Port Shenzhen, Garstedt
Alshain Military District, Draconis Combine
August 11, 3040
“Meet meee ‘round the julah treeeee,
Bring meee all that saddens theeee,
And I promise, promise, pro - chikushō!”
Chu-sa Seiichi Saito and his fellow officers howled with laughter as Sho-i Vargas took one step too far and tumbled off the stage in mid-chorus.
His attempt to rise was defeated by being entangled in the microphone cord, and in his inebriated state, he was helpless until some of his equally drunk comrades came to his questionable rescue.
The cheerful backing music continued on amid the laughter, shouting and cursing, making for another happily chaotic Saturday evening at the Sweet Melodies Karaoke Bar.
Saito eased back in his chair. He and a few other senior officers of the Ryuken-san sat around a crescent shaped table in a semi-private raised alcove at the back of the Bar. It allowed them to be part of the regiment’s carousing while giving their juniors social and physical distance to let their hair down. It was a fair arrangement, to his mind.
The regiment had a lot of steam to let off. After escaping Caph during what was now being called the “Six Month War”, the Ryuken-san had hoped for a reprieve to rebuild their battered ranks. Instead, they were immediately ordered to join a relief force for Dieron, which had been invaded by a joint FedSuns and Lyran task force. Letting a Prefecture Capital fall into enemy hands would have been bad, and Saito had been prepared to die to keep Dieron in the Combine, but by the time the relief force arrived, the FedCom troops had already pulled out after wrecking most of the military and governmental infrastructure on-planet.
The Ryuken-san therefore saw out the war on Dieron helping to restore order and assist in the reconstruction effort. They had apparently been selected for the role because civil assistance operations were beneath the dignity of the more senior and prestigious DCMS regiments in the relief force.
Indeed, those more “worthy” regiments had left almost as soon as it was confirmed that there were only looters and not enemy BattleMechs to fight.
After Dieron was deemed sufficiently “secure”, the -san, still only at fifty-five percent strength, had been ordered to Garstedt for rebuilding.
Yet their journey was not over. Originally co-located with the 3rd Alshain Regulars in Fort Dalmatia on the other side of the planet, the personnel from the two regiments did not get along and the local military police had had their work cut out for them keeping the peace.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the -san were relocated to a reserve installation in Port Shenzhen on the other side of the planet. Fort Lushan was designed to host armor and infantry, not BattleMechs, and there was no integral DropPort, but no matter, the -san, in their usual close-mouthed fashion, stoically made the best of things.
Now in their third month posted here, Saito was glad to finally be able to go to work reconstituting the regiment. As the senior surviving battalion commander, he had been promoted to Chu-sa and made XO of the regiment, meaning that logistics and personnel was now his responsibility, and those jobs were easier to do when your unit stayed in the same place for some time.
Life had developed a semi-comfortable rhythm, and there were signs that regardless of how they were viewed by other DCMS units, someone in high command was pleased with them.
“It seems our new busoshensi are finally beginning to fit in,” observed Tai-sa Kansa from the center of the table. Like his senior officers, Kansa had unfastened his service jacket, an unspoken signal to all that normal military formalities were suspended. Non-traditional the Ryuken might be, but they were still samurai, with attendant social norms that sometimes got in the way of military effectiveness.
That conclusion was still anathema to the vast majority of their peers and superiors in the DCMS, so in typical Ryuken fashion, Kansa and his officers had contrived to work around them. Unbuttoned service jackets at a karaoke bar was the signal that allowed them to talk shop openly.
Following his commander’s eyes, Saito and his fellow officers watched Sho-i Vargas being helped back to his seat by two recent replacement MechWarriors from his company.
Two weeks ago, they had received eight recent graduates from assorted Combine military academies - and four former Sun-Zhang Cadre members. The latter could normally expect assignment to one of the higher prestige regiments of the DCMS upon the completion of their time in a Cadre, so their very presence was a message.
Saito grunted in agreement. One of the Sun-Zhang alumni was in his Second Battalion. Chu-i Suzuki had experienced quite a bit of culture shock at first, but had adapted well, even getting over his disappointment at not being assigned as a lance commander immediately.
Saito had watched Suzuki during training exercises and found him malleable to the Ryuken way of doing things. It was much the same with the other replacements. It would seem that High Command had actually tried to find replacements who would do well in the Ryuken set-up.
“Replacements are well and good, but we need machines to go with them,” countered Sho-sa Henry Uchida of Third Battalion. Only the Sun-Zhang graduates had brought ‘Mechs with them. He plucked the toothpick umbrella from his multi-coloured cocktail and pointed it at Master Chief Petty Officer Amaruddin. “Which is what the Master Chief wanted to talk about, right?”
Amaruddin waved a negligent hand in Uchida’s direction, never taking his eyes off the next singer up front. Despite his lowly relative rank (Master Chief Petty Officer being the Support Arm equivalent of a Chu-i in the DCMS), being the Master Chief in a ‘Mech Regiment was a position that carried enormous responsibility and unofficial authority, since he had risen through the ranks to his current position as commander of all the Techs and AsTechs that kept the BattleMechs running. Indeed, Amaruddin was the oldest man at the table.
“Tai-sa, did they tell you where the new ‘Mechs came from?” Amaruddin asked.
The new BattleMechs in question had arrived two days prior on an unmarked Mule-class cargo DropShip. A whole battalion’s worth of advanced models not seen in the Inner Sphere since the fall of the Star League, the assortment included Crabs, Guillotines, Black Knights and Highlanders. There were enough of them to bring the -san almost to full strength, and the more powerful weapons they carried promised to make them deadlier at one fell swoop.
It didn’t take long for the regimental grapevine to go to work, and almost every MechWarrior in the unit had already petitioned Kansa for assignment to one of the new machines. One of Saito’s current headaches was working out a equitable way to decide who got them.
Kansa and his staff took the arrival of so many advanced machines as yet another sign that High Command was pleased with them. Perhaps because the Coordinator’s son and heir, Theodore Kurita was now Gunji-no-Kanrei (Deputy for Military Affairs), and he was known to favour effectiveness over tradition.
Now Kansa considered his Master Chief’s question.
“They said…” he began, then stopped, remembering. “No, the charge officer implied that they came from Luthien Armour Works.”
Amaruddin snorted. “If they did, then it looks like LAW has opened factories on Terra.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a batch of multi-coloured tags that he tossed on the table in front of the officers, who reached for them.
Saito held his tag close to examine in the dim light. It was a work tag, universally used by Techs working on vehicles to indicate work done on components.
In this case the yellow rectangular tag, slightly frayed from being pulled off whatever it had been attached to, bore a ComStar logo in the top left corner, and the inscription read: “Inspected: 30371113, CG Fac4534, Terra.”
Kansa put down the tag he was examining. “I want the machines - but only if they are safe to operate,” he told the table, extracting nods from everyone.
“Hai, Tai-sa,” agreed Amaruddin. “We will strip each one down to their frames to ensure there are no surprises.”
“How long will that take?” Saito asked, already anticipating the barrage of enquires he was sure to field from subordinate officers.
Amaruddin scratched at his technically forbidden braided grey goatee (Master Chiefs could get away with quite a bit as long as they kept their machines running). “If we go to fifty percent maintenance cycle on our current ‘Mechs, I can assign enough crews to do four ‘Mechs a day - that’s tear-down and rebuild. We can increase that to six per day if we go to three shifts, but I assume we want this done right rather than done quickly.”
Saito calculated out loud “Alright, so nine days to do the lot, assuming we don’t find anything… unusual. I’ll tell the regiment we will begin releasing the new ‘Mechs a lance at a time in a week.”
Both Kansa and Amaruddin jerked their heads once in agreement.
“Great. It’ll be good to give the FedCommies a taste of their own medicine,” Uchida all but rubbed his hands together in glee. “Once we have weapons that equal theirs, it will come down to skill again, and there we have the edge!” he pronounced, lifting his glass.
“Eh - not quite,” Amaruddin interjected.
Every head at the table turned to look at Master Chief Amaruddin.
“Explain,” Kansa commanded tersely.
“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Amaruddin said. “They told us these are top-of-the-line Star League tech models, right?”
“Hai.” But Kansa now had a wary look about him.
“Well, they’re lying, or ComStar bullshitted them.”
“How?”
“We tested some of the weapons. The extended-range particle cannons on those ‘Mechs match the range of the FedComm ones, but don’t do any more damage than the usual ones, so they’re a third less powerful than the AFFC ones.”
“Chikushō!” Saito swore. “You’re certain?”
The Master Chief nodded solemnly.
“Are the ER-PPCs being regulated - do they have a governor on them that limits their power throughput?” Saito asked next.
“Ie, Chu-sa. We checked.”
“Any other discrepancies?” Kansa reentered the conversation, leaning in a bit to be heard because the next singer was belting out some hard-pop number whose popularity completely escaped the Tai-sa’s generation.
“The double heat sinks we got are still the same as the ones coming out of LAW and not the compact ones the Dragoons use.”
Uchida sank the remainder of his cocktail in one swallow.
Kansa cupped his chin in one scarred fist. “So, ComStar is still holding back the SLDF Royal grade stuff, but the AFFC somehow got their hands on it.”
The grim looks at the table told him that his senior staff agreed with his conclusion.
“Well then, gentlemen - we had best start developing tactics to win against royal grade enemy ‘mechs.”
New Sarepta, Tranquil
Clan Wolf Territory
July 10, 3039
C’mon, c’mon! Fraser leaned his ‘Mech back as far as he dared while twisting it’s torso counter-clockwise at maximum rate. The air in the cockpit was hot and heavy - losing a pair of heatsinks earlier in the fight made it that much harder to cool off.
On the other hand, he was also limited in how much heat could now build up since his Gargoyle-Prime’s right arm, mounting twin highly destructive and hot running extended-range particle cannons, had been shot away twenty seconds ago.
Hence he was cranking his assault-class OmniMech around to bring his remaining weapons - all mounted in his left arm - to bear. It was a gamble, since he actually had less armour remaining on his left side, but he had nothing left to shoot back with on the other side.
His opponent was in roughly the same shape as him. Another 80-ton Gargoyle, this one was the -D variant, which carried a targeting computer to make its arsenal of lasers even more deadly. In a grotesque mirror-image, it too was missing an arm - it’s left - and Fraser’s sensors indicated that he’d also managed to destroy one of the torso-mounted pulse lasers.
Both MechWarriors were now in a turning fight. Neither had a manoeuvrability advantage, and the open plains they were fighting on offered no meaningful cover, so it came down to who could shoot more accurately and make fewer mistakes.
Center, Fraser told himself - employing one of the “focus words” Tom West had taught him to facilitate getting his head in back in the zone, where he could block out discomfort, pain, alarms and the neural feedback warning him that he was only a hair of a degree away from overbalancing the thirteen metre tall war machine.
Without conscious thought, he switched to independent targeting, and four closely-spaced but separate crosshairs sprang to life on his HUD.
Fully in the zone now, the quartet of red circles seemed to slide smoothly across the landscape until they crossed his opponent’s battered torso.
One by one the crosshairs blazed gold to indicate valid firing solutions. Fraser pulled triggers as they did, his Large- and Medium- class pulse lasers generating staccato-like hits across the other Gargoyle’s centerline almost too fast for the eye to follow, while his Extended Range Medium Laser went lower and struck around the waist rotation ring.
Even as he did so, his opponent cut loose with an alpha strike, flaying armour from head to toe.
Almost every warning light in the cockpit lit up, vestibular feedback from his neurohelmet confirmed what his eyes were telling him - he was falling. He had gambled and lost.
Just before he hit the ground, the lights went out.
Fraser slumped back in his command couch as the lights snapped back on in the simulated ‘Mech cockpit. The canopy cracked open with a hiss of hydraulics, allowing cooler air to flood the overheated pod. Fraser silently gave thanks for his full-body MechWarrior’s cooling suit.
While the canopy retracted to its fully open position, he unstrapped himself from the couch and hauled himself out of the simulator.
As he took off his neurohelmet beside his recently vacated cockpit - one of ten arranged in two rows in the room, he saw Cyrilla Ward climbing out of the opposite cockpit.
“Stravag! I thought I had you that time!” she jabbed a finger at him.
“What?” Fraser was confused - she’d taken him out -
“We drew - you destroyed my gyro with that last salvo,” Ward informed him.
“Against a bloodnamed trueborn, I’ll - I will take it, Galaxy Commander,” Fraser shrugged, looking around in vain for a towel -
“Here!”
Fraser’s head snapped left and he made a reflex catch of the towel that Natasha Kerensky threw at him as she came out of the simulator control room.
“Well, Rilla - does your subjective experience confirm the objective data?” she asked her old friend while handing her a second towel, with only a fraction of her usual snarkiness, Fraser noted.
The Galaxy Commander stripped off one of her gauntlets and hurled it at Kerensky, who caught it just short of her face.
“There’s no substitute for fighting someone - you of all people know that, Tasha,” she shot back.
Fraser and Ward had just gone head-to-head five times, for two wins apiece and a draw. They had used different ‘Mechs and different environments for each scenario.
He was only now feeling back to his old self. Under interrogation, he had answered truthfully - it was, after all, part of the Plan to give the Clans a true picture of the Inner Sphere.
However, his prompt answers had caused the interrogator to think that Fraser was feeding them a cover story, so he had upped the dosage, and discovered that Fraser was one of the three percent of people who had a lower-than-normal cardiac arrest threshold for these drugs.
End result - three days in bed, and a week of light activity only after that. He had been cleared of permanent damage by the medics, but had only been allowed back into the simulators in the last few days. He longed to climb into the real deal, but there was no chance of that right now.
Security around them was still tight, although a few more people had been brought in to serve support functions for their little crew.
Once he was back on his feet, Kerensky had talked to himself and Tulliver, beginning with an apology for not managing to avert their narco-interrogations.
Fraser had been surprised by that - he’d never heard Kerensky apologise for anything, ever. Tulliver later told him that Kerensky had been confined to quarters for punching out the local garrison commander - who had been a sibmate of Kerensky’s, no less - while he had been unconscious, but the pair had apparently sorted things out after a couple of days and several meetings that Kerensky was tight lipped about.
Whatever had happened, apparently they now had sanction at the highest levels of Clan Wolf to proceed with their plan.
That meant that Tulliver now spent her days closeted with a bunch of analysts interpreting the database they brought back with them. As an anthropologist by trade, she had adapted smoothly to this new culture. It irked Fraser a bit that Tulliver was now more fluent than he was in the Clan dialect of Star League English, even though many of the terms and phrases were derived from the military jargon that he was more familiar with.
And he was being tested. He’d been put through a battery of physiological tests, many of them familiar to him from his yearly medicals. Other tests were definitely not familiar, including an afternoon spent sparring against live opponents both unarmed and with armed with various melee weapons. Not for the first time, he silently gave thanks for the training that Tom West and some of the other original Dragoons had put him through. He also often wondered how his old friend was doing.
Fraser stretched, tucked his gloves into the bowl of his neurohelmet and walked over to the two Clan MechWarriors.
“He is no Ice Hellion when it comes to reflexes,” opined Ward “but it does not matter because his decision making is excellent.”
“Exactly, Rilla! And that is what we need everyone to understand!” Kerensky leaned in to poke her friend in the chest.
“Here among the Clans, he’d be assigned to a solahma cluster by now, given shitty equipment, poor resources and suicide missions. Of course those warriors can’t measure up to the next generations! They’re handicapped in every possible way, so their fate becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!”
“I am right here, ladies,” Fraser put in, but Ward just blew past him.
“But your own data shows that he is exceptional amongst the Spheroids - not the rule. Benchmarked against our baselines, Fraser is only above average.”
“Ahem,” Fraser tried again.
“Those baselines don’t measure the benefits of twenty years combat experience!” riposted Kerensky “Otherwise, how do you explain still being on active duty at our age? And he just drew a five-round contest against a Clan Trueborn warrior!”
“Aff, I know,” sighed Ward. She turned to Fraser. “You did far better than I expected. If you were of Clan Wolf, I expect that we could find you a place in our Touman.”
“Thank you, Galaxy Commander,” Fraser replied. “But to be honest, I didn’t - excuse me - did not expect to do so well either. I usually lose as many as I win against other Dragoons.”
Kerensky snickered. “Ah… Dechan, you did happen to notice that for the past few years, you’ve been pitted against the best of the Dragoons in testing, right?”
Fraser blinked hard as the revelation hit him. “You mean…?”
“Aff,” grunted Ward as Kerensky’s smiled reached feral proportions. “Apparently you have been fighting above your weight for a while now.”
“Well, let’s go somewhere with refreshments to continue this discussion,” Kerensky spun on her heel and stalked off without waiting for the other two.
“Was she always like this?” Fraser asked Ward.
“Neg. She has gotten worse,” confirmed Ward with a long suffering sigh as she and Fraser followed the Black Widow out of the room.
---------
The secure mess in the complex wasn’t empty.
Tulliver and Star Captain Mulligan were waiting for them.
“Galaxy Commander, Star Colonel,” the latter began, holding out a red-bordered message form for Ward.
“Thank you, Star Captain,” she said as she took it. Kerensky leaned over to read over Ward’s shoulder.
Fraser didn’t think he could be so familiar, so he just shot Tulliver a questioning look.
“The timetable’s moved up,” she answered. “You and Kerensky need to pass your Trials of Position in the next month.”
Forging the Pack - The Untold Story of Wolf’s Dragoons in the Reckoning
By Drs H. R. Cowan & T. S. Choi
Pub. New Avalon Press, 3068
By 3041, the disparate arms of Dragoon technological diaspora had reached the stage that an oversight organisation was badly needed.
Thus was born the blandly named Liaison and Coordination Group (LCG). Given the enormous and critical responsibilities of the LCG, finding the right person to head it up was not easy.
The number of people with the right qualifications and temperament for the job was small, even given the vast population of the Federated Commonwealth. Too, the position would require the successful candidate to essentially vanish from public view for the forseeable future, which culled the list even further. It was the latter requirement that ruled out the Sovereigns’ first choice for the role, Marshal Ardan Sortek. He was simply too high profile to drop out of sight for years.
With some reluctance, the intelligence community of the FedCom was tapped once more to fill the position. So many operatives and analysts were now assigned to protect Project BUILDING that intel lapses in other areas were almost inevitable.
For instance, Professor Fiora Challing has convincingly argued that the abortive so-called “Second Skye Rebellion” of 3043 would never have got as close as it did to launching if FCIC agents and analysts assigned to the Skye March had not been stripped to historic low levels in order to staff Project BUILDING.
Nevertheless, Alex Mallory, recently retired after coordinating the merger of the FedCom’s Intelligence apparatus, was appointed Chairman of the LCG, with retired Kommandant General Kasper Nowak (late of the LIC) as his deputy, and eventual successor.
On its formation, the LCG assumed oversight for all Dragoons related activities and projects.
Project BUILDING was the largest and most well known of the programs. Thanks to the infamous Gorrich Leak of 3059, we have a partial list of Project BUILDING sub-program code names, as well as some details on what some of them pertained to.
PILLAR was the ultimately abandoned crash project to mass-produce OmniMechs and OmniFighters.
AWNING concentrated on creating the infrastructure to mass-produce advanced technology items. This program would prove crucial to the coming war.
FRAME was the WarShip program, another one that was ultimately scaled back in the resourcing crunch of the early 3040s. By the Reckoning, the AFFC Navy would only be able to claim a strength of eight WarShips (six of them being Dragoons WarShips recovered from the BRISTOL Cache by Operation SKYLARK), with another on the slipways.
It should be noted that as an added security measure, anytime the project codenames were used in written communication, a randomly generated greek letter suffix was added, for instance, “AWNING GAMMA”. The suffix denoted nothing, but was intended to suggest multiple locations or sub-programs that didn’t exist. Where subdivisions of projects actually existed, as they did in the case of the OmniTechnology project PILLAR, the subdivisions were referred to by a further numerical suffix, thus - “PILLAR KAPPA-17”, which, as nearly as can be determined, referred to the OmniMech portion of the PILLAR sub-program.
The most secretive of the sub-programs, of course, was the HPG technology one. Virtually all information about this project is still sealed under 50, 75 and 100 year publication ban rules. Most of what we think we know is conjecture and extrapolation. Even the name of the program is unknown.
We know that cracking the secrets of HPG technology, even with the help of the Dragoons, proved to be almost impossible. Those few Dragoons who had experience with HPGs knew how to operate them, not build them.
Hopes were raised briefly when Operation SKYLARK returned to the Outreach system in the dying days of the Six Month War. While combing through the contents of the Dragoon BRISTOL Cache recovered by Fleet Colonel Issola Chandra’s Task Force, techs discovered a maintenance manual for a ship-borne HPG, somehow missed during the sanitisation of the WarShip Alexander’s data archives. To be clear, there was no HPG aboard the Alexander, although later investigation showed that it was highly probable that she had once been fitted with one, possibly when the ship had been used by the exiled SLDF to scout the Kerensky Cluster.
Needless to say, multiple copies of the manual were quickly made and secured. Despite lack of context issues, such as instructions to “close panel and run normal Boot sequence steps A to G as per Ops Manual Section 4.11.2”, it was still the most information any Successor State had ever uncovered about Hyperpulse technology.
By itself, it was not the breakthrough that the FedCom was hoping for - indeed, ComStar’s monopoly on Hyperpulse Generators remained intact through most of the Reckoning. The main thing it did do for the elite group of FedCom researchers, now joined by Dragoons engineers, was to show where, and how large, the gaps were in their knowledge.
In fact, the quantification of the “missing jigsaw pieces”, as one researcher put it, had the fortuitous effect of driving AFFC R&D investment into alternative interstellar communications technologies as they realised how far they had to go. Based on the events of the Reckoning, it is highly probable that the FedCom was able to implement a limited-capacity FTL communications network not based on HPG technology for AFFC use.
As large as Project BUILDING was, it was merely one of the LCG’s responsibilities. Jamie Wolf had promised full access and cooperation, and the FedCom intended to test that promise.
Intelligence and Military personnel, covered as Mercenary Liaison Officers, took up residence on Outreach.
Some of the Sovereigns’ closest advisors wanted the Dragoons sibkos to be shut down, for a variety of reasons ranging from religious objections to the more immediately serious fact that genetic material was being used without consent.
In a two part compromise arbitrated by Mallory, the Dragoons were ordered to cease using genetic material gathered from Inner Sphere sources. Going forward, all Dragoons sibkos would be seeded with material from existing Dragoons only. In return, a closed sitting of the High Court of the Federated Commonwealth ruled all Dragoons born from the iron wombs ineligible to hold any noble title in the Federated Commonwealth.
Nowak took the lead in negotiating the best use of the Dragoons’ combat assets. It was agreed, for example, that the six WarShips from the BRISTOL cache would be turned over to the FedCom Navy. One of the six would be stationed in the depths of the Outreach system, two more sent to guard the twin capital worlds of the FedCom and the rest held as a reserve and for study.
It was further agreed that from now on, the main mission of the Dragoons was to train the AFFC to stand against the Clans and ComStar’s ComGuards. No more than two brigades at a time could be hired out, and not at all for extended contracts.
Mallory and Nowak became fixtures at Dragoons command council meetings - the first outsiders ever allowed in. Mallory says in his autobiography:
“There was a tension in the air as Kasper and I entered the secure elevator at the heart of Fort Joshua’s main building. Colonel Patrick Chan, CO of Gamma Brigade and an original Dragoon, was our escort.
“His nickname amongst the Dragoons was “Old Stone Face”, and while he certainly did his best to be inscrutable, both Kasper and myself had made careers out of, and sometimes even bet our lives on our ability to read people. Talking to Kasper afterwards, he agreed with my assessment that Chan was not happy at all with our intrusion into the inner sanctum. This once again supported the prevailing analysis that Jaime Wolf was the key to the whole relationship with us. The Dragoons would go in whatever direction he wanted, no matter their personal misgivings.
“The elevator descended for long enough to make the silence uncomfortable, but none of us felt like speaking. When it finally came to a stop, we were deposited in a small security lobby, completely bare except for a duty desk to the left and four guards flanking the double doors to the secure conference room. Two of the guards, we later learned, were members of 7th Kommando. The other two, by their size, obviously had the Elemental heritage that we had learned about earlier.
“We were admitted without delay - the duty officer triggered the doors, which swung open silently. Chan preceded us into the surprisingly large chamber - large horseshoe shaped table in the center, with a podium at the open end, and a holotank beyond that.
“A dozen Dragoons officers stood behind their chairs, awaiting us. Chan came to attention, announced us, then turned and pointed us to a pair of chairs two places down from General Wolf’s at the head of the table.
“As Chan walked to his own place on the other side of the table, I took a moment to survey the faces before me. Behind the rigid military masks they wore, I could see resignation, and mourning. An era ended as Kasper and I took our seats.”
Though no one put it in those words, the new reality was that Wolf’s Dragoons had ceased to be mercenaries under contract. They were now an instrument of the FedCom state, and the LCG were their overseers.
Castle Davion, New Avalon
Federated Suns
March 19, 3041
The First Prince got to the phone on the third chime, before he was fully awake.
“Yes?” he croaked as he rolled upright in his bed, cradling the handset to his right ear and rubbing his face with his left. He squinted to read the extra-large clock display on his bedside table - 04:09. Unfortunately, being woken at all hours of the night was an occupational hazard of his position.
At least Melissa was spared the abrupt awakening - she was on her way to the Tamar March for a round of planetary visits.
“Your Highness, this is Colonel Marks in the Situation Room,” came the voice of the duty officer. “We have a possible multi-locale BLACK MAGIC indication.”
That code phrase instantly chased the last remnants of sleep from Hanse’s mind.
“What do you have, colonel?” he asked, reaching for his glasses and swinging his feet out from under the covers onto the floor.
“Three reports, sir. NAIS security patrols interrupted what appeared to be a burglary in progress at the Engineering Hall at local midnight, suspects fled and we’re looking for them. Then an hour ago we received a FLASH FAX about an attack on GUIDEPOST THETA two days ago that was beaten off - we’re attempting to gather additional details. Five minutes ago, we received another FLASH FAX from AWNING PSI about a similar thwarted attack on their site.”
Hanse bit back on the urge to swear.
“Alright, Colonel. Call in everyone. I want a full briefing in one -”
“Wait one - excuse me, your highness,” cut in Colonel Marks apologetically. “We just received a third FLASH FAX reporting an attempted infiltration of FOUNDATION SIGMA.”
FOUNDATION SIGMA was on Outreach. This time, Hanse did swear as he reached for his robe.
