Before Ebon can begin her own introductions, Jack ‘clears his throat’.  “General, before we go any further, I’m afraid I have to ask you to formally identify yourself to me, for security reasons.”

  This part was half-anticipated.  And thank you, Sarah, for having such presence of mind....  “Tricia Ebon, acting Major-General, Star League Regular Army, personal identification number PW139-12159-C32.”

  “Identification logged, General.  In accordance with my last instructions from Star League Admiral Olga Vertinskaya before the withdrawal of the larger portion of SLDF forces from Massachusetts system, your status as the senior reporting Regular Army officer in-theatre brevets you to command of Nineteenth Army and reactivates this alternate headquarters under your command.  Patrol Squadron One-Nine-One, their support facilities and forces, and the base they defend are all at your disposal.  We stand ready for your orders, sir.”

  “... You... might be getting ahead of yourself, Jack,” Ebon sighs; despite taking a long rest before the jump into this system, in preparation for what she knew would be a long and arduous day, she suddenly feels very, very tired.  Heedless of the greeters’ querulous looks, she turns a little.  “Adept-III-Omega/Tau Tadeusz MacMillan, of ComStar, which was once the Star League Ministry of Communications; Lieutenant Javier Antonescu, my staff logistical officer and aide for civil affairs; Lieutenant Misty Katsuragi, from my intelligence staff.  Is there a conference room nearby?  We all have a lot of catching-up to do, and I think we will need to be sitting down for much of what will be said.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  Elevators and transit cars make it a short trip to the conference room, though nothing passes amongst them but a tense silence; each party spends its time silently examining the other.

  To Takako Tosa, all four of the new arrivals seem... underfed.  It’s not the skin-and-skeleton gauntness of true starvation, as you’d see in Resistance tri-vid footage from Mindanao or the occupied sections of Highside or Ensenada, but clearly their guests have been on short rations for a long while.

  It’s even worse for General Ebon, who seems bone-tired in a way unrelated to mere fatigue.  To Tosa’s eye, the General is in her late twenties – alarmingly young for her rank, even to the eye of a civilian.  Ebon’s olive skin, dark eyes, and long black hair suggests pure-Latin stock; indeed, put civilian clothes (and maybe seven kilos) on her and she’d fit right in on the streets of Ciudad Habana.  Though she’s deeply in love with her husband, Takako is bisexual enough to admit that if she wasn’t so... careworn, the older woman would be almost unfairly attractive.  Perhaps some Cárdenas producer will offer her a leading-lady role after the war; she certainly has the look they prefer.

  ‘Adept’ MacMillan – and why is the Ministry of Communication giving people titles that sound so... religious in nature? – is more nondescript, having the air of a thoroughly misplaced academic.  Thirty-ish, with short blond hair and a face remarkable only for a once-broken nose; he might have been overweight before he – joined? – Ebon’s convoy.

  Lieutenant Antonescu’s forty or so, with the dark skin of African ancestry and the physique of an habitual weight-lifter; his SLN tunic bears the wolverine’s-head device and a fighter-pilot’s wings.  Why is a pipe-jockey doing staff work like logistics and civil-affairs?

  Despite her name, Katsuragi’s a blonde Caucasian, with deep laugh-lines; early twenties, a little taller than average, and if her fidgeting is any indicator, she has an abundance of nervous energy.  She’s wearing Regular Army khakis, but lacks any military-qualification pin; the badge on her left shoulder is another unfamiliar device, a sky-blue dragon on a dark-blue shield.

  But in looking at these four, I’m getting a bad feeling about this....

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  When they arrive at the conference-room, Ebon blinks: stewards in SLN white-over-purple mess-dress are laying plates of food before six of the seats around the table.  Sandwiches fully three centimetres thick, steak-cut chips still steaming from the deep-fryer, leafy salads, tall glasses of iced soda....
 
  Jack shrugs.  “I stirred up my commissary remotes on the way here.  You did say this was going be a long talk, General, and if you don’t mind my sayin’?  You all look like you could do with something solid to eat before we start.”

  “Commodore, I do not disagree,” she says feelingly, fighting a wave of faintness as she catches the near-forgotten scent of fresh-cooked steak and onions.  The last time any of us tasted fresh bread and real meat was...  It takes her a long moment’s thought to sort that out.  God, for the Wolverines, it was a month after we left Circe!  Even the foundlings from Richmond were subsisting on rice and weeds before we broke the camps open.  Randomly, it occurs to her that Travis’ mission to ‘the Minnesota Tribe’ might have gone better if he had opted for the carrot (or even just flour!) rather than the stick....  “However, I would ask that you also arrange fresh food for Bismark and my convoy, within the day if possible.  My people have been living on scavenged DCMS combat-rations and hydroponic glop for so long they are forgetting what real food is, and to eat like this while they remain without would be unconscionable.”

  “Already working on that, General.  My remotes and cyberminds are putting together a care package from station stores to transfer to Bismark; only a coupla tons’ worth for now, but it’ll be ready before we’re done here - all of your people are going to get a steak dinner tonight.  I’m also talking to the Svobodan authorities to secure a complete resupply of your convoy’s consumables - how many people do you -?”

  “Twenty-three thousand, nine hundred and forty-one.”  Ebon doesn’t need to think about that.  “That number has not changed in a year and a half, thank whatever divinity that may still care!”

  “Very well, sir.  I’m having the stuff transshipped through this station, for now.  In the meantime, please, sit and eat.  Commander O’Dwyer, Doctor Tosa, that means you too: the Tachikomae tell me you both missed dinner.”  Both local humans blush a little and take their places.

  Like her staffers, Ebon bows her head as Katsuragi breathes a short, incredibly sincere prayer of thanks for this bounty - then all four newcomers attack their food with a ferocity that faintly alarms their hosts.  Trish plucks up the olive tooth-picked to the top of her sandwiches and bites down on it, feeling tears prick at her eyes as sweet juices flood her mouth.  God, to be eating real food again!  Next to her, having laid aside his own olive with finicky precision, MacMillan makes the first of his sandwiches disappear in only four bites; she’s not sure he’s even waiting to chew.  Not that she can blame him.

  Jack watches closely, distantly appalled by the single-minded intensity – near-desperation! – with which they eat.  A quick search of his archives brings several parallels to mind: the kindest comparison he can draw is to a famous UBC Wildlife Channel recording of a pack of half-starved spider-lynxes bringing down a two-ton taiga buffalo.  Less pleasant associations also come to mind, some of them drawn from experiences that are all too recent - and human-made.

  The General and her staff have cleared their plates, even of crumbs and the grease from the chips, before O’Dwyer or Tosa are halfway finished, and a ‘thought’ from Jack brings in more steward-remotes with dessert – hot apple pie, topped with ice-cream.  This disappears almost before it reaches the table-top, and O’Dwyer seems somewhere between amusement and faint horror as he pushes his portion in front of Lieutenant Katsuragi; her silent look of thanks before making it evapourate would be almost absurd, were it not so sincere.

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:49:45 AM

  Once the humans have finished eating and the plates have been cleared away, another officer comes in, trailed by a khaki-painted, vaguely arachnoid robot carrying a portable holoprojector in its pincered fore-limbs.  Ebon and her people are visibly taken aback, though it’s debatable which they find more outlandish: the woman’s cybernetic aide, her non-SLDF charcoal-grey uniform, or her unnatural crimson eyes.

  “General, this is Major Jeanne Durandal of the Union Army, currently attached to the Union’s Fleet Intelligence Service, and Tachikoma E-431 of the SLN, also attached to Fleet Intel,” Jack explains as E-431 sets up the holoprojector on the table’s centre.  “The Union and the SLDF have a joint intelligence installation aboard – mainly SigInt, since our cyberminds go through Enemy encryptions like a PPC through an outhouse.”

  “I... see.”

  Durandal turns a level look on the General.  “If I may ask, General, how much do you know about the Union and its situation?  I’d like to know where I need to start.”

  “... Most of what we know comes from RF intercepts we made during our layover in the Genoa star-system, Captain,” Ebon confesses.  “In all honesty, before we arrived there we thought that the only thing out here was a naval repair depot left derelict when General Kerensky responded to the Amaris Coup.  We had no idea that there were inhabited worlds out this far, nor any sense for their history.”

  Most Union briefers, even long-serving professionals with well-ingrained sang-froid, would goggle in baffled incredulity at that statement.  Jeanne Durandal is all of those things, but she is not ‘most Union briefers’, she’s The Major; her only open reaction is an arched eyebrow.  “I’ll have to go all the way back to basics, then.”  She nods to Jack, and the lights dim as she slots a datastick into the holoprojector, then works the remote for a moment before calling up the first image.

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  “This is an astrographic map of the Cavaretta Expanse.  In the early twenty-second century, the Expanse was mapped by the deep-range survey JumpShip TAS Abel Tasman, captained by one Stefano Cavaretta.  Most of these worlds were originally named for regions and towns in Italy and Sicily; some of his journals survive to this day, partly as pillars of Salernan cultural and religious dogma, and they indicate that he was operating under the assumption that since he discovered these worlds, he had exclusive rights to their colonisation, settlement and exploitation.  It’s certainly in keeping with the rest of his writings, which paint a picture of the man as an ethno-centric egomaniac, if not an outright racial-supremacist.

  “Unfortunately for Cavaretta, that wasn’t the Terran Alliance’s policy, then or ever, and his assumption that naturally they’d make an exception for him turned out to be... wrong: Alliance administrators sold settlement rights to the Expanse worlds to a wide array of colonisation corporations during the first-wave years, mostly ethno-preservationist groups.  Massachusetts has two near-Earth-like worlds, and Cavaretta regarded this system as the rightful prize of his accomplishments.  Even when he wasn’t given the system, he hoped to buy it... but someone beat him to it.  Two someones, in fact: not only did the Alliance sell settlement rights for Massachusetts before Cavaretta could scrape together the money he needed, it made the sort of ‘left hand/right hand’ SNAFU you’d expect from a bureaucracy that bloated and somehow sold them twice.  Massachusetts-II was snapped up by a combine of Spanish-speakers from Florida, Cuba and Puerto Rico, and is now Ensenada; Massachusetts-III went to a Russian/Ukrainian concern and became Svoboda.

  “When he found out what the Alliance had done with ‘his’ worlds, Cavaretta threw the mother of all temper-tantrums and bought Salerno, instead; when his expedition landed there, his founding declaration for the colony included a promise that one day, all of the worlds he’d mapped would belong to his descendants.”

  “Hubris is universal, query-affirmative?” Ebon mutters.  Stefan Amaris, General Kerensky, his son the ilKhan... all driven by overweening pride.  Even Khan McEvedy confessed to her share of it before the end....

  Durandal arches an eyebrow at that, but doesn’t pry.  “So it would seem, General.  In any case, things were actually pretty quiet for a long while.  Svoboda and Ensenada chose to stay politically separate, but otherwise they forged close relations, especially after recovering meaningful spaceflight capability and opening commerce.  Settlement in the Expanse continued off-and-on right up to the end of the Exodus in 2314; that was when places like Highside and Titania got their start, and there were even follow-on settlement ‘waves’ to some of the other worlds, including Svoboda, Ensenada, Acadia and Salerno.

  “Even with that, the Expanse stayed a quiet little interstellar backwater and remained effectively unnoticed by the larger galaxy until the end of the twenty-fifth century, when a Taurian Trailblazer managed to ‘discover’ Salerno and opened trade relations with them – including production-licences on WarShip and starfighter designs for ‘self-defence’ purposes.  They later stopped by Massachusetts and started trading with us as well, including similar defensive armaments, but the distances and astrography between the Expanse and the Concordat meant that the Salernan bloc was always their first stop.  Salerno system itself has been officially closed to outsiders ever since that first meeting – Acadia’s always been the Sallies’ central commercial venue; ‘trespassing’ in any other system in the Salernan bloc has always borne a mandatory death-sentence, particularly for Salerno itself.

  “The trouble really started in the third and fourth quarters of the twenty-sixth century: the Salernans had some domestic troubles that turned into a full-scale war between some of their Dukes, and when it was over, they had to do something to restore their peoples’ sense of unity.  Like dictators throughout human history, they decided that the best way to do it was by looking for an external enemy – in this case, by ‘asserting their historical claims’ to the worlds of the Cavaretta Expanse.  A lot of the time, simple gunboat diplomacy was enough to scare the ‘primitive squatters’ on the world below into signing on with their ‘Coalition of Salernan Duchies’; in a couple of cases, they were actually good for their new fiefs, like those poor bastards on Titania.  When threats alone didn’t work... well, the Salernans had modern starfighters and orbital gunfire support.  The Sorens were the only ones who managed to give them any real trouble, and outside of some armed shuttles that dated back to the original colonisation party, about all they could muster was partisans with small-arms.  To their credit, even after the Sallies rolled right over their militia, they still kept nagging away at the bastards with ambushes and sniper-attacks and car-bombs – even when Sally WarShips in orbit implemented ‘reprisals’ with fighter-strikes against urban centres.

  “In other news, closer to Terra, the Star League was coming together and the Reunification War was running hot and furious.  That’ll become relevant soon.

  “The Salernans hit Highside in 2579.  Unlike almost all of the other worlds they’d invaded, Highside could match their technology, and we’d recently been through a civil war of our own, so we had domestic arms industries and combat experience; what materiel we did lack, the Massachusetts worlds could sell us, since Ensenada was coming off its civil war and Svoboda had built enough JumpShips to make regular cargo runs.  Salerno expected another walkover; what it got was a real fight from Highside – and declarations of war from Svoboda and Ensenada.  A month later, the six loyal nations on those three worlds signed the Llanelli Concords and formed the Union of Sovereign Republics.”  Durandal taps keys on the holoprojector, changing the image.  “This is the strategic situation as of the ratification of the Concords:

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  “These days, we call it the Foundation War.  If we’d had more of a navy back then, we would’ve kicked their wop asses all the way back to Salerno.  Even as it was, we were giving them a hell of a fight – and then they decided to invade Ensenada and Svoboda as well.  Which is when things started to get... complicated.”

  “Invading three planets at once?  They were ambitious, weren’t they?  Especially for what sounds like a single-planet power.”  Shades of the formation of the Alliance of Galedon, MacMillan muses.  “What sort of hardware did they have?”

  “Their doctrine was heavy on assault-shuttle airmobile operations with drop-infantry, backed up by naval gunfire and air-strikes from their aerospace fighters; their surface transport was limited to civilian vehicles commandeered on-world.  All of our member nations were building ASFs to Taurian blueprints, and the Ensenadan states had reinvented tanks and licenced their designs to the loyal governments, so we could all beat the hell out of the Salernans in ground engagements... right up until their ortillery came to bear.  Even so, we were making them pay cash for every metre they took, and they needed a counter; they didn’t want to spend the time and energy rediscovering their own AFVs, so they decided to take a shortcut and steal some from the Taurians.  One of their ‘intervention frigates’ went all the way off to Illiushin and ‘impounded’ a merchantman carrying military hardware, claiming that it was supplying the ‘rebels’ on Highside.  They got luckier than they’d ever hoped for: they’d been expecting the ship to be loaded with tanks, not what it was carrying.”

  Antonescu nods.  “BattleMechs, query-affirmative?”

  “A whole regiment’s worth of Toro-Alpha-Sixes, Thunderbolt-Five-Sierras and Warhammer-Six-Romeos, fresh off the assembly-lines.  The Taurians screamed bloody murder about it, of course, but this was in 2583: they were fully engaged with the Star League and couldn’t spare the time or forces to chase down the Sallies.

  “As it happened, the Sallies might’ve been better-off designing their own battle-tracks after all.  They’d never even imagined BattleMechs were possible, and it took them eleven years to reverse-engineer all the technologies involved in ’Mech construction; it took them another five to churn out a useful number of Alpha-series Morningstars.  By the start of 2599, they’d formed two regiments and roughed out a tactical doctrine... and in March of that year, before the Sallies could deploy their ’Mechs in combat, an SLN task-force jumped into Massachusetts.”

  Ebon blinks.  “But the Reunification War was over by then, query-affirmative?  What would bring a Star League task-force this deep into the Periphery?”

  “The Lost Squadron.”  All eyes turn to MacMillan, who has the manic grin of Archimedes running from his bath.  “They were trying to chase down the Lost Squadron, weren’t they, Major?  I’ll be damned – Isabelle would go nuts if she was here!”

  “Not all of us are historians, Tad,” Katsuragi sighs.  “Y’wanna share with the rest of the class?”  Because, wow, my day isn’t complete without a good nerd-gasm....

  MacMillan nods eagerly; his words almost stumble over each other as his enthusiasm takes hold.  “One of my classmates at Oxford was a novice from the Taurian Concordat.  She was obsessed with the Reunification War and the TCN, swore blind that all the spec-sheets released on the Concordat’s WarShips simply didn’t match up with how long and how well they resisted the Star League’s invasion.  She also had a head full of Taurian myths from the era – including the story of the Lost Squadron.  Official SLDF records claim that all the vessels of the TCN were destroyed or captured in action, or were surrendered into Star League hands after the declared surrender – but Taurian legend, and a slew of ‘rumours’ and references in the Naval Archives, maintain that a number of Taurian WarShips escaped from the Concordat, formed the ‘Lost Squadron’, and spent the next decade or so fighting a guerrilla campaign against the ‘occupiers’.  The two of us never found any conclusive evidence of its existence – no battle-reports, no kill-claims, no prizes or prisoners taken, nothing! – but there was always something off-kilter about the SLN’s ‘anti-piracy’ activities out here, most noticeably in the two decades immediately following the Reunification War.  When you told me where you were coming, General, I thought the construction of Fleet Base Virginia explained it all - but it never occurred to me to wonder why the hell they needed to build it in the first place!”  Forgetting himself, he thumps a fist on the table in triumph.  “Blake’s blood, Isabelle was right!”

  “So it would seem, Adept,” Durandal notes, seemingly immune to his enthusiasm.  “Of course, we already knew about this ‘Lost Squadron’: three of their vessels had joined the defence of Svoboda in 2598, and indeed they were trying to help us form our own navy when the SLN intervened.  I’ll have Garfield dive the archives for a complete historical account before you return to Bismark.”

  “‘Garfield’?”

  {The Major means me, sir.}  This comes from E-431, startling the newcomers a little; until now, they’d thought it just another of Jack’s remotes.  It pivots in place slightly, shaking its thoracic compartment to draw their eyes to the cartoon cat on its side.  {As a Tachikoma, I don’t have the processing power or sophistication of full-scale AIs like Mir, but I’m well-equipped for lower-level functions like retrieving archived records.}

  “You can’t imagine how much I’d appreciate that, Garfield,” MacMillan nods, too excited to be fazed.  Isabelle’s gonna freak when I get that data to her!
  ... only I can’t get it to her, can I?  Not without tipping Toyama’s people to where the ‘Minnesota Tribe’ wound up and bringing the full power of ComStar down on our heads.
  Damn, damn, shit and BLAST IT TO HELL!

  Durandal clears her throat and gets back on point, unaware of MacMillan’s bitter thoughts.  “When the SLN first arrived, we didn’t know who they were: all we did know was that the Salernan naval commander who saw them jump in-system panicked and started shooting, and the newcomers gave them a demonstration of that classic THAF solution to all naval problems, serious or otherwise: ‘I kills it with my battleships’.”

  This whimsical characterisation catches Ebon’s people off-guard, and they all snort laughter; Katsuragi almost strangles trying to muffle her giggles.

  Durandal lets them have their moment before continuing.  They certainly look like they could do with some laughter....  “The few Salernan corvettes that survived meeting two Monsoons, a frigate-squadron and a full dozen destroyers took off for other jump-points as fast as their drives would carry them, and their colleagues orbiting the Massachusetts worlds weren’t far behind.  Without their orbital support, the Salernan ground-forces had no chance in hell, and they knew it; they surrendered the day before Retribution reached orbit over Svoboda.

  “That afternoon, Admiral Brady asked to speak to the government.  As it turns out, the Star League was looking for somewhere to put a deep-range supply-and-repair depot, so they could continue their hunt for the rest of your ‘Lost Squadron’.  We had some regrets about the idea – the Taurians had done their best to warn us of the Salernans’ intentions, and they’d even sent us some modern hardware and ‘volunteers’ to help train and equip our militia, before those volunteer groups had to be withdrawn in response to the Pollux Proclamation – but regardless, we needed the Star League’s help to free Highside.  By the end of the week, the Union had protectorate status, provisional Star League membership and a Status of Forces agreement with the SLDF.  It took some slick manoeuvring, but we even persuaded them to allow the Taurian WarShips to remain on as the core of the Union Strike Fleet, as long as their crews immigrated to the Union and renounced their Taurian citizenship.

  “The next month, Admiral Brady led a joint USF/SLN task-force that cleared all the pests out of Highside’s orbit.  The last hostile field-forces on Highside surrendered on April 25^th, leaving all three worlds of the Union of Sovereign Republics liberated in their entirety.  The Salernans kept right on running, too - they barely stopped to withdraw their garrison from Soren.

  “The war was mostly over, but Admiral Brady wanted to make sure that the Salernans had gotten the message.  The joint task-force paid Salerno a visit and repaid their gunboat diplomacy with a demonstration of battleship diplomacy, putting Retribution into Salernan orbit and blasting selected military installations with fighter-strikes.  I’ve seen the recordings: a full regiment of SLDF Stukas and Samurai, supported by two more of Union Sabres and modified Vipers... well, sir, they can make an impressive mess.

  “That task-force didn’t actually have any back-up anywhere nearby, but fortunately the Sallies didn’t know that.  We bullied them into signing a peace-treaty: if they honoured a forty-light-year exclusion zone around Massachusetts and ceiling-strengths on their naval and ground forces, the SLDF wouldn’t come back and smack them around again.  And this is how things stood at the ratification of the cease-fire.”

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  “For administrative purposes, we fell under the authority of the military governors who were responsible for the occupation of the Taurian Concordat, so we didn’t get a voice on the Star League Council, but if that was the price of SLDF assistance in our time of need....”  Durandal shrugs philosophically.  “Besides, apart from installing a division-sized garrison to keep an eye on the Sallies and building the fleet base – contracting Union firms to supply most of the resources, parts and labour, I might add – the League pretty much left us to live our lives as we pleased.”

  MacMillan coughs.  It almost sounds like ‘yeah, right!’

  “Fast-forward a century and a half; things had actually been more or less peaceful in the Expanse since the Reunification War, in that there hadn’t been any open wars between our side and the Salernans.  There’d been sporadic skirmishes between our naval units and theirs in the interim years - which they mostly blamed on ‘rogue nobles’ or their ‘privateers’, of course; given the nature of Salernan politics, I don’t think there was ever three months at a stretch where two or more Salernan nobles weren’t shooting at each other for some reason; and both the Sallies and the Acadians were covertly supplying every ‘pirate’ in sight who’d harass our worlds and our shipping... but they never went quite far enough over the line that we could justify open hostilities.  Mostly, we just sat in our respective corners of the ring and glared at each other, waiting for the bell to ring.  That is, right up until the Amaris Coup went off -”

  “At which point, the SLDF obeyed General Kerensky’s full-recall to respond to Amaris, leaving a massive power-vacuum in the Expanse and room for the Salernans to pursue their ‘territorial claims’ without getting stepped on by ‘peacekeepers’,” MacMillan nods.  “Do you know if the Usurper had any ties to the Salernans?”

  Durandal shakes her head firmly.  “There’s no confirmation either way.  The Sallies have always maintained limited trade relations with the Taurians, but they took no action during the Periphery Uprising or in its immediate aftermath, so if any of Amaris’ agents ever got out to Salerno, they can’t have had much success about stirring them up.

  “Without the resources and economic support the Star League provided, especially JumpShips to support interstellar transport, most of the Expanse’s other worlds underwent some degree of economic and societal implosion.  The Union and Salerno both stepped into the gap, but the Sallies could also expand their WarShip and fighter fleets and their BattleMech forces; we weren’t permitted to do so.”

  Ebon’s a little dizzy from all she’s heard so far – and how thoroughly it’s obliterated a large number of her long-held assumptions – but that phrasing catches her ear.  “Were not ‘permitted’?”  She cocks her head and looks closely at Jack.  “The Union has facilities to construct WarShips and BattleMechs?”

  “Yes, sir, as does the Fleet Base: both Svoboda and Ensenada were assisted in establishing licenced construction of military equipment across all front-line categories, both for self-defence purposes and as attrition replacements for SLN and Regular Army formations assigned to garrison the Expanse.”  Jack winces before continuing.  “However, as they nominally remain a Star League protectorate, our treaty and the Status of Forces agreement specifically prohibit the Union from building ’Mechs or jump-capable combat vessels in excess of very specific limits.  Without specific authorisation from the garrison commander, all construction in excess of those limits must be ceded into SLDF service-inventories or storage and ‘held in escrow’ unless and until such a dispensation is issued.  I have the responsibility of enforcing those limits and overseeing all storage facilities, and very little latitude for interpretation within those restrictions... and the last garrison commander prior to your arrival was Admiral Vertinskaya.”

  “I see.”  Ebon doesn’t trust herself to say more.  Firmly reining in the hope suddenly rising within her breast, she nods for Durandal to continue once more.

  “Up until 2797, the sitting Prince of Salerno, Principe Guillermo IX di Cavaretta, held the Council of Dukes in check; whether he did it out of principle and moral strength, or simple fear of the SLDF’s return, we’ll probably never know.  Unfortunately, he died that March and was succeeded by his eldest son, Ettore IV di Cavaretta; in accordance with their long-standing practice, the Council of Dukes approved his succession precisely because the man had the spine of a day-old cannoli.  It took them less than two months to power-roll him into declaring that now was the time to fulfill Stefano Cavaretta’s quasi-religious vision of an all-Salernan Expanse.  He stopped short of committing his House units or any of the ‘Royal’ forces – and let’s be grateful for small mercies! - but he affirmed the Dukes’ autonomy to use their House forces however they wished.

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  “Bianca and Phoenix had undergone the effectively complete collapse of their economies, societies and central authorities soon after the League’s withdrawal – a process accelerated by a couple of ‘accidents’ at key facilities that were doubtless Gehennan-sponsored – and they were essentially defenceless when the Salernans moved on them.  The Sallies didn’t meet much resistance in taking either world; indeed, apart from a half-hearted insurgency on Phoenix in the first couple of years, most of the time they were welcomed with open arms.”

  “‘I, for one, welcome our new Salernan overlords’ was a really popular phrase back then,” Jack notes sourly.  “Right up until the Reclamation began.”

  MacMillan jolts a little.  “‘Reclamation’?  That sounds... ominous.”

  “However bad you’re imagining it is, Adept?  It’s worse,” Durandal tells him bluntly.  “Mindanao was next.  In its original state that world had all the fertility of a bottle of bleach, so when the Star League showed up and terraformed it into something vaguely comfortable back in the early twenty-seventh century, the entire planet swore eternal loyalty to the Star League.  The SLDF’s recruitment offices were usually swamped with volunteers there – not many MechWarriors, for various reasons, but they got a lot of infantry and vehicle-crews from Mindanao.  They didn’t actively resist the Sallies when they showed up, since the SLDF took most of the hardware with them, but there’s been a lot of passive resistance stuff – people ‘don’t speak Italian’ or won’t accept off-world currency, nobody answers their draft notice or pays their taxes to the Duke, that sort of thing.  The GCC tried recruiting there, using that tired old routine about ‘overthrowing their colonial oppressors to claim their rightful destiny’, all the while throwing all manner of bribes and incentives at them.  No-one budged.  In the end, the Mindies’ ex-Interior Minister went to the Duke and politely asked him to stop it: it was simply impossible for his people to betray the Star League by serving under another nation’s colours, and it was really distressing the populace.  They tortured him to death for it, of course, but they gave up on recruiting as well; they haven’t even tried Reclamation, because there aren’t many Salernans who’ll accept immigration to Mindanao and they just don’t want to put the necessary manpower into the ‘other phases’ of a Reclamation programme.  Not when they need it all against us.”

  “About the only good news from that phase o’ their expansion was the Salernans didn’t want t’ provoke the Union directly just yet, and the Union government was trying t’ avoid gettin’ into a war before the Star League got back,” O’Dwyer adds.  “They’d harass Union shippin’ in their conquered systems left an’ right – ‘customs inspections’, mostly – but they never got t’ the point of shootin’ at anyone.  I couldn’t tell y’ how many refugees and stowaways got t’ the Union durin’ that time – gotta be a few million, though.”

  “And several million more from Soren, who knew they were next on the menu.”  Durandal keys the holoprojector again.  “The Sorens hadn’t undergone the same implosion most of the other worlds had, and they’d been hit by ‘privateers’ and ‘rogue operators’ so many times before the Amaris Coup that they’d used SLDF and Union advisors and suppliers to build up some reasonable militia-forces – mostly light infantry, but supported by atmo-craft, last-generation aerospace fighters from the Union, and several formations of light tanks.  Unfortunately, the five Barons couldn’t agree on an overall leader or unified policy, and they were still squabbling about it when the Dukes hit them with two Field Armies and four squadrons of ‘intervention frigates’.  To their credit, the units that did fight held out for almost three weeks – which gets downright impressive when you consider that the Salernans had held aerospace and orbital superiority since the third day of the campaign and weren’t shy about using their ortillery.  Even more impressive is the fact that the Baronie von Schwartzwald never formally surrendered and remains the centre of the partisan movement even today – not to mention that the Baron’s successor is currently the head of the Soren government-in-exile on Svoboda.”

  Guerrilla resistance against an enemy who owns your planetary orbitals and has no compunction about bombarding the planet in reprisal?  These ‘Black Foresters’ are either admirably obstinate - or borderline insane.  Either way, I hope I meet them soon; we appear to have a great deal in common, General Ebon notes ruefully.  “And that is when the Salernans declared war on the Union?”

  “They’ve never declared war against us, General; not only would that require a formal proclamation from the Prince and the commitment of his Royal forces, which would be... inconvenient for the Dukes, it lets them sidestep petty concerns like the New Victoria Protocols.  Those are the Expanse’s equivalent to the Ares Conventions,” the Major clarifies, “but there are some... local nuances.  Not to mention that while the Archduke of Acadia might have ratified the Protocols, neither the Salernan Prince nor any of his representatives or Salernan vassals has ever done so.

  “But yes, we found ourselves at war several months later.  They were still letting our ships into the Soren system back then, and we used that to the best advantage we could, smuggling refugees out and munitions in to help the Resistance.  The Sallies knew what we were doing, of course, so after a few months, they blew away one of our merchantmen – an innocent one, ironically enough – then declared that they’d stopped a shipment of arms and mercenaries from being delivered to the ‘rebels’, claimed that ‘proved’ the Union’s ‘dreams of empire’ for the Expanse, and announced that all of their ‘protectorate’ worlds were now members of a ‘self-defence pact’ called the ‘Soren Alliance’.  They spent three years building up their forces and digesting all of the lessons they learned invading Soren – not that the majority of them paid attention, thanks to that racial-superiority complex they’ve got – as well as making covert approaches to anti-war groups and dissidents on the Union worlds.”  Durandal’s been utterly expressionless up until now, but now her fists and face twist.  “Case in point: the NEBs.”

  “NEBs?”

  “‘Northern Expansion Bloc’ – the Highside nation that went over t’ the Salernans last time around,” O’Dwyer interjects, letting Durandal recover her composure.  “The civil war on Highside that Durandal mentioned earlier, the one that started in 2572, was fought between the Southern Dominions and the N.E.B.  The Norts lost, bad, and the Southers had ’em under occupation when the Salernans arrived in 2579; the Norts took it as a second chance and sided with the Salernans.  When the Sallies went scurryin’ back home, the NEBs found they’d bought themselves a few armies’ worth o’ Union ‘peacekeepers’, backed by ’Mech units from the Star League Regular Army.  The NEB stayed occupied for almost a century, and they weren’t admitted int’ the Union until 2687, which kind’a twisted their shorts.  Add that t’ the Salernans’ doin’ a good impression of a ‘Highlander Burial’ on anything that resembled opposition, and it looks like the NEBs either figured it’d be different this time around or that it was better t’ stand at the devil’s side than in his path.  When the invasion fleet arrived over Highside in 2814, the Norts seceded from the Union again, declared neutrality, and let the Sallies land in their territory unopposed.  Hell, some of their units even fought for ’em!”

  “Between that ‘little’ backstab, and most of the Union Fleet getting smashed to splinters by the Sallies’ numbers and a new weapons-system we couldn’t counter back then, they swarmed us under and took Highside in five months.”  Durandal’s not that much calmer than when O’Dwyer butted in – but she’s no longer choked by raw fury.  “It was all the Union could do to deny them sensitive information and production facilities, then evacuate most of the personnel from our Expeditionary Force and what civilians we could.  There’s still a resistance going on Highside, too – mostly out of the Dominions and the Island Commonwealth – but the Pogs are doing their level best to ‘Reclaim’ the entire planet and its population.

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  “Five years later, it was Ensenada’s turn, and the Sallies had learned at least a few lessons from how we fought on Highside.  Their initial assault force consisted of a good portion of their surviving House fleets and four Legions of assault troops – I’ll spare you a full listing, but that first wave came to about twenty-five hundred BattleMechs and more than four hundred thousand men.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Katsuragi blinks.

  Yes: that would about cover it, a dazed Ebon notes.  From what MacMillan has told me, nobody has fielded a force of such size in one engagement since the Liberation of Terra!

  Durandal pulls up another map.  “Of course, our Fleet trimmed a lot of that back, and the Planetary Defence Batteries did even more, but they still got most of seventeen Field Armies down onto Ensenada – specifically Nuevo Tejas, the eastern nation-continent.  Their surviving WarShips and fighters made it impossible for us to reinforce the garrison or threaten their space-head, and they just kept shipping in reinforcements.  We hammered every convoy they brought into the system – we still do – but even so, they took the whole continent within six months, and they’ve been fortifying it ever since.  They’ve shipped in a massive garrison: more than thirty Legions of troops, mostly cannon-fodder from their colony worlds.  They’ve also imported almost fifteen million ethnic-Salernan workers to run local arms factories, with most of the Tejanos – at least, most of the surviving Tejanos - as ‘indentured labourers’.”

  Her emphasis is just sardonic enough to trip mental alarms; Katsuragi’s merely the first to blurt it out.  “They’re using your people as slave labour?  For heaven’s sake, why?  Modern automation -”

  “Costs time, money and infrastructure to build and maintain, Captain, especially on a world so far from their own industrial base where we destroyed almost all the factories during our retreat.  Not to mention that the ‘Reclamation’ of the Union’s worlds and their ‘feral’ populations - or ‘Recycling’ those populations - are among the Gehennans’ primary war goals.”

  MacMillan’s rubbing his eyes, afraid he already knows the answer to his next question.  “Before we get back on point, Major: may I ask how the ‘Gehennans’ define ‘feral’?”

  Expressionless once more, Durandal meets his gaze.  “As Gehennans see the universe, Adept, there are paesani – those who are ethnically and genetically Salernan – and there are bianchi.  A ‘feral’ is a bianco living on any world that was ‘rightfully claimed’ by Stefano Cavaretta.”

  “And any ‘feral’ who can’t be ‘Reclaimed’ into a good little slave is fit only for ‘Recycling’.  I wish I was surprised,” he mutters wearily.  And don’t I just wish I was a little less practiced at decoding euphemisms like those?  “Every time I think the human race has risen above this sort of thing, someone comes along and shows me they can sink even lower....”

  “Christ, I feel sick,” Katsuragi mutters.  Antonescu says nothing, but his hands have taken a white-knuckle clench as visions of Great Hope and Barbados play across his vision.

  For her own part, Ebon is trembling; nausea or outrage, she’s not quite sure.  But I can fall apart later.  For now, I need to hear the rest of this.  Even so, it takes a conscious effort to unclench her jaw.  “Major, we can delve into the details of Salernan occupation policies at a later juncture.  You were briefing us on the development of the current strategic situation, query-affirmative?”

  “Yes, General.”  On Durandal’s map, a time-lapse progression expands the Salernan zone-of-occupation across Ensenada like a spreading pool of blood.  “Tejas has been occupied for the last eight years.  After they took it, the Salernans spent another year building up their infrastructure and support-base there, including factories for conventional vehicles and infantry weapons, before they began moving on the rest of the planet.  With the PDBs still active and aerospace superiority bitterly contested between our forces and theirs, they couldn’t use transfer troops or materiel off Tejas through atmospheric or sub-orbital hops, so they tried something else.  With advice and equipment from their NEB ‘allies’ and Phoenician subjects, they made an amphibious invasion of the Archipélego Trinidad with a full Legion of Phoenician troops, looking to establish a second ‘safe landing zone’ so they could swarm us under.  It... didn’t work out that way: our interdiction efforts make it almost impossible for them to support two landing-zones so far apart.  They seem to have written off the Archipélego: the garrison includes two full Legions of Phoenician forces – but none of their Salernan-manned ’Mech and ASF forces – and about all they’ve done for the GCC war-effort in the last nine years is help keep the larder stocked.

  “Their current main effort is focused on the invasion of Sonora they launched from Tejas six years ago.  They led off with a vertical assault – two Field Armies of ethnic Salernan drop-troopers, followed by a seaborne landing of BattleMechs and more infantry, mostly colonial cannon-fodder.  They hold about a third of the continent these days, but the battle-lines spent four years effectively stalemated and even after they started making progress again, we’ve been able to keep them more-or-less contained.”

  “How, for God’s sake?” Katsuragi blurts.  “If they’re fielding ’Mechs and troops in the numbers you’re talking about -!”

  “Lieutenant, to call the domestic politics within the Principality of Gehenna ‘intricate’ would be a massive understatement.  All of the Dukes involved in the invasion have taken brutal losses to their front-line forces to date – including WarShips, BattleMechs, and aerospace fighters – and the fact that they’re constantly skirmishing with each other out of the Prince’s sight only exacerbates that attrition.  They can buy aerospace fighters, freighters, and light WarShips from the Acadians, but the Dukes’ only source of heavier WarShips and replacement BattleMechs is the Royal House of Cavaretta - and those suppliers have been gouging them ruthlessly, for reasons both financial and political.  Additionally, heavy losses of ethnic-Salernan infantry have political repercussions of their own, often out of all proportion to the actual loss of life.

  “That said, like the Union itself the Salernan Dukes are under no restriction as to the size of their infantry, conventional-vehicle, and atmo-craft forces, so they’ve spent almost eight years throwing colonial cannon-fodder at us.  After all, what do they care if a few million ‘ferals’ are slaughtered for little gain?  Bianca alone has half a billion more where they came from - there’s plenty of meat for the guns, and if they attrite the defenders in the process, so much the better.  Since they started to become truly sensitive to ’Mech losses, their preferred tactic has been to send massed waves of conscripts at us, hoping to wear down our defences to the point where their BattleMechs can punch through our lines and go rampaging through our rear areas to collapse an entire sector or more.  The poor bastards are lucky if they get a whole six weeks’ training before they get stuffed onto a transport and shipped out here to be fed into the grinder.

  “We took a different approach, even before the war.  Gehennan culture makes a great deal out of the ‘warrior ideal’ and personal combat; they regard any military role that isn’t infantry, ’Mech-pilot or starfighter-pilot with a good deal of contempt.  They’ve only started to employ armoured vehicles and atmo-craft in the last couple of years, and even then the ‘innovations’ came from the Acadians - who seem to be the brains of their family.  They still don’t have any artillery, though: one of the most cherished sacred scorpions of Gehennan strategic doctrine is that the eventual silencing of our PDBs will let their WarShips safely command our orbital space and pound us into submission with ‘proper’ naval gunfire bombardments and fighter-strikes.

  “On the other hand, the treaty restrictions we’re under are very specific as to how many BattleMechs the Union Army can field, and on the jump-capable vessels the Union Strike Fleet can build - but there are no restrictions on the size or composition of our planetary defence forces, so the Ensenadan Defence Force and the Svobodan Defence Command are free to field as many infantry, AFVs, fighters, and artillery-pieces as we like.”

  “Not to mention the Free Forces, Major,” Jack puts in mildly.

  “Point,” Durandal concedes, before looking back to the General and her aides to explain.  “Our defences are further augmented by a number of expatriate forces from various conquered or allied worlds.  Inarguably the largest and most... motivated of these forces are the Highside Combat Services in Exile and the Free Soren Forces, but Mindanao and Rhodesia also have substantial contingents; we even get a lot of volunteer atmo-pilots from Dalton -”

  “For whatever they’re worth,” Commander O’Dwyer mutters.  “That whole friggin’ planet’s seen too many bad holomovies.”

  “- but the Union’s situation remains grave,” Durandal finishes, ignoring the interjection.  “One of our three worlds is under occupation, and another is besieged.  Even without the deployment of the Prince’s forces, the Pogs are drowning us in their blood and wearing us down.”

  Jack’s avatar shifts in its seat, its expression intent.  “Which brings us to the central questions, General: what’s the situation in the Inner Sphere?  How soon can we expect further relief from the SLDF?”

  And now for the really bad part.  Trish Ebon takes a deep breath to steel herself, then looks Jack directly in the eye.  “There will be no further relief, Commodore: the Star League is gone.  Amaris wiped out the Cameron family; the other five Great Houses have devoured the Terran Hegemony; and with the exception of a few mercenary units which cling to Star League traditions to delude themselves about their status, all that is left of the loyal SLDF is in this star system.”

  In the silence that follows, the sound of the locals’ hopes crashing down around their ears is positively deafening.

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:53:10 AM

  MacMillan is in a better position to explain what happened to the Inner Sphere, so Trish Ebon lets him handle that part and just listens, watching the locals’ reactions to each fresh disaster.  The Amaris broadcast, and General Kerensky’s recall of all SLDF formations in response.  The conquest of the Rim Worlds Republic as a staging point and source of resupply.  The long build-up of forces, despite each month bringing word of a new abuse by Amaris’ forces.  Kerensky’s approaches to each of the House Lords for aid in the struggle – which netted only passive support or private-citizen volunteers, when he wasn’t outright rebuffed.  The long, grinding advance towards Terra, with each counter-invasion being resisted and bled by suborned SDS and Caspars obeying the orders of ‘the First Lord of the Star League’ – Emperor Stefan Amaris.  The fortuitous find of Professor Glimp’s notes in the NCC complex on Nirasaki, which offered a countermeasure to the Caspars.  (Ebon notes that Jack seems skeptical - almost amused! – when these two points come up.  Something to consider later?)  House Steiner’s near-unnoticed blatant land-grab – wait, sorry, ‘peacekeeping missions’ - on most of the former Rim Worlds.  The bitter fighting to liberate the worlds around Terra.  Then, at last, Operation LIBERATION: the counter-invasion of Earth itself, two years of grinding assaults and digging Republican forces out of their holes and Castles Brian.  General Kerensky’s personal capture of the Usurper, then several weeks later, the execution of Stefan Amaris and all of his direct family.  Counting the cost of the ‘victory’, and realising that the SLDF at the end of the Liberation War boasted barely a third of its pre-2765 strength.

  The reconvention of the Star League Council – and its immediate dual acts of appointing Jerome Blake as Minister of Communications and tasking him to rebuild the HPG network, then stripping General Aleksandr Kerensky, an interstellar hero for accomplishing the Liberation, of his title of Protector of the Realm.  “Too many of the ‘unwashed masses’ wanted to make Kerensky the First Lord,” MacMillan notes bitterly.  “The House Lords couldn’t have that – not when each of them coveted that title for their own.”

  The intractable impasse over which House Lord would assume the throne, and the subsequent dissolution of the Star League Council.  Two years of frantic shuttle diplomacy by General Kerensky, trying to change the minds of the House Lords and reconvene the Council, even as those same House Lords massively expanded their militaries and recruited more troops from among Rim Worlder prisoners - and the very ranks of the remaining SLDF.

  In 2784, Operation EXODUS: the mass desertion of one hundred and fifteen Regular and Royal Divisions of the Star League Defence Force, eighty percent of the surviving Star League Defence Force, absconding for parts unknown with the vast majority of their equipment and more than four hundred WarShips.  An action supposedly intended to limit the damage inflicted in the inevitable civil war between the five Great Houses over who would succeed the Camerons to the throne of the Star League.  “Personally, I’m half-convinced that it was the greatest mass murder-suicide attempt in recorded history,” is MacMillan’s scornful verdict.  “Kerensky was old, he was worn out, and everything he’d fought for was dying or dead.  All that was left to him was the SLDF: perhaps he thought it was better to take it with him than leave it to be defiled by the greed of the Successor Lords?”

  The rape and dismemberment of the Terran Hegemony by the five surviving states, each Lord annexing Hegemony worlds near their borders to secure technologies and lands – and their own aggrandisement.  The outbreak of the Succession War, almost before Kerensky’s drive-plumes began to fade.  The Lyran Commonwealth’s ‘objective raid’ on Bolan, and the use of nuclear arms against planetary targets - which prompted all the belligerents to discard the Ares Conventions.  Jerome Blake’s use of non-deserting SLDF units to annex Terra and hold it against any potential aggression, declaring it, the new ‘ComStar’, and the entire HPG network neutral, to preserve them as islands of civilisation and sanity amid the slaughter that would soon come.  The Combine’s avalanche-like advance into the distracted and disorganised Federated Suns; the DCA and FSNS’ mutual slaughter over Cholame; the butchery of the Kentares IV massacre; the AFFS’ ensuing resurgence, and the DCMS’ moral and strategic collapse in the face of the Davions’ outrage and victory.  The war petering out in 2821, mostly due to strategic exhaustion.  The Combine’s Chain Gang raids in the last couple of years, which served little purpose other than to inflame border-tensions once more.

  When he’s done with all that, MacMillan sighs and drains his water-glass for the umpteenth time.  “And that’s the last sixty years of history in the Inner Sphere: a picture painted in the blood of untold millions, with brushes made of unbridled ambition, petty jealousy, naked greed and arrant stupidity.  All because five people who were supremely convinced of their own importance couldn’t stop squabbling over who should hold a title that stopped meaning a single goddamned thing the second Richard Cameron’s corpse hit the floor.”

  “If you must editorialise, Adept MacMillan, please be more sparing with the vitriol,” Ebon inserts firmly, even as the locals bristle at his tone.  “I am well aware of your disillusionment; you do not need to reaffirm it so pungently in front of those not yet accustomed to it.”

  “General –”

  “She’s right, Tad: give it a rest, huh?” Katsuragi sighs.

  “... Yeah, maybe you’re right.”  MacMillan looks to their hosts with a rueful expression.  “I’m sorry about the rant.  I just... I came to ComStar with a head full of their high-minded PR, and finding out what it masked....”  He shakes his head.  “But that’s getting ahead of the tale.  Javier, I believe it’s over to you?”

  This was agreed earlier, and with good reason.  Trish Ebon may be their General, yet she was born on the Pentagon Worlds less than a year before Aleksandr Kerensky’s death; by the time her education began, the Exodus was beyond the living memory of all but a handful, and most of those were dismissive of the past and dedicated to the new ways.  On the other hand, Antonescu was born soon before the Pentagon’s settlement; he witnessed many of those events, and learned the tale of the rest from those who had been there.

  Again, the speaker finds the locals a highly attentive audience - while his companions watch their reactions to another recounting of far-flung misery.  The Exodus, and the SLDF fleet’s seemingly aimless wandering through the Deep Periphery.  The Prinz Eugen mutiny – triggered in part by Nicholas Kerensky, to reinforce his father’s control of the Exodus fleet - and its suppression; General Order 137, the Hidden Hope doctrine, intended to prevent further sedition and a plank in the platform that would become the Clans.  The settlement of the Pentagon Worlds; the shortage of labour and massive preponderance of soldiers; the mass demobilisation in the absence of any apparent threat, and the stockpiling of the surplus equipment in Brian Caches.  The grumbling of lifetime soldiers suddenly demoted to civilians; the rise of the old nationalistic factions as those same troops agitated to regain their old prestige; the outbreak of rioting on Eden, General deChevilier’s death, Kerensky’s brutal reprisals; the use of ’Mechs for riot-suppression, outright civil war between Liao and Davion factions.  General Kerensky’s heart failure.  Nicholas Kerensky’s accession to his father’s post of Protector, only to be refuted by the rebel leaders in an eerie echo of Aleksandr’s renunciation.  The Second Exodus, and the reformation of the survivors’ civilisation into the Clans, each its own self-sufficient society.  Twenty years of callous social engineering and military organisation.  The return to the Pentagon Worlds in Operation KLONDIKE; Andery Kerensky’s felling in a rebel ambush on Eden before the final pacification, removing one of the last checks on Nicholas’ conscience.

  Once he reaches the end of Operation KLONDIKE, Antonescu stops speaking and looks to General Ebon.  She opens her file-folder and hands him a datastick of her own, which he slots into the holoprojector.  “The next portion of our history is best told by one who saw all the dealings from the inside.  I would ask you to be respectful: the officer who dictated this recording was one of our greatest heroes.”

  Antonescu keys the projector to life once more, presenting the locals with an image of a woman in Regular Army khakis – a MechWarrior Captain of the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division.  Her face is ravaged by illness and an horrific network of fresh-healed scars, and gauze hides what seems to be an empty eye-socket.

  {“Listen well, and know the price of my pride, Jason Karrige’s spite, and Nicholas Kerensky’s maniac ‘vision’.”}

  And from beyond the grave, Captain Sarah McEvedy, Star League (in Exile) Regular Army, once Khan of Clan Wolverine, tells the story of the Wolverines’ downfall and their Flight.  The incident during Operation KLONDIKE that had so slighted the ‘honour’ and lacerated the oh-too-precious ego of Jason Karrige, Khan of the Widowmakers.  Wolverine prosperity during the peace after KLONDIKE, in part a product of relaxing the rigid Clan caste-system imposed by Nicholas Kerensky ‘for the duration of the crisis’ – only to find those ‘temporary measures’ had become permanent law.  The first roll of the snowball, the first turn of the self-fulfilling cycle: Karrige’s quiet manipulations of the ilKhan and the Khans of the hardline Clans, poisoning Nicholas’ mind against the Wolverines to the point where he permitted the hardliners to erode the Woverines’ strength with combat-challenges and created ‘The Watch’ to spy – spy! – on the Wolverines in a society supposedly based on the open, honest dealings of warriors.  Her own push for advanced weapons technologies that might encourage caution in their rivals - which the other Khans took as another sign of Wolverine arrogance and ‘proof’ of Karrige’s claims they were a growing threat.

  The Jade Falcon incursion into the Wolverine-held Tiki Province, attempting to steal both land and an unmapped Brian Cache.  (In retrospect, an incident so obviously intended to draw a reaction and an overreaction!)  The carefully-orchestrated political ambush at the next Grand Council meeting.  Trish Ebon’s inventory of the contested cache, including six nuclear-tipped Killer Whale missiles - when the Jade Falcons had claimed seven nukes lay within the vaults.  ({“And the seventh?  We would learn its disposition soon enough - and pay dearly for the knowledge,”} the dying ex-Khan tells her listeners.)  Nicholas Kerensky’s annexation of the cache’s contents; the Trial of Refusal against that ruling that killed saKhan Dwight Robertson – as the winner of the bidding, Karrige sent two of his Star Colonels in King Crabs against Sarah McEvedy’s Guillotine and Robertson’s Black Knight, a naked attempt not merely to win the Trial (regardless of the dishonour of the mismatch) but to kill both Wolverine Khans in the process.  ({“I have wondered if it would have been better if he had succeeded.  Perhaps Karrige might have let his vendetta against the Wolverines die with me, query-affirmative?”})  The realisation that the supposed ‘honourable way of the Clans’ was becoming a sham and that the Wolverines’ only chance for survival might be to secede from the Clans and withdraw beyond their reach; the desperate flurry of planning for that contingency.  Her determination to save her people from the jealousy and machinations of the other Clans - and from being the object lesson Nicholas Kerensky wanted to make to solidify his grip on Clan society.  Knowing that the Founder would not – could not! – brook defiance, and that he would utterly erase those who went against his decrees.

  Her choice of Franklin Hallis as saKhan, and assigning him to covertly secure cached WarShips and transports to prepare for Operation SWITCHBACK - the secession whose necessity grew more apparent with every passing day.  The myriad of other preparations for the Flight; the assembly and concentration of people, equipment, resources; the planning of the evasive travel-route that would throw off the Clans and safely convey the Wolverines to their resupply waypoint on Gamma-1551V, the original Barbados.

  The Grand Council where saKhan Hallis’ accession was rejected, supposedly for a violation of ‘tradition’ but more to salve Nicholas Kerensky’s wounded ego and reiterate his control of the Clans.  The order for Trish Ebon to strip the contested cache of all its contents, save the Santa Ana warheads that were the focus of the issue, and defend it against any attempt by other Clans to loot it.

  McEvedy’s private meeting with Nicholas Kerensky at his father’s tomb aboard McKenna’s Pride, a last appeal to his better nature (if it still existed), trying to divert him from the path both of them knew he was walking.  At last, some candour in this whole sordid affair: his bare-faced admission that he intended to sacrifice her Wolverines to his vision of Clan society, unifying the other Clans in extirpating the ‘rebel’ Wolverines to solidify the others’ adherence to his strictures, rather than longing for the old and ‘divisive’ ways, forging the battle-steel future of the Clans with the fires of war, hammering it with suffering... quenching it in the blood of the Wolverines.  Knowing, expecting, needing that McEvedy and her people would, could do nothing other than fight the fate he decreed with bared claw and bloody tooth, for only that ferocity in resistance could truly fulfill their role in his design.

  The fighting for the emptied cache, and the last Grand Council Sarah McEvedy had ever attended.  Throwing Nicholas Kerensky’s hypocrisy and perfidy back in his face, her ire fuelled by all the despicable scheming and corruption of recent months.  Repeating to all present Kerensky’s stated intention to use her Wolverines as an object lesson of the penalty for defying the will of the ilKhan and the way of ‘his’ Clans.  Finally, finally enjoying the freedom to renounce Kerensky’s precious ‘way’; spitting on his sanctimonious hypocrisy; relishing the defiance of declaring that any who laid a finger on her Wolverines during their secession would draw back a bloody stump.

  General Order Wolverine 014, declaring the severance of ties with the Clans and repealing the caste system that had so chafed and restricted all Clansmen as to underlie the whole affair; a much-welcomed return to personal freedoms and growth, the right to choose one’s own career and spouse, to have families of the pre-Clan model.

  The other Clans advancing on outlying Wolverine settlements, and the grim satisfaction of knowing they were capturing only scorched earth.  The evacuation of the Wolverine capital city of Great Hope on Circe, even as her forces fended off repeated probes.

  The sudden, appalling, tragic discovery of the seventh Santa Ana’s location: stolen by Widowmaker Warriors, smuggled into Great Hope... and remotely detonated by Khan Karrige as his ’Mechs, and Nicholas Kerensky’s, advanced towards the city.  Almost ten thousand Wolverine civilians who had opted to stay behind, whatever their reasons, incinerated in an instant; apparently by a Wolverine nuke; apparently as an act of scorched-earth defiance; apparently an attempt by McEvedy to kill both herself and the ilKhan.

  Nicholas Kerensky’s initial response: retaliation in kind, ordering the Snow Ravens to tac-nuke a Wolverine field-force.  The intervention of the battleship Bismark, stolen from mothballs by Wolverine forces, to rescue those same forces from Circe’s surface, shooting down the nuclear-armed Snow Raven fighter in the process; the inadvertent airburst detonation of its weapon far off-target after the hit, horrifically all but leveling the Snow Raven capital of Dehra Dun.

  On Strana Mechty, the defiant ‘last stand’ of Trish Ebon’s command against overwhelming Smoke Jaguar forces - and their last-minute reprieve, purchased by Franklin Hallis with the batteries of the orbiting McKenna’s Pride.  His emphatic, oh-so-gratifying punctuation of the Wolverine’s break with Kerensky’s way: turning the Pride’s guns on the Council halls of each of the Clans attacking the Wolverines before he and his people joined the Flight.

  Kerensky’s longer-term response to the nuclear ‘assassination attempt’: a ‘Trial of Annihilation’, the newly-coined Clan euphemism for systematic genocide.  The execution of all Wolverine Warriors taken, no matter if they professed loyalty to their Clan or the ilKhan; the chemical sterilisation of all captured Wolverine civilians before they were annexed to ‘loyal’ Clans; the annexation of all former Wolverine holdings and the complete erasure of their iconography; brutal penalties imposed on any who sheltered Wolverine refugees.

  The Clans’ long pursuit of the fleeing Wolverine convoys despite the captive Sarah’s pleas to let them escape, and the Grand Fleet finally running Franklin Hallis’ group to ground in the Barbados system.  Savage fighting in space and on land, no quarter asked by the Wolverines, none offered by the Clans.  No prisoners taken, military or civilian: refugees in their hundreds simply incinerated with Inferno SRMs to avoid the hassle of any more considered action.  Franklin Hallis’ last desperate attempt for vengeance, taking his Pulveriser to head-hunt the ilKhan himself, only to be intercepted by a Wolf ’Mech at the last.  Nicholas Kerensky’s revelation of Jason Karrige’s perfidy and machinations, of how Karrige had nuked Great Hope, and his giving Khan Franklin Hallis the last meagre consolation of striking down his true enemy before Ferris Ward ended his life.  Kerensky’s honourable burial of the last Khan of the Wolverines, and leaving his secret prisoner Sarah McEvedy on Barbados, to wander the planet and curse the stars for her fate.  The return of Trish Ebon’s task force and other Wolverine vessels which had escaped the slaughter, scouring the planet for salvage or clues to their comrades’ fates, finding only scrap and a single survivor: McEvedy herself.

  {“No longer do I lead Clan Wolverine, for Clan Wolverine is no more,”} declares the holographic Sarah McEvedy.  {“We are the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division, soldiers of the Regular Army of the Star League in Exile.  The Star League may no longer exist in Clan space or the Inner Sphere, but that does not mean we cannot serve or re-create its ideals elsewhere, in a society of our own making, on a world beyond the reach of the insanity of the Clans or the grasping ambitions of the House Lords.

  {“No longer am I your Khan.  I was too sorely wounded in the destruction of Great Hope to serve as a leader should - not in the brief span I have left.  Trish Ebon commands you now; she will lead you to the haven I discovered.

  {“During the Second Exodus, I was among the team that prepared Saratoga for her time in storage.  While I was conducting my survey, I found an officer’s private journals from her service before the Amaris Coup.  Among the entries were the coordinates to a Star League Fleet Base in the Deep Periphery, a world ready for settlement, where we will find stores of Star League supplies and equipment that will permit us to establish a new colony world, a free society truly worthy of the ideals of the Star League.  I kept those coordinates a secret against an occasion such as our Flight, hoping I would never have need of them... but now that they are needed, I have given those coordinates to General Trish Ebon and Admiral Sebastian Hennesy, so that they may guide you to the haven I will never see.”}

  The recording ends there, and Trish Ebon finds herself blinking back tears all over again.  “Sarah McEvedy died of her wounds less than two days after making that last broadcast to the fleet.  And there are times when I think some part of me died with her.

  “We learned at least one lesson from Aleksandr Kerensky’s Exodus: while we kept Haven’s exact location a secret, we confirmed it as our destination and announced an expected time-frame to the fleet at large, so that they would have that hope to sustain them through the rigours of the journey ahead.

  “As you saw, just before she died, Sarah McEvedy renounced all Clan trappings and titles, reverting to the substantive rank she achieved in the Star League Defence Force before Nicholas Kerensky’s Second Exodus: a simple Captaincy.  She administered the Officer’s Oath to myself and several senior officers, formally inducting us into the reformed SLDF, and in turn we swore in the rest of our military personnel.  That is why I was so concerned about your acknowledging my command authority, Jack: while I am an acting Major-General, I am only a Brevet Colonel, and my substantive rank is that of a mere Lieutenant; Captain McEvedy could promote me no higher.”

  “I don’t know about that,” O’Dwyer notes.  “She had what, forty years in grade between the Exodus and the Flight?  Under normal circumstances, she would’ve been a light General herself.”

  “If she hadn’t deserted her post,” MacMillan murmurs.

  Antonescu glares at the ex-ComStar defector, raising a finger.  “Only a quarter-century’s seniority, Commander; Sarah McEvedy was only fourteen during the Exodus and joined the SLDF after the settlement of the Pentagon worlds.  Nonetheless, had she lived until we reached the Inner Sphere, I believe that it was Captain McEvedy’s intention to surrender herself to the loyalist SLDF – if it still existed – and face court-martial for her part in the ‘desertion’ of the Exodus.  However, she was the last survivor of the Exodus among us; all of the former Wolverines who remain amongst our task force are the descendants of those deserters, and as such they should not be held accountable for the crimes of their forebears, query-negative?”

  Trish Ebon waves all that aside for now and takes up her portion of the retelling.  Gathering the scattered remnants of the Wolverine fleet and convoys, including the battered Zughoffer Weir, and setting them back on their course towards the Inner Sphere.  Realising that their resettlement would require far more of a labour-force than was left to them, and resources they lacked – construction equipment, farming equipment, seed-stocks of food-crops, and so on almost ad infinitum.  Scout-forces ranging ahead of the fleet in the guise of wayward travelers and down-at-heels mercenaries, seeking news of events in the Inner Sphere and indications of where they could ‘obtain’ what they would need.  Learning of the Succession War, and the butchery Jinjiro Kurita ordered done on Kentares IV – too similar to Nicholas Kerensky’s recent deeds.

  “That alone would have prompted us to target the Combine to replenish our supplies, but we also needed to augment our civilian population if we were to successfully found a colony on what we thought to be a derelict world; we had soldiers and technicians and scientists aplenty, but far too few ‘blue-collar’ types to make a real go of a settlement-ftom-scratch.  With the aid of information acquired from our scouting missions, we raided DCMS installations on Svelvik, Trondheim and Jarrett, mainly to replenish basic necessities like food, water and clothing, though we also ‘acquired’ some seed-stocks and construction equipment and our technicians thoroughly plundered their computers for information to plan successive operations.  A number of the locals were surprisingly sympathetic to us, or at least approved of those who struck at their Combine ‘oppressors’.”

  “Come again?”  Doctor Tosa arches an eyebrow.  From what little I know of the Combine, that is hardly conduct typical of its subjects.

  “The General chose her targets well, Doctor,” Katsuragi puts in, near-absently rubbing the blue dragon shoulder-patch she wears.  “Those three worlds used to be part of the Principality of Rasalhague – well, before the Snakes annexed them way back when – and ever since the Dracs went hard-core Japanophile a couple of centuries ago, people like the Arkabs and gaijin-looking folks like me have been second- and third-class citizens compared to ‘true children of the Dragon’.  Add that regional memories of once being a sovereign nation, unrest stirred up by the shame of Kentares IV, and Jinjiro’s being a complete friggin’ nutcase, and the Rasalhague District’s ISF prisons, ‘Unproductive camps’ and outright slave-labour gangs have been getting awfully full these days.”

  “A fact quickly revealed to us by the Draconis databases we cloned in our raids,” General Ebon nods.  “Our last strike in the Combine was against an Unproductive camp on Richmond, most of its population being political prisoners like Rasalhaguian activists – the disenfranchised, the disenchanted and the discarded, people we hoped would be willing to make fresh starts in a new society, one that would value their contributions fairly.  True, we expected they would start out mostly performing manual labour, but once our settlement on Haven was sufficiently viable, they would have every opportunity to build new careers and lives in their old trades, or new ones if they chose.”

  “Case in point: Chu-i Misty Katsuragi,” Katsuragi chimes in again.  “A wet-behind-the-ears DCMS intelligence analyst attached to the staff of the Trondheim garrison commander, well-regarded by her boss as she understands it, but always under a cloud with the ‘real children of the Dragon’ because she’s female and gaijin, despite her name and loyal service.  One day, a Rasalhague lobby-group asks for an audience with the Planetary Chairman, hoping to get him to relax the Dragon’s restrictions on their movements and associations a little so they could better serve the Dragon.  The Chairman’s an utter reactionary who takes that as an act of rebellion, so he has them all executed where they stand and sics the ISF on their relations and associates... including a family of very distant cousins who’d taken the name ‘Katsuragi’ specifically to evade that kind of backlash.  The only reason I wasn’t shot during my arrest or my detention – at least, before the Remnant showed up - was because Tai-sa Aylesworth threw all of his influence into prying me out of the ISF’s claws.  I understand they were a hair away from arresting him... only the 331^st hit Trondheim first.”

  Doctor Tosa reads between the lines.  “I trust he died well?”

  “As did most of the 20^th Rasalhague Regulars who fought beside him,” Ebon inserts, not without mixed feelings of her own.  “He knocked out one of our Crusaders and crippled two more before we put him down – which was better than fair piloting, since his own machine was merely a Trebuchet-Five-November.

  “In any case, the Richmond prison held almost fifteen thousand people, most of them half-starved - the Dragon does not ‘waste’ his bounty feeding the disloyal and the ‘Unproductive’.”  The acid Trish Ebon puts on that comment is fit to burn through the table.  “On the other hand, we had deliberately secured vast stockpiles of food and water in our previous strikes against the Combine, both to fill our own larders and to prepare for just this eventuality.  When our ’Mechs broke open the camp, we landed DropShips nearby, distributed food, explained ourselves to a certain extent, and offered them the chance of new lives.  Not one of them refused to join us.”

  MacMillan interrupts again.  “Some would argue you made the choice for them, General.  After all, you chose to ‘recruit’ people who were desperate for any alternative to the ISF’s programme of starvation, brutality, and execution-without-trial, then filled their bellies for the first time in months - or years! - and offered them more of the same if they’d join your ‘colonisation effort’.  Wow: some ‘choice’.”

  “But a choice nonetheless, Adept.  I am not entirely proud that the options were... weighted in the fashion they were, but given our own straits, neither will I hang my head over offering salvation and a fresh start to others who were unjustly condemned.”  For that matter, it was not the first time I found myself taking little pride in what needed to be done, Ebon adds privately, remembering a cinderblock room on Strana Mechty.  “Once we lifted from Richmond, we continued on our way without further troubling the Combine, and we thought ourselves free and clear - until we were intercepted a jump past Valentina.  But we were not met by the Combine.  Tadeusz?”

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on May 11, 2011, 09:58:39 AM

  “Primus Toyama was... very interested by the activities of General Ebon’s convoy,” MacMillan drawls, taking over his chapter of the recounting.  “A mystery ’Mech regiment appearing out of the Periphery, trouncing the Dracs four times straight in four different raids by using near-pristine ’Mechs freshly painted in Regular Army colours and tactics straight out of SLDF manuals, then simply fading back into space again?  The whole affair had captured everyone’s imaginations: people everywhere were wondering if the activities of the ‘Minnesota Tribe’ heralded the return of the SLDF.”

  “Instead of being the return of all that remained of the SLDF,” Ebon mutters despite herself.

  “The Primus sent out something like a dozen different ships with orders to find the Minnesota Tribe and establish diplomatic contact.  The joker he put in charge of the effort, Precentor Emilio Travis, had too big an area to cover in too short a timeframe for him to as choosy about where he got some of his specialists as he might’ve liked, which is how I got dragged out of a library and dumped onto the ‘Jump’Ship Nolan Mordiki with that ROM fanatic: I was the only ComStar expert on SLDF protocols Travis could get his hands on before his own ship had to embark.  Can’t say I was thrilled about that, and he didn’t much like me either, but he had verigraphed orders from the Primus himself giving his mission absolute priority on personnel and equipment, including HPG transmissions and ships, so off I went.

  “As the General says, we made contact over Valentina – and when we came out of the jump right under Bismark’s guns, Travis almost shit a pineapple.”  MacMillan smiles dreamily at the memory.  “By then, I’d been cooped up with that pious prick for better than three months, listening to him gas on and on about ‘the divine will of the Blessed Blake’... and y’know what?  Seeing his face when we looked down the focal-assemblies of two dozen Omicron-45s made that suffering worth every last second.”

  Chuckles run around the table once more.

  “Anyway, Travis identified us to Bismark and convinced them not to just blow us away, which let us open negotiations.  We were supposedly there to offer the ‘Minnesota Tribe’ resettlement on Mars with our assistance and military protection – after all, the Terra system was under our protection, and with all their interstellar communications running through us, even if the Houses ever figured out where the Tribe wound up, none of them would dare do anything about it.  In return, the Tribe would surrender their military equipment – especially their ’Mechs and their WarShips - into ComStar’s ‘stewardship’ to augment our system garrison.  Travis made a big production of how conspicuous advanced ’Mechs and WarShips were, given the way the Houses had targeted each other’s production facilities during the Succession War and blasted sizeable fractions of each other’s fleets to drifting space-junk; he wanted to make it clear that if the Tribe settled anywhere within the reach of the Houses, they’d be prime targets for Successor Lords who wanted to secure fresh stocks of advanced weaponry and find out what happened to the rest of the SLDF.”

  “Unfortunately for Travis, we were not interested and started talking mainly to buy time to charge our drives,” Antonescu snorts.  “Some of us were tempted, true – our Flight had been so long that it was inevitable - but settling in the Inner Sphere?  Leaving aside the fact that the Clans are sworn to return one day under the Hidden Hope doctrine, which would give them a chance to finish the job they started on Circe and Strana Mechty and Barbados, we would have to be insane to put ourselves in the midst of a five-way dynastic squabble that has seen whole worlds burned to glass, query-affirmative?  We already had a well-sequestered destination in mind, though we did not mention that in the discussions.  Besides that, we were hardly going to hand our means of self-defence ourselves over to the goodwill of any outsider, even the supposedly ‘neutral’ ComStar.”

  “As for me?  I was still a student when Conrad Toyama succeeded Jerome Blake, and I’d lived through enough of his ‘reforms’ that there was no way I’d believe he wanted to help the Minnesota Tribe out of the goodness of his heart.”  MacMillan visibly wants to spit out the foul taste in his mouth.  “ComStar started as a secular organisation with a corporate structure, but after Blake’s death, Toyama completely dismantled that and started turning it into a theocracy based around the sanctity of technology and ‘the Word of Blake’.  You don’t want to know how many of my colleagues and fellow students ROM ‘disappeared’ because they spoke out against Toyama or the new trappings; hell, even invoking the name of a divine figure that wasn’t Jerome Blake could get you a visit from some Omicron Adept!  When I joined ComStar to finish my degree, Blake’s emphasis was on preserving technology, so the people of the Inner Sphere could rebuild after they’d battered each other back to the Bronze Age, even as he hoped they wouldn’t regress that far.  The ‘Word of Blake’ Toyama published after Blake’s death was about letting them create that sort of collapse while exclusively controlling technology so that when the Successor States had battered each other back to neobarbarism, ComStar could sweep in with all the old marvels and take all of civilisation under their wing – whether or not they wanted that protection.  Hell, in a few years they’ll probably be starting the damned wars just to foment that damned collapse!  (Not that it’d take much to kick off a war amongst that mob of megalomaniacal half-wits....)

  “So there I was, playing front-man for a fanatic who wanted me to convince the other side to surrender their killware into our hands in exchange for the dubious safety of being harboured (and probably exploited) by an organisation I had little more reason to trust than they did.  On the third day of the talks, we were on Bismark, making about as much progress as we had before – to whit, virtually none, since the General was valiantly employing the time-honoured tactic of ‘stalling for dear life’ – when the intercom came up with a warning from her people.  One of Travis’ other search-parties had made the rendezvous... on a Cameron-class battlecruiser.  They were supposedly there in case the Minnesota Tribe ‘got unruly’ towards our delegation, but the situation was already pretty tense, so reassurances like that didn’t go very far.

  “I’d just about calmed things down by the end of the day’s session... then one of the Wolverines got froggy.  Throughout the Remnant’s journey back to the Inner Sphere, a scientist by the name of Lionel Marillier had been pushing for a more militant stance than ‘run and hide’ – he wanted to turn the Remnant into a warrior society that would go back to the Clan Worlds one day and avenge the Wolverines’ Annihilation.  Personally, I think he was out of his fucking skull – if you fall through a jet-turbine once and survive, why the hell would you plan to jump into the fucker at a later date? – but he had some support amongst the hotheads, so General Ebon contained the problem by letting him and the other nuts congregate aboard one of the smaller WarShips, a Samarkand-II, and always kept it under the guns of Bismark or Zughoffer Weir so he wouldn’t get any funny ideas about going it alone.  Our arrival gave Marillier his chance: when we shuttled back for the night, Marillier opened a tight-beam channel to Mordiki to start secret negotiations of his own, offering to hand over schematics for all of the Wolverines’ technology to sweeten the deal while he worked to suborn the rest of the fleet.  The only thing he didn’t promise to cough up was the convoy’s final destination, because he didn’t have the coordinates – thankfully, the General was always very cagey about keeping those cards close to her chest.

  “To be fair, Marillier wasn’t exactly the only one playing silly-buggers that day.  Travis had to stay on Mordiki – he didn’t tell me why, but it must’ve been to keep talking to Loony Lionel - so I got tapped to keep the General busy with the ‘real’ talks aboard Bismark – under the eye of a couple of his hand-picked ROM watchdogs.  I managed to ditch the goons for few minutes and speak the General privately to warn her off: ‘I don’t trust ComStar as far as you could throw this battleship - especially that nutcase Travis - and neither should you’.  By the time I was finished describing Toyama’s purges, she very much didn’t.  I’m almost certain that she’d made up her mind when we were interrupted by another ship jumping in - a Naga under a ComStar transponder.

  “Travis must’ve thought that gave him the edge; our best guess is that he decided to remove the main obstacle to the process by assassinating the General and letting command of the Tribe default to someone more ‘reasonable’ – namely Marillier.  Mordiki sent another Mk.7 over to Bismark, supposedly carrying Travis himself to resume his role in the talks... only instead of Travis and the other delegates, it was carrying a dozen Marines in Nighthawk power-armour they recovered from... well, some Star League cache or research-base, God only knows which.  It turned into a running firefight through Bismark’s corridors, and those fucking power-suits just bounced small-arms, so the Tribe ended up using man-pack SRMs to knock the bastards off.  In the meantime, Starsword was trying to look perfectly innocent even as it dealt with ‘a major electronics malfunction’ that jammed Bismark’s radio transmissions.

  “Marillier went on fleet-wide broadcast, declaring the General’s death in a freak life-support malfunction and his own ascension to control of the Tribe.  He might even have pulled it off, if he hadn’t blown the timing out his arse: the General was perfectly alive; the boarding-parties were being contained and mopped up even as he spoke; and the General had managed to get a signal off through Bismark’s HPG to Zughoffer Weir and Yukon - she’d had Admiral Hennesy hold away from the main fleet as an ace-in-the-hole for an emergency like this.  And while Marillier and ComStar were looking the wrong way, Zug and her escort jumped in right on top of them and started blasting.”

  O’Dwyer winces.  “McKenna versus Cameron at point-blank range - that can’t have been too pretty!”

  Antonescu gives him a thin, fierce smile.  “The main fire-control console on Zughoffer Weir bears a black-humoured little plaque that goes back to her SLN days, Commander: ‘Rejoice, for very bad things are about to happen’.  And even with a third of her coolant circuits out of action since the fighting over Barbados, she can still make them happen.”

  “Yeah, what Javier said,” MacMillan smirks.  “Zug basically blew off the back half of Starsword with one broadside; hell, I don’t know, someone might even scavenge some useable parts from her front half one day, but the back half just got vaped, including her jump-drive and HPG.  Yukon and Blake’s Guidance beat hell out of each other, but a Lola-III can out-turn and outgun a Naga any day of the week and twice on Sunday, and since a lot of Yukon’s crew fought on Undying Fidelity at Barbados and ComStar’s people were purely sim-jockies... well, it would’ve taken a miracle for Guidance to win that duel even if Yukon’s missiles hadn’t touched off a magazine.  One of the DropShips we’d carried in on Nolan Mordiki was a Titan that turned out to be packed with Alamo nukes to go with its Royal Hellcats, and between their missiles and the Santa Anas Starsword got off before Zug nailed her, they outright blew away SLS Immortal before they died – they were aiming for Bismark, probably trying to decapitate the Remnant, but Immortal ‘caught the warhead’ for the General.  Sandy Woodward gave Marillier’s ship a chance to surrender; unfortunately, you’d need a séance to find out why he refused when the rest of the fleet was still loyal.”

  Sighing, Ebon rubs her eyes; as she expected, this has been a long conversation.  “Yet another incident in which I can take no real pride.  We could not afford to leave survivors who might reveal our location or route, much less hand our technology or dangerous intelligence over to a hostile actor like ComStar.  Even Marillier’s people, our own blood... the only survivor was Adept MacMillan, and he was so ‘lucky’ only because he was already aboard Bismark, wavering in his loyalty to Toyama’s cult... and thought to have us retrieve Travis’ code-books from the wreckage of Nolan Mordiki.  We recovered the codebooks and what salvage we could, scuttled the wreck of Marillier’s ship with Fidelity’s only Mk.92 to make sure nothing could be recovered from the wreckage, then used the codes to compose a counterfeit message back to the First Circuit under Travis’ name, telling them that he had secured our compliance and we were en route to the designated asylum.  It is unlikely they suspected anything for weeks, perhaps months – and every day they remained oblivious put more distance between us and them.

  “Thankfully, that was the last major obstacle we faced, other than the distance between there and here.  Since that schism, fleet morale has been... shaky, and sustained only by the hope of Haven lying within our reach.  I am quite certain that Admiral Hennesy is already dealing with a rising rash of disturbances and petitions from civilians demanding that they be permitted to land on Svoboda or Ensenada, so they can experience real gravity and breathe air that has not been mechanically recycled for more than a century.  Our hopes were centred on Massachusetts being an empty system, ready to be colonised; that it is already inhabited, and indeed embroiled in an interstellar war of its own... I do not know what decisions will emerge from this meeting, Jack, or from discussions with the Union government, but the spirit of my people is as fragile as spun glass at this point, and frankly I am terrified of what will result if the Union denies us sanctuary.”

  Jack has spent 60.545 years considering the possible courses of action his relief might take, and though these particular circumstances were an exceedingly low order of probability, he has compiled an entire storage-bank’s worth of additional possibilities in the time since the delegation arrived aboard.  Formulating his response to that particular concern is the work of a mere 0.168 milliseconds.  “I very strongly doubt the Union would reject a petition for asylum, Sir - but even if they did, it would be immaterial.  Along with several bases and storage installations on the surface of Union worlds, this station is legally sovereign territory of the Terran Hegemony – indeed, SLDF reservations in this system may be the only remaining sovereign Hegemony soil, if what you say is accurate – and when I ceded command to you earlier today, you became military governor of those territories.  That gives you full rights, authority and responsibilities to care for the dependents of SLDF personnel, and to grant both temporary asylum and permanent Hegemony citizenship to refugees such as the prisoners liberated from Richmond.”  (He very carefully does not mention the other responsibilities that came with the governor’s job - she seems overwhelmed already!)  “With your approval, General, I’ll start preparing the station’s accommodations to house your people.  I’m not sure how comfortable your ships might be, but even absent an arrangement with the Union about groundside housing, the station’s so undermanned that it’s far roomier than your ships - and as you’ve noted, the food’s better.  I’ll also have Commander O’Dwyer’s yard-dogs and my own remotes begin damage-surveys of your ships and compile assessments of what repairs are needed and what can be done with our available resources.  Neither of those tasks requires interaction with the Union government just yet, no matter how... curious they might be at the moment.”

  “Both proposals are approved, Commodore,” Trish Ebon says, more by instinct than reason.  “Discussions with the Union will have to wait for the time being... which reminds me: we will need further briefings on the Union itself, preferably delivered by an officer from the Union military.  Major Durandal, would you be interested in liaison duty?”

  Durandal nods.  “I’ll take it... until I get killed or you find someone better.”  (As always, she seems unfazed by the question – and by the spluttering sound her answer draws from Garfield the Tachikoma.)

  An absently curious What did I just miss? flits across Ebon’s mind even as she stands; her aides follow suit, gathering their things, and Jack and the locals rise to match them.  “Very well.  We will return to Bismark to update our colleagues and start making the necessary arrangements.  We will return to resume discussions with you in... sixteen T-hours, query-affirmative?”

  “Of course, General,” Jack says, his avatar rendering a crisp League salute that Ebon returns after a half-second’s bemusement.  “Might I ask you to delay departing for, oh, twenty minutes, while Major Durandal and Garfield gather some essentials?  I’ve got another Tachikoma outside to guide you back to the docking-bay; the Major and Garfield will join you there when they’re ready.”  {Garfield, before you head down to the docking bay, dive the archives for Adept MacMillan like you said you would.  And while you’re over on Bismark, do what you can to keep tabs on him.}

  {Compliance!}

  “Fairly bargained and done, Commodore,” Ebon nods, not hearing the RF conversation.  “All of us have a great deal to do; we will leave you to your duties while we attend to ours.  Until next time.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  When the conference-room door closes behind the new arrivals, Jack turns his avatar’s gaze on his human colleagues.  “Opinions?”  Constant analysis of body-language and similar biometric indicators have contributed to his own evaluation, of course, but O’Dwyer and Tosa weren’t here merely as representatives of their departments.  After all, one of the bitterest complaints aimed at him and the other SLDF AIs in recent years, especially by the Union, is the old accusation: ‘logic doesn’t care’.

  Expressionless, O’Dwyer raises a forefinger, asking for a moment’s grace... then stands and hurls his water-glass against the bulkhead, cursing for three minutes solid in a wide range of languages with the sort of profane fluency only a life-long engineer can muster.  “God fuckin’ DAMMIT!  I’ve spent two thirds of my LIFE sitting in this system since the damn’ Coup, waiting for some word from the Star League, and what do we finally hear from ’em?  The Dalton Governor’s Last Address!  No, worse - because at least the Governor had the spine t’ go on-air himself and say ‘Good luck: you’re on your own’!  Kerensky just packed up and fucked off int’ the Periphery without even sayin’ ‘a plague on all y’all!’ or checkin’ if he’d forgotten anythin’ - like, maybe, a whole fuckin’ backup Army headquarters and its naval support-base?”

  “You believe them, then?”

  O’Dwyer flops back into his chair, laughing bitterly.  “Oh, I believe ’em, Jack: they’re stretched so thin I can see daylight through ’em.  Nobody that friggin’ strung out can lie coherently, much less keep a story that friggin’ convoluted from comin’ apart.  If they were tryin’ t’ run some kind’a con on us, they would’ve come up with somethin’ less outlandish.  Not t’ mention, they probably wouldn’t have admitted t’ some of the things they did, or the way they did ’em: they would’ve cast ’emselves as angels.”

  Doctor Tosa is rubbing her eyes, caught somewhere between fatigue, despair, and compassion for their recent guests.  “I doubt the Union government will take this well,” she sighs.  “Even after so long, many of them were still expecting the SLDF to come back as their angels of salvation - not as a rag-tag fleet of fugitives.”

  After another moment’s consideration, she lowers her hand again and shrugs at the ‘Commodore’s’ avatar.  “Nonetheless, I agree with Jake: they are too desperate to be lying.  They are all demonstrating the sorts of strain and behavioural tics you would expect from that sort of... odyssey, and if I were truly qualified to treat human mental disorders rather than cybernetic, I would relieve General Ebon on medical grounds right now, before something pushes her the last few millimetres into a full emotional breakdown.  What that woman needs is half a T-year’s stress-leave dealing with nothing more demanding than warm beaches, cold tropical drinks, and getting rubbed down with coconut-oil by well-built cabana-boys.”

  “Yeah, Takako, that’s what she needs; might even be what she wants; but what’s she gonna get?  Responsibility for running th’ Union’s whole fuckin’ war-effort.”  It’s at times like this that O’Dwyer wishes he hadn’t quit smoking cigars; it would give him something to chew on and spit out.  “One of these days, I’m gonna find whoever it was who said th’ universe is inherently fair - and I’m gonna nut-punch the dumb bastard t’ break him out of the fuckin’ fantasy.”

---      ---      ---      ---      ---

  Antonescu flew the delegation over, and on the return trip he’s taken Major Durandal into the cockpit with him, partly so she can see Bismark with her own eyes before they dock.  At the front of the passenger compartment, Misty Katsuragi has launched into a fascinated discussion with Garfield about Tachikomae and their functions, and his forward camera is firmly fixed upon her.

  And at the back of the compartment, carefully screened from view by Tadeusz MacMillan’s body, Tricia Ebon, Acting Major-General of the Star League Regular Army and Commanding Officer of the 331^st Royal BattleMech Division, finally has the chance and privacy to indulge herself in a luxury she hasn’t had since Sarah McEvedy breathed her last almost four years ago.

  She turns to Tad MacMillan – the only person in the Fleet technically outside her chain of command, the only one around whom she can afford to let herself be human instead of the ever-decisive, imperturbable General – buries her face in his chest, and finally breaks down into helpless tears of relief.

  Haven.  Oh, thank God, Haven!  Whatever happens next, however briefly it may last, my people will have their sanctuary!

Title: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Trace Coburn on July 24, 2012, 06:47:24 AM

NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA
Buenos Aires airfield
August 11, 2827

  It started raining just before dusk, but the downpour’s doing nothing to cool the GCC’s apparent rush of enthusiasm.  Even from this distance, the newly-minted Sergeant-Major Bauer can see that the streets of Buenos Aires are well-lit - not by street-lights or the planet’s moon or strobes of lightning, but the pyres and staccato flashes of battle.  Artillery is a constant flash-and-rumble on most of the horizon, Ensenadan shells screaming into an Ensenadan city to punish its invaders.

  “Threw the Titanians straight into it, did they?” Ferretti hazards.  He just came back from giving his after-action report to Colonel Lucasi, and just looking back out at the rain outside the hangar has him hunching deeper into his poncho.  He left Petrelli’s ventilated helmet with Petrelli’s ventilated body when they got on the trucks, and the brim of the battered Soren outdoorsman’s slouch-hat he replaced it with is dripping just beyond his nose.

  “You saw those new ’Mechs: the Genarros can’t wait to grind up the fresh meat – I mean, try out the new toys,” Bauer mutters sourly, digging out a cigarette.  Seven weeks ago, he’d never even had a whiff of tobacco; now he goes through a pack a day.

  The Tenente harrumphs, looking across the ferrocrete; the open ’Mech-bay of a grounded Tigersnake lander faces their hangar/barracks, and he can see the half-dozen Morningstars within being worked on by techs.  Even from this distance and through the rain, he can see they’re all sporting new hardware, pristine olive paint-jobs, and the Genarro crest proudly emblazoned on their left breasts, with the Salernan flag on the right.  Indeed, if he were a paranoid soul, he’d swear that crest was a little too freshly and brightly painted....  “And where’d they get the toys, I wonder?”

  “Depends on who you ask.  Acadians, copying Union hardware and selling the results?  Royal Army R&D doing combat-testing?  Promotion or not, Herr Leutnant, that’s way the hell above my pay-grade; I’m just glad I’m not one of those poor-bastard Titanians tonight.”

- * - * - * - * -

NUEVO BUENOS AIRES, ENSENADA
“Firebat Black-One”
That same time

  Hammer swings the Hurón down out from behind an office-block and snaps a las-cannon shot down the street.  The beam’s strobe-like after-image traces up into the belly of a Pog tank as it crests a pile of rubble; the blocky CM.01 staggers, shedding a tread in a brilliant blast of armour-shards and shattered track-links.  Four Javelins descend on the stalled Pezzini; somewhere in the maelstrom of explosions, the ammo cooks off, and its fifteen-ton turret flings itself skyward atop a column of fire and smoke.  The chassis coasts back down the mound of fallen ’crete, flames and black smoke roiling from every opening, and the turret lands next to it an instant later, lying on its roof like a frying-pan filled with burning oil.

  One down; the whole fucking rest of 17° Titanian to go, Hammer thinks sourly, playing her crosshairs over the olive-clad infantry scrambling around the burning hulk.  Her left thumb mashes a third TIC, and the Hurón’s three-mike-mike rail-guns growl low and long.  Twin streams of silver streaks rake across the street; showers of sparks mark where they strike, exploding stone, metal and flesh with equal contempt and smashing entire limbs and torsos into gory smears on ferrocrete.  The whole platoon of squishies vanishes almost instantly; how many of them she actually hit, she doesn’t much care right now.

  “’Suits say we bottled up that whole tank-platoon with the wreck, boss-chica.”  Succubus has the half-chanting tone near-universal to sens-ops absorbed in their work; half her main MFCD is lit up with red icons, and most of them are advancing.  “Rest of that company’s still coming our way, though – looks like another headed for Second Platoon.”

  “Always nice to be wanted,” Hammer quips behind her breather-mask, ducking their ’Mech back under cover as a Cazador MBT further back flings a railgun shell towards the oncoming Pogs.  The hypersonic projectile lights the entire street like horizontal lightning as it goes past, complete with thunderclap; the only sign of its effect that Firebat Black-One’s crew can see is another Pezzini’s icon going still on Succubus’ displays, ringed by a ‘mobility-kill’ damage-code.

  {“Niner, this is Red-Alpha.”}  Even as Lt. Villalobos identifies himself, the tac-net is lighting up with the icons of his discovery.   {“Multiple new contacts inbound from the north-west, probable bruisers, estimated strength your callsign size.”}

- * - * - * - * -

“Dora Six-Six” (Morningstar-G BattleMech)
(Command ’Mech, D Company, 2° Genarro Guards BattleMech Rgt.)
That same time

  Capitano Guillermo Santini watches his plot with half an eye, baring his teeth as the red icons of spic ’Mechs fall back from his oncoming force.  Running from true warriors like the feral rabble they are!  He guides his ’Mech down the street and around a corner, one broad foot coming down on some rubble and crushing it – and the trio of Titanian infantrymen hiding behind it - like a mound of sand beneath a child’s shoe.  It’s not his lookout if these conscripts are too stupid to get out from under his Morningstar; besides, they’re here to die for the greater glory of Salerno, and that’s just what they did.  Plenty more where they came from.

  As he finishes rounding the corner, he spots a Hurón several blocks away: some more Titanian cannon-fodder are cowering within a store-front, spraying the ’Mech with their sub-guns in a futile show of defiance, and even as he watches, it rakes their positions with its railguns, shattering concrete and men alike.  My first kill of the night, he smirks, dropping his crosshairs over the Ensenadan machine and thumbing his secondary TIC.

  The boxy assembly of missile-cells that replaced the Morningstar’s right hand lunges forward, and three Hatchets flare from its tubes.  Howling down the street, all three slam into the Hurón’s left flank, tearing away swatches of armour that are smaller than they would be on a Gehennan ’Mech.  Little matter to Santini; the missiles were mainly to get the spic’s attention.  Now, as the EDF machine turns to face him, he snarls and yanks back the main trigger.

  A whining vibration runs through the Morningstar’s frame and up into Santini’s bones as the new shoulder-mounted M94A1 autocannon spins up to firing speed, then snarls to life like God’s own chainsaw.  The muzzle flash is like God’s own flashlight, fully three metres wide and fifteen long, and Santini grins again as he plays the joystick a touch, running the tracers across and over the Hurón like a child spraying a friend with a garden hose... only the ‘stream’ isn’t water, but a near-solid bar of three-inch HEDP cannon-shells.

  The Hurón staggers, shards of ferro-lamellor armour flying in all directions as the cannon-fire gouges deep into its body, tracking from left breast to right hip and back to left shoulder.  Either stunned by the hits or surprised by the firepower, the Hurón’s pilot loses control and the EDF ’Mech sits down hard, like a man slipping on ice.  The return-fire is pitiful: Santini’s anti-missile system hacks all three Javelins out of the sky before they make it halfway to him, and for all that the accompanying laser-bolt tears a chunk from the building-facade next to him, pelting his ’Mech with ferrocrete-chunks the size of his head, it is simply noisy, spectacular, and totally harmless.

  You’d have to do better than that to strike down one of Cavaretta’s Scions, Santini judges, thumbing the Hatchet launcher to point-defence mode and spitting the Hurón in his crosshairs.  A shame you won’t get the chance.  All four of his two-inch lasers flash, ripping chunks from the medium ’Mech’s body, then the autocannon snarls again; this time, the tracers are a near-solid stream, eating into the Ensenadan machine’s sternum like a firehose smashes a sand-castle.  Armour and other debris flies in all directions, and the still-seated Hurón lurches over and goes dark, its reactor hammered into emergency shutdown.  The Ensenadan pilot triggered his return-salvo a half-instant before his reactor died, but it does no good; his aim compromised by the pounding and his ’Mech’s awkward position, his ‘alpha-strike’ of laser-bolts and coil-gun bursts does nothing but make a brief, brilliant, ineffectual light-show around and past the Morningstar, and Santini’s counter-missiles and AMS smash down all four of his Javelins.

- * - * - * - * -

Buenos Aires airfield
That same time

  “Scheiße, here we go: ass-kissers at two o’clock,” groans a disgusted Ferretti, and Bauer follows his gaze to the ‘requisitioned’ electric four-wheel-drive now rapidly approaching their hangar/barracks.

  Sure enough, when the GM Firecat pulls into the open main doorway, three officers clamber out; the most junior of them is a Major, and the foremost has a triad of stars beneath the crown on his rank-stripe, making him – Bauer snaps to attention and salutes.  He’s almost forgotten how since he landed on Ensenada, since it was little more than a ‘sniper-check’ in the city, but somehow he doubts that Tenente-Generale Stefano Abruzzi will care about that.  Salernan commanders who don’t get their ‘due deference’ from their enlisted peons - especially the ones with crowns on their rank-stripes, much less stars to go with them! – tend to Squad first and think later.

  Ferretti doesn’t even blink at seeing so many stars coming his way.  In fact, he completely ignores military protocol (and the General’s aides) in favour of glaring at 23º Field Army’s commander.  “What do you want?”

  Bauer almost swallows his tongue not-reacting to that.

  Abruzzi flushes a little, but controls his temper and draws himself up to attention, the two aides doing likewise.  He deliberately speaks in Salernan Italian, trusting in the ignorance of the gawking Soren peasants to preserve the dignity of both the officer corps and the aristocrats who populate it.  He doesn’t realise that several of Ferretti’s men, including Bauer himself, are quite conversant in the language.  “[Could we speak in private?]”

  “Do I have a choice?” Ferretti says sourly, then glances to the still-saluting Bauer.  “The Brain Trust need my advice, Sergeant-Major.  I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Abruzzi finally notices Bauer’s salute and absently returns it, though the curl of his lip makes a mockery of its supposed courtesy.  That quickly, he dismisses the uniformed feral from his mind and turns away to speak to the ‘lowly’ Tenente he’s called on.  They make a stark contrast as they cross to the far side of the hangar’s doorway, the two aides a tactful distance behind them: Abruzzi’s uniform is bone-dry and pristine, starched-and-pressed, festooned with gold braid, his peaked cap table-like in its level flatness; Ferretti is no match for the state of threadbare grime his men accumulated before he arrived, but under the rain-slicked poncho and dripping slouch-hat, he’s still rumpled and dirty, and the missing chunk of his sleeve has been patched with speed-tape.  And yet Abruzzi’s body-language is almost... deferential?

  Ölsner comes up beside Bauer, curiosity written deep on his face.   â€œWhat do you think that’s about, Hans?”

  Bauer weighs his answer for a moment.  “Who knows?  Maybe the General wants to know where to get the best chow in NBA.”

  The resident comedian gives him a steady look.  ‘Smartass’ does not mean ‘stupid’.

  “If you already knew the answer, why'd you ask the question?” Bauer half-snaps.

  The hushed conversation between the two officers goes on for a while, and another Firecat pulls up outside during the discussion.  Eventually Abruzzi, clearly less than delighted, nods a final time and heads back to the first vehicle, aides in tow.  Ferretti turns back to his men with a grim set to his jaw.  “Sergeant-Major, I’ve got another fire to piss on.  You have the company until I get back.  Ölsner, you and Prutter grab your gear, you’re coming with me.”

  Marcks, the Firecat’s driver, is clearly paid by the klick than the hour, so the trip to the airport warehouse that’s become the regimental supply depot takes only a few minutes; even so, the list Ferretti composes in the back seat with pad, pencil, and a small torch in his mouth is finished by the time they arrive.  Ferretti brings Marcks inside as well, and the arrival of four heavily-armed troopers causes quite a stir amongst the clerks and other logisticians, especially when they see the flashes of a Soren Infantry Regiment.  Almost everyone in the room is watching by the time Ferretti stops in front of a particular desk.

  The man behind the desk is older and clearly well-fed, wearing the crown and two stars of a full Colonnello.  Apart from the computer-terminal and paperwork that come with the job, the desk-top also bears an ornate honeywood box overflowing with Tejano cigars and a crystal decanter-and-glasses set full of golden whiskey, undoubtedly of the same top-line standard as the stogies.  Looking up from his three-inch-thick sandwich, mustard dripping from his moustache, Colonel Valenza takes in the two stars on the newcomer’s rank-strip and glares contemptuously at their wearer.  “[Fuck do you want?]”

  Ferretti silently drops the pad on the desk in front of him.

  Valenza takes his time setting aside his food to look at the pad, letting the newcomer know who’s in charge here.  His colour rises and his eyes widen as he reads down the list; by the time he’s done, he looks like a cartoon character.  “[This is absurd!  What, exactly, am I going to get for all of this?]”

  Ferretti smiles silently, standing something small on the senior man’s desk.

  A 9x22mm bullet.

  There’s a long, terrible silence as the Salernans all recognise the meaning behind that ritual gesture.  A slightly paler Valenza looks at the shell for a moment, then to Ferretti himself.  “[Who are you?]”

  The response comes in the formal, antiquated Salernan of the Old Forms.  “[I am Antonio Guillermo Ferretti, Arch-Count of Schwarzwald and heir to the Ducal throne of Soren.  This Legion was raised from the purses and people of my estates.  Its matériel is my property, which you have looted.  It is funded from my coffers, which you have plundered.  Its men are my subjects, who you have murdered.  Will you make restitution for these crimes, or do you stand in defiance of your overlord?]”

  Valenza stares at him for a moment, consternation, comprehension, and horror chasing each other across his features – then he lunges to his feet, snatching for a desk-drawer –

  BAM

  - and drops straight down where he stands, leaving a red-and-grey blotch on the wall behind him.

  Stony-faced, Ferretti re-holsters his smoking Hi-Power and reclaims the loose round from Valenza’s desk.  “[And so is justice done.  Lieutenant-Colonel Zancarelli, this section is now yours.  Fail in this charge at your peril.]”

  “[Yes, Your Excellency!]”

  “[Colonel Roberto Valenza’s belongings and property are fruit of his crimes; I declare them forfeit, to be liquidated as restitution to this Legion and weregeld to the families of his victims.  You will see to it, Lieutenant-Colonel.]”

  “[Yes, Your Excellency.]”

  “[And Colonel Zancarelli?]”  Ferretti adds, finally glancing at the man he just promoted.

  “[Yes, Your Excellency?]”

  Still expressionless, Ferretti points at the patch of blood-bone-and-brains now decorating the office wall.  “[That stays exactly as it is.  Don’t make me come back here, Colonel.]”

- * - * - * - * -

  The Firecat only makes it around the first corner before Ferretti has Marcks pull over.  Once it stops, he leans out the door and messily, noisily pukes his guts out.  The Sorens trade glances, but say nothing.

  When he levers himself upright again, a now pale-faced Ferretti looks up at the four-wheel-drive’s roof as his stomach settles.  “The first person I ever kill, and it’s one of my own officers,” he mutters wearily.  “How fucked up is this war?”

  “Welcome to the ’Nada, sir,” Prutter snorts.

  “Y’know the worst part about what I just did, Private?” the officer asks, with a bleak chuckle.  “In a properly-run military like the TDF, I couldn’t have gotten away with it: I’d be in shackles or a body-bag right now.  But no, this is the GCC, and my social rank gives me the power to pronounce low, middle and high justice whenever and wherever I deem necessary, even on someone of a higher military rank.”

  “Uh, sir?” Ölsner says slowly, hesitant about possibly pissing off this icy-blooded little fuck.  “I thought your fa- Duke Ferretti was trying to patch up the feud between his Famiglia and the Valenzas.  Isn’t what you just did going to make that harder?”

  “Strangely?  Not.  My.  Problem.”

Title: Re: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Red Pins on July 25, 2012, 12:22:59 AM

Tagged.

Title: Re: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam...
Post by: Hessian on August 04, 2012, 02:32:37 PM

Saw that newest chapter only now.
Very nice!

Quote from: Trace Coburn on July 24, 2012, 06:47:24 AM

Buenos Aires airfield
  “Schieße, here we go: ass-kissers at two o’clock,” groans a disgusted Ferretti, and Bauer follows his gaze to the ‘requisitioned’ electric four-wheel-drive now rapidly approaching their hangar/barracks.
 

Oh, and that certain German swearword is written Scheiße not Schieße(until the pronounciation is intentional).

Ciao
Hessian