3018.
“Water purification systems?” Hanse leaned forward, frowning. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, Sir.” The analyst gestured at the documentation MIIO had accumulated. “The Taurians are currently replacing many of their current systems with these units, and from what we’ve been able to determine, they appear to be based on Star League technology.”
“Could they have been recovered from a cache?” Hanse asked.
“No. We haven’t been able to recover a complete item, not yet, but we have enough evidence to determine that they have been built no later than the last nine months.”
“A factory,” Hanse muttered. The blueprints for the Star League era systems still existed—but not the supplementary material, the technology that made it work, and nobody had ever been able to come up with the capital to redevelop the technology. “Pragmatically, what does this mean for us?”
“Well, we can’t be certain, since we don’t know how much it’s costing them to make it, but Star League purifiers ran about 30 percent cheaper than what we have, and can go about twice as long without requireing maintenance.” The analyst shrugged. “And they can handle a vastly wider range of environmental conditions.”
“We could really use something like that,” Arden Sortek muttered.
“I doubt the Taurians will be interested in selling to us,” Hanse said. “And this, if they can expand it, will improve their own economic position.”
“And make them more attractive to pirates,” Sortek said. “And… Freelance groups out of the Syrtis March.”
Thank you for reminding me of my problem child. But Sortek was right. For that matter, not all the raids were from any government—Hanse had a perennial problem with mercenary units who disguised pirate raids as “preemptive defense expeditions.” It was worse because he simply could not afford to keep the best and most loyal units on the periphery frontier.
“What’s the potential threat?” Hanse asked.
“Well, more money in their economy that is freed up means more economic development, which could translate to a larger military.” The analyst shrugged. “MIIO is divided on that—as we’ve noted, they’ll be attracting more pirates, so it’s an open question as to whether or not more mechs would be useful as anything but a way to maintain the status quo.”
“There’s also the fact that Zarantha Calderon has always been more interested in internal economic development and her Far Lookers,” Hanse mused. He’d only met her once, and it was a chilly meeting regarding some Taurian ships that had jumped into Davion territory and been seized as pirates. Hanse had sacked the governor in question, because only a blind man would think they were pirates, or a man hoping to make a quick buck, and returned the ships.
But the damage had been done. Most Taurians remembered just what had happened the last time such an accident had occurred and Hanse was certain that Zarantha was expecting something else than she received and was suspicious.
But Hanse did not want active hostilities with the Taurians. Unfortunately, it looked like the best he could do would be to make it plain that the central government didn’t support the rumbling of raids and counter raids, while cracking down on anyone who gave him an excuse to do so.
“Thank God Thomas wasn’t put in charge,” Sortek muttered. “We still don’t know what he did to merit exile.”
“I—” Hanse blinked. “Maybe found something that needed a high level, but very quiet presence?”
“Like a purifier factory?”
“Or someone who can build purifiers who is trading with the Concordat.” Hanse said. The image of the periphery as a land of savages was popular, but anyone who thought about it knew better. There were worlds that had been originally settled by Alliance Refugees and the extent of the possible range of human settlements in the periphery was pretty much as far as a colony ship could travel. A world, or even a polity, that had never experienced the Amaris civil war, or the succession wars, might very well equal the old Star League…
If so… “Gentlemen, I want MIIO to fast track this. Find out who is making them, where are they coming from, and whether or not this presents a danger to the Federated Suns.” Hanse made a finger-gun gesture. “But soft methods only. Nothing likely to convince any unknown parties that we’re hostile, rather than curious.”
“Understood, sir.”
As the others left, Hanse shook his head. Now, in the dramas, would be the time that he dropped everything. But the fact was that he had a hundred emergencies and opportunities landing on his desk every day. He’d have to trust that MIIO would find out if this was one he couldn’t ignore.
“And with that, my IN box isn’t getting any smaller,” Hanse said as he started to go through his computer files once again.
[/hr]
Muleshoe, Mech Proving Ground Alpha.
Proving Ground Alpha was a network of narrow canyons and tall stone pillars, many of them impregnated with iron ore.
In other words, it was a perfect place for a miserable day of fighting.
Mary hauled her Marauder around, desperately avoiding the blast of fire from a Warhammer. The PPC (really, a low-powered laser), slashed across her forward leg, the armor indicator going yellow. But only yellow.
I love improved armor, Mary thought, but the fact of the matter was it wasn’t going to hold up forever. She snapped off a shot from her left PPC, waiting and following up with her right, both beams hitting the Warhammer in the already damaged right torso. The machine did nothing for a moment, then slumped over, the indicators blinking red, showing that it was knocked out of combat. But behind it, another Warhammer loomed out of the windblown dust, and it was time for Mary to go.
Triggering her jump jets, she vanished over a low foothill, leaving the pilot behind her to curse his luck.
[/hr]
“The jump jets really sell it,” Mary said. “I know I’m but a lowly mechwarrior,” the 18-year-old said, “But the advanced heatsinks are good enough, heck they’re giving more cooling than the original fit. So using the saved weight for the jets is just great.”
“R&D thinks that more armor and weapons might…”
Mary shook her head. “Armor and guns don’t let us jump. That makes the X1 model one of the few heavy mechs that can jump—and can still carry a full warload.”
Beyond the meeting room, Mary saw the big assembly floor—Brannis couldn’t build mechs, not yet, but they could assemble frames sent from Tarus, refitting them with advanced armor, heat sinks, and the jump jets the weight savings allowed.
And none of the refitted Marauders, Thunderbolts or Wasps would be deployed off world—not until it was decided that the rewards exceeded the dangers.
And better yet, they might be able to deploy in homogeneous units—four advanced Marauders in a lance would ruin anyone’s day.
And if so, I might just get off of this world… After all, there was only so much drilling you could do, and even taking liberty on any city on the planet she wanted (courtesy of the shuttle flights) wore after a time when you could just look up and see what awaited you…
“She’s good,” the training officer told Thomas. “Thinks before she moves, but doesn’t overthink it. She hasn’t had any combat experience, but we’re considering fast-tracking her for an officer’s posting.” He shrugged. “If she survives, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her in charge of a regiment before the decade’s out.”
Thomas nodded. “We’re getting some rumbling that people want to see combat, I see.”
“They’re well trained, loyal, and can’t stop thinking what they could do to your typical pirate band.” The grizzled officer chuckled. “Can’t blame them.”
“They might be getting the chance sooner, rather than later,” Thomas said. “The amount of frames we’ve been pulling for refit is raising eyebrows and it’s an open question how much longer we can keep this secret.”
“Shouldn’t have started shipping the purifiers.”
Thomas made a quelling gesture. “Half the new toys we have were paid for by those purifiers.” Every replacement, every new settlement sent money back here, simply because they’re so much more efficient. “But we’ll be deploying an over-strength battalion. The Third, and the 1st recon company.”
Mom wants us to send a message, and a battalion made up of upgraded Thunderbolts and Marauders, with a company full of upgraded light mechs… Thomas had his reservations about showing their hand, but anyone who ran into his force would be very unhappy indeed.
“Why, sir?”
“Because we can drill on Taurus, show the rest of the military where their budget has been going, and talk about where we go from here.”
“More advanced mechs, I’d assume.”
“You’d think that, but right now, it’s not looking cost effective,” Thomas sighed. “We can build them here, but anything using electronics? That means we need maintenance, which means we need to train techs and we don’t have that—not yet. If we do come out, we can start training techs all over the Concordat, but for now… well. Now, the boffins have decided that it would be most cost effective to stick with armor, heat sinks and other things that give us maximum bang and minimum support headaches. They found some other information in the core and we’re going to be focusing on upgrading a part of the Concordat that has been neglected for far too long.”
“Oh?”
“Yah. You don’t have need to know, but suffice it to say, our enemies will be very surprised if we get it finished.”
“I see. Well, sir, I’ll start letting the troops know that some of them may, at long last, be getting to see the galaxy.” With that, he left the office. Thomas waited, grinning as he heard the dim cheer echoing down the halls. Alone he opened up his datapad and unlocked the fingerprint lock. Schematics and images scrolled down the screen, above them highlighted in red the name.
PROJECT THUNDERCHILD
“Yes, they might be very surprised indeed…” Thomas said with a chuckle. Of course, it depended on what his mother thought, but well, he had a very convincing argument lined up.
[/hr]
Taurus:
Zarantha looked at a news broadcast talking about the upcoming talks to accept Brannis into the Concordat as an official member. The “recovered” battlemechs were marching down Independence Way, the traditional route for units that would be based in the military bases that surrounded Samantha.
“Very impressive,” she said. “The mask won’t last long, of course, but it’ll be several months I think before our neighbors realize what we have.”
“If they haven’t already,” Minister Wilma Zyvan said. The Minister of the Department of Economic Development gestured at the spreadsheet. “They can read trends just like we can, and they all know by this time that we are manufacturing water purification systems of Star League vintage.”
“Which means we need to be prepared!” Grover Shraplen snapped. His family had sent him to observe the meeting, and Grover was honoring the MacLeod’s World reputation for paranoia perfectly.
Dammit, Grover… Thomas agreed with him, but Grover and his mother got along like well, oil and water.
“We are being prepared, or have you missed the shiny new battlemechs?” Zarantha asked. “The economic situation, for the first time in decades, is allowing us to purchase the entire output of our indigenous industry.” She gestured to an aide, and another graphic appeared on the displays. “In fact, as I’m given to understand, Marshal Willis, we’ll be adding another regiment to our forces, not counting our Brannis units, before the end of the year.”
“Yes,” Willis was an older man, approaching retirement. “For now, we’re intended on keeping the upgraded units as a unified combat formation. That way, should there be a major conflict, we can reserve them for the point when their capabilities will come as the greatest possible shock.”
“Mph.” Shraplen glared at the formations. “And they’ll be on the defensive, when we should consider retaking our ancient worlds!”
“Yes. The worlds that haven’t had a single pro-Taurian revolt over the last two hundred years, where it’s almost impossible to see where Taurian families end and Federated Sun families begin.” The protector’s voice was dry.
“They’re just waiting for a call.” Shraplen said.
Nobody rose to his defense.
“But, since you’re all cleared, how is THUNDERCHILD going? Admiral?”
“Ah,” Admiral Tomoe Allister was a tall woman, her graying hair cut short. The head of the Bureau of Shipbuilding (Buships) gestured at the packets in front of hte various officers. “As you know, THUNDERCHILD is the program to rebuild a black-space combat capability. It is, as yet, merely in the planning stages, and I will tell you right now, that even assuming a maximum effort to build a warship, sacrificing all of our other military and civilian projects, as well as making it completely obvious to even a blind man what we are doing…” She steepled her fingers. “15 to 20 years. Assuming no problems. Just as a bit of information—there will be problems.”
“We have dropships!” Shraplen said. “You build them.”
“Nobody has built a compact core in the Inner Sphere since the very beginning of the Third Succession War—and the Lyrans scrapped the project because it was too expensive.” Tomoe was unflinching. “You could drop our entire state into the Lyran nation and not cause their GDP to blip more than a few percentage points. Then you have transit drives, vastly larger than dropship drives, and everything else that goes into a warship. We might have the plans, but we’d be inventing everything else, from the expertise to the support industries, from scratch.”
“And while we were doing this, we’d be cutting everything else to the bone.” Thomas didn’t want to support the admiral, but she was right. “However…” He smiled. “That’s not our only option. Check page 22, please.”
“What are these?” Willis said. “They look like conventional lasers, but they’re… Much larger.”
“They are. These were some of the earliest designs used by the old Alliance for the first combat jumpships—well before anything like a dedicated warship as we know it had been fielded. They are, as you said, larger, but fundamentally no different than our conventional systems, which makes building them far easier than trying to develop a capital class weapon. Now…” Admiral Allister smiled. “We have this, again courtesy of R&D helped along by our archaeological finds.”
After all, only a few people here are Core-cleared, Thomas thought.
Everyone paused at the large, wireframe image.
“That’s not a combat dropship,” Grover said.
“No,” Thomas replied. “It’s based on work we’ve done at Brannis and the Vandenberg shipyards. About the size of the mammoth, multiple cargo handling facilities, modular engines that can be easily removed.”
“We’ve done studies,” Zyvan said. “There are multiple manufacturers of small and midranged dropships, but heavy dropships? Almost unknown, and there’s a screaming need for them. My people hinted at this design, and we’ve been getting inquiries about purchasing ships or licensing the design from almost every major manufacturer in the inner sphere.”
“And how is this a warship?” Grover growled, glaring around around the room as he realized that he was not among those who had evidently been briefed before.
“That isn’t, this is.” The image shifted, and the new ship, while still having the engines of the old, was sleeker, with deadly weapons emplacements studding its hull. “The Tentativa class, gentlemen and ladies. Based around a common core, we have a half-dozen notational designs for gunship, carrier, troop carrier, and escort models. Best of all, it has a sixty-five percent parts commonality with the civilian transport—every ship the Inner Sphere buys will be directly funding our military program.”
“How long until this… Dream becomes a reality.”
“We’ll have the first Dromedary class ready for test flights in the next four years. Presuming nothing breaks terribly, we can assume that a Tentativa may be fielded in about five to six years.”
“FIVE TO SIX—”
“Lord Shraplen,” Zarantha was frosty. “Instead of shouting, maybe you should congratulate the admiralty in coming up with a design that will dramatically improve our defenses, without destroying our economy.”
“Yes. Forgive me.” Shraplen said. “I was overcome.”
I’ll bet you were, Thomas thought. Grover was going to take some delicate handling after this.
