Star League Defense Force Repair & Refit Yard #83
Classified Star System (Clearance #21099954321)
Aboard the SLS Sybil Ludington, QFF-4197
Feb. 27, 2784
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Admiral Noriko Murakami floated into the Central Computer Core, a frown on her face. She pushed off against one of the handholds near the door, executing a maneuver designed to bring her to one of the terminal consoles in the center of the room. She sat down in the seat, buckled in, and began to type an alphanumeric sequence into the terminal console.
A disembodied, amused-sounding woman's voice chose this moment to announce, "Admiral, I am aware of your presence. There is no need to log onto a terminal, unless you are going to conduct a Priority One override of mission objectives."
The admiral's frown deepened. "Sybil..."
The voice spoke again, all traces of amusement gone. "I see. Awaiting override codes."
Murakami typed in another alphanumeric sequence, at which point "Sybil" spoke again.
"Priority One override codes accepted. Please state new mission objectives."
Clearing her throat, Admiral Murakami looked directly at the camera attached to her terminal. "Sybil, I have received an HPG message from SLDF High Command. The situation in the Inner Sphere has deteriorated badly - with the Cameron line gone, the Member States can't agree on who the new ruling family should be. Each member of the Council is trying to take over, with no consensus. They've ordered General Kerensky to step down, and are trying to gain control over whatever elements of the SLDF they can. All-out warfare between the Member States is imminent. The Montbatton will be departing for New Samarkand in four hours, where we will meet the rest of the fleet."
She paused for a moment, then continued, "Your orders are to maintain your operational status and remain in this system. You are to evade non-SLDF units, including those belonging to Member or Territorial States. If you are attacked by non-SLDF units, you are to take whatever level of force you deem necessary to protect yourself. This includes any attempts to board your vessel by unauthorized personnel. You are only to show yourself to SLDF units or personnel. I am not at all certain how long it will be before someone comes back for you. It might only be a few years, or it could be a few decades. This means that I cannot tell you who will come back for you, so you will accept the command authority of the highest-ranking SLDF officer in-system when we return. Do you have any questions?"
"Negative, Admiral. Your explanation of the situation, and your orders, are quite clear, and there is insufficient time to retrieve, install, and test my KF drive controller prior to the departure of the Montbatton, which will prevent me from entering hyperspace. I will carry out your orders to the best of my ability, and will remain here while matters in the Inner Sphere stabilize enough for the SLDF to return for me."
Murakami smiled, visibly relieved. "Very well, Sybil. I will be returning to the Montbatton immediately. Good luck."
She unfastened herself from the seat, pushed off the chair, and glided through the exit. Nearly everyone left aboard the ship had gathered in Sybil's boat bay, where they would depart with her for her battleship. She pondered the HPG message she'd received from General Kerensky. Exodus? She had her doubts. If worst came to worst, at least Sybil would provide a backup plan, in case she and her crew decided to come back and make the best of things in the Inner Sphere.
Twenty minutes later, as her shuttle departed the Sybil Ludington's boat bay, silence ruled the decks of the Congress class frigate. Lights throughout the ship began to shut down, as "Sybil", the A.I. that ran the ship through its enormous, sophisticated SAL9000 computer system, began to put the ship into power conservation mode.
CSV Galileo (Explorer Corps. JumpShip #92)
Uncharted Periphery System
June 15, 3068
Aboard the SLDS Cleseau (Leopard CV)
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One moment, Ensign John Morgan was sitting in his Sparrowhawk class aerospace fighter, recovering from the after-affects of the Galileo's hyperspace jump. It was standard operating procedures these days during jumps to have all the fighter jocks sitting in their birds, prepped to launch, just in case the damned Wobbies were sitting on the arrival side of the jump. So far, they'd been pretty lucky - the Galileo had been assigned to explore a pretty remote area, and hadn't run into any Blakists. So, when alarm klaxons went off all around him, and his radio crackled to life scant seconds after the JumpShip emerged from hyperspace, to say Morgan was a bit surprised would be a prime understatement. So much for a nice cushy mission.
"All fighters, prepare for launch. We have a Blakist Vincent class corvette out there, and it looks like she wants to play."
Yep, things were definitely beginning to suck - they were notably outgunned. Morgan rechecked the seals on his canopy, did one more glance over his checklist, then signaled the flight officer he was ready for launch. A moment later, the launch doors swung open, and his fighter was propelled out of the Cleseau.
Lt. M'bunga was already clear of the carrier, and was signaling for all fighters to form up on him. The plan was to try to hold off the Blakist Vincent's fighter squadron, while the Galileo quick-charged her drive to try to make an emergency jump. The Cleseau was beginning to separate from the JumpShip, and was making a burn towards the Vincent - she was going to try to keep the enemy corvette occupied while the Galileo, carrying the other DropShips, tried to escape.
Unfortunately, it didn't look like things were going to go according to plan. The Blakist corvette was ignoring the Cleseau, and making an end run on the Galileo. Her forward missile tubes were already launching Barracuda missiles, each of which massed 30 tons, the same as his fighter. They detonated on the foreward section of the Galileo, striking her command section. Followup barages from the ship's NAC/10s pretty much spelled the end of the Galileo, breaking her in two, and sending her attached DropShips spinning out of control. With that, she turned on the Cleseau, striking it with a full barrage from her guns. Even as lackluster a WarShip as the Vincent class corvettes were, they were still more than a match for the 1900 ton carrier DropShip, and the converted merchantmen the Galileo had been carrying.
The battle didn't last terribly long from that point, with the Blakists making short work of the Explorer Corps unit. One by one, the fighters in his squadron were destroyed, until Morgan and his Sparrowhawk were all that was left. No matter - it's not like they had anywhere to go, or were going to get any mercy from the damn Wobbies.
Morgan had pretty much resigned himself to his fate. He did a quick check to see what vector he would need to ram the fraggin' Vincent - he might be able to do some serious damage to it that way. His radio crackled to life one last time, as did his IFF transponder, suddenly indicating the presence of another SLDF unit in the area, as a remarkably calm female voice announced, "SLDF fighter SPH-314159, change vector to heading 310 mark 35, increase thrust to maximum. Assistance is on the way." Checking his radar display, Morgan saw the blip of what appeared to be a ship closing in at 2.5g of acceleration. The vector given to him by this mystery woman would put him on a rendezvouz course with...with...
Looking at his IFF transponder, he could hardly believe it. "SLS Sybil Ludington, QFF-4197, SLDF. What the hell? QFF? That'd make her a drone!" At the moment, the Sybil Ludington was roughly 800 km away from the Blakist Vincent, which, while a Congress had a couple capital missile tubes that could reach that far, meant she was still too far away from the Vincent still to really damage the Blakist corvette. He trained his cameras on the incoming WarShip to confirm that, indeed, a Congress class frigate in old SLDF colors was inbound. A second later, the ship fired what appeared to be a massive railgun at the smallerVincent striking it in the bow so hard it looked like it went nearly halfwaythrough the smaller WarShip.
With that, the Sybil Ludington made a rapid yaw to starboard, and fired an array of capital lasers and particle-beam weapons. This was especially confusing, considering that neither the SLDF nor the Clans mounted these weapons on the Congress hull. According to his battle computer, mixed batteries of capital-grade particle beam cannons and 45-cm naval lasers lashed out from the side of the Sybil Ludington, striking the Blakist corvette with frightening precision. The resulting explosion left little doubt to the fate of the Blakist crew. It was all over so fast, the Vincent hadn't even had time to fire.
Morgan's radio came to life again. "SLDF fighter SPH-314159, this is the SLS Sybil Ludington. Stand by to receive vectors for landing."
Star League Defense Force Repair & Refit Yard #83
Uncharted Periphery System
June 15, 3068
Aboard the SLS Sybil Ludington, QFF-4197
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Sybil was looking forward to meeting the pilot of SPH-314159. For the first time in 284.259 years, she was going to have an actual SLDF officer on board. This was certainly an improvement over her current situation.
However, the new situation, itself, was somewhat...confusing. In the 514,937 SLDF return scenarios she had simulated, none of them included a single SLDF DropShip being carried by a non-SLDF JumpShip, taking fire from a non-SLDF WarShip. This was not what she had been expecting.
As the fighter was making its final approach for landing, Sybil tried to formulate a hypothesis, while simultaneously directing SPH-314159 to a landing. First, there was the Vincent class that had attacked the SLDF DropShip. Its IFF transponder indicated the ship was the WBS Blake's Wrath, but listed the hull number for an old SLDF Vincent. However, the transponder's ID indicated the ship belonged to the Word of Blake.
The JumpShip, meanwhile, had carried an IFF code indicating it belonged to ComStar. The two spheroid DropShips, still spinning away, streaming air, had Draconis Combine registries. Sensors indicated that the G-loading on the DropShips was such that there was only a 14.27 percent chance of any survivors, while the quantity of lost atmosphere was high enough to decrease that to 0.43 percent odds.
SPH-314159 was now aboard, so Sybil delegated analysis of the battle and speculation as to its cause to several tertiary processing nodes, and turned her attention to the pilot of the SLDF fighter. Routing audio to the now pressurized fighter hangar, Sybil engaged her speech module again.
"Welcome aboard the SLS Sybil Ludington. I am Sybil, the ship's directing artificial intelligence, running SAL-9000 distributed supercomputer system. If you would be so kind as to identify yourself, so I can issue you security clearance, and you can assess me of the current situation, and advise me of my new orders."
To make an already unusual situation even more strange, Sybil's sensors were detecting changes in the pilot's vital signs, which indicated a rise in his fight-or-flight response. Her facial recognition subroutines indicated a mix of fear and confusion in the pilot's expression. She paused a full 48 milliseconds to assess the situation. Was the pilot not aware of her presence in the system? Could the SLDF have forgotten her?
The pilot's first words since boarding confirmed her growing suspicions. "OK, hey, wait a second. What the hell are you talking about?"
Sybil trained one of her security cameras on the young officer more closely before continuing - strange, his nametag and rank insignia were present, but he wore a conventional pressurizedflight suit, not an SLDF pilot's exoskeleton. "I believe I can explain to your satisfaction, but, before for security reasons, I need your full name, rank and SLDF identification number first."
The human looked confused for a moment, then responded, "Ensign John William Morgan, SLDF ID number FS214-12235-A57"
"Identification logged. Ensign, you are aboard the SLS Sybil Ludington, hull number QFF-4197. I am the ship's central computer, a SAL-9000 artificial intelligence control system. My programmers and test crew, however, simply called me 'Sybil'. In essence, the Sybil Ludington is my physical body, so that was fairly appropriate. I was ordered to remain in this system in 2784, by AdmiralNoriko Murakami, prior to her departure to rendezvous with the rest of the SLDF fleet aboard the SLS Montbatton. At the moment, all indicators are that you are the only surviving SLDF officer in this system. As per my last set of orders, I am now prepared to accept your command authority at this time. Welcome aboard, Captain."
Human emotional states were frequently evident from their facial expressions. Captain Morgan's expression was one of surprise and shock. His fighter's sensors should have made clear the condition of the other ships, so he had to have known he was the only survivor - while traumatic, that should not have been a surprise.
"I'm sorry, Captain. Were you not briefed on my existence prior to your arrival in this system?"
"What? Hell no, we weren't...wait. Only survivor? Nobody made it off the transports?"
"I'm afraid not, Captain. I indicate only a 0.43 percent chance of survivors on the two Draconis Combine transport DropShips. This is considerably higher than the odds for survivors from the CSV Galileo or the SLDS Cleseau. All of the aforementioned ships took severe damage from the WBS Blake's Wrath, yet no lifeboats or escape pods have been launched from any of the ships. Despite the low odds, I am prepared to maneuver to search for survivors at this time, though I lack a completemedical staff,and possess only minimalmedical supplies. Therefore, in the event of injured personnel, we will havea high degree of difficulty intreating them. Would you like me to set a course for the wreckage at this time, sir?"
Sybil's programming had, by necessity, included some knowledge of psychology. Based upon this knowledge, and the five years of interaction she had with humans prior to their departure centuries earlier, she surmised that giving her new commander a task to focus on would be valuable in assisting him in dealing with his current situation. This fit with her understanding of command principles and, while Ensign John Morgan was her new commanding officer, he was still a junior officer. He would most likely need her guidance, especially while settling into his new command. Besides, despite the low odds of success, searching for possible survivors was still the appropriate course of action.
Her assessment of the situation proved correct when he next spoke. "Very well. How far are we from the transports, and what is their rate of drift from the Galileo?"
"Approximately 648 kilometers, sir. The Galileo is separated from them by 18 kilometers at this point, and the two DropShips have a delta-v of 30 m/s. I can have you to the midpoint between the wrecks in six minutes, if you like, at 2 g burns."
"Go ahead. We'll check the Galileo first, make an initial sweep, then check theBara no Ryuand Sakurabana. I'll want to make an EVA to check the ships, so I'll need to know if you have an EVA suit or thruster pack compatible with my flight suit on board."
"I have three engineering suits on board, sir, as well as four SLDF pilot's exoskeletons. If you are not familiar with engineering suits, I would advise the latter, as it was designed to function in a manner nearly identical with obsolete flight suits such as yours."
"Obsolete? Wait just a...never mind. Go ahead and begin burn, and direct me to the pilot's exoskeletons."
Star League Defense Force Repair & Refit Yard #83
Uncharted Periphery System
June 15, 3068
Outside the DCS Cherry Blossom transport DropShip
Morgan's nerves were more than a little rattled. Here he was, conducting an EVA into the wreckage of a ship he'd been aboard not that long ago. Some compartments still appeared to be streaming air, as the damage to the hull in that section didn't appear to be all that severe. Hopefully, Sybil would be proven wrong, and he'd find someone alive onboard the shattered DropShip.
Speaking of which, "she" had deployed a number of repair drones, which she normally used to conduct repairs on her outer hull. These grappled the wayward DropShip, in an effort to get its spin under control. They'd already done the exact same thing aboard the Bara no Ryu, during their unsuccessful search for survivors aboard the shattered transport.
Unfortunately, that was beginning to look like theSakurabana would prove as fruitless as he soft-landed on her hull, and made his way to an emergency airlock. These emergency airlocks generally had their own power supplies, for situations where the ship lost main power. Despite this, the airlock appeared to be utterly devoid of power. Morgan used a combination of external handholds, electromagnetic plates on his boots, and even a brief thruster burst to move to the next emergency airlock, only to find that it, too, was unresponsive.
Time to find another way in. Morgan began to make his way towards the bow of the Sakurabana, where the DropShip had been attached to the JumpShip Galileo, before the larger, FTL-capable ship had been blown to pieces by the Blakist corvette.
On his way there, Morgan let his mind wander a bit to his current situation, and the 760,000 ton, sentient WarShip a mere kilometer behind him. It was certainly better than thinking about the mess the Galileo had been.
How the hell was he going to explain to Sybil that, having been reinstituted after nearly three centuries, the new Star League was already in its dying throes, having barely lasted a decade? Morgan and the other crewmembers of the Cleseau had only kept the SLDF identifiers because they didn't know what the hell else to do - they'd been caught out in the Periphery, the sparsely-populated area of space on the fringes of civilization, when word of the dissolution of the Star League, and resulting declaration of Jihad against civilization by the Word of Blake, had finally reached them, nearly three months after the fact.
A millennium ago, prior to mankind discovering a practical method of faster-than-light travel, mankind had fervently hoped to meet an alien civilization more advanced than their own, in the hopes that they could assist humanity through its rough growing pains. Unfortunately, while alien life did prove plentiful, intelligent alien life was pretty much nonexistent. The closest mankind had ever found was Neolopithacus, a primitive hominid, similar in many ways to the earliest humans, the Australopithecus. Rather than finding the ancient, advanced civilization to save them from themselves, and promise them the keys to peace and happiness, humanity ended up finding out they were the ancient advanced civilization.
Reaching the bow, Morgan found that the docking collar, where, like all DropShips, the Sakurabanaattached to an FTL-capable ship for trips to other star systems, was a mess, having failed completely when the Galileo had been destroyed. Fragments from the JumpShip had been propelled though into the docked DropShip, causing massive damage, and opening up the top few decks of the spherical transport ship to the harshness of space. As he walked he found numerous tears and rents in the outer hull of the Sakurabana, along with the frozen remnants of the ship's atmosphere, clinging to them like dried blood around an open wound.
Morgan slipped into the jagged opening, and keyed his microphone to transmit to Sybil. "Entering the ship now. Can you still hear me?"
"Affirmative, Captain. Reading you five by five. I am maneuvering repair drones to assist you, and to relay communications."
Morgan shuddered involuntarily, as the spindly,spider-like repair drone, which she'd referred to as a "Tachikoma"dropped into place alongside him. Just beyond that was a much larger, fully-automated K-1 Dropshuttle, modified to do external repair work. As valuable as they'd proven on the last two searches, he just wasn't quite used to the damned things yet.
Making his way fur her inside, Morgan began to travel "downward" towards the aft sections of the DropShip, looking for an intact section. It didn't look promising, however - he passed through the first two decks quickly, noting that all of their compartments had been breached, the bodies he encountered shattered, bloody wrecks.
It was nearly an hour before Morgan found a compartment that appeared to be intact, alongside a panel that still had power. Just like last time, opened a panel next to the hatch, and patched the repair drone into the ship's communications systems. Through her link to the drone and his emergency codes, Sybil was then able to do a compartment-by-compartment sweep of the intact areas, looking for survivors and listening for signs of heartbeat, respiration, or any other indicators of survivors.
Meanwhile, through the link, Morgan was able to tap into the loudspeaker system, and broadcast a message. "Anyone on this net, this is Ensign John Morgan from the Cleseau. If you can hear me, please respond." For good measure, he even banged on the hatchway with a hammer, then put his palm against it to feel for vibrations.
Nothing. Just like the last time. Nothing.
There was little to be done at that point. Morgan and Sybil tried for another 30 minutes to try to find someone, anyone who was still alive. Eventually, though, he had to admit the obvious - he was the only survivor of the expedition.
Morgan made his way back out of the shattered DropShip, while Sybil deployed her large external repair drones to commence salvaging what they could of the ship's cargo. It seemed like such a pointless gesture, but, with the Jihad on, salvaging any war-fighting material they could was probably worthwhile.
Once he was back onboard the Sybil Ludington, Morgan made his way to the ancient ship's Combat Information Center. Sybil left him in relative silence. Perhaps she was as shaken up as he was.
The next step was to do something for the dead. A normal funeral for each just wasn't going to happen, so Morgan ordered Sybil to commence continuous fire from her energy weapons batteries until, in turn, each ship was little more than an expanding cloud of vapor and molten metal. He tried to say a few words, in a formal fashion, but nothing sounded right. Eventally, he gave up, settling on just saying goodbye.
Neither Sybil nor Morgan spoke for what seemed like aeons, but was, in reality, more like a minute. Finally, before he was fully aware he was doing it, Morgan spoke up. "Why didn't you get there sooner?" He regretted the question almost as soon as he asked it. They'd just jumped into the system - how could she have known?
"When the Blake's Wrath jumped into the system and began maneuvering towards my position, I continued to observe her passively. My last set of orders had been to conceal my presence from non-SLDF personnel, so I suppressed transmission of my IFF codes, and drifted powerless. With nobody aboard, I was able to keep my power usage, and thermal signature, to a minimum. When I observed your JumpShip's EMP footprint, indicating an inbound JumpShip, I assumed the Blake's Wrath was set to rendezvous with another ship. When I observed her take a battle stance, and finally detected the Cleseau's IFF transponder code, I proceeded to engage the Word of Blake ship at maximum thrust. I apologize for not arriving sooner, sir."
"It's all right, Sybil. You did the best you could. Tell me, are you jump-capable?"
"Aye, sir. While I was waiting for the SLDF to return, I proceeded to install my drive controller, and test it by jumping between the zenith and nadir points of this system, as well was practicing jumps to numerous Lagrange points, and even the "Crazy Jane" micro-jumping method. The latter allowed me to jump 34 light seconds, to close within 2500 kilometers of the battle."
Morgan furrowed his brow in confusion. "Why didn't we detect your EMP pulse, and why didn't you jump closer?"
"The arrival pulse of your own JumpShip, sir, made both impossible. Levels of background radiation had not dropped sufficiently to make a footprint as small as one from a microjump detectable and, at the same time, this background radiation was also an indicator that the space around your JumpShip had not yet returned to a sufficiently normal level to safely allow for another jump that close to two other Kearny-Fuchida jump drive cores."
Morgan nodded in understanding. "I see. Very well. Unless you have a lithium-fusion battery system that's fully charged, deploy your jump sail and commence charging your drive core. It's time to return to the Inner Sphere. Set a course for the Tukayyid system, that will take us past Luthien, minimum number of jumps.. We'll see if we can get some help from the Draconis Combine on our way back home."
"Very well, sir. If I may ask, why did it take so long for the SLDF to return, and why were you not aware of my existence prior to your arrival in-system?"
"It's a long story, Sybil, but the short of it is that the Star League wasn't re-instituted again until just 10 years ago, and just collapsed again only three months ago. A lot has happened while we were away, Sybil - we've got a lot to talk about."
Sol System, Terra
Prince William Sound, Alaska
July 15, 2786, 2150 Hours
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"They're coming for you. You know that, right?"
Rear Admiral Noriko Murakami, Star League Navy, stood at the stern of the yacht, her fifth beer in the past hour in her hand. She'd been out there for hours, at this point, and by now the Moon was almost directly overhead, bathing the Sound in an eerie glow. "How appropriate," she thought.
She tried to shrug her old flame's concerns off. "I know, Aaron. When the colleagues in your rather narrow field start dropping off like flies, due to 'accidents', you get the impression something's up. I've...put measures into place, love."
He sat up a bit more, propping himself up on one elbow. "No, you won't. It might not come tomorrow, or the day after, or the month after that, but they will get you, Noriko. He's intent on this, and they're going to make for damned sure they don't leave anyone around who can recreate them. And I can't save you, Noriko. But I can save her."
He'd known. He'd known she couldn't fufill her orders, and destroy the Sybil Ludington. And, unfortunately, he was right. Eventually, they'd get to her, and kill her, too, just like they'd gotten to Dr. Aoki, which was why she'd gone to such extremes in the first place, to ensure her project wouldn't fail.
"What about you, Aaron?"
"I'm safe. After all, I'm a mechwarrior, not an engineer. Besides, he won't kill me, dear, because he still needs me. He's...broken, Noriko. More than anyone realizes, he's a broken old man. Losing Richard was like losing his own son. He's been colder, more distant since then." "So, what do we do, then?"
They'd moved carefully, purging data that would lead them back to Sybil. Noriko's OpSec had been good, but wasn't perfect, and there had been a handful of infiltrations into her staff. Pruning them would be distasteful, but necessary. It was hard, though, knowing what they'd had planned for her people, and letting them do it anyway - their blood was on her hands as much as it was on the man who'd sent them. But they'd agreed, tipping off their opposition wasn't going to work - it would just bring things up into the open, and then any chance they'd have of succeeding would be lost. With the Old Man himself calling for this, there was just too much against them.
There just wasn't enough time, though.
"You know if they get ahold of me, Aaron, they'll eventually be able to get her location out of me. I can't let that happen."
"Will you try to get the Montbatton back there?"
She shook her head. "We'd never make it, and you know it. You know they've given me a new flag captain, right?" He nodded. "Sukhanov is one of them. And I can't get out on civilian traffic, either - you and I both know they're watching the starports. I won't make it off Earth, and you know it." He brushed an errant lock of hair away from her face, and exhaled sharply. "I really wish you were wrong, but you're not. What will you do?" "What I have to, and soon. Can you..." "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" "Yes, Aaron, I'm sure. Ever since I lost Misato...Sybil is all I have left, and I won't let them kill her. I just wish I hadn't told her to..." DeChevilier pulled her closer. "I know, dear. She'd understand, though, and forgive you. But, are you sure that..." "Remember when I said I took measures, dear? I...made a copy. She's asleep right now, but the right circumstances will wake her up." "My God, Noriko..." He'd finally make the connection, though - Misato's cross. Noriko wasn't wearing it. She smiled, but looking at her eyes, Aaron could see she was forcing it. "I wanted to make sure I'd be there if she needed me, love. I knew this might happen." She rolled over, reaching for her nightstand, and pulled a small data chip out of a drawer. "Here, this is a progressive worm. Send it as an HPG message to the attached address, and it should take care of most of the data on her. It's only stored in a handful of locations, after all, and I know where those locations are. Promise me you'll load it...after, please." "When will you..." "Tomorrow. I'm going sailing, I think." "Then we still have tonight," he said, trying to hold back his tears.
She tipped back the can of Timbiqui Dark finishing the last of it, then threw the can into the water. She was tired, and finally drunk enough. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open. "I'm sorry, Aaron. I'll miss you. And I hope you'll understand, Sybil, and realize I'd never abandon you."
Taking one last look at the moonlit scenery, Noriko stepped into the water.
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Author Notes:
I might havetaken a few smallliberties with the current Jihad-era storyline, as this was started - obviously, as FanPro and WizKids publish more information about the Word of Blake Jihad storyline, the more likely I'll get contradicted..In the canon universe, development of sapient artificial intelligence ended with the M-5 Caspar project, which, as the Star League Defense Force would soon find, had...vulnerabilities. Also, I've taken some liberties with SLDF Navy ranking structures, switching them completely back to naval ranks, rather than the hodgepodge of army/naval ranks they use in the canon. It simply made more sense.
A brief rundown on some of the characters who aren't mine:
General Aaron DeChevilier - The second in command of the SLDF, under Commanding General Aleksandr Kerensky. He's a canon character, and thus owned by WizKids/FanPro, not me. Yes, I know that, in canon, he was supposedly involved with one of the founders of Clan Jade Falcon, but I'm going to operate under the assumption that that relationship came about some time during the nearly 20 or so years between Operation Exodus and the start of the Pentagon Civil War.
Dr. Aoki belongs to Liam'sGhost,a fellow poster onthe official Classic Battletech forums. After I started "Sybil", he came up with a similar story, called "Sense of Being", of which Dr. Aoki is a central character. His, and Chobii's, story can be found here: http/forums. in fact, this story had a major influence on how Murakami chose to act in the last "act" of Part 1.
Currently, progress on "Sybil" is a bit slow, since most of my focus has been a round-robin fanfic I'm writing with poster Cannonshop,called "Knock, Nock", which features Sybil, as well as an M-5 Caspar WarShip drone named Tabby (short for Tabiranth). "Knock, Nock". I don't know that it will ever go up on since it's a cooperative work. Also, note Tabby's original story can be found on the Classic Battletech forums. those who are interested.
New, unfiltered or reviewed stuff generally gets posted on the Classic Battletech forums first for review and continuity checks. You can find them at - just click on the forums link and register. :)
Thanks for reading, and please, feel free leave a review to critique my story, and let me know what areas I can improve in. :)