Part XLVIII - Section 2 of 2----------
"Hey, it's Danny from my school" Judith exclaimed, waving to a boy stood near his parents also watching the display. "Hi Danny!" she called out to him. "He's in the year above mine, he's Ironborn like Fred, only without the genetic engineering" she told her parents as the boy waved back.
Looking over Franklin Hallis recognised the boy's parents and frowned. He had no idea that their son went to the same school as his daughter and felt relieved it hadn't been
him that personally handed over the assignment that the boy was likely to be a little sore over. They were both with the 295th so General Romanov had taken it upon herself to deliver the news thinking it might be badly received under the circumstances what with the boy being so young.
As it happens Danny Donovan had taken the news much better than his parents had thought he might, something that his mother was both pleased about and mildly upset because she had expected him to be considerably more distressed to find out that he wasn't going to see her for nearly a year than he actually was.
Claire Donovan noticed her son waving to someone and saw it was a girl sat on General Hallis's shoulders, like her and her husband he was in civilian clothes and presumably also off-duty having taken his own family to the park to watch the firework and hologram display.
"Friend of yours?" Danny's father queried, also noticing the waving.
"Kinda, she's in the year below me at school" Danny replied, "My friend Alan always says hello to her because her Dad's the Khan" he explained.
"Not
our Khan" Claire Donovan reminded her son.
"Nah, but he's still a General" Danny replied. "Did you ever want to be a General?" he asked his mother.
"I didn't even want to be a Major, but they stuck me with the promotion when they handed me the new assignment" Claire Donovan replied. At least it wasn't just a brevet rank which meant it did come with a pay-rise not just a fancier title.
"I never wanted to be a general either," her husband told their son, "but I always thought being a Lieutenant-Colonel would be nice" he said. "I certainly never thought I'd be stuck as a Lieutenant for half a century,
finally make Captain and then have my
wife promoted over me" he muttered. "Not that I'm bitter or anything
Ma'am" he added wryly.
"I always outranked you at home anyway Douglas, so don't pretend the natural order has been upended" Claire told him, smiling.
"When you visit Terra you're going to bring me back a present right?" Danny checked, watching a holographic image of that very same world appear in the sky. As he watched the image seemed to zoon out to show Luna orbiting it and then further out to show the entire solar system the homeworld of humanity was in.
At school they talked about the Terra system almost as much as they did Niops and the other systems that belonged to them now. It was important to teach kids where they came from after all.
"I'm not there on vacation or to sight-see Danny" Claire reminded her son. "But I'll try to bring back a souvenir" she promised.
"I wish I could go" Danny said.
"Because you'll miss me?" Claire asked.
"Well yeah" Danny replied, "but I've never been to Terra" he added.
"I'm a little jealous too" Douglas Donovan remarked. "Your mother and I haven't been there in sixty years, and I might never get the chance to go back."
"That is
so long" Danny responded, unable to imagine being as old as his parents. Most of the kids at school had
grandparents younger than
his parents even if his parents didn't look as old as they really were. "Do you remember when Niops was founded Dad?" he asked deadpan, knowing that he wasn't
that old.
"No, I don't, I wasn't born yet" Douglas Donavan replied, slightly annoyed at the accusation he was well over a hundred years old. He was only
ninety-seven, which
was admittedly pretty old to have a son Danny's age, even by Terran Hegemony standards, but he wasn't quite into the three-figures
yet. His older sister Deborah had been born in 2741 though, so if Amaris's troops hadn't killed her on Caph back in 2767 she would actually be celebrating reaching her own century this year, just like the Niops Association.
Getting to fight the bastards again on Algenib a few years ago had been
inordinately satisfying, as well as having made him feel younger than he had in years.
Running around after Danny all the time however was making him feel
old. Fortunately Claire felt much the same, their son from the Iron Wombs was a blessing, as well as being a miracle of science, but tax advantages or not they
really didn't want another one.
Like the vast majority of those who found themselves stranded on Buffalo Meadows the Donovan's had not ended up having kids there. A lack of the required equipment needed to found a colony from scratch, along with the environmental conditions on the somewhat marginal planet, meant it had taken decades to actually build a colony suitable to raise children by which time it was too late.
The Wolverines turning up at Buffalo Meadows one day, bringing their Iron Womb tech with them, had changed all that of course and Douglas and Claire Donovan were far from the only nonagenarian veterans of the 295th on Niops with an elementary school aged child these days.
Actual
centenarian Jenna Romanov had outsourced the problem to someone younger, having found a volunteer family to raise her own biological/technological offspring for her, but that solution did not appeal to many of her somewhat aged division.
Danny had a thought. "When you meet the Pope can you get me his autograph?" he requested.
Claire burst out laughing. "I don't think I'm going to get to meet the Pope" she replied eventually. "And even if I did, I don't think that's something you're supposed to ask him."
"Why not? He's famous" Danny persisted.
"Yes, but he's not famous like a holovid celebrity" Claire explained, but judging from her son's expression he couldn't really grasp the distinction. "Would you ask the First Lord of the Star League for his autograph?" she asked.
Danny thought about that. "Yes, but I don't think ghosts can hold a pen" he replied eventually. "Maybe if he was a poltergeist?" he reasoned.
"There are no such things as ghosts Danny" his father told him.
"You can't know that for sure Dad" Danny replied. "It's not
completely ridiculous like believing in astrology" he argued, confirming to his parents that their son was very much Niopsian. "What I don't get is why
you have to deliver Critchly to the Vatican?" he asked his mother. "Just because you were the one that shot his mech out from under him that doesn't mean you have to be the one that has to escort him all the way to Terra."
"The government think it's a good public relations opportunity" his mother explained. "They want to maximise the press coverage on Terra and the rest of the Inner Sphere. They think having me there to personally hand him over in front of the cameras will be good for Niops, and if the people at the top order me to do something I do it because I'm a soldier."
"Yeah, I guess" Danny replied without enthusiasm. He had always thought it was pretty cool that
his mom was the mechwarrior that took down a famous, or rather infamous, war criminal, a guy that was literally mentioned in all the history books about the Amaris War, but that had never affected him
negatively before. Usually it just meant showing off the chunk of Critchly's
Rampage assault mech that his his mom had hanging on the wall at home to other kids when they came around his house the first time, the thick metal massively dented from the gauss rifle slug that had impacted it and torn it right off the machine.
Mom's ride was a
Pillager assault mech, an old design but one that mounted twin improved gauss rifles that, in Mom's words, hit like a meteorite strike. Dad's mech meanwhile was a
Thug which had recently had its Enhanced ERPPC's swapped out for the newer Improved Enhanced ERPPC's that could cause as much damage as a gauss rifle, but were smaller and lighter.
During one of their occasional arguments over dinner Mom had eventually conceded that the IEERPPC had its charms, but still insisted that 'There ain't no kill like a kinetic kill' while noting that while a particle projector cannon might burn the armour right off an enemy mech it wouldn't pollaxe one like a gauss slug could.
The most annoying thing about the whole thing as far as Danny was concerned was that Mom would complain if he ever said 'ain't' himself, was bad grammar only okay for adults?
Both his parents had been military brats when they were his age, back when
Simon Cameron was still First Lord of the Star League and Danny was pretty sure dinosaurs still walked on Terra. As such they had raised their son in the way they had been raised, as far as they could on Niops anyway, and they didn't really see being deployed away from their own child for a year as being nearly as weird as the parents of most kids at school would have.
The Wolverine kids, or 'kits' as they liked to call themselves, got it, but
they were a whole other kind of weird even if they didn't think Danny being Ironborn was all that strange like some other people did.
Being asked at school by regular kids if he would go completely crazy if he drank a beer or if he had 'superpowers or something' got old fast. He
wasn't that kind of Ironborn, until they started giving him the anti-agathic gene-therapy treatments the DNA of his cells was barely tinkered-with at all.
The holograms in the sky were replaced by the beginning of another volley of fireworks which increased in volume over a few minutes before reaching a crescendo of light and sound heralding the end of the display and also the end of the centenary celebrations.
Danny's parents wouldn't be there for the bicentenary of Niops in 2941 which made him feel a little sad, although
he would be thanks to all the jabs. He might even still be around for the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Association in 2991 which should be pretty cool, although by then he guessed they might just be calling themselves the 'Terran Hegemony' because Mom and Dad said that once the jerks ruling the Successor States had beaten each other into a pulp, the Clans were dealt with and ComStar was put back in its place they were going to take it all back and restore the Star League under the Cameron Star.
First things first though. Niops had to raise its profile in the Inner Sphere, project an image into the galaxy a little like the holograms earlier had been projected into the sky over the city, something to be wondered at, perhaps even be a little awed over eventually.
Sending a ship all the way to Terra to publicly hand Bernard Critchly over to the Vatican was part of that, Danny's parents had explained. It was something that even ComStar would find difficult to downplay because the Catholic Church, both of them, would spread the word far and wide, and Niops and the 295th would forever be remembered as the ones that finally brought the evil bastard to justice.
Danny wasn't usually allowed to swear, but it was okay to call Bernard Critchly an evil bastard because he was one, just like he wasn't supposed to spit on the ground unless he was outside and he had just said the name 'Stefan Amaris' then it was alright.
The Wolverine kids at school did that too, although they also spat on the ground if they ever said 'Nicholas Kerensky' as well. Danny assumed that children in the Federated Suns did that when they said Jinjiro Kurita, him being another evil bastard because he ordered the Kentares Massacre.
For some reason Danny couldn't
quite understand killing billions of people with nuclear weapons didn't seem quite as bad as killing millions of unarmed civilians with swords as Jinjiro had done, or even hundreds of protesting Catholic Monks by stomping them with your mech as Critchly had. It was probably because when you dropped a bomb on someone you couldn't actually see them making it feel less real, like playing a computer game he reasoned.
Danny had occasionally wondered if the ghosts of all those dead monks haunted the piece of the Rampage that stomped them, the one hanging on the wall at home, but he figured they wouldn't want to bother the people that caught the guy that murdered them so it didn't bother him too much.
Despite her promotion Danny's Mom wasn't going to be in charge of the mission, Colonel MacArthur would be. He would have some 'name recognition' on Terra according to Dad because
his Mom, General Leigh MacArthur, had commanded the 295th before General Romanov which meant there would be files and documents about her on Terra. Colonel MacArthur's granddaughter was a teacher at Danny's school and his parents had told him when she started that he
must always behave for her because of the family she came from, not that he was allowed to misbehave for any of the
other teachers, it was just that the MacArthur's were important.
Leigh MacArthur had still been the commander of the 295th when Danny's parents joined, both being Terran Hegemony born they were the type of recruits the general had been looking for in her quest to get the division's original 'Royal' title reinstated, as well as turn them into an elite formation. If not for her and her recruitment policies Danny's parents would have probably never even met, and Danny himself wouldn't even exist, so he kinda understood why they thought that way about 'House MacArthur'.
When the fireworks display ended everybody started heading home, filing out of the park with some of the adults swaying a little because they had enjoyed a little too much to drink. One of those a little worse for wear after enjoying one too many beers was Gareth Jeffries of the Diplomatic Corps who had not only been celebrating the Centenary but also his recent success in getting ComStar to repair the Thraxa HPG with a little, rather undiplomatic, political chicanery.
As Niops main trade link to the Magistracy, having Thraxa fall off the HPG grid because of a technical failure in admittedly aging machinery had been a potential problem, one that the Association felt ComStar was seeking to use to pressure them into signing up to the terms of the Communications Protocol of 2787. It had been less-than-subtly hinted by ComStar that if Niops played ball then the Phone Company would find it in their hearts to install a new HPG at Thraxa with all haste, all it would take if for NHCOMNET to be handed over to them.
Instead the Director of NHCOMNET, with both the High Associator and the Diplomatic Corps urging him on, had sent an HPG directly to Primus Raymond Karpov telling him that either ComStar could fix the Thraxa HPG or NHCOMNET would install one of their own.
Jeffries himself had suggested a few additions to the HPG message which vaguely referred to the possibility of NHCOMNET perhaps going on to install new HPG's on other Magistracy worlds in the future if they weren't properly maintained.
That had probably caused Karpov to blow a gasket, but it was
amazing how fast Thraxa's HPG was up and running again afterwards.
Before the ComStar Interdiction on the Free Worlds League the Magistracy of Canopus would have been a little annoyed to get dragged into this diplomatically in any way, even as a mere bystander, but the Magestrix seemed far more amused than annoyed about it all. ComStar losing some faith in their absolute monopoly on providing HPG communication was good for everyone, except for ComStar that is.
In a few weeks Gareth Jeffries would be on a jump-ship heading to Terra, representing the civilian government of Niops and being temporarily accorded the status of Ambassador to the Holy See. This was the kind of opportunity that would make or break his career, that thought being another thing which had led to him getting drunk, and at a stroke make him the most senior diplomat ever to be born on Niops.
Fortunately High Associator Murray was only too happy to follow the advice left behind for him by Giles Olson as regards foreign relations, and since Jeffries had worked closely with Olson in his final few weeks of office last year in formulating those plans the diplomat was more than familiar with them.
One thing was for certain regardless of how smoothly the mission to Terra went, if ComStar had been pissed off about losing their HPG monopoly and then having NHCOMNET mouth off at them then they were going to be apoplectic with rage when the Niops Association publicly announced it was going to start providing the plans for civilian lostech to the entire Inner Sphere, starting with the Jamerson-Ulikov Water Purifier,
for free as part of an interstellar aid program.
Not knowing how ComStar would choose to react, attempted sabotage by ROM or even actual military action by their own troops or hired mercenaries could not be ruled out, Jeffries had also put together a series of proposals to retaliate to any such moves.
By far the funniest in his own opinion was building a new university on Alphard which would offer scholarships to people from throughout the Inner Sphere.
First course to be featured on the curriculum of the physics department: Hyperpulse Theory, while meanwhile the engineering department would be teaching HPG Maintenance and Repair 101.
Just thinking about it caused the still inebriated Jeffries to suddenly start howling with laughter as he stumbled his way home.
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Note from the Author:According to Field Manual: Periphery the Niops Association was founded in 2741, although that was when the first fifty thousand actual colonists arrived, not when the engineering crews who actually built the colony did. Niops being Niops only counting when the astronomers turned up as being their founder's day seems apt. There are people on the planet whose parents or grandparents were there before 2741, although not many.
The Donovan family, Claire and Douglas, has appeared before a couple of times in the story although we've never seen their son Danny before. Danny is Ironborn in the sense that his parents utilised the Iron Womb technology to be able to have him but not in the sense of him being a genetically-engineered Wolverine type. Both being well into their nineties the Donovan's are old to have a pre-teen child even by Terran Hegemony standards (having kids in your seventies was pretty normal just not twenty years older than that) but to look at them you'd think they were only in their sixties at this point. Being the mechwarrior that brought down Bernard Critchly of the infamous Greenhaven Gestapo, Claire has been assigned to the mission that is taking him back to Terra to hand over to the Vatican.
Battletech has a rather feudal outlook as regards allegiances to certain families. The MacArthurs as the descendants of General Leigh MacArthur are looked upon by the 295th as special (especially for the Donovans who were recruited into the division by her). The 331st have House McEvedy and House Hallis, the 295th House Romanov and House MacArthur in effect (these would be considered 'Martial' rather than actual 'Noble' Houses although the Romanov's can always point to the Tsars if they want to pull rank).
As well as being the centenary of the founding of the Niops Association, 2841 is also the year that Jinjiro Kurita finally died (although having gone nuts he hadn't ruled as Coordinator of the Draconis Combine for some time by then). They're celebrating on Kentares IV too but for a very different reason than on Niops VII.
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