AN: Coming to the end of the story, or at least this 'book' of it. I have other projects I intend to spend time on before I start working on the plot arc dealing with the clans, which will probably be a massive story; Stackpole did it in three novels, I'll probably do it in something at least vaguely comparable. More or less, I'm not entirely sure, but it definitely won't be short.
AN: 2: For those of you whose threads I usually track, I've been absent lately because of spending so much time on this. You should see me around again starting tonight.
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Chapter 6: War in Heaven,
Or, Death Isn't Funny.
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February, 3028
Imperial City, Luthien
Secured Room, Unity Palace
"Five regiments of Aerospace Fighters," Takashi Kurita half said, half growled, "It would be cheaper to send ten regiments of Battlemechs!"
A statement which was, Theodore Kurita silently reflected as his face remained entirely impassive, only barely true. Aerospace Fighters were just over twice as expensive as the equivalent weight of Battlemechs, one of the primary reasons that Battlemechs remained the predominant force on the battlefield, but were also more combat effective by weight in any combat environment save for urban or mountainous. The greater combat effectiveness was nowhere near sufficient to justify the cost, but ASF were still necessary, as allowing your foes aerospace superiority with anything more than a handful of fighters was tantamount to tactical suicide.
Theodore had requisitioned the ASF wings of more than a dozen regiments, something around ten percent of the Combine's total ASF strength, and something Takashi had not been expecting. Takashi was a traditionalist, and like most traditionalists, he did not react well to the unexpected, especially coming from his alienated son.
"Coordinator-dono," Theodore asked with precisely measured respect in his voice, "The wedding is to occur aboard a Jumpship, in an unihabited system, with no Terrestrial worlds. There would be little purpose in an escort comprised of infantry, armor, or battlemechs. The CTA are well-known for their advanced Aerospace Fighters, and it would do little good for me to bring an inconsequential measure of force to bear against that. I admit, however, that I am of course nowhere near as well informed regarding the greater needs of the Combine as yourself, and will make do with whatever apportionment you see fit to permit me."
Even with the sop Theodore had just given to his father's ego, by the end of their meeting, it was apparent to him that if their meeting had not been held in private, Takashi would still have denied his son the requested forces, purely to assert his authority and ego in front of others. As it was, it was still a near thing.
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February, 3028
Forbidden City, Sian
Throne Room, Celestial Palace.
"So, Justin Xiang," Maximillian Liao said, "I cannot ignore this invitation in its entirety, at least so long as 'peace' persists, but what do you think The Fox will do?"
"I cannot state The Fox's intentions for certain, Excellency," Justin said, "However, I can lay strong suspicion on two different courses of action."
"Please elaborate," Maximillian said with an air of generosity.
"Of course, Chancellor," Justin said, "The primary determining factors that our agents within the Federated Suns, Draconis Combine, and Lyran Commonwealth have been able to uncover, are as follows:
"First, The Wolf Dragoon's contract with the Draconis Combine is coming to completion, and Hanse Davion has spent a great deal of money on securing their services when it expires. We have been able to determine that the Dragoons contact will carry their standard clause regarding not fighting with their prior contractors. Also, the Wolf Spiders appear to be signing on with the Lyran Commonwealth, bringing the entirety of Wolf's combat strength into the Steiner-Davion axis.
"Second, while Lyran forces have been concentrating closer to Terra, the AFFS has not been observed making similar movements.
"Third, as you already know, Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner's wedding is to be located near Terra, which would justify some of this force concentration, especially considering the Silver Eagle incident, if our reports regarding the Combine's abduction attempt are true.
"Fourth, the ongoing intelligence warfare between MIIO, Loki, and Comstar's ROM, as well as Comstar's declaration of increasing the numbers of the Comguard.
"Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the CTA's offering of some of its soldiers as bodyguards, particularly in relation to the Wedding that they will be hosting.
"All of these factors combined could, when combined with other datum, lead to any number of conclusions, but I believe I have discerned the most likely course of action on the part of Hanse Davion. Most probably, he will use both the Dragoons and the Lyran force concentration around Terra to serve as a deterrent against adventurism directed at the Wedding. After that is completed, he will commence a build-up aimed at conquering the worlds surrounding Terra, and perhaps Terra itself, if he feels particularly ambitious, to unify the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns territorially."
"Indeed," Maximillian said, leaning back on his throne and stroking his beard, "This is consistent with my own understanding of The Fox's stratagems. I will now lay before you two issues, the handling of which must be conjoined. The first, is how to respond to, and who to send, to this wedding invitation of his. The second, is how to respond to the threat of attack upon our worlds near Terra."
"As you may expect from your primary intelligence analysts," Justin said with a bow, "We have anticipated these questions, your excellency, and prepared responses."
Tsen Shang stepped forward and bowed swiftly before addressing the Chancellor.
"My compatriot," He said, "Favors one plan, while I favor another. In Xiang's plan, our forces would be withdrawn from four out of five of the worlds that we expect Davion to target, and concentrated on the fifth. This would result in token garissons succumbing to easy conquest early in a conflict, but at little real military loss, while Davion's forces attacking the more heavily fortified worlds would face crushing defeats. Further, we would have lost little force, while Davion's soldiers would be tied up in protracted, and costly, fighting within the League and the Combine. Once a suitable time had past, and Davion had committed his reinforcements to the continuing fighting on Combine and League worlds, we would initiate counter-attacks, claiming the territory lost, and as possible re-taking worlds lost to the Suns in decades past.
"My own plan, Excellency, is rather more aggressive, involving the immediate deployment of the Warrior Houses to our worlds near Terra, both to serve as escort for those sent to the wedding, and a strong warning against Davion's aggression. The most likely result, would be Davion focusing his expansionist efforts upon the Combine, and the Lyrans upon the League, while only directing sufficient attacks upon us to discourage adventurism while he deals with less immediately-formidable adversaries."
"The weakness perceived in this plan," Xiang said, "Is the possibility that Davion may instead choose to focus primarily upon the Warrior Houses, and concentrate enough force to destroy them, robbing us both of a large amount of force, and most of our elite formations."
"While the weakness perceived in Xiang's plan," Sheng said, "Is first the loss of face when a number of worlds are lost nearly uncontested in the first phase of war, and second the potential for reversal should Davion discover our troop movements in sufficient time to shift the weight of his own assaults."
"And how would you propose we respond to Davion's wedding invitation, with these plans?" The Chancellor asked.
"In my plan," Xiang said, "We would send an emissary in your place, perhaps one of your daughters, so as not to appear weak, while simultaneously not placing your own person in direct peril while surrounded by high enemy force concentrations. A heavy escort would also be necessary for the party attending the wedding, due to the lack of immediately available reinforcements."
"In my plan," Sheng said, "You yourself would attend, escorted by one of the Warrior Houses, bringing as much strength as possible within the three-dropship limit as a show of strength."
Maximillian Liao leaned back on his throne, and stroked his beard for some time as he considered the options presented by both of them.
"We shall utilize Sheng's plan," The Chancellor decreed, "Save for one difference. I shall send my daughters, rather than myself, and the both of you to accompany them. I have other affairs to attend to."
((()))
March, 3028
Forbidden City, Sian
Undisclosed location, Undercity.
"They have agreed to support us?" Romano Liao demanded, glaring at the rather sallow man in the uniform of the Maskirovka.
"Yes, Avatar," The man said, bowing deeply, "They will move on the third day."
"Excellent..." A mad smile slid across the face of Romano, second daughter of the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation.
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April, 3028
Imperial City, Luthien
Secured Room, Unity Palace
"We may, perchance, have uncovered the information you seek," Subhash Indrahar stated calmly.
"Providence would appear to be with us," Theodore replied, "What have you discovered?"
"Records of a covert assault from a century ago," Subhash said, "Orders for an attack on the world of Caph."
"Was that not the world where Battlemechs were first invented?" Theodore asked, "I seem to recall it retreating from the Inner Sphere at large after the Second Succession War left it mostly a wasteland."
"Indeed," Indrahar said, passing a file to Theodore, "Or so it was thought. Considering the activities of the CTA since then, this may be what you were looking for."
Five minutes into reading the file, Theodore was all but certain he had discovered the origins of the CTA; by the time he finished it, he was certain.
"I believe," He said to Indrahar once he was finished, "That we will need to carry more firepower than normal with us into this potential battle."
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August 3rd, 3028
System XXLI, near Terra
Apex Jump Point.
With a multi-dimensional flash of light, the full range and intensity of which was beyond human comprehension, an AFFS Jumpship appeared. Once the jump field faded, and reality stopped protesting its rules being broken, it launched a trio of Dropships, one of which contained the First Prince of the Federated Suns, and the Archon-Designate of the Lyran Commonwealth.
"So why did they call the planet 'Onion?'" Melissa asked, as she looked out a 'window' showing a video feed from the Dropship's bow.
"I gather it has something to do with its multi-layered atmosphere, and onion-brown color," Isaiah said from behind her, "Once we're close enough, you'll be able to see for yourself."
"Mm," Melissa said, glancing over at Isaiah before returning her attention to the starfield in front of her, "So I'll finally get to meet the legendary 'Granny Ivo?'"
"Indeed," Isaiah said, "But as I've said-"
"She's energetic," Melissa replied, rolling her eyes, "Don't worry, I'm sure I can handle a youthful old lady."
"If you say so," Isaiah said, "But I did warn you."
((()))
August 10th, 3028
System XXLI
CSS Calvin Joliet, Orbit of 'Onion.'
"Oh, she's so cute!"
This was all the warning Melissa Steiner received before she was engulfed in a suffocating hug; literally suffocating, she couldn't breathe.
"Granny," Isaiah said calmly as he peeled Amanda Ivo's arms away from the slightly-smaller Steiner, "Please do not suffocate the bride. I suspect it would rather ruin the ceremony."
"Spoilsport," Amanda pouted, before turning her attention back to the gasping Archon-Designate, who beheld the Ivo Matriarch with some shock.
Amanda Ivo could very easily have been mistaken for being no older than Melissa herself, late teens, maybe early twenties. She was a somewhat short woman, with absurdly long dark hair coiled into a braid that was wrapped around her neck more times than Melissa could readily count. About the only indicator of age Melissa could find was the shape of the woman's hips after closer inspection.
Melissa's inspection of Amanda had been returned, and the older woman had many more years of experience to rely on, something that became impossible for Melissa to miss when the two looked each other in the eye.
"Oh," Amanda said, "You'll do just fine. Now come along, I'll show you where us woman-folk are setting up camp, so we can start planning."
"Ah," Melissa said, "Planning what?"
"Why, your bachelorette party, of course!"
((()))
Calvin Joliet, Amanda Ivo's Quarters.
"Um," Melissa said as she half walked, half was dragged into a set of... creatively decorated quarters.
"Here," Amanda said, tugging the much younger woman over to a beanbag, "Have a seat."
"...Okay?" Melissa said, seating herself carefully, rather surprised at how self-conscious she felt around the older woman, especially as she had somehow managed to drag her into the odd room without any of her bodyguards following in.
Amanda busied herself with some sort of stainless steel contraption that Melissa was not familiar with, so she took the time to study the cabin in some detail. The floor was covered in thick shag carpet, colored a deep red, and the walls and ceiling were paneled with a bizarre mismatch of different woods, fitting together more like randomly cut puzzle pieces than any thing with rhyme or reason, an impression reinforced by how rough the sections were. The cabin didn't possess a room so much as a pit, formed out of what was either a water or air mattress, edged by beanbags, and covered with a chaotic array of blankets and pillows. Above the bed-pit, was an array of electronics on a servo-mount, that looked like it was designed to raise or lower to suit its user's whims.
Aside from that, there were a few miscellaneous beanbags, a modest table and kitchenette, a door that appeared to lead to a bathroom, a bookshelf occupying one entire wall, what looked like one knicknack from every world in the Inner Sphere, and probably the Periphery too, and pictures. Lots of pictures, of what Melissa suspected was the entire extended Ivo clan. There were hundreds of them. In truth, it was probably the largest cabin she had ever seen aboard a jump-capable vessel, but the sheer amount of stuff in it, made the place feel cramped.
No, Melissa thought, not 'cramped.' Cozy.
Then Amanda passed her a steaming mug of what smelled like Hot Chocolate, then sat down across on a bean bag in front of her, with her own mug.
"So," Amanda said, "Now that we're all situated, let's talk."
"About a 'Bachelorette Party'?" Melissa asked dubiously.
"That too," Amanda said, "But first let's talk about you. I understand you especially requested Isaiah for your guard detail?"
"Yes," Melissa said, taking a sip of her hot chocolate, then smiling, "This is good."
"It'd better be," Amanda smirked, "I've been developing that blend and the machine I 'brew' it with for over a hundred years. You probably picked Isaiah out because he'd made a good impression after you were picked up at The Rock?"
"He helped me a great deal," Melissa said quietly, "That was a very hard time for me."
"It's always hard," Amanda said, reaching out to lay a hand on Melissa's knee, "The first time you see death. It was two hundred years ago for me, and I can still remember the first time I saw death with horrible clarity."
Melissa shivered as the older woman's words resonated with parts of her heart that were still healing, and the Ivo matriarch gracefully slipped across to seat herself beside Melissa, and wrap an arm around her shoulder.
"Death was never meant to be a part of this world," Amanda said softly, rubbing Melissa's shoulder soothingly, "And it's a tragedy every time it rears its ugly head."
Melissa nodded, fighting back tears as she remembered all the men and women who had died protecting her on the rock, and the Kuritan soldiers who had died trying to abduct her. Her heart ached for those who had died to protecting her, but she still felt sick when she thought of the deaths of her would-be abductors as well.
"Did anyone ever tell you the story of my first husband?" Amanda asked softly.
"Not much," Melissa said, her voice trembling setting her cup aside so that she could wipe at her eyes, "But I did hear he died defending your Duke's family."
"Oh, Melissa dear," Amanda said, "That was only the beginning. I met Cameron Ivo when I was twelve years old, and he was twenty-two, at a celebratory party on the preeminent University on Caph at that time. It was March 12th, 2842. I'm still not sure whether or not I really noticed him during the main part of the party itself, but I definitely noticed him when the party was attacked by ROM operatives from Comstar. They attacked the building, both where the party was taking place, and the research data they were celebrating was stored, sending in operatives to make sure that they got all the research data, and that nobody had survived. Nobody, including myself and the other children, some of whom were barely three years old.
"Some of my memories of that night are what you'd expect, blurry, warped by emotion, I was a terrified twelve-year-old girl, in shock after having just watched my parents get shot as we were leaving. I ran, a lot, and eventually wound up trying to hide in a server room, where Cameron Ivo and the corpse of his older sister were. Some of the ROM team, who were dressed up like Maskirovka operatives, came after me, one of them was planning on raping me. Cameron was an enormous man, seven feet and two inches tall, and he was also extremely fit. I was too hysterical to see how he killed those men, but I know he was unarmed, so it was probably pretty brutal.
"The Blakists set a bomb in the facility, to clean up anything they missed; I was mostly incoherent at that point, but I read Cameron's report to the police about what he did years later. Cameron built an improvised blast-shelter out of armored servers, then tore the guts out of one, and tucked us away inside of it. One thing I do still remember, is that he wrapped himself around me even inside of that. That's the kind of man my Cameron was, putting his life on the line, to give the greatest protection he could, even then.
"He took custody of me after that, mostly because at first I would panic every time he left my sight, and dropped his plans to leave the planet and join the AFFS, and took care of me for the next four years, long enough to make sure I could take care of myself, and I wasn't having panic attacks whenever I was left alone. Child Services tried to intervene, but the Duke stepped in personally to grant Cameron custody after he saw how he treated me.
"Then Cameron went off and joined ROM, and spent the next nineteen years gathering every scrap of information on what Comstar was doing, why, and salvaging as much of the research data from throughout the Inner Sphere that they were destroying as he could."
Amanda paused for a moment, her countenance troubled.
"I don't think some of the things he did on raids for ROM were right. I know he didn't think they were right. It wasn't until I nearly died during complications from my fourth pregnancy that I managed to get him to open up emotionally and start dealing with his guilt and self-loathing."
"I don't understand," Melissa said softly, "What did he do?"
"He joined the same division that had attacked that party on Caph," Amanda said grimly, "Rho division. Then he went out into the field and did whatever they told him to. Operation Holy Shroud was completed, so nothing was as horrific as that attack, but he killed innocent people, and more than just a few. I had to drug him in order to keep him from setting himself off on a suicide mission when everything was said and done, and Caph had successfully withdrawn from the Inner Sphere.
"He killed people. A lot of people, that did not deserve to die, and I know that he saw his older sister in every single one of those people he killed. It wasn't right, part of me has tried to justify it, on and off, for one hundred and fifty years, but it just wasn't right. On the other hand, all of what Caph has been able to do has been a direct result of what he did then. Part of me says that there is another way that we could have gotten here, but at this point it's impossible to know what it is, and the past is the past. Learn from it, and move on.
"After I kept him from leaving Caph, before we went into seclusion, I more or less dragged him to the altar, and we married, and started the Ivo clan. I had nine children in four pregnancies."
Melissa's eyes widened considerably at that revelation.
"I shocked a lot of people with how aggressively I used fertility medication and treatments," Melissa said with a melancholy smile, "I started a cultural trend on Caph that never completely died, towards larger families. It's why we've had to start our own colonies in the Periphery, there are a lot of Caph-ites. Back onto the topic though.
"My husband spent most of the rest of his life as a stay-at-home dad, sidelining some work for the Duke's intelligence and security divisions. He was an excellent father, patient but firm, affectionate, and the biggest mobile jungle-gym a pack of kids could ask for.
"One hundred and forty-seven years ago, and one month, almost to the day, when Elizabeth and Cameron Junior were only fourteen years old, a group of Luddite terrorists attacked the Duke's compound. They killed some of the Gustafson family, including shooting the Duke's youngest son in front of his wife and child, in cold blood. Cameron was getting old, and before our telomere therapies were developed, giants had considerably shortened lifespans, but he had kept his skills from his ROM days sharp.
"Cameron tore the arms off of the woman who shot the Duke's son, taking a number of bullet wounds before he took them off, then beat her subordinates to death with what was left of the woman. He died in my arms, while his children watched. He told me he Loved me, and then his last words were that he had always wanted to die protecting somebody."
Amanda stopped talking, and silence reigned in the cabin for some time, while the two women finished off their now not-so-hot chocolate. Once they were both finished, Amanda collected their mugs, then dropped them off in the kitchenette's sink. On her way back, she retrieved a set of brass knuckles, set with gems, from her pocket, and held it out to Melissa before sitting beside her again.
"These are the Ivo family knuckles," She said, "This," She pointed to the largest, central diamond of the three present, "Is the carbon-diamond compressed from Cameron's ashes. The other two are also from family members who died protecting another's life. There are more Ivos who died in such a way, but their remains were kept by their immediate family, rather than added to these. Using these knuckles, I killed a man attempting a coup on Caph decades ago.
"This is the story of Cameron Ivo, my first husband, and the most famous man on Caph to this day."
Melissa handed the knuckles back to Amanda, unsure of what to say.
"I carry these with me always," Amanda said, tucking her chin into her knees, voice betraying an emotional vulnerability that surprised Melissa, "To help me remember what we're fighting for. Freedom from Tyranny."
Silence passed between the two women for a long time, Amanda lost in reminiscence, Melissa uncertain of how to respond to the older woman's tale, before eventually deciding to return the comfort she had been offered earlier with a hug of her own.
"I don't really know what to say," Melissa eventually said softly, "All of this is so far beyond anything I've experienced."
"I know," Amanda said quietly, returning the younger woman's hug, "That's why I'm sharing it with you. You're going to marry soon, and have at least one child if you are at all physically capable of doing so. Most people I try to give pre-marital advice to, my own experience with Cameron was far more extreme than anything they'd likely experience. You though, one of the consequences of your marriage will be the creation of the largest socio-political entity in the Inner Sphere. Anything could happen to you, your husband, and your soon-to-be children. It's important, before you marry, to know why you are marrying, what you want, what you're willing to give, and the same about your groom. My first husband wanted to end the threat ROM, and Comstar in general presented to Caph, and now you know what he went through to accomplish that. I want the same thing, and you've some idea of what I've been willing to do to accomplish the same."
Melissa nodded, and they sat together for a long time, in silent contemplation and companionship.
((()))
Captain's Quarters, Calvin Joliet.
"Sooo," Hanse said, his alcohol-impaired tongue dragging the word out, "Yer sayin' the secret is in the listenin'?"
"Yeah," Cameron said morosely, staring down at a picture of his wife, "See, you're like me, you're a problem solver. You hear about somethin' bad happenin', yer first instinct is ta go out and fix it. Wives though, they don't just want the problem solved. First, they wan' you to listen to them, not jus' to unnerstand what the problem is, but to do so in a way that makes it clear that you care about how the probblem is 'fectin them 'motionally."
"Doesn't fixing the probrem show you care?" Hanse asked, more than a little confused.
"Yeah," Cameron said, "But mos' women won't care 'bout that unless they already know ya care. Still not entirely sure why, but thas' how it is."
"Hafta 'member that," Hanse said, nodding gravely, "'ll keep an eye on 'lissa for stuff like that."
((()))
Amanda Ivo's cabin, Calvin Joliet.
A knock sounded on the hatch, interrupting Melissa's impromptu lesson in a card game called 'Dutch Blitz,'
"Ah," Amanda said, standing and moving to the hatch, "That should be Amalinda."
"Amalinda?" Melissa asked curiously.
Amanda opened the hatch, revealing a tiny young woman who bore a very distinct resemblance to Amanda, enough that the two could be mistaken for each other, if not for the different lengths of hair, and fact that they were standing right next to each other.
"Amalinda," Amanda said, "This is Melissa Steiner. Melissa, this is my youngest daughter, Amalinda."
"Pleased to meet you," Melissa said graciously as she stood and approached the older woman.
"I'm happy to meet you too!" Amalinda said energetically, and promptly bounced up to Melissa to wrap the taller woman in a hug, massive smile on her face, "Will you play with me?"
"Certainly," Melissa said, slightly confused, but seeing no reason not to, "What would you like to play?"
"I've been teaching Melissa Dutch Blitz," Amanda chipped in, "You can join us, Amalinda."
((()))
Some time later, Amanda and Melissa were speaking quietly, while Amalinda slept in the room's bed-pit.
"Before you ask," Amanda said quietly, "She's not younger than she looks. She's learning and development disabled. Amalinda was born in 2871, the last of Cameron and I's children, and due to complications suffered from some oxygen deprivation, resulting in brain damage. It's been a very, very slow development for her, she's functionally twelve years old as far as mental maturity goes, but as a result of how I've been raising her for the last one hundred and fifty years, she's probably the most mature twelve year old you've ever known, and is incredibly well informed about anything that's ever piqued her curiosity."
"She's very... bright," Melissa said, "I don't think I've ever seen a smile like that on anyone older than eight."
"I know," Amanda said with a maternal smile, "I've jealously guarded that brightness for a very long time now. She makes a point of cheering me up whenever she sees me down."
"I'm guessing you probably introduced me to her on purpose?" Melissa asked.
Amanda nodded.
"Probably to show me both what can be, with a child, and as a warning about how things don't always go the way we would like or expect, right?" Melissa asked.
Amanda nodded again, smiling.
"Marriage and motherhood are both dynamic things, because people change," Amanda said softly, reaching out to lay a hand on Melissa's shoulder companionably, "A lot of being a good wife, and a good mother, is in recognizing what you should and shouldn't try to influence or control, be deliberate about how you are changing as a person, and being prepared for the kinds of things you're getting into."
"This isn't the kind of thing that shows up often in romance novels," Melissa said with a wry smile.
"That's because most romance novels are trashy things, basically emotional pornography for girls," Amanda said, with sudden bite that surprised Melissa, "Dramatic 'destined' relationships, or people who have 'love at first sight,' or 'just click together.' No mention of personality and living-habit clashes. No mention of conflict management and resolution. No mention of sacrificing for those you Love, because real people don't always want the same things. There's no more substance in most 'romance' stories than there is in the visual pornography that sells to men."
"That's... quite the opinion," Melissa said softly.
"I appreciate your diplomatic way of putting it," Amanda said, visibly forcing herself to not raise her voice while her daughter slept, "But it's not opinion, it's fact. I've watched hundreds of romances and marriages either endure, or fail. And every girl I met who believed in star-crossed lovers and crap like that either quickly was disabused of those ideas, or had their relationship fall to pieces. I'd probably be a lot less pissed at the blowhards who write those bullshit novels if the men and women who buy into that crap only hurt themselves, but so many of them go and have children. You're a smart girl, I'm sure you can imagine what happens to children raised in a house where their parents hate each other."
Melissa shuddered and nodded.
"Enough of this grim talk though," Amanda said, shaking off her dark mood with startling ease, "You're not that kind of stupid, and you're not too proud to ask for advice. Unless Hanse is a complete jerk, you should be just fine. And if he is, I'm sure my son is beating that out of him as we speak."
((()))
"You know," Cameron said, "I've got more than a hundred years of experience on you. You should not be beating me at Chess."
Hanse just grinned.
((()))
August 11th, 3028
System XXLI, near Terra
Bridge of the CSS Calvin Joliet
"Claire," Cameron Ivo Jr said as he entered the bridge, "As the Captain, I'm afraid it is my grim duty to impart upon you a perilous mission."
"Let me guess," Claire said dryly, "Grandma wants to talk to me, so she can try to cram me into a bride's maid's dress."
"Entirely possible," Cameron said, "It's also distinctly possible that my mother wants to introduce you to Hanse Davion's groomsmen. I understand some of them are single."
The bridge became very, very quiet, and Cameron carefully floated himself out of Claire's ways. No words were said as she silently propelled herself through the primary hatch, and then moved off towards the nearest elevator.
"Sir?" The Junior Lieutenant at the helm, who had caught sight of Claire's face before she left, asked, "Is that what death looks like?"
((()))
Calvin Joliet, Amanda Ivo's quarters.
The hatch to Amanda's quarters did not so much 'open' as 'forcefully leave the path of Claire Ivo.'
"GRANDMA!" Claire screamed, stunning Melissa with how her voice managed to seem even larger than the woman's six foot seven inch frame, "I HEAR YOU'VE BEEN TRYING TO SET ME UP AGAIN!"
"Oh?" Amanda said, standing up and striding cockily towards her much-larger granddaughter, "Has my eldest son been loose with his words again?"
Melissa was rather startled when Amalinda took hold of her 'round the waist, and dragged her over to the bathroom.
"Shhh," Amalinda whispered, "Aunty Claire can be scary."
Melissa was inclined to agree, as 'Claire' was not only the largest woman she had ever seen, but also the angriest. She was literally frothing at the mouth with rage, gesticulating wildly at her grandmother as incomprehensible half-words poured out of her mouth.
"Claire," Amanda said with too-perfect sincerity, "Do I need to spank you?"
With that, Claire's temper truly snapped, and she lunged at the older and smaller woman. It wasn't a sloppy lunge either, but a well-balanced attempt to sweep Amanda into a crushing bear-hug; Amanda's evasion of the move, slipping down and to Claire's left, was even more well-executed. Claire twisted into a sweeping kick, but Amanda ducked beneath that as well, then swept Claire's other leg from beneath her, before bouncing back away from the larger woman.
Claire rolled to her feet, then dropped into a low stance, that even Melissa could tell was oriented around balance, and began to advance on her grandmother, barely-checked rage fueling a punishing barrage of punches that were too swift for the Archon-Designate to make out as more than blurs. Apparently Amanda did not suffer from the same problem, as she managed to either slip around, or deftly deflect, every single punch, even as Claire's swifter advance brought her further and further into Amanda's guard.
Then Amanda stomped on Claire's instep, fouling her balance. Melissa couldn't really tell what happened next, but the results of it were impossible to miss, as the larger Ivo woman went soaring halfway across the room to smash head first into the wall, knocking her senseless.
"Melissa!" Amanda said cheerily as she turned to face the bathroom, "Allow me to introduce my grand-daughter, Claire Matilda Ivo."
"Ah," Melissa said, "One of the livelier members of your family?"
"Oh, not hardly," Amanda said dismissively, "She's usually one of the cooler cucumbers, but gets wound up whenever I try to find her a man."
"Isn't she somewhere over a hundred years old?" Melissa asked.
"Yes," Amanda said, "And she's still single. I require great-grandchildren!"
Amalinda giggled.
((()))
Calvin Joliet, Bridge.
"So," Cameron said, cutting the feed from the security camera in his mother's quarters, "Do you think that's the face of death?"
"Er," The louie Helmsman said, "I think at this point, I'm more scared of your mother."
"Well," The Sensor Officer said, "You'd better grow a spine quick. It looks like the Liao contingent just jumped in, and Romano Liao's aboard. She's creepy as hell, and dangerous, so you'd better be on the ball."
((()))
August 18th, 3028.
System XXLI, near Terra.
CSS Calvin Joliet, Orbit of 'Onion.'
Security aboard Calvin Joliet-class vessels was always very tight; a much easier proposition aboard a space-faring vessel that never dropped below the Karnak line than for any other vessel or installation. It functioned in three tiers; the outer oriented around access to the ship's outermost compartments, where the primary industrial processing and storage took place; it was the area most open to other personnel, as all of a CJ's commercial activity was conducted through these compartments. Access was still always restricted, however, due to the classified nature of the vessel's armaments, as well as the life support modules and other critical systems housed in this region. The weakness in this layer of security existed primarily in the sheer amount of traffic it had to monitor, and allow through, in order for the ship's primary commercial function to be served.
The second layer of security was centered around the grav decks, particularly vital as all of the ship's crew lived in 'The Can' as it was sometimes called, due to its cylindrical shape. Security here was much more robust, primarily due to its layered nature; each grav deck rotated at a different speed, and the elevator system linking them was, consequentially, rather complex in application. A human guard, rather than a simple security camera, stood at every level of every elevator shaft, and a Core Security officer checked and approved each elevator transit from level to level. The weakness of this layer of security existed primarily in the amount of manpower required to maintain such a thorough watch, and how this demand was met. Every adult who lived aboard ship as 'staff' rather than 'crew' was required to serve a four-hour watch once per week at the elevators; the highly dynamic nature of scheduling made it nearly impossible to man enough traitors to cause a catastrophic security breach, but at the same time, made it nearly impossible to prevent all security breaches.
The third, final, and most intensive layer of security, protected the ship's core. The mode by which it existed was very simple; only people on The List were granted access. Only items on The List were allowed within. Core Security, the highest paying position aboard ship after the Captain and Chief Engineer, lived on the innermost grav-deck, just outside of the Core, and did not move outside of their habitation deck for the duration of their one-year tour with Core Security.
No security, however, was infallible, either against dumb luck, or sheer determination. Fools tend to possess the one, and fanatics the other. Unfortunately for the Calvin Joliet, her crew, and her high-ranking passengers, the Thugee cultists acting on the orders of Romano Liao were both deeply foolish, and comprehensively fanatical.
They bribed a single lift guard to 'take a walk' during ship's 'night,' then cracked the security codes for that lift access, and infiltrated a single agent into the shaft, equipped with tactical camouflage. That Thugee agent spent the next eighteen hours locating and compromising every camera inside of the shaft, while dodging the elevators within; a task made considerably more difficult by the fact that a number of the cameras were located on said elevators. He was aided in this task by the fact that the Core Security agent monitoring the shaft was rather stressed by the increased workload the wedding had brought, and was paying more attention to what was happening in the elevators, than what was happening without.
This accomplished, another guard took a 'walk,' though for a considerably larger sum this time, and the cultist who had worked the shaft was retrieved, and replaced by a team of three, carrying no small amount of equipment, both brought with them, and acquired aboard ship. Once within, they disassembled, reassembled, and reconfigured assorted pieces of body armor, glassware, and 'private' clothing, into a chemical processing construct, and began rendering down and recombining various cleaning agents and rubbers into a powerful chemical explosive. Once this task was completed, they used the explosive compound, the plating from their personal body armor, and a variety of electronics, to construct a powerful shaped charge.
Which was then placed on the exterior of the Calvin Joliet's core hull, and after a moment of praise to Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, the three sent a broad-burst communication to their superiors, then detonated the bomb while they stood directly beside it.
((()))
The moment that the Thugee's message was received, orders were given aboard the Luminarious, and the Dropship's engines were fired at full blast. This was intended to cut a hole into the ship, which the Capellan Battlemechs aboard the Dropship would then use to fight their way into the Calvin Joliet's bowels. The Capellan's plan, however, had not counted for the fact that the CJ was built to handle Warship-scale combat, from the ground up, and its hull was both incredibly thick, and incredibly durable.
Dropship engines, their housing, and the hull immediately around them, was designed to handle incredible amounts of stress for centuries of service, the harshest stresses being encountered during take-off and landing, when much of the heat and force of their thrust was being reflected back at them by the surface they were landing on. So long as these periods were brief, no damage would be done; as the Luminarious' docking clamps were still engaged, and the Calvin Joliet's armor did not give away quickly, the time of exposure was anything but brief.
The Dropship captain briefly considered deactivating his ship's engines, but then remembered just who was in command of this operation, and instead ordered his engineer to red-line them. Within sixty seconds of activation, the massive fusion engines had overheated beyond the critical point, and detonated in a catastrophic containment failure. The explosion blew a hole the rest of the way through the Calvin Joliet's already eroded hull, and incinerated the bottom half of the Luminarious, sending the rest of the Dropship spiraling off into space.
Unfortunately, this also left a large hole in the hull for the other five Liao and Marik Dropships to attempt to board their Battlemechs through.
It was about then that the Comstar Warships started jumping into the system.
((()))
"What the hell happened?" Cameron Ivo demanded as he 'stormed' onto the Calvin Joliet's bridge as best as anyone in zero-g can.
"Someone," Commander Claire, his XO, said, "Detonated an explosive of some kind on the surface of the Core. Almost certainly the Capellans, though possibly the Leaguers. One of the Capellan Dropships, the Luminarious tried to cut through the hull with its engines, blew its engines up in the process, destroying half the Dropship, and punching through the loading doors with the explosion. Capellan and League Battlemechs are moving towards the breach now, and the Prince Davion is asking permission for the Lyran and Suns vessels to be allowed to release their own Battlemechs."
"Grant it," Ivo said, "But they are not to move more than fifty meters from their own ships unless they are attacked. What about the Kuritans?"
"Nothing yet, sir," Claire said, "The-oh shit."
Cameron's gaze rose sharply; his daughter never swore without reason. Very strong reasons.
"Someone just jumped a fleet of Warships into the Apex jump point," Claire said, her tone utterly flat, "They aren't running IFF, but at least half of them match the emissions signature of the Blakist fleet we have intel on from the Montpelier's Captain."
"Full Battlestations," Cameron barked, "Keep the Capital weaponry in reserve, but run everything else out, and tell Davion he can have the run of the ship's hull so long as he coordinates with our own forces."
"Yes sir."
Cameron then 'sat' in his Captain's chair, and punched up a call-order to communicate with Caph's home fleet.
((()))
On the hull of the Calvin Joliet, weapons emplacements usually intended to serve as anti-ASF defenses emerged from beneath armored plates, and began to fire on the five battalions of Liao and Marik Batttlemechs that were making their way across the hull towards the hole the Luminarious had created. Although heavily armored, these emplacements suffered the fate of all fixed positions in modern warfare; annihilation as soon as viable targeting solutions could be found, which did not take long at all.
What these emplacements did accomplish, was hold the attacking Battlemechs in place long enough for the Calvin Joliet's Combat Air Patrol to return, and the ready-five squadron to be launched. While further shipboard military assets were scrambled, CTA ASF assets began strafing the Battlemechs moving across the surface of the Calvin Joliet's hull, further slowing their advance, not to mention inflicting heavy damage with laser weapons operating from beyond what was thought to be maximum effective range.
Unfortunately, they did not buy enough time, and League mechs reached the compromised docking ring before CTA mechs were in place to defend from within.
((()))
When Theodore Kurita and his entourage reached the Dragon's Fang, both his own security, and the CTA guards that had been escorting him, were very pleased. Kurita himself was more pleased when he arrived at the Dropship's flag bridge, and was filled in on the tactical situation.
"We will withdraw to the Nadir jump point immediately," Theodore declared, "We will have no part of a battle between Warships."
"Warships," One of his entourage, Tomoe Sakade, asked, "Plural?"
"The CTA have possessed the ability to construct Jumpships for over a century," Theodore said simply, "If Comstar possesses Warships, the CTA must as well. If not, the imbalance of power would have destroyed one force long since."
"Sir," The Dropship's captain said once Theodore stopped speaking, "The Calvin Joliet's captain has given us clearance to undock, and the docking clamps have been released."
"Let us depart then," Theodore said.
((()))
The vessels that had arrived at the Apex jump point were, in fact, Comstar Warships, and they were under orders to seize control of the Calvin Joliet, with the vessel as intact as possible, regardless of cost. To best effect such orders, they were accelerating towards the gas giant the CJ at maximum sustainable accelleration. The system's star being unusually small, combined with the higher rate of acceleration, meant they would enter combat range in just short of eighteen hours.
Across the surface of the Calvin Joliet's hull, Battlemechs exchanged fire, the CTA, LCAF, and AFFS forces quickly discovering that the FWLM and CCAF Overlords had been overloaded by nearly fifty percent, and were carrying nothing but Assault mechs. The turrets around that section of the hull did not last long, and though the ASF fire harrowing the attackers wore them down, it was not enough to stop them from pouring into the Calvin Joliet's interior. Heavy weapons fire began to flash back and forth within the massive ship's industrial modules through the hole in its port hull.
Along the vessel's starboard hull, Steiner and Davion Battlemechs fought against scarcely half their number, but nearly their weight, of Marik war machines, in what was rapidly becoming clear was little more than a delaying action. The collective Aerospace assets of every house except for the Kuritas, who did not launch, rapidly engaged in mutual fratricide, with the far stronger CTA ASF presence bringing total dominance to themselves and the Steiner/Davion air wings within ten minutes of the conflict's beginning, but by that time, a full regiment had already entered the Joliet's hull.
((()))
"That's a lot of metal," Cameron said as he stared down at the tactical plot.
"Ten million tons, sir," His XO said, "About half our gross weight, and roughly four times our firepower."
"Much less firepower at long range though," Cameron said, "Have they launched strike craft yet?"
"No sir," Claire said, "They have launched Dropships though, and it looks like the Potemkin had a full load."
"Shit," Cameron said, then turned towards the Joliet's helmsman, "Pull us into a lower orbit, I want you to build speed for the fastest, lowest orbit you can, timed so that we'll come out of the planet's shadow with optimal timing to cut across that fleet's engagement envelope as quickly as possible. Start crunching the numbers."
"Sir," The helmsman nodded, and set about his business.
"Any coherent response from Caph STIC yet?" Cameron asked, turning to face the communications officer.
"Nothing from the admiralty," She said, "But the ship captains are scrambling for the nearest jump points; we should be able to see a task-group level response force within eight hours, a fleet level force within twenty."
"Good enough," Cameron said, nodding sharply, "It looks like the balance will be made by strike craft, which means it's time to declare Case Plaid." He turned to Claire again, "Now what's the situation with our VIP's?"
((()))
"Get down Princess," Isaiah snarled, but the Archon-Designate stubbornly held her position, and kept firing.
Isaiah had, in the time he had known Melissa Steiner, come to the conclusion that she had learned from her experiences on The Rock; currently he was wishing she had learned different lessons. The instant that the deck had trembled, and the alarms had begun to sound, Isaiah had stormed into the young woman's quarters to see to her safety. As the attack had occurred during ship's 'night,' Melissa had only been wearing her undergarments; fortunately Tharkad was a cold world, and her undergarments, while skin-tight, were still reasonably modest, so there had been no embarrassment involved as the two Lyran guardswomen who had been stationed inside her quarters had stuffed her efficiently into her new body-armor in front of the large Ivo.
The upside to Melissa's learning experience, her (very expensive) body-armor, and the laser carbine she was wielding with considerable proficiency, was that the Archon-Designate was nearly as combat-effective as her bodyguards. The downside was that she wouldn't stay behind cover and let her bodyguards guard her body. Her body-armor, literally the most advanced hardware that Caph's manufacturers fielded, was functionally completely proof against the needler weapons that most of the Liao fanatics attacking them carried, but some of them were also using laser weapons, something that could hurt the young woman, with enough concentrated fire or a lucky shot.
About the only thing keeping a stress-related heart attack from being a more dangerous threat to Isaiah then the nutjobs shooting at him, was the fact that in her armor Melissa was functionally indistinguishable from any of the women in her protective detail, and the Liao operatives couldn't concentrate their firepower. He suspected that they believed the Archon-designate was within the inner chambers of her quarters, otherwise they would have at least been focusing fire on the female members of the group. Also, part of what Melissa had learned was the importance of cover, and made a habit of exposing nothing more than the top half of her helmet and the barrel of her gun when she fired from behind the overturned steel table she and Isaiah were tucked away behind.
A half-second stream of laser fire from one of the Thugee assassins struck the surface of the table directly behind Isaiah, heat bleeding through to his armor, and then his back, scalding him slightly, and he decided it was time for him to take another few potshots at the enemy himself. After a quick check of the CJ's security cameras with his HUD, Isaiah popped up and opened fire with his personal weapon of choice for the third time since the Liao attack on the Archon-Designate's quarters had begun.
A screaming stream of white-hot flames leapt from the barrel of his flamer, dousing two of the Thugee in flames, and catching the arm of a third on fire, before the weapon's compression chamber emptied and Isaiah ducked behind cover again. As counter-fire from the Thugee intensified, and another of the Lyran guards took a shot through her armor, Isaiah silently cursed the fact that it was a group of fanatics obsessed with death attacking; any sane unit would have given up the assault when faced with a flamer in enclosed quarters long since.
((()))
"Candace," Justin said flatly, "Your sister is an idiot."
"I would hardly disagree," Candace Liao said wryly as she peeked around the corner, to observe the ongoing firefight between her sister's fanatical minions, equipped with needlers, unreliable-but-overpowered laser pistols, and light body-armor, and the CTA and Lyran guards, equipped with needlers, laser carbines, slugthrowers with armor-piercing rounds, and a flamer.
It was not hard to see where such a fight was going, and Candace was resigned to either a very short life, or one spent in captivity, as a result of her sister's stupidity. The fact that one of the Thugee might get lucky, and actually injure or kill the Archon-Designate, just made things worse, as if Hanse Davion's bride was killed, Candace had little doubt that The Fox would not relent until the Capellan Confederation was utterly ruined.
Not to mention she, herself, would either have a very short life, or spend the rest of it in captivity.
"I'm afraid, beloved," She said, backing away from the corner to embrace Justin gently, "That you will very soon stand trial for treason. I don't suppose you know of some secret means of escape from this predicament?"
"Perhaps," Justin said with an odd smile, one that Candace had not seen on the Intelligence agent's face before, "But its ability to function, will depend on how much you are willing to trust me."
"Oh?" Candace said, her eyebrows raising in surprise, "A little trust? Is that all?"
"Not quite," Just said, a touch of grimness entering his voice, "I'm afraid your sister's life would also be forfeit."
"While I mourn her death," Candace said sadly, "She has been more a rival, then enemy, to me, since she was sixteen, and is quite plainly mad now. She is already dead; do what you must."
"Very well then," Justin said, then gently pried Candace away from him, and strolled around the corner towards the Thugee, and their mad mistress, "Follow my lead."
((()))
Janos Marik and his entourage were headed towards the Calvin Joliet's HPG, weapons drawn. There had been more than thirty of them; now there were less than a dozen, and a number of dead CTA security personnel littered their path.
Unfortunately for them, they reached the point where their path intersected with that of Amanda Ivo. Unlike the CJ's on-duty security teams, Amanda had been able to take the time to armor up for heavy combat, and the heavy power armor she was wearing increased her slight profile to something roughly equivalent to an average-sized man of occidental descent. Her armor had also been specially designed to incorporate a certain pair of brass knuckles on the left hand.
The Engineer who had created the design had thought it was wastefully expensive; Amanda had thought it entirely necessary.
After the first volley of shredder flechettes shattered or bounced off of the thick alloy to no effect, the FWLM team decided it was just bad news. Two amongst them were carrying heavy weapons, which had been painstakingly reconstructed from broken-down components, and were loaded with AP and HE rounds; in the closed quarters of the grav-deck's internal passages, men of their skill level were functionally incapable of missing. Two shots were fired into Amanda Ivo's chest, and she went down.
Then she got back up.
"I've spent my whole life fighting treacherous shits like you," She growled through her armor's external speakers, which had been specifically configured to produce ominous metallic overtones, "But this'll only be the fifth time I've done it on a battlefield."
Then she moved, and proved that the most expensive set of body-armor ever built on Caph was entirely worth it. The first two Leaguers drew knives and attempted to stab the joints of her armor as she rushed them; they were very briefly shocked to discover that she was, in fact, both faster and more agile than them while in armored form. After their moment of shock, they were dead, as an armored snap-kick crushed one's rib cage directly over the first man's heart, and the second's temple was punctured by three carbon diamonds, sending bone fragments through his brain.
For a moment, Amanda considered picking up one of the downed men's shredder pistols, or a knife, but decided that her point would be better made with her armored fists.
The pair of Leaguers with the heavy weapons decided to attempt to dissuade her, and opened fire again, but this time Amanda had braced herself, and the impacts merely rocked her back. Four more men died, flechettes, knives, and blood scattering wildly about, before they managed to reload the reconstructed weapons, and they were forced to hold their fire as Amanda utilized her augmented strength to employ one of the Marik soldiers as a human shield. The first gunman was able to fire when she hurled her shield at the second, striking Amanda directly in the visor of her helmet, but the round failed to even jar her head substantially through her massively over-engineered armor.
Her fist made a much more permanent impression on his throat. She did decided it was worthwhile to snag his gun as the man collapsed, his neck snapped, and proceeded to beat the rest of Janos Marik's guards to death with the weapon, smashing it beyond repair in the process.
Marik himself spent the time attempting to stab her in the back; aiming for the back of the knees, the shoulders, the neck, but he was old, and even a man as strong as her long-dead husband would have been hard-pressed to muster the force necessary to pierce even the weakest points on her armor.
Amanda's strength, however, augmented by the myomer musculature of her armor, was more than enough to haul up one old man by the scruff of his shirt, and crush the hand holding his knife.
"Janos Marik," She growled, "I've got a few questions for you, and you're going to answer them. Whether you like it, or not."
((()))
"Horse poop," Jessica Langtry calmly declared, as the Calvin Joliet abruptly began accelerating, and hers, as well as every other mech fighting through the CJ's Number Two Ore Refinery lost footing as 'down' abruptly decided to exist again.
The Calvin Joliet was only putting out half a gravity of acceleration, but the utter lack of any other form of gravity within the vessel and outside of its gravdecks, resulted in a massive pile up of Battlemechs against the module walls, all but a handful having either fallen dozens of meters, or had a mech fall dozens of meters to land on them. All of the war machines, CCAF, FWLM, and CAF, were assault-weight, particularly unsuited to surviving such falls without damage; the Caph-built Assault Mechs, however, all were built with jump-jets, and the pilots were rigorously trained in their use. Still, given the short distances involved, not all of the Mechwarriors could react in time, and only a third of the CAF machines had their falls cushioned by judicious jump-jet usage.
That still left them in far better shape than the attacking mechs, and putting down the survivors was nothing more than mop-up work, something Colonel Jessica Langtry and her subordinates took great pleasure in. All throughout the CJ's other compromised compartments, the scenario repeated itself, and the boarders were rapidly repulsed. Along the exterior hull, the situation was little different, with every last Mechwarrior discovering that their mech's magnetized feet, were nowhere near magnetized enough to keep them on the hull in half Terran-standard gravity.
This would have resulted in a great number of mechs sent into loose orbit around Onion, but the declaration of Case Plaid to the CAF pilots changed the picture considerably. Over the course of a half-dozen seconds, every Caph-built Battlemech reconfigured itself into an Aerospace Fighter, and then commenced search and destroy, and search and rescue missions, regarding the CCAF, FWLM, LCAF, and AFFS mechs now largely stranded in space.
The words 'turkey shoot' were mentioned.
((()))
"Ivo," Hanse shouted, "You magnificent bastard! Your entire Battlemech arm is comprised of Land-Air Mechs!"
"Actually," Ivo said, directing The Grin at the First Prince of the Federated Suns through their video call, "It would be more accurate to say that our ASF and Battlemech arms are the same thing."
"How the hell can you afford that?" Hanse demanded, "Especially with Assault-weight LAM's? Even the Star League never fielded Heavy LAM's, much less Assault-weight!"
"Ah, Prince Davion," Cameron said with a faintly chiding tone, "You forget, the Battlemech was invented on Caph. We have a fairly good idea of how to work these things. As to expense, we pay about five times what you would pay for an Atlas, for a single Mjolnir-class LAM. Once you factor in the relative industrialization, relative wealth per-capita and GDP ratios between Caph and the Fed Suns, we pay more like two and a half times, then once you factor in the enhanced combat effectiveness and simplified logistics chain, we're looking at a little under twice the cost. Oh, and we don't build anything smaller than one hundred tons."
"I'm not even going to ask why," Hanse said, with some disgust, "Do you have any word on Melissa yet?"
"Ah," Cameron said, "About that, I need your assistance on a little situation regarding the Capellans and your bride-to-be."
((()))
Well, Justin thought to himself as gravity abruptly shifted around him, I can work with this too.
He was five meters away from the junction the Thugee, Romano Liao, and Tsen Shang had taken cover behind when the abrupt shift hit, and a number of them were knocked off their feet. Justin, a seasoned mechwarrior, was more than accustomed to keeping his feet despite harsh impacts, and instead took the opportunity to burst into an uphill sprint, bringing up his cybernetic arm as he did so, before bringing it down on one of the Thugee's skulls.
Steel alloy had a lot less give to it than skin, sinew, and bone knuckles; the human skull had the same amount of give as ever. Twisting his momentum into a spin before the Thugee could fully realize they were under attack, Justin laid an ax-kick into the next one's neck, before deliberately tumbling to the ground, and bringing up his cybernetic arm again.
This time, instead of being used as a blunt-force weapon, the hand snapped up and back, leaving the wrist exposed, as a blunt muzzle leapt out, and two streams of coherent light leapt out, skewering first Romano Liao through the chest, then winging a Thugee in the shoulder, which of course just pissed the woman off. That might have been bad for Justin, considering the woman was armed, and Justin himself had just drained his arm-laser's small power cell dry, but Candace opening fire with her needler pistol nicely obviated that little problem.
Which only left Tsen Shang, who was too occupied with Romano Liao's body to prevent Justin from roundly clocking him over the head, knocking him unconscious. Leaving Justin alone with some two-dozen corpses, several of them still on fire.
"Oy!" He called around the corner, as Candace moved up behind him, "Now that the idiots are dead, we'd like to surrender!"
((()))
Isaiah turned to look at the ranking Lyran guardswoman. It was more an instinctual gesture than anything else, as they shared an encrypted comm channel, and their sealed full-face helmets made it impossible to read facial expressions. Still, it was enough for her to nod that he should take the initiative on this matter, so he activated his helmet's external speaker.
"Who's surrendering?" He demanded.
"Justin Xiang," The voice called out, "And Candace Liao. If it's not too much trouble could you contact Quintus Allard or Hanse Davion and tell them I've got word?"
"The First Prince of the Federated Suns," Isaiah replied flatly.
"Yes," Justin replied, "That Hanse Davion. I'd say at this point that my cover is pretty much done for."
((()))
"Your cover?" Candace whispered to Justin incredulously, "Do you really expect them to buy that?"
"Well," Justin said, a little awkwardly, "Seeing as how you're armed, and I'm not, this would be the best time for me to tell you two things. First, I love you-"
Candace blushed slightly at his words, as he unknowingly filled a rather ridiculous adolescent romantic dream she'd held regarding star-crossed lovers together in a desperate situation on a battlefield.
"Second," Justin continued, "I expect them to buy that because I'm telling the truth. This whole affair, ever since Hasek-Davion set his treacherous eyes upon me, has been one big, long infiltration mission.
Candace blush faded to confusion, as she attempted to wrap her mind around the sheer magnitude of what Justin was saying.
"So," Justin continued, "Considering that the Capellan Confederation will soon be under the concerted attack of both the Federated Suns, and every mercenary in the Inner Sphere that will take the CTA's money, please, please think very carefully about what decisions you make about the opportunities you will be given in the next few hours."
((()))
"You see," Cameron Ivo said, "Apparently one of the Capellans up and killed the rest of their strike team, including Romano Liao, then surrendered. Man by the name of Justin Xiang, along with one Candace Liao, claims you'd be willing to speak with him."
"Oh," Hanse said, raising an eyebrow, "I suppose his cover's been blown then. He's one of mine, so I'd be much obliged if you'd hand him over."
"Well," Cameron said, surprise etched across his face, "I must admit, I didn't see that one coming. I don't suppose Candace Liao was one of your operatives too?"
"No," Hanse said, trying desperately, and almost succeeding in hiding his satisfaction in pulling one over on a man a hundred years his senior, "But I rather suspect Justin's swiped her loyalties away from her father. I suppose I'd better ask for her as well."
"How about this," Cameron said, "We'll move the two of them, and Melissa to Gravdeck one, and you and I can meet up there as well so that we can all have a chat."
"I'd have thought you'd rather stay on the bridge," Hanse said, "What with the Comstar fleet on its way."
"No need," Cameron said, waving his hand airily, "My XO is quite capable of dealing with such nuisances. I'll see you in twenty then?"
"Agreed."
((()))
Twenty minutes later, Amanda Ivo (who had arrived drunk with Katrina Steiner), Cameron Ivo Junior, Candace Liao (not junior), Hanse Davion, Isaiah Ivo, Justin Xiang/Allard, Katrina Steiner (who had arrived completely drunk out of her mind with Amanda Ivo), Melissa Steiner, and Quintus Allard were all gathered on Gravdeck one, the first non-CTA personnel aboard that deck in decades, with a handful of attendants, to talk about the situation.
There was some confusion, at first, about who held the authority to call the meeting to order, but Cameron, as ship's captain, decided to take the matter into his own hands, and (after fending off his mother's latest attempt to stroke his hair) successfully drew things to order.
"So," Cameron said, "Comstar's fleet is some seventeen hours from firing range, masses half of what we do, can punch three or more times our acceleration, and has roughly four times our firepower, Aerospace assets not-withstanding. Reinforcements from Caph are moving to jump positions, but we only had a single frigate on station to jump immediately, and it'll be more than seven hours before a reasonably sized detachment can move in. Under the circumstances, I cannot make a reasonable guarantee of safety for those aboard ship, and we specifically selected this planet, in this system, for its lack of NSJ's, that's Non-Standard Jump-points, or Pirate Points, to those not familiar with the term, around the Gas Giant, due to the heavy system clutter.
"We have two Union's docked at the bow rings, which could put out enough acceleration to outrun the Comstar Warships, and take you to one of the NSJ's around the next planet out for pickup, but because Comstar has not yet revealed the strength of their ASF contingent, I can't guarantee a strong enough escort to protect you if you break away from the CJ. In short, do you want to ride the fight out, or try to run?"
"I'm rather unclear here," Candace said, "On the point of fleeing for a Pirate Point, unless you already have a Jumpship stationed there?"
"Case Plaid," Cameron said, waving his hand dismissively, "It's time for the CTA to reveal some of our true capacities. Most of our manned Jumpships are equipped with Lithium-Ion batteries, which allow for a second jump immediately after the first, as soon as we rotate the Jump-core coolant, a process that can take anywhere from two hours to twenty minutes. Star League was just implementing them before it folded."
"Ah," Candace said, "I see."
"You said that the Comstar fleet is packing somewhere in the order of four times your firepower," Hanse said, "That implies that the Calvin Joliet is armed with capital-class weaponry."
"Indeed," Cameron said, "Calvin Joliet-class Industrial Ships have three hundred and twenty Naval Laser fifty-fives built into concealed turrets along the vertices of their hulls. For those of you not familiar, they're extreme range heavy lasers; we've upgraded them a fair bit, of course, since the CJ was launched, but that's mostly had to do with increasing their effective maximum range; nobody has really done much to develop hardware that can take the strain of a higher power output on the naval scale, so no real damage increase. We're going to have a hell of a range advantage on them, except for their capital-class missile launchers."
"The danger being potential nuclear loads," Quintus Allard said.
"NOOK-YOU-LEEEERRR!" Katrina helpfully slurred, and Amanda giggled, before making another attempt at petting Cameron's hair.
"Yes, mother," Melissa said gently, before pulling her inebriated parent back down into her seat, and handing her a large bottle of water one of the attendants had retrieved, "Now drink up."
Katrina did as she was told, and the others redirected their attention to matters at hand, though Amanda kept trying to pet her eldest son's hair.
"Yes," Cameron said, "The danger being nuclear payloads. Nothing can beat a powered missile's range, but even if they launch in proper volleys, we'll swat them all out of the air with ASF and point-defense weapons. The real danger depends upon the size of their ASF contingent, and how they use it. If they outnumber us strongly, and use their strike craft to cover their missiles until they close, we could be in deep shit."
"While I can appreciate the general concepts," Hanse Davion said, "None of us have any experience with naval combat. Which do you think gives the better odds, staying aboard, or running?"
"Staying aboard," Cameron said without hesitation, "Until we know their ASF strength, we can't know if it's even possible for us to send an adequate escort force with you, much less detach one. And if we strip too much away from the CJ, the ship is pretty much doomed."
"Then we stay," Hanse said, glancing at the sloshed Archon for a moment, before looking directly at Melissa, "You'll have to make the call for your mother, since she's in no shape to do so herself."
"We stay," Melissa said firmly, "I'll not leave the people of this ship with anything less than the best protection available. If I had the skill, I'd go out there myself."
"Agreed," Justin Allard said, "If Yen-Lo-Wang hadn't gone up with the Luminarious, I'd crawl out on the hull to lend defensive fire."
((()))
Over the next fifteen hours, time seemed to crawl by. The Comstar commander continued to hold his strike craft in reserve, while building velocity towards Onion, and the orbiting Calvin Joliet. Meanwhile, the CJ's helmsman built up a truly tremendous orbital speed, thrusting 'down' into Onion's gravity well in order to develop as much breakaway velocity as possible when the time came.
Some light years away, the relief fleet continued to muster in the Caph system, ships accumulating around the precisely-charted jump points throughout the system. The entire process was held up for nearly an hour, by the exchange of assault dropships, for carrier dropships, but the exchange was considered worth it both by the admiralty, and by those aboard the Calvin Joliet.
The final element in system, the trio of DCMS Dropships, spent the entire time burning towards the Nadir Jump-point at a single gravity, and was 'reinforced' by a quintet of Jumpships arriving at said Jump-point, though they simply remained on station and waited. Both the Comstar commander, and Captain Ivo, wrote them off as irrelevant to the coming engagement, so long as nothing changed.
((()))
August 19th, Onion System
En-route to Nadir Jump Point
"I am officially authorizing the deployment of nuclear arms to our Aerospace Fighters," Theodore Kurita informed the Tai-sa on his comm screen, "All of them."
"Hai, Kurita-sama," The man responded crisply; Theodore saluted in response, then closed the channel.
"A precaution?" Tomoe Sakade asked quietly, "Or do you intend to throw the Combine into this conflict?"
"I have not yet decided," Theodore said, "But there was no fear in Cameron Ivo's eyes when I spoke with him. He sees a possibility of victory, and I wish to see where it comes from."
((()))
Eventually, with no discernible warning that the CJ's crew and passengers could detect, the Comstar fleet launched its strike craft.
It launched a great deal of strike craft.
Over one thousand, five hundred strike craft.
Jessica Langtry, studying the sensor feeds being relayed to her LAM, which was clinging to the CJ's hull, had only one thought for the situation; 'horse-poop.'
The Calvin Joliet, with all of its LAM's configured to flight mode, with the support of the Lyran and Suns ASF's, made up less than seven hundred strike craft, even if they averaged a heavier weight. Caph-built war machines would possess longer effective range, greater armor protection, and marginally more firepower than the Comstar fighter craft, but aerospace combat was the single place where all of these things mattered the least, as for all of Caph's technological advantages, they had not found a way to nullify inertia. This meant that the maneuverability limits on each fighter would be determined by the g-forces that its pilot could manage without blacking out.
For once, the officers of the CAF found themselves regretting their neglect of missile technology, as unless Comstar had also developed more advanced E-war capabilities (unlikely), they would most likely have been able to make up a great deal of the numerical difference with missile spam. The CTA's predilection for more cost-efficient energy weapons, however, was now showing its downside, as CAF strike craft were facing their first engagement where they were legitimately outnumbered.
The officers of the Calvin Joliet, however, had not been idle over the last century, and had developed plans for how to exploit the advantages they did have, all of which were centered around a single, unifying tenet:
When it comes to war, cheat like hell.
((()))
"Amanda," Katrina Steiner growled, "I am never letting you get me drunk on a Jumpship again."
"Oh," Amanda Ivo said, "Don't be such a baby; learn how to hold your liquor!"
Her message was rather undermined when the next thing out of her mouth was a mass of vomit, which fortunately was directed into a barf bag, which was already half-full. Amanda was some two hundred years old, but even for her, being massively hung-over in zero-g was a new experience. At this point, she was actually enjoying it for the sheer novelty of a genuinely new experience after two hundred years.
Katrina Steiner was mostly just trying not to throw up; zero-g did not agree with her stomach while she was hung over. Which for her, was quite the surprise; usually, her stomach (and liver) was as iron before the onslaught of alcohol. She would much rather be in the bathroom, with the sink and toilet ready at hand for their respective uses, but combat protocol required her, as a non-combatant, to be strapped into a crash harness, so she was. It felt very strange to the Archon, to be neither in a cockpit, nor the command center during a conflict.
"Well," She quietly mused, "You learn something new every day."
"What was that?" Amanda asked once she had finished her latest bout of retching.
"Nothing," Katrina said, "What's this son of yours plan for getting us out of this crapshoot anyways?"
"It's as much my grand-daughter's plan as my son's, knowing those two," Amand said with a slightly green smirk, "And it mostly involves shooting at the bad guys until they die."
((()))
"Open fire," Captain Cameron Ivo commanded crisply as the Calvin Joliet orbited into view of the Comstar fleet for the last time.
"Open fire," Commander Clair Ivo relayed crisply.
"Firing," The weapons officer reported.
All across the hull of the Calvin Joliet, three hundred and twenty armored hatches were blasted clear of the hull by charges that had awaited this purpose for nearly one hundred years. Two hundred and eighty of the revealed fifty-five-rated Naval Lasers opened fire on the incoming Comstar fleet, firing from nearly twice the Comstar fleet's maximum effective range. Of the roughly fifty Comstar Assault Dropships moving with thee fleet, forty were targeted, each receiving an amount of attention appropriate to its mass and durability. The Comstar fleet had been moving in a flat, ballistic course the entire time, their course not varying by so much as a single meter, and the Calvin Joliet's laser weapons targeted the firing ports of weapons, portholes on those dropships that had them, and other structural weakpoints, with absolute precision.
A few of the beams were distorted minutely by particulate matter in their path, striking the armored hull instead of the intended weak-points, but Dropships were never meant to stand up to naval weaponry anyways. Every single Dropship was destroyed, many of them vaporized as their own fusion engines detonated.
"Coming up on breakaway point," The CJ's Helmsman declared.
"Initiate as planned," Cameron ordered.
"Initiating in ten... five... three, two, one, breakaway."
The Calvin Joliet, which had been thrusting forward and downward to maintain its speed and orbit, abruptly pitched upwards, the sudden acceleration causing small pockets of chaos throughout the ship, the powered its engines up to full burn. The amount of thrust required to provide a four and a half kilometer long ship with two gravities of acceleration was immense, and Calvin Joliet-class Industrial Ships mounted the largest fusion drives ever built. At the time of launch, it would have taken days to prepare the ship for higher acceleration, but technology had marched on in the century since, and it had only taken twelve hours for Claire Ivo to direct the lockdown of the gravdecks and other miscellany. The enlarged drive plume of the Calvin Joliet was visible to the naked eye from tens of thousands of kilometers away, and completely impossible for the Comstar fleet to miss.
Something that Cameron was counting on, as his ship broke orbit of Onion and began hurtling towards the Nadir Jump-point.
"Weapons cycled," The weapons officer declared.
"Fire," Cameron said flatly, and a second barrage of coherent light lashed out, this time targeting a single one of the two Aegis-class cruisers that represented a disproportionately large percentage of the Comstar fleet's firepower.
The Comstar Admiral was no fool, however, and his fleet was maneuvering now. It was not enough to prevent the CJ's lasers from striking her target, but it was enough to keep her lasers from seeking out weak points in the Warship's thick armor, preventing the Righteous Fury from being destroyed outright. It did not, however, get off lightly, the massive salvo of lasers vaporizing armor all across its prow and port flank, then chewing into its internals. Weapons were slagged, compartments depressurized, crewers killed, and the armored bulkheads around the engine room were very nearly penetrated. Nearly half the vessel's weapons were damaged or destroyed,and its frame was warped by the heat the lasers imparted.
The Captain of the Righteous Fury gritted his teeth, then calmly ordered the ship to roll and present its other broadside to the Calvin Joliet.
Then, before the CAF ship's weapons could cycle again, the opposing forces tremendous velocities brought the Comstar fleet into its weapon range. Comstar's own naval lasers, as well as Heavy NPPC's, Medium NPPC's, and NAC-10's, all opened up on the Calvin Joliet. Almost all were firing from the extremes of their effective ranges, but the CJ was too massive to manage much in the way of evasive maneuvers, and while the Comstar war-fleet did not posses targeting hardware and software anywhere near as advanced as Caph did, their gunners were highly skilled, and they managed nearly 50% accuracy.
Which was when the Caph Armed Forces revealed their second trick, the slaved weapons systems of the Dropships and LAM's attached to her hull acting as an improvised point-defense system, and smacking the ballistic projectiles of the NAC-10's off course, and leaving only the lasers and PPC's to strike the Joliet's hull.
The Calvin Joliet's extremely heavily armored hull, which soaked the damage to no noticeable effect upon the ship, aside from a slight tremor. What was on the hull, however, did not get off quite so easily, a handful of LAM's being caught by NL or NPPC fire, and more or less obliterated instantly. Two point-defense weapon mounts were also destroyed, though few even noticed.
The CJ's weapons finished cycling, and a third salvo struck the Comstar fleet, for a second time targeting the Righteous Fury, chewing through her port armor, weapons systems, compartments, and structural members. Again, the barrage failed to destroy the Cruiser, but so much of its armament was obliterated, armor destroyed, and structural integrity lost, that it was effectively out of the fight, as marked by its Captain dropping the vessel out of formation.
For less than half a minute, the two forces closed into what was considered 'close' range by naval standards in the Inner Sphere, and all hell broke loose. Every weapon in the Blakists arsenal opened up, Autocannons, Lasers, Particle Projector Cannons, and Capital Missiles. Again, the CAF's targeting and weapon links allowed them to divert the Autocannon fire, but at this range, more than ninety percent of the weapons fire struck home.
Hellish energies blistered across the Calvin Joliet's dorsal structure, savaging its immense armor plates, scrapping almost three dozen point-defense weapons, five dozen of the attached LAM's, scuttling one of the docked Dropships along its port hull (a Liao vessel, fortunately), and crippling or destroying eleven of the Naval Laser turrets along its vertices.
After the energy barrage struck, the LAM's detached themselves and launched, to meet the oncoming capital missiles, which were being escorted in under lower acceleration by the Comstar ASF's. Eight seconds passed between the CAF LAM's launching from the Calvin Joliet's hull, and interpenetration of the two swarms of strike craft, moving at prohibitively fast speeds relative to each other. A significant fraction of the sharper CAF pilots managed to take advantage of their longer effective range to fire two volleys, rather than one, but the weapons exchange was still surprisingly bloodless.
The Comstar pilots tripled up on their targets, massed fire bearing down on the CAF strike craft; high speed, and maneuverability eroded accuracy, however, resulting in barely over 30% accuracy. This low accuracy, combined with Comstar's more average spread of ASF weight-classes weighed against the CAF's pure deployment of 100-tonners, there were surprisingly few destroyed or mission-killed CAF war machines, though there was a great deal of armor damage.
The CAF, AFFS, and LCAF weapons fire, however, was almost purely focused upon the sixty-one capital-class missiles bearing down upon the Calvin Joliet, every single one of which was emitting radiation appropriate to a nuclear payload. Of the sixty-one missiles, forty-five were struck down by the defending strike craft, and fourteen more were destroyed by the CJ's own point-defense weapons, leaving two to strike her dorsal hull.
The CJ was trying to roll, but it simply was too massive to maneuver in time, leaving its already-damaged surface vulnerable. One of the missiles struck a virgin section of the hull, and its detonation did little more than heavily irradiate and heat the hull, eroding its strength, but failing to penetrate. The second missile, however, struck one of the mutilated sections of armor, and tore the fore quarter of the dorsal hull to shreds, blasting shrapnel and radiation into the Joliet's number three hangar bay, while the pressure wave propagated through to shatter the modular compartment walls, gutting all of the neighboring compartments and damaging the ship's structural frame, as well as several key power conduits.
Due to the damaged power conduits, the Joliet's answering salvo was another thirteen guns light, leaving only two hundred and fifty-six NL-55's to answer the Comstar fleet's ruinous barrage. Two hundred and fifty-six naval lasers, however proved to be more than enough, as the Comstar fleet had concerned itself more with optimizing their own offensive fire, rather than maneuvering to best protect against the Calvin Joliet's, and the Sure Justice, the second Aegis-class Cruiser in the Comstar fleet, took a half-dozen beams through its engine compartments, before disappearing in a flash of nuclear fury.
One final weapons exchange occurred before the two forces blitzed out of each other's range, though the Calvin Joliet had managed to roll by this point. With the hull cleared of LAM's, the salvo did little but chew up the CJ's heavy armor, and slag a single point-defense mount. The Joliet's return fire, however, tore up the aft section of the Strength Through Adversity, nearly causing the Frigate's engines to overload. The Lola-III-class Frigate was forced to shut her primary fusion drives down, effectively removing her from the fight.
Then the two forces were away from each other, with time to assess damage, and prepare for their next clash.
((()))
"We'll be able to route power to the downed NL's," Claire said quietly, "It should take six hours or so. There's no way we can fabricate something large enough to cover the hull breach quickly enough to make a difference in this engagement though."
"About what I expected," Cameron said with a nod, "I'm just glad we made it off so lightly as far as fatalities are concerned."
Aside from a few casualties caused by concussive force, the Calvin Joliet's crew had gotten off incredibly lightly, not exactly surprising considering that every man, woman, and child, had been evacuated into the inner layers of the grav sphere. Cameron had no doubt that it was the lightest casualty count of any vessel that had ever had its hull breached by a nuclear weapon, and was pretty much entirely the result of the sheer size of the vessel.
"So what's the bad news?" Cameron asked.
"Our LAM's detected small-scale nuclear weapons on a number of the Comguard ASF's when the two forces interpenetrated," Claire said, "Nothing that our AMS can't deal with, but if they clear out the point-defense on a large enough section of the hull, suicide strike, or manage to maneuver into the breach on the dorsal hull..."
"It'll get ugly," Cameron summarized, "I need to speak with the Royals again."
((()))
Amongst the Comstar fleet, things were a mixture between grim, and satisfied. Slingshoting around Onion would require them to burn a lot of momentum, but it was better than having to decelerate, then re-accelerate from scratch, and while the Blakist capital ships would be unable to re-enter engagement range before the Calvin Joliet reached the Nadir jump point, but their strike craft, and double handful of dropships, would be able to make the range.
The relative acceleration and velocity being what it was, they would make the range only an hour short of the Jump-point, as Jumpships did not actually need to stop in order to jump, and thus the Joliet did not need to decelerate. One hour, however, was more than enough time to cripple or destroy the massive Industrial Ship, now that its hull had been holed.
((()))
"I believe," Theodore Kurita said, "It is time to cast our lot in this affair. Launch the Fighters."
((()))
"And that's about the size of it," Cameron finished, looking from Candace, to Hanse, to Katrina, to Melissa, "We can have a ship pick you up at the Jump-point, but that's-"
"Captain!" Claire's voice came abruptly, and sharply, through the comm, "The Draconis fleet has launched ASFs, over five hundred of them! They're on an intercept course, set to reach us at roughly the same time as the Comguard detachment!"
"Well," Cameron said, searching for a moment for words to adequately express himself, "Crap."
"I take it then," Katrina Steiner said quietly, "That the only way out of this then, is the hard way?"
"That would be a yes," Cameron said, "Unless Theodore decided it was time to throw in on our side of the fight. But not tell us. Hold on," He activated the comm, "Claire, any transmissions between the Combine fleet and the Comguard fleet detected?"
"No sir," Claire said, "We're not picking up anything from them at all. They have to be using comm lasers to communicate, or else we'd be getting something. Orders?"
"Rebalance the strike craft," Cameron said, some fatigue beginning to show in his voice, "time until engagement?"
"Eleven hours, sir," Claire said.
"Alright then," Cameron said, "Break out the sleeping pills, I want the first watch getting eight hours before we re-engage. Arrange something for the pilots as best you can as well."
"Aye-aye sir," Claire said, then cut the channel.
"Well," Hanse said wryly, "Looks like now would be the time for mounting up, and crawling our Battlemechs out onto the ship's hull."
"Considering that a nuclear detonation inside of the hull is more or less guaranteed to, at a minimum, cripple the Jump Drive," Cameron said, "That's probably not a bad idea, for everyone in this room who isn't royalty. Including myself. And mom."
"And why not me?" Amanda demanded.
"Because," Cameron said shortly, "While you technically qualify as 'mech pilot, you're not much of one, and beyond that, you didn't bring your mech with."
"You're so cute when you're irritated," Amanda said, smiling fondly at her son.
((()))
For some, time seemed to crawl interminably, for others, it seemed to fly by far too quickly. Every Steiner and Davion mech still functional entered the breached landing bay, and made the difficult climb up to the dorsal hull in double gravity, though they waited until three hours before the Comguard strike craft would overtake them to do so.
It wasn't going to be a pretty battle. The CTA forces were vastly outnumbered, and most of the LAM's had already taken damage. The Comguard pilots had been riding first on their dropships at two g's, then in their cockpit at more than three, for nearly a full day by the time they caught up. Adrenaline and stimulants could make up some of the difference, but there was no way to compensate fully. Those aboard the Calvin Joliet had been able to rest, but they were still suffering under the weight of higher gravity, and not at their best. Only the DCMS pilots were reasonably rested, both because they had launched last, and because they were only accelerating at roughly one gravity, both to prevent strain, and due to the intended timing of their intercept.
Hours passed, and as the Calvin Joliet closed with the Kuritan ASF's, her sensors began to detect the radiation emitted by the Kuritan's nuclear payload. At that point, the entirety of the CJ's non-combat personnel were packed into the ship's core, and innermost ring, which were armored, to offer the best protection possible against nuclear attack. And Cameron Ivo spent the rest of the time before contact was made, attempting to make contact with the Kuritan ASF wing, as preemptive action would become necessary if they posed a nuclear threat.
When he received his response, his face shaped itself into The Grin.
((()))
"I hate this kind of waiting," Admiral Dipak Vishram declared, "Makes me feel like I'm sitting on my ass, watching people die."
He and his Chief of Staff, Tomas Stump, were watching the engagement over live FTL link from the Calvin Joliet in the Admiral's day cabin aboard the CSS Heavy Metal, and their inability to act yet was driving Dipak nuts.
"I'd offer to help you get drunk, sir," Stump said, "But it's less than six hours until time for us to jump."
"I should have joined the Army," Dipak grumbled, beginning a rant Stump had heard many times before, "Much more straightforward. See enemy, shoot enemy."
Stump waited out his CO's rant with the patience of long experience.
((()))
Roughly five minutes before the pursuing Comguard ASF's entered their own weapon's range relative to the Calvin Joliet, the Industrial Ship's capital-class lasers opened fire on the smaller ships. Many salvos were fired, but less than two dozen Comguard strike craft were destroyed, due to Comguard defensive maneuvering, and the difficulty inherent to targeting strike craft with capital-class weapons.
In the final sixty seconds before interpenetration, the DCMS Strike Craft engaged maximum thrust, moving from under one gravity of acceleration, to roughly five gravities. The difference in expected acceleration resulted in the Kuritan ASF's bursting past the Calvin Joliet and her escorts less than two seconds before they entered weapons range with the Comguard strike forces. The Kuritan ASF's opened fire with every weapon in their arsenals, concentrating fire on the lighter Comguard craft, and destroying more than two hundred of them.
Due to their relative velocities, the Kuritan ASF's swept past the Comguard vessels before they could even begin to return fire, bearing down upon the trailing Comguard fleet, which was now stripped of its ASF escort, with a heavy nuclear payload.
Then the CAF and Comguard forces clashed, lasers, missiles, autocannons, and PPC's lashing back and forth through the void as the two factions savaged each other. It was all over in scarcely more than the blink of an eye, the Comguard's velocity being vastly higher in order to allow them to overtake, and as they swept away, both forces had lost roughly equivalent numbers, the edge slightly in the CAF's favor, but nowhere near sufficient to make up for the numerical disparity.
The Comguard fighters immediately came about, and began to decelerate, hard, but so did the Calvin Joliet and her escorts, expanding the time it would take for the two forces to close and re-engage, as well as the amount of time the CJ's capital lasers would have to attempt to thin their assailant's numbers. The acceleration was still in the Comguard's favor, however, as well as the time it took the Joliet to come about, and it would be less than thirty minutes before the next pass, and this one would leave only a few minutes before the Comguard forces returned for the last time, relative velocities close enough for genuine dogfighting.
The second pass came, and without the DCMS attack to break the Comguard's formation and firing plans, things went much more poorly for the Calvin Joliet's protectors, their numbers cut down to just under six hundred, while the Comguard flotilla still numbered around eleven hundred. In the time between passes, the Joliet's capital lasers managed to scour another double-handful of strike craft from the void, but not enough to make the difference. After the secon pass, the CJ came about again, lengthening the time of separation again, as she accelerated towards the Nadir Jump-point once more, and her Dropships launched, moving into protective positions over her damaged dorsal hull.
Then the final approach came, and the battle began in earnest, the two forces making one head-to-head pass, before dissolving into a furious furball of interweaving dogfights. To both their boon, and their bane, the Comguard pilots were very objective oriented, as had been pounded into them by their training, and one hundred and fifty of the strike craft broke away from the main engagement, moving to attack the Calvin Joliet directly once her protectors were otherwise occupied. They ran afoul of first the defensive fire from the Dropships, and then the Joliet's considerable point-defense weaponry. Dozens were destroyed, and a dozen more were crippled; in retaliation two dozen nuclear missiles were launched at the dropships, to attempt to clear the way.
Over the last century and a half, the CAF had spent a fortune on laser-based anti-missile systems, and the AMS attacked the incoming missiles with a vengeance. Unfortunately, the nuclear missiles were larger, and more heavily armored, than the AMS were designed to deal with. Fortunately, weight of fire made the issue irrelevant, and every last missile was destroyed before it could strike the Dropships.
This did not, however, prevent the Blakist ASF's from forcing their way past the Dropships, especially when one of the fighters equipped with a nuclear missile, and piloted by a particularly fanatical lieutenant, rammed itself into one of the Assault-configured Mammoth's, turning a quarter of the ship into radioactive slag, and much of the rest into ruin, killing most of the crew instantly.
Then the attack force came upon the large hole in the Calvin Joliet's hull, and another two dozen were lost to the huge mass of fire that vomited out of the hole, courtesy of the Steiner and Davion mechs within. Their weapons, however, did not cycle in time to stop the second wave to approach the hole, and they successfully penetrated the hull, and launched a half-dozen missiles. Three of the missiles were destroyed by the detonation of the other three, but that still meant three nuclear detonations within the Calvin Joliet's hull.
The combined explosive force of over one hundred kilotons instantly obliterated every Battlemech and Aerospace Fighter within the Number Three Hangar, tore the nose half-way off of the ship, and peeled the damaged dorsal hull like an orange nearly halfway to the back of the ship. The compartment was void of atmosphere, so the pressure wave caused by the detonation was blunted, but all of that energy had to go somewhere. The blast wave and vibrations tore up and down the ship, shattering the walls of almost every compartment, turning the forwards sections of the outer grav decks to so much twisted wreckage, and shredding a great deal of her industrial machinery beyond repair.
In the armored core of the ship, the blast wave struck like the hammer of an angry god, and though it did not manage to breach the innermost grav deck or core, the sheer percussive force smacked people around like rag dolls, killing thousands, and injuring tens of thousands. Worse, it jammed or crippled a large number of hatches and almost all of the elevators, which would prevent medical care from reaching the injured in a timely fashion, resulting in hundreds more dying from their wounds.
Outside of the ship, the forward quarter of the dorsal hull had been turned into so much shrapnel by the detonation, heavily damaging the Dropships that had attempted to protect her, and tearing the remaining Comguard ASF's in the immediate area to shreds, save a handful which were in the shadow of the CAF, ASSF, and LCAF dropships. In perhaps the only mercy the ship received, the primary engines were not damaged, though the detonation had driven the ship far off course. With her primary source of power still active, the Ventral and aft turrets were still able to fire, and fire they did.
For any other force in the Inner Sphere, Periphery, or Deep Periphery, firing into an intense, tight dogfight such as that being fought between the CAF and Comguard aerospace wings, would have been an exercise in folly. For the CAF, every bird equipped with a targeting computer and advanced data interlink, slaving not only ever LAM's, but also every turret aboard the Calvin Joliet into a single fire control link
The CAF, AFFS, and LCAF fighters were outnumbered three to two, but averaged a much higher weight and armament per bird, and with fire support from the Calvin Joliet's remaining turrets, as well as the differences in pilot fatigue levels, they came out ahead.
Barely.
((()))
When the Kuritan flotilla of strike craft reached the Comguard fleet, the engagement was as swift as it was brutal. Comstar had retrofitted much of the old Star League vessels with heavier anti-fighter weapons, but faced against over five hundred strike craft, with no ASF escort, it was entirely inadequate.
The DCMS strike force launched over one hundred nuclear weapons at the Comguard capital ships and remaining Dropships. None survived as intact warships, and less than a thousand total Comguard crewers would manage to escape.
((()))
Twenty-three LAM's, six Davion ASF's, and three Lyran ASF's survived the dogfight around the Calvin Joliet. None of them survived unscathed, and many of them barely counted as functional. Pilot mortality had been high, due to the nature of conflict in the void, and the fragility of pressure suits, on all sides of the conflict.
The Calvin Joliet, though, was safe, such as was left of it, and she made the course-correction to continue on towards the Nadir Jump Point, decelerating steadily at 0.8 gravities, the most she could manage safely with her damaged frame. She would overshoot the Jump-point, of course, but it would still minimize the amount of time it would take for relief forces to intercept her once they arrived in system.
Then the second Comstar fleet jumped in-system, at the Nadir Jump-point.
((()))
"Jump," Admiral Dipak Vishram ordered, and the CSS Heavy Metal jumped, Battlegroup One jumping after her a moment later.
Directly into the maximum limit of their range relative to the second Comguard fleet.
((()))
Aboard the Dragon's Fang, Theodore Kurita watched silently as three Battlecruisers, and twenty-four heavy frigates jumped into the system, and began tearing the second Comguard fleet to shreds. The Comstar vessels immediately began maneuvering to close with the CAF fleet, but they were all, every last one, crippled or destroyed before they could fire so much as a single naval laser.
"How did you know?" Tomoe Sakade asked quietly.
"I did not," Theodore said, "I simply asked myself which party was behaving more honorably, the charlatans pretending to be both pacifists and nameless pirates, who coordinated with people willing to attack a wedding while under a banner of truce in a time of peace, or those who have simply hidden their might, and fought to defend themselves?"
"Honor is clear in this case," Sakade murmured softly.
Theodore laughed harshly, before speaking again.
"It is," He said, "What is also clear, is that the Blakists would not have allowed witnesses not already in their thrall to escape, and thus honor and enlightened self-interest coincided."
He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a moment, before speaking again.
"And now," He said, "We must deal with the aftermath of this situation, and curry our support with the CTA, in hopes that they will prevent Comstar from destroying us with an interdiction as consequence of our actions."
((()))
AN: This took way too long to write. Ironic that I feel that way, considering the relatively short time between updates; really, what's so aggravating about this chapter, is writing it was also the process of me getting over my writer's block, and forcing myself to kick 2k+ words out a day, despite very much not wanting to. Unlike a lot of fanfic authors, I'm attempting to become a career novelist, and was writing novels (as yet unpublished) before I started on fanfiction. So, 2k words is actually nowhere near what I would considerable an acceptable daily output. I want at least 4-5k daily out of myself, when I'm in the authorial doldrums. When I'm 'in the zone' I can do that much in about two or three hours.
Still, I'm producing regularly again, so with luck, my update schedule will actually become respectable (by my own standards at least) again.
AN 2: ...And after I wrote the above AN, I went on to write another 3k words that night. Go figure. The next chapter will be the end of book one of this story, after which it will go on hiatus. Probably a long hiatus. Don't expect to see any more at least until I finish writing Brutal Harry's sequel.