Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star

[Daryk]

I'm here for that ride either way... :D

[Hotpoint]

Part XIX- Section 1 of 2

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"The impossible we do immediately, the merely difficult was finished the day before yesterday"

Unofficial Motto of the Star League Department of Mega-Engineering

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Association Council Building – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2830

The holographic projector that a technician had set up in the middle of the conference room had once sat in a much similar room in Columbus Base in the Epsilon Pegasus system. Even if you travelled in a straight line it would take a year to get there from Niops, and the circuitous route the device had taken to end up where it had was anything but direct.

Most of the people in the room had never even left the Niops system, let alone be as remotely well travelled as the projector, and it occurred to Trish Ebon that the only person in the room with more mileage on them than her was Colonel Roger Callahan, the man currently presenting his report on the world being projected up there as a visual aid.

"Due to a lack of anything resembling a central government we ended up having to visit most every settlement on Comstock, both to introduce ourselves and inform them we intended to make the planet a protectorate of the Niops Association" Callahan told the steering committee and their invited guests. "In the majority of cases they were deeply suspicious of us at first, assuming reasonably that we were pirates or other ne'er-do-wells merely pretending to be the SLDF, but once we managed to establish our credentials their reaction was overwhelmingly positive to the news."

"I imagine that returning the people abducted by the Blood Rain helped immensely?" Samantha Hollister, the new chair of the committee and a nuclear chemist, suggested. The previous committee chair had resigned because of a disagreement with the High Associator over a need to cut the university budget to help fund a new technical college.

"It did Ma'am" Callahan confirmed. "As did them learning from the abductees that we had decisively defeated the pirates in open battle, demonstrating our martial prowess and ability to take on and beat even the best trained and equipped threats out here" he continued. "As an aside, although I certainly wouldn't claim to any expertise in agriculture, my impressions of much of Comstock from travelling around the place so extensively are that it could easily become a breadbasket world with the right investment. I know the Star League wanted to develop it for industry, starting with leatherworking as there was a ready supply of materials from Francas, but from what I could see the soil across much of the planet is prime farmland waiting for the plough."

Hollister nodded. "There are a couple of worlds we've surveyed that have even more potential for arable farming, but since neither of them have an existing population near as large as Comstock we're already advocating developing the planet as both an agrarian and industrial world in the long-term" she told him. "Since you mentioned Francas I'll note that we've already decided it will continue as a world devoted to livestock farming because its vast swathes of grasslands and wide open plains are so suitable for the purpose. Fortunately they managed to maintain a functional central government of sorts there so we're much further along the track with them diplomatically."

Callahan smiled. "I'm not sure if you're aware but apparently there's always been a friendly rivalry between those two worlds, they actually remained in contact after the fall of the Star League because the jumpship that transported meat and leather from Francas to Comstock continued operating. If it hadn't then the food shortage on Comstock would have been even more severe" he told them. "If we're ever at the stage of asking systems to formally band together to form a new Hegemony then tell Comstock that Francas is working hard to becoming the second member to sign up after Niops, that'll motivate them" he advised, grinning.

"We'll make a note in our report to that effect Colonel, thank you" the Hollister replied. "Returning to Comstock, what do you think the prospects are for them forming a government we could negotiate with on a more formal basis as we did with Francas?"

"If we facilitate the process it's possible, but it could be a few years before they're in a position to elect a government, even with our assistance" Callahan replied. "The food shortages they suffered once grain shipments stopped arriving took a wrecking ball to their political structure. They lost faith in their planetary government because it was unable to cope with the situation, it was never really that strong to start with anyway because most important decisions were made by officials on Terra, and it could be a while before they get that faith back even if we try and nudge them back towards a more centralised and less factionalised society."

"How would the local populace react if we appointed a governor from Niops to take over running the colony until they were ready to do so themselves, do you think?" one of the other members queried.

Callahan frowned. "There's no simple answer to that, Sir" he responded. "A large number, perhaps even a majority would accept it as long as we could keep order, fend off pirates and steadily improve their standard of living, but a significant minority are still going to object to outside rule being imposed" he warned. "Though most people seemed glad to see us there were more than a few who were angry that the Star League seemed to forget about them and occasionally directed that anger towards my personnel. They seemed to accept our cover story that the reason the Niops Association didn't show up before was a fear of being blasted into oblivion by the Great Houses, who had already razed other developed Terran Hegemony worlds necessitating an isolationist policy until we could amass a sufficiently large nuclear deterrent to feel somewhat secure, but there remains an undercurrent of resentment."

"I know it's not your field of expertise Colonel, but having witnessed the situation on the planet first-hand what methods would you advocate?" Hollister asked him.

Callahan thought about that. "Nothing revolutionary, just following much the same approach as we took on Alphard in order to get the locals on side would work wonders on Comstock too" he replied. "Building more schools and hospitals, providing farming equipment and agricultural technical expertise to improve their food situation would quickly bear fruit" he continued with a mild joke. "As regards law and order issues, well as long as we make clear that the legal system we expect them to follow is simply a book of Terran statute law and precedent which we wrote 'Niops Association' on the cover of there shouldn't be any major objections. There are still people on Comstock that were born in the Hegemony and will happily tell the people around them that it was far from totalitarian" he said. "On that note I'd argue that acting like the Terran Alliance would get quicker results, but the Terran Hegemony approach of leaving domestic affairs up to the member worlds leads to fewer rebellions in the long term" he observed wryly.

"What of law enforcement?"

"The SLDF is already planning on training and arming a local militia which could help with that, but I can't see why the NAPD can't train them up a few professional cops too" Callahan replied. "They have local town sheriffs and the like there already, it's not a foreign concept" he said. "Keep in mind that civilisation on Comstock may have collapsed shortly after the Star League did, but that wasn't so long ago that they don't remember what civilised society actually is" he said. "There are still more than a few people on Comstock who emigrated there from the Hegemony after receiving the same anti-agathic treatments that some of the people in the room here today did, including myself."

"You served throughout the entire war against Amaris, Colonel?" one of the committee members asked curiously.

Callahan laughed. "I look good for my age, but not that good" he replied. "I was only in it right at the end when we took back Terra, barely eighteen years old and green as grass" he explained. "I've got a few years on General Hallis if you're wondering, he was only a kid during the Exodus."

Trish knew that Roger Callahan and Sarah McEvedy had actually played together as children, he was her oldest friend and when the clans were formed had naturally joined her in Clan Wolverine. As to why Sarah had wanted Dwight Robertson and later Franklin Hallis to be her saKhan instead of Callahan the answer was pretty simple, they were much better administrators and he just wasn't interested in a job that was far more politician than it was mechwarrior.

The committee chair leaned forward. "Colonel. If we advocated a more interventionist approach, not outright annexation of Comstock but taking temporary control of the planet until they were able to govern themselves, would you be open to accepting the position of Military Governor?" Hollister asked him seriously.

"I would not, and my wife would divorce me if I did" Callahan replied flatly. "That would require moving there, not just being there for a mission lasting a couple of months. We've uprooted ourselves more than enough already" he stated with conviction.

Unlike most of the rest of the senior leadership of the 331st Roger Callahan was a family man. He already had a wife and a couple of kids when he followed Nicholas Kerensky on the Second Exodus from the Pentagon Worlds to what became the Kerensky Cluster, and those kids were now mechwarriors themselves, two of them having fought against the Blood Rain on Algenib.

Thanks to the Iron Wombs he also had a son in Sibling Company Gamma, one that his wife insisted they take in, and he was finding it was pretty fun to be a dad again, even if the Gamma kits were weirder than his own had ever been.

"Furthermore," Callahan continued, "while I realise that as a colony of the Terran Hegemony we have some legal grounds for going that route, even putting aside the sweeping authority provided by the Pollux Proclamation, I would like it placed on the record that I personally consider it a very bad idea" he said. "We want the people of Comstock, and of Francas for that matter, to see themselves as Hegemony citizens again, not oppressed denizens of the periphery with an SLDF boot planted firmly on their necks" he continued. "Again, it's a personal opinion, albeit one based on experience, but after Operation Klondike the clans that treated the population of the Pentagon Worlds badly ended up tying down much of the military strength in keeping the lower castes from rising up against them, and I imagine that will be an ongoing problem" he opined, thinking of the Smoke Jaguars in particular because their labourer caste despised their military caste and with good reason. "Loyalty is earned, not taken, and we want our protectorates to follow us into a bright future by choice, not harbour seething resentment towards us."

"A simple 'no' would have sufficed, but we appreciate both your candour and your perspective" the committee chair responded, seemingly mildly amused by his impassioned argument. "Are there any more questions for Colonel Callahan before we move on to the next item on the agenda?" Hollister asked the others, everyone shaking their heads. "In that case, thank you for your time Colonel Callahan, we might wish to get back to you after studying your written report but until then you are free to go."

"Thank you" Callahan replied, turning to leave as Trish smiled at the irony that once again on Niops the military seemed to have less of an authoritarian streak than the civilian administration. She idly wondered how many other places that was true of in the Inner Sphere and doubted it could be too many.

How the Niops Association might have evolved as a society if the SLDF-in-Exile had not turned up at their door one day was a scenario she found diverting to contemplate sometimes. The technocratic instincts of a bunch of academics could have readily morphed over time into a 'benevolent' oligarchy of sorts, as they tried to maintain a decent standard of living, sacrificing some personality liberty for security and making sure everyone had their basic needs met.

The planetary image of Comstock being projected changed to that of Alphard as the next person arrived to make their presentation. Their tan certainly indicated plenty of time spent recently in the blazing sun of Alphard, although it would have looked less comedic if the area around her eyes wasn't so pale by comparison with the rest of their face.

"Good Afternoon, Professor Jeffs, nice to have you back" Hollister greeted the geologist they had invited to come talk to them.

"Nice to be back Sam," Stephanie Jeffs replied sincerely. Much as she enjoyed fieldwork there was much to be said for being able to take regular showers, eat something other than what the military considered healthy and nutritious rations, and go out to a bar if you felt like it.

"Would I be correct in assuming you spent much of your time on Alphard wearing sunglasses?" the chair asked, trying to keep a straight face. They had known each other long enough for her to get away with it.

"Haven't you heard. The reverse racoon look is all the rage" Jeffs replied wryly, knowing full well she looked daft. At least they couldn't see her legs, they were tanned brown to just above the knees while remaining their normal pasty white above.

"At least you didn't get sunstroke" Hollister commiserated.

"I didn't but one of my grad students did" Jeffs told her. "That'll teach them for not wearing the boonie hat that were given because it messed up their hair" she added without much sympathy for the hapless, and hatless, girl concerned.

Trish had already heard this story from Major Gao whose unit had been providing security and transportation for the geology team. The girl concerned had been flirting relentlessly with one of his VTOL pilots and had prioritised looking pretty over staying cool as a result.

Gao had also joked that it was a good thing that the survey ended when it did, because the arguments that his male personnel were having over which of the female grad students looked best in the khaki shorts they all seemed to wear were becoming more heated than the arid terrain. His female troops however had remained cool and aloof, albeit mostly because they unanimously agreed which of the male geologists had the best ass.

As Jeffs began her presentation with a summary of the scale of the germanium deposits already starting to be extracted at the Crux facility, and her geological survey of other sites on the island continent that showed signs of being almost as rich in the strategically vital resource, Trish jotted down some notes. With the Great Houses having once again set the Inner Sphere ablaze the High Administrator wanted to move ahead with plans to purchase the plant and machinery necessary to rapidly develop the Niops economy, requesting that the committee provide him with their final recommendations as soon as possible. To this end they had urgently called in various subject matter experts to provide last-minute evidence, not wishing their report to be less than thorough.

"Moving on to the rest of the planet" Jeffs continued her presentation, "while the northern continents of Typhon and Echidna are extremely mineral rich, I concur with others that it would be a criminal waste of arable farmland not to devote as much of them as possible towards food production" she said. "The soil samples we collected confirmed that with better irrigation there is no reason to believe we cannot eventually grow enough crops there to support a population on Alphard well in excess of a billion people, though it will certainly never be a garden world."

"Over a billion people on such an arid world? Really" Hollister queried.

"Typhon and Echida are both very large continents with vast areas of land potentially available for cultivation" Jeffs responded. "You have to remember that Alphard is only 55% percent covered by ocean compared to just over 70% for Terra" she said, pointing to the holographic globe. "There's not enough potential farmland to support anything like the population of Terra, or Atreus or Capella for example but low single-digit billions, perhaps three at the top-end, that would be feasible."

"That would certainly provide a sizeable workforce for future industrialisation" one of the other committee members observed.

"As regards industrial development I would point you at the largest continent, Hydrae" Jeffs suggested, pointing to it on the globe. "Most of it lies in the Northern hemisphere, but it straddles the equator making much of it even hotter than Crux if anything" she said. "It does however benefit from several mountain ranges, a couple of which are high enough for sufficient precipitation to fall to form rivers. These either flow into either the ocean or the large inland sea known as Lerna" she continued. "Hydrae has great mineral wealth, but it is also somewhere we could develop as a centre of industry because, unlike Crux, some of it is reasonably habitable. Building homes and factories on the coast where the larger rivers meet the ocean would seem ideal, because not only could food be shipped in by sea from Typhon and Ecidna, we can use the river itself for bulk cargo transportation inland until a maglev network is constructed."

"This mineral wealth you spoke of is conveniently near these rivers?"

Jeffs smiled. "If you'll forgive the hyperbole, Hydrae is practically made of metal ores" she said. "While the richest deposits we found aren't near the rivers alas, the ones that are located nearby are still well worth digging up. I'm not just talking germanium either, though it's there, we also found copper, aluminium, titanium, tungsten, magnesium and practically anything else you might care to mention, and without even having to look very hard" she continued. "It's not even like we have to worry about despoiling the environment. Much of Hydrae away from the rivers is practically a barren, lifeless wasteland and frankly open cast mining would only be improving the view" she joked.

"You mentioned the inland sea, I assume it's salt-water not fresh?" Hollister asked.

"Freshwater, but too much evaporation for it not to be a bit salty, it has some potential for irrigation projects but the land around it doesn't exactly have great soil" Jeffs replied. "There are fish in there and it would make a great place for a tourist destination, all the sunshine you could ever ask for, if that happened to be your thing, and the water is warm enough to make swimming in it an absolute pleasure."

Hollister looked amused. "You took time off to go swimming?" she asked chidingly.

Jeffs blinked. "We were testing the buoyancy as a measure of salinity" she replied unconvincingly. "We also collected examples of various aquatic species for the biology department, including a very interesting one we're calling the Alphard Mudskipper that might be on the evolutionary track to becoming a land animal eventually."

"I thought you geology people were only interested in rocks" someone joked.

"We're mainly interested in rocks, that doesn't make us incurious about the other sciences" Jeffs replied evenly. "On the subject of other disciplines, before I forget can you please make sure that the credit for our expedition to Alphard is shared with the geography department" she requested. "Without the help of a couple of their people who tagged along our report wouldn't be as thorough and would lack a broader perspective."

"There's a geography department at the university?" someone on the committee queried in surprise.

"It's like six people and a bunch of maps" another responded. "They're basically an adjunct of geology, they just refuse to merge with them."

"The fields are radically different" Jeffs responded. "Why not just merge us with geometry too" she growled, her reputation as being the academic more prone to threats of violence of any on Niops causing everyone to quickly abandon the topic.

Rumours that she had once beaned a student with an accurately thrown whiteboard eraser, the student concerned having fallen asleep during one of her lectures, were widely believed though officially denied.

[Hotpoint]

Part XIX - Section 2 of 2

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"A complete planetary survey would have taken longer than we had, but if you read my full written report you'll find it already provides a list of sites my team believe are either worth further investigation or are worth setting up a mining operation there straight away" Jeffs told them. "I doubt there are many strategically important minerals that Alphard does not boast in abundance."

Hollister nodded. "On the subject of germanium in particular how long do you think we can expect to extract it from Alphard at meaningful rates until it runs out?"

"I'm not sure how you define 'meaningful' but there's enough germanium that we could pull in excess of a billion dollar's worth of the stuff out of the ground every year for over a century before we even had to go looking for deposits I can't already point to on a map" Jeffs replied. "Incidentally, if anyone wants a few billion in platinum and palladium let me know and I'll tell you where to start digging" she added, chuckling.

"I assume that a century of mining at over a billion of germanium per year is a high-end estimate?"

"No. It's a rather conservative one actually" Jeffs replied, shaking her head. "The old ATC were doing noticeably better than that themselves, and they concentrated all their mining efforts at one primary site on Crux only. Which is admittedly the location holding the richest deposits, but ore that would be considered low-grade by Alphard standards is still better than most of what's dug up in the Inner Sphere" she told them. "I really must warn you that we don't want to dig it up any faster than that because if we did we could actually end up lowering the market price considerably and that's not in our interests."

"That seems unlikely given the massive demand for germanium to build jumpships" one of the other committee members responded dubiously.

"That would be the case if there were still as many shipyards in the Inner Sphere still making the things as there used to be but there aren't are there" Jeffs asked rhetorically. "The bottleneck to production used to be germanium supply, hence it always maintaining its value and making it an excellent means of backing the Star League dollar, but if the Great Houses don't stop blasting each other back to the Stone Age then eventually they'll have a stockpile of germanium and be unable to build enough jumpships to use it all up. I can't see it being a good idea to speed up the process of them building up a reserve so they become less interested in buying it at the usual process even sooner."

"Logically the price per kilo would start falling dramatically if supply starts to exceed demand" Hollister concurred. "We've already considered that we might want to be careful how fast we spend the germanium we already have, monitoring the markets to make sure we aren't hurting our own profits, but we weren't really thinking about having to do that well into the 30th Century and how much demand might potentially drop off in the long-term."

"That's actually a good argument for starting to construct our own jumpships from the germanium earlier than initially planned and selling those instead" Trish spoke up. "They're only going to increase in value as more shipyards are destroyed."

"It's a good point but our orbital manufacturing capability is already sorely overstretched which is why constructing a shipyard is as far down the list as it is" one of the others chipped in. "That is unless we look again at the proposal to only partially construct the Olympus stations in our own system and Annie Jump Cannon. Instead of eight batteries at each, only build four for now, and only complete one grav deck and the larger of the three repair bays, completing the work when we're not as stretched."

"The smaller bays are for dropship maintenance and with luck we'll have the actual dropship yard from Camelot Command operating before the year is out anyway" Trish added for herself. "If we are able to get the licenses and blueprints needed to build the CargoKing we might not need to devote as much effort to maintaining our older dropships, we'll be building brand new ones and by the time they need servicing the Olympus stations might be fully completed and available for the task."

The committee chair looked thoughtful. "We're certainly not short on dropships in any case so we could simply mothball any that are becoming unsafe to operated" Hollister observed. "We should probably call in the engineering people again to discuss this all again in detail" she said. "I'm slightly surprised you seem to have placed such weight on the implications of the scale of your find in terms of market economics, Professor Jeffs" she remarked. "Not exactly your field of expertise I would have thought."

"My department literally teaches courses in Economic Geology" Jeffs responded, seeming amused by the comment. "If you'll forgive the pun, geology is a little more 'grounded' than many of the other sciences. We don't just dig up rocks for fun, a big part of it is to go looking for the valuable ones so other people can dig them up to make money" she said, "and we're often called in to help advise how to dig them up too because local geology can make a difference to how you want to handle that" she continued. "Less pure science just for the sake of it, more profit motive you might say."

"Consider me better informed as to your department then. Moving on, in the light of your survey of Alphard should we be considering diverting some of the planned efforts to expand mining output in the Niops system to there instead?"

"If you wanted to maximise output then as regards the plans to dig new open-cast mines on Niops V and Niops VI I would say yes, although that decision should really be balanced with the presumed need not to have all our eggs in one basket strategically" Jeffs replied. "I would certainly advise to still go ahead with mining rare earth metals on Niops III for that very reason, and of course the expansion of the asteroid mining program because when you're talking about the tens of millions of tons of material needed to construct orbital and jump-point infrastructure, and then supply zero-gee factories and shipyards on an ongoing basis, you don't want to have to haul it all up the Alphard gravity well in dropship sized chunks and then cart it all here by jumpship."

"I would have to agree" an astronomer on the committee concurred. "Moreover, one of our greatest advantages is just how close everything in this system is to everything else, our asteroid belt is only a stone's throw away, forgive my own pun, so we can easily and quickly ramp up orbital factory production when required" he said. "We can grind up a big floating rock, feed it into an arc furnace and have the metal to the factory weeks before we could do so if we relied upon imports instead."

Jeffs nodded. "My colleagues and I discussed this in consultation with some of the engineering department and an authority in meteoritics and there are a few strategic metals that aren't found in abundance in the Niops asteroid belt that we are going to want to import" she told the committee, "but as regards iron, titanium, aluminium and so on, the ones we use in bulk, there's no good reason to import them and several good reasons not to" she said. "We'll still want to mine them on Alphard, but only to feed the industries there."

"Out of interest who did you talk to about the makeup of our asteroid belt" the astronomer queried. "I'm not aware of anyone from geology approaching my department."

Stephanie Jeffs looked shifty for a moment as if reluctant to say. "He's not actually from your department although…"

"Farnstrom" the astronomer realised with distaste. "He's a fruitcake."

"He does know a lot about our asteroid belt though and he was readily available without making an appointment to answer a few quick questions' Jeffs defended herself, "mostly because they don't let him lecture the undergraduate students anymore after the incident with the particle accelerator and the cheese sandwich" she undermined her case. "He really does know a lot about the subject. I can't be the only person he's droned on to about floating rocks at parties surely?"

"A knowledgeable fruitcake is still a fruitcake" the astronomer replied, "and we don't let him anywhere near any of the social events my department organises" he told her in a tone that indicated mystification that anyone would. "For obvious reasons I'll be double-checking any information he gave you."

"I'm always open to peer review" Jeffs responded with a shrug. "You should have already all received copies of my full report so there really isn't too much more to say at this juncture other than one particularly interesting discovery on the smaller of the northern continents, Heracles, situated roughly between Typhon and Hydrae."

"That being, Professor Jeffs?" Hollister asked.

"It looks like Alphard might have taken a hit from a particularly hefty comet at some point, the remains of part of the impact crater can be seen on land with the rest underwater" Jeffs told them. "We're talking about something on the scale of the Chicxulub crater on Terra, but the lack on an Iridium layer indicates big ball of ice not big rock as the culprit on Alphard" she continued. "Preliminary estimate gives an impact date of approximately twenty-five million years ago. If we had a palaeontology department I'm sure they would want to start digging into the fossil record to see what impact the impact had on how the planets native species developed."

"That is interesting" the committee chair enthused, everyone else apart from Trish seeming equally interested in news that was apparently aeons old.

The next person to be invited to speak was apparently running late so the committee members and guests talked among themselves for a while before an annoyed looking engineer wearing a dishevelled SLDF jumpsuit arrived, being immediately directed to a spot next to the projector so he could provide his report.

"Thank you for coming, Captain Murray" the committee chair greeted the engineer. "I'm afraid we do not seem to have received your written report regarding the electronic auto-factory project" Hollister noted.

"That's because I thought it was more important to get the thing running than it was to stop working on it and tell you about it" Murray replied gruffly. "I should be back there right now" he complained.

Trish fought back a smile. SLDF orbital engineer James Murray had recently passed his hundredth birthday and was also long past the stage in his life where he cared much for civility, or paperwork other than blueprints and operating instructions for that matter.

The committee chair sighed. "We will try not to detain you longer than we have to" she replied. "I assume you know our role here? That the recommendations of this committee will be used to determine the spending priorities of the Niops Association for perhaps the next decade."

"Yeah" Murray confirmed.

"Good, then I hope you realise that it is important that we hear from you given that once the auto-fac you are constructing is operational we can use it to produce important replacement circuitry that would otherwise have to be made in a Project Workshop" Hollister checked. "Workshops that could be used to make something else instead so we don't have to import them."

"Obviously" Murray nodded.

"In that vein can you please give us an update on when exactly the auto-factory for producing electronics that was stripped from the Camelot Command facility might be running."

Murray crossed his arms. "Yesterday" he replied.

"I'm sorry?" Hollister responded in surprise.

"Yesterday. We started it running yesterday" Murray told them. "We're still putting it together but because we know what we're doing we started with the module that processes raw materials and puts them into storage, connected up a fusion reactor and turned it on" he said. "We've been feeding it copper, silver, silicon and various other materials while we connect up the other modules that can convert the processed materials into components."

"I'm sorry but how have you 'turned on' an automated factory that as far as I know is still packed up in crates?" Hollister responded nonplussed.

"Only part of it is still packed up in crates, the part that actually produces the finished product because obviously that can be left until last, but judging from your expression I'm assuming that you think the auto-fac is like one big machine" Murray surmised. "It's not, it's a lot of separate auto-facs bolted together that all do different things" he explained. "Okay, so I'll give you an example. This morning we put together the module that makes resistors, that's all it does, it takes raw materials from the storage hoppers containing those and turns them into a few dozen different types of resistors, which it then places into other storage hoppers ready for when the module that actually makes the finished circuit boards needs them" he said. "This afternoon we'll be plugging in the module that makes diodes and if it goes smoothly then hopefully get started on the module that makes capacitors next"

"You make it sound like a big construction kit!" one of the other committee members exclaimed.

"That's exactly what it is" Murray replied. "The SLDF needed something that could be made in manufacturing plants in the Terran Hegemony, taken apart, shipped to where it was needed and bolted back together so that's exactly how they designed the things" he said. "We took it apart on Camelot Command, properly labelled the boxes, and now we're just reversing the process, being smart enough to do it in the right order so we can get it running while we do so."

Hollister frowned. "I'm just surprised that you don't have to completely assemble the thing before turning it on."

"If all you needed was a couple of non-standard transistors to fix something with, a type that weren't already in the storage bins you could just reach in and take, you wouldn't want to have to turn on an entire factory to get them would you?" Murray asked rhetorically. "The way it's designed you can just tell the computer running the entire thing to tell the transistor module to make them and wait for a few minutes until it has, with most everything else still powered down. They'll pop out in a drawer on the side" he said. "The biggest pain in the ass is actually fitting all the conveyer belts and other internal connections that lets the whole thing work together. Some of the robotic systems that collect components from all the various storage hoppers and feed them to the circuit-board module are clunky. They were designed to be hard-wearing which, makes them bulkier than they would be ideally. You have to squeeze past them sometimes to get to where you need to be, we might need skinnier maintenance people to look after it in the long-term" he joked.

"It all sounds like you've got quite a project to manage, Captain Murray" Hollister remarked, though it did seem like he knew what he was doing.

"I started out as an apprentice engineer working for the Star League Department of Mega Engineering before signing up with the SLDF Ma'am" Murray replied. "Anything less than terraforming an entire planet seems less than daunting to me" he said. "The more complicated modules will take longer to install, the big one that makes microprocessors could potentially cause us problems too, but you can safely assume I'll have the entire thing up and running, spitting out any circuit board you might need, inside of five weeks" he said, pretty sure it would take less than three, but it looked good to come in well ahead of schedule.

Hollister raised her eyebrows. "That's… rather quicker than we assumed" she said.

"I'm a miracle worker, what can I say?" Murray responded wryly. "Just don't forget that this type of auto-fac was never intended for ongoing mass production, running around the clock. It was intended to make replacement parts for equipment on Camelot Command that went wrong, and to do the same for ships that went there" he warned. "You can use it to make the electronics needed to run a manufacturing plant like that, but it's no substitute for one."

"We're aware" Hollister told him.

"Can I get back to my job now please" Murray requested. It wasn't so much that the big ugly concrete warehouse just outside of town where they were reassembling the auto-fac was an appealing place to be, he just wanted to get it finished so he could move on to bigger and better things. To be specific he wanted to start putting the orbital dropship factory together, partially just because he liked working in an EVA suit in orbit, it reminded him of his youth placing orbital mirrors above planets as part of a terraforming project.

Much to his chagrin the Niops Association had refused to allow big orbital mirrors to be constructed above Niops VII. They might warm the planet up to a more comfortable temperature, thanks to all the extra reflected light hitting the surface, but they ruined the sky for astronomy.

"Any more questions for Captain Murray that cannot wait for now?" Hollister asked the committee, "It seems like his time might better serve the interests of the Niops Associator spent elsewhere" she observed, with nobody seeming to disagree.

Hollister watched with amusement as the centenarian engineer dashed off. "If he's right then one of the Project Workshops currently tied up in making replacement electronics might be available for other duties sooner than expected. Are we in agreement that it should be put to work making parts for additional Project Workshops as soon as possible?" she asked with nobody voicing any objections.

For decades whatever manufacturing capability Niops boasted had been tied down making replacement parts for things that broke down, and the Association lacked the excess capacity within the system to get ahead. The Terran Hegemony had intended the science colony to be self-sufficient, not an industrial powerhouse, and what limited headroom for production they had barely coped with the increased demands on the system resulting from the arrival of the Capellan Refugees and then the SLDF.

If they could get ahead of themselves however, free up a Project Workshop to start turning out additional manufacturing capability starting with duplicates of itself, now then they could really start to get things moving.

Now we're cooking, Trish thought to herself with satisfaction. Imagining a half-dozen Project Workshops beavering away to make the machines, needed to make the machines, needed to make fully-automated robotic battlemech and aerospace fighter production plants.

And if those morons running the Great Houses keep blowing up each other's shipyards we'll sell them jumpships at a horrific mark-up in price so that they end up paying for it all, she realised, grinning inanely.


----------

Note from the Author:

Roger Callahan started his military career as a SLDF mechwarrior in the 331st Royal Battlemech Division and found himself back in the same job decades later (albeit at a much higher rank). I'm assuming there was a reason his childhood friend Sarah McEvedy (they were military brats following the unit around until old enough to fight themselves) never picked him to be her saKhan and him not wanting to get involved with the bureaucratic side of things seemed plausible. As an experienced old-hand he was assigned the task of making contact with Comstock and starting to strike up relations with that world (a job made tricky by just how far society had fallen there after the Star League collapsed). I can imagine most people being pleased to see the SLDF again, but quite a few being annoyed they hadn't showed up before to help. The Niops Association using a cover-story that they wanted to keep their heads down despite having inherited a sizeable military has a plausible ring about it, Terran Hegemony colonies were being routinely razed during this whole period. I've placed Comstock on the map between the Magistracy and what would have been the Marian Hegemony. In canon pirates from there raided Campoleone in the FWL which is another reason why I put it (and Francas) where I did.

The return of short-tempered geologist Stephanie Jeffs, last seen in Part VI. I've not used the names the Marian Hegemony did for the continents on Alphard (because it's not full of Roman cosplayers). Italia (where Nova Roma, the capital city of both the planet and the Hegemony was located) becomes Hydrae, the most northerly continents of Alba and Gaul become Typhon and Echidna, Hispania becomes Heracles and Ostia become Crux. The large inland sea in Italia Hydrae is now called Lerna (not Stella Maris). All that germanium coming on the market at the same time that there are fewer shipyards using it to make jumpships should logically have an impact on market prices.

A half-built Olympus recharging station is still a big step up from no recharging station at all. Getting the things partially operational then moving the construction crews over to another project for the time being might be a better use of them given limited resources.

Since the battletech universe doesn't have Star-Trek style replicators their automated robot factories (raw materials in one end, complex finished product out the other) are logically a lot of mini-factories stuck together doing different things. One auto-fac manufacturing circuit boards presumably has a part making LED's, another making microchips etc. etc and the last part of the production line takes the various manufactured components and slots them into the boards. This basically all being a big modular kit seems to make the most sense because they had to be taken apart and transported from Terra to other places (and easily maintained in the case of auto-facs on space stations that are months of travel-times away).

The Department of Mega-Engineering was well-named, they really worked on some big projects.

Niops will surely be keeping a close eye on when jumpships are becoming scarce, ready to pop up saying "So you need jumpships do you? Here's an Invader at only half again as much as they used to cost. What do you mean that's extortionate? It's not a buyer's market now is it? I'm sure the Taurians would be only too happy to... okay great, just sign here. Delivery should be in six to eight weeks."

[Hotpoint]

Quick map for you (you can see where I've placed Comstock and Francas).

[PsihoKekec]

"It's like six people and a bunch of maps" another responded. "They're basically an adjunct of geology, they just refuse to merge with them."

Suggesting academic departments merge? That's a material for a lifetime vendetta right there.

Rumours that she had once beaned a student with an accurately thrown whiteboard eraser,

Weaksauce, our teachers were not afraid to throw chalk or a key bundle, to wake up a sleeper or shut up a chit chatter.

[Daryk]

Awesome update!  And I can validate academic vendettas are a thing... ;D

[Evil Imperial]

[spoiler]Will the ELH being rejoining the SLDFiE, in the next generation, the 2850s, when they are stationed on Circinus, or the SLDFiE will see them to far gone as mercs?
After all it'd make a interesting story showing the next generation of the SLDFiE characters.

Besides it'd kill two birds with one stone, gain another potential brigade, get rid of another bandit kingdom.[/spoiler]

[wolfgar]

Rumours that she had once beaned a student with an accurately thrown whiteboard eraser, the student concerned having fallen asleep during one of her lectures, were widely believed though officially denied.

my mother told me a story a long time ago about her mother,
My grandmother was born in 1912, and went to medical school at Tulane in the mid to late 30's for reference.
As an alumni of that school, she was often asked to return and give lectures to current medical students, she would always place a tennis ball on the lectern at the beginning of class as she was laying out her stuff. One day, she was giving a lecture in their auditorium, and a student nodded off in the back of the room. she picked up the tennis ball and beaned him from the lectern without ever missing a beat. "Tomorrow it will be a baseball," she tells the class as the tennis ball bounces back down the auditorium towards her.

The next day she walked into the class and unwrapped a brand new Rawlings Baseball and sat it on the corner of the lectern.

for note, my grandmother was all of 62inches tall, and 120lbs at that point in her life. make of this story what you will, i have more.

[Hotpoint]

Part XX- Section 1 of 2

----------

"The only thing that frightens badly-trained infantry more than a thirty-ton battlemech running towards them at over a hundred and fifty kph, fifty-cal machine guns blazing away and breathing fire, is when the damn thing just blew up their APC with a freaking great laser cannon first."

Major Marcelo Gao - 2836CE

----------


Reykjanes Island - Niops VII – 2830

One advantage to living on a planet that was slightly larger than Terra, but barely had the population of a small city, was that when you requested a piece of land to conduct live-fire exercises on the government response was to ask whether an unpopulated island roughly the size of the Indian Subcontinent would be enough, or was that too small for the intended purpose?

General Jenna Romanov wasn't sure if they interpreted 'live fire exercises' as being that they thought the SLDF would be testing multi-megaton yield thermonuclear devices or something, but she had the presence of mind just to nod and say that would be fine as she found herself with four million square kilometres to do with whatever she felt like.

Situated halfway around the world from the capital, although fortunately at roughly the same latitude so it wasn't the frozen wasteland Niops VII was nearer the poles, an active chain of volcanoes ran across the island like a spine, the older extinct ones snow-capped and the remainder a little too hot at the summit for that. One of the latter kind was currently erupting in the far distance, providing a somewhat epic backdrop to the rows of battlemechs, and the dropships that brought them there that lined up across an ancient lava field that Romanov had chosen for the exercise that day. "If the Army Corps of Engineers ever finishes their ever-expanding list of high priority projects we should build a permanent base here, maybe even a budget Castle Brian" Romanov observed to Franklin Hallis as they walked along the first row of mechs together.

It was a rather impromptu parade of the two full regiments assembled in ranks. After the general officers had made their informal inspection the units would separate into two teams and head for the where they would start from for the exercise. With six battalions involved the exercise would cover a pretty large area, which was why Romanov and Hallis would be observing proceedings from a VTOL overhead rather than from the ground.

Colonel Hermann Bostick would be commanding the regiment formed of mechwarriors from the 331st. Formerly the commanding officer of the 102nd Strike Cluster, part of Clan Wolverine's old Beta Galaxy, he wanted to climb the ladder demonstrating that he should be put on the fast-track for promotion to Brigadier-General by obtaining a quick decisive win over the regiment from the 295th, itself commanded by one Colonel Alexi Kaempen. For his part Kaempen was too old and frankly a little too jaded to care much about getting to wear a shiny star on his collar, he only wanted to show that his people still had plenty of fight left in them and to not let down either the Blue Star Division or General Romanov herself.

"Maybe we build a little further away from the volcanoes than this though" Hallis suggested wryly, looking over towards the eruption. The sky on Niops was a dull red at the best of times, and despite it approaching mid-day all that ash spewing into the sky, and the glow of distant lava flows was making the whole place look as ominous as some kind of apocalyptic Swords and Sorcery style fantasy movie. It was a reminder of why Niops utilised geothermal energy as well as fusion reactors to power their society. Dig down deep enough anywhere on the planet and you would soon find out what effect the star's gravity was having on the planet's molten core as it tried to tidally lock Niops VII as it already had all the other worlds orbiting it.

"It's a big enough island that we don't have to worry about the whole place going Krakatoa on us" Romanov replied. "I hope you told your people not to go easy on mine just because they've hardly worn a neurohelmet in half-a-century?" she checked. "The whole point of this exercise is to let them know just how much they've forgotten."

"No Ma'am" Hallis responded, shaking his head. "They all know they're supposed to put aside any respect they might have for their elders and give them a whupping" he told her. "If these boys and girls get back up to speed as fast as your other people did who fought on Algenib then the rustiness shouldn't last too long though."

Romanov laughed. "The youngest of them is past seventy-five, so I'm not sure calling them 'boys and girls' is an accurate description" she observed, "but it was nice to get the chance to prove the adage that old warhorses can still kick ass" she said. "This all remind of one of your clan trials a little, does it?" she asked curiously.

"They were rarely fought on anything like this scale, no more than a handful of mechs per side was the norm" Hallis replied. "Plus of course we didn't use dialled-down lasers and training rounds in the autocannons" he said, smiling. "Nicky K treated it all like a sport, or a game, but it was played for keeps."

Romanov stopped next to a Flashman heavy, one that had arrived from Buffalo Meadows on the Ulithi and had yet to be either upgraded or re-painted with the Red Cameron Star. "I've been thinking about that, the notion of a military force that are all shit-hot mech-jocks like they've come straight out of the Gunslinger Program but they don't train for combined-arms operations and they don't train for large-scale engagements" she said, looking thoughtful. "Once we've gotten both expeditionary brigades put together we should probably think about running annual, or even bi-annual training exercises, pitting them against each other. Three regiments of mechs, two armoured cavalry regiments and an artillery regiment per side."

"Most of the clans don't favour artillery that much so in some of those exercises we might want to have one of the brigades running as an OPFOR without that kind of support" Hallis suggested. "A lot of their aerospace fighter jocks lean heavily towards the honourable 'Knights of the Sky' thing too, training much harder for air-superiority missions than they ever do ground support, so that's something else to consider."

Romanov nodded. "It's a pity we can't just adopt a military doctrine aimed specifically at countering clanner tactics, and specialise towards that aim, because we have to plan to take on the militaries of the Great Houses too" she said regretfully.

Hallis smiled. "The Great Houses fight smart, well most of them do, but have bad gear and the clans fight dumb but have good gear" he observed. "Guess we're going to have to be the ones to show them both what an army that fights smart with good gear can do."

"On the subject of good gear the prototype of that new model Hussar should be ready for testing soon" Romanov said, starting to walk again. "I was surprised at how quickly your engineers and technicians managed to get it done considering it was practically hand-built apart from the endo-steel skeleton."

"We were still mostly hand-building mechs not long before Klondike" Hallis replied. "If you've built a Devastator from scratch like the one over there a Hussar doesn't seem too daunting a project" he said, pointing to the towering assault mech a couple of hundred metres away. "If we ever put those things into serial production we're going to need to come up with a good cover story as to how we got the plans, because all the prototypes left with Exodus. Maybe something like the SLDF sent out back-up copies of the blueprints to Niops at the start of the Amaris War for safekeeping?" he suggested, thinking about it.

"Less suspicious than us suddenly producing a brand-new type of assault mech from scratch anyway" Romanov observed, "even if it's not a Pulverizer" she said, smiling. "You're still leaning towards the idea that we should choose the DVS-2 as our heavy assault once we're at the stage of expanding the army?" she asked.

Hallis nodded. "It just makes sense in terms of the image we're going to be trying to project" he replied. "The Niops Association as the continuation of the Terran Hegemony and the Star League, but not just stuck in the past" he said. "The Devastator would have been the SLDF's next big thing if the Star League hadn't fallen. That, the Rifleman II and probably an Atlas III if Kerensky Senior was still calling the shots."

Romanov chuckled. "Oh, we'd be on the Atlas IV by now at least. He really loved the look of those things, like a gigantic anthropomorphic personification of death wearing a bulky suit of armour instead of a black cloak" she said. "You can't imagine how surprised I was that he had the corpse of Stefan Amaris cryogenically frozen and given to that university, rather than using his skull as a paperweight."

"If he loved them that much I wonder why he commissioned the Devastator as well" Hallis remarked. The battlemech had been specifically designed according to his own specifications, albeit to replace the flawed Titan rather than his beloved Atlas.

"Two gauss rifles and a pair of PPC's have their own charms" Romanov observed, smiling. "Not that you people didn't look at that and think 'undergunned' did you?" she asked rhetorically.

"Swapping out the PPC's for ERPPC's for the ones we made for Klondike just made sense" Hallis replied. "Same range on all the primary weaponry" he explained the thinking. "Later swapping out the ERPPC's for our Enhanced ERPPC's once we had them was just as obvious an upgrade, and it also means that while the Atlas may look like death incarnate, at long range our model of the Devastator actually is death incarnate" he boasted and not without justification. The big assault mech mounted four long-range weapons, all of which could blow another mech's head off with one shot if it managed to score a hit there. Trying to take one on at its preferred engagement range was therefore just an astonishingly bad idea, even if you were big and mean enough to survive the sheer battering it could inflict on you for a while. Eventually it might get lucky and end you there and then, and the ****** thing had four chances every salvo to get lucky.

It would be years before they had the spare production capability to even consider putting something like the Devastator into mass production of course, more's the pity. Thanks to that treasure trove of refined germanium discovered on Alphard the budget was available to make it feasible to start turning out the new model of Hussar soon, and maybe also the Blackjack for garrison duties if they could get the blueprints and sign a licensing agreement for its production, but they weren't going to be making any new heavies and assaults until the end of the decade at the earliest.

Given that it was likely going to take another three to four years just to upgrade all the battlemechs and aerospace fighters they already had with improved weaponry, a considerably more cost-effective means of increasing SLDF firepower than building new machines anyway, it was hard to argue the point with the bean counters.

Realistically, the two new expeditionary brigades, the off-world garrison troops and the Niops Association Militia was more than adequate a military force to defeat anything short of a full-scale invasion by the Free Worlds League or the Clans. With another three whole regiments of battlemechs being mothballed as an emergency reserve, they could even absorb fairly severe battlefield losses and still be able to put a very formidable army in the field for round two of any conflict.

Of course, since the SLDF wasn't going to keeping every battlemech it had in active service that meant they found themselves with a surplus of mechwarriors, hence the training exercise of the day. A lot of the old soldiers of the 295th who thought they were going to get their old jobs back were going to be disappointed, and it would hopefully help them accept the situation if they could be shown, not just told, that they weren't as sharp as they used to be.

Even with Terran Hegemony anti-agathics, a man or woman near a century old did not have the reaction times they had when they were in their thirties.

"The latest report from the R&D people seemed promising" Romanov commented as they passed by a Royal Sentinel, the gauss rifle mounted where the medium mech's left arm should be always making the thing look more than a little ungainly and lopsided. "I'm not sure if I would have prioritised some of the things they did, but at least we should be ready for the next round of upgrades by the time all my machines are up to your spec."

Hallis frowned. "Anything in particular you're querying, research wise?" he asked.

"Well, better flamers and machineguns for a start" Romanov explained her comment. "It's not like we're not already well equipped to do horrible things to infantry."

"Oh, that just because the clans already had those in advanced prototype before we left, so it's something we could get to the production stage faster than we could with something complicated and finicky like better pulse lasers with more range" Hallis explained. "They're really going to help with the new model Hussar anyway, they're light enough that we can hang a couple of machineguns and a flamer on the thing, as well as the new model ER Large Laser replacing the old one, so we'll get more use out of them than just scouting."

Jenna Romanov thought about that and then suddenly laughed out loud. "Did you know that the Hussar was originally supposed to be an anti-infantry mech?" she asked.

"No" Hallis replied honestly.

"Well, it was. Back when I was an officer cadet, that was when mechs ran on coal and targeting computers were clockwork" she joked, "I read an article about the development of the thing because I had the notion that I might be easier to get a place in a Royal Division if I said I always wanted to ride a HSR-200-Db, knowing that most people didn't because of the Hussar's rep. After not achieving the required specs they just decided to make it a reconnaissance platform instead" Romanov told him. "You've managed to achieve the original design goals by accident without making it a worse scout."

"It's even a better machine in a fight against other lights as well" Hallis noted, smiling. "The new laser has more range, and we might be able to increase the armour by another half-ton too" he continued. "It'll have the speed to keep out of range while still getting in its own hits, and unlike those Jackrabbit mechs with peashooter AC/2s we ran into on Algenib it'll do more than just annoy what it's shooting at, they'll feel it."

Romanov nodded her agreement. It was no eERPPC but she had seen the prototype of the new laser being tested and it definitely brought the hurt. "If there was ever a mech that needed more armour it's the Hussar" she stated with absolute certainty. The original model boasted a mere ton-and-a-half of armour, which could make riding around in one practically suicidal, hence the bad rep. The Royal version upped that to a considerably less horrifying five-and-a-half tons, and if the new model raised that to a full six it would actually have four-times the armour of the original machine.

They might even have to change the unofficial motto of mechwarriors that rode a Hussar. Live fast, die young and leave a badly mangled corpse.

[Hotpoint]

Part XX- Section 2 of 2

----------

"You mentioned the old Gunslinger program just now, I know some of your people went through it, maybe any of them that don't make the cut to still do the job can teach it instead?" Hallis suggested.

"More of my people went through it than most did in units that weren't Royal" Romanov confirmed. "A lot of that was down to Leigh MacArthur and her quest to get us our fancy title back. That and transferring anyone out of the unit that wasn't Hegemony born" she recalled. "It's certainly an idea, maybe have a few instructors from your people too, the boys and girls that won you all those trials they boast about winning when they've got a few beers in them at the bar."

Hallis shrugged. "We did win more than our fair share of trials, but because we didn't specialise as much in training for that kind of duelling there were a few clans that were still better at it than we were overall" he freely admitted. "I mean, we'd have kicked the shit out of them in a real battle, mostly because they thought combined arms warfare and proper logistical planning was cheating, but there are some really good mechwarriors to be found a couple of thousand lightyears coreward of here."

"Another reason to set up our own program then" Romanov replied. "It would also give us an excuse if anyone ever queries why the military of a Periphery nation that has supposedly barely fought anyone for half-a-century seems weirdly well-practiced at it."

"Something else for the cover-story. Like if anyone asks my people are your people's kids" Hallis agreed. "Right Mom?" he asked, tongue-in-cheek.

"Pah, you only wish you heathens from the 331st were really part of the glorious Blue Star Division" Romanov retorted.

"Aren't we all the Red Star Division now?"

Romanov thought about that. "I don't like it. Makes us sound like a load of commies" she eventually decided. "We should get moving, I want to see how many of your people get to learn the hard way that age and guile is a better match for youth and enthusiasm than your bunch of juveniles think it is."

"Yeah, we'd better mount up on the VTOL. If we don't start soon your people will have forgotten why they're out here" Hallis replied, smirking. "Maybe we should have a Project Workshop manufacture a few mech-scale Zimmer Frames to help them dodder to the objective points."

"No matter how much you try and provoke me I'm not stupid enough to bet on my people to win Franklin" Romanov replied knowing full well what he was up to with a crack like that. "Most of them spent decades ploughing fields while yours were getting into firefights. I might be proud of my unit but I'm not gullible, Junior."

Hallis sighed. "It's bad enough that my girlfriend can see right through me, my commanding officer being able to do it as well is disheartening" he said sadly. "What if I offered favourable odds?"

"No" Romanov told him with finality, wondering if the man was developing a gambling problem or if it was just another weird clan thing.

"It was worth a try" Hallis conceded defeat, in the sense that they were both sure his regiment would emerge victorious, the only difference being that Romanov expected her old farts to put up a much better fight than the kids expected.

It was always possible that a few of the 295th facing retirement would find a home in an expanded Niops Association Militia. Brigadier Nellis was pushing for his ground forces to actually field a mech-heavy brigade-sized unit and to this end the salvaged mechs that had once belonged to the Blood Rain had been allocated to him. Once they were all repaired the handful of Dragoon heavies, a couple of Rampage assaults and a company's worth of Phoenix and Jackrabbit medium and light mechs would not only give the NAM a noticeable increase in firepower they helped round out his equipment roster.

Given that they were all Rim Worlds Republic designs the SLDF regulars were only too happy to hand them over. They had plenty of machines that weren't tainted by the touch of pirates and war-criminals, and if the NAM weren't as fussy about what they rode that was their choice.

Two hours later, watching the proceedings below from the vantage point of a Vector VTOL, Romanov observed that they had certainly chosen a cinematic place for the clash between her 295th and Hallis's 331st. Even dialled way down from full power, so they would only scorch paint, not sear off armour plate, the laser and PPC fire looked spectacular in the dim red fight especially when a change in wind direction brought the vast pall of volcanic ash heading their way.

Mixed in with all the dust being kicked up by six battalions of battlemechs on the move, the smoke from blank autocannons rounds and the exhaust from training missiles the oncoming cloud began to look positively apocalyptic. Hundreds of SRM and LRM warheads exploding as they struck their targets looked just as spectacular as they would have if the missiles were arriving with HEAP high-explosive-armour-piercing warheads fitted rather than mere flash-bangs, and they only added to the overall illusion that armageddon was here.

Romanov quietly wondered to herself if she was about to be faced with several dozen cases of PTSD being triggered among her people. Visually it was all too reminiscent of fighting under the twilight of a recent nuclear exchange, something the 295th had done more than once during the campaign to liberate the Terran Hegemony from Amaris.

It did look epically cool though, she had to admit. Hallis certainly seemed to think much the same judging from his awed expression as they continued to monitor the exercise, pointing out important losses and interesting developments to each other.

Both sides had been instructed that this was supposed to be a testing of the skills of the mechwarriors concerned, it was not meant to be an opportunity for the two commanders to demonstrate their tactical brilliance, which was why Romanov had chosen an arena which was fairly flat and utterly devoid of vegetation.

If one side won because of some fancy feigned retreat, a flashy sweeping flanking manoeuvre or just a fortuitously timed counter-attack that wouldn't answer the questions being asked. Romanov and Hallis wanted a slug-fest, they wanted to see who among the 295th could still hack it and hopefully show some of them that still thought they could that they couldn't.

A disproportionate number of the 295th on the field that day were in fact those considered by their commanding officers to be too much of a liability to still be doing the job. They skewed above average in age, which was saying something, in many cases had never been regarded particularly highly compared to their peers anyway, but were all invariably all too damn stubborn to admit it.

It showed particularly among light-mech pilots, where you needed quick wits and quick reactions to stay alive because you didn't have the armour to help you dodge incoming fire or survive an error of judgement. A ninety-five year old might still feel twenty-five in his heart, although a cardiologist might disagree with that assessment, but when you reached late middle-age (by Terran standards) you weren't quite as well suited to running about in a Hermes at 151 kph being shot at with missiles as you used to be.

Faced with a healthy dose of reality being injected into them by getting their ass shot off, albeit figuratively, would hopefully lead a few of those in the 295th that were utterly convinced they were just as good as the kids that they weren't. Some would undoubtedly still disagree, stubbornness was not a trait that diminished with age after all, but that could be handled with a combination of medical screening and perhaps by running some basic drills to show them that it wasn't just bad luck why they lost a firefight to an actual twenty-five year old.

It would be a little different for officers, particularly senior officers that weren't ever expected to run around like lunatics in MASC-equipped light-mechs, because experience was more important to a command position than trigger-pulling ability. Hallis freely agreed that officers like Colonel Kaempen, for example, knew a hell of a lot more about how to handle a regiment as part of a brigade or particularly a divisional-sized engagement than he any of his own serving officers did. The clans did actually have a formation that size, the Galaxy, but that was mainly just an administrative designation with variable numbers of unit assigned to each, it wasn't really intended to fight as a cohesive unit.

With the VTOL pilot warning that if the ash cloud got any closer he would have to either land or fly further away, because he wasn't sure how his rotors would handle it, Romanov gave him permission to get clear. She had already agreed with Hallis that once the exercise degenerated into the expected slugfest that, as expected, the skill gap between the sides was largest in fast-moving light mechs and smallest between lumbering assaults where speed mattered less than careful shot-placement.

With the computers inside each machine registering the hits they took, and automatically disabling systems that would have been destroyed if they were doing this all for real with full-powered guns, eventually combat-loss-grouping started to become an issue. What had begun as equal sides, both numerically and in equipment quality, gradually shifted in the former category as the regiment from the 295th was being whittled down in number faster than the younger mechwarriors of the 331st were.

Despite getting the better of their foe Romanov pointed out that some of Hallis's people still had an apparent tendency to fight as individuals not a group, and that this was causing them to take a some entirely unnecessary losses because the ones that went rogue were soon knocked out of the fray by her 'team-players' that ganged up on them. The mechwarriors of the Blue Star Division had learned their trade in large-scale engagements and were soldiers, not warriors, and she drew an analogy with how the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns had fought differently in the Second Hidden War of 2725 to 2729 which she had studied as a cadet. The average Combine mechwarrior was often more skilled than their average FedSuns equivalent, but while that mattered a great deal in single-combat, or even a small skirmish, in larger engagements unit-cohesion and the concentration of firepower on a single target had more than made up for it.

Combined arms warfare was not a completely alien concept to the clans of course, but a cultural bias towards 'Trials' that were often just duels of skirmish size or smaller, was probably something that could be used against them.

If nothing else it would be academically interesting to see what one of her new expeditionary brigades, these being modelled in part on an SLDF Regimental Combat Team, would do to a Clan formation of similar size. It was one thing to understand large-scale combined arms warfare theoretically, it was another thing entirely to be any good at it in practice.

The 295th were stubborn and experienced but when everything degenerated into a confused mess as the endgame approached they found themselves with a serious problem as the larger number of fast light and medium mechs remaining on the other side used their mobility advantage to flank around Kaempen's battalions, hitting them in the sides and rear.

As Romanov and Hallis continued to watch the exercise from above as it gradually drew to a conclusion, the 331st 'bloodied' but looking to be victorious, they had no idea that someone else was monitoring events from below, if unwittingly, as on the other side of the world the seismographs buried on the island to monitoring volcanic activity had been going absolutely nuts.

Since the geology department at the university had never imagined that anyone would be stomping across the unpopulated region in a couple of hundred bipedal war machines, each massing at minimum twenty tons and with some, like the Devastator for example, five times as heavy as that, their equipment was deeply confused and started giving warnings that the entire area was about to resemble the Toba eruption on Terra seventy-five thousand years before. The one that nearly made homo sapiens extinct as a species.

After issuing some urgent warnings to the government, and being told after a few minutes of frantic, panicked conversation that the SLDF were conducting some-kind of large-scale military exercise there so that might be why the monitoring equipment was giving such anomalous readings, a deeply irate Professor Samantha Jeffs blew her top in a somewhat volcano-like manner. After issuing several graphic and convincing threats of violence to the various idiots that hadn't bothered to keep her department properly informed, despite it being official registered they kept a virtual electronic presence there, she slammed down the telephone, becoming the subject of a judicial restraining order that barred her from entering the Administration Council building the next day.

With the election coming up Jeffs was so angry she momentarily considered throwing her hat into the ring and running against Giles Olson for High Associator on a platform of putting science back to the fore on Niops. She quickly dismissed the notion, mostly because she didn't think she had a chance of winning, but also because the man delivered a hell of an inspiring speech at his election rally that made Jeffs, and others, reassess the Association's place in the galaxy.

With the Great Houses seemingly intent on rolling back at least a thousand years of technological progress, while simultaneously making sure that a few billion more people who were lucky enough to make it through the First Succession War alive weren't going to survive the Second, there was a growing feeling that in the end that it might actually be up to Niops to save civilisation.

This was certainly not a role that the Association had ever envisioned for itself, and not one that it was even sure it could achieve, but that didn't mean it was wrong to try.

Let's face it, who else was there? The Clans were still out there true enough, but that wasn't the kind of society anyone on Niops wanted to see ruling over humanity, and the only other candidate at present was the ****** telephone company, and there was definitely something badly off about ComStar as they increasingly started to resemble some kind of pseudo-religious cult.

If the future of humanity was going to end up in the hands of the psychos, the weirdos or the nerds then the latter were pretty sure they were the best alternative, not just because they were smarter, but because they were frankly a lot less unhinged.

Giles Olson's rallying cry that 'We might live under the dim light of a Red Dwarf but we have it within ourselves to ensure our values will shine out from Niops like a Blue Hypergiant. A beacon to the galaxy, a shining city on a hill, the champion of liberty and scientific progress not oppression and ignorance' resonated with the public and helped him achieve a decisive victory in the general election the following month. It helped of course that food imports from other systems had ended rationing, and that tens of billions of dollars in germanium meant that taxes wouldn't have to go through the roof to support an outsized military-industrial complex, but he was offering something other than a continuation of technocratic government, something larger and more inspiring.

Thus it was that after the election that when General Jenna Romanov jokingly declared, 'To hell with it. We'll make our own Star League with Blackjacks and Hussars' she was taken very seriously by the press, and Olson was forced by public opinion to dispatch the trade mission to obtain the licenses and blueprints for the BJ-1 battlemech way ahead of schedule.

It would of course be a few more years before the Blackjack factory on Alphard even started construction, let alone be fully staffed, up and running, but the first production model Hussar HSR-250-Dn strode out of the manufacturing plant on Niops V in 2835, the same year that the Beagle Active Probe it carried effectively became lostech in the Inner Sphere because nobody else could make them.

That was also the same year that ComStar introduced the C-Bill, making interstellar commerce easier, the year Niops reestablished HPG contact with the Inner Sphere, and because of that also the year in which Niops told ComStar to stick their 'Communications Protocol of 2787' where the sun don't shine because the Niops Association never signed it and was perfectly capable of maintaining their own Hyperpulse Generators thank you very much.


----------

Note from the Author:

In canon the Niops Association utilises geothermal power, as well as building its own fusion powerplants. This makes sense in that Tidal Heating is a thing and the processes that saw the star Niops tidally lock all its planets except Niops VII are going to be working on the molten core of the latter. The continent where most people live was chosen because it was less geologically active but you are going to find other locations like Reykjanes Island here where things are a little more exciting. Because of the chain of volanoes, and no shortage of less geologically dynamic places, to set up home nobody lives on Reykjanes and this led to a belief that nobody would care what happened there. Unfortunately the geology department cared very much because what other people hate about the place they love.

The Devastator was a late Star-League design assault mech that never entered service beyond a full prototypes. The Clans hand-built a few for Operation Klondike and the Wolverines upgraded the ones they had later with their Enhanced ERPPC. Like the Atlas it sprang from the creative mind of Aleksandr Kerensky but he didn't insist upon the head resembling a human skull.

The Hussar was originally intended for infantry support but ended up in the scout role with a very different weapons load-out. Thanks to several clan weapons already being at the prototype stage a few years before the Wolverine Secession, and the clans cooperating on research projects until after Klondike, they are able to get them into service only a few years after the clans manage that themselves. These include the Clan ER Large Laser (in prototype 2820), the Clan Machine Gun (in prototype 2820) and the Clan Flamer (in prototype 2821). These lighter, and more compact versions of Inner Sphere weapon designs make it possible to make a Hussar that's still just as good as being a scout but can now do other work as well.

The SLDF's Gunslinger Program was developed in response to Draconis Combine mechwarriors continually challenging them to duels during the First Hidden War. The Combine produced some truly first-rate mechwarriors but the result of several battles during the Second Hidden War  between them and the Federated Suns showed that made them far from unbeatable when up against better tactics.

And we finally reach the point in the timeline where the quotes at the start of Part I and Part V are actually said, and Niops veers into a less isolationist future.

[Daryk]

Loving it!  Heading down to the design forum in hopes that you already posted the Hussar and Blackjack you mentioned... :)

[DragonKhan55]

Love it. Also I gotta say I am surprised the Devastator never got the Clantech treatment given the history of it. A DVS-C with two Clan ERPPCs, two Gauss Rifles, and four Clan Medium Pulse Lasers along with a Clan ECM suite would be a nightmare to fight.

[drakensis]

It's very possible to make a Devastator with Clan weapons saving so much tonnage that it's not necessary to use an XL engine - which lets it nail the long range firepower and the durability options.

[DragonKhan55]

It's very possible to make a Devastator with Clan weapons saving so much tonnage that it's not necessary to use an XL engine - which lets it nail the long range firepower and the durability options.

Just tried in Megamek Lab. 100% doable - 15 tons of Clan Ferro, two cERPPCs, two cGRs with four tons of ammo, three cERMLs and 17 DHS gets you there on the dot. Would be a very useful and powerful Second Line mech that could easily outshoot most assault omnis too.

[mikecj]

Just tried in Megamek Lab. 100% doable - 15 tons of Clan Ferro, two cERPPCs, two cGRs with four tons of ammo, three cERMLs and 17 DHS gets you there on the dot. Would be a very useful and powerful Second Line mech that could easily outshoot most assault omnis too.

'
Thank you for the nightmare fuel!

[crestrunner]

'
Thank you for the nightmare fuel!

Nightmare fuel? Nah, that's going to be my go-to when my opponents bring in Gausszilla or other munchkin designs.  Either that, or an equal point value of pikes on a floating map.  sure, I'm plinking away with a paltry 2 damage per shot, but that's a lot of AC2s, and I will sandblast away your armor and internals from outside your weapons range, clanner.

[Sabelkatten]

No need for rolling maps... Look at this BV and consider just how many TACs you can take before you get mission killed!

Code: [Select]

Plinker

Mass: 100 tons
Tech Base: Inner Sphere
Motive Type: Tracked
Rules Level: Tournament Legal
Era: Clan Invasion
Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/X-X-E-A
Production Year: 3070
Cost: 3 936 667 C-Bills
Battle Value: 852

Power Plant:  200 I.C.E.
Cruise Speed: 21,6 km/h
Flanking Speed: 32,4 km/h
Armor:  Ferro-Fibrous
Armament:
    8  LB 2-X ACs
    1 Unknown CASE
Manufacturer:
    Primary Factory:
Communications System:
Targeting and Tracking System:

================================================================================
Equipment           Type                         Rating                   Mass 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internal Structure: Standard                      50 points               10,00
Engine:             I.C.E. Engine                200                      17,00
    Cruise MP:  2
    Flank MP:   3
Heat Sinks:         Single Heat Sink             0                         0,00
Control Equipment:                                                         5,00
Lift Equipment:                                                            0,00
Turret:                                                                    5,00
Armor:              Ferro-Fibrous                AV - 188                 10,50

                                                      Armor     
                                                      Factor     
                                               Front     48       
                                          Left/Right   38/38       
                                              Turret     32       
                                                Rear     32       

================================================================================
Equipment                                 Location    Heat     Spaces     Mass 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 LB 2-X ACs                                 T         8         8        48,00
CASE                                         BD        -         1         0,50
@LB 2-X (Slug) (45)                          BD        -         0         1,00
@LB 2-X (Cluster) (135)                      BD        -         0         3,00

BattleForce Statistics
MV      S (+0)  M (+2)  L (+4)  E (+6)   Wt.   Ov   Armor:      6    Points: 9
2t         1       1       1       0      4     0   Structure:  5
Special Abilities: CASE, EE, TUR(1/1/1), FLK 1/1/1
As a random test I ran four of these against a Dire Wolf once on 2x2 standard maps. The DW got to fire once before the pilot died from ammo TACs and head hits.

[crestrunner]

No need for rolling maps... Look at this BV and consider just how many TACs you can take before you get mission killed!

*snip*

As a random test I ran four of these against a Dire Wolf once on 2x2 standard maps. The DW got to fire once before the pilot died from ammo TACs and head hits.

The LB 2-X is definitely the very definition of a long range sandblaster, however I find the humiliation factor of being killed by 3025 periphery tech the extra "frack you" needed to cut a munchkin down to size.  YMMV of course, and your Plinker is definitely scary fun. Especially since most munchkins I've played against prefer a slow 100 ton mech, so staying out of range is childs play.

But we've gotten away from the story, so this is probably the last post I'm doing on this here.

[Sabelkatten]

Somewhat more on topic regarding long-range plinking, which kinds of upgraded ACs can Niops produce?

[Daryk]

I'd expect at LEAST the Improved AC/2... ;)

[Hotpoint]

Part XXI - Section 1 of 2

----------

"I'm honestly in two minds as to whether it's really clever or really stupid to call it 'Project Hittile', and if they get it to work before I'm dead of old age I'll be surprised, but for what it's worth I do like the tagline on the proposal, 'Taking the miss out of missile'."

 Brigadier-General Craig Nellis - 2840 CE

----------

(FLASHBACK) Camelot Command – Dark Nebula (Lyran Commonwealth) – 2826

Frederick of Sibling Company Gamma had not known what to expect when they arrived at Camelot Command. Despite the fact his sibko had transferred over from Yukon to Zughoffer Weir for the journey from the Theta Carinae Cluster to the Dark Nebula, for some reason when they arrived at their destination a dropship had carried them back, reuniting them with Star Captain Francis just before Yukon came into dock.

Looking out through large windows made of thick armoured glass Frederick and the rest of his sibko watched transfixed as the massive airlock opened to allow Yukon to enter the massive internal bay of the station on thrusters. Although not nearly large enough to allow a battleship like the Zug to dock inside, a Riga II destroyer could do so easily, and it made for an awesome experience as the warship did so, huge spotlights inside the bay playing over the ship.

Flown with precision Yukon reached her final destination and stopped, mechanical clamps coming out to grab hold of her as the thrusters cut out. Once secure an airlock tunnel from the station snaked out and made a seal with one of the external locks on the destroyer so everyone aboard could disembark.

Apparently most of the vessels of the Switchback Fleet that could fit inside the station had either already been serviced here, or else at somewhere called Columbus before they even got this far, so Yukon had been bumped up the maintenance schedule for attention. The ship had come a long way, most of it completely alone and unsupported, so the engineers and technicians wanted to strip her down and make sure she was still in good shape as soon as possible.

That explained why they wanted Yukon to come in and dock of course, but it still didn't explain why they transferred the kits back to her before she did.

The answer to that came when the crew of Yukon and her passengers, Sibling Company Gamma, filed through the airlock and were directed on through a corridor and then onto an elevator large enough to carry a lance of assault mechs up to the higher levels where there the rotating station provided gravity.

The massive elevator door slid open inside a massive chamber on one of the decks where gravity was around half-a-gee.

The cavernous space was large enough to hold thousands of people, which was good because it actually was filled with thousands of people.

"Holy crap!" Frederick heard Star Captain Francis mutter under his breath as the crowd erupted in cheering and applause.

Momentarily stunned the crew of the Yukon didn't initially know what to do but they were beckoned to leave the elevator, space having been left by the crowd enabling them to do so.

A woman Francis didn't recognise approached, as she did so the Star Captain took note of her SLDF rank insignia that indicated she was a Colonel.

The colonel held out her hands and the cheering and applause ended immediately.

"Star Captain Francis?" the woman checked.

"Yes, Ma'am" Francis confirmed.

"Star Colonel Tricia Ebon, saKhan of the Wolverines" she introduced herself.

"Attention on deck!" Francis ordered sharply, the crew of the Yukon and the children with them instantly snapping to attention as Francis saluted.

Trish Ebon returned the salute then smiled. "I bet Franklin did not do this, but you deserve it for getting your ship and crew out of clan space and especially for saving the kits" she told him before pulling a very surprised and then extremely embarrassed Star Captain Francis into a hug as the crowd began to cheer and applaud once again.

When this hug was described later as a 'bear hug' Trish Ebon objected to the phrasing. Wolverines don't get on well with bears, or Ghost Bears in particular.

"I think they're happy to see us, quiaff?" Frederick whispered to the other kits of sibko Gamma who were all bunched up together.

"Aff" Jennifer whispered back. The crew of the Zughoffer Weir had reacted in a similar fashion to seeing them but it just wasn't all at such a scale.

"No shit, Sherlock" David responded instead, he had hung around the engine room of Yukon quite a lot and the language in common usage down there was almost as bad as that of the marines.

"Let us get you all to the canteen for some fresh food and after that we will give you a tour of the place" Trish Ebon yelled at them over the noise of the crowd. "None of you will have to pay for your own drinks at the bar for a while" she added, grinning.

Half an hour later Sibling Company Gamma were sat together around a large round table in the mess-hall. The fact that they could all fit around a single table was indicative of just how much of an exaggeration calling them a 'company' really was, because even calling them a 'Sibling Platoon' instead would have been overstating things as there weren't even enough of them to fill out two squads.

Having been born in 2816, or perhaps it might be described as decanted instead, as some of the first batches of children to emerge from the Iron Wombs, the kits of sibko Gamma were badly outnumbered by later sibling companies, particularly those from 2819 onwards when the technology was improved. They were prototypes in effect, not even early production models like the first batch from 2819 were, and it was a sad truth that quite a few of their potential 'brothers and sisters' never made it to full term in the wombs.

Everything about them was an experiment in effect, not just how they came to be, but also how they were raised because of what they were intended to become, or more actually made for a specific purpose.

In ancient Sparta boys were taken from the mothers at age seven to begin training as soldiers, by the time they were that age the kits of Sibling Company Gamma were already several years into the process and instead of playing with construction kits and toy battlemechs they were stripping down Mauser 960 Laser Rifles and getting used to wearing baby's first neurohelmet.

Needless to say they were all considered very, very weird by those raised in a more normal environment whose 'parents' weren't a gene-sequencer and a cannister full of slimy goop.

They were still enough like normal children that Trish Ebon had noticed they seemed to be getting overwhelmed by all the attention and she had ordered for them to be left alone to adjust to their new circumstances.

Having each collected a tray of food before choosing an empty table for themselves, Star Captain Francis sat nearby with other officers from Yukon, they chatted among themselves while eating some kind of thick unfamiliar vegetable stew called 'shiro' that was served on a large flatbread called 'Injera'. According to the catering staff who had served them the food was imported from a planet called Nakfa, one of the worlds in a different region of the Dark Nebula to Camelot called the Erit Cluster, and while it wasn't exactly what they were used to eating it was actually pretty tasty.

"What is in this again?" Frederick asked curiously, spooning up some of the stew.

"They told me it is chickpeas, onion and garlic" Jennifer replied, having asked. "Tomorrow we get something called qulwa that has meat in it."

"Anything that is not a ration pack is fine by me" David said with conviction, digging in.

"Ration packs are very healthy and meet all dietary needs" Jennifer pointed out.

"They just forgot to add flavour" Frederick observed, 'and texture."

"And flavour" David added.

"I already said flavour" Frederick responded, rolling his eyes.

"It needed repeating for emphasis."

"Why is the table round, not rectangular like normal?" one of the other kits, Henry, asked.

"I guess because of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" Frederick theorised. "His castle was called Camelot so Camelot Command gets round tables" he said, recalling the bedtime stories they had been read while they were little about the days of yore when valiant knights in armour did battle against each other in honourable single combat.

"That was my assumption too, and someone deleted the database here so we can't check if we're right" a woman interjected.

The kits looked around and found an older woman, maybe ilKhan Kerensky's age, stood there. She was wearing an SLDF duty uniform which hardly made her stand out, but her rank insignia certainly did.

"Attention on deck!" Jennifer ordered, the kits of Sibling Company Gamma dropping their spoons onto their trays and getting off their chairs, snapping to attention.

Jenna Romanov couldn't help but smile at the sight of a bunch of ten-year-olds, all of them wearing the smallest jumpsuits anyone could find for them, sleeves and trouser legs rolled up to make them fit as best they could, reacting like trained soldiers.

"At ease" Romanov told them. "I thought I should introduce myself to the newest additions to my command" she said. "Major-General Jenna Romanov, 295th Battlemech Division, Acting Commander Eleventh Army."

"We know who you are Ma'am" Jennifer responded for the group. "Khan Hallis explained the situation to us aboard the Zughoffer Weir" she said. "The Sibcadets of Sibling Company Gamma stands ready to serve the Star League Defence Force in any capacity you require" the girl announced formally.

Having been raised on stories of the SLDF fighting Amaris, not just mythologised tales of times of old when knights were bold, Sarah and the other kits had adjusted quickly to the notion that the person in charge now was not actually a member of the clan. After all, Jenna Romanov had led her division into battle against the usurper alongside James McEvedy and his 331st, it was the Eleventh Army they both belonged to that took Apollo, the capital world of the Rim Worlds Republic, and they both went on to rid Terra of the foul stench of Amaris.

"At the moment I just require you to finish your meal, so all of you please sit back down" Romanov told them, amused by just how serious they all were.

Jennifer and the others complied and reached for their spoons again to resume eating.

"Are we going to go back and fight the clans soon General, quiaff?" Frederick asked. "I have both mechwarrior and aerospace fighter pilot genes, so I do not mind which you want to put me in" he added.

Romanov chuckled. "Probably best if you're big enough to reach the controls first before we think about sending you to take on Nicholas Kerensky, don't you think?" she asked rhetorically, hoping she didn't sound patronising.

Frederick thought about that and had to admit the woman made a valid point. "Aff" he conceded reluctantly.

"You have got to be General Hallis's son" Romanov decided, taking a good look at him.

"Yes, but also no" Frederick replied. "I mean I am not really his son, I am more like his clone, but again not really" he said, failing to clear up the matter. "The majority of my genes came from Khan Hallis, not that he was a Khan then, or even a saKhan yet."

"My genefather was Dwight Robertson" David spoke up. "He was saKhan before Franklin Hallis."

"And my genemother was Sarah McEvedy" Jennifer told the general. "She was Khan before Franklin Hallis."

"He got promoted fast because back-stabbing clanner ****** kept murdering us" Frederick growled. "They talk about honour but then they bring King Crab assault mechs to what should have been a fair fight, or they nuke your city, lying that you did it to yourself, and then frame you for nuking another city knowing that it was an accident and one of their nukes that did it."

"Bastards" David concurred. He still vividly remembered how he felt when Star Captain Francis took him to one side and told him of Dwight Robertson's death just before he told the others. It wasn't just that the Widowmakers had brought assaults to fight the heavies that saKhan Robertson and Khan McEvedy were using, that was simply cowardly, but they had also broken the rules of engagement by both attacking the Robertson's Black Knight together to knock him out of the fight before then ganging up on McEvedy. It was supposed to be a pair of one-on-one duels, formal ritual combat practiced according to the ilKhan's rules, and even Khan McEvedy who thought applying those rules to an actual battle was pretty stupid still followed them for Trials.

"They will get what is coming to them" Jennifer declared. "Did you know that ilKhan Kerensky had every member of our warrior caste who surrendered summarily executed and every one of our civilian castes who did not escape chemically sterilised?" she asked rhetorically. As the last Clan Wolverine ship to escape, Yukon had still been deep inside clan territory when that order was sent out, which was why it had come as a blessed relief that the star-captain from the Ghost Bears they ran into on Liny while they were gathering supplies had been merciful enough to let them go. According to his orders he should have slaughtered them, but apparently even the ilKhan's commandments mattered less to him than having the deaths of children on his conscience did.

"So I've heard" Romanov replied, more than mildly disturbed by just how serious and intense the little girl was.

"Then you know why we are going to go back" Jennifer said coldly. "They sowed the wind and they are going to reap the whirlwind" she added, deliberately invoking what her gene-mother had told the other Khans was going to happen.

The other children nodded solemnly before one of them suddenly smiled at she had a bright idea. "We should design a new mech called the Whirlwind, quiaff?" she suggested.

"Neg. There is already a class of destroyer called that" Frederick pointed out. "Badger is a Whirlwind."

"So? There is a type of tank called a Fury and a type of dropship that is called a Fury too, but nobody gets them confused" the girl, Katrina, countered. "It is not like anyone is going to think you are talking about the warship when you say that there is a lance of Whirlwinds on the way to reinforce the line, quiaff?"

"Aff, I suppose" Frederick reluctantly conceded the point.

"Maybe you could all brainstorm what you think a Whirlwind mech should be like" Romanov suggested, thinking it might be a good activity to keep them busy.

"And then give the ideas to the Scientist and Technician castes you mean?" David reasoned. That was what the 'Great Father' Aleksandr Kerensky had done with the Atlas after all, came up with the design specifications and let the experts actually work out how to make a machine to meet them.

"There are no castes anymore. Khan Hallis told us that Khan McEvedy abolished them" Jennifer reminded him. "We are just supposed to call them scientists and technicians now."

"She changed other things too" Henry spoke up, frowning. "I do not know if I am happy that we are allowed to call ourselves by our blood-names without earning it."

"Perhaps we should ask permission from our gene-parents first at least, quiaff?" Henry suggested.

"Aff" Frederick agreed. "But that is easier for some of us than for others" he noted, looking to Jennifer and David.

"I will ask Khan Hallis if I can call myself Jennifer McEvedy" Jennifer decided.

David nodded. "And I will ask him if I can call myself David Robertson" he concurred.

"If he says no you could always call yourself David Robertsonson instead" Frederick joked, David finding it somewhere less amusing judging by the glare he directed at him.

Henry laughed however. "And if they ever use Dave's DNA to make a new Trueborn they could call him Davidson Robertsonson."

"I do not think we are supposed to say 'Trueborn' either because it makes us sound like we think we are better than other people" Jennifer noted. "Khan Hallis suggested we call ourselves 'Ironborn' instead, because of the Iron Wombs, but it was not an order."

"But we are better than other people are we not, quiaff?" Katrina responded. "We were genetically engineered to be."

"I think the problem is that 'True' implies some kind of moral, not physical superiority" Jennifer supposed, looking to General Romanov for confirmation.

"That's partially correct" Romanov told her carefully. "It's also that when people think they're better than other people then they can use that as a justification to mistreat them" she explained as best she could, trying not to overcomplicate it all given the age of the children. "It also divides a society because the people being looked down upon will be discontent and unhappy."

"Like the labourer caste in Clan Smoke Jaguar" Katrina realised. "Star Captain Francis said that the reason we did not need to use warriors to force our labourers to work like the Jaguars did was because their labourers hated their warriors, and ours did not."

"The other clans were stupid not to let people move between castes" Jennifer declared. "It only wasted talent and made the other castes feel less like members of the clan" she said. "Khan McEvedy was too smart for that."

"Yes, she was" Frederick agreed. "It is a pity that they gave you her looks but not her brains, quiaff?"

"NEG!" Jennifer responded angrily. "They gave me all her DNA that related to intelligence" she stated with utter certainty. "Take that back or face me in a Circle of Equals!" she challenged him angrily, glaring at the boy.

Frederick grinned. "I apologise, though my greater regret is that I did not save that jibe for when we spar because your anger would have surely caused you to act rashly and lose the bout" he said.

"The suggestion that you would win the bout regardless of how rash I was is by far the funniest thing you have said all week" Jennifer replied, smirking for a moment before sticking out her tongue at him.

The juxtaposition of their strangely formal speech patterns, they seemed to eschew normal contraction even more than the adult Wolverines, with the little girl sticking out her tongue at the little boy nearly caused Romanov to burst out laughing but she held it back. "I should go talk to Captain Francis and the Yukon crew" she told the children. "Nice to have met you all" she added.

"General Romanov" Jennifer responded, acknowledging her authority with a slight bow.

"Remember to try some of the fruit" Romanov remembered to tell them, pointing over to where another table seemed to be piled high with various types. "It's good for you, plenty of vitamins" she told them. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" she added something her mother always said.

"They are full of sugar though" Jennifer responded. "An apple a day keeps the dentist in pay" she countered the old saying impishly, looking pleased with herself.

"The lychees are worth brushing your teeth for, trust me" Romanov told the girl, smiling.

"Of course, we trust you, General" Jennifer replied seriously, the other kits of sibko Gamma nodding their agreement. "Although… what is a lychee?" she asked.

[Hotpoint]

Part XXI - Section 2 of 2

----------

Elsewhere in Camelot Command Franklin Hallis was looking at the bowl of fruit sat on his desk dubiously. At least nobody else had take over his quarters during his long absence from Camelot Command but he strongly suspected that Trish had been using his office because nothing was in the same place it had been before he set off to search for Yukon.

Trish herself was sat on the other side of the desk waiting to give him an update on what had been going on in his absence.

"Did you 'borrow' my stationary saKhan Ebon?" Hallis asked suspiciously. "I am certain that there used to be more pens in that pen holder" he told her.

"I have no idea what you are talking about, Khan Hallis" Trish replied sweetly.

Hallis narrowed his eyes at her and muttered something under his breath. "What is with the fruit basket?" he queried.

"I thought it might make for a nice homecoming present" Trish told him. "We had a big shipment in from Paran a couple of days ago."

"Paran? Were the rumours of an Avatar being there true?" Hallis asked.

"Affirmative" Trish confirmed. "It belongs, or maybe belonged to the Star League Expeditionary Brigade, one of their fleet of survey and exploration ships" she told him. "Most of the crew are the descendants of the original crew now, although there are apparently still a few old hands aboard keeping the thing running as best they can. Their jumpdrive slagged itself after jumping into Paran back in 2819, probably from going too long without being serviced, so they've been stuck there ever since."

"We made contact with them?" Hallis queried.

"Only incognito" Trish replied. "The Tramp we sent out told them they were investigating the rumour of them being there because they found an old cache of Star League Navy supplies they could not sell to anyone else. There's not really much of market for naval autocannon ammunition and the like if you don't want to deal directly with a Great House so I guess that sounded plausible."

"We traded them naval ordinance for alien fruit, query affirmative?" Hallis responded, raising his eyebrows.

"Aff, although we traded them some ammunition for a lot of fruit, and a dropship hold full of frozen fish as well" Trish replied. "And it's not alien fruit, they only grow Terran transplants on Paran."

"Except the bananas I've never seen fruit like this in my life" Hallis replied, taking another look at it.

"Those are lychees, those are starfruit, those are dragon fruit and those are mangosteens" Trish pointed to each in turn. "Paran is covered with tropical islands. We've got lots of coconuts and pineapples too, but they're not really fruit-bowl appropriate" she said. "There is breadfruit as well, but that's more of a staple you can use instead of rice or potatoes… or bread."

Hallis took another look at the basket of fruit, at least if they were of Terran origin they were probably not going to trigger the kinds of weird allergic reactions that alien foodstuffs sometimes did. "Did our people find out anything else?"

"They were smart enough to say that they found a load of old spare parts in the cache too and wondered if the crew of the Pioneer, that is the name of the Avatar by the way, were interested in anything on the list we made up to show them. That hopefully gave us some inkling of the state of the ship, it's far from a wreck but other than spares for weapon systems they were very interested in spares for manoeuvring thrusters and the station-keeping drive so those might need replacing. We also learned that there is some tension between them and the locals. Not exactly surprising given that Paran was part of the Rim Worlds Republic, having a warship belonging to the other side turning up on their doorstep was bound to ruffle some feathers."

Hallis nodded. "Do we know how screwed their K-F core is?"

"None of our people got to take a look first-hand, but they got the impression that back in the old days it would have been written off and completely replaced" Trish replied. "As in, cut the ship in half, yank the whole damn drive out, put in a new one and weld the ship back together" she said. "The last time that ship was in drydock Simon Cameron was still First Lord, and I would bet that the Expeditionary Brigade really put some miles on her even before the Star League collapsed."

"That is unfortunate" Hallis responded, sighing. "Getting hold of a Expeditionary Brigade ship might have come in really handy if we end up having to leave the Inner Sphere completely, and if it's true they're on bad terms with the natives it should not have been too hard to get them to tag along. We need to start thinking ahead, it's not like we can stay here forever."

Trish nodded. "We might have a lead on somewhere to go" she told him. "It is not technically in the Inner Sphere but it's only one jump out."

"Yeah?"

"Captain Mitchell from the Badger suggested we check out a colony that the Terran Hegemony placed just outside Marik space" Trish said. "The system is called Niops."

"Never heard of it."

"Seems like nobody has except Mitchell" Trish replied with a shrug. "He only knew where it was because way, way back when he was a navigation officer on a transport jumpship attached to XXXIV Corps and he used to unofficially run supplies to and from there."

"Unofficially?"

"From what he told us, the CO of XXXIV Corps, I think her name was Von Corvden or something, could not get all the logistical support she needed for her troops so she turned to unorthodox methods to get hold of them instead" Trish explained. "Some things were easier to get than others, she did a deal with the Illyrians for certain raw materials for example, but high-tech equipment, especially Hegemony high-tech equipment was trickier so she made arrangements with Niops."

"They're an industrial colony?" Hallis queried.

"No, they're a scientific research colony, astronomy and astrophysics, but they were established to be entirely self-sufficient with the ability to fix or replace any piece of equipment that went wrong" Trish told him. "According to Mitchell they could make anything you provided the blueprints for" she continued. "That's not hyperbole either, I mean anything" she said. "One of the things they turned out for Von Corvden was a replacement mobile HPG, and they made spares for her Royal mechs and aerospace fighters too."

"Those are restricted technologies" Hallis pointed out, doubtfully.

"Right, restricted to the Terran Hegemony only" Trish confirmed. "The thing is, because Niops was a Terran Hegemony colony Von Corvden figured she could get away with it without getting put up against a wall and shot" she continued. "Mitchell knows that SLDF High Command were told, but he thinks they turned a blind eye because technically XXXIV Corps wasn't breaking any laws and it stopped them bugging Terra for more supplies."

"Plausible I suppose" Hallis decided after thinking about it. "So why are we interested in the place?"

"Because not only has nobody in the entire fleet except Mitchell even heard of it, when we dug through every piece of news reporting we could get our hands on regarding the Great Succession War it is not mentioned once either" Trish replied. "There is an actually possibility that they were just so damn obscure and off the beaten track that Niops is the only Terran Hegemony colony that is still completely intact."

"If they were entirely self-sufficient they could have kept their heads down right through all the fighting you mean, query affirmative?"

"Aff" Trish responded, nodding. "Turned off their HPG and hoped like hell not to get noticed by anyone more dangerous than pirates" she said. "Pirates they could deal with easily enough, the SLDF provided them with a bunch of cast-off equipment to arm a local defence force."

"Worth checking out the place at least" Hallis decided.

"Romanov thought so too, she sent Mitchell off in a jumpship to go take a look not long after you set out to find Yukon but do not expect to see back anytime soon" Trish told him. "Niops is about thirty jumps from here, so even in an L-F Tramp it's quite the trip there and back."

"Thirty jumps? That's most of the way to the Magistracy!"

Trish grinned. "For anybody but us that would be a long journey, but compared to how far we travelled since we left Strana Mechty behind it is practically next door" she joked.

"Just as long as Mitchell doesn't die of old age before he gets back" Hallis remarked drily. "Any other news?"

"We have had some success in locating caches of SLDF equipment in and around the Lyran Commonwealth" Trish replied, nodding. "The ship we sent out to the old Finmark and Timbuktu provinces of the Rim Worlds Republic really raised the bar on that."

"Go on" Hallis requested.

"Well for a start they found a derelict Congress Class Frigate near Finmark, the James Sever" trish told him. "Not much worth salvaging on her but they had the bright idea to nudge it into a rapidly decaying orbit. All we have to do is paint new markings on the Rickenbacker, reset her IFF to squawk she is the SLS James Sever and we have another warship we don't have to hide away."

"That could be damn useful" Hallis responded, thinking about it. They already had the Cape Bon and Protecteur that they could risk being spotted without bringing the Clans running, but a congress class frigate had a larger cargo hold, and unlike the destroyers could also haul a couple of dropships with her. "It's not like we can send Yukon or Saratoga out without Old Nick blowing a gasket" he noted. "With or without fake accents" he added, grinning.

"Fake accents?" Trish asked, confused.

"Oh, you are in for a real treat when you get to listen to their communications with ComStar" Hallis told her, laughing. "I won't spoil it but Captain Meriño on Saratoga earned himself a commendation for comedy above and beyond the call of duty" he continued. "Also, we need to find him a sombrero."

Trish looked at him suspiciously for a moment, wondering if he was yanking her chain somehow, before dismissing it from her mind. "Okay, getting back to what I was saying, after they found the wreck of the James Sever they checked out the two supply depots we had records for, starting with the one near Vortalcoy."

"Any luck?"

"They found two companies worth of SLDF mechs there" Trish told him. "Not just junk either, pristine condition and nearly half of them were heavies or assaults, including a King Crab."

Hallis nodded, smiling. "That's a damn fine haul. Good thing we found them before some ****** pirate did out there" he said seriously. Much of the former Rim Worlds Republic had fallen to piracy and general lawlessness, due in no small part to the Lyrans annexing many of its most productive worlds and then actively making sure the others were prevented from recovering from the Amaris War. "What about the other depot?"

"The one at Rosetta? Not quite so good in terms of mechs, only a single company and the largest machines were a lance of Rifleman heavies" Trish replied. "Are you going to eat anything from that fruit basket?" she asked, changing subject. "Rude not to considering I put it together for you as a welcome home gift."

Hallis groaned, if he didn't at least eat something from there she would nag him about it. After weighing his options he chose the banana, mostly because he knew what it was.

Trish waited until he peeled the banana and took a bite before speaking again. "We also found a data core, nothing on it that we did not already know except for some missile research data concerning FTL LRM's."

Hallis chewed and swallowed. "Never did think much of Follow-The-Leader guided warheads" he told her. "When they work they're great, first missile hits and all the rest impact in the same place one after the other, but when they go wrong they all follow an LRM that missed so you do not hit with any of them."

"That is what the research is about. They were trying to fix that flaw" Trish told him.

"Did they?" Hallis asked hopefully. An FTL LRM system that always worked as intended would be a nightmare in a long-range firefight.

"No" Trish replied flatly.

"Crap" Hallis swore glumly, taking another large bite from his banana.

"Although we did also find four and a half thousand crates of Starfire Mark 2500 guided SRMs" Trish told him casually, having timed saying it for when he had a mouthful of fruit.

Franklin Hallis nearly spat out the chunk of banana but instead just managed to swallow it instead, in one piece, unchewed, triggering a minor coughing fit. "Headhunters?" he eventually managed to gasp out.

"Headhunters" Trish confirmed. "Thousands of them. We assume that they and the data core were transferred from a missile research facility somewhere in the Hegemony to keep them out of the hands of Amaris, and they eventually ended up at the depot on Rosetta."

Hallis stared at her, mind still catching up. "Do you have any idea what those things can do?" he asked rhetorically.

"Hopefully exactly what it says they do on the booklet of instructions inside the crates" Trish replied, grinning. "Do not get your hopes up too high though, we took one apart and there is no chance we can reverse-engineer them to make more because the electronics inside are more advanced than our technicians have ever dreamed of" she cautioned, "but if we save them for a rainy day we have one hell of an ace up our sleeves."

"Mixed metaphor aside I would have to agree" Hallis concurred, mind abuzz with the ramifications of the find. The 'Headhunter' guidance system was not merely cutting-edge military technology, it was bleeding edge at least on a par with the AI systems that ran the Terran Hegemony's SDS network, if not beyond it.

Anecdotally the problem with the things was always that they were quite ludicrously expensive, to the point that even the Royal Divisions with their vast equipment budgets were many years away from getting hold of any when the Star League fell apart.

An Artemis IV guided SRM or LRM cost twice as much as a standard missile, which was bad enough, but a Headhunter SRM or LRM was expected to be at least five times as expensive as their Artemis IV brethren, and that would be after they were put into full production reducing the price per unit.

There was a good reason why all the old test footage of the Starfire Mark 2500 being fired against old mech targets showed them being launched singly, not as a volley. To say the pre-production missiles were literally worth their weight in germanium would be a massive underestimate of the reality.

The Starfire Mark 2500 was akin to the guided weapons of the twenty-first century, the time before ECM systems requiring wattages only a portable nuclear powerplant could provide rendered fire-and-forget weaponry, and many electronic targeting systems, obsolete. They earned the 'Headhunter' nickname because they were best employed for exactly that purpose, target them on the cockpit of an enemy battlemech and watch with glee as they hurtled across the battlefield and smashed straight into it with the intent of turning the man or woman inside into mush.

In furtherance of helping it achieve that noble goal the Starfire also carried a fancy new type of tandem-charge warhead, one that was extremely bad news for the ablative armours that battlemechs utilised because of the prevalence of direct-energy-weapons on modern battlefields.

"I guess after we've tested a few we will put the rest in a vault with a sigh on the door saying 'Open only in the event of Clanners' right Khan Hallis, query affirmative?" Trish suggested, grinning.

"Affirmative. Well, we sure-as-shit won't need them to guarantee a whupping for anyone else, saKhan Ebon" Hallis replied as a matter of certainty. The Great Houses of the Inner Sphere couldn't even make NARC beacons anymore, to them an M2500 would be like some kind of dark sorcery practiced by evil wizards.

Trish reached for a lychee. "It is a pity they could not get their solution to the problem with the Follow-The-Leader missiles to work" she said. "I will have to tip my hat to whoever had the bright idea though."

"What was it?" Hallis queried.

"Fire a modified Headhunter LRM first and get the much cheaper FTL LRM missiles to follow that" Trish told him, nibbling at the small fruit.

Hallis blinked. "Oh, we are definitely going to be taking another look at that project if we ever get the chance to throw money and resources at R&D" he stated firmly.

"Thought you might like it" Trish replied, reaching for another lychee.



----------

Note from the Author:

Thanks to escaping the Clan Homeworlds aboard Yukon (the last Wolverine vessel to make it) the kits of Sibling Company Gamma are still a great deal more 'clanner' than the rest of the Wolverines at this point (they always will be to some extend given their history but it is particularly noticable in 2826 when they reunite with everyone else. They're only ten years old, having been born, or decanted, in 2816 so very much still children, but they're hardly normal kids. The Clans were still making it up as the went along this early so the crèche and sibko arrangements are not what they were later.

Paran VI was a breadbasket world for the Rim Worlds Republic, a little hotter than Terra and known for its islands. Tropical fruit seemed like something they might be growing in abundance, as well as having a large scale fisteries industry. The crew of the Star League Expeditionary Brigade ship Pioneer who ended up stuck on Paran when their jumpdrive failed there in 2819 were not well liked by the locals when they first arrrived. Relations improved immensely however in 2830 when the people of the Paran system learned how useful it was to have an Avatar Class Heavy Cruiser backing them up when a load of pirates jumped in and found themselves a tiny bit ougunned (the jumpdrive on Pioneer might not work but her weaponry still did).

When she found herself placed in charge of XXXIV Corps in 2764 Major-General Lijsbeth van Coevorden solved her supply issues creatively, including trading with Niops the closest advanced Terran Hegemony colony to where her Corps her based on the periphery edge of the Free Worlds League. SLDF High Command turned a blind eye to these unofficial, and unauthorised, schemes for whatever reason.

The two companies of mechs they found in an old Star league depot near Vortalcoy are the ones that Hopper Morrison would have found in canon in 3032. The other depot, SLD-601 on Rosetta would have been found by Hansen's Roughriders in 3028 but mostly because of unfortunate timing they never managed to secure the small number of mechs found there, the datacore present, or the thousands of Starfire Mark 2500 Headhunter missiles left in the depot. My assumption for why the SLDF didn't quickly mulch the RWR Army with Headhunter missiles during the Amaris War was that they were so advanced (and expensive) that they barely had any (the ones of Rosetta might have been the large majority existing and were intended for scale-scale testing when the coup started).

Another late Star League missile type was the Follow-The-Leader (or FTL) that worked either really well, or really badly, depending on whether the 'leader' was going the right way. I couldn't help but think that a more reliable 'leader' in the form of a Headhunter would make the things live up to their potential.

[Daryk]

Well found!  I'm sure Niops will be able to do SOMETHING with those... ;D

[mikecj]

I was wondering what a Faster-than-light missile might be used for... then I read the next sentence.

[Brother Jim]

Nice !!!

Yeah, I kept thinking "Faster Than Light" too.

[Daryk]

ALWAYS read the next sentence (/paragraph/chapter/etc.)... ;)

[Vizzer]

I was wondering what the minimum safe distance for an FTL missile would be & if it's measured in AU?

[Hotpoint]

Part XXII - Section 1 of 2

----------

"You can easily spot someone from Niops when they're visiting Alphard, it's so much brighter than what they're used to that they always wear sunglasses. If they're from Frobisher instead they're wearing really big sunglasses."

Lieutenant-Colonel Karin Kumar - 2840CE

----------

Association Council Building – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2832

High Associator Giles Olson stared across his desk at the naval officer. "I'm sorry" he interrupted. "Can you run that by me again?" he requested of Admiral Bremman and the younger female naval officer wearing the rank insignia of a ship's captain stood next to him.

"As you wish, Sir" the younger officer began again. "We took a direct route to Ballad in the Magistracy as planned, it's a regional capital so it was thought it would be a good place to try and get our hands on the equipment we were after" she said, "but after we made contact with the local office of Magistracy Metals and Manufacturing, telling them we were from an old Terran Hegemony scientific colony looking to trade, they seemed really confused because usually we deal directly with the Head Office on Canopus, and they also wanted to know since when did we have a Star Lord class jumpship"

"At this point everyone was probably confused, needless to say" Bremman interjected.

"Right" the captain agreed. "So, we soon realised that they thought we were someone else entirely, and eventually upon further investigation we found out that another Terran Hegemony colony where the Star League had placed a scientific research station had been making supply runs to the Magistracy for the last few years."

"Can you get back to the fish people already!" Olson insisted. Why the hell was it always Bremman and his minions that turned up the most implausible stuff out there anyway, he wanted to know?

"I'm getting there, Sir" the captain told him. "We do the deal, we've brought back some mining equipment, a couple of electric arc furnaces and some industrial mechs incidentally, and after asking some more questions we are able to find out a little more about this other colony, specifically where it was and its name, Frobisher. Turns out it's not going to take us too far out of our way to return to Niops via there, it's almost precisely ten jumps rimward of us, so on my own initiative I decide that under the circumstances we should probably go take a look."

"And this is where you met the fish people?" Olson said slowly.

"Eventually Sir. First, we had to deal with the problem that when we jumped in and made radio contact the authorities on Frobisher thought we were pirates, and it took me a couple of days to convince them that we weren't before they gave us permission to land."

"To be fair introducing yourself as 'Captain Blood' probably raised some suspicions Anne" Bremman observed, trying to keep a straight face.

"It's Blüd, not 'Blood' Sir, as you well know, and it's not my fault that when Khan Hallis said we should start using family surnames again that was mine" the woman replied defensively, this was far, far from the last time anyone had intimated that which a name like hers she should have really opted for the buccaneer's life. "Anyhow, once we set down on this island where they have their landing pads, and they seemed satisfied that we were who we said we were, they seemed very happy to see us."

"The fish people?" Olson said once again, dearly wanting them to get to the damn point.

"We didn't meet any of them at first, only a few of the scientists and a couple of security people" the inconveniently named Captain Anne Blüd of the transport jumpship Michael Cameron replied. "It turned out that the Star League, or rather the Hegemony, established a colony on Frobisher back in the 2690's, a few years before they colonised Niops, and built a massive research facility there, mostly underwater."

Olson narrowed his eyes "To make fish people" he said flatly.

"Yes Sir" Blüd finally confirmed. "Someone back on Terra, someone with enough seniority to get the project funded and approved, had the bright idea that since so many habitable worlds were more sea than they were land then why not genetically engineer a race of amphibious human beings" she said. "With gills, and webbed hands and feet to better suit the environment."

"Christ" Olson exclaimed, burying his head in his hands.

"Yeah, they've got some serious Island of Doctor Moreau shit going on down there, Sir" Blüd agreed wholeheartedly with the High Associator's reaction.

"And they did it? I mean they actually got it to work?" Olson asked incredulously, raising his head once more.

"They did, although when the Star League collapsed the project went all to hell because they couldn't get replacement parts for all their fancy scientific gear anymore" Blüd told him. "They could still trade with the Magistracy for certain things, but not the high-tech Hegemony equipment the project needed to keep running as it had been. They've been doing their best to keep as much of it operational as they could but it's been half-a-century and the Hegemony did not see fit to give them their own Project Workshops."

"My guess is that Terra wanted to keep them on a leash by keeping them dependent on the Hegemony for replacement parts" Bremman correctly theorised.

That seemed plausible enough, Olson decided. It was quite telling that trusting a bunch of people with doctorates in physics on Niops with the ability to manufacture their own nuclear weapons was considered reasonable, but the geneticists on Frobisher needed to be handled with care. "And you've seen these, fish people, first hand?" he asked Blüd doubtfully, still finding it all more than a little hard to accept.

"Yeah, they all seemed nice enough, the ones I got to meet. They're really no different than most other people in terms of intelligence or personality wise, you just need to get used to them looking a bit funny" Blüd replied. "It's the eyes mostly, they're a little larger than normal, gives them more of an uncanny valley look than the webbed hands and bald heads do actually."

"Bald heads?"

"Only body hair they still have are eyebrows and eyelashes, and the hairs up their nose too I guess" Blüd told him. "Their hands are only webbed to the first knuckle so that's not nearly as immediately noticeable as the eyes" she said. "They could swim better if the webbing went to the second knuckle, or all the way to the end, but it would mess with their ability to use tools, or say type properly, so the scientists compromised on that."

Olson frowned. "How exactly do these fish people feel about being the product of some madman's vision?" he asked.

"The test subjects didn't seem to have any problems with it to be honest, though if I was born with gills, and there were thousands of other people with gills around, I probably wouldn't think it was all that weird either" Blüd replied. "It's not like they're treated like lab rats or anything by the scientists, they're free to come and go as they please, although most of them live and work at the research station."

"I assume this is paid work and not forced labour of some kind" Olson wanted to know. "If this is a Terran Hegemony colony then I will countenance no slavery under the Cameron Star" he firmly declared.

"A mix of paid work and voluntary labour" Blüd told him. "Most of the support staff and technicians are genengineered humans, and have been for a couple of generations now. You might be surprised how similar the society is to here, I mean here before the Capellans and then ourselves turned up anyway, Hegemony cultural norms. Just with the majority of the population being, well, amphibious."

"Hegemony cultural norms you say" Olson queried.

"Yeah, so, to give you an example I was shown an elementary school and I swear they were using the exact same textbooks I've seen my niece reading for homework" Blüd told him.

"Did you introduce yourself to the kids?" Bremman asked.

"Yes Sir" Blüd replied.

Bremman smiled knowingly. "Did they ask if you were a pirate?"

"Yes Sir" Captain Blüd confirmed with a pained expression.

Olson pursed his lips. "I've got to ask. Did you take any photographs of these, ahem 'people', by any chance?" he inquired, more than a little curious to see one for himself.

"No, but I did bring one of them back here. Or rather I brought her parents here and she insisted on tagging along" Blüd replied. "The director of the research station is hoping that Niops is going to be able to help them out with new equipment, so he dispatched his deputy and her husband to come talk to you."

"You brought a fish person here, to Niops?!" Olson exclaimed, eyes widening.

"No Sir, I brought an administrator and her husband, who's a genetic engineer by the way, to Niops and their teenage daughter came with them" Blüd replied. "She's adopted incidentally, they don't have the gills but she does" she said. "They don't like being call 'fish people' though, just thought I should warn you."

"What do they like being called?"

"People" Captain Blüd replied. "Or Homo Sapiens Amphibia, if you want to get technical about it" she said. "One word of warning, it's best not to call them mermaids, particularly the men among them, one of my crew nearly got slugged for repeatedly doing that."

"The deputy director and her family are currently being detained, politely, at the spaceport" Bremman informed the High Associator, swiftly changing the subject. "For security reasons we were loath to bring them to the capital but that's your call, Sir" he added.

"If they weren't Terran citizens I wouldn't have brought them back, but they are, and the scientists on Frobisher are offering something in return for us fixing their equipment Sir" Blüd said. "They say with their gear running properly again, and the right funding, they can reproduce Hegemony anti-agathic gene-therapy treatments and help out with biosciences in general. I know that's not exactly our strength, at least not compared to physics and chemistry."

"Frankly, compared to making people with gills, extending lifespans has got to be a breeze" Bremman wryly observed. "I think I can safely say that Frobisher is leagues ahead of us when it comes to genetic engineering, and there are definite military applications as well as civilian ones to that kind of technology."

Blüd nodded. "There's something else too, something I didn't talk to them about, there aren't enough of the bioengineered humans to sustain a stable population. They've had trouble achieving high enough birth rates for that, but they don't have Iron Womb technology like we do" she said, knowingly.

"You think we should help them make more of these… people?" Olson asked, surprised.

"Not a decision for the military to make Sir, although I can't help but think that the SLDF's CAAN Regiments would have given their right arms, or other body parts, for a few special forces teams that could breathe underwater" Bremman said, chuckling at the notion. "I will say on a personal basis however that it sounds like the scientists on Frobisher skipped a few lectures on scientific ethics at university, so the galaxy at large might be better off if they weren't entirely self-governing regardless."

Olson frowned. "Annex them you mean?"

"Encourage them defer to a higher authority than their own conscience" Bremman suggested diplomatically. "I'm not totally convinced that their moral compass reliably points north, so some assistance with navigation may be advised."

"They all seemed very nice, they just seemed to have a blind-spot when it came to human experimentation" Captain Blüd observed with a shrug.

Giles Olson looked at them both askance. "You do realise that what you Wolverine people did to your sibko kids was human experimentation too, right?" he asked rhetorically. "He who is without sin, etc."

Admiral Bremman and Captain Blüd looked at each other. "It's not exactly the same thing" Bremman said eventually.

"Of course it isn't" Olson responded sardonically. "Okay, I guess I'll go there and meet them at the port. Make a decision on whether or not to allow them into the capital based on how the meeting goes" he said. "Rather than hitch a ride in your own VTOL I'll take Bureaucrat One, her pilot probably needs the flight hours anyway."

"As you wish Sir" Bremman replied. "Do you want to bring your own security detail?"

"Given that there has to be at least a battalion's worth of soldiers and marines stationed at Goddard to protect me against a pen pusher, a scientist and a teenage girl I'll take my chances without them" Olson replied, chuckling. "You can ride with me Captain, fill me in on anything else I might need to know on the way."

"Of course, Sir" Blüd replied, snapping to attention.

Olson stood up. "Just one thing Admiral, if on their travels your people should ever find a lost Cameron heir, an advanced alien civilisation, the Ark of the Covenant or God forbid, the clone of Stefan Amaris, can you please keep it to yourself until after I retire from politics" he requested, tongue-in-cheek.

"You didn't see the memo I sent last year about recovering the Ark of the Covenant?" Bremman replied, feigning confusion.

"No. What did you do with it?" Olson asked, playing along.

"We have top men working on it right now" Bremman told him.

"Who?"

"Top men."

Blüd laughed. "I love that old film" she said. "I still think that the fourth one where he finds Atlantis was the best in the series though."

Olson nodded his agreement. "You know, technically Captain you just found a lost underwater city belonging to a fallen civilisation" he pointed out, smiling.

"It wasn't really lost, the Magistracy knew about it even if we didn't" Blüd replied. "That said, if we're going to station some aerospace fighters there to protect them from pirate raiders we should definitely go with the Trident."

It was certainly appealing in the humorous sense, but after a little sober contemplation Olson decided that it might lead to a diplomatic incident due to cultural sensitivity.

[Hotpoint]

Part XXII - Section 2 of 2

----------

Three quarters of an hour later Olson found himself knocking on a door inside a small office building on the outskirts of Robert H. Goddard Spaceport. There were a pair of SLDF marines stood guard outside the room and they had snapped to attention when he approached, one of them opening the door for him after he knocked, stepping to one side so he could enter. "No need to follow me in" he told the marines who looked like they weren't sure if they should or not.

"As you wish, Sir" the more senior marine, a sergeant, replied. The sergeant hoping like hell that the weird looking kid in there wasn't going to go nuts and assault the High Associator, because if he got hurt the non-com would surely get the blame.

At least the military hadn't stuck their guests into a cell, being nice enough to place them in a break room with comfortable furniture and some drinks machines instead, and Olson put on his best politician's smile as he entered. "Administrator Johanson?" he addressed the woman slumped on one of the chairs. She looked to be in late middle-age like himself, but if Hegemony born she could actually be decades older than the Niops-born Olson.

"Yes?" the woman responded quizzically, looking at the man wearing the expensive, well-tailored suit who had just walked in.

"Giles Olson" the stranger introduced himself. "High Associator of the Niops Association and its Protectorate Systems."

Johanson sprang up from her chair in surprise. "Eleanor Johanson, Deputy Administrator of the Frobisher Research Colony" she introduced herself in turn. "We weren't expecting you to come to us" she told him awkwardly. "This is my husband, professor Doctor Ian Johanson PhD, and our daughter Philomena" she introduced her companions.

"A pleasure" Olson said, shaking hands with the administrator first, then her husband and finally the girl, grateful that he was so practiced at maintaining a warm smile regardless of his personal feelings. The girl didn't look quite how he had expected, the bald head certainly did, albeit looking incongruous on a teenage girl, but her eyes were something else. Weirdly they were smaller than he had imagined, less cartoonish, but they were certainly larger than those of a regular human and were, to risk a pun, eye-catching.

They just made her face look a bit, well, wrong. Uncannily so, Olson decided, not letting his reaction show on his face at all. in much the same way as he did if encountering a particularly deranged weirdo on the streets with a political axe to grind.

"Sorry that you weren't transported to the capital to meet me in my office" Olson apologised to Eleanor Johanson, "but if you weren't Terran citizens from a Hegemony Colony you wouldn't have gotten any further than our Zenith point, and we would have had to chat via video-link" he told her.

"Yes, Captain Blüd explained your, understandable, isolationist and secretive ways" the administrator replied.

"Secret, in the sense of it being an open secret that we don't want to risk letting the Great Houses know any more about the Niops Systems than they have to, including the locations of our military installations and industrial sites" Olson observed. "I assume that you are well aware of what happened to practically every other Hegemony colony that possessed something worth fighting over, or simply destroying to keep it out of the hands of one of the others?"

"We are, my family originally came from Lone Star" Eleanor Johanson replied, "while some of my husband's people lived on Inglesmond" she added.

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry for you both" Olson commiserated. "Some of my family on my mother's side were from Haddings" he told them. "I should have cousins there, but I strongly doubt that I do" he said sadly. "The decision of my predecessors as High Associator to maintain a strict isolation seems to have been a correct one given the course of wider events, it has only been in the last few years that we started to look outside our own system and become involved elsewhere."

"If it's not a secret, may I ask why you changed your policy?" Ian Johanson asked out of curiosity.

"Because we are far more heavily armed than we used to be, and the Great Houses are considerably weaker" Olson replied. "After the fall of the Star League we inherited quite a number of SLDF units, thanks to our prior ties with them as a source of resupply out here in the periphery, and since then we have invested considerable money and resources into expanding our military-industrial base" he said. "To be perfectly frank if the Free Worlds League, or anyone else, turns up at our doorstep these days looking to make mischief then they had better all be wearing factor five-thousand sunblock because a great number of physicists and nuclear chemists, plus plenty of military hardware to study and the time to do so, results in a very impressive nuclear stockpile."

"And they'll assume you won't be shy in using them after what happened to the other Terran Hegemony colonies" Eleanor Johanson surmised.

Olson nodded. "I suspect that if the Marik's ever poke their nose into our affairs then a mention of what they did to New Dallas, and our…" he paused, "…feelings about that, in conjunction with some unsubtle sabre-rattling, will at least give them pause for thought."

"And if they think you're bluffing?"

"Then they find out the hard way that we're not" Olson stated firmly. "Fortunately, we have ways to make them reconsider short of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange" he said. "There aren't many periphery nations that can dispatch a couple of warships to raise hell, but we can."

"Warships?" Ian Johanson responded with a gasp of surprise.

"Yes" Olson confirmed. At some point soon the Inner Sphere would find out that the 295th ended up on Niops, even if the presence of the 331st as well would be kept firmly under wraps, and the records would show that the 295th had warships with them when they disappeared, so he wasn't revealing anything they planned on keeping secret in the long term. "With the navies of the Great Houses tied up hammering each other again, our analysts consider it unlikely they're in a position to send enough ordnance our way to simply sweep us aside. If they try and grab Niops for themselves with anything less than a full-scale invasion right now then they'll draw back a bloody stump."

"That's a rather, graphic, mental image" the administrator responded, looking to her daughter who seemed rather less than perturbed.

"My apologies, too much time spent talking to those of a military persuasion perhaps" Olson replied. "I doubt back in my younger days working in the field of radio astronomy I would have phrased myself quite the way I do now."

"You were a radio astronomer?" Ian Johanson queried.

"According to my own PhD yes" Olson replied, "although to be honest I was never at the top of my field" he continued, smiling. "My wife convinced me that it would be easier to win an election than it ever would be to obtain tenure at the university, so I turned my back on academia and went into politics" he said. "But enough about me, I believe your intention in travelling to our corner of space was to request technical assistance with some of your scientific apparatus?"

Eleanor nodded. "We've been able to keep most of it operational until recently but a lack of advanced domestic production capability, and our inability to get hold of spare parts elsewhere, means that much of our equipment is doomed to eventual failure" she said. "Frankly the situation is grave because we need that equipment to keep Homo Sapiens Amphibia genetically stable."

"We're not genetically stable and we're in danger of becoming inbred because there's not enough of us" the girl, Philomena, spoke up, sounding surprisingly blasé about it.

"Inbred is an exaggeration, at least so far" Ian Johanson responded. "Despite low birth rates we're still above the Minimum Viable Population threshold, if below the optimum number to prevent unwanted recessive genes rearing their ugly heads every few generations, so as long as we can deal with random mutations we should be fine" he said. "Without our equipment however, problems are likely to cascade in the long term. If we can't keep control of the extra genes we spliced in it's possible we might overshoot our goal."

"Overshoot how?" Olson queried.

"We'll end up more fish than human" Philomena said wryly. "It doesn't help that pretty soon we'll all be cousins."

"Could be worse" Olson remarked. "We've run across isolated colonies out here where the population is so inbred the greetings cards say 'Happy Birthday Uncle Dad' and the family tree is a telegraph pole" he joked, trying to get a laugh out of her.

The girl didn't laugh but she did at least grin. "Do they have webbed hands and feet too?" she asked holding one of hers up, fingers splayed to show him.

"No, but at least you've got the right number of fingers and thumbs which is more than I can say of a few of them" Olson replied. "Great banjo players though thanks to the extra digits" he joked again before turning back to Eleanor. "I certainly can't promise we can help you out with your technical difficulties, for one thing until our engineers can take a look we'll have no idea if it's something our Project Workshops can replicate, but I will say that historically there has proven to be precious little our experts can't copy or fix so feel free to be optimistic" he said.

"You'll help us?" the administrator responded, surprised.

"If we can" Olson told her. "You're a Hegemony colony, that makes you our responsibility. You're not even the first other than ourselves we've encountered. We already have people working on Comstock and Francas to get them back on their feet."

Eleanor frowned. "I've never heard of those worlds" she admitted.

"Don't worry, neither had we until we tripped over them" Olson replied, smiling. "They're about three jumps rimward from here, Francas was established to farm cattle and other livestock, Comstock was a low-tech industrial colony. Believe it or not they mainly made footwear."

"Footware?"

"Initially boots for the SLDF, it was a big military contract that got them started, but when we ran across them we found warehouses full of all sorts of shoes" Olson told them. "Of course, when the Star League fell they found they couldn't sell them, and they certainly couldn't eat them, so their society collapsed. Naturally we're making sure that their economy is going to be a lot more diversified in future although that is going to put some strain on our finances."

"Finances, yes" Eleanor said. "I assume that Captain Blüd mentioned our offer to assist you in recreating the anti-agathic treatments available on Terra in return for your assistance?" she asked. "That research will needed to be mostly funded by yourselves though, I'm afraid. Our own economy is tiny compared to yours."

"She mentioned it, I'm sure we can come to an arrangement there" Olson replied. "However, if you want us to assist with your population issues we're going to require a little something more from you."

"What?" the administrator replied, frowning.

"Acceptance of protectorate status and yielding authority over your diplomatic and interstellar trade agreements to ourselves" Olson explained.

"No, I meant what do you mean you can help out with our population issues?" Eleanor told him.

Olson crossed his arms. "Come with me, I've got a VTOL waiting outside to take us somewhere" he told them. "Trust me, it'll be worth the trip" he promised, giving them his most winning politician's smile.

Two hours later the Johanson family were stood in a research facility north of the capital staring at rows of unborn babies in their third trimester of development, all floating in tubes like they were some kind of macabre display, except they were all very much alive according to the monitoring equipment.

"What the hell is this?" Ian Johanson wanted to know.

"Artificial wombs able to carry a child from gestation to birth, or perhaps decanting might be a better word" Olson told them. The facility staff had been given fair warning he was coming there with guests so most of them were taking a break, although a couple were present towards the back of the room making sure everything was fine with the machines.

"Are they… clones?" Eleanor asked, more than a little taken aback by what she was seeing.

"No, these particular infants aren't even genetically engineered to any appreciable degree, think of it as artificial insemination except that the egg isn't inside the mother" Olson explained. "Our people do screen for genetic diseases of course, we're not nearly as advanced in the field as you seem to be but our scientists can fix things like that readily enough."

"How did you get hold of this technology? I'm not aware of the Hegemony working on anything like this" Ian Johanson asked, nonplussed.

"Military R&D project, a super-soldier program if you will" Olson replied, leaving out a great deal of superfluous detail. "Currently we're using them to help out members of our society that want children but for various reasons are unable to do so naturally."

"Super-soldiers? Really?" Eleanor responded dubiously.

"Honestly. Is it any harder to believe than people with gills?" Olson asked rhetorically. "I can probably arrange for you to meet a couple of them, the oldest is probably about your daughter's age" he said. "The program is on hiatus at the moment, our resources are overstretched as it is, but resources could be reallocated if we found ourselves faced with solving a problem such as your own."

"You want to create more Homo Sapiens Amphibia in these… what do you call them?" Ian Johanson asked.

"Iron Wombs, and the question is really whether you want to do that?" Olson replied. "It would surely assist with your issue of a stagnant population, and I doubt you're ever going to get a better offer from anyone else" he said flatly. "Cards on the table. Your expertise in genetic engineering is something that the Niops Association would dearly love to get hold of, bioscience is the one major scientific field that we probably don't lead the Inner Sphere in these days, but you still need us more than we need you and our conditions are far from onerous. Becoming a protectorate doesn't mean becoming a vassal, for the most part your domestic affairs are your own to decide."

Eleanor looked him in the eye. "In what way aren't they ours to decide under this arrangement?"

"We would expect you to govern yourself under the legal system of the Terran Hegemony, as we do so ourselves" Olson replied. "We expect you to have an elected government, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to a fair trial… the usual trappings of a liberal democracy" he explained. "Oh, and I'll warn you that if your webbed-fingered citizens are treated as some kind of lower caste then our surprisingly anti-authoritarian military will take a very dim view of it" he advised seriously.

"That's it?" Eleanor replied, raising her eyebrows.

Olson chuckled. "Did you expect I'd demand that you drop to one knee and swear allegiance to me as First Lord of the Star League?" he asked, smiling. "We're a democracy, a somewhat technocratic one admittedly, but we're not the Capellans or the Combine that want to control every aspect of our people's lives" he said. "I mean we're not as chaotic and disorganised as the Free Worlds League, but we're hardly some kind of centralised autocracy. Our long-term goal is to try and create a new Terran Hegemony out here, not a new Terran Alliance."

Ian Johanson stared at the High Associator. "A new Hegemony? Seriously?" he asked incredulously.

"Well, calling ourselves the Star League would be a little grandiose don't you think?" Olson replied, amused by their reaction to what he had just told them. "Look at it this way, we hang together or we hang separately. Eventually someone was going to look at worlds like ours with envious eyes, technology is already backsliding in the Inner Sphere which puts us at greater risk each and every day of looking like a very juicy target. All that Hegemony tech you have on Frobisher is going to be well worth invading you for, and I'm not just talking about your genetic engineering equipment, just the electronics from your other devices will soon be worth a fortune."

"You think?" Eleanor replied, frowning.

"Do you know how expensive basic mining robots are to buy now?" Olson asked rhetorically. "We've been mostly buying up broken ones and fixing them ourselves the last year because the trickle of new ones that Earthwerks are still turning out cost more than some battlemechs" he said, grimacing. "Inside of ten, twenty years at the outside, there's going to be a whole list of things that nobody in the Inner Sphere can make anymore. The only people that will still have technology that was common a century ago will be ourselves and ComStar, and ComStar won't be sharing."

"What makes you think so about ComStar?"

"Because they've been doing very nicely for themselves with their monopoly on Hyperpulse Generators and having the monopoly on other things only makes them stronger relative to everyone else" Olson replied. "If they can retain a mid-twenty-eighth century tech-base while everyone else is sliding back towards the Bronze Age it's only good for them."

"You're assuming ComStar think in those kinds of realpolitik terms" Eleanor replied, not completely convinced.

"Jerome Blake took control of Terra with eight divisions of SLDF troops, which would indicate he had a certain grasp of the way Great Power politics is done" Olson responded drily. "ComStar's altruism is a fig-leaf, they're playing their own game and seeking ways to enhance their power base. That's not an assumption on my part either, we've seen them playing the game ourselves" he said, recalling the concerning though hilarious 'Canada Tribe' incident. "All this talk about the nefarious scheming of the Telephone Company aside, we're offering by far the best deal you're going to get. As well as repairing your equipment I can have a full battalion of troops with battlemech and aerospace fighter support on the ground on Frobisher well before the end of the year to protect you from ne'er-do-wells and we can do something to help with your low birthrates too."

"Frankly this is all a little overwhelming. I'll need time to consider all of this" the Deputy Administrator replied honestly.

Olson smiled. "I'm sure you do. We'll find you somewhere to stay overnight at the spaceport while you think about it" he said as one of the staff poked their head into the room and coughed to attract attention. "Yes, what is it?" the High Associator queried of the interruption.

"My apologies Sir, but there are a couple of people here that were hoping to visit their unborn son" the staff member by the door told him. "Serving military officers" he added.

"Oh, okay let them in. We were just about finished here anyway" Olson replied.

Claire Donovan of the 295th Battlemech Division had not been expecting to run into the High Associator when visiting the facility with her husband, but they were both seasoned enough to snap to attention when they were directed into the chamber where the Iron Wombs were situated and found him there with a couple of strangers and a rather odd-looking teenage girl.

"At ease" Olson told them. "I think I've met you before" he addressed Claire.

"Yes Sir, you awarded me a special citation for my role in apprehending the war criminal Bernard Critchly" Claire replied, trying not to stare at the girl's eyes.

"Ah yes, you were the one that blew the bastards mech out from under him as I recall" Olson remembered. "Excuse my language in front of your daughter Eleanor but if there was ever a man that deserved to be called a bastard it was surely him."

"Critchly?" Ian Johanson repeated, "as in the man that slaughtered all those monks at the Vatican? I thought he was never caught?" he asked, confused.

"Oh, justice caught up with him eventually, in the form of a battlemech wearing Niops Association insignia" Olson told him. "You're visiting your son I'm told?" he asked Claire.

"Yes Sir, he's in the third cannister over. We never thought we would be able to have children but fate intervened I guess" Claire replied. "My husband fought on Algenib too, it helped bump us up the waiting list."

"That's wonderful, children are a blessing" Olson replied warmly, "you might not think so when they reach their teenage years though" he cautioned, smiling.

"Hopefully we'll have grandchildren before we're much past a hundred and twenty-five, be nice to see them grow up too" Claire replied, smiling back.

Olson nodded. "You know, with any luck, and with the assistance of our new friends here from Frobisher, your son there might still be alive a hundred and fifty years from now" he told Claire. "They're from another Hegemony research colony that specialised in genetic engineering."

"Really?" Claire responded in surprise.

"Don't worry, the eyes aren't compulsory" Philomena interjected having noticed them trying not to stare. She had gotten used to it travelling with the crew of the Michael Cameron and knew full-well how weird she looked to anyone not from Frobisher.

"Bringing back the Terran Hegemony one system and one technological miracle at a time" Olson declared proudly, deciding that might make for a decent election slogan when he ran again in 2835.



----------

Note from the Author:

Frobisher was another Terra Hegemony scientific research colony in the periphery but they were working in a very different field. The goal on Frobisher was to produce genetically-engineered humans that were amphbious and they actually managed that, although the fall of the Star League soon caused problems because they could no longer obtain the high-tech equipment required to keep going. The genes they spliced in weren't quite stable enough and needed repairing periodically, and the population was never high enough that inbreeding was not an issue (they seemed to be barely above Minimum Viable Population (MVP) and in canon they were basically utterly screwed by the late 31st Century.

It's still not too late for Frobisher in 2832 however, most of the equipment still works (the pirate raids by those looking for lostech aren't a big thing yet) and only a few of the scientists have left for the Magistracy of Canopus. Incidentally, since it's canon that some scientists from Frobisher did relocate to the Magistracy there must have been contact between them (either Frobisher had a jumpship or jumpships from the Magistracy went there). My supposition is that Frobisher was trading with the Magistracy for supplies and spare parts (spare parts that weren't Hegemony-only tech).

The SLDF had a few CAAN Regiments (Cavalry, Armored, Aerospace and Naval) that were mainly deployed on ocean planets. Frobisher seems like a place where one of those would be very handy (and the locals are pretty optimised to recruit for them).

As regards the fourth Indiana Jones movie being about Atlantis (not Crystal Skulls) the Battletech Universe diverged from ours in the 1980's (Reagan got the Strategic Defence Initiative, AKA 'Star Wars' operational in 1985 for example) so I thought a little nod to that was warranted.

We last saw the Donovan's in Part XIV, they never managed to have kids on Buffalo Meadows but thanks to the Iron Wombs they now have a son on the way. Claire had the luck to be the mechwarrior that brought down Critchly's Rampage which looks very good on her record.

Oh yeah, and with a name like that Captain Blüd really should have been a pirate.

[PsihoKekec]

The Indiana Jones series could also be rebooted at any time between 20th and 28th century. I would imagine once a holovids became popular many older franchises got rebooted. With Indy, after certain moneymakers that are the first three movies, they might have gone with the Fate of Atlantis scenario, as you really can't go wrong with nazis.   

"They all seemed very nice, they just seemed to have a blind-spot when it came to human experimentation" Captain Blüd observed with a shrug.

And Dracs are also nice people who have a blind-spot when it comes to human rights 

Also at least she is not a Colonel Blood, then it is ''lock ya crown jewels'' time.