Black Stars Mercenary Collective (AU) IC Thread

[blackpanzer]

Harlech City Spaceport,
Outreach,
‘Contested Space’.
10th November 3091

John Kelly stepped into the Customs control booth, placing the plastic passport card into the slot. A monitor in front of him flashed up his name, photograph, residential details and travel details as sensors analysed him for offworld infectious diseases and X-rays scanned him head to toe. The screen flashed green and ejected his passport.

A coolly impersonal female voice recording said, “Welcome to Outreach, Mr Kelly.”

As Kelly passed through to the busy Spaceport terminal he looked up at the screens presenting the latest news streaming into Outreach from the DropShips that landed every day. The top news remained the developments taking place in what the pedants insisted on calling ‘contested space’, but remained the Chaos March and its surroundings to those of Kelly’s generation. The Unified Leadership of Tikonov Revolutionary Army was still carrying on their bloody war against all comers with a fanaticism not seen since the bad old Word of Blake days, and the talking heads and armchair generals were racking up the overtime hours speculating on what exactly the hell was going on where. It was a new kind of war, with front lines changing every day – often the battalions jumped to reinforce a system that had already fallen, or landed to find their original enemy vanquished and a rival power in possession of the battlefield.

Some of the worlds the talking heads called ‘contested’, ‘isolated’, and ‘besieged’ were actually holding out just fine. For example, Outreach here was relatively secure with the mercenary equivalent of half a dozen Battlemech regiments and ten times that in armour, infantry and aerospace fighters taking part in a spirited defence of their own independence as private security contractors to whomever they liked. All around Kelly was the evidence of just how seriously the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission and its powerful backers the Allied Mercenary Command took the defence of their world.

When Kelly’s JumpShip had translated from hyperspace into real space at Outreach’s nadir jump point, he saw from his cabin porthole that the jump point was picketed by combat DropShips including a powerful Overlord A3 Assault DropShip that Kelly guessed might belong to the Medusans, a naval mercenary unit. Kelly’s passenger DropShip, the Monarch class Isabella I of Castille, had been thoroughly inspected by customs officials escorted by squads of battle armoured space marines. Then there had been a three hour wait in zero gee while other scheduled JumpShips arrived and were similarly processed. Only then did the DropShips form up in convoy – eight of them, including Kelly’s – to make the three day burn to Outreach itself. The convoy was escorted by a mercenary Leopard CV class vessel and its full complement of six aerospace fighters.

Here in the terminal itself were stationed a few squads of infantry troopers, moving through the crowds with watchful eyes and weapons carried at port arms. Outside on the tarmac anti-air vehicles and Battlemechs swept the skies above the Spaceport. Yes, concluded Kelly, they took their security seriously.

Kelly collected his baggage and went out to the Spaceport terminal proper. He passed all the mercenary recruiting and hiring stands, manned by Mech bunny shills in camo crop tops and miniskirts luring the young men to enlist with the ‘blackwater seas’, the mercenary companies which excelled in hiring out cannon fodder at cutthroat rates to cutthroat employers and leaving them out to dry and die when the firing started.

He passed the more reputable companies which eschewed the ‘meat rack’ hiring tactics to play on whatever glory and reputation they had acquired, their booths manned by grizzled sergeants surrounded by holo-banners and display cases of battle trophies – captured enemy flags, uniforms, weapons.

Heading towards the hire groundcars, he passed groups of tough looking men and women who talked a different language, walked a different walk, obeyed a set of rules completely alien to polite society – and felt at home again.

Both Mark Sheppards had known that.

* * *

New Rannoch,
Glengarry,
Isle of Skye.
Three weeks ago.

Kelly had just returned to Outreach from a brief but incredibly important trip to Glengarry where he had put down tentative roots in a secluded little valley in the Glencoe Highlands. There in the little hamlet of New Rannoch, he had given to the grieving parents of Dr Mark Sheppard Jr. the urn containing the ashes of their only son. Despite his grief, Mark Sheppard, barkeep of the Shepherd’s Rest, had with the sombre dignity of the bereaved thanked Kelly for his time and effort, for Kelly had risked his life once more in his old trade to enlist in the Black Stars Mercenary Collective and run to ground the pirates who were the only ones in the Inner Sphere who knew what had happened to the young medical intern and the Interstellar Red Cross expedition he had been a part of. The two men adjourned to the bar of the Shepherd’s Rest, leaving Mrs Sheppard to her bereavement.

Solemnly the barkeep extracted from somewhere in the very back of the bar a dusty bottle of fifty year old Glengoyne Single Malt, and poured Kelly and himself a large double.

“To Mark.”

“Mark. Slainte mhath,” replied Kelly.

The whiskey exploded in Kelly’s throat, bright, rich and filled with clean flavours, suffusing through Kelly’s chest and warming him instantly in the chill of the unheated room. The fifty year old distillation was truly uisge beatha, ‘water of life’, and a fitting celebration of Dr Mark Sheppard’s. Kelly reflected grimly that the whiskey was older than the boy had been.

“Thank you again,” said the barkeep.

“It was my true pleasure, Sheppard.”

The barkeep was silent for a while, then said, “Did you find out how... how Mark... how he...?”

Kelly held up a hand. “You don’t want to go there, Sheppard. You think you do but you don’t. He went decently, without pain, okay? Leave it at that.”

The barkeep nodded. “But you got the bastards who did it, right?”

This at least Kelly could answer, and he smiled. “We got them. We got them good.”

Grimly, the barkeep crossed himself and said “Amen.”

They drank. Mark Sheppard refilled their glasses. “What will you do now?” asked Kelly.

“I don’t know, Kelly,” replied Mark Sheppard. “Gloria has said she might want to move back up to Moray, where her sister lives. She has four children. It would do Gloria good to be with her nephews and nieces I think. I can open up a bar up there.” Mark Sheppard looked around. “Shame.”

“I’ll miss the Rest.”

“I’ll miss your custom.”

“I’ll miss this bloody fine whiskey, that’s for sure.”

“There’s few like it,” agreed Sheppard, turning the bottle reflectively in his hands. “Just think, this was laid down during the War of 3039. Back when the Dracs were our worst enemies and Melissa and Hanse were the hottest thing. We’d never heard of the Clans before.”

“Now they’re long dead, we’re called the Lyran Alliance, and the Dracs are friends and this wee ULTRA is the one making a right mess of things,” said Kelly. “The world changes, and the world stays the same.”

“ULTRA,” snorted Sheppard. “Bloody stupid name. Couldn’t think of anything else could they?” The barkeeper was silent for a while, then said “D’you know, I couldn’t think of a name for my boy either. I thought, Mark’s a damn fine name, innit, and he’s my son, and there you go.”

“You raised a fine boy, Sheppard,” said Kelly. “Whatever happened, it’s not your fault.”

“It’s not your fault either,” replied the barkeep. “For bringing my boy back – Gloria and I are grateful. She just... doesn’t show it that’s all.”

Kelly understood this to mean that in some way, Mrs Sheppard did in fact blame him. “I understand.”

“Women can be unreasonable.” By way of apology Mark Sheppard poured him another double.

“Cheers.” Kelly took a large sip and licked his lips appreciatively. “Well, I am most grateful to both you and your family for taking care of me when I was... down. If this is the only way I can say thank you... well, thank you.”

“I understand too.”

Somehow Kelly felt the urge to explain. Tongue loosened more than just a little by the fifty year old Scotch, he said “I’m forming my own mercenary company on Outreach. In time I hope we can be based in the Isle of Skye, preferably here on Glengarry but maybe on Skye itself.”

“Why, that’s grand, so it is,” said Mark Sheppard, and he topped up Kelly’s and his glass and held it up. He nodded knowingly. “Aye, we always knew you would go back into the business. It’s what you were born to do, just like I was born to tend bar. We could see it in you... Mark and I.”

Kelly squirmed inwardly, and smiled hesitantly. “Thank you.”

Mark Sheppard held up his glass encouragingly. “Here’s to... what did you say you were naming your little outfit?”

Kelly looked the barkeep squarely in the eye. “The Glengarry Independents.”

* * *

Lot 13, Cochrane Road,
TempTown,
Harlech City,
Outreach.
10th November, 3091.

After bringing Dr Mark Sheppard Jr back to his family, Kelly had only stopped by to check that his house on the New Rannoch Moor was intact, and then he had gone back to Dunkeld. Before leaving for Outreach again, he paused only to post an advertisement on the planetary network’s main recruitment site. The advertisement was simple – it announced the registration of the Glengarry Independents with the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission and all veteran Mechwarriors, armour crews, battle armour infantry troopers and tech support personnel were welcome to apply. Then he had caught the Isabella I of Castille at Dunkeld Spaceport back to Outreach. The round trip had taken him five weeks but it was necessary in order to fulfil his obligations to the Sheppards.

The hire groundcar slid to a gentle halt outside Lot 13, and Kelly paid the driver and stepped out. Lot 13 was a three and a half acre piece of industrial land surrounded by an oversized and reinforced wall eighteen meters high, which made for unsurpassed privacy from the casual passerby. The land was oriented to the compass and measuring one hundred and twenty meters a side, totalling fourteen square kilometers. The large gate was as tall as the wall but a smaller set of inset gates allowed people and groundcars to enter and exit without opening the main doors. The gate was set in the south wall near the eastern corner and measured ten meters in length. To open it, a powerful electric motor rolled it back on a single sunken track.

Lot 13 contained three essential pieces of shelter but only one real building on it. Two of these were its raison d’etre, its reason for being. A simple corrugated steel roof, nearly flat, covered the back quarter, stretching from east side to west side down the length of the north wall. This formed the first bit of shelter. A square area of almost a full acre was covered by a similar roof, stretching from the west wall to the middle of the square. And off to the west side was a two storey building every inch as rugged looking as the two roofed areas, save it was a real building with sturdy walls and a balcony that ran down the side of the top floor.

The long low building measured thirty meters by ninety meters itself and was painted white with neat blue trim. This was the current home of the Glengarry Independents.

Underneath the protective roof of the shelter lining the north wall stood four Battlemechs, the vaguely humanoid bipedal walking tanks that dominated the battlefields of the fast waning thirty first century. The shelters were the best Kelly could do as far as Mech hangars were concerned; his funds had failed to stretch as far as a single Mech maintenance facility cubicle, a fully enclosed building equipped with lifting cranes, built in electronics and forges for the ease of his tech support staff. At least the shelters had hydraulic gantries so his overworked tech staff didn’t need to resort to cherry pickers to reach all areas of the Mechs.

The second shelter in the middle of the compound was mostly empty. Of the four Mech ‘spots’ available in the middle shelter one spot was occupied by the heavy hover armoured personnel carriers of Kelly’s command, the other spot by eight Longinus battle armour suits laid out in various states of disassembly. Because there was just so much space Kelly had also ordered the techs to turn the second shelter into the main munitions and equipment storage area. It was an absurd waste of space – but Kelly was relatively alright with that.

He had plans for the expansion of the unit.

One lance of four Mechs, two mechanised squads of battle armour, and a security group of infantry – barely a single combat element in most professional state militaries Sphere wide. But a year ago Kelly had only two Mechs and half this strength. And they had pulled off a seemingly impossible mission, avenged themselves on a well organised band of pirates, salvaged some very important hardware and most importantly, received a very generous nine figure paycheck from the Black Stars Mercenary Collective, two hundred thousand C-bills of which had gone to renting this place. Kelly had strong hopes for the future.

But one step at a time.

Kelly approached the building which currently made up office, operations centre, storehouse and troop barracks for his small unit of not more than ninety men and women. The long building design left a lot of space for groundcar parking and a parade ground out front. The place had been built with expansion in mind. He entered the building, and passed the duty desk sergeant who stood but did not salute as Kelly was still in his rough civvies. The door behind the desk hid the guard room where an infantry squad in half body armour helped monitor the perimeter cameras.

Kelly had hired the two infantry platoons once it was apparent that he would need more ground security to look after the facilities. The sixty men and women were detachments from Stalwart Support, the premier infantry mercenary regiment, and came highly recommended. Kelly was paying them near top dollar at two thousand C-bills a man, and he grimaced at the thought. Still, it was not just anyone and everyone who could hire the very in demand Stalwarts, and Kelly had only acquired these because one of his battle armoured infantry commanders, Dave Jackman, had introduced him to the elite infantrymen.

As Kelly passed through the visitors’ reception area and through to the offices further deeper into the building, one of the two infantry lieutenants appeared out of a door marked “Officer of the Day” and clicked her heels in her best imitation of a Teutonic officer.

“Captain,” said Lieutenant Olivia von Rittberg, in her strongly Lyran accent, “welcome back. Lieutenant Zibler-Carlyle has asked me to inform you the Federated Suns ambassador has agreed to see you at eighteen hundred today.” She pronounced the word ‘Leudftenant’, as if she had belatedly remembered to change the pronunciation of the rank from the Lyran ‘Leutnant’ to the Federated Suns ‘Leftenant’. When deciding on the unit’s rank structure, Kelly had opted on the latter pronunciation, deciding that it gave the unit a less Lyran and more interstellar perception.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Kelly, and listened as his latest officer recruit brought him up to speed on all he had missed during his absence in crisp, precise sentences. Olivia von Rittberg was not only Leutnant, she was also Komtesse of Coldbrook, a small planetary fief out on the Lyran Alliance’s Periphery border. Another displaced young blue blood, like Zibler-Carlyle – Kelly wondered how and why so many were ending up in his unit, but in truth he knew the reason why: though almost all nobles still served in their respective Successor State militaries for at least one or two tours of duty, as an arena to garner gold, glory and command experience the mercenary trade was unsurpassed, and in the private sector you fought for yourself and you kept what you salvaged. Besides, Kelly had a feeling the Komtesse von Rittberg had fallen afoul of the Social Generals of the Lyran Alliance. The lieutenant was as tall and regal looking as any Steiner scion, but her looks were too plain and she seemed to get on too well with the common folk. And what was she doing in foot infantry, of all postings?

“...and sir, Captain Wright reported his crew ready for inspection two days ago, though he still needs a week to put the final touches on. That is all sir,” finished von Rittberg.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” said Kelly.  He checked his chrono; he could spare two hours before the meeting with the Fed Suns Ambassador. “I’m going to see Captain Wright now, but I need to change; call up the duty sergeant and get me a groundcar.”

“We have rented a Freedom 900 hover jeep, sir, and assigned Private Parry from my platoon as your driver.”

“Excellent,” said Kelly, though in his heart he wondered again how much the jeep rental was. The costs were just adding up; the previous mission had landed him a massive paycheck and an equally massive bonus in the form of an unprecedented salvage opportunity, but most of the former had gone to finance the latter. “Lieutenant, I asked Lieutenant Raman to do a proper inventory of the new stores and talk to the Black Stars’ representative for a new contract. Has he made a report?”

“Lieutenant Raman tells me he has submitted a report to your mailbox,” replied Lieutenant von Rittberg. “I do not know if he has found any contracts for your attention, sir.”

“Okay. Thanks. Good work, Lieutenant; you may go back to your duties.” Kelly turned, then turned back. “Oh yes, Lieutenant? I’ll drop by before heading on to the meeting with the Ambassador. Please inform Lieutenants Zibler-Carlyle and Hawke, and tell them to be ready.”

“Yes sir.”

Private Parry was a small, animated young man with a cheerful face that looked like it could hardly have seen a razor yet. He clicked sharply to attention as Kelly stepped outside, all eagerness and smiles. “Afternoon, sir,” said Private Parry. “The car’s just over here.”

“You know the way to the Spaceport Annexe?” asked Kelly.

“Yes sir, been there a few times to bring the officers to check on things, sir.”

“Well then, lay on, Macduff.”

* * *

Spaceport Annexe,
Harlech City,
Outreach.

So it was back to the Spaceport, and sooner than he had expected. But this time Private Parry took Kelly in the rented Freedom 900 on a much longer drive than the hire groundcar had, detouring around the passenger terminal approaches to the less well known sides of the Spaceport. They passed the cargo terminals where arguably the bulk of Spaceport business was conducted, driving past the huge Customs and Excise buildings, the godowns and warehouses where thousands of cargo containers of all types sat – common, bulk, refrigerated, pressurised, flammable, and the specially marked ones in which were brought in the military grade fuels, lubricants and most importantly ammunition on which Outreach’s thriving industry of war depended. Two massive Mammoth class DropShips and half a dozen of the smaller and more common Mule class sat in their docking cradles being loaded or unloaded by a small battalion of CargoMechs. The Freedom 900 whirred past all these and continued to a smaller sprawl of buildings beyond the cargo terminals. A signboard by the side of the road read “Annexe 3 – Shipyard Terminal”.

A gate guard took Kelly’s ID, swiped it and nodded in approval before returning it. He checked the private vehicle’s registration tags and obviously noted that it had come in several times before.

“I’ll take her straight in, sir,” said Private Parry to the guard. “Just you ring ahead and tell them not to stop us any more, mate.” To Kelly he said, “I’ve got the knowing of their ways now, sir.”

The Freedom 900 cruised onto the tarmac, staying well within the groundcar safe lane. As they cleared the terminal buildings and drove out into open sunshine Kelly gripped the roll bars and stood up for a better view of the Annexe 3 tarmac.

He was grimly surprised to see that the number of DropShips in Annexe 3 had nearly doubled since his last visit. Approximately ten or so ships in various states of disrepair were being worked on. Six DropShips were clearly fitting out for deployment, undergoing scheduled maintenance, hardware and system upgrades, Mech or vehicle cubicle modifications according to their operators’ requirements and of course, loading up on weapon systems and munitions. One of these was a beautiful Claymore class attack DropShip, sleek and deadly, built with the soaring wings of a swan and bristling with weapon ports. It was painted in the tan and brown colours of the Wild Geese, a famed Allied Mercenary Command unit, which made it resemble a predatory raptor of some kind.

“Beautiful, isn’t she, sir?” said Private Parry. “Fresh out of the Shipil yards of Skye for the Wild Geese, they tell me. They’re part of the Allied Mercenary Command. A most beautiful ship,” he said again.

“Aye, that she is,” agreed Kelly. “The Wild Geese bought that? Do they expect to have to use it much?” Few units, mercenary or Successor State, deployed attack Dropships since a planetary assault tended to rely more on stealth and guile to deliver troops to the planet’s surface. Even when a landing was opposed the defender typically only sent up a squadron or so of aerospace fighters, and DropShips were armed and armoured against that eventuality.
Kelly had fought in at least three battles involving capital WarShips, flotillas of assault DropShips and literal hundreds of aerospace fighters, but these massive battles were few and far between, and decisive enough to end wars one way or another.

Parry shrugged. “Well I wouldn’t know sir, but every yard what can is building as many assault DropShips as they can, you ought to know that, sir. Shipil delivers at least two of them Claymores a year sir, to the Lyran Alliance, the Skye Rangers and the private sector as well, sir.”

“Is that so?” War in the waning years of the thirty first century suddenly seemed that much more dangerous to Kelly than it had during his younger years. They passed three DropShips were damaged and clearly undergoing heavy repair. Two of them were Mech carriers that didn’t look like they had suffered compartment breaches, just armour damage, but one of them Kelly barely recognised as a Leopard CV – its tail stabiliser had been shot off and it was riddled with heavy cannon hits and scarred with laser weals. A fourth DropShip beyond the three was barely a pile of wreckage and Kelly wondered how it had even managed to enter planetary atmosphere. The fused and carbonised lump which made up most of its nose implied that it had failed at least once, bouncing off the stratosphere and searing off what looked like nearly twenty percent of the ship’s length. And then they reached their berth, and Kelly had no more eyes for the other ships.

Because sitting there on the Spaceport tarmac in front of him was his own.

The Provide Hope XII had once been a Union class BattleMech transport to the Lyran Alliance, before it was decommissioned and disarmed, its weapon ports plated over and its Mech cubicles ripped out for extra life support stores, bulk haulage bins and cargo container racks. It was used as a tramp hauler for a while before passing into the hands of a charter company which hired the DropShip out more or less permanently to the Interstellar Red Cross. It was in the service of the IRC that Provide Hope was lost, captured along with its crew, passengers and cargo by pirates in the Confederated Magistracy Periphery. It was Kelly who had recovered the vessel, recapturing it from the pirates, and it was therefore Kelly who had been awarded full salvage rights to the vessel by the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission here on Outreach.

Kelly had had the DropShip brought here to Harlech City Spaceport’s Annexe 3, and spent the bulk of the previous mission’s bounty on repairing, refurbishing and restoring the Union class DropShip to its role as a combat BattleMech carrier.

The outside of the DropShip had been decrepit, its hull plating tarnished and buckled in many places from neglect and damage done by the pirates. Bringing the DropShip back to Outreach had been a nightmare as the damn thing leaked so much it was almost completely depressurised, its crew of Capellan salvage specialists forced to wear space suits to pilot it.

Initial work to make it capable of atmospheric entry had been carried out in a large orbital facility in Outreach’s high orbit. But after grounding at Annexe 3 the work went on much faster, and though the Provide Hope’s hide was hideously blotched with red rubber sealant paint where the new armour tiles had been fitted in place, all it really lacked to finish the exterior was a coat of primer and paint. “Here you are, sir,” said Private Parry, “and here I’ll be staying until you’re done, sir.”

A man was stumping down the ramp of the DropShip, a man in a faded cap and greasy overalls, built like a low slung armoured personnel carrier and possessed of a bulldog chin over which a large walrus moustache protruded. He stopped in front of Kelly and peered upwards with the myopic squint of a man who’d spent too many hours staring at bright lights through welding goggles.

“Captain Kelly, sir?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“John Potter, sir. Bosun. So, you’re here to look her over? Aye aye, sir, come this way. We’ll start from her nose.”

* * *

[blackpanzer]

DropShip Provide Hope XII,
Pad 19, Annexe 3,
Harlech City Spaceport,
Outreach.

Kelly stepped out of the lift, and looked around. The Union class DropShip’s grey painted hallways still bore all the signs of its refurbishment, with scuff marks on its bulkheads and wiring and opened access panels everywhere. But, thanks to the herculean efforts of the technicians and crewmen scattered all over the ship working feverishly to keep to the schedule of work, the DropShip was ready for his first nose to stern inspection. Though Kelly had seen the insides of at least a dozen Union class DropShips in his life of military service, it being the most common Mech transport in the Inner Sphere, as a Mechwarrior he had always been restricted to the ‘passenger only’ ship spaces and had never had the grand tour of the DropShip.

Now that he was owner and commander of his own DropShip – though he had yet to come up with a proper name for it – and his very own unit, though it was really registered as a sub-command under the Black Stars Mercenary Collective, Kelly intended to get to know this very costly acquisition very well.

He had already hired a captain and four crew, including the bosun, John Potter. Captain Isaac Wright had come well recommended and Kelly hoped the captain’s reputation would draw more spacers to sign on before he needed to deploy the ship.

He now stood in the uppermost level of the DropShip, inside the blunt nose of the ship some seventy meters – equivalent to a good twenty storey building – off the ground. Being a relatively ordinary troop carrier, the Union class DropShip was cut into just five sections, with reinforced bulkheads separating each section. Each section was sized for the massive machinery and Mechs contained inside the DropShip’s armoured hull, not for the relatively small people who lived and worked inside of it. “Deck One is the forward most section in the ship, sir,” said John Potter, waving a hand around. The stocky spaceman had agreed to take a break from his job as bosun to guide Kelly around the ship. “The most important systems in here are the primary sensor arrays and fire control director radars.”

He pointed towards the coreward side of the corridor, at access panels marked with a plethora of hazard signs but most prominently the ones for Radiation and Laser hazards. The corridor was – or companionway as the ship’s crew insisted on calling it – was cramped and lined with haches. “These compartments around the sides are storage spaces, parts and tool lockers for the radar arrays. But there’s a small battle station here.” The spaceman opened a door. Kelly took a look at the electronic compass program on his personal datapad, and reckoned this was on the ventral side of the ship, though it really didn’t matter. When under way in space a spaceship was best understood as a skyscraper; its nose was ‘up’, aft was ‘down’, and port and starboard didn’t matter except when determining the guns on which side had the enemy in its arc of fire.

The door – the ship’s term was ‘hatch’ – opened to a small compartment with room for a single crewman. It looked very much to Kelly like the cockpit of a BattleMech, and in fact, as Lieutenant Potter explained, it served much the same purpose. As with all ship compartments the equipment inside was modular. The seat was attached to the wall by a mounting on its left side, and the control panels and monitors were on sturdy looking hinged arms that, like the seat, could be swivelled to face ‘sideways’, down pointing to the aft of the ship, or ‘forward’ facing the nose and down pointing to the ship’s belly.

“This is the nose gunner’s station,” said Potter. “From here he controls the extended range particle cannon, Gauss rifle, LRM racks and medium lasers.”

“Sounds like a lot to handle,” said Kelly.

“Six weapons. No more than your typical heavy BattleMech, sir, and more automated. But he is trained to engage up to four separate targets – and he doesn’t have to pilot or watch his heat.”

“That’s true.”

“Aye, but he’ll have his work cut out when systems start blowin’ and some of the guns have to go to manual cause of damage. Till then his work’s just prioritising targets; after that it gets interesting. Well, that’s all there is to see up here. Deck Two now, sir.”

Kelly was familiar with Deck Two – crews’ quarters and common areas – and the inspection in some places here was perfunctory. The enlisted mess, which could seat all of twenty people elbow to elbow at once, was the same as all DropShips over. Reconfigurable chair and table mounts were familiar to Kelly; the small kitchen – ‘galley’ – and refrigerated lockers, not.

“With thirty of your men sir and the five of us, we’ll run through about three quarters of a ton of food every week,” said Potter. “Every Sunday I bring up the week’s supply from the hold, but we don’t have anyone yet who is trained in shipboard food prep and cooking. We can eat combat rations I guess...” Potter trailed off unenthusiastically.

“That’s alright, I have a trooper who can do that,” said Kelly. “And I shall hire a ship’s cook when I can.” He made a note on his datapad.

Anybody who travelled in space would have seen the ship’s gymnasium. Though pills had been invented which did most of the work of preventing the zero gee effects of muscle and nerve degeneration, at least an hour of exercise daily was still needed for proper health. The officers’ wardroom – a tiny lounge and mess area for up to eight people, who could at least sit and stretch somewhat more comfortably than those in the enlisted mess, was next to the officers’ suites.

Kelly had claimed one of these suites for himself. Usually Kelly would have had to sleep in the four man dorm type accommodations allocated for ships’ crew and passengers, but as he hadn’t managed to hire both the ship’s lieutenants the lack of crew had, well, freed up their quarters. Out of respect for Lieutenant Amelia Hawke he had assigned Hawke the other stateroom. Captain Wright’s suite was next to Kelly’s.

Deck Three held the primary airlock and accessways to the magazines, feed mechanisms and recoil absorbers for the DropShip’s nose weaponry. But most importantly it held the ship’s Combat Information Center, or traditionally known to the ship’s crew and indeed most people as the bridge.

Here, almost at the center of the DropShip, was where the majority of the ship’s crew had their stations. Inside Kelly found Captain Wright, Neil Sengupta and two other techs working on the ship’s bridge systems. Isaac Wright was around Kelly’s age and had gotten his baptism of fire in the massive naval battles that occurred during the ComStar operation to retake Terra, Case White.

He had proven himself as a DropShip commander in the heavy combat against the Clans in Operation Lorelai. He was slimmer than Kelly though, clean shaven and younger looking too.

Yet the captain was quietly confident and the techs seemed to like him, always a good barometer for Kelly to judge new additions to his personnel roster.

“Good afternoon, Major,” said Captain Wright, laying aside a diagnostic computer tool. Kelly remembered that ship traditions dictated only the ship’s captain was called ‘captain’ on board, all other captains being brevetted to ‘Major’ until they left the ship. “Come on an inspection tour? Just give me a moment, sir.”

“Good afternoon, Captain. No, don’t let me bother you. I’ll just have Potter bring me around,” said Kelly. “I’ll see you for dinner and a chit chat later this evening.”

“Excellent. Will do, sir.”  Kelly nodded and stepped back out of the compartment. Deck Four was all too familiar to Kelly, as it held the smaller of the DropShip’s two Mech bays – fitted with docking cubicles and repair gantries for four BattleMechs – and the primary cargo hold, but Potter pointed out where the port and starboard weapon turret mounts were located. Kelly had never noticed them before. For that matter he had only once been aboard a DropShip that had to fire its guns in a combat situation. That had been on a Hellstorm Hussar mission to the Promised Land system, where they had made a planetary assault while around them raged a space battle involving several WarShips, at least two squadrons of assault DropShips and close to two hundred aerospace fighters. Kelly had spent all of the extra-atmospheric part of that battle in his BattleMech trying not to think too much about what was going on outside the DropShip.

Each of the broadside turrets on board a Union mounted an Extended Range Particle Projection Cannon, a Gauss rifle, two twenty tube LRM racks, an ER large laser and two short ranged medium lasers. They were all controlled from the bridge and computers did the aiming. All the gunners had to do was to select the targets or follow the direction of the master gunner, usually only an enlisted man on board a small troop carrying DropShip, and fire. Most of their work actually lay outside of battle, when they maintained the weapons and assisted with the ordinary ship work.

“You saw the nose gunner’s station on Deck One. The lasers and LRM racks on one broadside of the DropShip is the responsibility of one gunner on each side,” explained Potter, “and a fourth gunner fires the broadside particle cannons and Gauss rifles. Since he has to deal with a more all round arc of fire, the best gunner is put in charge.”

Deck Five held the larger Mech hangar, with space for 8 Mechs. In the center of the hangar was the cargo lift rated for over two hundred tons which serviced the upper and lower cargo decks of the DropShip. Deck Five also held the aerospace fighter hangar for the DropShip’s complement of two fighters. But there were no aerospace fighters carried in the hangar. The idea of having a flight of aerospace fighters to cover the skies was excellent, but with barely a lance of Mechs in the unit and no experience in managing aerospace assets, Kelly wasn’t sure if he was biting off more than he could chew at this point. Best to shelve that question for now.

“I always wondered,” remarked Kelly musingly, “Launching an aerospace fighter is relatively simple, but how do you recover them?”

Potter pointed at a boom along one side of the fighter bay. “With that, sir. The fighter matches delta vee and heading with us, and lines up his belly with the hangar hatch. We depressurise, open the hatch and extend that boom which has a capture attachment. It might take a minute, but once we grab onto the fuselage with the boom we’ve got the fighter and bob’s your uncle; we just retract the boom to reel her in, sir. The pilot shuts off his thrusters once the boom has locked on. The attachment can rotate her to face aft and then as she comes in she pivots up ninety degrees. That places her in the proper alignment.”

“I see,” said Kelly, struggling to visualise it. “I wouldn’t call that simple at all. Not compared to going up the ramp with a Mech that is.”

“Aye, well, them pilots are a canny bunch. This way, sir.”

The final section of the DropShip was subdivided in to Decks Six and Seven. Deck Seven was the ‘ground floor’, so to speak, of the ship, where the primary cargo hatch was located as well as the ground access ramp leading to the Mech bay and hold. More importantly it housed the massive fusion reactor, main engines, fuel tanks and retractable landing gear which made up a third of the DropShip’s seventy meter height. The engineering spaces weren’t usually accessed in space flight, only when they were on the ground and work needed to be done. Instead, the After Control Room (after what?, wondered Kelly) occupied a shelf halfway up the massive room, on Deck Six. Inside the After Control Room Kelly found Engineer’s Mate Frederick Heydte being assisted by two of Kelly’s reactor techs, struggling to do the work of refueling and refurbishing the neglected reactor without the benefit of the missing Master Engineer’s experience and expertise. Here too were the two gunnery stations for the aft gunners, and a small secondary station for the loadmaster to monitor cargo hatch and ramp operations. The loadmaster typically had his main control board up in the hold.

“Quarter gunners, sir,” said Potter. “We call them quarter gunners, not aft gunners.”

“But ‘quarter’,” said Kelly, “might mean the forward quarters as well as the rear quarters mightn’t it?”

Potter shrugged. “That’s just the way it is, sir,” he said. “Bow, port bow, starboard bow, port and starboard broadsides, dorsal and ventral – that’s uh, sort of up and down, if you put us sideways – port quarter, starboard quarter and aft. The aft turret is called a chaser, sir. The gunners each take one quarter, port or starboard, and then the senior one of the two handles the chaser guns too.”

“I see,” said Kelly.

“Well, that’s it sir,” said Potter. “You’ve seen the whole ship. She’s a small one, sir, just six frames counting the hull, and under fifty bulkheads from nose to stern.”

“Thank you, Potter,” said Kelly. “You’ve been very helpful. Tell me, how many personnel are we missing actually?”

John Potter’s eyebrows beetled. “Well now,” he said slowly, “You’ve the Captain, myself, and Fred already. We’ll definitely need more bridge crew: at least one electronics tech, preferably two, to man Radar and Comms respectively. It would be best to fill the two missing officer spots as well, sir – a Master Engineer and a Master Gunner. Five gunners, of course, and the loadmaster. And, well, I need an assistant, sir, a bosun’s mate. He can help with the helm too.”

Kelly counted it in his head. “So, ten more crew?”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s the minimum?”

Potter nodded. “The barest minimum, sir. Total of the Captain and thirteen crew. Organised in three watches when not under way – myself and the two lieutenants will head one watch each, with one bridge crew and two or three other hands.”

“I see. Ten more men, eh? Well, I’ll have to arrange that somehow. Thank you, Bosun. I’ll see myself out.”

Potter left him there in the after control room, peering through the armoured windows at the massive reactor and thinking hard about his dwindling bank account.

* * *

Harlech City,
Outreach.
Later that evening.

Back at Base – as Kelly was beginning to think of Lot 13 – Kelly waited in the Freedom 900 studying reports in his datapad while Private Parry went in to use the bathroom. When he came back out the three other passengers followed in his wake.

Of the three, Lieutenant Robert Zibler-Carlyle looked most casual. Of course, the displaced Federated Suns blue blood had the advantage of not being the subject of the meeting to which they were travelling. By contrast Lieutenant Amelia Hawke, formerly Captain Amelia Hawke of the First Federated Suns Armoured Cavalry Regiment, and Sergeant James Webster of the same, were visibly uncomfortable and apprehensive, as befit the main players of the drama about to commence.

But to all of them Kelly gave a kind greeting. He beckoned to Zibler-Carlyle to sit beside him in the back, Lieutenant Hawke taking up station on the other side and Sergeant Webster getting into the front passenger seat. “You have the stuff?” asked Kelly.

Zibler-Carlyle nodded, and produced a datapad from the briefcase he carried. It was embossed with the logo of the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission. “All in here, sir.”

Kelly was too preoccupied to be overly polite. “We will need all of that, Zibler.”

“I understand. Its a different kind of war we’re fighting, one you’re not used to, sir. Words and documents instead of cannon shells and missiles,” Zibler-Carlyle had a right to say that – he was Kelly’s chief mentor and generalissimo in this matter, and had employed some of his personal contacts to produce the contents of the briefcase – their small armoury.

“Yes well,” said Kelly uncomfortably, then shot a glance at Amelia Hawke to catch her eye. “You’re sure on the course you’re taking, Hawke?”

Amelia Hawke nodded, then squared her shoulders and said more resolutely, “I am, sir. You saved my life, and Webby’s. Twice, in point of fact. We pledge our cause to yours,” she said formally.

“Well, you’re both welcome aboard,” Kelly replied. “Full speed ahead.”

* * *

[blackpanzer]

The Colonial Tearooms,
The Ritz,
Harlech City,
Outreach.

Kelly was new to diplomacy. All he knew was what the army had taught him; diplomats were not to be trusted, and everything had to be talked at length before a decision was made.

Even the venue of the discussions to be held today had had to be negotiated. Zibler-Carlyle, as his chief advisor, had quietly suggested to Kelly that he not allow the embassy staff to get a hold of Amelia Hawke on embassy grounds, and the embassy had made a point of insisting on exactly that. Upon receiving Kelly’s vehement objection the embassy had proposed the Harlech City Suns Club, a gentleman’s club for wealthy Federated Suns expatriates. Again under Zibler-Carlyle’s advice Kelly had flippantly suggested the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission’s Hiring Hall.

Impasse.

After a decent standoff interval in which to allow everyone to save face, the Harlech City’s elegant Ritz hotel was selected as suitably neutral negotiation grounds. The Federated Suns’ Ambassador to Outreach was incongrously a rotund and jolly looking hail fellow well met sort of fellow with a thick but well tended moustache and mutton chops, and was clad in a white suit, a pale gold waistcoat and a regimental tie which gave him the air of a kindly grandfather. Giving every appearance of looking forward to afternoon tea rather than tense negotiations, the Ambassador had suggested they meet in the Ritz’s Colonial Tearooms cafe. It was not the vision Kelly associated with a man of House Davion’s Diplomatic Corps, let alone one trusted enough to be sent to Outreach, an assignment which must figure highly in the Diplomatic Corps’ way of thinking. It had the effect of immediately putting Kelly on further guard that he already was, possibly the opposite intended effect.

Harlech City’s Ritz was a low wood panelled building, painted a bright tropical white all over which made the building dazzle in the afternoon sun. The hotel made the most of Outreach’s warm climate to maximise its tropical theme, and the cool brick flooring and rattan furniture was a glamorously stark throwback to Terran pre-interstellar fashions. The Colonial Tearooms was likewise appointed, drenched with sunlight from above by a raised glass ceiling and dotted with stunted tropical palms. Low tables draped in white tablecloths stretched the expanse of the room, about a third occupied by guests of the hotel.

The corner tables were designated VIP tables, set a part from the other tables and partly screened by low plants. At one of these a large man was seated. Kelly made straight for that table.

“Mr Kelly,” said Lord Richard Robson-Davion in greeting, “how nice to see you in the flesh at last. Captain Hawke, Sergeant Webster, Mr Zibler-Carlyle. Please take a seat. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for all of us – tea, coffee, sandwiches and scones suit you all? Excellent,” said the Ambassador, grinning widely. “It shall arrive shortly I’m sure.”

“Mr Ambassador...” Kelly hesitated. “May I call you Mr Ambassador? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were a baron. Or would you prefer Baron Robson?”

“It is Lord Robson or Baron Mansfield, my good man, the title is addressed by the fief, but Mr Ambassador will do,” said the Ambassador genially, helping himself to a finger sandwich as the tea and food arrived. “Mr Zibler, if you will be so kind as to be mother? Much obliged. Now, Mr Kelly, I understand you’ve got yourself into a bit of a pickle with regards to Captain Hawke and Sergeant Webster here and some little toys, in a bit of a gray area, and the Mercenary Liaison asked the Foreign Service, and therefore I, to look into this.”

“By little toys,” said Kelly, “you mean a Templar OmniMech and a Raven BattleMech, which have been officially awarded to my Glengarry Independents as legal salvage by the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission. There’s no gray area about the matter at all, sir.”

“That’s the strange thing, my dear fellow,” replied Lord Robson. “Our military chaps are insisting that their Mechs were stolen.”

“How could I possibly have done that, sir?” said Kelly. “I have been nowhere near the Federated Suns for at least two years now.” The Ambassador’s eye swivelled to Amelia Hawke and James Webster, and Kelly began to understand. “The story is as I have told it a hundred times to the Federated Suns’ military representatives,” said Kelly a little impatiently.

“Lieutenant Hawke and Sergeant Webster were stranded behind enemy lines. While on a series of pirate hunting missions my unit and I rescued them.”

“Well you see, Mr Kelly,” said Lord Robson casually, “there are two possible scenarios my people are suggesting. The first is that Captain Hawke,” he emphasised Amelia’s Federated Suns rank, “and Sergeant Webster went – what’s that military term? Ah yes – AWOL, or Absent Without Leave, and absconded with Armed Forces of the Federated Suns property, to whit, their Mechs.”

“That’s ridiculous!” said Amelia Hawke forcefully. “We’ve explained what happened in our official letters.”

“Yes, you were sent on an unauthorised reconnaissance mission deep behind the Capellan border,” said Lord Robson. “Naturally my compatriots in the Foreign Service deny any such mission, while I can’t get a single word out of the General Staff. Hush hush so they say.”

“Well, there you go!” snapped Hawke.

“Well, the General Staff doesn’t usually have a habit of confirming or denying anything as a rule,” said Lord Robson, “so their not saying anything is merely conforming to type and long history, unfortunately. And it doesn’t help your case in the slightest that the Outreach office has discovered yourself, Captain Hawke, and Sergeant Webster registered on the personnel rolls of Mr Kelly’s company.”

Kelly shifted uncomfortably while the Ambassador ate a sandwich. “Well, it is a fact that Hawke and Webster are interested in joining my unit. But they were registered in order to get them through the Capellan border.”

“Oh?”

“We extracted Hawke and Webster from a Capellan planet,” said Kelly. “Theoretically they’re prisoners of war. If I had told the Black Stars so, we would have had to turn them over to the Capellans at Victoria under our contract.” Kelly was admitting, in other words, that he had cheated the Black Stars’ previous employers out of a pair of prize prisoners. It wasn’t something bound to be good for his health. But he had no choice.

Lord Robson regarded him thoughtfully. “Really? That is quite... irregular of you.”

“Hawke and her men dug me and mine out of a very tight spot,” said Kelly. “We did not consider them prisoners. So in that sense they were a part of my unit already.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that at the time, they were also serving personnel of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns?”

But Zibler-Carlyle had prepared Kelly well, and he was ready for this. Kelly extracted two datapads from the briefcase. “No. These are Hawke’s and Webster’s resignation letters. You’ll notice that they’re dated to before our declaration to the Capellan authorities.” Back dated that is, Kelly didn’t say.

“But they were not discharged yet, since their commanding officer could not possibly have received these letters at that time,” said Lord Robson.

Kelly shrugged.

“Most irregular, Mr Kelly,” grumbled the Federated Suns’ Ambassador. “These letters should have been immediately filed with our embassy on Victoria.”

They didn’t exist at the time, thought Kelly to himself. Out loud, he said “I didn’t know there was an embassy on Victoria, all the way out there in the back end of the Capellan – sorry, the Confederated Magistracy.”

“Victoria is a Commonality capital. No matter what our governments’ relations with each other, Federated Suns citizens might even be found travelling there,” said Lord Robson. “The Foreign Service serves in all sorts of places likely and unlikely. We are here, after all.”

“Guess I just didn’t see the place when I passed through the last time,” said Kelly. “Then again, we had more important things in mind at the time. Like helping fight off a couple of damned Word of Blake divisions and their WarShip support.”

“Ah yes,” said Lord Robson. “You were then in the Hellstorm Hussars, in service with Baron Filtvelt.” Kelly nodded, though he was unfamiliar with his former commanding officer’s new title.

He had long known the Baron Filtvelt, as Lord Robson called him, as first Colonel and then General Timothy Maddox. “Give me credit at least for keeping two of your Mechwarriors out of Capellan hands,” growled Kelly.

“And snatching them out of the First Prince’s service as well,” said Lord Robson casually.

Kelly shrugged again, and drank his tea. “There was no other way,” he repeated.

“Well now, this affair is just getting curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it?” said Lord Robson eventually. “Now we come to the Foreign Service’s second possible interpretation of this little affair. Captain Hawke, Sergeant Webster, are you one hundred percent in agreement with Mr Kelly’s version of events?”

“Yes, Baron,” said Hawke simply, and Sergeant James Webster echoed her.

“You are not being detained against your will in any way? Coerced into an arrangement with Mr Kelly?”

“What do you mean by that?!” barked Kelly, standing up in a rage. But a rustle of movement caught his attention, and he sensed a man emerging from behind an ornate pillar to his left. Instinctively his hand went to the 9mm Hi Power slug thrower on his hip. “Hold!” snapped Lord Robson, surging to his feet as well.

Time froze.

“A misunderstanding, Michael,” said the Ambassador, gesturing at the man behind him without taking his eyes off Kelly. “Let’s all sit down and have some more tea.”

Kelly sat down slowly. The Ambassador’s bodyguard stepped backwards, but kept himself – and his Federated Suns standard issue Serrek Arms autopistol – in plain view now.

“Captain Hawke,” continued Lord Robson, nonchalantly buttering a scone as he picked up where he had left off, “I suppose you can reassure me that you have not been abducted by Mr Kelly and his men? He holds no power over you, and is not compelling you to stay against your will? You need only give the word,” and here Lord Robson eyed Kelly with a little less warmth than his jolly appearance seemed to convey, “and the Federated Suns will do everything it can to repatriate its citizens.”

Kelly glanced at the man behind the pillar, then back to the Ambassador, his jaw clenched in anger. “Captain Hawke is free to go wherever she pleases,” he ground out.

“I assure you, Lord Robson,” said Amelia Hawke coolly, “that my sergeant and I are in full control of our freedoms and faculties. I appreciate your concern, and that of my regiment and the Federated Suns.”

Lord Robson coughed. “Yes, well, as to that, you are aware that your regiment and General Chapman will take a very dim view of your resigning your commission under these circumstances?”

“I do,” said Hawke evenly. “I take a dim view of being left on my own on an enemy planet as well, sir.”

“We all know the exigencies of the service,” said Lord Robson smoothly. “However, I see no point in further pursuing the issue. Sergeant, you are of the same view? Very well. Let us set aside the question of Captain Hawke and Sergeant Webster and consider their Mechs – that is, the nominal property of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns.”

“Salvage,” said Kelly promptly, extracting another datapad from the briefcase. “The Mechs of Lieutenant Hawke’s lance have been claimed as salvage in full accordance with the terms and conditions of our sub-contract with the Black Stars.”

“Salvage?” said Lord Robson, one eyebrow lifted over as he bit into a teacake. “In what situation, may I ask, did you encounter Captain Hawke’s men and Mechs, and obtain salvage rights to the Federated Suns’ property entrusted to the Captain’s care?”

Kelly motioned to Amelia. “Lieutenant? Please explain to the Ambassador.”

Lieutenant Amelia Hawke closed her eyes to compose herself briefly before launching into a succint description of the battle with the pirates on Huanghuadian in which she had encountered Kelly. Lord Robson listened intently without interrupting at any point. “At the conclusion,” she said, “I had lost Subaltern Marcus Cooper and Sergeant George Lemcke, and their Mechs were completely destroyed beyond repair or salvage. As my own Templar and Sergeant Webster’s Raven were at no more than ten percent effectiveness, I surrendered to Captain Kelly and his unit.”

“We can provide you our after action report logged with the Black Stars and BattleROMs if you wish,” interjected Kelly. And he knew he would, too; the report to the Black Stars itself exaggerated just a little the damage sustained by Hawke’s Mechs, because the truth was that after spending a long time lost in the Huanghuadian jungles, Hawke had simply surrendered to what she had assumed was a Capellan unit just to get off the derelict world and away from the bloodthirsty pirates.

And this was the truth that needed covering up here and now: that as they deemed the Federated Suns to have turned its back on them, so too had Hawke and Webster turned their backs to the Federated Suns.

“I see,” said Lord Robson at last. He motioned for the datapad, and flicked through its contents nonchalantly. “So Captain Hawke and Sergeant Webster surrendered their BattleMechs to you, Mr Kelly, and themselves as well presumably. Yet they turn up in Capellan space as members of your unit. And at which point, may I ask, did Captain Hawke and Sergeant Webster’s status convert from prisoners of war to members of your company, piloting the very same Mechs they piloted in service to the Suns?”

Kelly shifted uncomfortably again, as Lord Robson sipped his tea with equanimity, and gazed at Kelly with innocent blue eyes. “My remit was to eliminate a band of pirates,” replied Kelly at last. “I – questioned Lieutenant Hawke and discovered that she was not a pirate. At that point I set her free, but I kept her BattleMechs as a legal spoil of war. Later she resigned from the Federated Suns, and has now taken up service with me as a registered mercenary under the ambit of the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission.”

“I see. Again, I am afraid the Foreign Service will take a dim view of this matter, Mr Kelly. It is most irregular indeed.”

This was turning out bad. Kelly had only one card left to play. “It was done in order to avoid having to explain to the Capellans why Lieutenant Hawke was there behind their lines, sir, under questionable pretences. Spies can be shot.” There, he thought. Do you really want the Capellans to know of your spying activities behind the border? Its extensive penetration all the way to Huanghuadian?

“I grant you that irregularities tend to crop up in war,” said Lord Robson. “Captain Hawke’s mission, I believe, falls under the category of acceptable ruses de guerre I’m sure. But you and I – we are not at war with each other, now are we?”

That was unmistakeably a threat, thought Kelly. And as he pondered the Ambassador’s words he realised the thrust of the Baron’s argument – we are at war with the Capellans. Spying is a norm. They may well know that we know of their colonisation efforts in the Periphery. What do we care if you expose our spy Captain Hawke? It would profit her and Kelly nothing, nor damage the Federated Suns. And that took away Kelly’s last card.

Kelly was still searching desperately for some kind of answer when he felt a nudge in his side. He turned, and Zibler-Carlyle was looking at him. “Communication from base, sir. It might be urgent.”

“This really isn’t the time...”

“It’s probably urgent, sir,” said Zibler-Carlyle. Was it Kelly’s imagination, or had he seen a faint wink there?

“Excuse me, Mr Ambassador. I’m very sorry.”

Behind a pillar Zibler-Carlyle turned to face Kelly. “I think I’ve got it. He doesn’t care if the Capellans know that they know about Hawke’s mission.”

“I know that,” said Kelly irritably. “What he wants is the data,” said Zibler-Carlyle urgently. “Hawke’s surveys, what she saw, what she knows about their defenses. That’s what he’ll be after!”

Kelly stared at Zibler-Carlyle. “That... makes sense. But he never said anything about...”

“What does he care for Hawke and Webster? Two rebellious Mechwarriors and two broken down BattleMechs? He wouldn’t give half a fig for ‘em – a drop in the storm compared to all the might of the Federated Suns!”

“Their reputation?”

“Who’s to know what happened? I know they made a big deal out of it earlier, but who cares if yet another couple of Mechwarriors leave the AFFS for the private sector? It happens all the time!” said Zibler-Carlyle. “And more importantly – the Capellans don’t know about Hawke, now. The Suns know they don’t know – and as long as they can shut us up, the Capellans will never know the Suns know they don’t know!”

“That’s what we’ll offer for Hawke and Webster,” said Kelly. “Her full report. Is it a big enough a carrot?”

“As much as she can remember about the data she collected from her quiet visits to half a dozen Capellan worlds?” Zibler-Carlyle shrugged. “Let’s see.”

They walked back to the table where Lord Robson was enjoying the last of the cream cakes.

“Mr Ambassador,” said Kelly, “All I can say is that Lieutenant Hawke, Sergeant Webster and their equipment have passed out of the employ of the Federated Suns in complete accordance with legal precepts. I’m sorry communications were a little garbled – it was not our intention to misinform the Suns and Lieutenant Hawke’s regiment in any way. However, as an apology, we will allow Lieutenant Hawke to give a full mission debrief to the Suns with regards to her, um...” Kelly faltered.

Lord Robson looked up. Was it Kelly’s imagination, or was there a ghost of a genuine twinkle in the diplomat’s eyes? “Her rescue by you from her navigational error in uncharted space, and subsequently from pirates who attacked her?”

So Zibler-Carlyle was on target, thought Kelly. “Yes, that’s right. Um... Lieutenant Hawke? Have you finished that report?”

“Captain?” Lieutenant Hawke was looking at him quizzically. Kelly made a quick gesture under the table. Play along.

“Ah, no sir, I’m sorry sir.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Lord Robson easily.

“Shall we say – in two weeks? I’ll send one of my lads to look you up – Winston I think. I shall send Winston.”

“Two weeks sounds right,” said Kelly.

“Then I think that’s the crux of the misunderstanding solved,” said Lord Robson, beaming. “I shall inform the Foreign Service and the General Staff forthwith of my findings. Rest assured, Mr Kelly, I think we shall have this cleared up satisfactorily. Wonderful tea, Mr Kelly.”

“What? Oh, yes. Thank you.”

“I say, let’s make it a royal tea, what? Service,” said Lord Robson, and a white jacketed waiter stepped forward. “A round of champagne, sir. We have an accord to toast.” The Ambassador turned back to Kelly. “Now that business is settled, tell me about this new company of yours. The Glengarry Independents, I hear they’re called?”

Rattled by the rapid conclusion of talks, Kelly struggled to carry on a seemingly normal conversation for the next few minutes with the suddenly pleasantly effusive Lord Robson. The champagne arrived.

“Well, I think I’ll see if there are any little jobs our Mercenary Liaison here in Harlech can offer you,” said Lord Robson. “Well I think a toast is in order. Here’s to all’s well that ends well, the career of the Glengarry Independents, every one of them, and good hunting to all.”

“Good hunting,” replied Kelly, and downed the glass of bubbly. The Ritz served only the finest, he could tell.

“Now I simply must dash,” said Lord Robson, getting up. “Service? On my tab please. My shout, Kelly, no, it’s my pleasure.” Lord Richard Robson-Davion, the Baron Mansfield, took two steps, then turned. “In future, Kelly, I would caution you as to the advisability of hiding secrets from any one Successor State, let alone two. Fortunately, in your case, the Foreign Service is inclined to overlook the more inconsequential transgressions of a man with attestations by such august personages as General Archer Christifori, and the Baron Filtvelt. You have powerful friends, Kelly. Do appreciate them.” And with this Parthian shot the Federated Suns Ambassador to Outreach bade them goodbye and left.

* * *

[blackpanzer]

The BattleMaster,
TempTown, Harlech City,
Outreach.
Two nights later.

Kelly was in the BattleMaster again. The last time he had been in this out of the way bar in Temptown, he had taken on the main crew who formed the core of his unit; Zibler-Carlyle, Raman, Jackman and Chris Hirschfeld. It was a well known waystation for people looking for guns to hire and as always, the perpetually dark and smoky pub was half-filled by tough looking men and women who nursed drinks and waited patiently for their scheduled rendezvous. There was one slight change since the last time Kelly had been here; the seven-foot Mech model in the center of the room of a BattleMaster assault Mech made entirely out of scrap Mech parts and genuine Battlemech grade aligned crystal steel now sported a battered neurohelmet perched incongruously on top of the Mech’s bulbous cockpit canopy, rakishly tilted to one side.

Kelly nursed a tumbler of his favourite whiskey, a ten year Glengoyne Single Malt and waited patiently too.

Beside him, Robert Zibler-Carlyle sipped from a double brandy, and alternately read from a datapad and closed his eyes in apparent meditation. The displaced Fed Sun noble was fast becoming Kelly’s right hand man, and Kelly had begun to delegate some of the administrative tasks to the infantryman, tasks which Zibler-Carlyle had eagerly applied himself to. Kelly had initially thought to tap Peter Raman, the only other Mechwarrior he had recruited in the BattleMaster, for his second in command but the independent minded Mechwarrior had in his quiet way signalled that he did not want the job.

“The job looks solid,” said Zibler-Carlyle. He passed the datapad over and picked up his tumbler. “It seems the Black Stars are finally taking a greater interest in coreward affairs, and this could mean bigger contracts down the pipeline.”

Kelly looked at the datapad. “Summer, eh? That’s a Lyran Alliance world – near the Isle of Skye, isn’t it?”

“Near the Lyons Thumb actually. Spinward of Galatea.”

Kelly read through the contract. It was a reconaissance in force mission, with a potential follow up contract for an offensive campaign on planet. The Lyran Alliance’s Loki spec ops teams had discovered ULTRA supply depots on planet and were now calling in the muscle. Average pay, enough to make expenses but not nearly enough for what Kelly had in mind for further expansion of the unit unless the combat bonuses kicked in. And Kelly reminded himself to subtract the administration fee he paid to the Black Stars Mercenary Collective so that his Glengarry Independents had access to their hiring networks, clerical staff and supplier contacts. Still, reflected Kelly, going up against ULTRA almost certainly met those combat bonuses would apply. The salvage terms were very favourable too – the Lyrans were interested only in denying ULTRA the supplies, and had given the mercenaries a free hand to do as they liked with the contents of the depots, and that appealed to him as well. “Did you ask that twerp Harding what Colonel Zhao had to comment on the contract?” said Kelly without looking up.

Zibler-Carlyle grinned. Kelly’s disdain for the Black Stars’ oily broker, liaison, go between and general mercenary ‘face man’ was well known to him. “He expressed interest in fighting the ULTRA movement.”

“Don’t the Black Stars usually keep to the Periphery regions?” asked Kelly.

“Yes, but it seems the Colonel’s changed his mind as far as ULTRA is concerned,” said Zibler-Carlyle. “According to Harding the first wave of Black Stars should be hitting the planet by November from Algorab – it’s a sub unit we haven’t worked with before, the Bloody Marauders under an Elijah Callahan. Due to the logistics issue preventing us from linking up with the Marauders, Harding’s given us an option to go in as the second wave in early January.”

January. Huh. “We’ll need at least a month to work up the new lads and complete the reorganisation for a deployment. Then give two weeks say for travel off Outreach, jumping to Summer and transit – what is the transit time?”

“Right. If we hustle through December I think we can make planetfall in the first week of January,” said Kelly. “We’ll have to travel direct from here though. Ask Harding if he can help us arrange our own JumpShip transportation from Outreach. If he says anything about extra charges, tell him we’ll do it ourselves and the hell with him.”

“Yes sir,” said Zibler-Carlyle, grinning. He checked his watch. “We should be seeing the first chap any time now... ah yes, here he comes.”

The first of the men and women Kelly had arranged to meet was a large foreign looking man with dark brown features, a cap of black curled hair and a protuberant nose. “My name is Tiberius O’Donnell,” he announced himself.

“John Kelly,” replied Kelly. “Nice to meet you at last. Where’re you from?” he asked.

“Lordinax,” said Tiberius. In response to Kelly’s raised eyebrow, he added “The Marian Hegemony. I come from a family of patricians in the wine business,” he said with more than a touch of pride.

“Marian I see,” replied Kelly. “We don’t often see many of your chaps around. Have you any military experience?”

“I served six years with the V Legio Ripariensis, piloting a Centurion BattleMech.”

“And what rank did you achieve before your discharge?”

With Zibler-Carlyle’s guidance Kelly had instituted a slightly more formal hiring process compared to the first time.

He had ten candidates from which to pick four recruits from, and he allowed each candidate an interview time of twenty minutes. During this time too Zibler-Carlyle was busy by his side checking their recruits’ names and details against the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission’s databases. One merc was wanted by the Harlech City police for assault. Two others had obviously lied about their previous battlefield experience. These immediately disqualified them in Kelly’s eyes, but he gave no indication he knew and merely told them that he would contact them in three days if they were to be taken on. There was one no show who just didn’t turn up without word. In the end Kelly found his four recruits.

Jessica Summers was the second recruit to arrive. She was actually the third in line but the second had been the no show. The booth was empty and Kelly and Zibler-Carlyle had gone to use the facilities. So when a young girl in sequined bell bottom tights and a tube top slid into the booth Kelly checked her out and made the obvious assumption.

“Sorry, not interested, girl,” said Kelly.

“You mean the position’s filled?” asked the girl. Kelly took a second look and the girl said in a long suffering manner, “You’re hiring Mechwarriors, right?”

“Oh. You’re... Summers.” Kelly looked up, caught Zibler-Carlyle’s eye and gestured him over with a jerk of his head. “You’re fifteen minutes early.”

“Jess Summers, and yeah, I saw there wasn’t anybody after the big guy left so I came over.”

“You’re a Mechwarrior?”

Jessica Summers shot Zibler-Carlyle a steely look as he sat down. “Yeah I am. What, I don’t look tough enough? I drove a War Dog for Battle Magic for a couple of years, but have you seen the kind of contracts they take nowadays? Behind the lines repair jobs, well protected by their employers cause their indemnity fees are so damn high – no place for a Mechwarrior. Ugh, can you imagine they wanted to put me in a salvage Mech? I shoot straight and I can make any heavy Mech dan... spin on its heel, just look at the battle readiness certs in my file.” She slapped a datapad down on the table.

“Okay,” said Kelly. “Sorry about the mix up earlier. You don’t look like a Mechwarrior.”

“Oh, so that automatically makes me a bar bunny skank, is that it? God, Mother was right about men.” More than a little nettled by this remark, Kelly asked “And where did you say you came from? Before joining Battle Magic that is.”

“Canopus.”

“The planet?” asked Kelly.

“Oh I’m just waiting for the Pleasure Circus jokes. Yes, I said, Canopus!”

Zibler-Carlyle said dryly, “That explains a lot.”

Jessica Summers flared up again. “Excuse me? Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m from Canopus doesn’t mean I’m... whatever, alright? I don’t do fraternisation, I don’t do honey pie jobs, I’m a ****** Mechwarrior and the first sign of any hanky panky by anyone in the unit and I’m reporting to the MRBC, got it?”

“You finished, lassie?” said Kelly. “Your story checks out with Battle Magic’s database. You’re a good Mech jock – better than average but not shit hot. I’m a good jock myself. No one in the unit will look askance at you based on where you come from or what you look like – just what you do. And that includes blowing up and blowing off at the guys who want to hire you. Now, based on your reports I do want to take you on. I will guarantee professional conduct from everybody in the unit, or I’ll know the reason why. But I want to know if you can follow orders without questions or snappy comebacks. Because you’re useless to me otherwise.”

“How can you guarantee...” began the girl, but Kelly raised a warning finger.

“...I can. Sir.”

“So it seems you can obey orders. Good. Report to this address tomorrow at oh eight hundred.”

When Jessica Summers of Canopus was gone Zibler-Carlyle turned to Kelly. “What a nice, well adjusted, sweet tempered child.”

“She’s a right fiery one, aye,” agreed Kelly. “But if her piloting scores are right she’s definitely wasted in salvage reclamation work. And I can imagine the lass has gotten tired of Canopian jokes. I can take a chance on that.”

The next Mechwarrior Kelly hired was a young man who looked completely out of place in the dark bar, dressed as he was in preppy slacks and a navy blue blazer and what Kelly recognised as a Sanglamore Academy tie. Jan Schmidt of Rahne had served with the 15th Arcturan Guards and had decent scores and the standard good behaviour certificate on discharge. Not only was he preppy in his dressing, he behaved like an Academy cadet and sounded painfully eager the way he volunteered the information that he had his own complete set of Mechwarrior kit and would not need a neurohelmet, just a BattleMech.

“Mr Schmidt,” said Kelly, “what I don’t understand is why you left your old unit. Your record is scrupulously clean, congratulations, and you achieved the rank of Leutnant. Within a few months you would have been commanding your own lance. Why did you quit?”

Jan Schmidt leaned forward. “Herr Kelly, I am son of businessman. More worse, I am commoner. My family paid much money to get me into Sanglamore. But I am not first in class. And I am not son of duke. Top cadet, wunderbar. Son of Duke, wunderbar. But tenth place, and son of businessman? Nein! A General, even a Hauptmann, he must be having the title, ja? For the officer club, ja? Highest rank for me, the lance commander.”

It was an old story that Kelly knew. Though he was a capable Leutnant other officers were being promoted and given good postings ahead of him, simply because they had a higher social ranking. It was not only a Lyran problem – what the rest of the Inner Sphere mocked as Lyran Social General Syndrome, they tacitly accepted as ‘connections’ or ‘pull’ in their own societies.  “All right. You’ve got your chance. Report to this address tomorrow at oh eight hundred.”

The seventh interviewee was a gum chewing street kid who didn’t look older than nineteen. He got carded at the bar when buying his drink, before sauntering over to the booth with his beer. Tall for an Oriental at five feet eleven and lithely muscular, the kid looked more like he belonged in a street gang than a combat unit. When Kelly asked Julian Wong about his skills, the kid shrugged. “You see what that board there says?”

Kelly squinted at the far end of the bar. “It’s a beer ad.”

Julian turned. “’Galatea Gold Ribbon – the choice of professionals everywhere. Two C-bills per half liter bottle, three C-bills the liter. Alcohol by volume eight percent.’”

“Commendable eyesight,” said Zibler-Carlyle.

“I was a sniper specialist and second in command of a fire lance for a year in Narhal’s Raiders. These are my files.”

“Where are you from? The Combine?” asked Kelly.

“Lushann, in the Outworlds Alliance,” said Julian unenthusiastically.

“That’s kind of far.”

“Yeah, it’s in the middle of nowhere.”

And you joined the Alliance militia for the training, and transferred to the Narhal Raiders – a Fed Suns mercenary unit – as soon as possible, thought Kelly.  Looking for the golden dream then, eh?

Zibler-Carlyle passed the young man’s file over for Kelly’s perusal. The kid’s gunnery scores were highlighted, as well as his four assists against enemy Mechs while in the Narhal Raiders. “You’re in,” said Kelly.

The very last applicant that Kelly took on was also the least experienced of the four. Alistair Stewart of Caledonia was weedy and thin, painfully young looking with a chin that looked like it had hardly touched a shaver.

He was a fresh graduate of the Skye Academy, looking out of place in the smoky bar with his curly cap of ginger hair and a cadet tie. Like Julian Wong he had been carded by the bartender.

“Your results are about par,” said Zibler-Carlyle to the lad. “Why didn’t you continue your tour with the Skye Rangers?”

Alistair Stewart smiled sheepishly. “Aye, I’m afraid I didn’t quite fit in with the unit, y’ken? Me family, we’ve always been wanting to go into the private line.”

“Why’s that, then?”

“It’s me dad. He were a strong man o’ Kelswa’s. No boy o’ his is to fight for the likes o’ Steiner, so he says. T’were better by far for us to fight for ourselves. In time he hopes for us to set up our ain company, y’ken?”

“So you have other family in the business?” asked Kelly.

“Aye,” nodded Alistair Stewart. “Me three brothers are in the Nor’wind Highlanders.”

“So why didn’t you join them?”

“Aye, me dad heard about a unit what called themselves the Glengarry Independents,” replied Stewart, colouring. “And he thought, it were a fine thing and all, to support a man o’ the Isle o’ Skye.”

Kelly grunted. It seemed that his advertising effort on Glengarry had not gone wholly to waste. “All right. You look like a likely lad and your record is good in all the right places. You’ve got your ticket with me.”

“Thanks, sir!”

At the end of the interviews Kelly looked at Zibler-Carlyle, who shrugged eloquently. “What do you think then?”

“Three young men and a high spirited little lady,” said Zibler-Carlyle. “It would have been far more satisfactory to have hired at least one chap with command experience. You’ll have a time whipping them into shape.”

“Lot of young blood on Outreach.”

“It seems the market’s soaked up a lot of the old hands.”

“Or there’ve been a lot of casualties lately,” said Kelly darkly. “Well we’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

“As always, sir.”

“In any case we’ll have some good equipment to give them. Has Raman talked to the Detroit Brothers yet?”

“Yes, sir. The last one has been delivered and will be deployment ready in half a week, and Frank Detroit has promised to help outfit us in short order for the coming mission. I’ve told Chief Wong to standby and transfer your command modifications to the -6T sir.”

“Great. Has Raman agreed to transfer to the -8D?”

“Well, we might give him the -4L instead.”

“Oh well. Good job, Raman. Now, we’ve got a hectic two months ahead. I want everything thrown on the ship and us leaving by Christmas, no more. You can pass the word around that I expect everyone to be pulling sixteen hour days until we’re on board – we’ll all rest when everything’s done and we’re in transit.”

“Understood, sir.”

Kelly lifted his tumbler of Glengoyne single malt and toasted Raman, who grinned. “Then on to Summer.”

[blackpanzer]

Temporary Black Stars Compound
5th Lyran Guard RCT Base
Fort Habersburg, West Wing
Gacrux
Lyran Alliance
3rd January 3092
Local Time 0310 hours


The explosive shattering that vibrated through the base shocked Zhao Zi Long from his slumber. Scrambling off his bed, the mercenary commander quickly threw on his tanker fatigues and before rushing out to the corridors that led to the rest of Fort Haberburg’s West Wing, home of the 5th Lyran Guard RCT here on Gacrux and temporary base of the Black Stars mercenary command.

The unoccupied bunkers? Zhao stopped in his tracks for a while, trying to remember where the explosion had come from. He estimated the direction where the boom had emitted from and headed in the direction quickly. There were more than a few others of the mercenaries along the way, most wearing the same alarmed looked as the Chinese man himself. He noted that more than a few were carrying at least side arms, if not even more heavily armed. He tapped on the comms piece on his ear.

“Someone give me a sitrep.” He surprised himself that he could manage the words out evenly between breaths. “Are we under attack?”

It took all of two seconds before a calm voice responded. “All clear Colonel. We are clearing up now at the empty armory.”

Zhao frowned in spite of the assurance, his pace not slowing. “What’s going on Miro.”

“I’ve informed the rest of the Stars that there is nothing to be alarmed about, and have also sent assurances to the 5th Lyran Guard as well.” The Sharp Shooters’ Second in command replied evasively.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Zhao accused his fellow Black Star.

“No, I did not.” Miroslav replied evenly. “We’ll talk when you arrive.”

The scene was not one of chaos or mayhem as Zhao might associate when an explosion occurred when he reached the heavily reinforced room that was previously used as an armory. Instead, several unsuited Battle Armour troopers were standing guard, keeping inquisitive bystanders away. The troopers parted quickly as the tank commander approached before closing ranks again. Zhao was surprised that Doc Kaplan Bowles was standing beside Miroslav.

“What’s going on.” He demanded in between deep breaths.

Kaplan looked once at Miroslav, before turning his gaze towards Zhao. “We should probably talk about this inside.”

The trio entered into the armory… and Zhao nearly retched.

In the middle of a room was the remains of what had obviously been a metal chair that had been twisted, bent and broken. Around it, splattered on the floor, walls and ceiling were red bluish bloody gore, pieces of flesh, skin and bone matters mingled with non-organic particles. Zhao thought he saw a piece of bionic eye, as well as what looked like a ferro-fibrous arm.

“What the ****** went down here.”

Miroslav turned towards Zhao, took a deep breath and started. “A few months ago, while we were having our stopover on Terra, I was informed by my sources that a former Doctor who was known to have been working for the Manei Domini had potentially been identified and located. Given the unique opportunity the situation presented, I decided to dispatch one of our squads over to check things out.”

“You told me that it was a supply run to draw from one of your numerous hidden caches for spare parts for your Demon suits.” Zhao’s eyes narrowed accusingly.

“It was.” Miroslav agreed with a nod. “But they also had another objective.”

“One that you failed to inform me about.” Zhao’s voice was level, but the simmering anger was easily detectable.

“We could not be sure of the accuracy of the intel. We had to be sure first.” Miroslav apologized. “You know as well as anyone of us that Manei Domini remains a very sensitive topic, regardless of what specifics were concerned. I couldn’t afford to attract more attention by sending a larger time.”

Zhao paused, allowing his temper to fall before he looked at the former Word of Blake Zombie Adept Tau. “Go on.”

“After collecting the necessary parts, the squad arrived in the system of Park Place, a planet of little renown, claimed by none of the four principal provinces nor miscellaneous district and minor regions within the Free Worlds League.” Miroslav began. “There, they followed the various clues, while carrying out their own investigations to sniff out tell tale signs that might point them to who they were looking for.”

“In one of those off the track towns, they finally found who they were looking for.” Miroslav took another deep breath as he mentally laid out his report. “Doctor Johann Conrad Dippel was most notable as a theologian, making enemies and allies throughout his profession for some of his ideas. His notoriety comes from what he claimed was genuine alchemy, which he perused throughout most of his life.”

“The good Doctor even had an invention that bears his name – Dippel’s Oil.” Kaplan Bowles snorted with a shake of his head and a grimace on his face. “Made mostly of bone char but containing blood and other organic bits and pieces, the oil had many practical uses that were overshadowed by its more sinister use as a non-lethal chemical weapon. The Word of Blake used Dippel’s Oil to poison wells and water supplies as part of their terror warfare against the rest of the known universe.”

Miroslav nodded as Kaplan went on, disgust unmistakably thick in his voice. “Even while under the employment of the Word, Dippel wrote extensively about experimenting with deceased animals and humans. He claimed to have concocted potions of various uses through boiling dead animal parts, including what he proclaimed as a genuinely true Elixir of Life and a mean to exercise demons. There’s actual documentation of these claims, which has led to popular myth stretching the truth just a tad. Dippel never used live humans or parts taken from them in his experiments, or at least as far as we know of, and while he wrote of his own belief that a soul could be transferred from one host to another, there’s no proof that he actually tried this – though many other doctors did.”

“His belief and his skill in the more morbid nature of medical sciences saw him plucked by the Word of Blake in their continuous… affords to create and improve the Manei Domini.” Kaplan glanced at Miroslav, who showed no sign at all at being offended at the reference “Apparently, even Dippel could not stomach what was needed to create the ultimate Manei Domini, the ultimate of the Master’s soldiers – the Ascended.”

“What? The toaster lovers wanted him to reanimate the animals he cut up as their pets?” Zhao snorted derisively.

“If only it was that simple Colonel.” Miroslav sighed. “Dippel told us yesterday…”

“YESTERDAY?!” Zhao nearly screamed at the implication of the word. “You brought a deranged, Manei Domini murderous Doctor to our base here?!”

“Please, hear us out. I reacted much the same was as you did when Miro first approached me with the idea.” Kaplan implored to Zhao as he held up a hand. “But after I actually listened to what Dippel said, it made sense for him to be WITH us than out there, potentially AGAINST us.”

For the umpteenth time since he left his quarters, Zhao forced himself to calm down, willed his spiking temperature to at least manageable level. Not trusting himself to speak without screaming once again, he motioned for the pair to continue.

“The nature of hyperspace is unknown to the denizens of our universe despite years of faster than light – FTL travel through the use of Kearny-Fuchida drive technology, as no one ever experiences the realities of this alternate dimension for longer than the seconds it takes to transit through a jump.” Kaplan stopped, looking at Zhao to make sure that the Chinese man was able to understand. At the latter’s nod, he continued. “Thus, actually living in hyperspace — assuming it is even possible — is unknown. Indeed, the laws of time, space and physics may not apply as we know them within the void of hyperspace.”

“That the Word of Blake was creating an army of fanatical super human beings called the Manei Domini is widely known today, but where these creatures came from and the reasons for their extensive modifications are a source for much debate despite the generally accepted notion that they were created specifically to fight against the Clans.” Again, Kaplan searched Miroslav’s expressions to see if he had touched any nerves. Satisfied that he could proceed, the former Crucis Lancers Medical Officer went on. “If what Dippel said is true, the Word has tapped into the dangerous and unpredictable nature of hyperspace, not only as a place to hide its darkest secrets, but also as a means to hone the Master’s Hands in an environment so hostile, so alien, that the only way to survive it is to transform oneself into a hybrid of technology and humanity.”

“Based on what he claimed, only the cybernetically enhanced Manei Domini have the modifications necessary to survive in hyperspace for extended periods of time. These modifications enable them to go so far as to inhabit the hyperspatial counterparts of the stars themselves, which underscores the sheer counter-intuitiveness of hyperspace reality.” The Doctor shuddered visibly as he remembered the rantings of Dippel. “How they accomplish the act of entering and staying in hyperspace is just one of the mysteries that I may never wish to explore, let alone learn. Meanwhile, non-modified humans, who the Manei Domini referred to depreciatively as frails, exposed to this realm for more than a few seconds would gradually go mad by simply trying to make sense of the twisting layers of surrealism that surround them. Almost nothing may be what it seems in hyperspace, but only the Manei Domini will know for sure.”

“Hold on a second.” Zhao interrupted. “If what Dippel said is true, than Miroslav and all of our those within our ranks who were former Shadow Division personnel would have been to this… hyperspace void to undergo their cybernetic enhancements.”

“That is incorrect.” Miroslav replied stoically. “Those of us in the Sharp Shooters, in fact, most of the Manei Domini are what can be considered, for lack of a better term, entry level.”

“What Dippel said was that this hyperspace facility is where the Manei Domini are further… improved.” The leader of the Sharp Shooters’ Battle Armour detachment answered. “The ‘basic’ Manei Domini, the majority of the Shadow Divisions that had battled against the known universe, have their muscles supplemented with strands of myomer, armour added beneath our skin, senses enhanced so we can smell like a wolf, see like an eagle, hear like a deer. The Manei Domini believe that we have been blessed with the powers of godlings.” A shadow fleeted across Miroslav’s face. “And still that is not the limit of our… gifts that could be bestowed upon us.”

“So what else is there to add?” Zhao whispered, unable to imagine what could be worse.

“The terrible randomness of the extra-dimensional universe drives the human mind into itself,” Miroslav went on. “That place washes all doubt from its adherents. Those who survive the trial cannot be shaken from the Blessed Path.”

Horror rose within Zhao like a dark shadow. So that was how the nightmare was unleashed upon the universe needed: cyborg super humans who had been tortured until all vestiges of humanity had been burned away, leaving only a core of utter fanaticism.

“Those who survive,” Kaplan took over, “win the highest honour amongst even the elite Manei Domini: to serve as the Master’s Hands, as one of the Ascended. Cybernetic enhancement levels way above those ‘normal’ Manei Domini, augmentations that made them closer to the demons that we thought of them than ever before,” The Medical Doctor paused and swallowed hard. “With absolute and unshakable faith in their cause.”

An uneasy silence fell over the three mercenary officers as Zhao pondered the information overlord which he had just been subjected to. “And after telling you that, the Doctor went into sudden human combustion?”

A grim smile crept across Miroslav’s face. “What you see here isn’t the remains of Doctor Dippel.”

That sent alarms bells ringing. “Then what? One of OUR Manei Domini went all boom?!”

“No, no.” Kaplan rested a reassuring hand on Zhao’s shoulders. “Doctor Johann Conrad Dippel was running away from the Word of Blake, and possibly even some covert elements of the Covenant because of what he knew. He was not given full knowledge of the entire process of inducting a Manei Domini into the ranks of the Ascended, but he knew more than he should. Whatever knowledge he had, it was enough for parties out there to want silence him, or rip information from his mind.”

“I’m still not having the information I need from you two.” Zhao growled in equal measures of frustration and anger. “What and who caused this mess.”

“When we got in touch with the Doctor, we offered him terms.” Miroslav answered with a sigh. “In exchange for autonomy within the Stars, he will give us locations of spares, equipment, medical facilities, helping out as part of our paramedical division – anything required to keep the Manei Domimi and hardware in the Stars in fighting condition.”

Zhao barrowed his brows as he looked at Kaplan. “I thought Doc Bowles here has already been doing that rather ably so far.”

“I’ve only been able to treat the… human and organic part of our people when they suffered injuries.” Kaplan replied with a shrug. “When it comes to their cybernetic enhancements, they do most of the necessary repairs and replacements themselves to the best of their abilities. The results hasn’t been always satisfactory.”

Zhao’s eyes widened at the revelation. “Is THAT what that explosion was? Wear and tear catching up with us?”

“Again, no.” Miroslav replied. “Before we lifted off from Park Place with Dippel, the Doctor pointed out that there was a small cache of cybernetic parts and components near to where he was hiding. Our squad took the initiative to scout out the location with the intention to bring back as much of the contents as possible.”

“At the location designated by Dippel, a hidden cave behind a waterfall, our squad found what the Doctor claimed was stashed there.” Miroslav looked at Zhao. “They also found something else there.”

“Please tell me it was a WarShip,” Zhao snorted. “Or at least a lance of their tanks.”

“A person was already there, rummaging through the supplies.” Before Zhao could ask the obvious question, Miroslav continued. “It was a Manei Domini.”

One of Zhao’s eyebrows raised at that declaration. “Not one of yours?”

“No.” Miro replied with a shake of his head. “Not at all. It was one of the Ascended.”

“Bloody hell…”

“If not for the fact that my squad was prepared and it was not, I doubt any of them would have made it out there alive.” Miroslav nodded. “As it was, it was Dippel who saved our squad.”

“Dippel?” Zhao echoed in surprise. “He was augmented too?”

“No. In the years he was working for the Word of Blake on the creation of Manei Domini, Dippel wisely suspected that he might one day need to get away from his employers, that he might need something to neutralize the very super soldiers he was helping to create.” It was Kaplan’s turn to tell the story. “We all know that the Word of Blake developed the BattleMech Taser technology that was used to create the Battle Armour Taser, which itself was subsequently upsized by the Federated Suns for their BattleMech Tasers. While working under the Blakist, Dippel tried to further innovate, creating a prototype of what he called a Tight Stream Electro Magnetic Pulse gun, or TSEMP gun that doesn't require the cabling and capacitors like the Taser.”

“His prototype was a rather short ranged weapon with minimal physical damage output. Dippel told us that the TSEMP gun he created is an energy weapon that emits an EMP burst with the ability to temporarily shut down any electronics.” Miro finished up for Kaplan. “As it turned out, it was fortunate that he had a working prototype with him when he led the squad to the cache.”

“The Ascended absorbed two slugs to his chest like they were cotton balls and turned onto our people in the blink of an eye.” Miroslav recounted. “The squad leader lost an arm, ripped right out of his shoulder like he was a doll, and he was flung against the stone walls like one. Before any of the others could react, the Ascended than punched right through the stomach of another of our guys.” The large man paused, gathering his thoughts. “It was at that point that Dippel knocked the Ascended out with a burst from his TSEMP gun.”

“And they brought Johann Conrad and the incapacitated Ascended back.” Zhao whispered harshly.

“Yes,” Miroslav closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “Yes they did.”

“And this?” Zhao again indicated to the horror around them.

“We thought we could secure the Ascended, wring information out of him – where more of his kind were, locations of weapons, cabals where more Manei Domini might be hiding, or if there were facilities we could loot, raid or destroy.” Miroslav’s voiced was starting to break. It was the first time that Zhao had ever known the man to come close to losing control. “We had Dippel and his gun trained on it, ready to knock it out again when necessary.” He looked at Zhao. “We thought we were close to getting the information we were seeking.”

Zhao remained silent. The scene around him, the fact the Miroslav was as stricken as he appeared to be ample indication that they had not, in fact gotten what they were looking for. Something bad happened. Something had went horribly wrong.

“He broke through the chains and pinned down his guard.” Miroslav went on. “Dippel fired his gun, but it didn’t work. I don’t know if it was the prototype suffering a malfunction, or if the Ascended had somehow developed an immunity to it. When it ripped the guard’s head right off and started laughing, I pulled everyone out of there immediately.”

“And then? He activated his internal bomb? And… Boom?”

“Boom.” The word left Miroslav’s lips barely as a whisper while he hung his head down in defeat.

The three mercenaries stood in the room reeking of blood and gore silently. Neither seemed to know what to say. Seconds stretched into minutes. Minutes seemed to stretch into eternity.

“Well than,” Zhao finally broke the silence with a snap of his fingers. “Get this place cleaned up, we need to return these facilities back to the 5th soon.” He smacked Kaplan and Miroslav on their shoulders. “Debrief Dippel again, when and where reasonably save, and send out small teams to retrieve from those caches he mentioned.” The Chinese man scratched his chin. “Bring heavier hardware, BA suits if necessary. I can assign you some of our tanks if you think they are needed.”

“You’re not going to punish us.” It was a statement from Miroslav, not a question.

“You’re already my 2IC, I think that’s punishment enough if the actions of Pierre Macquer on Herotitus were of any indication.” Zhao waved the concern away. Formerly from the elite Nightcrawlers, the armour detachment of the Bad Dream mercenary unit, Pierre Macquer was the XO to Lt. Colonel Lochsmitt who ran a disciplined and well equipped force of mostly medium armour units that worked hard to maintain their level of excellence, in contrast to the Bad Dream’s MechWarriors. Highly loyal to one another, the Nightcrawlers often maintain a separation from the rest of the unit. Growing tired of Bortman’s incompetence, Lochsmitt is said to be contemplating separating the Nightcrawlers from the rest of the Dream.

However, the wait was unbearable to Pierre and about a company of the armour crew, who chose to leave the Nightcrawlers rather than stay around and continue to see if things can get better with the Bad Dreams. Signing up with the Black Stars, and given command of a full company of Demolisher heavy tanks in the Sharp Shooters.

Bestowed the rank of Major, Pierre was appointed joint XO to Zhao together with Miroslav for the Sharp Shooters. However, the man wanted more, craved for more power. He finally got his chance when the Black Stars went back to the Periphery mercenary world of Herotitus for rest, refitting and recruitment.

Pierre and his company, reinforced by other merc commands, mutinied and defected to the Taurian Concordat. The Black Stars and those that remained loyal to the ConMag had won the day eventually, but at great cost.

Zhao shrugged. “Also, you were looking out for those under your command, and I HOPE that you were looking out for the benefit of the Sharp Shooters as a whole.”

“And Dippel? What do we do with him after we debriefed him?” Kaplan asked.

“Miro promised him a safe haven as the Second in Command of the Sharp Shooters. We may be Periphery rats and money grabbing mercenaries, but we do honour our words – even if it means liberal interpretations of said words when necessary.” Zhao replied, pointing to the Battle Armour officer. “I don’t know what’s needed. Maybe if he changed his name, goes for plastic surgery and hide amongst the Stars in plain sight. Maybe all these will help him, or maybe it won’t, but it’s a risk we already took the day we first accepted Miroslav and his people.” Zhao’s lips crept into a tight smile. “They have long proven themselves, and I am glad to call them family. They’re just family with…” He tilted his head slightly, searching for the right words. “… family with special medical needs.” The tanker grinned. “If Dippel can make sure that our people remain healthy and fighting trim, I see no reason to kick him out of here.”

Zhao Zi Long suddenly paused, his eyes sparkling. “By the way, will the good Doctor be able to duplicate his prototype, or at least still possess the schematics needed to build more?”

“The prototype was lost in the explosion.” Miroslav replied, casting doubt to Zhao’s dream, before his next words virtually shattered it completely. “And all records of the design from his computer back on Park Place were automatically wiped out when another group, probably WoB-ROM attempted to hack into it.”

“It would have been sold for massive sums of money you know.” Zhao pouted dejectedly.

“I’m sure it could.” Kaplan grinned. “Perhaps Dippel will be motivated enough to re-create it once he feels safe enough.” He looked at the two ranking officers of the Sharp Shooters. “I’m sure if he feels adequately snuggled and secure here in the Shooters and the Stars, he will be that much more willing and able to rebuild that fancy gun of his that has got both of you drooling.”

“You heard the Doc.” Zhao said with deliberate aplomb. “Do what is needed for Dippel to settle into the Shooters. I’m sure between the two of you, there shouldn’t be any problems.” He started to turn as several others started filing into the room to do the cleaning up. Zhao stopped and turned back towards Miroslav and Kaplan. “Next time any of you clowns decide to hire extra help, let me know.” His eyes narrowed. “Preferably without a massive explosion.”


Sharp Shooters Seeker Class DropShip, Event Horizon
Military Drop Port
Temporary Black Stars Compound
5th Lyran Guard RCT Base
Fort Habersburg, West Wing
Gacrux
Lyran Alliance
9th January 3092
Local Time 0810 hours

It had been exactly a week since the… incident involving the former Word of Blake Doctor Johann Conrad Dippel and the violently self-combusting Manei Domini Ascended. Questions had continued to be asked, but no answers had been forthcoming from the Sharp Shooters apart from their steadfast insistence that the explosion was due to some rather poorly trained and highly intoxicated manual labour and their misadventures with some BattleMech grade ammunition they were supposed to handle.

Of course, the 5th Lyran Guards were not fully convinced. Knowing the Sharp Shooters – especially their panache for the unorthodox and unhealthy penchant for the supernatural, other Black Stars sub-units and their personnel were happy to simply accept whatever stories they were fed. As long as no one was hurt, no hardware damaged, and most importantly, no compensation to the 5th, or the Lyrans was required. The Sharp Shooters collectively decided to behaved as if nothing had happened, and the Black Stars collective decided to follow suit.

Zhao Zi Long sniffed as he looked from the ramp of the Event Horizon, the Sharp Shooters’ Seeker Class DropShip out to the planet that they would be lifting off from soon. The Black Stars were loading up with supplies and spares, replacement and new equipment, new recruits and those returning from injuries and recuperation.

The Taurian Concordat native pulled out a small pack from one of his pockets and shook a single stick of white from it. It was such irony that despite all the advances in technology, humans still could not break away from base addiction to nicotine, or find alternatives to the cancer inducing vice. Gacrux itself could be a shining example of how much humans had come along. It is a world well on its way to extinction. Its sun is a red dwarf in the final stages of its life. The only reason the world was settled at all was to extract the radioactive materials needed for fusion engines and precious metals. Given its proximity to the Free Worlds League the citizens of Gacrux have always been supportive of House Steiner and the LCAF. In fact Gacrux is one of the few worlds in the Federation of Skye that didn't agitate for secession. On the other hand, this loyalty to House Steiner has become a hindrance in several situations. Gacrux was one of the most vocal opponents of the alliance with the Federated Suns, and the Brotherhood of Cincinnatus, a Lyran nationalist movement with ties to terrorism, has maintained a facility on the world for many years.

In the current political climate, Zhao was glad that despite the predations of ULTRA and their successful conquest of nearby worlds, Gacrux had remained steadfastly loyal to the Lyran course. The system’s proximity from Summer – just two jumps away, the Black Stars’ target system, meant that the mercenary command could strike quickly. To Zhao, what was more important was that it also allowed for the various sub-units to make a quick exit if ULTRA decided to bring the considerable military muscles it had flexed to bear onto Summer. After all, the Black Stars were not contracted to invade Summer. The Chinese man thought back to the unofficial memo he had received from the Lyran ambassadorial office.

It had contained only two words. Offensive Campaign. The tank commander had no doubt that it was talking about the supplemental contract that was to follow up the Recon Raid against Summer. Taking up where a planetary assault leaves off, an offensive campaign usually entailed an attack against hostile forces on a contested planet. It was not uncommon that this sort of attack developed directly from a planetary assault, but more frequently than not, it involved additional troops reinforcing or replacing those in the first landings. The circumstantial situation on Summer certainly fitted into one. What Zhao did not understand was why the Lyrans would offer an offensive campaign instead of an outright invasion. Was the Black Stars to be a diversion while the Lyrans hit other target worlds deemed more important? Or was the campaign supposed to draw in more ULTRA forces so that the Lyrans could hit them with a single massive strike instead of chasing after shadows. Or maybe the Black Stars were simply to buy a little more time for the LAAF against the unstoppable onslaught of ULTRA.

Zhao exhaled as he took another pull from the cancer stick clasped between his fingers. The Black Stars less the Bloody Marauders were gathering here on Gacrux before pushing off to Summer. The Sharp Shooters would be joined by several more other sub-unit commands, gathering as much of their forces as they could before the assault against ULTRA. Already, the Glengarry Independents were already rushing over to link up with the Shooters. There was even a slight possibility that the Celestyna's Winged Legionnaires might participate as well.

Zhao shook his head as he took another puff. He nearly sighed, but caught himself against it.

Maybe his decision as well as that of the Cell to pledge themselves to the Lyrans’ course against ULTRA so as to earn themselves their first land hold had backlashed badly. After all, the Stars had always been well known to avoid campaigns pitting themselves against a major Succession House. Despite their declaration otherwise, nobody was under the illusion that ULTRA was indeed Free Worlds League.

No, the Stars and their dependents had been subject to too much danger and risks, with none of their employers able to provide the latter with the necessary protection. The Cell had decided that instead of subjecting their dependents to uncertainty and far from certain security while the main bulk of the Black Stars front line combatants were away, they would instead rely on their own. Sub-units refitting, those that decided to call it a day, those that were retiring from active combat but still able to offer their services to train, to garrison. Zhao was certain the collective leadership of the Cell had made the right decision.

And if it was not, he would die defending those that he called his own.

[Kidd]

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds;
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

- William Butler Yeats.

*   *   *

Date: 26th December 3091
Delivered: Fort Habersburg, Gacrux, Lyran Alliance
Sent From: Ecol City, Thorin, Lyran Alliance
To: Colonel Zhao Zi Long, Commander Black Stars
From: Captain John Kelly, Commander Glengarry Independents
Subject: Reply – Summer Update

Sir,

Thank you for the update on the Summer situation. I understand the difficulty the Lyran High Command has placed you in. Personally I concur with your assessment that the Black Stars should be able to eliminate the ULTRA forces on world. It is probable whoever is in charge has suddenly gotten cold feet and is hesitant to throw good units after bad, should the Summer operation explode in his face.

In any case, personal feelings notwithstanding, we must do as our employers demand. My unit is currently at Thorin. I have arranged for transport to take us to Gacrux by way of Milton. The circuitous route is unfortunate as few JumpShip captains are willing to chance the Castor and Pollux pocket, where fighting has been fierce. Nonetheless we hope to see you at Gacrux by the 15th of January. My unit will be combat ready.

Best regards,
John Kelly

*   *   *

Union Class DropShip Hope Warden (formerly Provide Hope XII),
En route to Zenith Jump Point,
Thorin, Lyran Alliance.

26th December 3091.
1625 hours.

As the spherical steel spacecraft settled into a steady one gravity burn, accelerating at ten meters per second, John Kelly glanced out the porthole of the Hope Warden’s wardroom at the receding planet. The small, cramped space was barely deserving of the name, being nothing more than a small square compartment measuring three meters on a side, furnished with a table and six chairs and a small sideboard for serving the officers’ meals, coffee and ‘mid rats’ or mid-watch rations. The latter merely consisted of cold cuts and vacuum packed army bread, long in life and hard in texture. He slapped cold chicken sausage on bread, layered a good helping of mustard, and assembled the sandwich. It was filling stuff, albeit plain and cheap – but Kelly didn’t mind as the cost was coming out of his pocket. The costs of everything around him were coming out of his pocket.

He owned the Hope Warden.

The Union class DropShip was formerly known as the Provide Hope XII, a modified military surplus charter vessel in the service of the Interstellar Red Cross. The ship was restored to its military specifications and had been rechristened just two weeks ago, in a brief ceremony Kelly had had done on Landing Pad 19 of the Harlech City Spaceport Annexe. Instead of the customary champagne Kelly had cracked a bottle of Arbroath Glengarry whiskey on the hull of the DropShip. It was the single most expensive piece of equipment Kelly had ever personally owned. Kelly and his unit had salvaged the DropShip following a series of vicious battles with a large and well equipped pirate band based on Huanghuadian, an abandoned planet in the Capellan Confederation’s Periphery. Oh yes, the unit.

Kelly owned the Glengarry Independents.

The Glengarry Independents currently comprised the Hope Warden and her abbreviated seven man crew, eight BattleMechs, eight Longinus battle armour suits, two heavy hover armoured personnel carriers, twelve Mechwarriors and vehicle crews, sixty eight infantrymen and sixty techs. All of them were on board the Hope Warden, and it was straining her passenger capacity to the limit. In her refit Kelly had converted the unused aerospace fighter launch bays on Deck Five into much needed cargo space and two empty Mech bays down on Deck Four into accommodation and life support systems for the two infantry platoons Kelly had hired to provide base security.

Cramming in an additional sixty men and women into two spaces meant for a hundred ton BattleMech and two personnel each had been a real headache. Kelly had at first thought of partitioning off barrack spaces in the former Mech bays, but working together with his officers they had discovered a more effective solution was to use containerised field accommodation modules. Each module accommodated five individuals, suited to an infantry squad of one non-com and four privates. The containers also allowed stacking to make use of the Mech cubicle’s vertical space. The result was ugly and appeared ramshackle and space was still a premium – the enlisteds were forced to eat in the common areas, with the non-commissioned officers having taken over the DropShip’s primary messdeck – but it worked. To a degree.

The DropShip’s small wardroom was the only place Kelly had left to use as a planning and conference room.

In addition to the wardroom commissary supplies the sideboard was now heaped with datachips, makeshift wired communications gear linking to all parts of the ship, boxes of dry rations, and miscellaneous personal gear. The table itself was mostly occupied by a large portable holo projector in the middle, pushing datachips, personal datapads and noteputers to the sides. Kelly had ensconced himself at the head of the table where he had spent almost all of his time since the start of the deployment.

On either side of the table sat or stood his lieutenants – Robert Zibler-Carlyle, his de facto chief of staff; Peter Raman and Amelia Hawke, commanding his two Mech lances; Dave Jackman, the gruff infantry specialist in charge of the two Longinus battle armoured trooper squads; and Christine Hirschfeld, who oversaw the Glengarry Independents’ battlefield support and technical staff from the inside of one of the two heavy hover APCs. These were the senior lieutenants who made up his command staff; there were actually two other junior lieutenants in charge of his two security platoons.

During his days as a Mech company commander in the Hellstorm Hussars mercenary regiment, Kelly had once had a little more firepower under his command than he did now; his Night Raiders combined arms company then had boasted eight BattleMechs, four infantry fighting vehicles and four squads of battle armour. Yet he had never commanded as many men and women then as he did now. He had learned very quickly the importance of an administrative adjutant and to forgo his usual one on one talks with subordinates for a proper staff meeting where everyone could be updated.

As he devoured his sandwich, Kelly listened intently as Raman finished his report of the previous week’s activity. “And finally, Neil Sengupta tells me that the training programs have been tested on all our equipment. We can run the programs at any time.”

Kelly checked his chrono. “I don’t think we can make it before the jump. We can schedule it for when we reach Milton. There’s lots to do before we rendezvous with the Black Stars; we need to finalise planning and make sure everything is combat prepped. As soon as we enter the system we need to link up with the Black Stars, find out what their operations plan is and our part in it and be prepared for combat ops at once.”

The other lieutenants smiled and Dave Jackman shrugged unconcernedly; Kelly was pleased to see they were all quietly confident. Morale at least was high, though their readiness was not. This mission had been taken too far too fast, but then it had been Kelly’s decision to pursue the contract. Outfitting the Independents and refiting the DropShip had consumed all of Kelly’s cash – his unit’s share of the Black Stars’ contract payout, the combat bonuses from the previous mission, and every C-bill of Kelly’s personal funds. His investment portfolio was a distant memory of the past – he was fully invested in himself now. The Independents were all he had, aside from the house in the valley on Glengarry, and they were living from contract to contract.

“Okay, then we’ll hold a table top crawl through exercise tonight after dinner. After jumping into Milton we walk through company drills, after action review the day after. Truthfully, I’m not that concerned as we have a good number of experienced personnel and its not like we are all new to small unit tactics. Still, it will be good for us to have at least one proper simulation before we drop anyway,” said Kelly. “Carlyle, draw us up a good scenario, will you?”

“You got it, Kelly,” said Zibler-Carlyle with a grin. Kelly had made it a stipulation that the senior staff were to refer to him by name whenever they were out of earshot of the men; all of the men and women here in the wardroom were as close to partners as he had in the Independents.

“Which brings us to lance assignments,” said Kelly. “I’m still working on who gets to drive what for now. It don’t help that some of us are being a tad stubborn about giving up their favourite rides,” and he winked at Raman.

The Mechwarrior shrugged. “I like to move fast, boss. That thing you want me to get into, it’s too slow.”

“Yes, well, I want us all to be equipped with the best we can afford. Anyway, here are the lance assignments. Raman, you’ll get Webster and Schmidt. That makes up your Recon Lance. I know it’s short one Mech but we couldn’t get another Mech and a pilot before we left, I’m sorry.”

Raman waved a hand casually. “That’s good. I’ve talked to Webster and he’s knows his way round that Raven of his. And Schmidt seems like a steady sort.”

Kelly nodded. “Yes, we lucked out good with this batch of newbies. Schmidt’s file has good things to say about his piloting and I want our best pilots in the Recon lance. You’ll all do a lot more running than the rest of us.”

“Yeah.”

Kelly turned to Amelia Hawke. “Amelia, you’ve got command of the Force lance obviously. You’ll have the three other recruits under you, pick a second in command and make him a corporal. I don’t want to promote a new chap over the others so soon but I’ve no choice.”

“I suggest we make the position Acting Sergeant,” said Amelia. “With a six month probationary period, no pay increase unless confirmed but both pay and promotion back dated if confirmed. I should be able to tell if he’s suitable after three months, sir.”

“Good,” said Kelly. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

“That Julian fellow looks promising,” said Amelia. “And he’s the only one who’s ever been made second in command in his previous unit.”

“Done,” said Kelly. “Now... Summer.” He extracted a datachip and inserted into the holo projector. The projector flared to life, emitters projecting a translucent three dimensional image from a special light spectrum that formed a model of a planetary system several inches above the tabletop. “I’ve passed out the Black Stars’ briefing packet to you all, so I won’t go into fine details. This is Summer. Distance from jump point is only two and a half days, which is in our favour. The planet itself has standard atmosphere and gravity, but rather high temperatures that will probably affect our weapon functions slightly. There is little vegetation and the terrain is mostly rocky and infertile, with no native life beyond very hardy plants. There are three continents, Lestrade which contains the capital Curitiba, the polar landmass Aberdale which has a large number of refineries around the city of Mount Breighton, and Wessel which has been tagged as not a concern by Loki. Those are only the main cities; Lyran intel identified the general area surrounding these two target cities as the reconaissance objectives. Within the objective area are a few smaller towns; there’s one of particular interest called Sandhurst Point which could have been the site of an old Star League military base.”

Kelly focused the holo display on the Summer system’s first planet. The two target areas were delineated in red. “As you know we are conducting a reconaissance in force in support of the Black Stars. There are two Black Stars sub-units assigned, Colonel Zhao’s Sharp Shooters and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Callahan’s Bloody Marauders. The Sharp Shooters were en route, last seen holding at the Gacrux system, while the Bloody Marauders have landed on Lestrade in the Mountain Lake area near Curitiba.” He pressed a button and a green icon flared to life on the holo projection of the planet Summer. “And the Sharp Shooters were to be heading for the Mount Breighton area. Any questions?”

“You said the Sharp Shooters ‘were’ en route, boss,” said Dave Jackman. “What happened to them?”

Kelly sighed. “This morning’s HPG packet from Gacrux included a message for us from Colonel Zhao with an update on the Summer situation. The Black Stars’ Lyran employers have asked all uncommitted sub-units to hold at Gacrux for the time being, as the enemy forces the Bloody Marauders found on Summer are a little stronger than the Loki intelligence team reported. It looks to me like the op planners have suddenly gotten cold feet and are panicking.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “The damned Social General in charge just wanted to cut losses to cover up his stupidity. After all, it’s only expendable mercenaries who are on planet, not Lyran troops.”

A wave of cynical amusement swept the table, even including the usually taciturn Christine Hirschfeld who said “It is known to happen.”

“Well, no one is very happy with the decision, least of all me,” said Kelly. “For one, Colonel Zhao anticipates that he will be asked to resume our drop on Summer once Lyran High Command has got their knickers unentangled. So our plans really are unchanged – save that instead of approaching the target separately we will first link up with the Sharp Shooters at Gacrux and prepare to join them for a combined drop on Summer. Any questions?”

There were none. Kelly continued the briefing.

“Alright, let’s go into the enemy situation. We are facing ULTRA – the Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Revolutionary Army. I don’t know how ‘liberate Tikonov’ became ‘terrorise the Inner Sphere’ but there you go. Lyran intel claims a small regiment worth of ULTRA forces are on planet. Now, these guys are basically terrorist militias, so unit strength varies greatly. Loki has identified the 71st ULTRA Dragoons which is a reinforced Mech company, the 133rd ULTRA Armour, also a reinforced company, and Colonel Zhao’s update mentioned a 101st Dragoons which comprises two combined arms battalions of Mechs, armour and mechanised infantry. We have no solid intel on their dispersion throughout the planet, or their equipment, but the Bloody Marauders on Summer have encountered elements of all three units around Curitiba, as well as at least six aerospace fighters. Chris, I heard you’ve been looking into the ULTRA attacks. Do you have anything to add here?”

Christine Hirschfeld nodded, and answered in her slightly Germanic Lyran accent. “Yes. I did a research analysis on the ULTRA attacks in the past six months. According to reports from units which have engaged them, ULTRA was noted to use mainly standard military off the shelf equipment from independent manufacturers like Quikscell, but a number of designs commonly associated with the Free Worlds League were noted, such as the Stygian strike tank, the Lancer aerospace fighter, the Wraith recon Mech and the Tempest heavy Mech.”

“Does that mean ULTRA is receiving Free Worlds League support?” asked Jackman.

“That particular combination does seem to imply something of the sort,” observed Zibler-Carlyle.

“Well the Wraith is widely found in the Capellan Confederation too,” said Raman, “but the others are standard Free Worlds designs...”

“There were loads of fingers pointing at the Free Worlds League, back on Outreach; it was the talk of the town...”

Kelly shrugged. “Well, we don’t know anything of the sort for sure yet, so let’s not go there just yet. Fine, we have an idea of what they may be fielding. Colonel Zhao says we can expect the enemy to be dug in and alert. Bear that in mind. Now, friendlies. As I said, the Bloody Marauders are on planet and operating near us while the Sharp Shooters are on Gacrux.” He manipulated the holo projector controls to zoom in and display a flattened map of the Lestrade continent. “The details of the Bloody Marauders’ organisation have been included in your briefing packets. Besides Colonel Callahan’s command lance, their main manoeuvre units are a striker company of light Mechs and two companies of Clan Mechs and a company of battle armour set up as a Supernova and a Trinary. This is supported by two companies of infantry and two companies of VTOLs, and two squadrons of aerospace fighters.”

“But... with that level of force, they could take on the whole of the ULTRA forces on Summer and win!” exclaimed Jackman.

“Which is why Colonel Zhao has a high confidence that the Bloody Marauders, especially reinforced by his Sharp Shooters, will be able to defeat the ULTRA forces on Summer, even taking into account what seems to be a larger force on planet than it initally appeared,” said Kelly. “Damned Social Generals – they ordered us to raid and engage any targets of opportunity. The whole bloody planet is a bloody target of opportunity!”

“Well that’s House Command for you,” said Jackman.

“Anyway. We will be working mainly with the Sharp Shooters, who we’ve met before. I’ll just give you all a reminder that they comprise a battalion of armour backed up by a company of battle armoured infantry. Their battle armour use a ComStar style six man squad, by the way, so that’s a slightly overstrength company they have there.”

“For all intents and purposes, that is considered a combined arms regiment,” pointed out Amelia Hawke. “Sufficient, one might say, to actually retake Summer’s primary population centers at least.”

“Against the opposition levels observed thus far, that is true,” allowed Kelly, “but I can actually understand why the Lyrans are hesitant to commit the Black Stars. For one you’ll notice we are low on infantry assets which makes occupying and controlling an area difficult. For another, you’ll note the ULTRA forces themselves constitute a combined arms regiment too, more or less. One on one odds don’t usually mean good news for the attacking forces.”

“Yeah I can see that,” said Dave Jackman, “but the Black Stars, they’ve an elite merc unit right? They busted a pirate band practically their own size at Huanghuadian, right? And who’re these ULTRA guys anyway? We’ve got better people, better intel, better equipment – look at the Clan tech on the Bloody Marauders – I think we could take them all out. The people on Summer would help us too, so we’d know the terrain better than them too once we link up with the locals.”

“You’re not wrong, Dave,” said Kelly. “In fact, make a note of the idea of linking up with the locals – when it does come down to a fight I want all the advantage we can get. But for now, we are in a situation where our hands are tied and there’s no call for us to go haring into Summer in the hope of linking up with the Bloody Marauders. The game plan as far as we’re concerned is to make our way to Gacrux and place ourselves at Colonel Zhao’s disposal. In the meantime there’s plenty of things to get done.” He shrugged. “For all you know, Lyran High Command may throw us into some other fire elsewhere if the Bloody Marauders have Summer sewn up.”

[Escudero]

1318 Hours Local Time
Terra, 28 August 3091

Kaden could hardly keep his gaze off the clear blue sky of Terra, the first time he had seen such a thing as it was his first trip to Terra.  Hardly a spec of cloud of the natural or polluted variety blemished the bright blue that was the sky near mid-day.  Certainly there were many beautiful and mysterious sights to see across the inhabited portion of the galaxy and beyond, but the beauty and comfort of Terra was something to marvel at.  There was little wonder now why Terra was referred alternatively to as the jewel of human civilization.

The young Flight Officer was dressed lightly in a tank top and black athletic shorts that stopped just above the knee.  The weather was as impeccable as the sky.  He could not recall a feeling such as this in any natural environment.  The temperature was... well there was no temperature that he could feel.  It was that perfect balance between hot and cold the young Lyran had learned to take for granted in controlled environments aboard ships or in temperature regulated facilities.  A testament to evolution perhaps as there were few planets that could come close to Terra's hospitability among the star systems of the Inner Sphere. 

Today marked Kaden's 24th birthday, and if he had been superstitious or religious maybe he would have claimed the weather and scene of the sky as a gift from some personal god.  Instead he merely beheld it with a feeling of awe and wonder.  He understood the basics of the science of it but it never ceased to inspire him still.

"Thinking of flying?" came a rough voice from behind Kayden, but he did not turn to look.  It could only belong to Lieutenant Sharpe.  "That costs money kid, don't forget.  Fuel is a little expensive this time a' year."

Kaden held back a chuckle.  "Yes sir Lieutenant, I know.  I'll make due with the simulators when they're available.  How is the process going?"

He turned towards the Lieutenant.  Lieutenant Nicholas Thorne was a veteran of the LAAF from some unit he had never disclosed to Kaden.  It would take Kaden's age plus an additional half to find the Lieutenant's, though he did not look too worse for the wear.  He was a little taller than Kaden, clearing 1.8 meters, and broad-shouldered but slender with blonde hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion.  The Risen had held fairly stringent dietary and fitness requirements for their aero pilots as reflected in Nick and Kaden. 

The Lieutenant held out a set of papers to Kaden.  There it was, there official sub-unit status in the Black Stars.  Kaden was now the executive officer, second in command of the 'Skies of Flame'.  Though, he reminded himself, he still had no subordinates under him.  It was a two man crew, but the point was that that could change.

"Now we're our own men, Flight Officer Park" Sharpe said encouragingly.  "We'll have our own unit account and all that, though we're still dependent on the rest of the Stars for transport don't ferget'."

Kaden nodded, though he felt a tinge of excitement from somewhere.  He had not seen much action yet with the Stars in his three years of flying, and this only increased the prospects that they would.

[blackpanzer]

Approximately 350km West of City of Mount Breighton
Northern Polar Continent of Aberdale
Summer
ULTRA Held Territory (Former Lyran Alliance Skye Province)
5th January 3092
Local time 0405 hours

Benedikt Howedes pretended he couldn’t see the Perseus standing at the edge of the germanium topsoil mining field as he finished his final pass. He kept his head turned, looking back over one shoulder at the continuous revolving chain of metallic buckets as each bucket dug up the ground cover, shredding the hard earth before the next one drove down into the topsoil again. All the while, the excavated earth and small quantities of germanium were deposited onto a conveyor belt that transferred them into a towed crusher and minecart.

Despite the dredging, the ground and scrubs were too compacted and dry to form any sort of sizable dust cloud as the combine mining machine continued its work. Ben glanced forward again, keeping his head low. He hoped the hat brim shielding his eyes from the reddish sun would give the impression he was only checking his ancient mobile miner’s alignment with previous swaths.

A second BattleMech had come over the rolling landscape to stand behind the other’s right shoulder. It was bigger than the Perseus. Given ULTRAs’ passion for appearances, Ben would have expected the ranking officer to drive the bigger machine, but its position indicated the newcomer was of lower rank.

Ben snorted. As if rank mattered when two BattleMechs confronted a simple miner driving his antique mobile dragline excavator.

Ben decided the bigger BattleMech was probably another signature Free Worlds League design. It had massively hulking squared shoulders like the ones of the Perseus, but its cockpit was lower and thrust forward, making it resemble a stooping vulture more than the noble look the Leaguers preferred. It looked tougher to Ben’s untrained eye, but he knew it made nationalistic sense for the boss to drive a League ’Mech even if a better one was available. Not that a seventy five ton Perseus heavy OmniMech was any slouch of a ‘Mech by any stretch of one’s imagination.

Coming up on the end of the pass, Ben could see he was running out of field. The ULTRA BattleMechs were standing between him and the access road leading back to his shed. He’d either have to drive straight into one or admit he could see them.

Tough choice. At the last moment he snapped his head back, dropping his jaw in amazement as he stared up at the towering war machines.

That’s right, folks, what the blue blooded nobles back home were right all along. Backwater miners and farmers like Ben are ALWAYS an idiot.

The driver of the Perseus said something over his external speakers. Maybe her external speakers, Ben reminded himself sombrely. The Summer native couldn’t tell for sure over the yammer of his miner’s massive and aging diesel engine. He made a show of cupping his ear and gaping while gunning the engine just a bit.

He’d laid it on too thick. The ULTRA ’Mech jockey let him know he — or she — wasn’t buying it by pointing the Perseus’s left arm at the combine.

Not all that anxious to see what a medium pulse laser could do to a six-hundred year old Terex-Schaeff, Ben shut his machine down after some rather dramatic and comic fumbling. Any way he could waste these guys’ time was a victory.

“This is the wrong area to be carrying out germanium sweeps,” the MechWarrior’s voice boomed in the sudden silence. Definitely a woman. “This mining field had been recently covered a year ago.”

There was like what? At least two battalions worth of ULTRA ‘Mech jockeys on Summer? Ben had to draw the only miner who kept track of where germanium exploration was taking place. Great.

“The previous exploration covered about twenty klicks out south, Lieutenant,” he called back, and then kicked himself for revealing that he’d recognized the single stripe of gold on purple badge on the Perseus’s shoulder. He could also read the unit designations — uncountable months of resistance had taught him a little about the invaders. Commander of Second Lance, First Company of the Hundred and First ULTRA Dragoons would be — Ben frowned as he flipped through his mental files — a Lieutenant Kris Vanderbilt. “Trying to see if they really missed out on anything,” he went on, hoping she hadn’t noticed the pause during his mental gymnastics. “When the big boys get in a field, they go straight for sub-soil scans hoping to hit the jack pot.” He made a show of grinning widely. “Sometimes, they forget that other than crude oil, germanium can form near the top soil as well. They usually don’t dig deep,” he added helpfully.

The Perseus kept its medium pulse laser leveled at his combine-miner. Ben suspected the first indication he’d have that Vanderbilt knew no germanium deposits or any worth existed within a hundred kilometres of their location except for his farm here would be a multiple needles of azure light vapourizing him to shredded burning flesh and smoke.

“Did a group of BattleMechs or tanks pass this way?”

You mean the Summer Militia Recon Lance? Ben thought. Those whose tracks I was just covering.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Until you two popped up, I hadn’t seen a soul.”

On the heels of his words, two more ULTRA BattleMechs stepped out of the forest — both good, solid, predictably League built Tempests. Ben felt his mouth go dry as he realized one had come from the north. He waited out the silence as First Company’s Second Lance chose not to include him in their deliberations.

“What is the metal building to the north?” Vanderbilt asked. Ben swallowed and he looked up at her machine. He wished she’d point her laser elsewhere.

“That’d be my miner shed,” he said. No point in playing too dumb, particularly with the Lieutenant clearly not buying his innocence. “It’s full of mining machines, harvesters, stuff like that. Half of it doesn’t work.” Then, making no effort to hide his pride: “The Howedes mine has been here ever since folks discovered germanium here on Summer.”

“Howedes germanium mines?”

“What you’re standing on,” Ben said, then swept his arms to illustrate. “From Mount Solace to the Tangering Valley; from Taylor East to the desert. Localized crude oil and germanium ore exploration. That’s Howedes mines and I’m Benedikt Howedes.”

“The owner of such an estate sweeps the mining fields like a common hand?” Even through the external speakers, the suspicions in Vanderbilt’s voice was obvious. Or maybe it was Ben’s own fear playing tricks on him.

“The owner of such a working mine.” Ben had no trouble putting an appropriate level of pride fueled heat into his words. “I spend twelve hours a day, seven days a week, keeping everything running right.”

Pause. Unmoving laser.

“Show us this mining shed.”

The shed — which Ben had to admit was actually an extensive garage that covered a good quarter of an acre — stood at the north end of Home Ridge, a long hill named by the third-generation Howedes. Ben did not imagine his ancestors, long dead of course, had put much thought into naming the place after building the family homestead on its highest point.

Building high was a Summer tradition without any need of explanation, as far as Ben knew. On such a sub-tropic world, everyone built their houses as high above the plains as they could, as though expecting floods momentarily. The badlands began just north of Home Ridge, the abrupt transition to rocky hardpan demarking the end of the Howedes family’s failed terraforming efforts. Heck, if not for the presence of germanium here on Summer, the population would have long fled the dying world.

The ground around this region, like much of the rest of the northern polar continent of Aberdale, was not stone. However, the clay was so compacted that even the ULTRA assault and heavy ‘Mechs failed to leave anything more than light tracks with their passing. The treeless land was rumpled like a coarse blanket thrown on the ground, a place of blind arroyos and abrupt escarpments. The broad shape of Danson’s Hill was visible to the northeast and the rugged white cone of Mount Solace dominated the northern horizon.

Ben made certain not to glance toward the peak, crowned with white mineral deposits that gave the illusion of year-round snow — and reflected most active sensors.

He made a production of working the clumsy mechanical combination lock that secured the shed’s double doors. They should not have been locked at midday. In fact, they had been wide open, giving some of his workers light and air while they’d stripped a mobile tunnel miner when Ben had taken the mobile combine mining machine out. No doubt his mechanic and mining hands had run from the shed when they’d got wind of the approaching ULTRA war machines.

The doors were high enough and wide enough for the Perseus to enter. Vanderbilt didn’t wait for the sodium lights far overhead to heat up. Instead, she turned on external spotlights, probing the shadows as she moved through the cavernous shed. One of the Tempest filled the doorway, the muzzles of its large pulse laser and gauss rifle casting about in a vague search for targets.

Ben would have stood back and waited for something to flush while the guys getting paid for it beat the underbrush, but the ULTRA ‘Mechs worked backward. Or maybe it was a military thing. He suspected their sensors had already told them there were no BattleMechs or any sort of military vehicle present, but from the way the Lieutenant was examining every truck and harvester trailer, there were probably enough similarities between mining equipment and military vehicles to make eyes on inspection necessary.

From the way she was peering at everything, Ben guessed the ULTRA officer wasn’t as familiar with tractors as she was with mining exploration procedures. He felt his pulse quicken as she spent several long seconds considering a rounded cylinder — the size of a ten thousand-litre water tank — protruding from a pile of parts and vehicle panels.

“This is built for underwater,” Vanderbilt accused, her amplified voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls.

“It’s one of the oldest things in here,” Ben shouted back. “Maybe they needed to be sealed while terraforming?” He got no answer. No doubt more convinced by the encumbering mound of dust covered debris than Ben’s words, the ULTRA Lieutenant moved away from his multiple-great grandfather’s most beloved treasure to examine another combine similar to the one that he had been operating earlier, but much smaller in size.

Ben didn’t draw an easy breath until he saw the backs of the four BattleMechs leaving his land, heading south.


Mount Solace
North to City of Mount Breighton
Polar Continent of Aberdale
Summer
ULTRA Held Territoty (Former Lyran Alliance Skye Province)
6th January 3092
0830 hours local time

“Thank God.”

The Summer Militia’s Leutnant Michael Franks made no effort to hide his delight as Ben threw back the tarp, revealing the crates of ULTRA MREs. Ben grinned, bending to lift the first case out of the trailer.

There had not been enough vaccine — or enough time — for the Black Stars mercenaries to have been immunized against Summer’s native micro-organisms. Though the water could be boiled and irradiated to purity, the Black Stars’ advance scout forces and remnants of Summer’s Militia had been forced to live on hoarded battle rations, dependent on local supporters for fresh supplies.

One man could not work fast enough, and Ben found himself politely moved aside as a squad of volunteers took over food distribution.

Stepping back, he looked up at the narrow sliver of grey sky visible past the overhanging roof of the shallow cave — more an alcove, he thought — that shielded the Militia and Sharp Shooters from sight of any ULTRA overflights.

“Any news, Benedikt?”

Ben turned to find Major Konstantin Wolff-Ploetig at his side. How the hell does he always creep up on me like that?!

At maybe eighty kilos and over a hundred and eighty centimetres, he was definitely not the smallest officer he’d ever seen, but the guy had been able to move about and approach like a wraith. Silent. And deadly. He smiled at Ben’s startled reaction, his sun burnt cheeks squeezing his dark brown, nearly black eyes nearly shut. Ben suspected that if Konstantin ever gave up the military’s strict physical training he’d turn plump – a high possibility since he had learnt from the other Shooters that the SpecOps man had picked up their Chinese CO’s rather over fondness of alcohol.

The thought of a butterball infantry special operations made him smile in return. Then he sobered as he remembered his news.

“ULTRA has figured out that if they can’t find you anywhere, you must be somewhere their sensors don’t work,” he said. “They’re eliminating the Badlands one area at a time.”

“Any chance they’re saving us for last?”

Ben shook his head.

“The ULTRA MechWarriors are a few days east of here, headed this way,” he said. “The 133rd Armoured are farther south — they went after the flats south of the Tangering first — but it’s a sure bet they’ll get here pronto once the Mechjocks call for help.”

Konstantin nodded. His eyes scanned the shallow cave, one of several in the flanks of Mount Solace that concealed the very small detachment of the Black Stars’ Recon Alpha.

Ben had no idea what his orders were, but he couldn’t imagine this mountain as a good place for a last stand. The narrow gorges and shallow caverns might favour the Militias’ smaller, faster and jump capable ‘Mechs, but they were easily blocked. A relatively small portion of the ULTRA forces could keep the Militia and Black Stars warriors from breaking free while the rest of them methodically blasted the mountain to rubble around them.

Or not. Their enemies could just contain them until their food supply ran out and they either surrendered or starved to death.

Neither Konstantin nor Michael didn’t share his thoughts with Ben, of course. But it didn’t take a genius to guess their job was to stay alive and keep the ULTRA forces tied up until some kind of reinforcements got here. The staying alive part meant both Konstantin and Michael needed to get their people out of this hiding hole before they got trapped.

With the desert to the north and most of Aberdale’s civilian population to the west, east and south were their only options. Take what was essentially a reinforced lance of light medium ‘Mechs through the ULTRA BattleMech or vehicular forces — both units easily bigger than the small mercenary command and both made up of heavier machines.

“We need more intel,” Konstantin said, then looked quickly at Ben as though startled he’d spoken. “Sorry. You guys are doing one hell of a job. But getting news a day or two old isn’t the same as hard numbers real time.”

It was Ben’s turn to look startled. But he only nodded as an idea formed in the back of his mind.


Approximately 350km West of City of Mount Breighton
Northern Polar Continent of Aberdale
Summer
ULTRA Held Territoty (Former Lyran Alliance Skye Province)
8th January 3092
1240 hours local time

“Look alive,” Ben called down into the control cabin. “We got four coming out of the woods up ahead.”

“We got eight more in the woods,” Sid answered. “It’s spooky. I can give you temperature, range, speed — I don’t know what all these numbers mean. I think that’s the pilot’s shoe size.”

Ben pulled his head down into the cabin, still gripping the rim of what Sid called the skylight with both hands. His eyes couldn’t adjust to the dim interior after the noon glare, but he could see the glow of a dozen screens.

“Shut those things down,” he said. “We don’t know how well those guys can see us.”

He heard a series of slaps and clicks, and the screens went dark. The only light was the smoky grey glow from the heavily polarized windscreen. The kid driving peered straight ahead through the thick ferroglass, oblivious to the activity behind him. Billy, one of the workers at his mines, was driving because that job required the least imagination. Ben pulled his head back up into the sunlight and tried to make balancing at the top of a truncated ladder look like relaxing in the catbird seat. According to the schematics loaded into the computer, he should have been head and shoulders inside a turret mounting a small laser.

The turret, the laser and half the waldos built into the hide of the ancient Cortez explorer had disappeared over the past half millennium. Ben had no clue where to look for them and he didn’t care. All that mattered was the Beagle Active Probe, which was in place and working — just enough — after Ben and Sid took apart the pieces they didn’t recognize, cleaned them all carefully and put them back exactly the way they’d found them.

Ben raised his hand, ordering his little caravan to stop. No use pretending he didn’t see the quartet of ULTRA ’Mechs striding toward them. He didn’t need to see the insignias and markings on them to know these weren’t the same lance that he had encountered in the mining fields a couple of days ago. These ‘Mechs probably hailed from Third Lance, First Company of the Seventy First ULTRA Dragoons, the lance he’d heard about but never seen. Reports had tagged the Second lance moving up to Danson’s Hill, a better place to make a stand and from which to make a quick break. From the way this particular lance had been moving in these last few days, they had a pretty good idea where the Vanderbilt and her people were.

He hoped the Third didn’t field any miners — or historians — among his MechWarriors.

One ’Mech — a barrel chested light machine Ben thought might be a Jackal — stepped ahead of the others and levelled it’s over the shoulder mounted particle cannon at his head. Ben could see from the markings that he’d drawn another Lieutenant. With over ten ULTRA ‘Mechs – a full company, around in the vicinity in a stepped up sweep for the Summer Militia and mercenaries, that meant this was another lance commander. He guessed the habit of having the head man check things out seemed to be common practise among the enemies.

“Name and business,” the ULTRA officer demanded over his loudspeaker.

“Benedikt Howedes, miner,” he shouted cheerfully, fighting the urge to duck down inside the explorer. “Just taking the combines and processor over to the Lattimer place.”

Sarah and Jenny, each perched atop an ore trailer and dressed to risk sunburn and wind chill, smiled and waved at the BattleMech on cue. Ben knew he’d taken a risk betting on male ‘Mech jockeys, but the odds were in his favour. Dressed as they were, he was betting his niece and Sid’s wife were pretty enough to keep the ULTRA Mechjock from looking too closely at the “combine.”

“Stick to the main roads,” the Lieutenant’s voice grated. “When you get where you’re going, stay put until you’re told you can travel.”

“The way Maggie cooks, that’ll be a pleasure,” Ben said as though that were the best news ever. He waved to the departing BattleMechs. A trailer with a conveyor leading into the rear cargo bay wasn’t much of a disguise. But it was enough to fool folks who couldn’t tell a Cortez explorer from a mining truck.

“Howedes, how did you get these readings?”

“Leutnant, my great-great-gran laid some old tech away for a rainy day,” Ben grinned at the radio speaker as though the Summer Militia’s lance commander could see him. Outside the skylight was as dark as the Cortez’s interior. After a day of casting back and forth in front of ULTRA’s positions, he’d sent everything the Beagle Active Probe had recorded over the off frequency the resistance used to communicate with the mercenaries.

“Don’t suppose you tagged the Seventy First’s CO?” the man in his fifty five ton Wolverine’s cockpit asked. “Chop the head off a military group like this and they usually fall apart.”

“No, sir,” Ben admitted. Figuring out that the equipment worked had been the extent of their success. They hadn’t a clue how to analyze the data they’d recorded. He should have rolled his Cortez right up into the middle of the ULTRA force, and then their head honcho would have stepped forward to look them over himself — Ben straightened abruptly, hitting his head on an unnamed box of electrics.

“Sid,” he said, holding his head and wondering if he felt blood. “The earth analysis augers work?”

“We can dig holes and throw rocks with the best of them,” Sid assured him. “What do we need with soil samples?”

Keying open the mike so the mercenaries could hear him as well, Ben laid out his plan.


--- Perspective and Time Change ---

As the 71st ULTRA Dragoons advanced up a gentle slope toward the reported hideout of the Black Stars, one of the lead ULTRA MechWarrior noticed that the ground ahead had been dug up and strewn about. Suspecting vibrabombs, Captain Simon Mercer’s Anvil moved to examine the freshly dug ground more closely. Finding no mines, an irritated Commanding Officer of the 71st Dragoons gave the order to advance. The miner’s trick had succeeded, however, for Captain Mercer had identified herself to the watching Summer Militia and Black Stars by moving to investigate the supposed minefield. An entire BattleMech lance and a squad of infantry with support weapons trained its weapons on the ULTRA commander as the lance from the Seventy First moved within range. In the space of within twenty seconds, Captain Mercer’s ’Mech suddenly collapsed under concentrated fire from its hidden enemies, the above average armour on the sixty ton Free Worlds Defense Industries design no match against such a barrage of firepower. The sudden loss of their commander demoralized the warriors of the 71st ULTRA Dragoons as if they had been set upon by a full battalion of enemies. Two of them moved forward, the hand actuators on the Wraith and Shockwave allowing them to physically haul their crippled commander back in retreat.

From his hidden position, Konstantin rose, an empty SRM launcher discarded beside him. With any luck, the Commander of the 71st would be hurt badly enough to bring down the ULTRA unit’s fighting ability to a negligible level. More importantly, this attack should reel in the other ULTRA forces not going after the Bloody Marauders – and allow the Summer Militia Recon Lance and his Recon Alpha to escape to another part of the Northern Polar continent of Aberdale, maybe even the City of Mount Breighton itself.

The Black Star grinned at the possible irony of ULTRA searching the countryside for him while they actually hid in the city itself. Never turn your back on an enemy, the ancient maxim went. What if they didn’t know that the enemies are right behind them?

[Escudero]

Aboard the Event Horizon
Approaching Nadir Point
0725 Hours Ship-board Time, 2 November 3091


The force of Gs was in the opposite direction now as it had been on the way to the jump point that would take them to the Gacrux system, of which Kaden knew next to nothing.  Little more than that it was in the Skye Province of the Alliance and now sitting near a threatened border.  Kaden ‘lay’ against the wall where the sense of gravity generated by the ship’s deceleration towards the jump point was pushing him against what was sometimes a wall.  He stared across the room lazily, imagining what he might encounter in the Summer system once they got there.  Already, elements of the Black Stars were in system and supposedly in grave danger, though they were mostly people Kaden didn’t know.  It was hard for him to get excited or worried about that, but he had no shortage of excitement.

When he thought about what would be his first real action he couldn’t help but conjur up dramatic images from aerospace holovids.  He knew that was probably very far from reality, especially the ones produced for movies and series.  But, still, the thirst for glory in him kept him from brushing those kinds of images completely aside.

Kaden closed his eyes, his hands gently clasped over his stomache as he felt the sensation of the ship’s perpetual deceleration pressing against him at roughly what would be the pull of the Earth he had arrived at and left for the first time not too long ago.  He could almost feel the soft, warm glow of Sol on his face when he thought of it there in the Stars’ ship.  Part of him wished he could have stayed there.  But his thirst for adventure was still stronger than his longing for a peaceful and easy life.

“All hands, strap down in preparation for jump” came the first officer’s voice over the loudspeakers.  “About fifteen minutes or so.”

Kaden opened his eyes and pushed himself towards the nearest chair to secure himself nonchalantly.  The ship was no longer decelerating now, but drifting towards the JumpShip that would carry them to the rendezvous system he imagined.  It was too bad fighters couldn’t jump on their own he thought while he waited to be thrown across a handful of lightyears to the Gacrux system.

[Cricket]

Tactical Operations Center
Seeker Class Dropship – Kerensky’s Soul
Mountain Lake Landing Zone
Summer
Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Republic Army
7 January, 3091
0717 hours, local time

Elijah and the Bloody Marauders had completed the Lyran Alliance’s Recon Raid contract on Summer.  The Bloody Marauders had been asked by Colonel Zhang Zi Long to stay for an Offensive Campaign against the Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Republic Army defenders on Summer.  Elijah had decided to have the Bloody Marauders join the Sharp Shooters on the Offensive Campaign contract.  With his decision, the Bloody Marauders would be committed to supporting the other Black Stars’ sub-units.  Elijah was still waiting for the salvage report from the completion of the Summer’s Recon Raid contract.

Elijah had stopped by the mess and grabbed a cup of coffee and headed up to the Tactical Operations Center.  It was his second office and most officers knowing that he would be there.  He seated himself at his normal chair at the holo-tank.  He was carrying his datapad that he turned on after seating himself.  When the datapad completed booting up, he opened the Bloody Marauders’ TO&E file.

Elijah also brought up the message from the Black Stars’ Cell.  The message contained information about the Black Stars selecting a possible landhold in the Lyran Alliance.  The message requested that the sub-unit commanders to list their choices for a possible Lyran Alliance landhold.  The message also presented what forces of the Black Stars that would be used for the defense of the landhold.  Marius had replied that he and his sub-unit would assume command of the landhold.  Elijah responded to the message stating that the Bloody Marauders would be also providing some of its forces for the landhold defense.  Elijah had added that he would provide exact content when the Black Stars were awarded their landhold.

Elijah looked over the TO&E of the Bloody Marauders.  He was looking at making some changes to the unit configurations.  He was thinking that the Beta Battalion would be a significant force for the defense of the landhold.  Plus he was thinking of adding a mech company to the defense force.

Elijah reflected on the fact that the Summer Militia had been destroyed except for a single lance.  During recon missions, the Bloody Marauders had located destroyed Militia mechs.  Elijah had decided to retrieve these nonfunctioning mechs.  He then had tasked the technicians to see if the mechs were repairable or used for parts.

Elijah returned to viewing the Bloody Marauders TO&E.  He figured that he would be making some changes but that the changes would come after the Black Stars departed Summer.  He started making changes.  He reduced the number of battle armor squads in Alpha Battalion.  He decided that the two Winter Hunters Trinaries would only have one Nova and two stars.  He figured that Beta Battalion would mainly consist of two battle armor companies and Delta Company.  He then saved them as an alternate data file.

Elijah then started reviewing the communication reports from the various Black Stars’ sub-units.  The Sharp Shooters were now on planet along with the Glengarry Irregulars.  Elijah figured a few other sub-units might be showing up with this joint effort.


Tactical Operations Center
Fortress class dropship – Flaming Shield
Iron Gauntlet Task Force
High Orbit
Summer
Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Republic Army
7 January, 3091
1011 hours, local time

Kaptain Damad Sandaker, the Lyran Alliance Ambassador to the MHB, was sitting in the command center of his assigned task force.  He had just turned 42 and had touches of white appearing in his brown hair.  He was a dedicated officer and reported directly to the Archon.
Kaptain Sandaker had forced the LAAF Command to release the remaining Black Stars sub-units so they could perform the new contract.  He despised the mindset that was being replaced in the Lyran Alliance.  He had also placed his personal unit, the Iron Gauntlet, at the disposal of the Black Stars if they needed his support.

Kaptain Sandaker had a fleet of dropships at his disposal.  The first dropship of the fleet was a Fortress class dropship, the ‘Flaming Shield’.  The second dropship of the fleet was an Okinawa class dropship, the ‘Legonnaire’.  The third and fourth dropships of the task force were two Achilles class dropships, the ‘Balista’ and the ‘Spartan’.  The fifth dropship of the task force was an Intruder class dropship, the ‘Fourth Horseman’.  The five dropships were transported by a specially modified Star Lord class jumpship, the ‘Pegasus’.

Sandaker’s Iron Gauntlet contained two companies and two special operations platoons.  The first company possessing a Battlemaster C, two Victors 9Bs, a Zeus 9T, four Falconers, a Wolverine 9S, a Griffin 6S, and two Hatchetmen 6D.  The second company possessing a Rommel –G, three Rommel –Hs, four Patton –SBs, and four Myrmidons.  The first special operations platoon consists of 3 Nighthawk powered armor squads and 3 Nightstalker VTOLs.  The second special operations platoon consists of 4 infantry squads.  The dropship fleet carries an Aerospace fighter squadron of Eisensturm Prime heavy class fighters, squadron of Stuka D7s, squadron of Transit 13Gs, and a squadron of Morgenstern As.

Sandaker had ordered one squadron of aerospace fighters to patrol at low orbit.  The patrol squadron would be rotated every four hours with the other squadrons.  The two Achilles assault class dropships were positioned at each polar cap.  The Fortress class dropship was ready to burn planet side at a moments notice.

Kaptain Sandaker had sent a communications message to Colonel Zhang Zi Long to inform him that if he needed the Iron Gauntlet, all he had to do was ask.  Sandaker only now was to wait for the signal from the ground forces.


Bloody Marauders’ outer perimeter
Mountain Lake Landing Zone
Summer
Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Republic Army
7 January, 3091
1349 hours, local time

Second Lieutenant Daffne Sanders was sitting in her Darter Scout Car and monitoring the outer perimeter’s center section.  Suddenly, the sensor monitor started signalling an intruder detected.  Daffne looked to see the exact coordinates of the alarming sensor.

Daffne informed the Tactical Operations Center about the possible intruder.  She then requested for a confirmation.  The Tactical Operations Center confirmed the request.  The Tactical Operations Center informed Elijah about the sensor report.

The Tactical Operations Center notified Lieutenant Annie Samons.  With the alert, Annie sprinted to her Nightshade VTOL.  The technicians had started the VTOL’s engine and performed a final flight check.  Annie quickly double checked the Nightshade.  She then climbed into the cockpit and strapped herself in.  After checking her control panel, she lifted off.  The Nightshade climbed into the sky and low across the terrain.  Once in the air, Annie powered up her weapon system and activated her Guardian ECM suite.  Annie headed toward the coordinates provided by Daffne.

While waiting for the confirmation of a possible intruder, Daffne continued monitoring the sensor network.  Daffne received word that the Nightshade was deployed to investigate.  Daffne had worked with Annie before and figured that Annie would be traveling flank speed to the coordinates.  The sensor network started alarming at the sensors next to the first alarmed sensor.

Daffne reported the additional sensor alarms to the Tactical Operations Center.  Daffne then switched to the frequency used by Annie in her Nightshade.

“Darter Actual to Nightshade Actual” Daffne announced.

“Nightshade Actual here.  Go ahead Darter Actual.” Annie responded.

“Nightshade, two additional sensors have detected possible intruders.” Daffne informed.

“Copy that.  Will do an approach from the rear.  Swinging wide to avoid hitting them head on.” Annie answered.

“Roger.  Will keep you informed if any additional sensors alarm.” Daffne informed.

“Going to radio silence until possible intruders viewed and identified.  Nightshade out.” Annie stated.

“Copy that.  Darter Actual out.” Daffne responded.

Daffne returned to monitoring the sensor network.  Daffne hoped that Annie would be able to surprise the possible intruders.  Daffne knowing that if the intruders were hostile and fired upon the Nightshade, the Nightshade would be destroyed quickly.  But Daffne knowing the skills of Annie, figured Annie would be safe.

Annie swung her Nightshade around to the east and continued at flank speed.  Once she was south of the sensor network, she turned the Nightshade to the north and headed toward the first sensor coordinates.  Since she was flying over open plains, she dropped the Nightshade down to 5 meters off the ground.

As she closed on the first sensor, she noticed that the ground had sections that were torn loose.  She started twisting her Nightshade just before laser beams and long range missiles streaked toward the Nightshade.  The ground around her Nightshade erupted from missiles exploding and laser beams burning the ground.

Annie peeled of to her left and at flank speed.  She swung back around and hovered since she was now out of the tank weapon ranges.  She activated her helmet microphone.

“Nightshade Actual to TOC.” Annie announced.

“This is TOC.  Go ahead Nightshade Actual.” Tactical Operations Center communications officer responded.

“Have been fired upon by Galleon and Stygian tanks.  They are identified as the 133rd ULTRA Armored company.  They are headed northward.  Suspect base has been comprimised.  Orders?” Annie informed and asked.

“Trail the tanks but keep out of their weapon range.  Marauder Actual is sending a reception party their way.” Tactical Operations Center communications officer answered.

“Roger that.  Nightshade Actual out.” Annie responded.

“TOC out.” Tactical Operations Center communications officer stated.

Annie started following the 133rd ULTRA Armored company at a distance.  She kept the Tactical Operations Center informed as to their progress.


Karpinski Pass
Mountain Lake Landing Zone
Summer
Unified Leadership of the Tikonov Republic Army
7 January, 3091
1524 hours, local time

Major Aleksei had received notification from the Tactical Operations Center and the orders from Elijah.  Major Aleksei alerted the 1st Winter Hunters Trinary, the 2nd Winter Hunters Trinary, and the Striker Company.  Major Aleksei then briefed Captain Christine, Captain Spiers, and Captain Corey.  The three mech companies loaded up and moved out.  Both Winter Hunters Trinaries were transporting one star of elementals each.

Major Aleksei was being kept briefed on the progress of the 133rd ULTRA Armored company.  Major Aleksei intended to ambush the ULTRA company at the Karpinski pass that was the first in a series of mountain passes.  The mechs were moving at 86 kilometers per hour.  Major Aleksei ordered Captain Spiers to move ahead and secure the pass.  Striker Company surged ahead of the two Winter Hunters Trinaries.

Captain Spiers and the Striker Company arrived at the southern end of Karpinski pass.  Captain Spiers directed his company to search the pass for any clues about the ULTRA tanks.  The mechs searched and reported that the pass was clear.  Captain Spiers reported back to Major Aleksei informing him of the situation.

Major Aleksei informed Captain Spiers to take defensive positions and remain hidden in case the ULTRA tanks appeared.  Captain Spiers instructed Master Sergeant Darcey to position her Raptor II up high and to report any tanks spotted.  Master Sergeant Darcey moved her Raptor II up along the eastern slope of the pass and located a vantage point on the slope.  Once in position, Master Sergeant Darcey activated her reflective camouflage armor.  Her mech seemed to disappear on the slope.

Captain Spiers moved the Alpha Lance to the western side of the pass and positioned themselves behind some boulders.  Captain Spiers ensured that he activated his Spector’s Guardian ECM suite.  Lieutenant McCormick moved her Beta Lance to the eastern side of the eastern side.  She positioned the Beta Lance behind some boulders.  Lieutenant McCormick then double checked her Spector’s Guardian ECM suite.

After a while, Major Aleksei and the two Winter Hunters Trinaries arrived at the northern end of the Karpinski pass.  The two Novas moved forward and dropped off the elementals in the center of the pass.  Each star of elementals positioned themselves to each side of the pass.  The mechs in the Novas returned to their Trinary.  The Trinaries positioned themselves at the northern part of the pass.  The mechs were just below the downward side of the slope.

< 133rd ULTRA Armored Company >

Captain Nixon was riding in his Stygian tank and looking out the periscope to view the terrian that his tank company was passing.  He checked to see if his company of 16 tanks were maintaining formation.  He was eagerly waiting to get his revenge on the Lyran scum who attack his unit a month earlier.

Captain Nixon recalled how it took the ULTRA technicians almost two weeks to repair the damages done to his tanks.  The strafing, bombing, and mech weapons had done their devastation.  He had to press several technicians into service to be the crew of a Stygian since the original crew had been killed in the attack on the Sub-capital gun emplacement.

The Colonel had ordered Captain Nixon to engage any forces to the north of the capital city.  They had identified several areas that a hostile force could use as a temporary base.  They were headed to the first location, a mountain lake area.  It would take two days driving to reach the mountain lake.

After traveling for most of the first day, Captain Nixon and his armored company encountered a VTOL.  The battle computer identified the VTOL as a Nightshade.  The Nightshade had approached their rear and was only 5 meters off the ground.  Captain Nixon and his tankers had engaged the Nightshade but the Nightshade pilot showed exceptional skills in avoiding the lasers and missiles from tanks.

Captain Nixon figured that the Lyran forces on planet were now keeping tabs on the 133rd ULTRA Armored company as they approached the mountain lake area.  Captain Nixon periodically spotted the Nightshade still following the tanks but maintained a safe distance and stayed out of the tanks’ weapon ranges.  The Nightshade becoming a nagging irritant like a fly.  Captain Nixon was hoping to lose the Nightshade once the tanks reached the mountains.

As the 133rd ULTRA Armored company approached the Karpinski pass, Captain Nixon instructed his eight Stygian tanks to form the center column with his tank platoon leading the way.  The left column consisting of four Galleon tanks.  The right column also consisting of four Galleon tanks.  In addition, the three columns were weaving back and forth so in case they were being targeted.

Captain Nixon talked to each tank and asking if they spotted any possible targets.  He received negative reports.  He instructed his crews to continue observing the area as they entered the Karpinski pass.

The tanks of the 133rd ULTRA Armored company ceased their weaving due to the constrictions of the pass.  They maintained their formation as they progressed.  Their sensors clear with a little static.

Then all hell broke loose.


Rank & Name: Primus Sarcina Rector (Colonel) Kasumi 'Badger' McKenna
Position: Black Wolf Rangers Brigade Executive Officer
Assigned Battlemech: Mad Cat Mk II
Assigned Unit: Black Wolves Rangers 2nd Ranger Expeditionary Force – Storm Wolves
Black Wolf Rangers Mercenary Brigade
Titles: Knight Protector of Cimeron and Baroness of the Aracas Providence

Rank & Name: Lieutenant Colonel Elijah 'Cricket' Callahan
Position: Battalions Commanding Officer
Assigned Battlemech: Victor VTR-9B "Night Shadow"
Assigned Unit: Bloody Marauders’ Command Company,
Bloody Marauders Battalions,
sub-unit Black Stars Mercenary Regiment

Rank & Name: Tai-i (Captain) Reece 'Budda's Fist' Kimura
Assigned: Narukami Heavy Tank
Assigned Unit: Dragon Army Lance
Assigned Company: Steel Dragon
Razan's Ronins

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