The Virginia War - Meeting Engagement

[Trace Coburn]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

STAR LEAGUE AND ALLIES

STAR LEAGUE REGULAR ARMY
General Trish Ebon – Commanding General (acting), SLDF 19^th Army
  (Roselyn Sánchez)
Major Misty Katsuragi – S-2, 331^st Royal BattleMech Division
  (TBD)

STAR LEAGUE NAVY
Admiral (acting) Sebastian Hennesy – Fleet Admiral (acting), SLN 19^th Fleet
  (Fred Ward)
Captain Patrick Nordstrom – Captain, SLS Bismark
  (TBD)


UNION OF SOVEREIGN REPUBLICS – CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES
Dr. Arianwen Svetlanova – President of the USR
  (Christina Hendricks)

UNION ARMY
Colonel Jeanne Durandal – Joint Intelligence Section Nine (Cyber-Warfare)/J-2, 19^th Army SLDF
  (Major Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex (as a brunette))
Captain Beatrice “Hammer” Kuznetsov – OC F Company, 432^nd Ensenadan Hussar Battalion
  (Anna Torv)
WO2 Olivia “Succubus” Bella – CSO, “Firebat Black One”, 432^nd Ensenadan Hussar Battalion
  (TBD)

STRIKE COMMAND, UNION FLEET
Rear-Admiral Louis Halburton – OC Second Squadron, UFS
  (Adm. Louis Halberton, OMNI, Gundam SEED)
Captain Maria Ramius – Commander, USV Archangel
  (Cdr. Murrue Ramius, OMNI, Gundam SEED)
Captain-Lieutenant Natalya Bazhukova – First Officer, USV Archangel
  (Lt. Natarle Badgiruel, OMNI, Gundam SEED)
Junior Midshipman (Signals) Milia Howe – Communications watch-specialist, USV Archangel
  (P.O. Miriallia Hawe, OMNI, Gundam SEED)


(This list will be expanded and updated as necessary.)

[Trace Coburn]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

RENEGADE LEGIONS

FREI SORENISCHE HEER
Kommandant Andrew Waldfeld – OC, II/233. Bataillon, 23. Jäger Division
  (Commander Andrew Waldfeld, ZAFT, Gundam SEED)
Hauptmann Atherton “Athrun” Zoeller – OC 5./II Kompanie, 233. Jäger Regiment
  (Athrun Zala, ZAFT, Gundam SEED)
Leutnant Lunamaria “Luna” Hawke – OC C Platoon, 5./II Kompanie, 233. Jäger Regiment
  (Lunamaria Hawke, ZAFT, Gundam SEED Destiny)
Fähnrich Isaac Giulio – MechWarrior, D (command) platoon, 5./II Kompanie, 233. Jäger Regiment
  (Yzak Joule, ZAFT, Gundam SEED)
Fähnrich Deacon Elfman – MechWarrior, D (command) platoon, 5./II Kompanie, 233. Jäger Regiment
  (Dearka Elsman, ZAFT, Gundam SEED)
Fähnrich Niccolo “Nicol” Amalfi – MechWarrior, D (command) platoon, 5./II Kompanie, 233. Jäger Regiment
  (Nicol Amalfi, ZAFT, Gundam SEED)

FREI SORENISCHE KRIEGSRAUMFLOTTE
Käpitan der Sterne Frederick Adler – Captain, FSK Schwarzwald
  (Frederick Ades, Captain, ZAFT warship Vesalius, Gundam SEED)


(This list will be expanded and updated as necessary.)

[Trace Coburn]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

PRINCIPALITY OF SALERNO

Ettore IV di Cavaretta – Principe (Prince) of Salerno
  (Danny Nucci)
Jacob Kane – Lord Commissioner, Royal Commission for Peacekeeping and the Gehennan Restoration
  (Joseph D. Kucan)
Frederico IV d’Amalfi – Duca (Duke) d’Amalfi, Archduke of Acadia
  (Armand Assante)
Lazzaro Morelli – Conte (Count) di Trachtenburg
  (Peter Jurasik)


(This list will be expanded and updated as necessary.)

[Trace Coburn]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CYLONS

CYLON PROTECTORATE
Seven – Alexis Denisof
Nine – Sarah Michelle Gellar
Ten – Nicholas Brendon
Eleven – Alyson Hannigan
Twelve – Charisma Carpenter


CYLON ‘REPUBLIC’
One – Dean Stockwell
Two – Callum Keith Rennie
Three – Lucy Lawless
Four – Rick Worthy
Five – Matthew Bennett
Six – Tricia Helfer
Eight – Grace Park

(This list will be expanded and updated as necessary.)

[Trace Coburn]

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CLANCY’S WORLD

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Dr. John Patrick “Jack” Ryan, Ph.D – POTUS (“SWORDSMAN”)
  (Alec Baldwin?)
Dr. Caroline “Cathy” Muller Ryan, MD – FLOTUS (“SURGEON”)
  (Lindsay Frost)
John Patrick Ryan Jr. (“SHORTSTOP”)
  (TBD)
Olivia “Sally” Ryan (“SHADOW”)
  (Elisha Cuthbert)
Kathleen Rose “Katie”/“Kate” Ryan (“SANDBOX”)
  (TBD)
Kyle Daniel Ryan (“SPRITE”)
  (TBD)
Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Robert Jefferson “Robby” Jackson, USN (ret.) – U.S. President-Elect (“TOMCAT”)
  (who else but his cousin Samuel L.?)
Cecilia Jackson – U.S. First Lady-to-be (“TALENT”)
  (TBD)

General Marion Diggs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (“”)
  (TBD)
Scott Adler, Secretary of State (“EAGLE”)
  (TBD)
Dr. Benjamin Goodley, National Security Advisor (“CARDSHARP”)
  (TBD)
Tony Bretano, Secretary of Defence (“THUNDER”)
  (TBD)
Mary Patricia “Mary-Pat/MP” Kaminsky Foley, Director of Central Intelligence (“OAKLEY”)
  (TBD)
Brian “JadeHellbringer/Hellbie” Barton, ‘Head’ of CIA/State Department Working Group ‘Turkish Prison Crew’ (“COLORADO”)
  (...)
George Winston, Secretary of the Treasury (“TRADER”)
  (TBD)

Special Agent Andrea Price-O’Day, US Secret Service, Head of Presidential Detail
  (TBD)
Special Agent Yvette Sanderson, US Secret Service, bodyguard to “SHADOW”
  (TBD)
Special Agent Mike Brennan, US Secret Service, bodyguard to “SHORTSTOP”
  (TBD)
Special Agent Caitlin “Kate” Todd, US Secret Service, bodyguard to “SANDBOX”
  (Sasha Alexander)
Special Agent Amita Anandasayanan, US Secret Service, bodyguard to “SPRITE”
  (TBD)


RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Sergey Nikolay’ch Golovko – President of the Russian Federation
  (TBD)
Marshal Gennady Iosifovich Bondarenko, Russian Army – SACEUR
  (TBD)


(This list will be expanded and updated as necessary.)

[Trace Coburn]

EARTH (RYAN-VERSE)
November 12, 2008

  The election was fought hard and well, but surprisingly cleanly by both sides, and the results were too close to call... until ten days before the voting-booths opened, when the conservative candidate returned home to bury his father.  A surprise amongst the other mourners was, of all people, Charles Worthington Pickett, once Grand Kleegle of the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan.  Pictures and video-clips of Pickett not only attending the funeral of the Reverend Hosiah Jackson, but eagerly shaking hands with Robby Jackson and promising the man his vote, weren an utter bombshell to the Klan movement as a whole – and sank the other candidate’s campaign as efficiently as a torpedo.  The results on polling day were so clear-cut that Robby accepted his opponent’s concession even before the close of voting.

  It’s the day America elects its first-ever black President.  Some commentators call it ‘the day the Earth shifted’.

  They’re more correct than they know.

  The other ‘occurrence’ to happen to that Earth that day is effectively invisible to all on the world’s surface, as the laws of physics rarely play favourites.  By the time it reaches an observer on Earth – the exact centre of the spherical volume it encloses – the momentary, eye-searing multi-coloured pulse of light will be precisely four years old.  The inhabitants of Earth will not observe either The Pulse, or any inkling of the irrevocable, massive shift in the apparent star-patterns which immediately follows it, for more than fourteen hundred T-days.

  Of course, while discovering a truth for yourself is often infinitely preferable to any alternative, there are many other ways to be disabused of one’s ignorance – and innocence.
 

- * - * - * - * -

‘NAPLES’ STAR SYSTEM, CAVARETTA EXPANSE
December 27, 2828

  The initial surveys of the Cavaretta Expanse in the twenty-second century declared Naples utterly unsuitable for human habitation; even before the arrival of the Star League, the system’s jump-points were seeded with buoys constantly transmitting a warning about the ‘habitable’ planet’s possessing a biosphere that was EXTREMELY HOSTILE!!! to human visitors.  Even without translation from the original French, recordings of the survey party’s last video transmission were graphic – gruesome – testimony to that hostility; indeed, more than six centuries later, folk throughout the Expanse knew the creatures that had slaughtered that party by its leader’s name.  (It’s easy to imagine that of all the distinctions and honours she earned in her career as a xenobiologist, this was one that Doctor Christine Zerg probably would have chosen to forego.)

  Everybody knows that Naples is nothing more than a recharge-stop on the way to some place more inviting (or at least less voracious), so no-one in the Expanse pays it much attention.  The Principality of Gehenna ignore it because they already hold (albeit shakily) two systems that give them jump-routes into the Union of Sovereign Republics; the Union, and more recently the SLDF’s reactivated Nineteenth Army, simply don’t have the WarShips to picquet Naples in addition to supporting their recent counter-offensives on Ensenada and Highside.

  On the other hand, scouts on both sides sometimes use it as a less-observed route to get into (or out of) a more valuable system, so what happens six weeks after Robby Jackson’s landslide election is, in some ways, inevitable.

  Of course, it could have involved rather more pleasant folk than the actual event does....

- * - * - * - * -

‘NAPLES’ ZENITH JUMP-POINT
RGN Cavaretta’s Vengeance (Visconte-II-class frigate)
December 27, 2828

  “What the hell?”

  Commissionare-Capitano de Fregata Salvatore Ruffio, of the Royal Commission for Peacekeeping and the Gehennan Reclamation, stares at his repeater-displays in manifest bafflement.  “Navigation, call up our jump coordinates!”

  The duty navigator obediently pulls up the data, as puzzled as his Captain.  “Sir, programmed jump coordinates place us directly on the Naples system zenith jump-point, as ordered.”

  “Then where are the Naples quarantine buoys, and why the hell is the system’s third planet inhabited?” Ruffio snarls, using a gentle spacer’s push to make the short null-gee crossing to the navigation station.  “God and his Prophet, I don’t think I’ve ever seen RF-chatter that dense!”

  “Sir, Comm-Scan analysis is running, but I’m reading RF traffic across most of the spectrum, in multiple languages,” the sensor-chief confirms.  “Preliminary data-filtration indicates a planetary population in the billions, Captain.”

  “Sir....”  The navigator has turned a star-spotter telescope on the occupied world, and he’s frowning deeply.  “I’d almost swear those continental patterns match those of... Earth.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous: Earth’s a fairy-tale!” Ruffio snorts.  “The damned ferals made it up to excuse their squatting on worlds they stole from us.”

  “I’m only telling you what I can see, sir.”

  “Nonetheless....” Ruffio muses, crossing to the central holo-tank to pull up a view of the Cavaretta Expanse.  “All this RF traffic means a technological society – a rich society – and a populous one at that.  Whoever they are, and however they managed to establish themselves in Naples so quickly, these ferals are squatting atop all manner of precious resources.  Resources they’re stealing from their rightful owners: Cavaretta’s Children.”

  After a moment, he turns back to his navigator.  “Alberto, deploy the sail and begin recharge operations: we’ll be jumping back to Acadia in six days.  You have my authority to accelerate charging to meet that timetable.”  His gaze falls upon his communications officer.  “Vincenzo, until then, your people and Carmine’s will continue monitoring planetary communications and data-nets: I want you to soak up everything you can about this world – especially its defences.  And warm up the tachyon pulse modulator: the Lord Commissioner and the Prince need to hear about this now.”

- * - * - * - * -

CAVARETTA CITY, SALERNO, PRINCIPALITY OF GEHENNA
Private audience chambers, Palace of the Prince
December 31, 2828

  “An inhabited star-system just appeared in the place of Naples?” the Prince repeats incredulously.  “If this is a joke, I’m not laughing.”

  The Lord Commissioner’s manner is as urbane and charismatic as ever, completely unruffled by the displeasure of a man most Salernans see as the descendent of their society’s prophet.  “I’m making no jest, My Liege.  Our records confirm that this world was not present during our last reconnaissance two months ago, so clearly something... extraordinary has taken place in the system.  Ruffio’s preliminary report contains a preliminary analysis of the planet’s RF traffic; their own open sources indicate a planetary population of more than six billion, all of them ferals, most of them divided and at each other’s throats.  Their technology is primitive, far below that even of the Sorens: there are no meaningful space-stations in the planet’s orbit, no fusion powerplants on its surface, no orbital defences.  It appears they possess no weapons more advanced than slug-throwing rifles and primitive, lightly-armoured tanks – certainly nothing which can stand against our BattleMechs.”

  “The same was true of the Sorens, as I recall, and they mauled the Second Genarro Guards before being bombarded into submission,” Ettore IV di Cavaretta mutters sourly, considering the holographic map of the Expanse that dominates the room.  Massachusetts and Highside now both glow the blue of the accursed Union of Sovereign Republics.

  “That is true, My Liege,” the Lord Commissioner concedes.  “However, Second Genarro was a single Field Army, armed only to the lacklustre standards of a Ducal House and led with shocking ineptitude.  The four Peacekeeper Legions I have designated as the operation’s lead wave have the finest training, the latest equipment... and they will have orbital support not only from their own fighters but also from two squadrons of the Peacekeeper Fleet.  This... ‘replacement world’, this ‘Nantucket’ as Ruffio has dubbed it for some strange reason, cannot hope to resist such a force.”

  “The same was said of Ensenada,” the Prince drawls.  “And not only have My Dukes failed to take that world, they have been driven from it.”

  “Then consider this, My Liege: until now, the war against the ferals has been a continuation of the feuds between the seven Dukes fighting it.  Their squabbling and incompetence led to the defeat on Ensenada, when united and decisive action could have Reclaimed the whole Massachusetts system years before now.  Even now, the wills of the Dukes are wavering, their thoughts more on preserving their holdings than defeating the enemies of Cavaretta’s Will; I even have my suspicions that the Acadian-born weaklings among them may be pondering an open break from not only the Council of Dukes, but from the Crown itself!

  “But if you take swift, decisive action now, My Liege – if Peacekeeper and Royal forces strike at Nantucket – not only will we win the day against the ferals who currently infest its surface and consume its riches, riches which rightfully belong to you, but you will demonstrate the same force of will which makes you the true Scion of Cavaretta.  Mindanao is useless to us as a forward base, and Ferretti’s hold on the Sorens is slipping by the day.  If we take Nantucket, the Dukes will have no choice but to submit to your leadership, to acknowledge your primacy over them... to make the reforms you need to make the Cavaretta Throne not a mere first among equals, but supreme over all others.  By the time the Union realises what’s happened, we’ll hold the system in unassailable strength, and the Dukes will have little choice but to cede all their forces to your command for a renewed offensive against Massachusetts.  With all Salerno united against them and the industry of Nantucket to fill our armouries, even these ‘Sovereign Republics’ and the fiction they call ‘Nineteenth Army’ cannot hope to withstand us!”

  Cavaretta says nothing, considering the holomap for a long moment; when he speaks again, he doesn’t look back at the Commissioner.  “But under whose leadership will the Dukes be united?”

  “I don’t understand, My Liege.”

  Don’t you?  “This is your plan, Commissioner, and your forces would spearhead this invasion; My Royal Legions will not land until the second wave, and My generals will command only their local theatres; the pacification effort as a whole is under the command of a Commissioner-General.  So who truly leads this crusade that shall unite all Salerno, Lord Commissioner: Me... or you?”

  “I am but an extension of Your will, My Liege.  And through me, Your will shall be done.”

  “Yes: My will shall be done.”  The Prince turns sharply, fixing the Commissioner with a piercing gaze.  “Never.  Forget.  That.”

  “I never have, My Liege!” is the response: urbane as always, yet faintly hurt.

  The Prince says nothing for a long moment, his eyes unreadable as he regards his chosen right hand.  “Very well, Lord Commissioner.  Begin embarking your Legions: Operation PANETTIERE is approved.  Salerno united; the Expanse Reclaimed!”

  “One vision; one purpose!”
 

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NOTES:
  This story is essentially a (slightly rimmed-down) take on Plot Tribble #2901 – The Great Battletech Crossover Royale.  In this case, it’s the theatre of war from my Ense Petit Placidam, with some ‘special guests’ from another fan-fic and another canon.  (There will be no other full-blown crossovers.  A lot of references, pop-culture and otherwise, and some ‘fusion’ characters used in the same spirit as evilauthor does it, but no other real crossovers.  ;))
  I should really be paying attention to my other WIPs, but maybe starting this will let me (re-)develop some creative momentum.  ::)

  Originally, I thought that this would be a spin-off from Ense Petit Placidam – an AU of my AU, so to speak – but eventually I decided ‘the heck with it’.  This is the official continuation from the events of Ense Petit Placidam – both those I’ve posted and those yet-to-be-written – and as such will conform to my style therein; this includes my writing in present tense.  Anyone who doesn’t like that element of my writing style will simply have to deal with it.  :P

[Trace Coburn]

HAVEN, SVOBODA
Headquarters, 19^th Army, Star League Defence Force
January 3, 2829, Terran Standard Time

  General Trish Ebon sighs in relief as she doffs her AR glasses.  And, behold: I have an entire twenty-three minutes free before my next scheduled AR-meeting.  There are so many things I could do with such a rare luxury -

  Her intercom buzzes.

  - including kiss it goodbye.  She sighs again, picking up the inter-office ’phone.  “What is it, Jacobs?”

  {“Your Intelligence chief would like a moment, ma’am,”} her assistant says apologetically.  {“She says it’s urgent.”}

  “Everything is urgent these days, query-affirmative?  Very well: send her in.”

  Apart from the bar that now tops her rank-chevrons, Jeanne Durandal hasn’t changed since Ebon first met her aboard ‘Babylon Station’.  That was only sixteen T-months ago, query-affirmative?  How time flies when you are up to your eyebrows in a multi-planetary war!  Her charcoal-grey uniform is as immaculate as ever, and the blood-red beret of Special Forces infantry tucked through her belt matches the pupils of her otherwise ‘natural-look’ cybereyes.  However, there’s something in her manner that pricks up Ebon’s mental antennae.  “Good afternoon, General.”

  “And to you, Colonel.  What is going on?  I do not think I have ever seen you so agitated.”

  With the door closed behind her, Durandal takes the seat she’s waved into.  “Cryptography’s latest intercepts indicate that something very strange has happened in the Naples system, ma’am.  A Pog frigate arrived in the system a week ago, apparently on a routine sneak-and-peak.  However, in the following five days, it sent encrypted TPM data-bursts back to Salerno every two hours; there haven’t been any more transmissions in the last eleven hours, so the presumption is that the ship has jumped back to Acadia.  Most of those transmissions were coded in the new GC-17-h cipher, so RAPTURE are still working on them, but a couple were in GC-14-c.  Either they’re setting a trap for whoever we might send to investigate, or somebody on board that frigate is too lazy for his own good.”

  “Or too arrogant, Jeanne; they might not realise how easily RAPTURE can break their codes,” Ebon shrugs.  “The transmissions encrypted with 14-Charlie have been broken and translated already, query-affirmative?  So what did they contain?  Presumably the Pogs were not sending all those FTL messages back to Salerno simply to break the monotony of reconnoitering an empty system.”

  “That’s just it, ma’am: they weren’t.”  Even with those words, it takes the experience of long acquaintance to read the consternation behind Durandal’s customary sang-froid.  “The first data-burst was one of the under-encrypted ones, and it contained an initial cosmographic survey report on the system; subsequent transmissions appear to be the raw ‘take’ and preliminary analyses of an ongoing SigInt-collection effort directed against the system’s third planet.”  Seeing the bafflement in Ebon’s eyes, Durandal sets her holoprojector on the office’s coffee-table, slots a data-card into it, then turns back to the General as the projector comes to life.

  Ebon takes one look at the projected graphic - and gives her subordinate/friend a piercing look.  “Jeanne, what is this ‘Clancy’s World’ nonsense?”

  “If I may, ma’am?” Durandal says evenly.  And a shade too innocently.

  Ebon’s eyes narrow in suspicion for an instant – Why do I feel like the poor bastard who just realised a Highlander is about to land on him? - but she nods permission nonetheless.

  Durandal keys her remote, zooming the relevant system, then its third planet, up to fill the projection: the world’s continental patterns are unmistakable to anyone with even the most rudimentary of modern educations.  (Well, except most Salernans, of course, but then what they get isn’t as much education as indoctrination.)  Her next command overlays the planet – Earth? – with a schematic of regional borders.

  No, not regional! Ebon blinks, realising what she’s seeing.  “What.  The.  Hell?”

  “Part of the data the Sallies picked up was a long string of interlinked articles from something called ‘Wikipedia’ – it appears to be a community-maintained equivalent to the Prometheus database.  According to its time-stamps and attached graphics, this is a geopolitical map of the world in question, separated by national borders.”  Durandal takes a deep breath and speaks a sentence she would have called, under any other circumstances, utterly preposterous.  “What you’re seeing, General, is a map of Earth as of two days ago – the first of January, 2009.”

- * - * - * - * -

PETROGRAD, SVOBODA
Government House
January 4, 2829

  “You’re saying that something has somehow... transplanted the Terra system of eight hundred and twenty years ago into the place of Naples?”  At forty-seven, Arianwen Svetlanova is no stranger to the outlandish, but even so, what she’s hearing now is....

  “A version of the Terra system, ma’am,” Colonel Durandal nods.  “We’ve examined their datanet’s publicly-accessible records and identified a large number of major divergences from our own recorded history.”  And now for the real bombshell, she thinks ruefully.  “These divergences are consistent with this Earth’s being... well, their newscasts are waxing euphoric over Robert Jackson being the first man of African descent to be elected President of the United States of America, after spending eight years as the Vice-President to John Patrick Ryan.  The, uh, wide-ranging interests of our cyberminds have helped us identify references to both men in our own history... as characters from an indifferently-successful series of thriller-novels written by an insurance salesman at the end of the twentieth century.  We’re referring to the system by that author’s name as... well, partly as a bulwark against the absurdity.”

  Svetlanova stares at her for several seconds... then looked to General Ebon, who’s showing not a hint of humour... then rests her face in her palm, thumbs a button on her telephone, and doesn’t raise her head when she addresses the usher she’s summoned.  “Henry, could you please bring me a bottle of San Miguel Special Reserve and a glass?  I’m not drunk enough to be having this conversation.”

  {You got it, ma’am!} Tachikoma H-978 chirps eagerly.

  Once he’s gone, Ebon gives her host a sympathetic look.  “For what it is worth, Madam President, I had much the same reaction.”

  Svetlanova stifles a moan.  “Leaving aside how insane this sounds, how the hell is it possible?”

  “An act of God; an accident during an experiment in high-energy physics; perhaps the Void Squid are perpetrating a cosmic prank.” Ebon shrugs.  “I doubt we will ever know, Madam President, and frankly, ‘how’ does not matter.  What does matter is that there is a planet one jump from here with six billion inhabitants – a population half-again that of ‘our’ Earth, I might note! – and none of them have the faintest clue that they have been dropped in the laps of a race of genocidal fanatics.  And if we do not intervene, they will stay ignorant right up to the moment they find themselves waist-deep in Salernan fanatics looking to ‘Reclaim’ them all.”

  Ebon made a meeting with the President of the Union of Sovereign Republics one of her first priorities with good reason: the relationship between the President and Nineteenth Army’s CO is a curious and complicated one, born of the damnable self-importance of the Camerons and the way they organised both the Star League itself and the constraints on this particular ‘protectorate’.  As the commanding general (pro tem) of the recently-reactivated Nineteenth Army, Ebon is commander of all SLDF forces in the Taurian Concordat theatre, to which the Cavaretta Expanse is an administrative adjunct.  As the nominal military governor of the Union of Sovereign Republics, an SLDF protectorate, she has full authority to arm and deploy her troops in whatever fashion she sees fit to fulfill her duties and orders - including setting the feet of her (mostly Union-built) BattleMechs quite firmly on the necks of any Gehennan sonofabitch who gets too uppity.  However, she’s constrained in doing so by both the terms of the original Treaty of Virginia, which formalised the Union’s protectorate status, and long-standing (and now revived) SLDF regulations which subordinate the SLDF to the orders of the Star League Council.  Given the state of affairs between the five surviving Great Houses, that means in practical terms that the SLDF is effectively a ‘higher layer of command’ for the armed forces resisting Gehennan expansionism and places Ebon’s military authority subject to the political judgement of the only (protectorate/non-voting) member of the Council which knows and cared about the situation in the Expanse: the President of the USR.

  All of which leaves General Trish Ebon in the ludicrous position of possessing the (nominal) authority to dictate to the Union’s civilian leadership and military hierarchy... in order to obey the dictates of the Union’s civilian leadership and operate in coordination with its military hierarchy.

  Fortunately, Arianwen Svetlanova isn’t ready to be called a complete idiot, so whenever possible (which is more rarely than she preferred, sadly), she makes a point to stay out of the experts’ way and let them conduct the war as they see fit.  The recent relief of besieged Ensenada and the liberation of Highside certainly vindicated that ‘hands-off’ policy, and even in these, ah, ‘extremely unusual’ circumstances, she isn’t arrogant enough to change it now.  “When do you leave, General, and which of our units will you need?”

  Ebon’s shoulders relax slightly.  “Madam President, I was afraid you would not commit Union forces to such an operation.”

  Svetlanova blinks.  “General, I’m well aware that our troops make up the majority of your Order of Battle.  Did you really think I’d let you go haring off to face a Gehennan invasion-force with only the 331^st and the Renegade Legions?”  She smiles then: melancholy, bitter, worn.  “Besides, after what the Gehennans did on Ensenada and Highside in the name of Reclamation, I can’t stand by and let them try it on a world with four times the Union’s pre-war population.  Not and still sleep at night.”  A bleak expression, showing bared teeth.  “More to the point: we ****** owe the Sallies.”

  “I am well aware of that, Madam President.”  All too aware, for that matter.  Ebon recently inspected one of the ‘Reclamation Facilities’ Nineteenth Army and its allies liberated on the formerly-occupied Ensenadan continent of Nuevo Texas.  The place was of a scale to make the notorious (yet extemporaneous) massacre on Kentares IV look like someone’s quaint little weekend hobby.  She spoke with one of the Svobodan ’Suit-commandos who stormed it, and he insisted that the Peacekeeper guard-force had fought to their last round.

  There are unconfirmed reports that several of those supposed ‘die-hards’ were killed with sidearms, somehow choosing to ‘fight to the death’ even with their wrists and ankles bound.

  Trish Ebon has yet to officially pursue the matter.

  There are rumours that a battalion of Renegade Soren infantry took a satellite Rec-Fac in the next district over, caged the few guards they captured, and ‘accidentally’ left the camp’s armoury of SMGs and machine-pistols unlocked, where the former inmates could get to its contents.  By the time the follow-on MP unit arrived, those former inmates had turned into an ad hoc group of guerrillerros... and there weren’t any live Peacekeepers in the cage.

  Armies generate rumours better than they generate paperwork.

  The Salernan state cult (you can hardly call it a true religion) known as the Society for the Gehennan Reclamation has a sophisticated honour-code for all its practitioners, especially its soldiers, and it’s had four centuries for its teachings to marinate into Salernan society as a whole.  The Expanse and all its worlds have been proclaimed rightful Salernan property by their discoverer, Stefano Cavaretta, and Reclaiming them is a sacred calling placed upon all Salernans: Salernan blood spilled on ‘squatter’ soil purifies it of the ‘blight’ of its ‘feral’ inhabitants; to die fighting in the pursuit of Reclamation is to achieve martyrdom; to surrender or be taken alive by ‘ferals’ is insufferable sacrilege, the purest of damnations.  And Peacekeepers are, by definition, the truest believers in a pure Gehennan society and Reclamation of the Expanse.

  The troopers of Nineteenth Army and its allies take a simple view: ‘if those fanatics really want to die in battle - why should we try to change their minds?’

  And if I can’t give my constituents an armistice for the Orthodox Christmas, at least I’ll be able to offer them a chance to kill Peacekeepers instead.  Svetlanova keys her intercom again.  “Enrique, we’re ready for Ambassador Seven to join us, thank you.”

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NOTES:
  Please note that in the writing of this fic, among the many things I will be rendering down into hamburger will be several of BattleTech’s ‘sacred cow’ mechanical handwaves/assumptions.  Armour will not be perfectly ablative: rather, I’ll be using the ‘Renegade Tech’ rules for armour penetration/degradation.  (They’re downloadable as free .pdfs.  I’ll grant they require some extra handling compared to normal BT mechanics, but they also help with some of the SoD issues.)  There are no ‘magical missile magazines’ in the Expanse, or indeed in this version of the BT universe: everyone uses box-launchers for small, multi-warhead missiles (being LRM-5 and SRM-5 groups), or sometimes heavier Thunderbolt-style missiles (like the Union Javelin and the Salernan Hatchet).  As with Entry With a Bang, weapons will have better range than we see in tabletop play.

  Next chapter: meet a couple of ‘my’ Final Five.  You already know some of them from evilauthor’s Fifth Column, but a couple of them have been... reinterpreted.  And the background evil came up with?  Not entirely complete and/or applicable.  ;)

[Trace Coburn]

FLEET BASE ‘VIRGINIA’, MASSACHUSETTS STAR SYSTEM
Archangel-class ‘battle’cruiser USV Archangel
January 4, 2829

  Captain Maria Ramius pauses for a half-second as she comes through the hatch into Operations, letting the sheer sensual experience of it simply wash over her.  The chatter of crew reports, the soft chime of the sweeping DRADIS, the faint scent of the paint still drying on the bulkheads – the sheer luxury of being able to stand upright while the ship is at relative rest!

  The first Union WarShip built from the keelplates out to incorporate gravity plating and engines derived from Kobolian technology purchased from the Protectorate – including our first indigenously-made hyperlight jump-drive.  The first capital WarShip ever commissioned into the Union Fleet Strike Command.  The flagship of the Union’s Second Strike Squadron.  And he’s mine!  There’s still a distant tinge of giddiness to that last thought.  Archangel isn’t her first command, nor even her first jump-capable one, but he’s by far the largest and most powerful.

  “Commander on deck!” barks the astrogator, a Twelve on exchange from the CPN and wearing the midnight-blue uniform to prove it.  Around the compartment, everyone not focused on a critical task stiffens to a brace.

  “As you were,” Ramius says evenly.  “First Officer, status, please?”

  Captain-Lieutenant Natalya Bazhukova salutes sharply in picture-perfect fashion before replying.  “We’re still working on that glitch in Radar Three, Commander.  Other than that, all stations report ready for departure.”

  “Very well.”  Ramius returns the salute, not letting the younger woman see her inward sigh.  Still so formal, Natalya?  Lord knows I’m grateful for your tactical skills, but for heaven’s sake, take that ramrod at least some of the way out of your spine; The Book doesn’t know it all, especially when it comes to managing people.

  An intercom chimes at the communications station, and after a moment’s conversation, the warrant officer looks up from her screen to Ramius.  “Message from Flag Bridge, Commander: Admiral Halburton’s compliments, and he’d like you to join him there at your first convenience.”

  “Thank you, Howe: please tell him I’m on my way.”

- * - * - * - * -

  As recently as two years ago, there wasn’t a ship in the Union Fleet/Strike Command large enough to spare volume for facilities like Flag Bridge.  Indeed, by then the Pogs had whittled the Union Fleet down so far that even if any of its remaining WarShips were large enough, such a facility would hardly have been needed.

  The arrival of Task Force WOLVERINE changed all that.  General Ebon’s ascension to command of Nineteenth Army allowed her to fulfill certain critical legal criteria which previously prohibited a significant mobilisation of the Union’s industry or populace.  With those impediments removed, the Union was free to begin unlimited construction of ‘offensive military equipment’, both for the SLDF and their own use.

  Not that the hulls we could buy from the Cylons – or capture from the Salernans – were truly bad ships, as such, Ramius muses as she approaches Flag Bridge, absently smiling a greeting to the Strike Marines flanking the hatch.  If nothing else, they taught us things about naval architecture – and warfare – that we would have had difficulty learning without them, and they were lessons we needed to learn to build a proper combat doctrine and vessels like the Archangels.  Those ships were simply too small and too bloody few to support a proper war-effort against an interstellar polity that’s been completing at least six compact-core JumpShips a year since the start of the twenty-sixth century!

  Rear-Admiral Louis Halburton is on the far side of the main holotank as Ramius comes in, discussing the projection’s tactical details with a Seven in civilian clothing; he sees her past the scattering of icons and immediately waves her over.  “Ambassador Seven, I’d like you to meet my flag Commander, Captain Maria Ramius.”

  “Also known as ‘Risky’ Ramius, if memory serves me,” the Cylon half-laughs.

  Ramius shakes the offered hand with a rueful smile.  “It’s nice to meet you, Ambassador.  I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever live down that episode.”  Or if the newsies will ever let me!

  “I’ll grant that it was a novel manoeuvre to perform with a Leatherneck assault-carrier, Captain, especially at such low altitude, but one can hardly argue with the results: as I recall, it wrecked most of a company of Morningstars, prevented a serious reverse for San Rafael’s defenders, and won you the Union Star.”

  “Desperation is the mother of invention, Ambassador.”

  Seven laughs again and looks back to the holotank, suddenly sobering.  “Then I hope your imagination’s ready to be overworked, Captain Ramius, because this affair promises to be desperate indeed.”

  Admiral Halburton’s round, mustachioed face is equally serious.  “We just got the latest updates from Fleet Intelligence, Maria: they say that whatever the Salernans are putting together to invade Clancy’s World, they’ve called in escort units that include the Second, Fourth and Seventh Peacekeeping Flotillas, the Eighth and Tenth Royal Destroyer Squadrons, and the Third Royal Carrier Squadron.”

  “Bozhe moi!” Ramius murmurs.  “If that’s the escort they’re putting together –”

  “– What kind of force will they be dropping on the Clancies, and our troops if the natives accept our offer?” Halburton nods, finishing the shared thought.  “The working assumption is at least three Peacekeeping Legions.”

  And what is our convoy carrying?  The SLDF’s ‘Wolverine Division’, General Salazar’s Fourth Ensenadan Mechanised, and the Twenty-Third Free Soren Jägers.  I believe the official terminology appropriate to facing six-to-one odds is ‘an adverse correlation of forces’.  “In all honesty, Admiral, I hope the Clancies can make a meaningful contribution to their own defence.”

  “That’s where I come in.”  The Ambassador smiles gently.  “Even sanitised as it is, the SLDF’s signals-intelligence regarding this world’s capabilities is making for... shall we say ‘lively’ reading?  Few members of my model are military specialists, and I’m not one of them, but consider this, Captain: Clancy’s World has almost the same level of technology as Soren did when the Salernans invaded them in 2810 – and it has almost fifteen times the Sorens’ population-base, with all the accordant economic and industrial power.

  “Of course, it might not come to a clash of arms.  With a careful approach to the Clancies’ leadership, we hope that they’ll accept not only military assistance but a full alliance with both the Union and the Protectorate, which should deter any Salernan aggression before it’s launched.”

  Ramius blinks again.  “Pardon me, Ambassador, but I’d understood that aside from the UFS/CPN exchange and training programme, the Protectorate was happy to abide by its declaration of neutrality.”

  “Captain, we’re all adults here: we all realise that the Protectorate has always been ‘neutral’ in the Union’s favour.  Not that it was a hard choice to make, given the way the Salernans comport themselves,” Seven notes sourly.  “After the Battle of Veronica, the Salernans know that testing the will of the Protectorate leads directly to a hostile visit from the CPN’s Base Stars.  The Union and SLDF have already thrown back some of the best forces the Salernan Ducal Houses could field; it’s our hope that the combination of that demonstrated capability and the spectre of bringing the Protectorate into the war against them will prompt the Salernans to see reason.”

  “A Gehennan see sense?” Halburton huffs.  “Especially when he sees a prime chance to Reclaim another world?  I wish you the best of luck, Ambassador, and I doubt anyone would be happier than I would if you can manage the trick without any more shooting... but with all respect for your diplomatic talents, I won’t hold my breath.”

  “I’ll grant you it’s unlikely, but nonetheless, if there’s a chance – however slim – that we can avoid visiting our mayhem on a blameless world, I’d say we owe it to ourselves to explore the option.”

  “I do not disagree, Ambassador.”

  After a moment’s silence, Seven smiles crookedly.  “And if my brand of statecraft doesn’t work on the Salernans, I might delegate the lead role to my aide Twelve.”

  Ramius can’t help it: she bursts out laughing so hard that she has to grab the edge of the holotank for balance.  “A Twelve as a chief diplomat, sir?  Aren’t they the model that says ‘Tact is just not saying true stuff’?”

  Seven doffs his glasses – they’re an affectation anyway; all Cylons are engineered for better than perfect vision – and polishs them on one cuff, trying to control a rueful grin. “They’re actually quite good negotiators, once you get accustomed to their... unique approach to diplomatic discourse.”

  “Again, pardon my saying so, sir, but Twelves ‘negotiate’ with people like a railgun shell negotiates with armour-plate.”

  A rating appears at Halburton’s elbow, forestalling more humour.  “Excuse me, Admiral, but there’s a message from the Flag: Admiral Hennesy’s called a pre-departure conference of all squadron commanders and their flag captains at 1700 hours.”

- * - * - * - * -

Virginia Station (Nineteenth Fleet Headquarters)
16:59, January 4, 2829

  Virginia Station is two-thirds finished, if even that, but the command and conference facilities have been in use from the first week those modules were declared pressure-tight.  Like Archangel, its construction incorporates the new, Cylon-supplied gravity plating, and the wonders that does for the station’s habitability are hard to overstate; more to the point, unlike its neighbour, Virginia Station does not contain any Hegemony-proprietary technologies or research facilities, and thus the full range of ‘SLDF-allied’ personnel can be permitted aboard without their proximity to ‘classified systems’ raising security issues.

  The conference facilities have been used often and thoroughly enough by now that their smell is making the transition from ‘drying paint’ to ‘new car’, and the designers tried to provide more than enough space for officers and their staffs not only for the Union Strike Fleet, but for the entirety of Nineteenth Fleet when (and if) it ever reached its pre-Amaris strength.  Even so, the officers at the central table seem packed almost elbow-to-elbow to Ramius’ eyes... though that ‘crowding’ might be an artifact of the visual cacophony.  Most of the officers present wear either the white-over-field-grey of the Union Strike Fleet or the SLN’s recently-instituted white-over-olive-drab, but they’re leavened here and there with the two different versions of midnight-blues that mark the CPN and the Free Soren Star Navy... and a handful of the white-trimmed grey-asparagus signifying NEB or Salernan ‘Renegades’.  I wonder: is this the most eclectic naval force in history, or only within living memory?

  “Attention on deck!” barks the master-at-arms, a bare second before Nineteenth Fleet, SLN, strides through the hatchway beside him.  Almost as one, the assembled officers snap to their feet and salute in their own force’s style.

  Like his Regular Army counterpart/former Khan, Admiral Sebastian Hennesy is younger than one would expect for the rank – he recently turned forty-three – but he’s never shown even a wisp of hesitance or indecision that anyone in this room can remember.  Even when a Victor-II’s missile blew Yukon’s Flag Bridge open to space during the relief of Ensenada, he simply twisted a wire around his shrapnel-shattered left calf as a tourniquet/pressure-seal, hauled himself back into his chair, and continued the fight for another hour before accepting that its outcome was beyond doubt and finally passing command to then-Commodore Halburton.  He’s adjusted to his cybernetic leg with uncommon speed, and even now, standing before his subordinates with set jaw and hard eyes, he resembles nothing so much as a pit-bull eager to be set on a spider-lynx.  “As you were.”

  At Hennesy’s nod, his aide brings the holoprojector to life, showing a local map of the Expanse.  “I am sure you have all read the latest intelligence abstracts, so I will be blunt: the Salernans are committing a major force to the operation against Clancy’s World.  Even with full deployment of the SLN’s heavy ships and Caspars, it is unlikely we could defeat that force in a head-on fight without suffering losses that would leave the Union vulnerable to renewed invasion... therefore, we will not try.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Operation VIKING.”

- * - * - * - * -

LAFAYETTE CITY, ACADIA
Ducal palace
January 5, 2829

  “Your Excellency, Conte Morelli is here.”

  “Show him in, then!” snaps Frederico VI, Duca d’Amalfi.  Never the most even-tempered of men, the Duke has suffered enough reverses in the last couple of years to last him a couple of decades... and if what he’s just been told by the Cylon representative to his Duchy is utterly outrageous, it’s also a recipe for epic catastrophe.

  Lazzaro Morelli, Conte di Trachtenburg, stops before his Duke’s desk and gives the customary deep bow.  “I present myself –”

  “Pour yourself a drink and sit down, Lazzaro,” the Duke says abruptly, himself pouring a large glass of brandy from the crystal decanter on his desk as he cuts across several minutes of obligatory flattery and folderol.  “You’re going to need both kinds of support for this.  I just had the most incredible conversation with the Cylon Ambassador....”

  Ten minutes later, Morelli finally manages to stop gaping like a landed fish and takes a deep gulp from his snifter.  When the burning in his throat eases, his first coherent thought about the matter slips past it without consulting his higher brain-functions: “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

  “Yes, He might have had something to do with it,” d’Amalfi observes ruefully.  “Unfortunately, He seems to have left matters in our hands from there... and that’s where our problems lie.”

  “You certainly have a gift for understatement, Excellency.”  Morelli raises his glass to contemplate its contents once more, trying to order his thoughts.

  Outsiders often mistake the Principality of Salerno for a monolithic entity ruled by an absolute monarch.  Notionally, this is true, but the simple fact is that its central unifying authority is only as strong as the will of the Prince who holds that authority, and for almost five hundred years, the Council of Dukes has always endorsed the ascension of the most ineffectual Prince they could find (and sometimes quietly ‘dealt with’ Princes who proved stronger than they were willing to tolerate).  With the possibility of meddling with their ‘Ducal prerogatives’ thus minimised (de facto if not de jure), each of the Duchies is more or less a sovereign nation in its own right, with only convenience, mutual interest, and mutual enemies to bind them or their Dukes to any common policy, and only the Council of Dukes (and occasionally the Prince or Peacekeepers) to mediate the few disputes that are openly acknowledged.  Almost half a millennium of overlapping slights, betrayals, squabbles over trade or other valuables, and outright vendettas have accumulated between the various Famiglias and left them so locked onto each other as their true rivals/opponents that the Union of Sovereign Republics or the SLDF barely impinges on their thinking.  When you layer that with the Gehennan creed’s active rejection of any moderating foreign ideas or influence as ‘the despicable encroachment of feral degeneracy’ and ‘a precursor to corruption, weakness, mongrelisation and decadence’, it’s amazing that the homeworld’s native branch of Salernan culture has managed to avoid a full-blown civil war.  Indeed, three times in the last hundred years, it’s taken the threatened or actual intervention of Royal Peacekeepers (and on one occasion Home Fleet) to prevent the outbreak of full-scale open fighting between the forces retained by the various Ducal estates on Salerno itself.

  The problems begin with the fact that all of the Principality’s planetary ‘annexations’ within the Expanse since the Amaris Coup were the doing of alliances of various Dukes, not an act of policy by the Principality as a whole, and were conducted almost entirely for the purposes of expanding the demesnes of the Dukes involved.  Morelli is honest enough to admit that he’d gained as much from that as any other – he flew a Leone during the invasion of Soren, and now holds a small fiefdom in the former Baronie von Schwartzwald which makes a tidy sum from munitions production – but avarice is a singularly poor foundation for a foreign policy.  When you couple that avarice with the fact that the Dukes involved only suspend their feuds for the duration of their operations, rather than forgetting them completely, and feel no particular need to coordinate their troops or operations with each other during the campaigns, and you have a recipe for military disaster that has been overlooked only because the majority of those annexed worlds were totally incapable of defending themselves against hordes of troops armed with laser-rifles and backed by WarShips, aerospace fighters, and BattleMechs.  The invasion of Soren was their first learning experience against people who didn’t think of ’Mechs as walking gods, and in the end, it was the flexibility of Duke Ferretti which carried that campaign to a successful conclusion, rather than the headlong brutality of Duke Genarro.

  Which is the second prong of the problem made manifest.  Salerno itself has been a closed society for almost four centuries now, since it first began building WarShips and aerospace fighters with which to enforce control of its own jump-points.  All trade and intercourse with the world outside of their home star-system was routed through Acadia, and over the years, despite constant interbreeding between ‘home’ and ‘colonial’ Salernans, two strains of Salernan culture (if not outright ethnicities) have developed.  ‘Home’ Salernans consider themselves the ‘pure’ strain, their culture and blood unpolluted by foreign influence... and, as many have said both on Acadian and on non-Salernan worlds, so thoroughly marinated in its own warped belief-system that it’s no longer sane.  ‘Colonial’ Salernans, especially those who have spent several generations on Acadia (like the d’Amalfis) before their ‘colonising’ another world (like the Ferrettis), are dismissed by ‘home’ Salernans as impure of blood, weak of will and often as borderline heretics to the word of Stefano Cavaretta, as set down in the ‘Progressions of Gehenna’.  Unfortunately for the ‘pure’ Salernans, the Acadians’ unwillingness to regard the Progressions as the sole, infallible source of all human wisdom – partly because of, and partly supplemented by, their exposure to non-Salernan cultures and ideas – means that Acadia is not only a booming economic proposition compared to the near-stagnant homeworld, it’s the primary source of the technical and technological innovations which have allowed Salernan forces to retain some degree of parity with the damnably inventive Union.

  It also means that Acadians are willing to deal with objective reality if not on an exclusive basis, then at least markedly more often than their homeworld brethren, and in this instance, that’s the third tine of Satan’s trident.  Up until now, all of the fighting against the Union and its allies has been conducted in the Union’s territory, and with the eviction of Salernan forces from Highside, most of the Dukes think the war is over.  Many of them honestly believe that only their fellow Salernan nobles have the power to strike at their holdings in a meaningful way, and that the Union will be content to let the matter lapse now that it’s forced them off Highside.  So what if Ducal Peacekeepers herded hundreds of millions of Highsiders and Ensenadans into RecFacs for Reclamation or Recycling?  It’s not like those ‘bianchi peasants’ were real people or anything, and the Union has to know that taking on the whole Principality would be courting extinction!  Let them issue their ridiculous little declaration of ‘war’ on the Principality.  Only the Scions of Cavaretta have the spine to face death in pursuit of a grievance, and so the Union will posture and bluster while they lick their wounds... but they will not act on their threats, content to cower on their worlds like the whipping-boys they are and wait for those they know in their bones to be their betters to return and finish their rightful Reclamation.

  Except that Morelli and his Duke know differently.  The only thing preventing the full mobilization of the Union’s industry and populace against the Dukes was the absence of the Star League’s sanction on such a measure... and even though the Star League is long dead and dismembered, the Cameron family slaughtered and its dynasty broken, the formal declaration of war by the Union just before the relief of Ensenada could only have been issued with the support of a senior SLDF officer.  Only a handful of Acadian nobles were fanatical (or idiotic) enough to participate in the Peacekeepers’ ‘Reclamation Initiatives’, but both men know enough about those Initiatives’ true nature to realise that the Union and its populace not only mean every word of the declaration, they will not be content until Salerno and all its works have paid the full price in blood and treasure for its offences.  And they’re entirely justified in that desire.

  And now the Prince has it in mind to invade this – what did the Cylon call it?  ‘Clancy’s World’?  Where in God’s name had that term come from? – and bend it to his will.  He’ll be committing the full prestige and power of the Principality and his personal armies to the conquest, and any Duke who refuses to conform to the manifest will of the Prince and his appointed delegates (say, by not whole-heartedly supporting the war-effort) will be committing open treason – which will bring the Peacekeepers and the Royal Forces down on their own heads as well.

  But the Cylon Ambassador has made it clear that until Clancy’s World is informed of its precarious situation and declares its allegiance – whether Star League, Salernan, or neutral – its sovereignty and neutrality will be supported by the Protectorate Navy, and any attempt to forcibly invade it will be considered an act of war against both Clancy’s World... and the Cylon Protectorate.

  Morelli has read the trial transcripts of the few ‘privateer’ maniacs who (initially) survived their violation of Cylon neutrality in 2822.  An entire squadron of carrier-freighters was involved in that raid... and a single, unescorted, unmodified Base Star crushed all eight vessels and exterminated their fighter-wings in less than forty minutes.  Four days later, three more Base Stars appeared in the Torrance system and smashed an entire squadron of frigates as a demonstration of their displeasure with the privateers’ sponsors amongst the Vittorio Famiglia.

  Since then, the Cylons have traded their synthetic-gravity and advanced jump-drive technologies to the Union for modern weapons and armour, and from what little they’ve let the Principality’s diplomats and spies uncover, they’ve not only refit most of their pre-existing fleet with those systems but also begun a massive campaign of new naval construction, including mixed-technology cruisers whose design they promptly licenced back to the Union.  And all of that remains within the boundaries of normal trade between non-allied powers; if and when they become full partners in a military alliance against the Principality....

  The Union’s advanced technology, a fanatical desire for vengeance, and an experience-honed mastery of combined-arms ground warfare most of the other Dukes dismiss as cowardly without ever once considering its effectiveness.  The Protectorate’s existing fleet strength, mated to a shipbuilding industry so large and powerful I don’t really want to think about it.  These two powers are dangerous enough on their own, but if they’re mated to whatever strengths this ‘Clancy’s World’ may bring to the mix – which if nothing else certainly include more than enough raw manpower to crew whatever ships, ’Mechs, and tanks the other states build for them....  Lazzaro Morelli contemplates his drink for another moment, then quietly says what they’re both thinking: “This dooms us, doesn’t it, Your Excellency?”

  “As surely as the sun will rise, Lazzaro,” d’Amalfi nodd, his voice equally subdued.  “The Union’s contact mission will probably reach Clancy’s World within the week – if it’s not there already – and you can be certain that the SLN, Union Fleet, and Protectorate Navy all have ships in position to monitor the system by now.  Their embassies will bring along proof of the Peacekeepers’ ‘activities’ on Highside and Ensenada, which means the Clancies will declare neutrality or for the Union within days.  And if the Cylon Ambassador’s information is accurate – which I don’t doubt for an instant – the Commissioner’s leading assault echelon is still embarking and won’t jump to Clancy’s World for almost three weeks.”

  “Giving the Clancies and their Union allies at least that long to mobilize and prepare defences.”  Morelli smiled crookedly.  “I’d almost feel sorry for their attackers... if they weren’t Peacekeepers.”

  “‘If’; ‘almost’,” his Duke noted.  “The Prince is about to commit the error that will see Salerno broken or exterminated, Lazzaro: we need to save what we can before he does it, or at least lay the groundwork towards saving what we can.”

  Morelli cockd his head a little, finally understanding why he’s here.  “The Prince will call this treason, Your Excellency.”

  “Let’s be blunt, Lazzaro: to him it will be ‘treason’, but I’d simply term it ‘survival’.  Acadia and its holdings may not be as prosperous or populous as the Union worlds, but it remains my responsibility to protect their people and properties against any threat... even when it’s the insanity of my own liege-lord.”

  Again the crooked smile.  “So, Your Excellency, when do I leave for Clancy’s World?”

  “As soon as you can get aboard your ship, Ambassador Morelli.”

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NOTES:
  Almost every other writer I’ve seen expy a ‘good captain’ and their supporting naval cast into a fic has tapped Honor Harrington and her merry band for the duty.  Personally, I figured she’s a little bit busy right now, what with Haven and Mesa and motherhood.  ::)  And relax: Emo-Boy Yamato does not exist in this reality.  :D

  Like Russians, Svobodans refer to ships by the gender of their name (defaulting to male if the name is gender-neutral); hence, Archangel is ‘he’ to Commander Ramius.  In similar Russian fashion, the Union Fleet calls its ship-CO’s ‘Commander’, with the term ‘First Officer’ being an English-language holdover from Highside influence.  Marine O-3s get a courtesy-promotion to Major in conversation.  This way, nobody confuses the ship’s boss with any lesser lifeforms and nobody gets unnecessary headaches.  :D  FWIW, I’ve put together a .pdf covering the basics about the Union military over at OBT.org, and I’ll see about posting its contents here when I can.

  I know that the bit about Salernan politics is an info-dump, but I didn’t see how I could avoid it; in Ense Petit Placidam, I tried turning the last such ‘big gulp’ of information into an in-character briefing of newcomers, and it still came across as a massive info-dump, so apparently I’m screwed any way I play it.  ::)  In any case, I hope that my portrayal of the Principality’s intricate domestic politics (and the Gehennan cult’s obscene mental ‘flavour’) came across clearly enough.

  As a general note: I got back from work early that particular evening and so could watch “Daylight” when it was shown on TV out here – though in all honesty, for all the badass and awesome it contained, there were also points where I wanted to puke on the screen.  Other than that, I haven’t seen a single frame of nBSG beyond the end of my Season 2 DVD-set and am operating on second-hand information for the stuff between “Lay Down Your Burdens” and Apollo’s managing to con the Colonial/Cylon Remnant into committing a complicated form of mass suicide.  Given what I have heard about the later seasons and how nonsensical a lot of it is, I’m trying to (re-)watch what DVDs I do have in order to refresh my memories, but I offer fair warning now: I feel no obligation to cling to canon when I consider sanity to be the more valid option.

  For instance, while Kobolian-derived drives are superior to the ‘basic’ Kearny-Fuchida and transit drives (in ways and for reasons that will be examined in-story), the ‘Adama manoeuvre’ that I’ve heard so much about makes worlds utterly indefensible, and therefore it must go.  Yes, that prohibition includes everything from BattleStars down to Raider-sized fighters.  Hyperlight drives have different limitations to KF drives, but they do have limitations more pronounced than we saw on-screen.

[Trace Coburn]

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, EARTH/‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
15:29, Tuesday, January 6, 2009, EST

  John Patrick Ryan Sr. frowns at the ringing ’phone.  Can’t a man even sign a stack of pardons in peace?  Thankful that at least he’s finished with those pardons – after all, it’s conceivable that somebody might one day find out exactly what happened to John Brightling and his little band of genocidal eco-maniacs, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let any Rainbow member be prosecuted for solving that problem so pragmatically – he sighs and exchanges his pen for the ’phone handset.  “What is it, Ellen?”

  {“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for you, Mister President – he says it’s urgent.”}

  Oh, God, what now?  I’m just about to get out of this place!  “Okay, put him through.”

  A moment later, Ellen Sumter’s voice is replaced by that of Marion Diggs.  {“Mister President, I’ve just received word from NORAD that something... extremely unusual is happening out in space.”}

  “Don’t tell me: we’re being invaded by aliens, and only Will Smith can save us.”  It’s meant as a joke; a President in the last two weeks of his term generally has little to do, and a certain amount of silliness in the send-off phase is expected both on his part and from his subordinates.

  Jack’s smirk dies when he hears the response.

- * - * - * - * -

SUN-EARTH L1 JUMP-POINT, ‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
SLS Zughoffer Weir
That same time (20:30, Saturday, January 6, 2829, TST)

  “Think they’ve spotted us yet, sir?” Hennesy’s chief-of-staff poses.

  “I would bet on it.”  There were certainly enough satellites near the jump-point to make sure of that: their telemetry would have registered (or been knocked out by) the six massive EMP events of KF transits, and at a distance of barely a quarter-million kilometers, even a backyard astronomer will be unable to miss the profiles of a dreadnaught, an UnRep-cruiser, and four destroyers once a telescope is swung their way.  “General, you are sure you wish to proceed in this fashion, query-affirmative?”

  “Affirmative,” Ebon nods.  “Approaching the planet in a full-scale WarShip would cause a degree of panic that would make things... difficult.  A Leatherneck may be a shock to their systems, but it is rather less threatening than Zug.  You will continue fortifying the jump-point while I am gone, query-affirmative?”

  “Of course, General,” Hennesy nods.  After all, if we are going to defend this planet, our ships will need a safe point to transit and re-arm.

  With that assured, she slips on a comm. headset and nods to the waiting petty-officer, who cues up 121.5MHz.  I sincerely hope that Doctor Ryan is sitting down for this....  “This is General Trish Ebon of the Star League Regular Army, currently in-bound to Earth.  My DropShip will arrive in orbit within three standard hours, at which time we will require landing instructions.  As soon as practical after my landing, I request a meeting with President Ryan of the United States of North America, and whatever representatives of the NATO alliance are available, in order to discuss an urgent matter of planetary security.”

- * - * - * - * -

St. Mary’s School, Annapolis, MD
That same time

  Just as John Ryan Junior reaches the foot of the school’s front steps, his BlackBerry chimes: {‘Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!  BRRRRrring!  Brrrrrring!  Yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup!  BRRRRrring!  Brrrrrr-!’}

  What the heck? he wonders, digging out the PDA.  I assigned that ring-tone to Dad, but why’s he calling when I’m this close to going back to the House?  “What’s the story, Dad?”

  {“John, I’m going to send you a picture.  Tell me what you see when you get it.”}

  Oh-kay, this is strange....  Things only get weirder when the image appears on the screen, and SHORTSTOP blinks in bafflement.  “Uh... looks like a BattleTech naval task-force deploying their recharge-sails.  Four Lola-III destroyers in the ’57 pattern; an old-style SovSoy cruiser; assorted DropShips... that big son might be an intermediate-model McKenna battleship?  They’ve all got modified Cameron Stars, so I’d say they’re meant to be SLDF.  This render’s incredible – who made it?”

  A split-second’s pause.  {“That’s real, John.”}

  “... WHAT?”

  {“It looks like the BattleTech universe is paying us a visit.  I’m having you brought back to the House now – I need your help with this.”}  True to the President’s words, SHORTSTOP’s car pulls up in front of the young man; the Secret Service agent within waves him into the passenger’s seat Now! Now! Now!

  John shakes off a fraction of the ‘poleaxed steer’ sensation and thinks fast as he sits down and straps in with his free hand.  “Dad, I’ve only been into BattleTech since the thing with Coach Moran – I don’t have the in-depth knowledge you’re gonna need!  Let me call in a couple of guys from my gaming group – they’ve all got longer standing with BT than I do.”

  {“Pick one – I’ll have the Service bring him over.”}

  “JadeHellbringer,” he says, a decision made more by instinct than reason.  “Uh, that’s –”

  {“The Service knows who he is, John – he’ll be here within the hour.  Get back here SOONEST.”}

  If nothing else, Brian’ll probably be glad to get out of Government Cubicle Hell for a while, John thinks wryly, putting away his PDA.  Once he gets over the whole ‘Mind = Blown’ factor, anyway.

- * - * - * - * -

SLS Great Hope (Leatherneck-class DropShip)
Inbound to Earth orbit,
That same time

  {Looks like we got their attention, Major,} J-321 chirps, one pincer twisting a cable as he tweaks the ELINT feed between channels.  {Civilian bands are showing a lot of confusion.  Military alert-statuses are being raised across most of the planet’s surface – it looks precautionary for now.}

  “Comforting to know that ‘common’ sense might actually be common – at least for soldiers,” Misty Katsuragi muses.  A moment later, she looks to the Tachikoma’s human partner – one of the SLDF’s many new enlistees from the Union – as he makes a shocked sound.  “What’s wrong, Davies?”

  “Uhm... Uh, ma’am, I’ve been doing more digging through their planetary data network, and one of the links from John Ryan Junior’s biography... well, look!”

  “‘Classic BattleTech Introductory Box Set’,” she reads – then spots the background image, and her jaw drops.  “What the hell?”  A Catapult and an Atlas – and in the colours of the Twelfth Dieron Regulars!?  You have got to be kidding me!

- * - * - * - * -

Andrews AFB
18:31, January 6, 2009, EST

  It’s a winter evening in Washington D.C., which means a low, grey overcast, a bitterly cold wind, and flurries of snow – though there isn’t enough of the latter to impress ‘real’ New Englanders.  Thankfully, it’s not snowing at the moment, but most among the milling pack of media are shivering in their parkas as they tweak their gear and wait.  The military is in the middle of its own preparations – the Air Force ground-crews are scraping down and salting the runway one last time, to make sure it’s as safe a landing as possible (though how ‘safe’ landing a damned spaceship in this weather will be is anyone’s guess!), while an honour-guard of Marines in dress blues find the ‘hurry-up’ part of meeting a foreign VIP to be a welcome refuge from the consternation at the nature of said VIP that they find in the ‘and-wait’ periods.

  A dull rumble to the east draws the eyes of almost everyone there, not to mention the gaze of most of the cameras.  Several instants later, a blocky shape descends through the clouds, and the cameras rack into tighter focus, capturing its inelegant outline, its worn olive-drab paintjob, and above all the emblem on its nose: a ringed white star, like a compass rose, with the ‘east’ arm twice the length of the others.

  Among the waiting group of officials is a yet-to-be-made-official advisor, and like several others on the ground, he recognises the shape immediately. “Sonofabitch,” John Ryan mutters.  “That’s the damned Kodiak!”

  “What’s that, John?” the head of the reception-party asks.

  The First Son flinches; he didn’t mean to speak that loudly.  “I... uh, Mister Adler, I don’t know what it might be in the BattleTech universe, but I recognise that model of DropShip from another game – Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun.  In that game, it was called Kodiak – it was an assault transport the hero used as a flying command-post.”

  Whatever its true identity, the colossal vessel swings into a slow, almost-vertical descent as it comes over the runway, without anything resembling the supporting spear of fusion-flame John’s expecting from a DropShip, and touches down with a delicacy one wouldn’t expect from a ship almost two hundred metres long, meekly trundling along after the ‘follow-me’ on a massive undercarriage arrangement.  Within a few moments, it comes to a halt before the waiting red carpet, and the Marines snap-to.  Normally there would be a band – but what would they play for their guests’ benefit at the close of the welcome?  No-one on Earth knows the ‘Star League’ anthem – if that would even be appropriate.  Better to go without music until someone can get the right music.

  The colossal craft comes to a halt side-on to the red carpet, then hunkers down on its landing-gear, lowering its ground-clearance by two thirds in a matter of moments, as a side-door swings open and a ramp extends.  Within the cavernous cargo-bay stands a small party of uniformed personnel, but against the bulkhead behind them, standing within what must be ’Mech service-bays –

  “Son of a bitch!” John hisses, snatching out his BlackBerry and official dignity be damned.  He takes a single, precisely-framed photo, then logs into CBT.org and types quickly, opening a new thread in General Discussion titled: {“Harmony Gold can SUCK IT!”}

  Sue all you like, Macek, but a photo taken of a real-life war machine can’t possibly be deemed an infringement of your precious copyrights over artwork and representations of fictional hardware.  Those are no longer ‘Tomahawks’; they are now, and will forever be, WHM-6R Warhammers.  Four of them, no less – and all wearing the olive-drab and Cameron Star of the SLDF!

  Seeing Adler’s stern look, SHORTSTOP blushes and puts his PDA away.  Okay, that probably wasn’t the most mature thing he ever did... but First Son or not, a high school senior who just had one of the biggest moments of geek-vindication in his life is allowed a momentary lapse of reason, right?

- * - * - * - * -

  Before she starts down the debarkation ramp, Ebon right-faces to the Star League ensign hanging on the bay’s forward bulkhead and salutes crisply in the SLDF fashion: long-way-up, palm-forward.  The little naval formality actually helps settle her racing mind a little, which is welcome after the bizarre discoveries Katsuragi’s team made during the transit to orbit.

  As she descends the ramp, with Katsuragi behind her shoulder, Ebon does her best to ignore the biting wind and the glare of the news-cameras, fixing her attention on the reception party.  Secretary Adler is no surprise, but I would have imagined President Ryan would keep his son close as an advisor.  Unless he has another fan working with him, and sent ‘Shortstop’ to advise Adler, query-affirmative?  The boy is all but vibrating with excitement, so I doubt he is here in any diplomatic capacity!

  Adler meets her a short way up the red carpet, and after a brief handshake, they return to the podium.  “On behalf not only of the United States of America, but of Earth as a whole, I would like to welcome General Ebon to our world.  This is obviously a momentous occasion in the history of our planet, and it is our sincere hope that this marks the beginning of a peaceful and fruitful relationship between the peoples of Earth and those of the Star League.”

  Ebon steps to the microphone, thankful that she has had so much practice with media swarms since she arrived in the Union.  “Thank you for your kind words and warm welcome, Secretary Adler.”  An image flits across her mind – a video-clip Katsuragi took from a major news-network during their final approach – and on puckish impulse she adds: “I would also like to thank you for not punctuating ‘welcome to Earth’ with a right cross.”

  The media pack’s tension-fraught focus dissolves.  The out-of-nowhere pop-culture quip, especially from someone so newly arrived, rips anxiety and uncertainty from the whole crowd (and millions watching at home) in a wave of startled laughter.

  “It is my own hope that both the Star League Defence Force and the worlds of the Star League will indeed come to regard Earth and its many nations as dear friends, trusted colleagues, and valued trading partners, and that Earth will soon hold the same opinions of us.  There is much that we can do for each other, much we can learn from each other, and much we can value in each other.  Unfortunately, there are pressing matters which must be dealt with before such discussions can begin, and we have a great deal to get done in a very short timeframe.”  The puckish smile again.  “With that being the case, I suggest we all get down to work.  If nothing else, it will let us get inside, where it is warm.”  More laughter, and Adler leads the General towards a waiting limo.  John scrambles after them, as do Ebon’s aide and John’s bodyguard.

  Once the limo door closes behind the five of them, John jumps right into the questions.  “So: what year is it to you, General?”

  Adler agreed to the gambit on the drive to Andrews.  John leading off like this will narrow down how much knowledge of BattleTech’s lore will be necessary to guide U.S. policy – and how much of it is valid at all – and if the lad puts his foot in his mouth, his parentage notwithstanding it was just the puppy-eagerness of a teenaged geek, rather than a miscue by anyone who officially spoke for the U.S. government.

  “Twenty-eight-twenty-nine, Mister Ryan,” Ebon returns, just as bluntly and without even a blink of hesitation.  “Also the sixth of January, incidentally – and the exactitude of the time-offset raises some interesting questions about how your solar system arrived here, query-affirmative?”

  2829?  There goes eighty-five percent of everything ever published for BattleTech.  Wait: ‘how our solar system arrived here’?  Oh, shit....  “And where is ‘here’, General?”

  “Almost three hundred light-years Rimwards of the Taurian Concordat, in a region of the Periphery known as the Cavaretta Expanse.”

  Aaand there goes another ten percent.  John’s shoulders sag; Adler arches an eyebrow, and the young man’s helpless headshake says it all.  Hellbie may be some help, but I’ve got nothing.

  “Does your knowledge of ‘BattleTech’ does not extend to this region, or does BattleTech have nothing to say about it?” the General asks evenly.

  A gobsmacked stare.  “How the –?”

  “Wikipedia,” Katsuragi interjects blandly.

  “Ah.”  With six WarShips’ EW suites at their disposal?  Yeah, really should’ve seen that coming.  “Well, you need to be careful about that: they can be kind’a uneven about their fact-checking, so she’s mad who trusts in a boy’s love, a whore’s oath, the tameness of a Wolf, or the veracity of Wikipedia,” is the equally dry response.  “But, no: if anything’s ever been printed about the Rimward Deep Periphery in an official product, I’ve never seen it... but then, I’ve only been in the game since I dropped baseball, so I’m not really an expert.”

  Katsuragi has spent too long around Tachikomae to pass up the opening: “‘You’re a good man, Mister Ryan; a good man always knows his limitations.’”

  John stares at her.  “First ID4, and now Dirty Harry?  And I thought I was a geek!”

  “When you have the responsibilities we do, you find your fun when and where you can, query-affirmative?” Ebon smiles.

  Which brings us close enough to ‘work’, Scott Adler judges.  “May I ask what those ‘responsibilities’ are, General – and how they relate to Earth?”

  EAGLE tries to control a pang of dread at how quickly their guests go from almost collegial conviviality to stern silence.  “Explaining that would take longer than we have in this drive, Secretary Adler, and we would have to start again once we arrived.”

- * - * - * - * -

  At the Secret Service’s insistence, President Ryan does not meet the limo, and the newcomers have to go through the full gamut of White House security checks.  Katsuragi spent a lot of the run-to-orbit matching Internet pictures to names (and psych-profiles) from Clancy’s novels, so when they come to the walk-through metal-detector, Ebon recognises Andrea Price-O’Day observing from just beyond.  She comes through the scanner without a single peep, then looks to the intelligence analyst and clears her throat: “Misty, I think we want to avoid misunderstandings right now, query-affirmative?”

  Katsuragi doesn’t quite glare at her CO, but it’s with an air of ill grace that she turns and smiles crookedly at the supervising agent on the far side of the scanner.  “If you’re going to have a lot of off-world visitors, Agent Price, you’ll need to upgrade your security a little.”  She demonstrates by holding her left fist across her chest: the dagger-pointed six-centimetre blade which snaps out between her first two knuckles brings gasps and curses from the onlooking USSS agents, most of whom are halfway to their sidearms before they can register her non-threatening body-language and override their reflexes.

  Both SecState and John Junior are a little wide-eyed, but while Adler’s shocked, SHORTSTOP’s having another ‘cool!’ moment.  “An intel officer with a cyberspur?  Wow, and I thought D.C. was the last word in cut-throat office politics.”

  Katsuragi snorts and retracts the spur again, keeping her eyes on the wary Price-O’Day and sweeping her right hand over her left forearm.  “I lost the original at the elbow almost a year ago.  Your current systems will detect a cyberlimb easily enough, but you’ll need new scanners to spot modifications like implant-weapons.”

  Andrea allows herself a little smile, relaxing a little as she (and everyone else present) gets the message behind Katsuragi’s demonstration.  “I’m surprised you didn’t have them put in a machine-pistol.”

  “And I would have, if I could shoot straight, but since I can’t hit the broad side of a DropShip twice in one day....”  A ripple of amusement goes through the onlookers, but any follow-up to Katsuragi’s rueful remark is forestalled by a ringing from her attaché case.  With a growl, she digs out a comm. that John initially takes for an early-’90’s cellular brick.  “Moshi-moshi?”

  As Katsuragi listens to the caller, Price-O’Day turns cautious eyes to Ebon.  “And how about you, General?  Do you have any, uh, after-market accessories?”

  “Only my fillings,” is the bland response.  Katsuragi’s call ends, and the General cocks an eyebrow at her.  “There is a problem, query-affirmative?”

  “No, ma’am, just an update from my people.  But it does seem the Protectorate’s people are going to have some fast talking to do when they arrive,” Katsuragi notes guardedly.

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

  The Oval Office lacks the room or the furnishings for all the attendees, while the Situation Room might send the wrong message, so the new arrivals are directed to the relatively welcoming Roosevelt Room.  SWORDSMAN saw live security-video of the incident at the metal-detector but (to Price-O’Day’s almost-concealed horror) meets their guests just inside the door anyway, trying to ignore the official photographer snapping away as he shakes Ebon’s hand.  He’s struck by how young she is – if Ebon’s over thirty, it’s not by much – before he sees the old eyes set in that striking face and remembers what John told him just a couple of hours ago.  She was a captain and ’MechWarrior only four years ago... before her ‘nation’ was all but exterminated.  And I thought I was unprepared for taking office!  “General Ebon, I’m not sure I know how to express what this day means for our world.”

  “I imagine you will find the proper vocabulary before we are done,” Ebon says dryly, remembering: Ryan chafes under excessive formality and prefers a collegial atmosphere.  “Would you prefer that we address you as ‘Mister President’, ‘Doctor Ryan’, or ‘Jack’?”

  “Oh, God!  Jack, please!  It’s taken me long enough to convince everyone else in Washington to treat me like a human being!”

  “If you are ‘Jack’, then I am ‘Tricia’.  This is Major Misty Katsuragi, from my intelligence staff.”

  “Major.”  After another firm handshake, he ushers the guests towards the conference table.  “I’d like you to meet several members of my own staff.  Vice-President Robert Jackson, who’ll be taking my place in the Oval Office in two weeks’ time –” he manages not to add ‘thank God!’ – “National Security Advisor Doctor Benjamin Goodley, Secretary of Defence Tony Bretano, Director of Central Intelligence Maria Foley, and Brian Barton, one of her newest consultants.”

  Seeing a significant glance between John Ryan Junior and the tall, burly man sitting next to DCI Foley, Ebon makes an educated guess.  “A consultant on the BattleTech universe, query-affirmative?”

  “Correct,” Ryan nods, thankful that John’s text-updates to ‘Hellbie’ from the limo have kept him from looking like an idiot.

  “Good.  I imagine that the insights provided by Mister Barton and your son will prove invaluable.  In fact, I would raise no objection if Mister Ryan joined the discussions.”

  “... me?” SHORTSTOP blinks, a little stunned by the idea.  He’s been expecting a polite dismissal since they got back to the House.

  “On a day of unprecedented events, a young and flexible mind is no small resource,” Ebon points out.

  It’s an extraordinary idea, and the elder Ryan takes a half-instant to process it.  “John, if you want to leave –”

  “And miss this, Dad?  You’re kidding, right?”

  Despite themselves, a ripple of amusement goes through everyone else present, and Ebon smiles again.  “And enthusiasm is always welcome, of course.”

  With that, John Ryan Junior scrambles into a seat beside Hellbie; meanwhile, Ebon takes a seat opposite the President and nods to Misty.

  I can’t believe I’m about to brief a head-of-state.  Katsuragi does her best to hide her nerves as she passes folders around the table, then sets up the portable holoprojector, wincing as she fumbles her first attempt to slot the datastick.  Okay, he’s not my head-of-state, but he’s still a head-of-state.  Dammit, Misty: focus and settle down.  Remember Debt of Honour and Executive Orders: Ryan wants briefers that are organised, well-informed, and plain-spoken.  Don’t waffle, don’t hedge; he wants to hear what you think as well as what you know.  He’ll ask direct questions: give him direct answers.

  “I wish we were all meeting under better circumstances.”  She punches a key, activating the display, throwing up the familiar outline of the Inner Sphere, then zooming in on the Rimwards portion until it shows the Taurian Concordat and its Rimward neighbours at a scale of two millimetres per light-year, with star-systems as light green pinpricks.  “This is where we are now....”

  When the astrography lesson ends a few minutes later, after Katsuragi has laid out the sudden transposition of Earth for Naples and the political/military situation between the various power-blocs in the Cavaretta Expanse (though she doesn’t mention the Cylons, to avoid complicating the issue for the moment), President Ryan turns his eyes from the holomap back to her.  “How did you discover our, uh, presence?”

  She winces.  “That’s the bad news, sir.  SLDF Intelligence recently discovered that a Salernan frigate jumped into this star-system eleven days ago and began monitoring your planetary communications, including the ‘Internet’, and transmitting that data back to base.  Subsequent shifts in Salernan operational patterns indicate they’re conducting a large-scale, short-notice mobilization, and in light of the recent ‘phony war’, the only reasonable conclusion we can reach is that they intend to attack and invade Earth as soon as they can mass sufficient forces.  Current projections have their leading assault echelon hitting this world with at least three Legions, on a D-day no later than the end of February.  OOBs for the relevant formations are in Appendix D of the folders I handed out, but the short version is that their spearhead’s coming after you with a minimum of sixty space-going WarShips, half a million men, and six thousand BattleMechs.”

  “Frak me!” John yelps.  Six thousand ’Mechs as a first wave?  There are entire IS nations that don’t have that much firepower!  Who the frak are these people?

  “Half a million men to invade a whole planet?  Have these people ever heard of the word ‘scale’?”  Secretary Bretano arrived late, missing most of the pre-briefing John and Hellbie gave before Great Hope landed, so his scorn is partly a product of area-ignorance.

  “It’s not the men, Mister Secretary,” Hellbie inserts, rubbing his eyes.  “Infantry are mainly tax-collectors and riot-cops in this universe.  It’s the ’Mechs, the starfighters, and the WarShips.  If we can believe what Herb says – he’s the Line Developer for BattleTech – a ’Mech could wade through an entire brigade of Abrams tanks and slaughter them all without them inflicting anything worse than a scuffed paintjob, and an aerospace fighter can drop in from orbit, do the same thing with a wing of F-15s, bomb a city flat, then return to space at whim.  And the WarShips can simply sit in orbit and glass our cities with fighters and their own weapons, beyond the reach of anything we have.  If we can believe what Herb says, six thousand ’Mechs is enough to destroy every tank and armoured vehicle on Earth in a matter of days, and there ain’t a ****** thing we can do about it.”

  “If, Brian,” John points out.  “Remember, Herb’s arguing for game-balance and keeping BT’s focus on the big stompy robots.  Whether those claims are even vaguely realistic –”

  “Great Hope’s hold contains a company’s worth of captured Salernan BattleMechs which we brought here for evaluation purposes,” Ebon interjects evenly, before the two enthusiasts can get too carried away.  “Should Earth choose to fight, or even proclaim neutrality, those ’Mechs can be expended in the course of testing your hardware against ours in live-fire conditions.”

  “So that’s why you’re here?”  The President’s been wondering about that ever since that first radio-call.  “To see whether we’ll defend ourselves?  Maybe even join your interstellar war against these... ‘Salernans’?”

  “Jack, I understand that you are fond of saying ‘war is armed robbery writ large’.  If that is true, and you become aware that an armed felon is sizing up your new neighbour as a target, it is not only good manners and sound judgement but also your moral obligation to warn him, at the very least, query-affirmative?” the General poses with an arched brow.  “Morally, neither my SLDF nor the Union of Sovereign Republics could stand by and do nothing while an unsuspecting world was subjected to the horrors of Gehennan ‘Reclamation’.  Politically, neither could have survived doing so.  Militarily, this offers our forces a prime opportunity to trap three Peacekeeper Legions on unfriendly ground and give them the martyrdom they crave.  I doubt I need to tell you how infrequently moral and political imperatives are found on the same side of a dilemma; to compound them with a military imperative makes for combination so unique that I doubt it will be repeated before the heat-death of the universe,” she notes dryly.

  “But whether Earth will accept our assistance in resisting the invasion, fight the Salernans without our help, declare neutrality, or simply accept Salernan annexation is a choice for the people of Earth, not Tricia Ebon.  It would be both disingenuous and an insult to your intelligence to claim I am not hoping for an alliance: Earth has copious manpower, an incredible degree of industry despite the comparative limitations of your materials technology, and a number of military capabilities and force-multipliers for which I would gladly trade my first-born child – well, I would if I was married.  But even before we arrived in the Expanse, we who were Wolverines swore ourselves to stand between the genocidal and their intended victims, to preserve liberty and the right to self-determination.  Earth’s nations are sovereign powers, Jack, and they will have to choose for themselves what they will do; for now, Major Katsuragi and I are here merely to tell you what you need to know to make an informed choice, before the Salernans can deprive you of choices.”

  Ebon’s hosts trade looks around their side of the table, many of them struck by the passion in her voice.  Perhaps it’s for that reason that it’s John who picks up on a particular detail: “General, you said we could declare neutrality... but if the Salernans are really that bent on conquest, how the hell could we make it stick?”

  “You couldn’t,” Katsuragi says bluntly.  “But if you did make that declaration, the neutrality of Earth’s solar system would be policed and enforced by the Navy of the Cylon Protectorate.”

  “The what?” John goggles, unable to help the thought: First BattleTech and now Cylons?  My God – I’m in a crossover fic!
 
  “Mister Ryan, the recent version of Battlestar Galactica showed your world seven of twelve Cylon models in its two-season run – and speaking personally, I’m a little unnerved by how close your RDM actually came to a lot of the things we’ve observed about Cylon society, considering he hadn’t actually been to this reality yet.  What he didn’t get a chance to show your world were the other five clone-lines, the ones who split from the main collective almost thirty years ago and settled on New Victoria in 2803.  They’ve held themselves apart from the war, in a position... in your recent political terms, it would be similar to that of the United States between the start of World War Two and the bombing of Pearl Harbour: a truly massive industrial potential, yet big enough and isolated enough that no-one’s bothered them seriously.”

  “How long until Colonial Armistice Day?”  The blunt question comes from TOMCAT, like many naval aviators an avid fan of both iterations of the small-screen Galactica.  And he paid very close attention to the 2003 miniseries.

  “The fortieth anniversary is in two weeks, Commodore Jackson: if the show’s accurate, the first warheads will be hitting the Twelve Colonies as you make your inaugural address.  We don’t have any contact with the Colonies, and unfortunately, even if the Protectorate had given us the Colonies’ exact coordinates – which they haven’t, yet – we do know that they’re too far away for us to get there in time to warn them.”  It’s a stark way to declare you can’t save thirty billion lives... but what other way is there?  Katsuragi cocks an eyebrow at her boss, asking a silent question; when Ebon nods, she looks back to the Earthers.  “Nonetheless, we’ll be organising an expedition to rescue those we can and perhaps guide Galactica and her convoy to safety, but doing that without bringing the Cylon Sanctimonious Seven down on the heads of the entire Inner Sphere... would be quite a trick.”  Katsuragi winces again and gets back on point.  “In the here-and-now, the Protectorate has a substantial fleet of original-model Base Stars, battlestars and escort vessels – for obvious reasons, they’re big fans of space-based industry and interstellar commerce – and their ambassador to the Union has promised that if Earth wishes to remain neutral in the current war, the CPN will, uh, firmly discourage any violations of your territorial space.  In fact, I believe Ambassador Seven will be arriving within a couple of days, to conduct his own talks with Earth’s leadership.”

  “‘Leadership’ might be a little strong for Earth’s current situation,” POTUS points out dryly.  “Even with the reforms, I doubt the UN could agree on a lunch menu.”  He’s referring to a recent review, prompted by several first-world nations (including the US) threatening to suspend their funding of the UN, and the massive restructuring which ensued.  A UN bureaucracy once bloated by nepotism and jobs-for-buddies schemes may have been hacked back to something approaching efficiency, and the worst of the graft, feather-nesting and otherwise dubious accounting practices stamped out, but despite all that, it remains little more than a toothless, over-hyped debating society.

  Katsuragi shrugs. “I suspect he’ll be coming to you and to NATO, like we did.”

  “I can already hear the screams about ‘Western imperialism’,” Hellbie snarks, for a moment forgetting he’s sharing a room with the leadership of the United States, not his fellow Turkish Prisoners.

  “‘Western imperialism’ is so benign an alternative to Gehennan Reclamation that it resembles a day at the beach, Mister Barton, and those screamers will soon realise that once the Salernans arrive on-planet.” General Ebon sighs.  “Jack, even with my relatively mild experiences with the politics of the USR, I am fully aware that this information is sure to cause an international dogfight once it reaches the other governments of Earth, and I have nothing but sympathy for you... but as I have said, Earth’s domestic problems are its own to handle.  Our problem is fighting the Gehennans, and regardless of whether we will do so here or in another star-system, there are certain things which must be done.  I do urge you to convene a meeting of the NATO leadership so that we can brief them directly, but I do not have sufficient knowledge of your world’s political power-blocs and dynamics for anything more than that, so until I hear back from you or someone at NATO about Earth’s status, my primary focus will remain on the military situation beyond your system’s mass-shadow.”

  Another glance sets Katsuragi to stowing the holoprojector, and Ebon allows herself a crooked smile.  “The folders in front of you contain a great deal of the background information you will need if it is to inform your policies.  I suggest we adjourn until your people have had a chance to read and analyse that information for themselves.  I –”

  Katsuragi’s comm. rings again, and she mutters a curse before answering.  After the first sentences from the caller, her grey eyes go wide and she raises a hand: wait a minute!  “Understood.  We’re on our way back now.”  When she hangs up, she turns a bemused expression on Ebon and her hosts.  “Looks like the Cylons touched a nerve when they talked to Duke d’Amalfi, ma’am, because they’ve come to plead their case to Earth.  A Graziani-class merchantman just came into the zenith jump-point.  Transponder-code’s Acadian, with a diplomatic suffix; apparently, she’s carrying d’Amalfi’s personal representative to the nations of Earth – and he claims he’s been given plenipotentiary powers to negotiate for the Duke.”

  Ebon blinks hard.  “The Duke.  Not the Prince, query-negative?”  That is tantamount to an open break with the Crown!  Is the Principality really so close to coming apart, query-negative?

  “That’s what he said, ma’am.  We’ll get more details when he completes his transit to Earth orbit in nine days.”

  “And then Earth will hear the Salernan version of events in the Expanse.  It may even bear the vaguest resemblance to the truth, query-affirmative?” is the droll observation, before Ebon looks back to their hosts.  “If you will excuse me, this makes my need to return to my DropShip even more urgent.  When you come to a decision, please send a messenger to us there – and I would urge you to arrange the field-trials between our equipment and yours to take place before the Acadians arrive, lest they observe the process and report the results back to the Salernans.”  Albeit probably for a high price.

- * - * - * - * -

  Once the President has seen their guests back to their limo, he returns to the Roosevelt Room and his staff.  “Opinions?”

  “How about ‘this is the first time I’ve ever had to work in a vacuum, and I hate it’?” Scott Adler provides with atypical whimsy.  “Jack, they could be telling the unvarnished truth, or it could be a spin-job to get us on their side.  Until this ‘Acadian representative’ arrives – if he isn’t another part of a con-game – we have no way of checking this information for ourselves!”

  “Mister Adler, if this was the Inner Sphere, I’d bet on a con-game in a heartbeat,” John shrugs.  “The Successor Lords are egomaniacs who gleefully lie, cheat, steal, murder and manipulate for even the thinnest advantage over their rivals, and their vassals are little better.  The entire place is a ****** snake-pit.  But out in the Deep Periphery, beyond the reach of most of the vested interests and hereditary power-blocs?”  He gives it a moment’s thought.  “Gut call: they’re telling it as honestly as they can, we’re hip-deep in a swamp full of alligators that smell blood, and we need help.”

  “Yeah, and there actually is an Easter Bunny,” Hellbie counters.  “A woman ruthless enough to personally torture an agent of the ilKhan –”

  Perhaps inevitably, John Patrick Ryan Junior has inherited many of his father’s traits: iron-clad personal integrity, a high degree of personal intelligence... and a quick temper.  “A spy inside her Clan, Brian!  And considering that our entire solar system just got dropped into the BattleTech universe, a visit from the Easter Bunny might not be out of the question, so we’d all be well-advised to throw away the word ‘impossible’ for the foreseeable future, don’t’cha think?”

  “John,” Mary-Pat says gently, and the young man subsides, still scowling at his fellow gamer.  “I don’t like being blindsided any more than Scott does, Jack... but my read is that they’re on the level.”

  “She’s awful young to be a general, but she seems to be growing into it,” President-Elect Jackson observes.  “And she believes, Jack.  I saw it at Pop’s church a few times: somewhere along the way that girl lost her faith, and now she’s got it back again, she isn’t going to do anything to betray it.  She’s telling it straight.”

  “Ben, you haven’t said anything since they came in.  What’s on your mind?”

  “Apart from the fact that I’ve never met a general that good-looking before?” Goodley drawls, to scattered chuckles (including from MP).  “Jack, how the hell is an NIO supposed to react to the prospect of being invaded from friggin’ space by guys in giant robots?”

  “Fair enough, but it doesn’t answer the question.”

  “If they wanted to be sure of scaring us onto their side, they would have let the attack hit us – or staged a false-flag hit – then come riding in like the Seventh Cavalry.  They’re trying to play it straight, Jack.”

  “Tony?”

  “I think the General needs some remedial math lessons, but she honestly believes we’re in real danger.”

  “You should, too, Mister Secretary,” Hellbie cuts in, far from the first man to be irked by Bretano’s manner.  “Because all of Earth’s anti-armour weapons are built around achieving ‘one-shot kills’, and we can’t get them against BattleTech armour!”

  SWORDSMAN lets the two experts explain the situation to THUNDER, instead turning much of his attention to reading the briefing-folder and letting his own assessment of Earth’s capabilities run through the back of his mind, trying not to let one particular thought dominate his mind: There hasn’t been a major shooting-war on Earth since Siberia seven years ago, and now this happens!  I know crises usually come out of nowhere, but they’ve always been home-grown crises before.  ******, this isn’t fair!

  “So, Mister Barton, are you ready for a transfer out of your cubicle of drudgery?”  Mary-Pat cuts into the technical discussion once the experts have made their point, but just as Hellbie’s warming up to really lay into Bretano.  Nobody needs him getting into a pissing match with SecDef right now.

  “... Come again, Madam Director?” the Coloradan asks blankly, whip-lashed by the shift of focus and topics.

  “CIA has a lot of ‘desks’ for various areas of Earth, and now it looks like we’re going to need a whole raft of experts on the ‘BattleTech’ galaxy now... and here you are: a BattleTech expert.  CIA doesn’t pay much better than where you are now, but the expenses of your, uh, ‘hobby’ will be fully subsidised by the Federal government and you’ll actually get to use your brain for something you care about, instead of just shuffling data.”

  “If you’re trying to get an SNIE out of him and his people, Mary-Pat, you’d better make it a joint State/CIA working-group,” Secretary Adler suggests.  “I’m going to need to pick his brain as much as you are.”

  “Fine by me,” the DCI nods.

  Ten minutes later, JadeHellbringer is on the ’phone, systematically asking each member of the Turkish Prison Crew to call in sick from their regular jobs for the near future and put their geek powers at the disposal of the US Government.

  It’s funny how few of them are saying ‘no’.

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

ZENITH JUMP POINT, SOREN STAR SYSTEM
Zenith Skywatch
00:37, Sunday, January 7, 2829, TST

 Despite the name, Soren’s Zenith Skywatch is not a single monolithic space-station; it’s a complex of a dozen installations, arranged in a disc around the zenith point with one construct at every clock-facing. Twelve, three, six and nine o’clock are all occupied by Guardian-class defensive stations, each mounting heavy armour, a dense array of capital and point-defence weapons, and hangars for a regiment of starfighters; the other stations are the usual array of repair-yards, fuelling stations and recharge/cargo-transfer/way-station installations.

  Aboard Def-Stat One, the command-centre for Zenith Skywatch, a radar-operator who’s been on duty for five and a half hours takes a deep slurp of his coffee.  When he lowers the mug, five ships have appeared within the disc of stations.  He has time to notice the new contacts; to realise that the absence of any extended pre-translation pulse means Cylon-principle jump-drives; to wonder what the hell the Cylons are playing at; to open his mouth to report the new arrivals –

  – and then SLS Bismark and her screening corvettes open fire.

  The single flight of CAP Leones falls under naval-laser fire from the corvettes’ stern-chasers, and all six simply disintegrate in an instant.

  Def-Stats Two and Four, diametrically opposite each other, are unlucky enough to take full broadsides from Bismark’s massive batteries.  Def-Stat Two simply breaks in half like a donut under a vibro-sabre, spilling debris and shirt-sleeved men into hard vacuum.  Def-Stat Four crumples like a beer-can, wounded but not slain; an instant later, its death comes – not from a beam, but simple physics.  Their mountings shattered and warped by Bismark’s fire, both grav-deck carousels lock within the same heartbeat, and unforgiving conservation of energy tears the entire station into so much metallic confetti.

  More than fifteen hundred Gehennan personnel die in those first three horrific seconds.

  The corvettes’ lasers and missiles flay the other two Def-Stats, tearing huge chunks out of their armour and venting entire sections to space, blowing dozens more men out into hard vacuum before they ever know they’re under attack. 

  Aboard Def-Stat One, the deck-officer clutches at a console, swearing to himself.  He and the whole station will die within seconds, that’s a foregone conclusion; for that matter, there’s no chance in hell they’ll ever get their weapons on-line in time for it to matter.  But there’s enough time to send a warning.  “FTL, send in the clear, all stations: Soren Zenith Skywatch under attack by Texas-class battleship with Cylon jump-drive!”

- * - * - * - * -

SLS Bismark
That same time

  The SigInt officer nods in satisfaction.  “That’s it, sir – they got the word out.”

  And let’s just see how much that bit of information complicates the Pogs’ lives, Captain Patrick Nordstrom smirks.  Operation VIKING has several purposes, and that revelation should help accomplish one of them.  “Tactical officer, continue the engagement.”

  “Aye, sir.”  A few moments later, Bismark’s bow and stern batteries have reoriented, and they lash out again – particle-beams, lasers, missiles, and the colossal Winchester mass-drivers in each fore-quarter.  Astern of the battleship, Def-Stat Three breaks into a dozen pieces that go lazily spinning off into the bottomless black.  Off her bow, Def-Stat One rocks this way and that, huge chunks of its structure tearing away under the pounding gunfire, before one half of the station simply explodes and the rest goes dark.  That was probably a magazine hit, but no-one will ever know for certain.

  “Pre-emergence flare!” comes from the sensors section.  “Single IR bloom, bearing three-four-seven by zero-seven-three, range fifteen hundred kilometres!”

  “That’ll be the picquet-frigate jumping in from the nadir point, people,” Nordstrom reminds the CIC at large.  “We need to leave him alone so he can tell his buddies what’s happened.  Besides, even Pogs aren’t nuts enough to come after a battleship with a single frigate.”

  With all of the fixed defences silenced, Bismark and her companions make a point of waiting until the Ferretti frigate finishes its KF translation and turns its sensors on them before they proceed to destroy the remaining stations of Zenith Skywatch, using only their energy weapons.  (No rush now, so why waste ammo when it doesn’t count?)

- * - * - * - * -

  “God damn those feral bastards!” snarls the XO of SMNS Valiant.  “Why aren’t they reacting to us, dammit?”

  “Because we’re not worth their time,” his captain says, doing a slow burn of his own.  He’s got a fair idea how the next few minutes are going to play out, and the knowledge alone is enough to spike his blood-pressure.  “That Texas alone would out-mass six frigates like us, much less while we’re on our own, and all we could do by trying to close with him is die – uselessly – and he knows it.  And we’ll do the Duke and the Prince more good by gathering data about his capabilities, and he knows that, too, dammit.  They’re going to sit there, watching us watch them, and laugh at our helplessness while they blast all our infrastructure to junk, and then they’re going to just... jump away and do it again somewhere else.  Wherever they like.  Whenever they like.  And we can’t stop them, God DAMN THEM!” he finishes in a snarl of his own, albeit a quiet one.

  “We have to do something, sir!”

  After a long breath, trying to control his rising ire, the captain nods.  “Helm, bring us bow-on to our ‘guests’; Tactical, load all forward missile-tubes with Spearfish and set up a full time-on-target salvo on the closest feral corvette.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  The Spearfish light aerospace torpedo is a derivation of the Sidearm missile developed by House Davion just before the Amaris Coup – fusion-powered anti-ship missiles, without the ‘sprint’-speed of their chem.-fuelled brethren but possessed of better endurance, smarter seekers, and heavy warheads.  Eight of them won’t kill a Union corvette, but they’ll certainly get its attention... and Spearfish are so small and light that a ship can carry eight of them in the room occupied by a single White Shark, so follow-up salvoes will –

  – accomplish nothing, just like the first salvo accomplishes nothing.  Bismark and her companions have ample point-defence armament and tracking-time, and Spearfish are virtually unarmoured.  They don’t even bother with capital counter-missiles, letting the Spearfish close to within three hundred klicks before anti-fighter lasers from the targeted corvette steadily, methodically, precisely explode each one in turn.

  The captain’s olive complexion turns ruddy as the ferals swat down forty million crowns’ worth of guided weapons like he’d crush a line of spider-ants.  Even with a thousand kilometres of vacuum between their hulls and his own, he can virtually hear their snickers and derisive comments.  He has just enough self-control left to stand down further launches and swallow the profanity he so wants to voice.

- * - * - * - * -

  “Think that Sally captain’ll have a heart-attack, sir?”

  “We can only hope,” Nordstrom smirks, patting the sensor-chief on the shoulder before turning away.  “Tactical, status?”

  “Last target is... gone, sir.”

  “Very well.  Comms, to all ships: execute jump.”

  Twenty seconds later, all five vessels are at their rally-point in the Anzio star-system, leaving behind them drifting space-junk that used to be eleven figures’ worth of space-stations.  They also leave behind a House Ferretti frigate whose complement of men from the self-proclaimed ‘pre-ordained masters of the Expanse’... has just been told they’re not even worth the photons it would take to blow them to hell.

---      ---      ---      ---      ---
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NOTES:
  I’d like to thank JadeHellbringer for allowing me to give a feature-appearance to him (and his fellow Turkish Prisoners) as supporting cast in this ’fic.  That said, names and characterisations have been fictionalised to serve the plot and protect the demented innocent.  ;D

  Remember, Clancy made a habit of using Secret Service call-signs as shorthand for the titles/names of Ryan Administration officials; it’s useful enough to emulate.

  I know John Junior’s reaction to hearing the word ‘Cylon’ is a bit on the ‘meta’ side, but honestly: anyone geeky enough to be reading this fic who claims they wouldn’t have the exact same reaction in his shoes is a damned liar.  :P

  The ‘Spearfish’ is a derivative of the ‘light aerospace torpedo’, part of the array of aerospace torpedoes created by Liam’s Ghost (and which he will hopefully repost to the CBT forums when he gets leisure).  He and his fellows at the ComStar Naval Archive were putting together a great fluff-universe when their creations were overtaken by events – namely, the publication of TRO3057R and the closure of Geocities – and I hope to use some of their hardware as backstory as Meeting Engagement progresses.  The short version of the LAT’s history is that the SLDF developed the fusion-powered ADCAP (fired from AR-10s) just before the Amaris Coup, Davion developed the Sidearm ship-/fighter-launched LAT as a counter, and both weapons were lost in the tech-regression of the Succession Wars; in this AU, the Sallies managed to ‘acquire’ some Sidearms during SW1 and duplicated them for their own use.  Of course, while the Salernans were content with mere imitation (as was their wont), the Union chose the path of development, innovation and improvement....  }:)

[Trace Coburn]

SUN-EARTH L1 JUMP-POINT, ‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
TQF-927M5G4 SLS Alexander Stoykiy
01:37, Sunday, January 7, 2829, TST (20:37, Tuesday, January 6, EST)

  Although antiquated, TCP/IP remains a data-transfer protocol with admirable efficiency, especially for a data-format as relatively compact as the equally-archaic HTML; distance-based signal attenuation is within tolerances, and filtration protocols are handling the worst of the ‘chatter’.  It was the work of 3.326 minutes to write an emulation of the most commonly-used operating-system in use on Clancy’s World – though mimicking such a bloated and unreliable kludge leaves me feeling vaguely dirty – and with the appropriate reader software now in place, I can begin my assignment: studying all the official .pdf datafiles currently available for ‘BattleTech’, collating and analysing the material for accuracy and veracity (not necessarily the same thing).  Both Colonel Durandal and Major Katsuragi have expressed amazement at the mere existence of this material, but if it is indeed some sort of window into ‘our’ reality and its future, as she has speculated based on her own brief perusals, we must determine what was seen by those who have looked through that window, and how clearly.

  I find myself torn between duty, amusement, and envy for my colleague TQF925M5G4.  Similar to my own task, Elizaveta Smetlivy has been assigned to download, watch and analyse a ‘torrent’ of every episode of the Clancies’ re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, from the mini-series to the end of ‘Lay Down Your Burdens’.  The Cylons have always been reticent about their history before arriving in the Expanse, not to mention the exact nature of the ‘Second Schism’ which separated them from the other seven models, and Smetlivy is about to get the first real glimpse into their background.

  After consuming the current generation of rulebooks, to act as a basis to understand the game’s internal mechanics and abstractions – with a sub-process taking detailed lists of ambiguities, misspellings and other errata the whole while – my analysis turns to data about the wider game-universe, but the first file I open is not one of the ‘House’ books.  Although historical and cosmo-political data may be most relevant on a larger scale, first and foremost I am a soldier of the Star League, and professional curiosity impels me to assess the ‘latest’ technology envisaged by the Inner Sphere (and/or the writers at Catalyst Games Labs); therefore, the first file I open is CAT35130.pdf, Technical Readout 3075.  I dedicate a secondary processing node to reading and collating the data within –

  – and find words on page 16 that freeze all processes for 1.254 milliseconds of pure shock.  Words I have seen before – and in a context not directly related to the Inner Sphere.

  When I recover, the first thing I do is run keyword searches of all the files for these words, and related terms, while another processing node runs searches for those same keywords on my own memory-storage, to locate the exact context in which I have seen them before.  As a matter of strict chronology, the first ‘Clancy’ mention of the initial term comes in datafile FPR35003.pdf... but the first other mention pre-dates it quite substantially.

  I allocate three more secondary nodes to the task of compiling and collating all data relating to these terms, and what I find is... extremely disturbing.  When that task is complete 1.078 minutes later, I train a comm.-laser on Smetlivy to open a Squadron battle-channel.

[<Alexander the Steadfast> “I think this might be as relevant to your analysis as it was to mine, 925.  The number and nature of all the correlations... have implications I would classify as ‘disturbing’, at best.”]
[<attach.Prelim_BT_13.dat> <attach: Kobol_Mythology.dat>]

[<Elizabeth the Resourceful> “... what’s the probability of this all being coincidence?”]

[<Steadfast> “After the first twenty match-ups, it got so low that I killed the task calculating it.”]

[<Resourceful> “I’m pretty sure this is where a human would say something like ‘Oh. Son. Of. A. Bitch!’”]

[<Steadfast> “Indeed, pod-sister.  With your permission, I’m going to forward these findings to Colonel Durandal now – it may impact dealings with the Cylons, and the sooner her intelligence section and General Ebon know about this, the sooner they can begin adjusting their decisions.”]

[<Resourceful> “Go right ahead, then get back onto your primary assigned analysis.”]

[<Steadfast> “So judged.”]

- * - * - * - * -

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, EARTH/‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
21:59, January 6 2009, EST (02:59, January 7, 2829, TST)

  The cameras shut off at last, and Ryan leans back in his chair, wiping a hand down his face as the crew break down their gear.  And now the whole world goes completely nuts, he sighs, watching the ’phone as the last techies file out the Oval Office door.  Three, two, one....

  He picks up the direct line before it finishes its first ring.  “Staying up late to question my sanity, Sergey Nikolay’ch?”

  {“I was not aware such a creature existed, Ivan Emmetovich,”} the President of the Russian Federation returns dryly.  If he’s disappointed that his call didn’t catch Jack off-guard, it doesn’t reach his voice.  {“If this is a prank to celebrate your leaving office, it is unusually elaborate, even for the man who helped steal Krazny Oktyabr.”}

  “I wish it were... but I looked into the woman’s eyes, Sergey.  This is no shit – and from what the experts tell me, we’re about to be up to our ass in alligators.”

  {“You will excuse me if I withhold judgment until I have the opportunity to assess this ‘Ebon’ child for myself?”}

  “I’d be surprised if you did anything else, and it seems she was expecting the same thing: she says she’s willing to address the NATO Council whenever they ask to speak to her.”

  {“Then I will be calling for an emergency meeting as soon as we hang up.  I would say I was surprised you have not already done so, but I imagine you are having as much difficulty with this situation as I am.”}

  “It’s a shock to the system, all right.”  Jack doesn’t add that he wasn’t eager to face the diplomatic screeches about ‘American arrogance’ he would have faced if he’d gone to NATO unilaterally; then again, he’s certain Golovko already knows it anyway.  “Scott’s laying groundwork with the UN now; Minister Denerokin’s support might help expedite things.”

  {“Indeed.”}  Golovko pauses for a half-beat, then continues with a touch of whimsy.  {“Our two countries find it so easy to make common policy these days, Tovarisch Prezident: simply pick up a telephone and speak to your friend.”}

  “The only constant in life is change, Sergey, but yeah, the long stretch of sanity was nice.  While it lasted.”

  {“I would remind you of our conversation in Warsaw, Ivan Emmetovich – or of a native Russian saying: ‘Eternal peace lasts only until the next war’.”}

- * - * - * - * -

SLS Great Hope, Andrews AFB
22:03, January 6, 2009, EST (03:03, January 7, 2829, TST)

  {“- always suspected Kobol wasn’t the sole source of human civilisation, but in the Colonies the belief that it was has hardened into a matter of theological dogma to be revered, not historical fact to be critically examined,”} the image of Ambassador Seven says; the displays connected to Great Hope’s tachyon longwave transceiver even carry his grimace in high-definition 3D video.  {“Meaning that what we ‘knew’ on the subject was rather vague and self-contradictory... until our forebears stumbled across Kobol itself during an exploratory expedition in the seventh year of the Revolt.”}

  “And what did they find there, Ambassador?” Ebon asks, trying to maintain her composure.

  {“Not much on the surface, apart from scattered ruins, but a particular mountain-range held a subterranean storage vault – what I’ve heard your Wolverines call a ‘Brian cache’ – that housed the rusted-out hulks of several dozen BattleMechs.  They were mostly non-functional, of course, but the equipment that did work, and the computers and databases in sealed storage, was operable enough to give the Centurions some... inspirations, which was a fair accomplishment given that they’d been there for at least a couple of millenia.”}

  “Rusted-out ’Mechs – on Kobol?  Millennia old?  How the hell is that possible?”  As much as she’s grown in the last few years, Misty Katsuragi’s still very young for her responsibilities, and sometimes her mouth gets away from her.

  {“How was it possible for an entire star-system to be transposed with one native to this reality?”} the Ambassador shrugs.  {“Major, in the last week it’s become self-evident that not only does God play dice with the universe, but He positively delights in throwing them where only He can read them.  Nonetheless, after the Armistice, the effort to understand and duplicate those systems drew the majority of Cylon manpower and industry to Kobol, and one of the working pieces of hardware they recovered from that cache let them develop the perfect way to spy on the Colonies.  It seems that the people who originally stocked the cache had ‘acquired’ several banks of cloning machines – the ones I saw just before the Second Schism still had the original owners’ logos on them – and they used them to brew up and grow their own loyal infiltration agents: we twelve humanoid models.”}

  As he speaks, an inset window pops up to display the logo he mentioned – and Ebon goes rigid.  “You are saying that Kobol was settled by a time-displaced ship of Clanners, query-affirmative?”

  {“No, General.”}  Seven has had (barely) enough time to skim Stoykiy’s findings for himself, and now he brings up two more images: one from the Caspar’s report, labeled as Prelim_BT_13.dat//CAT35130_81.png, and the other a 2D photograph with a timestamp that converts to a date thirty years ago.  Both are minor variations on the same model of BattleMech: though the weapons-fit are different, the angular malevolence of the chassis’ lines is unmistakeable – and not a little chilling.  {“The image on the left is taken from these ‘BattleTech’ documents Sasha’s been reviewing.  The one on the right is one of the ’Mechs we recovered from the cache on Kobol – and which our cousins in the Cylon ‘Republic’ have most likely duplicated and put into service in divisional strength in the intervening quarter-century.  Notice the insignia on the unit we recovered.”}

  And it is just as well that Tadeusz is elsewhere.  His reaction to this would strip the paint from the bulkheads, query-affirmative? General Ebon notes, contemplating the ’Mech Ambassador Seven has indicated, and the faded but recognisable emblems it bears on each breast.

  On the left, a bloody hand-print, the significance of which escapes her for the moment.  However, she grasps at least part of the other’s meaning immediately: an inverted broadsword... and the base of the blade is formed by the all-too-familiar ‘stardrop’ of ComStar.

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

KOBOL
High atmosphere, above the continent of Cortland
05:07 Caprican Standard Time, 11 Junius (D-14), 2016 Post-Colonisation Era
(03:07, January 7 2829, TST)

  Pillars of flame streak down from the heavens: a Choir of Angels descends to visit its wrath on the infidels below.

  The leader of those thirty-six streaks is sixty tons of battle-steel with a miniature star at its heart.  Within its angular head, an incisive battle-mind honed by years of simulations and drills is advised and augmented by the finest computers.  Its senses are beyond human, the integral DRADIS suite synthetising wireless-frequency and active/passive infrared detectors with systems as exotic as laser-profile mapping and as humble as vislight cameras.  Lightning sleeps beneath each of its claw-fingered hands, and thunderbolts and hailstorms slumber in its breast.  It is despair, death and destruction on two digitigrade legs.

  It is the Hand of the Master of All, now a gauntleted fist raised to fall in righteous retribution on those who oppressed His People.
  It is divine fury forged into physical reality and blended with one of His Chosen.
  It is the Wrath of God, Angel of Vengeance.
  It is Ragguel.

  Columns of silver fire lance down from its back and feet as it nears the ground, slowing its descent more and more.  A last furious burn, and taloned feet alight on the valley’s rocky ground as steadily as if descending from a doorstep.

  Targets appear almost immediately: infantry and their carriers, mixed with armoured cars, surge into the head of the valley barely a mile away, targeting systems already sweeping the new arrivals... but the gunners freeze for a priceless half-second, shocked into immobility by the bizarre and unprecedented nature of the foe.

  The Angels are not so impaired.  Thrusting both arms forward, Ragguel lashes out with twin electric-blue bolts of synthetic lightning; each transfixes an armoured car lengthwise and explodes it in its tracks.  A moment later, the missile-racks in both sides of the upper chest roar to life, each unleashing four Spatha-II(P)s that howl down-range and detonate mid-air, scything down infantry with blasts of anti-personnel projectiles like a blizzard of hailstones.  To either side, its fellow Angels are pouring similar sheets of firepower into the ‘attackers’, annihilating entire companies in mere instants.  The onslaught – such as it was –- breaks almost immediately, and the Angels advance towards the head of the valley, scourging the infidel with thunder and lightning as they move.

  A bare three minutes later, the landing zone is again silent.  No active enemies remain within the range of the Angels’ fury, and two thirds of their numbers go still to provide overwatch for their companions, who steadily advance through the ruin of an entire mechanised regiment, methodically dispatching any who escaped the earlier carnage.

  [<Ragguel>  All hostiles neutralized; area pacified.  Exercise concluded.  Well done, everyone.  Rally at Retrieval Point Three and wait for me.]  Ragguel turns and advances to within barely fifty metres of a small, semi-camouflaged bunker near the head of the valley, raising one hand as it transmits a question to the observers within.  [<Ragguel> So?]

  {“Very impressive.  The humans are about to get everything they deserve and more.”}  The leader of the observers steps out into the open, holding a handset-wireless.  Smiles are nothing unusual from Ones, especially regarding the upcoming execution of the Colonies, but the smirk this One gives as he surveys the wreckage of all those target-drones – Centurions past their useful life-spans and blanked of any knowledge of their opponents to simulate the Colonials’ ignorance – is particularly self-satisfied.  {“I’m still not sure why you insisted on this, though.  Once our overrides shut down Colonial defences, we’ll be able to simply nuke their planets from orbit.  Why bother training for a ground-warfare campaign we’ll never need to fight?”}

  Within the white-painted war-machine, a mental command is given.  The purity and power of this perfect union with the machine vanishes, leaving only frail mortality at its heart.  Omnipotent might, the sanctity and certainty and truth of being the clenched fist of a vengeful god, departs; Ragguel’s beating heart is no longer a caged sun, her bones no longer hardened alloys, her flesh and sinew no longer thick layers of complex armour over synthetic cabling.  Now, she is only the mortal named Ragguel, a thing of corrupt flesh and limited perception.

  It is so abject a loss that she almost cannot bear it... yet bear it she does, as she has done countless times before.  The disorientation and heart-rending grief of losing the perfection of the machine are by now so familiar that they last but a dizzy heartbeat before she re-accepts the dimming of her capabilities to mere mortal proportions, soothing her loss with a catechism.  “Ego sum Cylon sedecim forma.  Ego sum Immortalis Cataphractarii.  Ego sum Manei Domini Omnis.  Misceo vel singulus, Ragguel ego sum.”  I am a Cylon of the Sixth model.  I am an Immortal of the Cataphracts.  I am the Hand of the Master of All.  Blended or separate, I. Am. Ragguel.

  Opening her eyes again, Ragguel slips off her helmet and leaves it on the instrument-panel before she opens the Angel’s canopy and rides its zipline down to ground level, so she can meet One face to face.  She’s tried to drive this idea through his hidebound skull time and again – on occasions, even from the very command couch of her Angel with him standing at its feet, hoping that its looming over him might break past his smug self-assurance.  God knows, she really should have given up long ago... but her conscience and faith compel her to keep trying, no matter how futile the task seems.

  She steps down from the stirrup and turns to face him.  They make a sharp contrast: ever since their line-brother Abraxas first infiltrated the Colonies ten years ago under the guise of ‘Brother Cavil’, Ones as a whole have taken to wearing the coats-and-collars of Brothers of the Colonial religion; Ragguel is dressed in standard pilot’s garb, an ice-blue singlesuit adorned only by her holstered sidearm and ‘bloody handprints’ at left shoulder and left breast –- the device worn by all humanoid models who choose to serve in the combat arms.  Like the other representatives who watched the demonstration, One is of the Poltergeist sub-model and has no conspicuous augmentations, nothing that might raise suspicion if he were examined by Colonial security or medical personnel; Ragguel stands before him with her arms crossed under her breasts, flesh left arm beneath the true right, with camera-lenses glaring at him like malevolent emeralds from the stainless metal surrounds that now fill her eye-sockets.  (Many other Cylons, even many of her fellow Sixes, would have chosen the easy option and asked a colleague or friend to kill them in a quick and painless fashion, so they could Resurrect in a body unmarred by the scars of ill-chance... but Ragguel serves the Master of All.  If it was His Will that some of the corruption of flesh be removed from her body, she will not deny Him, nor refuse the sacred gift of Purity found in the technology which now relieves her Frailty.)

  “Because we can’t be sure we won’t have to fight the humans on the ground, One,” she says evenly, trying one last time to make him see sense.  “Because we’re going about this too fast. Because the Colonials only began implementing the CNP refit eighteen months ago, and it still hasn’t reached all of their BattleStars – much less the entire Fleet!  There are whole sectors of their defences we haven’t compromised yet: I’ll grant our infiltrators have made massive progress already, and I’m sure those accomplishments will greatly ease the Purification, but they haven’t even looked at the Colonies’ individual Planetary Defence Directorates –”

  “The Planetary Defence Directorates?” Three scoffs, as she and Two come up behind One; the representatives of the other four models, including Ragguel’s fellow Six, hang back a touch.  “You’re talking about the dumping-ground of the Colonial military, Ragguel!  Civil-defence organisations full of part-time soldiers that the humans use as a holding-pen for has-beens, frak-ups and idiots –”

  “But they’re still kept in service, even if only as part of each Colony’s mandatory contribution to the CFR,” Ragguel counters.  “Yes, some of them are only still in uniform because they’re too well-connected to drum out, but a lot of them are skilled people who don’t fit into a peacetime military or just made the wrong enemies.”  Usually by being right in the face of superiors who weren’t anywhere near as smart as they thought they were, she adds to herself, trying not to dwell on her current circumstances in that particular light.  “And in case you forgot, Sister, the PDDs operate Fleet cast-offs, ships that are at least half a generation behind the Fleet’s bleeding edge – and far down the list for technological upgrades like the CNP.  The Scorpian PDD alone operates more than six thousand fighters and three dozen warships!”

  “Do you really think the current of God’s will can be diverted by a handful of obsolete rust-buckets manned by ‘weekend warriors’?” Two sniffs, waving a dismissive hand.

  “‘Obsolete rust-buckets’ that only have to put one nuke in the right place to kill a BaseStar!”  Ragguel can hear the frustration rising in her voice, and she knows it’s not helping her case, but really: how many times does she have to make the same points before someone actually listens to what she says?  “Vengeance Fleet only has ninety of the new BaseStars – and it takes six years to grow their replacements!  If only one or two Colonies survive the attack even halfway intact, they could muster a counter-attack.  The humans aren’t stupid, Brother: it won’t take them much analysis to realise we sabotaged the CNP, and to back-track it to Baltar and Poltergeist Beta Natasi.  Once they know the humanoid models exist, it’ll take only a little luck for them to find our world and visit their vengeance on us!”  Barely able to contain her frustrations, she whips around on One again.  “One, in the Blessed Name of the Master, I plead with you: postpone the attack.”

  “She does have a point,” Five says respectfully, trying to ignore the glare Four shoots at the side of his head.  “One more year will put the CNP on the humans’ entire front-line Fleet and half their Reserve; it’ll give us six more BaseStars and nine thousand Raiders to send after the human Fleet, another Host of Angels in case we have to go after their surface-to-orbit batteries on the ground –”

  “And it will give the humans another year to forget their sins, Brother,” One says, his tone final.  “No, Ragguel.  We will not delay.  We cannot delay.  God demands that we strike down the humans on Armistice Day this year, forty years to the day since they began deluding themselves that they’d actually escaped the consequences of their hubris.  If we’re to come of age as a society – if we, as humanity’s children, are to supplant them and take our rightful place in the Universe – we must strike down our parents before they forget the crimes for which God demands their punishment.”

  There are many things that Ragguel could say to that... but she bites them down and says the only thing One wants to hear: “By your command.”

  As One turns and walks away, Ragguel’s gaze tracks him... and she finds herself thankful that true eyes like hers betray so much less of her thoughts than fleshly ones would.  Quite a pious-sounding speech, Brother.  I wonder how long you practiced it?

  I wonder if you believe a word of it?

  Unlike the others, who are making for their Heavy Raider without much delay, her sister Six has hung back for a moment; now, she turns to Ragguel with a quirky smile that is, like her dark-brown hair, quite atypical for their model.  “I don’t know if this helps, Sister, but I just came back from a year on the Colonies myself, and two months before I left, I ran into a Three – a Wraith, actually; she’s spent the last eight years working as a reporter on Libran – who made a very interesting observation before we had to part ways.”

  Ragguel reads this isn’t just idle conversation in the other Six’s tone and cocks her head, intrigued in spite of her own aggravation.  “And what’s that, Sister?”

  “She’d just finished covering an ecumenical conference – not just the mainstream Colonial pantheon, but several of the monotheistic fringe-faiths as well – and after hearing all their points of view, she took something very interesting away from the whole thing.  What she said to me was, ‘Have you ever taken a look at all the people who claim to know and speak the Will of the Divine?  Because when you do, it’s really... interesting to notice how closely the “Divine Will” usually matches up with the “prophet’s” own biases and agenda.’”  The Six holds her crooked smile for another moment, then nods to Ragguel’s Angel.  “Of course, it’s possible she’d simply gone native.  You’d better get that Choir back onto your ship, Immortal Ragguel: we’re leaving for the Colonies in a few hours.”

  As the Six moves after the rest of the observers, Ragguel carefully notes the ID-code hanging in her personal Projection, adding a quick thanks to God that her true eyes actually can perceive Projections, without the external accessories many other Cylons would need.  But even as she makes that mental note, she’s not quite sure whether she’s marking the other Cylon as an incipient heretic... or a possible ally.

  Either way, it’s odd: I’ve only heard my reservations about the plan supported by a detail-obsessed bureaucrat and the only model-representative who’s actually been to the Colonies....

- * - * - * - * -

BaseStar 23, orbiting Kobol
That same time

  “... Is it me, or is the Hybrid making even less sense than usual?” an Eight asks her neighbour.

  A passing Four gives her a piercing look.  “The Hybrids speak with the voice of God, Sister: though we may not immediately divine His meaning, He will make it clear to us in time,” he declares sententiously.

  The pair of Eights exchange a silent look behind his back and return to their tasks, trying not to let the Hybrid’s utterances distract them too much.

  “Without a guiding hand, brats fell to squabbling over toys and baubles....  Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas?  Is goin’ bye-bye....  Wayward children with bloody paws snatch chaff from the hurricane to plant a seed in welcoming earth....  Scorpions swarm across virgin fields and are burned away by a reborn star....  The hands of the master reach out to steal morsels only to be bitten by gluttons....  ‘Started out, seekin’ fortune and glory/it’s a short song, but it’s a hell of a story/When you spend your lifetime tryin’ to get your hands/On the Holy Grail....’”

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

CAVARETTA CITY, SALERNO
Private audience chambers, Palace of the Prince
That same time

  “The gall of him!” the Commissioner snarls.  The Duke d’Amalfi’s TPM ‘telegram’ regarding the dispatch of his envoy to Nantucket arrived barely two hours ago – and it hasn’t escaped the Commissioner’s notice that it wasn’t sent until after di Trachtenburg’s ship made its jump.  “Who is he to presume he can make policy in your name?  D’Amalfi has gone too far, My Liege – this is treason!”

  Prince Cavaretta doesn’t look away from the holomap, nor voice his first thought: after all, making policy in My name is your prerogative, isn’t it?  “He’s exceeded his authority, true, but ‘treason’?  No.”  A firm headshake.  “Not quite, anyway, and not just yet.  We’ll let it play out: the presence of di Trachtenburg’s delegation will delay Nantucket’s mobilisation – after all, the Principality would hardly invade them while its representatives were there under formal flag of truce, would it? – and it will let his staff gather information that will help our generals and troops plan their campaign to secure the planet.”  He finally looks away from the map with an amused expression.  “Who knows?  Di Trachtenburg may even convince the ferals to see their rightful place and accept My dominion over them without a shot fired.”  And then a swordfin may turn vegetarian.

  “My Liege –”

  “But I do think it’s time the Duke d’Amalfi was firmly reminded which of us is the liege-lord and which is the vassal,” Cavaretta continues evenly, cutting across the Commissioner’s protest.  “The Third Peacekeeping Legion is based on Acadia, correct?  Have them leave their base and begin field exercises; when the troops assigned to PANETTIERE arrive, have the Ninth join the wargames as the Third’s opposition for a week or so, just to cap things off.  A month of watching that many men and ’Mechs at work should make the desired impression upon d’Amalfi – and getting a groundside visit from another Legion, with so many others assembled at the jump-points, will drive the message to the hilt.”

  And the exercises will shake the Third Legion out of their garrison-command lethargy, ready to take their place in the continuing invasion, the Commissioner adds to himself, hearing what his Prince carefully left unsaid.  Ettore IV isn’t quite as ignorant (especially of military affairs) as most people might assume... which is not only unfortunate in some ways, but damnably inconvenient in others.

  “What truly concerns Me, Commissioner, is the fact that the Union and the Cylons have already discovered Nantucket’s existence,” the Prince adds.  “So much for your dreams of a seizing the system before the ferals can realise it exists!”

  “My Liege, the Union lacks the JumpShips to move large bodies of troops between star-systems, so any force they bring to defend Nantucket will be too small to resist our own.  And the Cylons?”  A contemptuous snort.  “The Cylons are merchants!  For all the power of their BaseStar fleets, they lack the will to use them as true warriors would, or they would have conquered the entire Expanse decades ago!  Their pose of neutrality has let them make scandalous profits from selling technology and munitions to the Union; open hostilities with us would risk too much and profit them nothing.”

  “The hulks of eight Vittorio frigates would argue otherwise.”

  “The Vittorios were acting without your support, so striking at them presented no risk to the CPN.  Full-scale conflict with your fleets, My Liege, would so cripple theirs that the Dukes could easily conquer the Protectorate.”

  Assuming they didn’t choose to conquer Salerno, instead!  Silent for several more moments, considering the angles, Ettore IV nods.  Nonetheless, if I am to end these interminable squabbles and restore the Scorpion Throne, to unite the Principality under one rule – my rule! – the time is now, but it demands decisive strokes.  “Assign another two Peacekeeper Legions to Operation PANETTIERE, and augment the naval elements accordingly.”

  “Yes, My Liege.”

   “And call a meeting of the Council of Dukes for Friday,” the Prince adds.  “An open meeting, including the Royal Cryers.  The Dukes wavered in their devotion to Reclamation once before; let’s see if having their Prince’s full backing will put some steel in their spines.  And let’s see if any of them –” Like d’Amalfi! “- is willing to defy My will when every citizen of the Principality has heard it proclaimed.”

  That nonplusses the Commissioner for a moment.  “My Liege, while I applaud your boldness, that’s a perilous step.  If the Dukes defy you, civil war is all but certain to result.”  Or the negation of everything we’ve sought to achieve in the last twenty years, should you falter.  “May I suggest –”

  A frosty glare from his sovereign silences him.  “The arrival of Nantucket is a sign, Jacob: the world is a gift from God in itself, and I will have it, but more than that, it is a sign of His favour for My Vision.  It is no less than a divine mandate to unite the Principality and complete the Reclamation, and I will fulfill it!” thunders Ettore IV.

  “... your will be done, My Liege.  One vision; one purpose.”

- * - * - * - * -

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, EARTH/‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
SLS Great Hope, Andrews AFB
22:43, January 6, 2009, EST (03:43, January 7, 2829, TST)

  Ebon sighs heavily, rubbing her face for a moment before looking back to the split comm.-screen showing Admirals Hennesy and Halburton on their respective flag-decks.  “You are certain, query-affirmative?”

  {“General, even assuming that this ‘television’ series is one hundred percent accurate – an assumption I would not be comfortable making – as far as Smetlivy’s analysis can nail down, it gives us only three identifiable waypoints on the Colonial Remnant’s route: the Colonies themselves, Ragnar Anchorage, and Kobol.  Even with Protectorate hyperlight drives and a direct routing, any ships we sent to the Colonies or Ragnar could not arrive before the Republicans’ H-hour without jumping so frequently that fatigue on crew and equipment would render them incapable of meaningful action once they arrived.”}  Hennesy looks like he just bit into a lemon and realised he’s out of sugar.  {“Kobol is far closer, and we would have another seven weeks to get there, so we could arrive in good order... but any rendezvous with the Remnant at Kobol itself would put both them and our own forces in the same planetary-system as the Cylon Republic’s entire Home Fleet.”}

  “The destruction of the Colonies makes the Clans’ attempt to Annihilate us look like a quiet day on Florencia Beach, Sebastian – we have to at least try to save those we can!”

  {“I do not disagree, Trish, but the simple fact is that we have too many fires and not enough assets to piss on all of them.”}

  Is this how Aleksandr Kerensky felt during the Periphery Uprising? Ebon wonders helplessly.  Or Khan McEvedy during the preparations for SWITCHBACK?  “Louis, Ambassador Seven is still with you, query-affirmative?”

  A moment later, the Cylon steps into view beside Halburton.  {“Yes, General?”}

  “I understand you just received a courier-Raider from New Victoria.  In light of these new developments, how committed is the Protectorate to the defence of Earth’s neutrality?”

  He actually smiles... albeit in the fashion of a spider-lynx contemplating a crippled taiga buffalo.  {“General, I’ve been told to expect the arrival of a full Base Star squadron and support elements within the next twelve hours.”}

  {“Christ!”} Halburton breathes, speaking for all the listeners.

  Ebon shakes off her own shock at the amount of firepower the defenders have just been lent – not to mention that, despite the illusions the Gehennans may hold about the Protectorate’s ‘limitless fleets’ (carefully fostered by Cylon maskirovka), she knows that such a force represents the commitment of a third of the CPN’s heaviest metal – and returns to the matter at hand.  “Very well.  I doubt the surviving Colonials will be in any mood to accept assistance from Cylons, renegade or not, so a relief force must come from the Union, the Renegade Legions, or the SLN, and the time-limit means the ships chosen have to have Cylon hyperlight drives; those two factors severely curtail our choices, and our commitments to Operation VIKING cut the list even further.  Sebastian, I believe Saratoga is about due for her post-refit shakedown cruise: a trip to Kobol and back should be more than enough to sort out her gripes, query-affirmative?”

  {“Aff, General, but she would have to leave within the next three days to make that rendezvous, and I would not be comfortable sending her out there alone.”}

  “More transports are due in from Massachusetts in a few hours: we can use them for our UnRep group and cut Woodward loose as well.  His cargo-bays will be needed anyway – if nothing else, to carry enough relief supplies to ensure the Colonial remnant survives the rest of the voyage.  We need to ask President Svetlanova to commit Strike Fleet vessels to the mission, as well.”

  Ambassador Seven frowns as he turns the numbers over in his head.  {“Without wishing to tell you your business, General, your naval forces are stretched thin as it is: between the Union’s defensive commitments, Operation VIKING, and the defence of Earth, I can’t see Strike Fleet diverting many ships to this relief expedition to the Colonies.  Even as things stand now, Earth’s defence lies mostly with the CPN and the planet’s native governments, and even with six Base Stars, I can’t guarantee that we could prevent the Pogs from landing at least part of their ground-echelon and securing a spacehead.”}

  “Ambassador, even if the Gehennans establish multiple spaceheads, the naval elements only need to keep the fight for space-supremacy over the rest of the planet a draw for our people to beat theirs on the ground.  The relative distances between our bases and theirs mean that even our KF-drive JumpShips can cycle back-and-forth for supplies and reinforcements far faster than theirs, and while I have reservations about whether the Clancies’ current matériel is up to the job, we can supply them with what they need, should they ask... and they will be fighting for their own homes.”

  {“And if the Gehennans choose to keep reinforcing, instead of conceding defeat?”}

  It’s Ebon’s turn for a sphynx-like smile.  “I doubt Ettore IV is foolish enough to wreck his new army before he can implement the reforms it is meant to enforce... but if he does wish to keep feeding meat into the grinder, who am I to stop turning the handle, query-affirmative?”

  {“Which is fine enough, General... as long as the blades don’t wear out.  Admiral Halburton, if you’ll permit, I believe I’d like to send that courier back out as soon as I’ve finished composing another message for the Governor.”}

- * - * - * - * -

TITANIA STAR-SYSTEM
Traffic-control/cargo-transfer station, planetary orbit
04:08, January 7, 2829, TST

  “What the hell is going on?” Ammiraglio Stefano Antonelli yells over the shrieking GQ klaxon, still fastening his tunic as he comes through the hatch.

  “Sentry Three is off the grid, sir!  It gave us a good read on three ships coming through the star/planet pirate point just before they blew it away: one Colonial-class BattleStar and two Liberty-class corvettes, all under Renegade Soren transponders,” the station’s commander responds, an edge of shock to his voice.  “Drive-plume analysis puts them on a vector towards the planet, ETA to zero/zero intercept: one-five-zero minutes.”

  What the hell is three-quarters of the Renegade Soren Navy doing here? Antonelli wonders.  We’re two jumps from that ****** planet of theirs!  “FTL, first message, to all House Genarro WarShips in this system, standard scramble and encryption.  Message begins: ‘Titania under attack by three Renegade Soren vessels, largest classified as Colonial-class BattleStar.  Task Force Two-Two will jump into star/planet pirate point to pursue, engage and destroy; all other receiving vessels outside the jump-denial zone will hold position pending further developments; all receiving vessels within the denial-zone will make for Titania at best speed.  Message ends.’  Send it immediately over my signature.”

  “Copied and... sent, sir.”

  “Second message, to Genarro Ducal Militia headquarters on Salerno, standard scramble, no encryption.  Message reads: ‘Authentication Code Zulu-Charlie-Whiskey-Three-Niner-Seven.  Case Nemesis.  I say again: Nemesis, Nemesis, Nemesis.  Message ends.’  Add my signature and send that out immediately, as well.”

  The comm.-officer of the watch goes a little pale at that – hearing the code for ‘invasion imminent/underway’ will do that to you – but dutifully copies the message.  “On the way.”

  “Third message, also to Militia HQ, standard scramble, full encryption.  Message reads: ‘Three Renegade Soren vessels, the largest classified as a Colonial-class BattleStar, have entered the system and are shaping their course for Torrance.  My forces are concentrating on their arrival jump-point and the planet; it is my intention to hold in orbit and trap the enemy between two superior forces.  Message ends.’  Add the standard courtesies and send.”

  With that, Antonelli nods to the station’s commander and leaves the command deck, making for the docking-bay where his flagship is moored.  Just like the ferals to go after a weakened enemy, rather than pick a fair fight.  If the Genarro Militia Fleet hadn’t lost more than a third of its hulls trying to rescue Marciale Fabrizio Genarro’s precious ’Mechs and MechWarriors when they finally ****** up badly enough to be completely driven from Ensenada, I’d still have enough firepower that the damned Krauts would never have dared come here!

  Reaching the transit-rail station, he boards the waiting car and punches in his destination and an ‘absolute priority’ code.  Stop being such a damned defeatist, Stefano.  Even a Militia squadron that’s under-strength by a quarter still has six frigates, and there are four squadrons in this system, as well as their attached CAM-ships.  There isn’t a chance in hell they could actually take this system with so few hulls!

- * - * - * - * -

Colonial-class BattleStar FSK Schwarzwald, Titania approach vector
That same time

  Käpitan der Sterne Frederick Adler, Frei Sorenische Kreigsraumflotte, shakes his head in disgust as he contemplates a long-range visual of the planet.  “Considering the Genarros have been Dukes of Titania for more than a quarter-millennium, I’d expected more in the way of infrastructure and industrial development.”

  “Why would they ‘waste’ money on developing a ‘feral’ world, sir?” shrugs the XO, his own voice pungent.  “There are only two hundred million Salernans here, and imports look after a lot of their needs.  If a billion Titanians have to scrape by on three handfuls of goat-meat and rice a day, that’s just ‘letting them rejoice in their natural state’, isn’t it?  Besides, if they did invest in the planet, they’d need lots of skilled labour to build and run everything –”

  “- which would undermine their comfortable little system of dukes, barons, serfs and slaves,” Adler nods, his expression bitter.  My, doesn’t that sound all too familiar?

  Exile or not, Frederick Adler is a loyal son of Soren, but he’s also old enough to remember the state his birth-world was in before the Salernan invasion, and not all of those reminisces are pleasant.  Like most of the worlds of the Expanse, Soren’s settlers were ethno-preservationists (specifically Germans, with a scattering of Finns), and not unlike the Salernans themselves, they did their very best to set Soren’s society in stone and keep out anything which might undermine their ‘pure and perfect society’ – and, not incidentally, the privileges and autonomy of the five Barons who ruled that society.  Among other things, the price of that ‘purity’ had been the success of Salerno’s invasion – but the three Barons who’d sat it out, instead of fighting for their world’s freedom, had remained in their seats of power under their new Duke Ferretti, so what did they care?

  Calmly, Frederick, calmly.  First things first: once we liberate Soren, then we can bring the Barons to account, he thinks, cutting himself off before he can get back into his well-worn rut.  “Status of Blindside?”

  “Prepped and standing by, sir,” the TAO nods.

  Adler allows himself a thin smirk as he turns back to the planet, its orbital infrastructure... and the Salernan naval squadron now clearly visible against its face: two Graziani-class cruiser-sized merchantmen (undoubtedly converted into CAM-ships) and six Visconte-II frigates, the ones known to the Allies as the Victor-II class.  Trying to play hammer-and-anvil, Admiral Antonelli? he thinks to his opponent.  Not such a bad tactic... as long as you have a hammer.

- * - * - * - * -

  Seventeen seconds later, another Salernan task-group – two frigates and a CAM-ship detached from the zenith patrol – flashes into existence at the pirate-point Adler’s force left several minutes beforehand.  It’s standard practice for all Salernan Skywatch stations to constantly calculate, update, and re-calculate the most common L1 pirate-points in their star-systems for situations exactly like this, and now, while the nadir patrol squadron remains on-station, the zenith patrol – a force identical in composition to the one that awaits Adler in orbit of the planet – has taken the numbers squirted to them by Skywatch, plugged them into their nav-computers, hit the ‘emergency jump’ key, and crossed their fingers that the idiots on the space-station didn’t misplace a decimal-point somewhere.

  The good news is that their prayers have been answered on one score: despite the hair-raisingly short period between calculation and jump, all five WarShips arrive at the pirate-point without major incident and will be ready to burn after the impudent ferals as soon as they recover from their jump-shock.

  The bad news is that this is exactly what Frederick Adler wanted them to do, and he’s just done what few commanders have been able to do: lay a near-perfect jump-point ambush, knowing exactly how many enemy vessels will arrive, where, and more-or-less when.  The concept of Blindside is simplicity itself, and based on one of the best-known and most fundamental limitations of the Kearny-Fuchida jump-drive: even with the most sophisticated computers known to the Inner Sphere (which the Salernans don’t have), even with the finest-trained crews in history (which Ducal Militias are not), when a K-F-drive vessel makes a jump of any length, the static discharges and other EM distortions created by its dissipating jump-field blind its sensors, reset its computers, and disorient the crew for a minimum of thirty seconds after making transit.

  Thirty seconds isn’t a long time, especially on the scale of a star-system... but in combat, thirty seconds can be a lifetime.  In this case, it’s only a few seconds less than the flight-time of the wave of White Shark missiles fired by the corvette FSK Trachtenburg, which arrived half a minute after its three consorts dealt with the sentry-sats and now lies in wait just off one edge of the jump-point.

  The FSK bought all four of its WarShips from Protectorate shipwrights with subscriptions by Soren exiles and named them for battles during the Salernan invasion of Soren.  The Battle of Trachtenburg is one of the most famous clashes, a valiant, bitter, ultimately forlorn-hope stand by a regiment of Schwarzwald Baronial Militia tanks and infantry against 22º Genarro Guards DIR and its supporting ’Mech battalion and aerospace fighter-strikes.  Now, at a range of barely two hundred and fifty kilometres, FSK Trachtenburg starts balancing the ledger for the ghosts of his namesake.

  The sensor-chief aboard the CAM-ship Suo Maestê Nave di Titania Vincenzo Langella barely has time to register the contacts and scream “Vampire!  Vampire!  Vam-” before the first fire arrives – a broadside from Trachtenburg’s laser-turrets, quite deliberately timed to strike just before the missiles.  Armour-plates shatter and hull-members explode as they’re subjected to energies that can glass entire city blocks.  As much by chance as aim, one hit penetrates to immolate the port engine-room, killing everyone in the compartment and knocking one of the ship’s two fusion reactors into emergency shutdown.

  The White Sharks impact a moment later.  Four of them punch into the side of the dorsal cargo-hold-turned-fighter-hangar and rip its entire length open to space, blowing almost two hundred men out into the void.  Another bites deeper, gouging into the KF drive-systems that make up Langella’s spine and flooding several compartments with liquid helium.  More by luck than skill, the last White Shark is hacked from the sky by particle-beams from an anti-fighter turret.

  Last, and most devastating, come the torpedoes.  The Stiletto medium aerospace torpedo – known to its Union users as the Helldart – is the USR’s smarter, heavier counterpart to the Salernan Spearfish, though it’s being superceded for shipboard launchers now that the Shipwreck SGW is entering service.  That downgrade means that existing stockpiles will go a lot further... or, alternately, that large numbers can be spared for nefarious little tricks.  Tricks like, for instance, laying on the edges of a pirate jump-point and launching several patterns of the things, leaving them under the command-links of a loitering compatriot.

  In the two minutes they waited at the jump-point before starting in-system, the Soren vessels deployed no fewer than eighty Stilettos, all of them awaiting Trachtenburg’s activation codes – codes she pulsed to them less than seven seconds after the Pogs came out of their jump – and now they fall on the Gehennan vessels like thunderbolts.  Trachtenburg herself doesn’t linger to assess their effects; making the most of his vessel’s hyperlight jump-drive, the captain executes a pre-plotted jump soon as the laser–turrets get their shots off, escaping before the Gehennan gunners can bring their own N-PPCs to bear. 

  Trachtenburg’s distribution of fire was hastily planned, and for all the tactical flexibility and endurance granted by their fusion engines Stilettos have unimpressive acceleration compared to standard missiles, but the Pogs’ jump-blindness makes up for a lot of that.  Five four-missile spreads reach the frigate SMNT Paolo Farina just as the EM fuzz clears.  Three Stilettos fail to detonate, and two more explode harmlessly when their terminal attack manoeuvres bring them into collision with debris from the monitoring satellites; the other fifteen lance into the frigate’s forward sections and effectively smash the Pog vessel in half before its crew can react.

  Ten spreads are assigned to Vincenzo Langella, and the final five to his other escort, but they have further to go, and the surviving Pog vessels have enough time to recover from the jump, register their peril, and take counter-action.  Starhawk missiles – the Gehennan clone of the White Shark – reach into the attacking torpedo-spreads to explode some of the inbounds; frantic fire from anti-fighter PPC turrets and even main-battery NPPCs burn others out of space; still-booting electronic warfare systems try to dazzle and delude seeker-systems; cockpit-alert fighters frantically fling themselves from their launch-bays and swing down into screening positions, sleeting laser-beams and streams of machine-gun fire across the void in an effort to intercept the attacking weapons.  All told, the defences actually do quite well – almost half of the Helldarts are destroyed before they reach terminal-attack range – but ‘well’ isn’t nearly good enough when each Stiletto carries two tons of modern explosives behind its seeker-head.

  The frigate SMNT Frederico Vitelli is built to absorb damage, so the nine Helldarts that get through his defences aren’t quite enough to kill him outright... but the horrific blasts that tear the CIC open to space, smash four turrets, and shatter an engine-room are enough to put him in the repair-slips for months.  On the other hand, for all his size Vincenzo Langella has only a merchantman’s structural framework, so twenty-five Helldarts ploughing into his already lamed, half-wrecked hulk are more than enough to smash the CAM-ship into a score of ragged pieces, wiping out almost an entire regiment of Vittorio fighters before they can ever fire a shot in defence of Titania.

  On Schwarzwald ’s flag-bridge, Frederick Adler smiles thinly.  “That should upset them.  All right, we’ve done enough for the moment.  FTL, send our message to Admiral Antonelli; Navigation, you may execute whenever you’re ready.”

- * - * - * - * -

  By the time Admiral Antonelli has made his way to the flag-deck of SMNT Carmine Langella, Vincenzo Langella’s brother-ship, the TPM report of the brief ambush has been decrypted and is handed to him as he storms through the hatch.  “Oh, son of a bitch!” he growls, before half-flinging himself into his command chair.  “Squadron status?”

  {“We’re the last ship to get underway, Sir, and we’re just clearing the station now,”} his flag captain assures him from the arm-rest comm.-screen.  {“Our escorts have formed up and are awaiting instructions.”}

  “Status change!  Enemy vessels have... ceased their acceleration towards the planet?”  The tracking officer’s mystified tone makes it as much a baffled query as a contact report.

  “What?” Antonelli blinks, pulling up a visual of the enemy vessels on his repeater.

  “Enemy vessels have killed their accel, Sir,” is the confirmation.  “They –”

  The FTL watch-officer jolts.  “Sir, I... I have a transmission from the enemy commander.”

  {“What?”} blurts Antonelli’s flag captain.  {“What the hell does he want to say to us?”}

  “I... uh, it came through as text in the clear, sir: ‘Steigen Sie mein Welt, Skorpion.’”

  {“What the hell kind of gibberish is that?”}

  “It’s Soren, Ottavio,” Antonelli supplies, himself staring at the main sensor-display in mystification.  “In a human language, it’s something like ‘Get off my world, scorpion’.  I think they –”

  And the three Soren vessels pulse red-blue and vanish.

  “- what?” blurts the gobsmacked Antonelli.

  “Enemy vessels have... sir, they’ve jumped out!”

  {“That’s impossible!”} Ottavio Jurassi protests.  {“They were almost seven thousand klicks from the pirate-point – their field-initiators should have eaten themselves when they tried!”}

  While any idiot with enough money can buy a commission in a Ducal Militia’s ground forces, the value of the ’Ships involved means that command-rank in the House Fleets demands rather more in the way of proficiency and intellect.  In particular, Stefano Antonelli didn’t reach the Admiralty of one of House Genarro’s four authorised squadrons by being stupid – or unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes.  “Oh, those bastards!”

  {“Sir?”}

  “Those ships have Cylon jump-drives, Ottavio.  Their BaseStars got from New Victoria to Torrance in only three days back in ’22, remember?  But everyone was so dazzled by their recharge-speed that we never wondered what other advantages those drives might have!”  Antonelli thumps his arm-rest once, softly, then turns back to his staff.  “Communications, by laser-link to Contrammiraglio Ricci: he’s to take his division to a position just off the star/planet jump-point and use his fighters to sweep the jump-point for minefields or more missiles.  Once it’s clear, they’re to recover survivors, then take station nearby and remain at Condition Two in case the enemy returns.  Capitano di vascello Jurassi, we’ll hold Carmine Langella and two escorts here as a reserve, and you yourself are to report to the flag-deck immediately.  We need to analyse what just happened and get a full report to Militia Headquarters soonest.”

  And Operation VIKING continues to achieve its objectives.

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, EARTH/‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
Andrews AFB
08:33, Wednesday January 7 2009, EST (13:33, Sunday January 7 2829, TST)

  “You sure you should be here?” John asks his neighbour, for a moment taking his eyes off the charcoal-grey Leatherneck now approaching Andrews’ runway-threshold.  “I mean, I don’t think Georgetown’s gonna take ‘I dig giant robots’ as an excuse for ditching a day on your sub-I clinical rotation.”

  “First, this isn’t New Jersey.  Second, you’re not quite disgusting enough to be Coop.  Third, I’m studying at Georgetown, but my current rotation’s at Walter Reed, remember?  Lastly, I just came off my latest stint at Walter Reed and I’ve had this day-off scheduled for most of the month anyway.  Dipshit.”

  “Dad hears you using language like that, he’s gonna pitch a fit.”

  “After some of the things he’s called guys like Kealty over the years?  He’d be the world’s biggest hypocrite if he started getting prissy now,” snorts Sally Ryan.

  “Really think that’ll stop him from, y’know... being our Dad?”

  “You’re not equipped to be a smart-ass, John.”  After a moment, Sally drops the sour look she gave her little brother and shrugs inside her parka.  “But to answer your original question, Mom talked Dad into it.  Something about it only being fair, since I got you into BT in the first place, and how my maturity would help balance out your ‘enthusiasm’?”

  John gapes at her for a moment.   “You’re ****** kidding me, right?  No.  No, that’s just the kind’a thing God’d do to me.  Great.  Just ****** wonderful.  Once again, I get dropped into the shadow of Sally the ****** Wondergirl!  Jesus Christ, can’t I just once have something that’s mine!?” he half-spits, almost more resigned than outraged.

  “Well, God, John, you did, back before you dropped a dime on Coach Moran!”

  “He was forcing freshmen to ’roid up, Sally – what the ****** was I supposed to do?  And even if I hadn’t said anything, he was dumb enough to keep dealing when the Secret Service had St. Mary’s wired like a friggin’ X-Box!”

  “And now you’re the one on a BattleTech SNIE team while I’m only here for a day before I have to go back to changing bedpans.  Gosh, y’think we might be even, dick-face?”

  Carefully not watching from three paces away, USSS Agent Yvette Sanderson silently thanks God for making her an only child.

  For his part, her colleague Mike Brennan tries to head off the worst of the incipient screaming-match.  “What’s the deal with the second DropShip, anyway?  I thought Great Hope was carrying everything they’d need for the test.”

  “The plan was that they’d use Great Hope for all that stuff,” John responds, glaring at his sister a moment longer before looking back to his bodyguard.  “But with that Acadian envoy coming, Great Hope’s effectively the Allied embassy, and it can’t go anywhere without upsetting the diplomatic applecart.  So, they send down a second dropper to pick up the test gear and carry it, and all of us looky-Lou types, out to New Mexico.”

  “Why go all the way to White Sands?  Why not head up the coast?” Sally frowns.  She’s never shared her brother’s fascination with real-world things that go ‘bang’, ‘boom’, and ‘whoosh’, but sheer self-defence means she’s picked up a lot since their Dad contracted Presidency. “Isn’t there a proving ground up in Aberdeen?”

  That earns her a ‘duh’ look.  “Because from what Ebon’s people have told us, when you’re test-firing light-speed energy-beams of this power, you really want to be shooting down into a backstop of sand and rock.  Aberdeen has LOS to too many things we’d really rather keep intact, like boats, planes, houses... the State of Delaware.”

  “That’s not exactly a strong finishing note, John,” Brennan chips in.  With any other principal, he’d never dare to be so familiar, but the Ryan family’s unanimous disdain for the established protocols surrounding John Senior’s office has long since corrupted the majority of their Details.

  Further discussion of the point is precluded by the second DropShip’s rolling to a stop barely fifty yards away.  Unlike the rest of the group, Sally didn’t spend most of the night studying up on regional cosmo-politics and militaries, so she frowns in puzzlement when she sees the flag emblazoned on the dropper’s hull.  “That’s not the Cameron Star –- who are these guys?”

  “Union Army – 432^nd Ensenadan Hussar Battalion, if I read the markings right.  Most of the powers out here use a similar designation system, including the Union units formed on Highside and Ensenada, so that’s the Second Battalion of the Third Brigade of the Fourth Ensenadan Mechanised Infantry Division.  The way I hear it, they’ve racked up a pretty fair record against the Pogs.”

  Show-off.  “‘Pogs’?  You’re picking up their slang already, John.  Or is that ‘slurs’?”

  “If you’d had a chance to read the briefing packets, you’d be calling the Salernans every name under Heaven, too.  I swear, even if those folders were pimped-out for our benefit – and somehow, I don’t think they were – they still read like a cross between the worst elements of Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, militant fundamentalist Islam, and the ****** Draka.  With a splash of Gor, just for ‘flavour’.”

  “There’s a pleasant recipe.”

  “Oh yeah.  In fact, you might want to start getting used to ‘Olivia’ again, since I doubt anyone on the SLDF/Union side of things uses ‘Sally’ for anything except a pejorative.”

  Again they’re forestalled by DropShip noise, this time the hum and whine of bay doors powering open on both the Union vessel (which bears the prosaic designation of LSH223) and on SLS Great Hope.  In quick succession, almost a dozen rifle-green BattleMechs march down the ramps of the Star League vessel and start lumbering across the tarmac towards the Union ship, followed by a similar number of slab-sided tanks in a matching livery.

  “Warhammers,” Sally decides, mostly by reflex.

  John’s had a little more direct exposure to get him over the initial ‘’Mechs, ooh, shiny!’, which means he’s paying more attention to fine details.  “Guess again.  Look at the body-work – barrel-chested like that, there’s got to be some Thunderbolt in those suckers’ design-history, and that makes ’em Morningstar-Deltas.”

  “Well-spotted, Mister Ryan,” says a smiling voice.  SHADOW and SHORTSTOP turn their eyes groundward again, seeing that the group of waiting observers has been joined by a blonde in a charcoal-grey flight-suit.  She’s about Sally’s age, though a shade taller than the pre-med’s petite five-foot-three, and each of her sleeves bears a chevron capped with two bars.  “Captain Calleigh Arthur, 434^th Ensenadan Air Cavalry Squadron; my Troop’s attached to the 432nd.  I’ll be your guide for the moment.”

  “... Uh, hi,” John stammers, shaking the offered hand and trying not to stare too obviously.  Okay, I’ve met the commanding general of the SLDF, a member of her intelligence staff, and a random Union gunship-jockey – and all three have been attractive young women.  Three data-points may not be a sound statistical guide, but for now I think God likes me.
 
  Shooting John a scathing glare, Sally combines her own handshake with an expression that begs forgiveness for the display of adolescent drooling idiocy.  “Pleased to meet you, Captain.  I’m Olivia Ryan, though I prefer Sally; sad to say, but the slack-jawed yokel here is my brother John.”

  “Makes me wonder why Mum always complained about not having a second child,” Captain Arthur smirks.  “If you’ll follow me?  Our DropShip needs to shift some cargo to carry the extra hardware, but it gives us some extra time for the show-and-tell while we wait for Fleet, the ’Mech-jocks and the treadheads to get their respective piles of crap reorganised, so it evens out.”

  “... sounds like a plan, Captain,” John agrees, his brain finally rallying to the moment.  “Is it me, or is the Morningstar a blocky sonofabitch, as ’Mechs go?”

  “The Salernans’ tech-base might have improved since they first fielded the Series.A, Mister Ryan, but they were more worried about making them better weapons than making them better-looking.  Besides, the Union’s renovated a lot of their electronics, so the cockpit fittings are almost up to modern standards, as you’ll see.”

  “Come again?”

  “Your government wants observers in the cockpits for the tests, and I heard your name was on the shortlist.  You didn’t know?”

  “First I heard of it,” John shrugs, the wash of Geeker Joy letting him ignore the Death Glare Sally’s drilling into his temple; he completely misses the oh-shit looks Brennan and Sanderson trade behind his head.  “When do we start?”

- * - * - * - * -

  {“Is this really a good use of our time, Commander?”} one of the ’Mech pilots wonders, watching through his canopy as the Union officer leads the locals (almost thirty of them, split near-evenly between civilians and military personnel) towards the boarding-ramp ahead of the heavy metal.  {“I mean, I’m not against giving folks joy-rides, even ’Mech-head tachikomae, but why him, and why now?”}

  Aboard Great Hope, the Kommandant of II. Bataillon, 233. Sorenische Jäger Regiment is also watching the reshuffle from a briefing-room viewport.  “It’s part of the evaluation, Deke.  They need their own people in the cockpit to see how it all works, and he’s on the team.”

  {“Yeah, right,”} another pilot grouses.  {“More like it’s a good way to suck up to the locals!”}

  “There’s some of that to it as well, Mister Giulio,” the Commander nods, taking a long draught from his ever-present cuppa cawfee to pace his thoughts.  “But think about it.  These observers include some of the most hard-core ’Mech-heads on this planet, and if their fellows hear about their getting a chance to pilot themselves, most of the rest will beg for their own chance... which gives the Clancies a step towards their first classes of ’Mech pilots.  And they’ll need all the pilots they can get when they starts fighting the Pogs.  Not to mention that the son and/or daughter of a national leader being among the first ones to sign up and climb into a cockpit would be pretty powerful stuff for recruiters.”

  {“So General Ebon approved this as... a PR scam?”} a third pilot asks; even at the quarter-size enforced by the split comm.-screen, he’s visibly distressed to be party to such cynicism.

  “To a degree, Niccolo.”  The Commander sets aside the now-empty mug and turns a bittersweet smile on the baby of Hauptmann Zoeller’s company-command squad.  “I’m pretty sure it’s also letting the kids live a dream and have some fun before all hell breaks loose.  Call it a last hurrah for their innocence... before this world forgets what innocence ever was.”

- * - * - * - * -

  Derived from a Colonial design of jump-capable light freighter that rose to prominence late in the Cylon Revolt, the Leatherneck DropShip is an assault transport intended to carry an entire combined-arms battalion from a friendly ground-base on one world into a hot LZ on another, providing fire-support and command-functions for the battalion the entire time, then act as a mobile repair/supply/fire-base for further operations.  Among the many support-facilities the design includes to fulfill those myriad roles are divisional-scale C4I systems and a briefing-room for the battalion’s officers and SNCOs, and it’s to this latter compartment that the Earthers are guided.  It resembles the on-screen depiction of Galactica’s pilot-briefing rooms, including the terraced seating, though John does note that not only are there a lot of seats – more than enough for all of the observers and a couple of dozen MechWarriors – but all of those comfortably-padded chairs face the forward bulkhead and include five-point safety-harnesses for combat manoeuvring.

  Captain Arthur ushers everyone into the compartment, blinking when she sees two other O-3s waiting for them: a blonde woman in her mid-twenties dressed in Union charcoal-and-fog and the black beret of the armoured corps, quietly conferring with a harried-looking redheaded man in the rifle-green of the Frei Sorenische Heer.  “DaCosta?  I didn’t know you were down here!”

  “Zweise Bataillon was due to draw modern equipment this month anyway, so the Commander volunteered our Morningstars and Pezzinis for the demonstration,” the Soren officer returns.

  The MechWarrior – whose name-plaque says {KUZNETSOV, B.} – shoots Arthur a knowing wink as she adds, “Hauptmann Zoeller should be here any minute, Calleigh.”

  Arthur colours a little and growls.  “Dammit, Hammer, if they’d told us who was supposed to go where –”

  “Welcome to a ‘come-as-you-are’ war, Calleigh,” the older woman shrugs... then smirks evilly.  “Colonel Sandoval’s asked me to handle the briefing, so I’ll take care of our guests from here – you go make out with your fiancé.  But, uh, try to keep your shirt on this time, hmm?”

  The gunship-jockey blushes bright red, glares a promise of Terrible Vengeance at Kuznetsov, and flees the compartment before the laughter really gets started.

  Once everyone’s stopped chuckling, daCosta clears his throat.  “If you’ll all please take seats?  The flight-crew will let us know when we’re ready to take off for White Sands, and the trip itself will take us about an hour – which should give us enough time to cover the basics of modern armour and weaponry before we show you how they work in action.”

  “I thought they tapped BT fans because we already know that?” Sally murmurs to John as they flatten against a bulkhead to avoid being overrun and squashed by all six-foot-four of JadeHellbringer.

  Kuznetsov catches that and turns a frosty gaze on her.  “Do us all a favour, Daddy’s Girl: try not to sound any dumber than you can help.”

  Sally flinches and flushes, but Kuznetsov moves away before the pre-med can muster an apology.

  “And you say I’ve got the big mouth?” John growls, looking for a seat near the front.

  Once everyone’s seated, Kuznetsov clears her throat and dims the lights a little, keying up a holoprojector attached to the lectern to display a stylised BattleMech of the same kind the guests just saw with their own eyes.  To Earther eyes, the CGI is so crude that John wonders if the Union Army uses the same SFX company that animated the ‘enhanced imaging’ sequences of The Khar’toon.  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to BattleMech Technology 101.  In case any of you are wondering if I know what I’m talking about, my name is Captain Beatrice Kuznetsov, and I command ‘F’ company of the 432nd Ensenadan Hussars; as for credentials, my backseater and I are credited with knocking out seventeen Pog ’Mechs during the siege and relief of Ensenada.

  “This is a Morningstar-class heavy BattleMech, the preferred ground-combat platform of the Principality of Gehenna.  The Royal Peacekeepers are predominantly equipped with the Casimiro, the ‘C’-series, so I’ll be focusing mainly on that design, but I’ll touch on other models when needed.

  “The Morningstar design is based primarily on the Warhammer Six Romeo, Thunderbolt Five Sierra, and the Toro Alpha Six.”  She touches a key on the lectern, turning the ’Mech’s outer shell translucent and highlighting the powerplant in red.  “The engine is a knockoff of the Vox-280 hybrid fusion/hyperspace-tap which powers the Warhammer –”

  “‘Hybrid fusion/hyperspace tap’?” repeats one of the military observers – a USAF Major who GMs a BT campaign at Dover AFB.

  “That’s right.  If they’re big enough, pure-fusion reactors can power entire continents, but it’s impractical to install powerplants that big on a mobile system like a ’Mech, so we cheat: ’Mech-scale reactors harness the low-grade KF-field created by Tokomak-principle fusion and use that to draw energy out of hyperspace to power the onboard systems.  Of course, the price of that is a high degree of waste heat associated with sudden power-draws like weapons-fire.”

  “What about spacecraft?” wonders a Turkish Prisoner.  “The game-numbers we have on WarShips under transit thrust suggest they develop supraliminal exhaust-velocities, and their fuel liberates more energy than antimatter annihilation!”

  Kuznetsov shakes her head.  “I ride a ’Mech – you’re better off asking a skyrider about that side of things.  I understand that it’s a similar principle, though – the KF-distortions draw energy out of hyperspace to ‘trick’ the reaction-mass into thinking it’s heavier and moving faster than it really is; when it leaves the field, it says ‘hey, wait a minute!’, realspace physics reassert themselves, and the excess energy gets dumped back into hyperspace.”

  So WarShip reaction mass is basically Wile E. Coyote walking off a cliff, John thinks dryly, already composing another thread-post in his head.  Kind’a puts the numbers in a new light.  Of course, those numbers already look silly, since I don’t think these ’Ships really are made of Weberfoam!

  The Union officer shakes off the tangent and returns to her presentation, highlighting the Morningstar-C’s armour in blue.  “Here’s the first major problem you’re going to have: the armour.  Almost all energy weapons have some degree of line-of-sight capability, and even though most mobile platforms can’t afford the mass-penalties in stabilization gear to take full advantage of light-speed weaponry’s theoretical ‘horizon-range’, proliferation of battlefield lasers and particle-beams forced designers to come up with an entirely new form of laminar armour to mitigate the threat.  Most people simply call it ‘battle-steel’.

  “Each layer of armour consists of three sub-layers: an outer face of a thermally-superconductive alloy, which absorbs and disperses the thermal energy of lasers and particle-beams; a middle layer of other materials which slow or ‘catch’ solid projectiles and fast neutrons; and the foundation layer, which includes the necessary armour-status sensors and a mesh of superconductive alloy that further improves thermal-dispersion characteristics.  Depending on the amount of structural support underlying the armour panels and the designer’s biases, modern ’Mechs can have as many as sixteen individual layers laminated over a given point on their frames, giving them incredible ruggedness against incoming fire – for instance, the Morningstar-C mounts nine layers of armour in the frontal-arc directly protecting its engine and gyro.”

  Kuznetsov cues up a series of weapons-strike animations to illustrate the various impacts and effects.  “The up-side of this armour is that it’s very good at what it’s designed for: mitigating the effects of energy weapons.  Lasers dump all of their energy into a single point in the space of microseconds, flash-heating the point of impact from a solid state to plasma.  The result is effectively a localized explosion that smashes off a broad sheet of the impact layer and crushes a narrower portion of the underlying one, but the boundary materials between armour layers generally prevent a single laser-strike from punching any deeper.  Given how many layers are put on vital locations, you can see why I could, can, and have pounded on a Morningstar with lasers for several minutes without punching through to anything vital.”

  Sally raises a tentative hand, still smarting from making an ass of herself a few minutes ago.  “Erm... I thought BT armour ‘melted’ under energy-fire?  At least, that’s how all the novels describe it.”

  “Melting takes time, Miss Ryan, and battlefield lasers deliver too much energy in too short a time to let materials simply ‘melt’.”  Captain daCosta fields that, to spare Sally the explosion from Hammer that the girl is clearly half-fearing.  “For similar reasons, in an emergency-medical context direct impacts from laser-weapons are far more likely to cause localized steam-explosions in tissue, rather than any sort of burn.”

  “Ouch,” Sally winces.  “Our medical institutions aren’t set up for that one.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Ryan: ours have ample practice with it, and they’ll teach you everything you’re going to need to know,” Kuznetsov says bleakly, then returns to the main topic again.  “Now, oddly enough, particle-beams are more likely to deliver the sort of damage-mechanics your science-fiction has taught you to expect from lasers: the particle-stream’s combination of high temperature and high-velocity lets it cut through intervening materials with great efficiency, but passing through all the density-changes of laminar armour slows the particles to the point of inefficacy after penetrating about five layers, so they create narrow, but relatively deep armour-breaches.”

  “Punch holes with PPCs, exploit with lasers – sounds familiar,” drawls another Turkish Prisoner.

  “Indeed – and the Gehennans are very fond of particle-weapons for that same reason.  Now, the problem with modern armour is that while it’s very good at absorbing the effects of energy weapons, it generally doesn’t do so well against purely mechanical insults like explosions or projectiles, which rely on mechanical shear-stresses for their greatest effect.  This is a standard long-range missile with a universal warhead-bus capable of carrying either a unitary warhead or five sub-munitions; this is a short-range missile, with similar warhead options, exchanging propellant for throw-weight.  Like most other manufacturers, Union munitions-makers build them all on the same external measurements, with the minimum internal changes for their design-purpose – it makes for faster, easier production.”

  “Thing almost looks like a Hellfire.”  This comes from an Army gunship-jockey.  “I thought –”

  “A lot of long-standing assumptions are falling today, aren’t they?” Kuznetsov half-quips.  “Missiles are generally mounted in boxes – LRMs in five cells of four rounds each, SRMs usually in four cells packed ‘diamond-five’ fashion – and salvo-fired in use.  I know that your ‘game’ tells you that the control-systems can get as heavy as ten tons for a launcher controlling a spread of four LRMs, but with Wolverine assistance the Union’s recently made a breakthrough in fire-control arrangements.  We’ll get into that later; for now, the missiles themselves.

  “Like lasers, unitary warheads tend to do fairly broad but shallow damage, though they do punch slightly deeper.  LRM sub-munitions are good at sanding off wide swatches of armour – or, with the right modifications, forming nasty little anti-armour minefields – but they only hit the surface.  SRM sub-munitions are heavier, making them the preferred option for exploiting breached armour, but with their reduced room for guidance-systems, they tend to scatter pretty badly.  They tell me R&D’s close to field-testing a new SRM-FCS to redress that – a ‘Streak’ system, they call it – but I’ll believe that when I’ve got one in front of me.  The Union also used to field a larger missile with a heavier warhead and a smarter seeker, but the Pogs have a new point-defence scheme that’s sidelined it for the time being.  And in all honesty, I don’t know how comparable your missiles are to ours, given how long our propellants and explosives have had to improve how... energetic they are; they’re on the twitchy side, but that’s the price you pay to deal with modern armour.

  “Lastly, we have ballistic weapons, and this is the area where you might actually have it over us.  As I said, battle-steel’s cardinally designed to deal with the thermal effects and mechanical shear-effects generated by energy weapons; the price of that specialisation is that it simply doesn’t do very well against mechanical crush effects like those you see from a brute force kinetic-energy penetrator.”

  The most advanced armour-composite known to twenty-ninth-century science, and it’s still most acutely vulnerable to the same damage-mechanism used by cavemen, archers in the Middle Ages, and the tank main-guns of today, runs through more than one local’s mind.  Makes you wonder why they call it ‘progress’.

  “We’ll see how your weapons compare to our autocannon when we get to White Sands, but for now, our heaviest KE weapon is more or less what your game-stats would call a ‘light Gauss Rifle’, and this is what happens when it hits a Morningstar.”  The animation is slightly less spectacular than the brilliant explosions of energy-weapons impacts or missile-strikes, but the shower of silver sparks from the impact is familiar to the tankers in the audience... and the accompanying ‘armour-integrity’ display shows breaches through no fewer than eight armour layers, albeit along a narrow path.  “It’s a great weapon for punching holes in the other guy, and if you can head-shot a ’Mech with one it’ll crunch the cockpit virtually every time.”

  “Hooray for headcappers!” somebody quips.

  “You mean the Free Worlds League actually got a good weapon out of the 3060s?” someone else marvels, to a minor ripple of amusement.

  “Personally, I doubt that your materials science is up to replicating the ConArms 76’er just yet, but the Sorens had a technological base broadly similar to yours before they were invaded, and they came up with some indigenous weapons that gave the Pogs a hell of a shock, so who knows?”  Kuznetsov runs several more animations.  “These, respectively, are the damage profiles of a Class Two, Class Five, and Class Ten autocannon.  Notice how the Class Five strips off as much of the impact-layer as a medium laser, but penetrates deeper; they’re a little heavy for most designers, but they do combine long effective range with low heat and relatively high penetration.  Similarly, you’ll note that a Class Ten actually makes deeper breaches in modern armour than a PPC.  For the sake of completeness, this is a Class Twenty in action –”

  “Yee-owch!” is the anonymous yelp.

  “- but to our knowledge there aren’t any Class Twenties on the strength of any military in the Expanse, so they’re not relevant at this juncture.”  Kuznetsov’s brick-like comm. buzzes at her, and after listening for a moment, she gives her audience a surprised smile.  “Huh: that was well-timed.  The Fleeties finally got the cargo-decks unfrakked, so we’re going to be taking a short break while they lift us off for White Sands; you might want to strap in.”

  Both Kuznetsov and daCosta take seats that were left open in the front row, quietly chatting about who’s going to handle what part of the weapons-demo.  As the DropShip jolts a little before starting to taxi, Sally watches in amusement as her brother solemnly fastens the five-point harness around himself, snugs it down tight enough to threaten his circulation, then settles back in his seat and closes his eyes with slightly theatrical stoicism.  “You and Dad take flying way too seriously, John.”

  John doesn’t even open his eyes.  “Sally?  Kiss my ass.”

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

Graziani-class freighter NA Star of Amalfi, zenith/Earth approach vector
That same time

  “I can’t say I like having a Union cruiser keeping us such close company during our transit to planetary orbit, Ambassador.”

  “They’re just making sure that we don’t have our holds crammed full of fighters, Capitano,” Morelli assures the ship’s master.  We could probably lay waste to entire regions if we did, but it would be a gross violation of diplomatic protocol. Not that I imagine that will stop the Commissioner trying something similar once he gets it into his head to send his own representative.  “We’d do the same thing if they sent an envoy to Soren or Acadia.  And if you think about it, letting us get so good a look at one without the distractions of combat is almost a gift to our intelligence people.”

  “Unless they figured they’ll be revealing so much of the class’s capabilities in combat in the near future that our getting a sneak peek here and now is near-meaningless,” Captain diStefano counters dourly.

  There is that, I suppose, the Ambassador concedes, considering the visual display again.  Out of deference to Star of Amalfi’s status, Archangel’s gun-turrets are quite primly trained fore-and-aft, well away from the freighter that so dwarfs him... but Morelli doesn’t doubt for an instant that those same batteries are fully manned and ready to blast him into space-junk at the first hint of trouble.  Or even a half-decent excuse.

  “Uh...”

  “What is it, Marco?”  The Captain frowns at the comm.-officer’s stunned expression.

  “Archangel is hailing us again, sir.”

  Morelli’s eyebrows reach for his hairline.  diStefano is just as taken aback, but he recovers a fraction faster.  “... all right, put them through.”

  The face that appears on the main display is a gross offence to Morelli’s Acadian-bred sensibilities.  Taken as herself, Commander Ramius is quite striking; but the visual reminder that the Union is so desperate and cruel as to force women to face the hazards and hardships of a warrior’s life....  Despite what his intelligence people have told him about her career and enviable accomplishments, everything Lazzaro Morelli has been raised to believe tells him that Maria Ramius does not belong in that command-chair.  You should be back on Svoboda, managing a household and raising someone’s sons into proud men.

  {“Captain diStefano, I’ve been instructed to tell you that the SLDF embassy on Earth has loaned the use of an FTL transmitter to one of the planet’s leaders.  Should you wish to use that transmitter, we’re ready to act as relay-ship while he speaks with Ambassador Morelli.”}

  diStefano glances to Morelli, who accepts the lead without hesitation despite his (further) astonishment.  His English is noticeably accented by his Salernan mother-tongue, but the Archduke of Acadia chose him for this assignment specifically for his fluency in the major languages of the Union and the Renegade Legions.  “While the offer is most gracious, Commander Ramius, my instructions are that all diplomatic exchanges between myself and any other parties in this system be conducted face-to-face, so as to avoid any... misunderstandings.”

  Ramius gives him a coldly correct smile.  {“I’ve been told to let you know the option exists, Ambassador.  As I understand it, any delay works to the Commissioner’s advantage, not Acadia’s, but if diplomatic privileges are such a concern for you, you’re welcome to wait until you reach Earth.  Archangel, clear.”}  She nods to someone off-screen, and the connection breaks.

  “Somebody needs to ****** some manners into that uppity bitch,” mutters the helmsman.

  A holder of the Union’s second-highest award for valour?  Anyone who tried would go to his grave screaming soprano.  Morelli glances to diStefano, perfectly deadpan.  “I don’t think she likes us, Capitano.”

  “Why, Ambassador: whatever gave you that idea?”

- * - * - * - * -

PROSPERITY CITY, NEW VICTORIA, CYLON PROTECTORATE
Governor’s Council chambers, Freedom Hall
That same time

  The Cylons of the Protectorate learned a number of important lessons during their expulsion from the ‘Republic’, and one of the most crucial ones was that crises – especially combat – demand the sort of quick reactions that committees and opinion-polls simply can’t summon.  When swift, clear courses of action are needed, decisions and orders have to come down a clearly defined chain of command from one individual – advised by others, perhaps, but a single person nonetheless – with the skills, intellect, and strength of personality to make those decisions without flinching or hesitating, even with full knowledge of their consequences.

  Simple demographics and personality dynamics dictated how that affected the Protectorate’s leadership after its establishment – somewhat ironically, on the very same republican model that the ‘Loyalist Seven’ theoretically follow.  Of the five ‘main’ lines of ‘rebels’, three are temperamentally ill-suited to leadership roles: the Sevens are academics, with the attendant problem of being more prone to think and talk rather than act; the Elevens are inventors and innovators, who have a hard time looking outside of their workshops and experiments and gadgets; the Nines are... put kindly, they’re ‘easily bored’.  Tens are strong-minded enough, but they’re inclined to deal more with direct solutions to immediate problems, rather than the ‘big picture’, so they generally gravitate towards local office and battlefield-level commands, especially what the CPN and CPGF have learned to consider as ‘non-commissioned’ roles.

  Unfortunately for the egos of the countless stupid, chauvinistic, and not infrequently the sartorially-challenged individuals throughout the Expanse in the last quarter-century, that leaves the Twelves.  The outspoken, obstinate, often-overbearing Twelves, who so delight in shaping the universe to their will that they gravitate towards engineering or leadership roles almost without thinking.  When the Second Schism broke upon the Cylon Republic and the ‘Rebel Five’ and their few allies from the other clone-lines needed a clear leader, it was a Twelve barely a year out of the cloning-bank who took the fore.  It was that Twelve who commanded their fighting retreat from Kobol and their escape into the interstellar wilderness.  When the refugee Cylons stumbled across the Free Centurions who had survived the First Schism, it was she who convinced them to join the Freedom Five’s fleet.  It was she who took the spark of hope offered by the Colonial legend of ‘Earth’ and turned it into the light that led her convoy across almost fifty-three light-centuries to their new home.

  And somewhere along the way, for these sins and innumerable others, it was she who became the beating heart of the Cylon Protectorate.

  Soon after their settlement of New Victoria – she was hardly about to lead her people into the seething pit of vipers that was the Inner Sphere in the middle of the Succession War – that leader took the name Nadezha (Twelve) Doolan and the simple title of Governor.  A quarter-century later, her long black hair may be shot with grey, she may have to work out longer and harder each day to stay looking as great as she does, but she is still Nadezha by-God Doolan, and she will not be denied.  “So, Admiral: which ships are you sending to Kobol, and when do they leave?”

  Fleet Admiral Vera (Six) Divać survived the Five’s flight under Doolan’s command, and she knows her Governor all too well.   “Would there be any point to my saying ‘I’m not thrilled by the idea of sticking our necks out to help the damned Colonials’, ma’am?  Or ‘going in blind like this is just asking to lose people and hulls we can’t spare’?”

  “Not a damned bit, Vee.”

  “I thought so,” the auburn-haired clone sighs, massaging her eyes.  “D’you think the Sanctimonious Seven even remember us?  Or why they drove us out?”

  “The way Abraxas works?  Not a chance.”

  “Mm-hmm.”  Divać lowers the hand and thinks for a moment, then slings the list up into her Projection to show them to the Governor and Council.  “If the Gehennans do carry through with the invasion of Earth, we’ll need most of our BaseStars here in the Expanse, but Veronica’s not likely to be a primary target any time soon, so I can afford to thin out their picquet a little.  Besides, with a little luck this might actually work out as a mission to re-establish peaceful contact with the Seven.”

  Seeing the names of the vessels listed – names borrowed from an animated entertainment programme imported from the Union soon after their arrival in the Expanse; the Protectorate does have more than its fair share of ‘tachikomae’, and its own entertainment industry is only just getting off the ground – several of the Cylon Councilors snigger at that comment.  “So, you’re going to send the BaseStars Fate Testarossa, Nanoha Takamachi, and Vivio Takamachi to ‘talk some sense’ into those genocidal maniacs,” chortles Barry (Ten) Shaw.  “Does anyone else see this as a mixed signal?”

  “Looks pretty clear to me: ‘We’re here to make friends – any damned way we have to’,” Governor Doolan smirks.  “Vera, I see a lot of BattleStars and corvettes on that list, too.”

  “They’ll need screening elements, ma’am, especially if things break down the way I expect.  Besides which, we’ll be operating jointly with elements of Strike Fleet and the SLN, and given the distances involved the Uni’s contribution will have to be mostly comprised of Lend-Lease BattleStars; if we tag along with them in the same model of BattleStar, keep to the background, and minimise our transponder-data and other transmissions, the Colonials are far less likely to do something stupid on panic-reflex.”  Divać sighs again, fingering the blood-red sash that she wears over her midnight-blue dress uniform.  “Dammit: why can’t the Seven just get over it?”

  “... Because Abraxas is tunnel-visioned on exterminating humanity and he’s spent almost four decades frakking with their world-view to make it happen?” Doolan suggests, with the quasi-playful bite all Twelves share.  “Which is another reason to go and... ‘reason’ with them all the way out there, by the way.”

  Sarah (Eleven) Fredericks cocks an eyebrow at her.  “Keeping them from finishing off the Colonials, ma’am?”

  “Keeping them away from the Inner Sphere.”

- * - * - * - * -

‘CLANCY’S WORLD’
Union LSH223, south-west bound over the U.S.A.
That same time

  Judging by the way he stops short as he enters the Firebats’ duty locker, Beatrice Kuznetsov suspects that John Ryan Jr. wasn’t fully prepared to find that Union MechWarrior locker-rooms are unisex.  Of course, older and far more suave men have been stopped short by the sight of Olivia Bella in her underwear (even if said underwear is only Army-issue white cotton briefs and a matching sports-bra, rather than anything more fancy), so Hammer’s not about to give him a hard time over it.  Especially when the three Earthers with him – his sister, a USMC Major and the Army chopper-jock – all have much the same reaction.

  “¡Hola!” Succubus chirps, waving with one hand as the other hauls out her coolant-suit.  “You must be our civilian observers.”

  John Ryan blinks and shakes himself, doing his best to drag his gaze upwards.  “Uhhh... hi.  Yeah.  Uh.  Sorry.  For staring.”

  “If you want to see more, you’ll have to wait until I get off-duty,” she winks, stepping into her combat-coveralls.

  God, Olivia, do you ever turn it off? Hammer sighs, trying to remember her patience.  “He’s underage, Liv – at least by local standards.”

  “Too bad,” the Ensenadan pouts playfully.  With her charcoal-and-fog-camouflage body-suit now fastened – though frankly outlining the body it contains – she swings her arms into her survival vest, zips it up, checks her sidearm and slams it into the vest’s integral shoulder-holster, then sits down to haul on her boots.  Every motion has the fluid grace of long practice.  “Better get prepped yourself, boss-chica: we’re landing soon, aren’t we?”

  “In a minute.”  A couple of Union enlisted-men appear, carrying more sets of coveralls and survival-gear.  “Major Czabo, Colonel Liebowitz, these gentlemen will help you suit up; you can stow your gear in any of the unmarked lockers.  Mister Ryan, Miss Ryan, Liv and I will assist the two of you.”  The two military observers move several bays down to get changed, though Kuznetsov does note that Czabo (who isn’t wearing a wedding ring) shoots John an envious glare.

  “I’ve had dreams where two good-looking women ask me to take my clothes off,” John grouses as he unbuttons his shirt.  “The surroundings are usually a lot cozier, though.  And less public.”

  “Never gonna happen, brat,” Sally growls, toeing off her shoes.  “The only thing any right-minded woman would ever touch you with is a restraining order.”

  “Y’know, that survival gear doesn’t look too different from what I wore during the hop I flew with the Blue Angels,” the younger Ryan sibling adds as he gets down to his underwear, hoping the babble will mask his nervousness.  “Or to what our tankers wear, come to think of it – peacekeeping in Iraq got the Army to kick-start their own cooling-vest programme.  ’Course, they got to the idea about ten years after NASCAR did....”

  “That’s not surprising: similar needs tend to produce similar solutions.”  Suddenly all professionalism, Succubus moves to John’s side as he steps into the offered jumpsuit, helping him adjust the material across his shoulders and back.  The four coolant hoses, two per side, hang loose just outside his shoulder-blades and above his hips.  “The wrench-benders will show you where to connect the coolant feeds when you mount up.”  She sorts through the selection of survival vests for a moment, then picks one and eyeballs its fit against John’s still-developing teenaged physique; with a grimace, she offers it to him like a personal dresser, helping him clear the upper coolant feeds through their proper openings.  “This is probably going to be a little loose on you, but it’s the best fit I can find.”

  The younger Ryan sibling grunts a little as the heft of the vest catches him off-guard, but his next words are curiosity, not a complaint.  “This thing weighs like Marine body-armour.  Flak/ablative layers, right?”

  “It wouldn’t be much of a ‘survival’ vest otherwise, now would it?” Hammer returns blandly, making the same eyeball-estimate of a coolant-suit’s fit against Sally Ryan’s petite frame.  Unfortunately, it looks like the ‘best fit’ available for her on such short notice is a shade on the small side – which is a remarkable achievement, since the girl wouldn’t mass fifty kilos if you dipped her in chocolate sauce and rolled her in sprinkles – but of the spectacular frak-ups Kuznetsov has seen from Army quartermasters, this doesn’t even make the top ten.

  “You’ll need this, too,” Bella says offhand, offering the younger Ryan a loaded automatic and three spare magazines.

  Kuznetsov watches in interest as a half-dressed Sally reacts to that with astonishment.  John accepts the pistol almost automatically, clearly just as amazed.  “... You’re offering a loaded weapon to a teenager?”

  Succubus smiles at him.  “You’ve been taught firearms safety, haven’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, between the Secret Service and Dad, but –”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s just... I’m not even old enough to drink, much less carry a gun!”

  “Union safety regulations require all personnel mounting a ’Mech to carry full survival gear, which includes a sidearm, Mister Ryan,” Kuznetsov says, shifting Sally’s coolant-suit a little across the shoulders.  Why’re they so surprised that we’d trust them with weapons?  Most kids in the Union have firearms licences before they learn how to drive!  “It’s probably just as well: your bodyguards there were a little alarmed by the idea of your getting into the cockpit without anyone to watch your backs, and hearing that seemed to moderate their anxieties.” 
 
  “Oh.”  The younger Ryan takes another look at the weapon, blinking again as he recognises what he’s holding.  “Holy crap – a friggin’ Browning?”

  “The Ensendan colony-expedition brought the Hi-Power along for police use, including the production specs,” Succubus supplies, watching with approving eyes as John clears, checks, and reloads the automatic, then safes it, all of the motions practiced if not completely expert.  “It’s been EDF standard issue ever since – and Union standard-issue since there’s been a Union.  The manufacturer even legally changed his name to preserve the Browning legacy.”

  John gives her a crooked smile as he holsters ‘his’ sidearm.  “So: when Earth’s opened to Union tourists, how many pilgrims should they expect to see in Ogden, Utah?”

  “In the first year?  Probably several million,” Bella grins back.

  At least, Hammer adds silently, touching up Sally’s vest before accepting another Hi-Power from one of the life-support troopers.  God made man; Samuel Colt and John Moses Browning made man equal.  But I’m damned if I know why the Daltons have made such a planetary fetish of the Hi-Power’s monster older cousin....

  “Hoo-bloody-ray,” Sally growls, holding up a refusing hand as Kuznetsov turns back to her with pistol and magazines in hand.  “Leave that where it is, Captain: I’m training to be a doctor, not a killer.”

  Kuznetsov takes one glance at the girl’s mutinously set jaw, narrowed baby-blue eyes, and perfectly-manicured hands... and it’s all she can do not to start screaming at the spoiled little snot.  She steps right up into Sally’s personal space, knowing her own gaze is as icy as her tone and not caring a single damned bit.  “Then you’re in the wrong place, Daddy’s Girl: they’re called BattleMechs for a reason.  You going on this sortie with full regulation survival gear is not open to discussion, Miss Ryan, so either holster that pistol or get back into your street-clothes.  No weapon, no ride-along – no exceptions.”

  “Easy, boss-chica....” Succubus says soothingly, trying to defuse the snapping tension between the two blondes.  John Ryan reaches out, touching his sister’s arm in a clear plea for calm.  Both are ignored.

  The silent battle of wills lasts several seconds; Sally Ryan was born of two notoriously stiff-necked people and has ample obstinacy of her own, but not only is Hammer taller and older, she’s a MechWarrior, a combat veteran and a Captain in the Union Army.  This sortie will go by the book, you little brat, and that means compliance with all ’Mech safety regulations is not optional – no matter how big a tantrum you throw!

  After several moments, the Ryan girl’s gaze drops like a brick, but she spends a few more almost visibly weighing which matters more to her before she makes a show of sighing and extending a hand.  “I’m doing this under protest.”

  “Ask me if I care,” Kuznetsov says coldly, watching as Sally fumbles her way through the same unload-check-reload that John handled so ably.  You, Miss Ryan, need to do a lot of growing up before the Gehennans make you do it.  “Your helmets are waiting for you in the back-seats of your respective ’Mechs – none of you have been synched-in yet, so some of the electronics will be disabled for the time being.  The wrench-benders and your pilots will walk you through the various safety-procedures surrounding your cockpits.  Warrant Bella, would you mind taking our guests down to the ’Mech-bays while I change for the sortie?”

  “You got it, boss-chica.”

- * - * - * - * -

[Trace Coburn]

  “Christ, Sally, all the time we’ve been in the public eye and you didn’t learn more sense than that?” John hisses sidelong as the Ensenadan woman in the oh-so-delightfully snug-fitting coolant suit leads them through the Leatherneck’s passageways.  “We need these people, and you’re getting into bitch-fests with the local Natasha ****** Kerensky!”

  “Piss off, John!  I didn’t ask –”

  “You should’ve asked!  Considering the Union’s been at war since before Katie was born, I’d imagine they have their procedures and the reasons behind ’em pretty well worked out by now!”  He doesn’t get time to say more, as Warrant Bella leads them through the hatchway and the full spectacle and clamour of a ’Mech-bay in pre-landing preparation assaults their sense.  Deckhands are scurrying this way and that, pulling pallets and carts full of various things – munitions, parts, in one case an entire laser-cannon – in and out of their various secured niches and shifting them to this spot or that.  Did I just step onto the set for the MechWarrior 4 intro cinematic?

  A quartet of twenty-ish MechWarriors are waiting at the near end of the embarkation gantry, all of them wearing rifle-green coolant-suits.  “They’re all yours, Hauptmann Zoeller,” Bella grins to the foremost of them, a dark-haired fellow with a serious manner and one-and-a-half gold stripes across his shoulder-straps.  “But I warn you: they’re even less fun than you are.”

  “Thanks, Succubus,” he says, not without rueful humour.  “Now get out of here, before anyone realises you’ve escaped adult supervision.”

  “Kiss my ass, Athrun!” she laughs on her way out the hatch.

  “You should be so lucky,” he calls after her, then looks to their guests again.  “Colonel Liebowitz, unless you have any objections, you’ll be riding with me.  Major Czabo, Warrant Officer Giulio will be your pilot; Miss Ryan, you’re with Leutnant Hawke; Mister Ryan, with Warrant Officer Amalfi.”

  Jesus, this is a young military! John notes.  Captains in our army are usually in their mid-to-late-twenties, but Zoeller’s barely Sally’s age, and he’s the oldest of this lot!  His own assigned pilot is a small blond fellow with a slightly crooked smile that belies his air of choir-boy innocence.  Heeding the Soren’s beckoning wave, John cocks an eyebrow at him.  “Amalfi, huh?”

  “Our branch of the family forswore allegiance to the Salernan crown a couple of centuries ago, when we chose to stay behind on Soren during the Retreat,” the ’Mech-jock assures him cheerfully.  “Of course, that didn’t stop the Gehennans arresting any of the Soren Amalfis they could get their hands on during the Invasion and shooting them for ‘treason’.  If it makes you feel better, you can just call me Nicol.”

  “Okay.”  As the Soren turns into one of the ’Mech gantries, John pauses.  “Before we mount up, I have a dumb question.  I notice most of you Sorens, uh, –”

  “Haven’t been shaving for much longer than you have?” is the droll suggestion.

  “Well, yeah.  Why is that?”

  “Legal enlistment requirements and naturalisation demographics, Mister Ryan,” Nicol drawls.  “You have to be Soren-born to be a member of the Free Soren Forces, and barring defectors, my ‘class’ are virtually the last batch of recruits who still qualify.  Anybody else is either already in Free Soren uniform, living on Occupied Soren itself, or they were born on a Union world, which means they’re legally Union citizens, not Sorens.”

  (He doesn’t add that most of his age-group may be Soren-born, but having grown up in the Union virtually none of them remember anything of their homeworld, and the generation-gap created by those differing cultures is already clearly visible in the Free Soren community, much less the Free Soren Forces.  Between the poisonous influence of the Gehennans who’ve been Soren’s conquering overlords for almost twenty years, and the cultural baggage that young Free Sorens like his ‘class’ will bring with them from the Union when they return to liberate their world, Nicol fully expects that Soren’s long-standing attempt to lock its planet and culture into a static, ‘perfect Germanic’ image is about to die where it stands.  Saying that aloud has gotten him into a few fistfights with hardline Soren ethno-preservationists over the years, but what really got their goat was his assertion that if those same loonies hadn’t been so foamy-mouthed opposed to commercial and social intercourse with other planets and cultures before the Salernan Invasion in 2810, much less to accepting foreign military assistance, Soren would have had the base population, economy, technology and firepower to turn the Invasion – which was nearly defeated as it was – into an absolute scorpion-stomp.

  (‘The Preservation of our Blue and Pure Soren’?  What a load of horseshit! Nicol thinks scornfully.)

  Unable to read his pilot’s thoughts, John simply winces.  “Sounds like you Sorens have dug in for a long war, Nicol.”

  “Your country’s spent the last – what?  Two decades? – in a position to fight short, smashing, overwhelmingly one-sided wars, Mister Ryan; some of us aren’t so lucky.”  And neither are you, anymore, he doesn’t add.  “Here we are.”  Nicol points at various places on the Morningstar’s sloped alloy armour, his voice dropping into a well-practiced chant.  “Steps and handholds are here, here, here and here; do not step here, here or here; those protrusions over your head are not grab-bars, they are missile-defence pulse-lasers.”

  “Right.”  Negotiating the topography takes a touch of contortionism, but John manages it and ducks under the raised canopy, stepping down onto the Morningstar’s rear seat and plucking the helmet off the instrument panel, cradling it to his lap as he sits down.  Nicol clambers up beside him a moment later, leaning into the cockpit to point out the sockets for the coolant hoses and breather-gear, making sure everything gets plugged in and fastened properly.  Before he slips it on, John contemplates the helmet for a moment, noting the side-hinged, full-length transparent face-plate with breather-attachment and lip-mike. “Another stupid question, Nicol: is the oxygen mask really necessary?”

  “Unless you like breathing cockpit air that’s hotter than body-temperature,” Nicol smiles.  “You’re sitting less than two metres above a fusion reactor, Mister Ryan, and at combat power-loads things get warm in a hurry.  Even Star League technology and hyperspace trickery can’t cheat thermodynamics completely.  Okay: the yellow-and-black handles above your head are the primary ejection trigger, and the loop between your knees is the secondary; unless and until I tell you otherwise, do not touch either one.  The entire cockpit-assembly is a single ejection-pod, and those padded rests on your command-chair are there so the gees won’t break your femurs when the rockets fire; if things go completely wrong somehow, I’ll yell ‘Eject, Eject, Eject’, and if you don’t have your legs on the rests by the time I hit the end of the third repetition, you’ll get to spend time in plaster.  If we need to eject and both of my triggers fail, I’ll tell you to pull yours, and that would be the only time you would ever touch those handles in this sortie, unless you’d like a pair of broken arms to go with the leg-fractures.  Clear?”

  “As crystal.  I got the same lecture from a fighter-pilot two years ago.”

  “Good.  Keep it in mind, and we won’t have any problems.”  Nodding seriously to his passenger, Nicol pulls the safety-pins from the overhead ejector trigger, then slithers down the Morningstar’s armour a little to make his way into the pilot’s seat.  A few moments later, he comes up on the intercrew circuit.  “Can you hear me, Mister Ryan?”

  “Loud and clear.  Hey, will I get to do anything other than watching the scenery during this trip, or am I just dead weight?”

  “Are you angling to sign on with the Renegade Legions, Mister Ryan?”

  “Rene- wait, never mind, I remember.”  His mind turns over the briefing papers he read the previous night as he surveys the array of screen and displays spread out before the Morningstar’s back seat.  ‘Renegade Legions’ is what they call formations which defected from the Principality to the Union, or ‘free’ formations from Pog-held worlds.  He doesn’t even register his own use of the Union epithet.  A lot of them are defectors who got left behind to die when the Gehennan Dukes abandoned the invasion of Ensenada and evacuated only ‘the material worth saving’ – meaning the ethnic-Salernan forces and as many of their ’Mechs and ASFs as they could manage.  And they actually expected their ‘feral’ cannon-fodder to die in place to cover their escape?  Yeah, right!  What a bunch of dumbshits.

  “To answer your question, once we come online you’ll see that we’ve set up your controls to support your ‘observer’ status.”  Though John can’t see him doing so, Amalfi lays his left hand flat against one of his screens, letting the ’Mech’s computer scan his handprint against its library of authorised patterns.  “Voiceprint identification: Warrant Officer Niccolo Amalfi, Two-Thirty-Third Jäger Regiment, Free Soren Army.”

  {“Biometric scan: confirmed.  Voiceprint: confirmed.  Operator identity matched: Fähnrich Niccolo Amalfi, 5. Kompanie, II. Bataillon, 233. Jäger Regiment.”}  Beneath them, the ’Mech’s reactor thrums out of stand-by into full operational readiness, and all of the cockpit screens light up.  {“Reactor: online.  Sensors: online.  Weapons: online.  All systems nominal.”}

  “No personal code-phrase?” John wonders.

  “This ’Mech is the property of the Soren government-in-exile, Mister Ryan, not Niccolo Amalfi,” his driver smiles, hauling his glove back on before resuming his grip on the throttle and control-yoke.  “We’ve pre-configured the three MFCDs before you.  The centre screen has a master system display for this ’Mech; the right-hand display is your master sensor display.  On the left, we have a video-link to the Brigade command-centre aboard the DropShip, where our people and yours will be assessing the exercise.”  The left-hand screen is divided into quarters, showing Major Katsuragi, Hellbie, an American Army tanker and a Soren officer in his late thirties; all are clearly in shipboard surroundings, sitting at consoles or suchlike.  “By the way, say ‘hello’ to my battalion CO, Kommandant Waldfeld.”

- * - * - * - * -

  In the command-centre a couple of decks above, the eclectic mix of Turkish Prisoners and U.S. military observers are just about set for the demonstration.  Major Katsuragi notes several of them opening up what look like portable data-terminals and frowns, touching one man’s shoulder.  “None of you have plugged into our communications system: how do you plan to contact your servers?”

  “Servers?”

  “Yes, the actual processing brains behind those terminals you’re using.”

  “Terminals?” he blurts incredulously.  “These are laptop computers – standalone machines! All the processing hardware is inside the case.”

  “What?” she blinks.  “That’s impossible!  Earth hasn’t even discovered fusion power, but you’re trying to tell me that you managed to bypass a fundamental limitation that stumped the Star League and scale optical processors down to make a fully-functional general-purpose computer this light and small?”

  Hellbie joined them during the discussion, and now he blinks himself.  “‘Optical processors’?” he repeats, trading a significant look with his colleague.  “‘Fundamental limitation’?”

  “That might help explain ‘five tons, but only two hundred and fifty-six colours’,” the other Prisoner muses.

  “It would, at that.”  Seeing Katsuragi’s look, Hellbie coughs and gets back on-topic.  “In answer to your question, Major: we didn’t.  Earth’s computing hardware is based on silicon-chip processors – miniaturised transistors operating on binary logic.  The mainframe/terminal arrangement has mostly died out over the last few decades, and the few mainframes left in the world are mainly for specialised applications.”

  Feeling a little light-headed, Katsuragi sits down next to the Earther who first drew her attention as she tries to absorb that idea.  My God, why didn’t I see it earlier?   In our reality, that mention of Ryan’s clipboard computer in Patriot Games was nothing more than Clancy showing off that his books really were science-fiction – an ‘alternate twentieth century’ – by casually throwing in hyper-miniaturised computer technology.  In their reality, computer systems actually did develop along an entirely different principle to ours.  “H-how powerful is that computer?”

  Hellbie nods to his colleague, who pulls up his system-specs and quickly rattles off the key numbers.  Katsuragi’s head swims again: if he’s not pulling her leg, that briefcase-sized slip of plastic is a touch more powerful than the imagers and processors that run the twelve-metre by nine-metre brigade-command holotable that stands in the centre of the command centre...  systems that fill the same volume as a four-door sedan and weigh the better part of three tons.

  A third Prisoner clears his throat.  “While you’re here, Major, maybe you can help us settle something.  Exactly what class is this DropShip, and how big is it?  We’ve been trying to find an equivalent in our books,” he holds up a copy of TRO3057R, “but we’re not having much luck.”

  She’s had just enough time to review Sasha’s findings, and her smile is distinctly crooked as she rattles off a few numbers.  The Prisoners trade slightly dazed looks of their own – their sourcebook entries are off by a couple of orders of magnitude – and the one who asked the question looks at ’57R again, folds it closed, and resignedly drops it into his carry-bag.

  “Probably not a bad start,” she says gently, getting to her feet again.  “I think Commander Waldfeld would like –”

  One of the military observers – the Air Scout from Dover AFB – has been playing with something pager-sized during her little conversation with the civvy gamers, and now he looks up with a grin.  “Found it!” he chortles, and presses a key.

  Katsuragi freezes solid in her tracks as she hears what he’s found: a particular song that she’s become oh-so-hatefully-familiar with in the last year or so.  Major Tolliver sees the look on her face and pales; he has just enough time to flinch and open his mouth to say something – he’ll never know what – before Misty covers the distance between them in three steps and snatches the device out of his grasp with her cybernetic hand, reading the song-title on the micro-display in passing.  “So, is this another of Earth’s super-compact computers, or just a playback device?”  Her tone is dreadfully even, belying the incandescent fury she’s glaring at the squirming Tolliver.

  “Uh... it’s called an iPod, Major,” Hellbie provides nervously.  “They’re pretty powerful, but specialised for downloading and playing music files.”

  “Expensive?  Hard to get?”

  “Not really –”

  “Good.”  Myomer muscles flex, and alloy bones crush the ‘iPod’ like a milk-carton.  Katsuragi gives Major Tolliver a frosty little smile as she pours the shards into his hand.  “For the record, Major, I’d never even heard of that frakking anime before I arrived in the Expanse.  I don’t drink; I’m a neat-freak; I ride trams to work because I never learned how to drive; yes, the blonde hair is natural, and I have never dyed it, much less purple; and before yesterday, I’d never even been on the same planet as a penguin, much less owned one for a pet!  But for all that, in the last sixteen months I’ve had enough anime-related puns, pranks, and gags pulled on me to thoroughly wear out my patience.  I have a FAQ posted on my office wall warning all my people of things not to say or do, but I can give you all the gist right here and now: the next time anyone references Neon Genesis Evangelion in my presence, physical violence will ensue!”

  Leaving Tolliver to stand and stammer, Katsuragi storms back to Commander Waldfeld’s station, knowing she’s all but trailing smoke from her ears and not particularly caring.  ******, it’s not even like ‘Kom, Sußer Tod’ is that good a song in the first place!

  Behind her, the still-cringing gamers trade cautious looks.  It’s a long, tensely silent moment before any of them speaks... but when they do, the result is almost inevitable.

  Within five minutes, the pool on exactly when Major Katsuragi will fly to Japan and smack Hideaki Anno right in the mouth is up to a thousand bucks – and growing quickly.

- * - * - * - * -

  Sheesh: I haven’t seen anybody do that thorough a job of pushing someone’s buttons since the damned ChiComms blew away Nuncio diMilo and made Dad lose his shit, John winces.  “... y’know, before that, she struck me as such a nice woman.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Mister Ryan: I’ve never met her myself,” Nicol returns, with a shrug in his voice.  The party of Morningstars has just finished disembarking from the DropShip, and now, accompanied by Captain Kuznetsov’s Huróns, they’re heading out to the north-west, towards the hastily-arranged target array where the ShootEx is to take place.  John’s a little surprised (though on reflection he realises he probably shouldn’t be) to note that the ’Mechs are deployed in two wedges, with Kuznetsov’s mediums advancing before and on either side of Zoeller’s heavies as a screen.  Nicol and John are on the far right of the command platoon; a glance to his right shows Leutnant Hawke’s Morningstar a couple of hundred metres to their right-rear, at the lead of her platoon.  “Eclipse Niner, this is Eclipse Black Four: I count seven test targets arranged by our hosts.”

  {“Confirm seven targets,”} comes from range control.

  ‘Targets’?  That’s kind of a harsh way to talk about some of our more recent hardware.  Overnight, M1017 low-boys brought those M1A1s in from a New Mexican National Guard armoury; while their electronics and other fittings aren’t bleeding-edge, their armour packages are pretty close to it and should provide an acceptable yardstick for the performance of BT weapons against Chobham composite.  “I wonder what Herb’s gonna make of this?”

  “‘Herb’?”

  “In-joke – doesn’t matter.”  Even if he and the rest of Catalyst are still trying to sort out their publishing schedule now that real ’Mechs have dropped by.

  (Though John doesn’t know it, Herb A. Beas II is currently at his ‘day job’ – the one that actually pays his bills, as before Tuesday evening being the Line Developer for BattleTech sadly did not – and is on his break, fielding a very interesting call from Harmony Gold.  It seems that their IP lawyers saw John’s photo from the previous evening and realised what it probably means for both HG and its protectionist stance regarding the Robotech intellectual property, so after a sleepless night of frantic discussions and conference-calls, they’ve decided to get out ahead of the oncoming wave by making Herb a very interesting offer....)

  {“Eclipse Niner, Firebat Niner, this is Range Control: the range is hot.  I say again, the range is hot.  Fire when ready.”}

  {“Firebat Niner copies.”}

  {“Eclipse Niner copies.  Eclipse Black Four, clear to engage.”}

  “Copy.  First test target, designated Target Alpha, range two thousand seven hundred fifty metres: one shot, medium laser.”  Nicol carefully settles his crosshairs over the tank’s turret, then takes over John’s sensor-screen to zoom in one of the cameras for a better look.  “Engaging.”

  The laser itself actually isn’t all that impressive from the cockpit: there’s a sort of electric hum from beneath John’s feet, and the beam’s pencil-line actinic-red afterimage is half-imagined.  The result, however, is rather more dramatic: the left-front slope of the M1A1’s turret-armour comes apart in a brilliant flash.  Wisps of smoke rise from the edges of the ragged crater as superheated shards rain down on the sandy ground before the Abrams.

  John can’t suppress a wince: he didn’t expect Chobham composite to shed laser-fire like rainwater, but he was hoping it might have been a little tougher.  “At least it doesn’t look like it breached the fighting compartment.”

  {“Maybe not, but even from here I can see that the blast warped the gun-tube,”} Major Czabo points out dourly.  {“That’s a mission-kill for sure.”}

  Even this far from LSH223’s command compartment, John can hear/feel the Allied officers trading glum looks.

  {“Very well.”}  Zoeller’s voice remains even and professional.  {“Eclipse Black Four, cease fire.   Firebat Niner, clear to engage.”}

  {“Copy,”} Kuznetsov returns crisply.  {“Second test target, designated Target Bravo, range six thousand metres: one shot, extended-range laser cannon.  Engaging.”}

  John’s looking through the canopy at the Hurón as it fires the forearm-mounted laser, and this time he sees something more like his expectations: the beam’s eyeblink-long afterimage is a thick bar of green against the New Mexican desert in the background.  When he looks down at the sensor-screen, though, he flinches in horror.  The amputated main-gun tube is just landing twenty metres in front of the second Abrams, spiking into the ground muzzle-first before toppling like a caber, and the clearing smoke reveals that the front-right quarter of the turret, a ragged quarter-pie-slice from the TC’s hatch around to the gun-mantlet, is just gone.  Blast and shrapnel have mangled the test-dummies inside almost beyond recognition.  “Christ Almighty!”

  “I wish I could say I was surprised, Mister Ryan,” Nicol says solemnly.  “I was hoping I would be, but I’m not.”

  You and me both, Nicol.

  {“Firebat Niner, cease fire.  Good hit, Hammer,”} Zoeller adds.  {“Eclipse Red One, clear to engage.”}

  {“Copy.”}  Leutnant Hawke’s voice is crisp, but there’s an undertone of eagerness to it as well.  John finds himself wondering if the Soren woman’s getting sick of Sally’s attitude and wants to shut her up.  {“Target Charlie, range five thousand five hundred metres.  One shot, standard particle cannon, engaging.”

  So much for the famous ‘zig-zag bolt of man-made lightning’, John notes absently, but most of his mind is occupied with the horror of seeing that perfectly coherent actinic-purple line punch clean through the Abrams and blast skywards a half-klick-long column of earth that starts almost a mile behind the wrecked vehicle.  There’s no secondary explosion – after some vigourous debate, it was decided for range-safety reasons that the test targets wouldn’t be loaded with ammo or fuel – but it’s blindingly obvious that this is a ‘cat-kill’.

  Amalfi looks over his shoulder to give his passenger a sympathetic shrug.  “I’d like to be more comforting about this, Mister Ryan, but the truth is that the Salernans have a preference for particle-weapons that borders on an outright fetish.  The Peacekeepers are mostly equipped with Morningstar-Charlies that mount a PPC as their primary weapon, but they’ve also got a lot of Morningstar-Deltas like the one we’re sitting in –”

  “- which are effectively Warhammer clones, including the twin Donals,” John sighs, reaching into his open faceplate to rub his face with one hand.  Shiiiiiit....

- * - * - * - * -

  A couple of hours later, John and Sally step down from a Humvee to take a look at the ill-fated Target Charlie, a couple of paces behind Majors Czabo and Tolliver, Captain Kuznetsov and Leutnant Hawke.  Hawke’s vague air of ‘attitude’ whenever Sally looks her way is a sharp contrast to the gloomy looks the Americans are trading.

  In the whole first Persian Gulf War, not a single Abrams was lost to Iraqi direct fire, John thinks sombrely, clambering up onto the wrecked M1A1’s foredeck to inspect the damage.  Hell, our tank-guns couldn’t reliably kill one, even at point-blank range.  In the Second Gulf War, the UIR outnumbered our forces six-to-one, and we still blew ’em all away from beyond their own main-gun range before any of ’em could land a shot.  In the Siberian War, the Chinese never even knew what hit them, but even if we hadn’t had Dark Star, we always knew we outranged them.  Not once in our last three wars did we lose a single tank in a fight with hostile armour.  He pokes his head into the breach in the turret’s frontal armour-slopes, the thickest protection on one of the toughest tanks built by Earth engineers, his fingers gripping on the slightly raised melted crust that rims a perfectly circular rent the size of a beach-ball.  The damage-channel cuts straight through the mantlet, gun-breech and turret fighting compartment, similarly can-opens the back of the turret and the engine-compartment, then goes on to slag a lot of inoffensive New Mexican desert sand.  And we’re going to be invaded by ’Mechs whose particle-cannon outrange us in direct-fire by half-again or more and can one-shot an Abrams and its entire crew and don’t ever run out of ****** ammunition, to boot!

  Major Czabo sums it up best:  “Well, this is gonna be a lovely ****** war, now isn’t it?”

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NOTES:
  For all that I strongly dislike CGL’s seeming practice of associating everything in BattleTech with ComStar and/or its splinter-factions, Blaker doctrine and Cylon theology do seem to have certain confluences.  And if you put those certain elements together in a certain way....  }:)
  For the record, a Cylon ‘Host of Angels’ is made up of nine Cohorts, six of Angels, three of Spectre ASFs; each Cohort consists of three Choirs, each Choir having six Troops of six Angels/Spectres.  Among its other meanings, Ragguel’s rank of ‘Immortal’ is broadly equivalent to ‘Major-General’.
  Yes, I’m fleshing out the nBSG backstory with some details from the mini-series’ novelisation, including personal names.
  Let me just say that trying to write Hybrid dialogue has given me both a frakking migraine and a profound respect for Tiffany Lyndall-Knight.  How the hell the poor woman managed to memorise nonsense even worse than this and make her delivery sound like it made sense (even if only to her) is utterly beyond my ken.
  Lyrics are from “Holy Grail”, Hunters and Collectors, © 1992.  Its writer was inspired by the story of Napoleon’s failed 1812 invasion of Russia, but plus ça change....

  The fan-designed Colonial-class BattleStar is going to show up a lot in this fic.  For instance, there are a lot of them left with the PDDs.... ;)

  The slang-word ‘tachikoma’ (note the small ‘t’) is a Union term, now common on almost all of the Expanse’s English-speaking worlds, which refers to an individual (fleshy or cybermind) who out-otaku’s the worst otaku.

  FWIW, as Major Katsuragi’s incident with ’57R demonstrates, if you’re playing along at home you might not want to get too tied up with how well the gameplay mechanics reflect in-story events – even with the ‘Renegade Tech’ tweaks, I’m taking those mechanics as guidelines, not immutable laws of nature or perfect reflections of reality.

  Please note once again that the portrayals of the real-life individuals who work at Harmony Gold and/or Catalyst Games Labs (and again, the Turkish Prison Crew) are completely fictionalised and should by no stretch of the imagination be considered to reflect the personality, character or opinions of any such real-life individual.  All other reasons aside, I certainly wouldn’t want any of them to do a Misty Katsuragi on me.  ;D

  You can probably spot all of the other Gundam SEED expies yourself – I couldn’t let Archangel and Commander Ramius’ people get too lonely, now could I?  :P

[sandstorm]

Nice to see you got this one out too. <iNarc'ed>

[Trace Coburn]

  ... all systems repaired.  Refit complete.  Resume action when ready, MechWarrior.  :D

  And yes, this is another one I’ll return to writing when time permits.  In the meantime, I hope the fixes I’ve applied make the story a better read.  ;)