== Part 41 – A Few Butterflies ==

Melissa Steiner collapsed in relief as the pain ebbed and she heard the wailing cry of her and Hanse's newborn heir fill the delivery room. Hanse squeezed her hand and kissed her on the forehead in joy.

"My Prince, My Archon, congratulations," the doctor began. "It's a girl!"


"...presenting the Cylon's first original Battlemech design, the Harpy!" the MC for the Annual Tharkad Mech Show said over the loudspeakers.

On the other side of the Solaris VII style barrier system that separated the audience from the parade field, a bird legged mech with a sharp torso that was so low slung that it almost looked flat, arms that were little more than stubby wing with weapons mounted on them, and a bubble cockpit strolled to the center of field. When it reached that prominent position, it turned to face the audience and gave a bow to the audience that should have looked awkward but didn't. As it returned to a standing position, the Harpy's wing stub armed rotated a full three hundred and sixty degree circle around its shoulders, while the weapons on them simultaneously swiveled to point out sideways and then swiveled back in to the forward position.

"The Harpy is 50 tons of sheer attitude capable of carrying a variety of weapon loadouts via an innovative modular rail system because... well because the Cylons couldn't agree among themselves what the Harpy should be carrying, so they designed it to be able to carry anything depending on the individual pilot's personal taste," the MC lectured. "The Harpy can carry up to twelve tons of weapons and ammunition as well as having a center torso bay for carrying additional non-weapon equipment. Now that might not sound like much, but the Cylons had to make room and devote mass for the one feature all their pilots wanted."

The Harpy hopped straight up into the air. Instead of falling back down to the ground, it just floated at the apex of its jump while tucking its legs close in until they were flush against the bottom of its upper torso. Once that was done, its jets roared to life and the Harpy executed a vertical loop de loop before returning to its original position and dropping back down to the ground. The Harpy's legs unfolded in time to catch its own weight before it could slam into the ferrocrete tarmac.

"Oooh," a five year old Victoria Steiner-Davion said in awe as she watched the performance with wide eyes of wonder. Victoria turned to grown woman seated next to her and tugged on her dress. "Momma! I want one!"


"I want a Land-Air Mech," Victoria told her parents.

"Isn't it a bit early for this?" Melissa asked her daughter. "You don't turn sixteen until next year."

It was a tradition of both House Steiner and House Davion that the heir to the throne be given their first mech on their sixteenth birthday. That was of course assuming the heir in question was training as a mechwarrior and not for some other combat role. The Inner Sphere being what it was, every House made military training a prerequisite for their leader.

"Yes, and I know how long getting a mech takes, Mother," Victoria replied. "So I'm telling you right now what I want to be piloting so you can get me a LAM instead of whatever you two were planning on getting me." She paused, and then added, "It was a Victor, wasn't it? As a pun on my name?"

"I can neither confirm, nor deny," Hanse answered smoothly. Internally, he winced. Was he really that predictable to his daughter? "In any case, an assault mech is a proper mech for the heir of any House Lord, much less two. And a Victor is a fast and highly maneuverable mech. I thought you liked that in a mech."

"Oh, yeah, sure, a Victor is fast and maneuverable for an assault mech," Victoria said sardonically. "But that's still too slow for my tastes. I've tried Victors in the simulators and I don't like them. I want to go fast in a mech and be able to fly through the air and maybe space too. I tried light speedsters and long jumping mechs too, but they still don't do it for me. I want to fly."

Hanse and Melissa traded meaningful glances before looking back to their eldest child.

"If you really want to fly, we could switch you to an aerospace track," Melissa offered. "I trained as an infantryman. You don't have to be a mechwarrior if you don't want to be."

"Tempting, but no," Victoria said thoughtfully. "I want to be able to walk on the ground when I need to, fly through the air when I want to. I want to be both a mechwarrior and an aerospace fighter pilot and a LAM will let me do both at the same time."

"You don't want much, do you?" Hanse asked dryly.

"Someone once told me that ambition is good trait for a House Lord to have, Father," Victoria said with a smile.

"So what do you want us to do, Victoria?" Hanse asked. "Dig up an old Pheonix Hawk LAM? Maybe start a new war with the Combine and take the last Stinger LAM factory in the Inner Sphere away from them. I'm not sure we can get that done by your sixteenth birthday."

"Oh, no, Father, those old Star League designs are total death traps," Victoria said disdainfully. "Buy a Harpy from the Cylons."

"Victoria, you know those only work as LAMs because of Cylon gravity tech," Hanse told her.

"And the Cylons don't sell gravity tech to anyone," Melissa added quietly. "Not even us."

That was a rather sore sticking point in relations between the Federated Commonwealth and the Cylons. Hanse and Melissa understood why they did it, but a lot of their domestic political opposition like Ryan Steiner would use that fact in his rhetoric to club them over the head with. And truth be told, the NAIS had managed to acquire a few samples of gravity tech through battlefield salvage – pickings from fights between the Cylons and other people's forces of course – but they hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the devices, and attempts at just rote copying their construction hadn't produced functional devices.

"And without the gravity tech, the Harpy is as slow as the Victor you just told us you hated," Hanse finished. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Although I suppose it could carry heavier weapons then..."

"Okay, then, just order the NAIS to design a new LAM," Victoria suggested. "Use the Cylon Harpy as a base if you have to. It's got a much simpler transformation sequence than those old Star League relics anyway."

"Victoria, you know your mother and I love you," Hanse began, "but I can't justify the budget for a whole new LAM design just because you want one. I'd need to fit them in the AFFS' order of battle, and it's long been conventional wisdom that anything a LAM can do, other, cheaper platforms can do better."

"Father, 'conventional wisdom' got flushed down the toilet when the Cylons started using the Harpy en masse," Victoria argued. "We've seen it in our war games with them. We've seen it during their pirate hunts along our Periphery border. We've seen it during their reprisal raids into the Combine and Marian Hegemony. A regular mech might be able to beat a LAM in a one on one fight, but they'll never be able to catch them because even the slowest LAM will be able to outrun the fastest light mech. A force of assault mechs might be able to fight twice their number in LAMs, but they'll never catch them and never be able to hold any ground they aren't standing on. No offense, Mother."

Melissa just waved her off and beckoned her to continue.

"Also, the future of warfare is clearly in aerospace," Victoria continued. "The Cylons may live almost entirely on their basestars, but we still live on planets. And between all the new build Jumpships and the Cylon Color Constellation's fleet providing jump services, interstellar Dropship traffic has increased eight or nine fold since the Cylons arrived and show little sign of hitting saturation. And that's creating a new arena of conflict in its own right, because everyone is trying to build up their aerospace forces as fast as they can. By the way, how are Uncle Quintus' efforts going to steal the plans for the Combine's new gas core KF Drive?"

Hanse just stared at her, as if to say that she should know better than to expect an answer.

'The point is that we need a platform that can both fight on the ground and in the aerospace arena," Victoria said. "And I want in on the ground floor of that."

"Hmm, you've been following all the military pundits, I see," Hanse said thoughtfully.

"I've wanted a LAM ever since the first time I saw one," Victoria replied. "I've thought about it a lot."

"Okay," Hanse said.

"What? Really?" Victoria said surprised.

"Hanse?" Melissa said at the same time, equally surprised.

"I'll get my people started on designing a new LAM," Hanse told his daughter. "I can't guarantee that it'll be ready by your sixteenth birthday. In fact, it probably won't. I can't even guarantee that it'll leave the prototype development stage. But I can guarantee that if we finally do start producing new LAMs, you'll get your first pick of them."

"Oh, thank..." Victoria began.

"BUT!" Hanse interrupted her with a raised finger. "LAMs require pilots that are trained as mechwarriors and aerospace pilots. Not many people have what it takes to be one of those. Even fewer can be both. And even fewer than that can do both well. So before I ever let you near a LAM of any kind, young lady, you will have to ace both the mechwarrior's and the aerospace pilot's proficiency exam. And I mean really ace them, not merely just get a passing grade. Am I clear?"

"Bargained well and done," Victoria agreed.

"What was that?" Melissa asked, puzzled by the expression.

"Oh, it was something I heard one of Jaime Wolf's Dragoons say when you last had them over for contract negotiations," Victoria replied.

After a happy Victoria left, Melissa rounded on Hanse.

"Hanse, what was that?" Melissa demanded. "You're not seriously considering changing the composition of the AFFS just to give our daughter a birthday gift, are you?"

"No, but it's something I've been considering doing for a while now," Hanse replied. Melissa typically let him handle all the military affairs of their shared rulership of the Federated Commonwealth, which was why this was all coming as a surprise to her. "We've already been looking into designing our own knock off of the Harpy LAM without gravity tech, but we're still working the kinks out of it. If I gave the order for them to go full bore into development and production right now, I think we can get mass production started right around the time Victoria enrolls into Nagelring."


"Vicky, you're working too hard," Kai Allard-Liao told Victoria as he paced back and forth behind her.

Victoria sat at a table in the Nagelring library, a thick textbook lying open in front of her with a tall stack of several more off to the side. Victoria's head was bowed over the book, propped up with her left hand as her eyes crawled across the paper and her right hand occasionally turning a page.

"Of course I'm studying hard," Victoria replied, her voice laced with fatigue. "That's what happens when you take on two career tracks at the same time and want to pass with flying colors."

"You really want that LAM, don't you?" Kai asked.

"I don't just want the LAM," Victoria replied. "I want to be assigned to a unit where I can use it to its fullest potential. I don't want to get a LAM and then be unable to fly because I'm stuck in a battalion that can't plod along faster than sixty four kph. And I don't want to be stuck in an aerospace regiment that never fights on the ground."

"Hmm, I see your point," Kai said. He stopped pacing behind Victoria, then placed both of his hands on her shoulders and began to knead. "But you're not going to pass anything if you're too tired to stay awake for your exams."

"Oh, that feels good," Victoria purred. "Stop that. Someone might see."

"Vicky, everyone already knows," Kai replied, not stopping his massage. "No doubt there's some paparazzi behind one of these book shelves taking pictures of us even as I speak."

There was a thump nearby, followed by the sound of falling books and the fading patter of fleeing footsteps.

"No doubt they're going to publish that I'm in the middle of trying to assassinate you via strangulation," Kai said in a mock serious tone.

"And you aren't?" Victoria asked, her traitorous eyelids closing as she enjoyed Kai's massage. She should be studying, she told her eyelids, but they refused to open for her.

"Of course not. We Liaos are far more dastardly than that," Kai replied proudly. He gently tugged on Victoria's shoulders and she obediently leaned back in her chair. Victoria's head flopped backwards so that when her eyes opened, she was looking right into Kai's face. It was very close to her own. "Obviously, I'm going to seduce you, make you fall in love with me, and then marry you for your titles and thrones," he explained softly. "After all, since the Federated Commonwealth conquered the Capellan Confederation, it's the only real route to real power that the heir of House Liao really has any more."

Victoria reached up and pulled Kai's head down for a long kiss.

"And let me guess," Victoria said, when they finally broke apart. "When we finally produce an heir together, you'll have me assassinated so you can rule as regent, right?"

"Of course not," Kai said with a humorous smile. "All I have to do is wait and you'll get yourself killed in that deathtrap you want so badly. The real problem is keeping you alive long enough to make an heir!"

"Okay, but if you make me fail a single test because of your seduction attempts, Lord Liao," Victoria began while smiling back in kind, "your dastardly plot is going to fail at the 'marrying me' stage."

"Not the 'falling in love' stage?"

"Tell me what you think," Victoria said as she pulled him down for another kiss.


Colonel Victoria Steiner Davion resisted the urge to whoop in joy as her LAM topped a rise and she spotted the Ghost Bear Battlemech Star in the distance, exactly where they said they would be. She eyeballed their composition in an instant. They were all second liners, "regular" Battlemechs that were no less dangerous than the Clan's front line Omnimechs, but their loadouts were much more predictable. And because of that, Victoria knew exactly how to handle them without them opening fire on her people first.

"Alpha, we're breaking left. Beta, break right. Charlie is on the off play," Victoria ordered to her command company. She didn't have to explain what she meant; everyone was well drilled enough to know their roles by heart.

The Federated Commonwealth's initial production run of new LAMs was extremely limited. And true to his word, Victoria's father had given her the literal first one off the production line. But he'd done more than that. Because their capabilities were so different from regular mechs and aerospace fighters, the AFFS didn't really know what to do with the new LAMs, so Hanse Davion had given his daughter an entire battalion of LAMs to play with - essentially the entire initial production run barring a few spares – just to see what she would do with it.

And just to emphasize how stupidly fragile the new LAMs were to Victoria, Hanse Davion had named the new 55 ton machines the BT-F1 Butterfly.

In response, Victoria had the Butterflies all painted all black except for the arms and wings, which were a riot of rainbow colors.

Luckily, years of gaming out LAM tactics with Kai and her friends at Nagelring had already given Victoria a good idea of how to use them, and getting her hands on actual working Butterflies with actual real world capabilities and limitations had let her refine her tactics and strategies to fine polish. LAM tactics boiled down to always staying on the move, using their speed to snipe enemy ground units at long range. Even the best gunners would find it nearly impossible to hit a LAM on the move at long range, even with LBX cluster rounds and highly accurate pulse lasers. The LAM pilots would have a difficult time hitting their opponents as well, but not as difficult as all but the fastest mechs were practically stationary compared to the LAMs.

And if they ran into enemy aerospace fighters in anything resembling equal numbers, Victoria's doctrine was to go to ground and use their ECM in conjunction with ground clutter to make themselves much more difficult targets like regular Battlemechs normally did. Luckily, Victoria didn't have to worry about them on this occupied Rasalhague world because the Clans had just withdrawn all their aerospace fighters to fight the Cylons, leaving only ground units to defend against her raid.

The hit and run tactics were more like what House Liao used to use than anything Steiner or Davion units were accustomed to, and Victoria eternally thanked God for her husband's contributions even if he had declined to become a LAM pilot himself and stick with his father's Yen Lo Wang.

Perhaps the hardest thing about fielding the Butterflies was scrounging enough talented enough people who were willing and able to train as both a mechwarrior and aerospace pilot. Half of Victoria's First LAM Battalion were her schoolmates from Nagelring.

"Focus the Rifleman and Kraken," Victoria added. Those were the most dangerous mechs, the ones with the long ranged pulse lasers and light, very long ranged ultra autocannons that had the slightest chance of downing one of her fleet Butterflies. "Break on my mark... Mark!"

As one, Victoria's Alpha and Charlie lance swerved to the left as Clan autocannon shells, long ranged missiles, lasers, and PPC fire reached out to them. All of them missed as the range was still very long. Beta lance has swerved right. Clan weapons in general hit harder in general than their Inner Sphere counterparts, but not so hard that they could down a Butterfly in one hit. Given that his daughter would be flying one, Hanse Davion had made sure the Butterflies had as much armor as their frames could carry. Not to mention inventing whole new technologies like the extra light gyro and other components just to free up enough weight to let the Butterfly carry a worthwhile weapons payload.

Victoria jinked to the right, just long enough to bring the back of the Kraken into her sights and trigger the pair of looted Clan tech Large Pulse Lasers her Butterfly had been refitted with, before jinking back to the left to maintain her distance.

The rest of Victoria's command company was still armed with standard issue Extended Range Large Lasers, and Victoria observed with satisfaction and beams crisscrossed through Clan formation, occasionally burning off armor with far more frequency than the Clanners were landing hits back.

If the Clanners got lucky, they might down one, maybe two Butterflies. But there were twelve Butterflies and only five Clanners. Victoria's other two companies were hitting other targets on the planet, but even so, Victoria was sure she had this one in the bag.