Disclaimer
The usual applies. I don't own Mechwarrior or any of the trademarks just the characters and storyline. I would love comments from people as this is my first attempt to write Fanfiction. I will try to finish this as time goes on and would love comments from people and especially encouragement. I have chapter's 1 and 2 written and will update as and when I can. Thanks for reading this, if I seem ignorant it is because I know what I know from Fanfic and the MW 4 and Mercs games so any corrections would be appreciated.
The Other Side Of the Coin.
Part One - Roots
Stevens World – Mining Survey Area 43:
Mining Supervisor (Under the Powers That be) Phillips looked on at his mining survey computer which recorded the content of the rocks under which his mining crawler passed. For the fifth time that hour he glanced at his watch waiting for the last fifteen minutes of his shift to pass. Dully he glanced at the circle that appeared on the screen, then jerked awake. This was at least unexpected, unlooked for but very welcome. Platinum, one of the universe's most welcome sites, used for jewellery and contacts on the best electrical equipment, and in this area of the verse unknown. By the standard of seams it was small but as it was platinum, worth mining. In the last hours seams of half a dozen precious or usable minerals had been found but none in quantities worth the mining commercially. He dully logged the motherload with that name, Phillips Motherload would go down on all the maps and he would be remembered, even if his record would be blotched by the rebuke he would receive.
Stevens World – Serene Encampment:
Mayor (Under the Powers That be) Smith looked on at the resources that the planet had yielded and rubbed his hands together gleefully. The Platinum had sealed a good day. Large quantities of mech grade building materials, ceramic grade clay and the platinum, all good. As he planned the future exploitation of the planet he sat in the overstuffed leather chair and rubbed his hands together the radio next to him broke it's silence. "Mayor, please come in, this is radar Supervisor Connolly," came through. The Mayor tagged the transmit button and replied. "Mayor we have unscheduled space traffic, it's an Overlord Dropship and won't respond to hails." The mayor responded "Just keep trying and get a message through to the duty officer of the Militia on Brians' world and remind them of their responsibility to the Faithfully Content."
Before the militia would arrive there would be a 36 hour spree for the unnamed pirates and much of the portable wealth would be gone. Many of those who had chosen to leave such things behind on other planets would be dead, raped or mutilated. The lucky majority in all but the Serene Encampment would go to ground and just be discomfited. The only good fortune would lie in the fact that there just was not much to benefit from in the colony as most of the founders' cash was untouched and most of the Optimistic had not arrived.
Outlook:
Military Advisor Frederick 'Freddie' Cole sat and pondered the commission that he had taken. As he looked at the contract that had looked so good a week ago he realised that he had sighed up for something that was harder than it appeared. He had taken a lucrative long term contract to be the representative of the Optimistic on Outlook and to lay the seeds of a defence and mercenary force for Stevens' World. The problem was that it was a commission for a combined arms operation for which he had a budget of only 20 million c bills with the same or more each year depending on the success of mining operations. While this would always be a small budget growth could be fairly slow and organic as he had thought there was a clause he had overlooked the importance of. The force had to be able to stop pirate raider immediately. The growth had to be faster and an immediate required size was an issue, enough to cause Pirates to think twice, and as the value of the prize grew so did the reward for Pirates. Damnation this was going to need thinking on. Combined arms for 20 million, just not very possible, especially with the schooling and defence sides of the deal, perhaps this would require a rethink.
Freddie woke with a start and jerked up from his seat. He realised he was alone in the office and that his partner had gone for the day. Getting up he wandered over to water the potted plant. Looking down to water the plant his eyes fell upon the book his partner had open at his desk, Hannibal and his eventual defeat by the Romans. The page open was at the last battle that sealed Carthages' fate. It all relied upon allies defecting and learning to deal with Elephants without any to rival them. As he read on he got to Hannibals' attack and the Roman lines opened up to let the Elephants through. While the parallel between the Elephants and Battle mechs was apt there was not much there, battle mechs would not charge through spaces in the lines. Perhaps ancient battles or stories could help, his partner in the business Beth Manston always insisted that it could. The next book he picked up was about ancient Creat and the Minoan empire, although it was a fictional account, The Bull From the Sea. As Freddie flipped the pages he found an account of the acrobats jumping onto a bull's back, so as not to get gored by the thorns. Interesting, nimble acrobats could avoid the horns and get onto the back of the bull, but what if someone had given them a knife; they could stab the animal in the neck or wherever and kill it. Perhaps antimech troops and nimble attacks with vehicles could reduce the requirement to have mechs, you could get a lot of troops and vehicles for the same money as a few mechs, then there were advisors to help train and the combat command as well, what if they were the same thing? Hmmm, still not a lot of money to hire mercenaries in all the appropriate areas. He reached for the office communicator and called Beth, after a few seconds she picked up. Beth was not what you would call pretty, she was tall at 5' 11" and far more muscular than the average model would have been. Muscle was what the former commando turned tanker had in abundance and skills deadly skills at that but most deceptively she was bright. As she answered she swept her dark short Bobbed hair behind her ear. Beth raised an eyebrow and answered ?" in a particularly sarcastic manner. "Freddie, so you're awake now us normal people want to think of sleeping?" Freddie looked down and found that it was 10 o clock. "Oh sorry Beth didn't realise that it had got so late. I wanted to talk about the contract with the Optimistic. I was looking at it and for a combined arms and weaponry training and defence contract I am thinking that it might be a bit small on the budget side for mechs so I wanted to ask what you thought of making it just one lance of mechs and a more significant number of ground pounder and tread heads?" Beth scowled at the insult to her former profession and answered slowly "As they want combined arms it might work, I recall that they were mostly concerned about Pirates. Pirated cannot usually manage to get more than a lance or two so I say ok, what about the people though? How can we get all the equipment, training equipment and people?" Freddie smilled and answered, "Beth I was thinking what if the people could bring their own defence equipment initially and in the first budget we could just pay for the training equipment?" At that the smile dropped from Beth's face and she said with venom "you mean dirty mercs?" Freddie almost swore alound, he forgot that Beths former command was torn to pieces by Mercs who were supposedly on her side. "Beth there not all bad, you said yourself that there were some good ones. I was thinking of choosing carefully and then offering the contract to those units that were badly battered after honourable actions, sort of letting them have about 15 million C bills as a garrison and training contract while they re-build." To which Beth softened her expression and responded "Well I cannot think of any better offer, but you will need to get them cheap and small. Perhaps I could help choose the mercs that you offer the contracts to for the infantry and tankers. If we time our offers to units that are near combat ineffective that should help, a safe contract is just what they will want."