Oh man, I forgot about this thing. It is a beast!
Yes it is and Korbin's Kommandos have the only one in private hands
Now for more with a huge chunk of action from the Terra system courtesy of marauder648
Border conflict
Draconis March, Federated Suns
2nd April 3111 In uncoordinated raids the Fifth and Twenty-second Benjamin Regulars attempt to liberate Hagiwawa and Umjiri from Federated Suns forces. Unfortunately even using pirate points to avoid Federated Suns naval assets the Benjamin Regulars are heavily outgunned when they reach the planet and are almost completely destroyed by AFFS Occupation Forces before they surrender.
Taking command of the Benjamin Military District’s defence from the world of Xinjan Warlord Hirohita Kurita takes the immediate action to remove Warlord Tsion Ben-Judah from all efforts to defend the District. To counter the political fallout caused by his actions Hirohita Kurita publicly calls out Warlord Ben-Judah demanding that he commits seppuku in shame for losing the best equipped Benjamin Regular units in attacks that would never have succeeded against entrenched Davion forces.
Khan’s Office, Ghost Bear Hall
Silverdale, Alshian
Alshian Province, Rasalhague Dominion
9th April 3111 Angela Bekker entered the Khan’s office at the Ghost Bear Hall “Khan Hawkins” she said approaching the younger man.
“Welcome back to the capital saKhan Bekker”
“Khan Hawkins I heard your bondsman was attacked in the city.” She said turning a chair backwards sitting down on it looking at the Khan.
“Aff, I heard”
“And you have taken measures to make sure that it does not happen again? We cannot tolerate violence in the streets.” She said tapping her fingers against the back of the chair.
“It will not happen again” the Khan confirmed glancing up from the papers on his desk.
“You arranged it” she said after a couple of moments looking at him “why?”
“Too many spies have entered the Clans by being bondsmen I wished to test Morgan’s commitment to our Clan.”
“By trying to kill him?”
“By testing him” Hawkins said “his assailants were members of the Watch who posed as members of the underground attempting to recruit Morgan into their numbers. When he resisted they put up minimal resistance he subsequently turned them over to security officials.”
“And if he had killed them?”
“It is not in his temperament” Hawkins said confident about what Morgan was and was not capable of “I think it is time to give him a chance.”
“At becoming a warrior… that is quick” Bekker noted
“He proved resistance to the attempt to ‘rescue’ him and now he has actively moved to avoid joining the underground resistance. He has proven he is dedicated to the Bear and the security of the Dominion.”
“He will still need to be watched” Bekker said not convinced that this was the best course of action. Morgan had embraced the Clan way with minimal encouragement from his bondmasters. While the Bears treated their bondsmen with more respect, and given them more opportunities to impress, than some of the other Clans Morgan’s attitude had still surprised many he had embraced many of the ideals of their Clan and appeared to believe in the greater good over his own personal gain.
Border Raids
Capellan March, Federated Suns
16th April 3111 The Capellan Confederation’s border raids against the Federated Suns continue several more worlds struck by regular and irregular forces. One attack strikes the Federated Suns stronghold on Homestead where the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers RCT are based. The elite command easily turns away the Capellan raid but their presence on the world shows massive gaps in AFFS security and rallies the anti-Davion feelings on the world.
SLS Bremen (Otey-class Battleship)
Sol, Kuiper Belt
Star League Protectorate
20th April 3111 The SLS Guardian, an Otey-class Battleship, was on the third and final leg of her post refit trials, after several months in the dockyard’s hands the ship was stretching her legs and working in the engines once more. Originally salvaged from the ships stored at Fenwick the Sol system was the one of a few places that the ship could be tested without others watching. There were a few civilians were still on-board, ensuring the latest updates to the ships electronics were as bug and glitch free as possible, but that small group aside the Guardian was active once more.
This far out in the belt wasn’t what one would call the normal hunting ground for the WarShip, yet she needed to calibrate and check her highly powerful sensors so hunting asteroids and comets would more than suffice.
“All quiet Sir?” The WSO said as he looked up from his console as it did another simulation. It was approaching midnight the Command Deck was quiet as most of the ship slept on their gentle cruise around the system.
“I dunno… sensors?” Lieutenant Cowpens asked glancing across the bridge.
“Yes sir, all quiet on the Western Front.” Came the reply from the sensor pit. Most of the Officers on the early watch were the ones with the least experience. The Captain liked to give them a chance to do their jobs without their section heads watching over them, and in the case of the man currently sitting in the Captain’s chair, a chance to experience command of a WarShip and the work it entailed. That they were working the graveyard shift was purely coincidental.
“Sensors, give me a rundown of the last eight hours so I can fill it in the log.” Freeman said glancing down the occurrence log on his personal display, since he came on duty at 1900 he had logged eight items.
“Yes Sir, two mostly ice comets, both cold and asleep, a few cubic feet of dust per hundred klicks and….” Her voice fell off, confusion evident as an amber light began blinking on the holo-display. “Sir, I’m picking up a heat source from behind Comet 5815/C, damn that’s a lot of heat… major drive plume.” She said her voice now fully professional and alert.
Lieutenant Cowpens glanced at the older staff on the bridge, it was his call to go to action stations, he was acting Captain after all. “Red alert, bring us up to battle stations we’re taking no chances, sensors find out what the hell’s causing that drive plume and why we didn’t pick it up earlier! Weps, activate the defensive batteries, charge weapons but do not go active sensors until I call it no need to scare the Belters if we don’t need to.”
Cowpens glanced at the older NonComm, hoping he’d say something, instead the older man just nodded and hit the alert and the lighting on the bridge went from cool blue to deep red as the alert claxon started blaring.
There was a buzz on the Captain’s chair, his chair at the moment, he punched the button.
“What have we got?”
“Ma’am, we’ve detected a major heat plume bearing…” Cowpens said glancing at sensors position.
“Green 48, mark 115 Sir!”
“Green 48, mark 115, it came from behind a big inert rock, I’ve ordered weapons charged but we’re not radiating.”
“Understood, good work Lieutenant, I’m on my way.”
“Sensors, what you got?” Cowpens asked as the Captain signed off.
“Reading a major metallic mass, its coming out of the mass shadow of the asteroid in 3…2…1!”
“Get me a visual and send a challenge!”
“Challenge away! Optics calibrating.”
On the main holo-display a window opened showing a low light image in startlingly high clarity. A blackened rock nearly a kilometre long, its surface marked with small craters and layered with gullies and ravines in the ice and rock that made up its body. And then they saw it.
“What the hell!?”
SLDF Foreign Affairs Headquarters
London, England
Terra, Star League Protectorate
22nd April 3111 “So, what am I looking at here Commodore Scott?” Ambassador Kenneth Bruce-Williams was an older gentleman who had lived on Terra his whole life, working as part of the bureaucracy that helped the planet run. Elevated to the post of diplomat, he worked civilian channels, meeting with CEO’s of corporations and his opposites on worlds in the surrounding the Protectorate. He wasn’t military and he looked at the picture on the pad before him, a grey eyebrow raised. “Looks like a keg…”
“Well that’s what they were known as, you’re looking at a Cruiser-class cruiser, its old, very old, Terran Alliance in fact.”
“Indeed… they lacked imagination with naming their ship classes too.” He said glancing over at Commodore Scott he was wearing the deep blue of a naval officer, his chest proudly baring the medals he’d earned in service of the SLDF.
“She ID’d herself as the MS Glomar Explorer and the Captain was very civil with the SLS Guardian’s Captain, apologising for any ‘fright’ he may have caused. We got a good look at her and she’s all but disarmed and the Belters have done some serious work to her.”
“But?”
“But… we need to know where the hell this ship came from regardless on how many guns she has she’s still a WarShip in private hands. We need to establish where they got her and if there are possibly others out there.”
“Ahh, so I assume a trip to Metis is in order?”
“Quite Mr Ambassador, we’ve arranged a ship already all you need to provide is the time and date and we’ll get you there and back again.”
Harvest Trials
Clan Occupation Zones
23rd April 3111 In a continued effort to rebuild their Touman Clan Jade Falcon launch trials of possession against Clans Hell’s Horses, Sea Fox and Ghost Bear targeting factory production and shipments of weapons. In all of the attacks the Falcons are able to claim multiple weapons that could be used to further enhance the Clan’s Touman but the Falcons also have a secondary task and during the battles their units take more bondsmen than is usual for the Falcon clan with almost every duel turning into a claim.
With these warriors and the equipment captured the Falcons plan to raise a further two clusters further reinforcing their depleted Touman Khan Jana Pryde also commands a further three Eyrie clusters be formed over the next three years with their Warrior-Cadets placed in combat roles for the last six months of their training. The Khan states that should these warriors prove themselves during this six months then it will serve as their initial Trials of Possession but if they fail to prove themselves then they will still be able to take part in an ‘End of Training’ Trial. Many traditionalist Falcons are unhappy that the Khan is willing to offer the cadets additional chances to become warriors. However with the First Jade Eyrie Cluster essentially accepted as a front-line cluster in Omicron Galaxy and the warriors from the Second Jade Eyrie Cluster being distributed throughout the Touman the Khan’s plan to rebuild the Clan appears to be working.
In one reversal for Jade Falcon fortunes the Twenty-First Provisional Garrison Cluster of Tau Galaxy is almost completely destroyed or captured in two Trials of Possession with Clan Sea Fox on Deia. The Sea Foxes take possession of all salvage from the unit and take all survivors, including their support personnel as bondsmen.
Belter Administration Block 14
Metis Asteroid, Asteroid Belt
Terra, Star League Protectorate
31st April 3111 The Belters had turned Metis into a veritable warren over the centuries of exploration and exploitation of the asteroid and its mineral wealth. Given a spin during the earliest days of the ‘Gold Rush’ into the outer system as space travel became cheaper and more accessible the asteroid was dotted with rings above and below the surface, all connected by rail systems that criss-crossed the industrial hub of the Belt, and its official Capital, home to the Metis Organisation, the loose grouping of the ‘Big Four’, the main colonist groups that made up the majority of the Belter population.
Ambassador Kenneth Bruce-Williams looked through one of the massive monitors and smiled at the quite magnificent view, the darkness of space and the huge bulk of the asteroid and the many refineries and factories that dotted its surface, little blazes of light that marked settlements and the dance of the trams and trains that scurried over the surface of the rock. He’d been waiting for two hours, but if thirty years in business and as a diplomat had taught him anything, it was the value of patience.
His hosts had been nothing but apologetic and polite, plying him with tea from the hydroponics on the station as well as offering to host a dinner which would be impolite to turn down. He knew though that the Metis Group was trying to decide what to do. Whilst there was no law or precedent in Star League history that banned the Belters from having large ships, and indeed, they had a considerable collection of JumpShips to allow movement between the inner belt and the widely spread settlements in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper belt, they’d not had what could be called a WarShip before. And, no doubt, they would be loathed to hand it over.
Garibaldi put his cup of tea down as he heard the doors open behind him and he saw in the reflection the security guard outside, a veritable bear of a man who looked like an Elemental in terms of sheer size, but it was the smaller form moving in that finally made him turn.
“Ambassador, please forgive the delay, I hope de tea is to your liking.” The speaker was a woman, somewhere in her late 30’s and she was, in a word, stunning. Long auburn hair and to quote a soldier Bruce-Williams knew ‘legs that went on for miles’.
“Madame Lebeau the tea was stunning, I trust you are well?”
“Oui, please, come and sit, I believe we have matters to discuss non?” Her accent was that of the French Creole, she didn’t bother hiding it. “Now, let us get down to business, shall we? What has got the League’s feathers all ruffled hmm?”
She smiled warmly, her eyes full of humour. She knew why he was here, but still diplomatic protocol had to be followed.
“As you know Madame Lebeau, one of our vessels on patrol encountered the MS Gomar Explorer, and in truth, it has my military colleagues somewhat alarmed, and we would like to know how you came across such a ship, or if she was built within the Belt.”
“Ambassador, please, call me Ettine.” She smiled again, glancing at Kenneth-Williams as she typed on a keyboard.
“Of course, and please, call me Kenneth.”
“Ahh yes… here we are, it surprises me that they are so worried about one little ship. I will transfer the data to your pad so you can calm the SLDF’s fluttering heart. In summary, she was found, Russ and Anne Jordan, a small ‘mom and pop’ prospector team in the Kuiper belt made the discovery.” A small holo-display sprang to life, showing the Jordans, their small ship based on an old Mark V shuttle and the relevant information about the family and their history.
“They had picked up a large amount of metal and thought they had struck gold, instead they found the ship the TAS Leander.” The holo changed to show a somewhat grainy image, a recording of a distant object, it skipped ahead to show the distinctive outline of the Cruiser classes hull, blackened by solar radiation and with what looked like an impact in the forward upper section of the flat bow.
“She was drifting free, a chunk of what looked like a docking clamp still attached to her hull, this impact, quite a big one oui…” She said as the image moved over the vessel Bruce-Williams thought the camera must have been mounted on the Ross’ ship as they flew over the craft. “We think it knocked her out of wherever she was and provided her with the momentum to send her back into the system. It was really only chance that the Ross’s found her.”
“Can we speak with the Ross family?”
“Oui Kenneth, but they are now on holiday, with the windfall from a find of this magnitude they are now quite wealthy, they should be returning in a few months though and I can arrange for you to meet them.”
“Thank you, Mi..Ettine, and when the ship was found, what happened?”
“A lot of things… arguments over salvage contracts for one thing.” She laughed warmly and shook her head. “We brought her to a facility in the Kuiper belt to be checked out to see if we could salvage her or if she was just worth the metal on her bones. The Terrans who mothballed her did a good job though, yes they had stripped her of her weapons, and as you can see here…”
The image changed, the ship was in a docking gantry, well-lit by floodlights. “They even removed the turrets before sealing the hull, so no, we’ve not suddenly got a glut of old Terran guns for your military boys to worry about either.” Lebeau grinned slightly.
“The thought never crossed my mind Madame Lebeau…”
“Hah! You keep your face straighter than a man addicted to poker but even I saw that lie. Otherwise why would you be here Monsieur Williams?”
“Okay… you got me there, yes, I will admit that the thought of those weapons were causing some people to have kittens.”
“Well you know us Kenneth, an armed society is a polite society.”
Kenneth grinned slightly “Remind me to introduce you to the Clans one day…”
“Hah! No thank you, all work and no play, so I have heard.”
“The ship…”
“Ahh yes, forgive me.” She grinned playfully once more “…once the towing contracts were sorted and she was taken to a dock the inspection lasted six months, her KF core had been pulled but the reactors were in operating condition once repaired. Save that bang on her bow she was mostly intact and then a ‘war’ began.”
“A war? Here?”
“A war of words and politics, nothing more, but bloody in its own right. Nothing untoward though, not like you Terrans and your cut and thrust goings on. All four members of the Metis Group wanted the ship, it was agreed by all that she would be kept and could be converted into a form of mobile refinery and mining vessel as well as a mobile homestead. The economic advantages of such a conversion are significant as it would allow us to move cargo and personnel more quickly between the Cloud and the Belt, allowing for on-site exploitation of asteroids and comets.”
“Yes that’s what the Guardian report said based on their initial scan of the ship. So, she is unarmed?”
“Oui, we have a pair of lasers in the bow which are to be used for cutting rocks, plus many of the computers on-board were so old they needed replacing and we do not have the necessary systems for such weapons to be used in such a way. Oh, and some smaller weapons to target smaller asteroids and the like.”
‘And to defend it against fighters or boarding ships…’ Ambassador Williams thought as he listened to Lebeau’s report.
“But how long have you had her?”
“Three and a half years, she was on her first mission under the auspices of Metis when she was found by your ship.”
“If I may be so bold Ettine…”
“Please, be as bold as you want Kenneth...”
“Why was this not reported to us, even a short message could have saved many ruffled feathers and hammering hearts.”
“Why should we?” She snapped 'Ahh… there it was, that Belter independence' Kenneth thought.
“You have your ships do ‘training’ runs past our settlements, you have Drones patrolling round Mars and Terra, Drones we still tell ghost stories about to our children." She said anger slipping into her voice. "Is Terra perhaps worried that we have a ‘WarShip’? You ignore us, and that suits us just fine, unless you wish to take what is our of course and then you'll face resistance.”
“We want no such thing Madame Lebeau, we just wondered where the devil you found a centuries old ship and how you got her active again.” Kenneth held up his hands in a placating manner. “Trust me, I know about our defensive measures for the Sol system and I think if you told any fighter pilot they would be going against Belters in combat…we’d see a huge spike in unexplained injuries.” He grinned slightly trying to soften the blow both of them knew that if the SLDF committed its capital assets even the Gomar Explorer would not change things.
“Oh so now you seek to flatter me… are you trying to seduce me, Monsieur Williams?”
“Were I thirty years younger… oh yes… but my wife would kill me. So… the ship?”
“Ahh a pity, I am sure we would get on very well non? And regarding the Explorer our yards are very good, and our people, are the best. Plus, the chance to work on a major project like this was a major draw for the various Clans and Families as well as our major contractors. I will furnish you with the full specifications of the Explorer, and they will not be edited in any way. Whilst we rarely speak with Terra, we’re not as bad as those on Colombia, and whilst our relationship must always remain at arms-length, that does not mean we can’t be cordial neighbours.”
“I’m sure my superiors will be relieved.”
“I hope so, we’re already building another three ships using plans obtained from the initial rebuild of the Gomar Explorer.”
“Three more… how many facilities do you have?”
“Oh… a few, now Kenneth, shall we have dinner, you’ve got what you want after all.”
“And have you got what you want?”
“Where you thirty years younger… oui.” Ettine smiled flirtatiously before standing
“Now Monsieur Williams, accompany a young lady to dinner and let us talk as friends, not as politicians.”
She offered her hand and Williams took it “How could I refuse?”
“One last bit of information for you Monsieur Williams, we did a little bit of digging ourselves. Whilst our logs are not as extensive as those on Terra, they are as old. The TAS Leander was put into storage at DSNR-9, we found invoices relating to the purchase of processed metal that was sold to the Alliance that would be used on DSNR, it means ‘Deep Space Naval Reserve’. Sadly, we don’t have its location…”
“And if you did would you share it Madame LeBeau?”
She laughed “Of course not, at least at first until we needed to explain ourselves to you again. But I will not lie, we don’t know where this reserve is, its probably somewhere in the Cloud, you could spend a hundred lifetimes searching with a thousand craft and still not find it. Perhaps its for the best, imagine if we had found a greater prize than the Leander.”
“Madame, after all the commotion this caused, I am deeply glad you didn’t.”