Disclaimer: This Disclaimers makes claim that nothing has changed regarding my ownership (or lack thereof) since my last disclaimer.
SLDS George Murray
Outbound from Tamar orbit
The doors of the lift slid open and for a moment he was left staring at the flat metal of a pressure hatch, but then that too opened though this with the faint shush of a seal being broken and then the din of a busy mechbay slammed into him as though it were a living thing. The helmet he had been issued was different from those used by Clan Wolf techs, and even more so than the neurohelm he was familiar with and he took a moment to make an adjustment to the hearing protectors.
"Dale Cairns?"
Dale started, mentally berated himself for his lapse, and looked down at the woman standing by the hatch who had addressed him. She was as short as an aerospace pilot, perhaps a little shorter, though she appeared physically more robust and without the tell-tale enlarged cranium and eyes. She wore the coveralls that seemed to be the undress uniform of technicians everywhere. He too wore a set that had been issued to him, but unlike theirs—which were black—his was white and lacked any insignia save for a nameplate. Well, that and the white, blue, and red-braided cord around his left wrist.
"I'm Wendy Potrykus; most around here call me 'Widget'. You can call me 'Chief'," she said. "Do you know your way around a bay, or are you one of those 'mech-monkeys who lords it over us mere mortals and only shows up to complain?"
Dale's hands had been balled more from habit than anything else, but her words and tone was enough for him to dig his fingernails into his palms. There was nothing wrong with the question, but the way it had been phrased… "I know my way around a Mech-bay," he said, forcing his voice to remain level.
"You'd better," she said with a little huff. "If I have to hold your hand I'm going to be pissed off. If you get yourself in sickbay because you didn't get out of a way of an ammo-cart—assuming you survive long enough to get to sickbay and aren't a one-way trip to the morgue—I'm really going to be pissed off, both because of the time that'll need to be spent scraping you off the deck and the paperwork…" She glared up at him, huffed again, then made a motion with her head. "Follow me."
Dale, seething and wondering if this was what all Bondsmen felt like, followed. She had a lean grace and economy of movement in her stride that made him wonder if she'd been trained as a warrior, and if she had, why was she working in a mech-bay?
He frowned as a sudden thought struck him. The purposeful movement and long limbs were things he looked for in the occasional bed-partner. Okay, so she was small, but that just made her exotic. Was this a freebirth thing? Was she working in a mech-bay because she was…breeding?
It did not seem very likely. Mech-bays were inherently dangerous even if it was a different kind of danger than that of a battlefield. But how else would these freebirthers create their next generation? They had female warriors; they could not expect them to not have a warrior's needs. But if the choices were to have a certain percentage of your unit not going into combat because of…breeding, or to limit their ability to breed…
Dale shook his head. The whole line of thought was growing increasingly absurd and only served to remind him how long it had been since he had had a chance to couple.
"Normally I have a whole lance-worth of mechs to supervise," she shot over her shoulder at him. "Lucky for you, Homer broke a femur last week so now I have to do his job as well as mine, and you get to help me do it."
She stopped abruptly enough for Dale to almost run into her. What he saw in the bay before them made him wince.
The Longbow was a design six centuries old. It was also effective for its purpose which probably helped to explain how it got to be six centuries old. Some Clans still fielded it secondary formations, though even there they had mostly been replaced by newer if questionably more effective models.
This one had been torn apart.
Its cockpit assembly had been removed and now was clamped in a gantry over the rest of the mech like a head displayed on a chain over a place of execution. Both missile pods had been dismounted and, from what he could see of them on the deck of the bay, gutted. Armor had been stripped away leaving bare bones of endo-steel and pseudo-musculature of myomer bundles. The 'rib' bracing for the mech's torso had been cracked open and spread in an obscene parody of wings and the engine dismounted. From the angle Dale was unable see if the gyro that was critical to a mech's balance was still inside, but he would not have been surprised if it had been removed as well.
"What happened to it? I see no damage," he observed.
"You did," was the short reply. "Not you personally, I mean Clan Wolf. You started to unload your garrison supplies before Planting was decided and third-cav captured the lot. Most of it was modular components for your front-line units, but quite a bit were normal spares for your second-line 'mechs. We're completely rearming the missile pods with captured launchers—not that fancy plug-and-play stuff, the second-line LRM racks—and recladding her with standard armor. Between the mass savings from the lighter launchers, and the space from the less bulky armor, we're going to be able to give it magazines that are fifty-percent deeper and a pair of your lasers for self-defense."
"Clan weapon systems?" Dale queried.
"Clan beamers are better than ours, mostly," the Chief said as she led him to a fusion plant that was anchored to the deck. "We have better ballistic weapons, though the feed mechanisms for your Ultra-series autocannons look interesting. And I helped do the work-up on their missile systems. Your launchers are a lot lighter and somewhat more compact than ours, but they don't look nearly as robust. On the upside, they have better tracking hand-off systems, but our missiles are decidedly superior, especially the seeker heads. For now, we're using your ammunition, but I expect a production run of compatible missiles will be done to simplify logistics. It will be interesting to see what kind of performance they get. And I've been asked to see if I can get Ullr integrated with the racks, but that's for later."
"Ullr?"
"Missile targeting system. Now, help me service this engine."
'Helping' mostly consisted of him passing tools or parts, or holding the occasional component in place while she anchored it in its appropriate spot. The engine was a Clan XL model they'd obviously repurposed for their own use much like the weapons, much like him… Many of the parts or tasks he recognized from the familiarization courses he had had in his sibko or supervising the technicians working on his—and then his star's, and then trinary's—mechs. Some warriors, even in Clan Wolf, disdained the other castes, but Dale had always made it a point to recognize what each caste brought to the Clan and made sure they knew he recognized it. Besides, working together often brought up ideas in which way the mechs could be tweaked to be a little more efficient that would not have occurred to a tech who was not, after all, the one who had to use it, nor the warrior who had other things to occupy his time with than every last detail of a laser assembly.
But helping to service this engine gave him pause. Many of the parts, such as the lasers that drove the fusion reaction, had been left as they were, but others—the components of the magnetic confinement bottle came to mind—were replaced outright. And there was something decidedly…odd about some of the new arrangements. There were an awful lot of particle converters—which turned charged particles from the fusion plasma into energy—and far fewer of the thermoelectric converters (which turned heat into energy) than would normally be found in a Clan fusion plant.
In fact, it seemed as though there had been no thermoelectric converter left in the engine housing. There were enough particle convertors for three engines of the same size and power, and there was enough room left over to fit in more magnetic field generators than a comparable Clan engine would have too. That would allow the engine to run with a higher bottle pressure and increase energy output, or perhaps it was for redundancy in event of battle damage? It was worth considering.
And there was the not-so-little fact that while it was about the same size as an equivalent rated engine used by the Clans, if he was reading the notation on it correctly the whole installation was much lighter…
"Are you not going to replace the neutron shielding?" he asked as she started to climb down. The shielding was a key component of the fusion chamber housing. It absorbed the neutrons created by the fusion process and kept them from damaging the rest of the engine, mech, and pilot. Replacing the shielding was a standard part of engine maintenance because, while a tedious task, it was easier than replacing an irradiated mech and pilot.
"Climb up here," she ordered.
Dale did as he was bid and she indicated an access hatch. A third of a meter or so inside, framed by a nest of components, was a flat grey curved piece of metal.
"What do you think this is?" she asked.
"The wall of the containment vessel for the fusion bottle," he replied. "One of yours?"
"Correct, on both counts," she said. "Homer managed that before he wound up in sickbay. Go on."
"There is no neutron shielding around it—or at least nothing that I recognize as such. And it seems you pulled much of the secondary shielding as well." Dale considered this for a moment. "Either this is an outer casing, or your shielding is part of the vessel itself?" The laser assemblies were of Clan manufacture, but the casing wasn't. Actually, the Clans made the vessel of shielding composites much like he had suggested though the briefings he had received prior to the start of the Invasion said that the Inner Sphere was unaware of the construction techniques necessary.
"Nope, you were right the first time, that's the outer vessel wall. Go on the other side of it and you'll be inside the fusion chamber itself. Try again."
"I cannot. Either your shielding is different enough that I cannot recognize it or you have no shielding at all."
"Exactly. We don't need it anymore," she said as she began to close up the access port.
"That makes no sense," Dale protested. "Neutrons cannot be contained by a magnetic field. Without proper shielding neutron contamination will—"
"Sure it does," Chief cut him off. "Look, the Clans use a deuterium-tritium fuel cycle, right?"
"Aff." Dale said patiently. Every military known to man used a D-T fuel cycle for their fusion engines. They had almost since the day that a reliable fusion cycle had first been initiated. Other fuels had made their way into civilian use, but—
"Why?"
"Deuterium-deuterium requires a longer energy confinement and reduced power production, and hydrogen-boron requires a much higher energy confinement for a lower power density. Civilian units can take that kind of penalty but not milita—" Dale stopped abruptly. "An aneutronic fuel source?" he asked incredulously. "Without the disadvantages of proton/boron fusing?"
"Helium-trey/helium-trey," she said. "Not only do we save by not having to worry about neutron-shielding, but all the charged particles produced means we can go for a direct electro-conversion rather than mucking about with thermoelectric converters. The mass savings mean we can put in more mag-coils for a denser plasma bottle which gives us still more power, and let's face it, shielding is bulky and mass-intensive. We run out of room in the plant before we max-out its available mass so our convert is lighter than the original to boot. Not to mention, hydrogen is a slippery sucker and Tritium even more so. Helium stores easily and it isn't likely to explode if a fuel bunker breaches."
"I understand how that would be so, but what about a fuel source?" Dale asked. "Certain planets and moons can have somewhat substantial deposits, but even on those the percent composition is so low to preclude efficient mining...at least where the quantities for a military organization of any reasonable size."
"A good start," she said. "Go ahead and speculate."
"A gas giant?" Dale said skeptically. The satisfied look told him he was correct. It was an answer known before mankind had reached Mars. An efficient means of harvesting the gas was a problem that had stemmed mankind for nearly as long. "How do you extract the gas?"
"Not my department," she smirked. "But let me add this little bit. This here engine," she said, patting the rebuilt engine on a now-closed access port, "takes up less volume than one of ours, and less mass of one of yours, we still will get more power out of it."
Dale's eyes widened at this pronouncement.
LC-81225-62114-239208-208919 (a rather useless red dwarf)
Well inside the Fuchida limit, on the elliptic
Sumner Johns glided through the last hatch marked in his instructions, expecting to find himself in a hanger bay filled with fighters, or at least the cradles for aerospace fighters. He had originally anticipated being sent to a commander's office, but he had been confronted with the wrong kind of door. It was the kind of hatch that anticipated death pressure occurring on the other side, not the kind used for internal compartmentalization.
What he found instead of a hanger was a kind of gallery. A long corridor running from his left to his right, with the wall opposite the hatch made of crystal-clear armorplast that looked out into space. He stopped himself with the grab bar and looked outside. Beyond the armorplast was a series of four gantry-cradles, each of which held a distinctly ungainly-looking craft.
They looked nothing so much like squat slab-sided cylinders that were rounded down into a cone going forward before abruptly ending at a flat-planed bow. Trapezoid-shaped wedges had been cut out of the dorsal and ventral sides, at the corner of each were thick tubes of what could only be engine pods. Blisters mounted on the engine pods at angles became ridiculously oversized thrusters.
Too large for aerospace fighters, or even small craft. DropShips, he thought with a mental snort, for such an awkward craft would never survive in the atmosphere. But on the small side though, he noted once the surprise had worn off. Each could not have massed much more than a few hundred tons, if they managed to mass that much. The...cradle-like structure had to be someway of boosting a KF-boom, or adapting it so that it could carry more than a single DropShip. That was an impressive accomplishment.
"What do you think?"
Johns turned, suppressing a frown at his own inattentiveness. The man who had snuck up on him was small—well, most of the best fighter pilots were on the small side, the data on that went clear back to the pre-space wars of the twentieth century—but weak eyes, a thin mustache, and premature balding hair made him think 'scientist' instead of 'pilot' despite that he was wearing a full-body pressure/G-suit.
Johns briefly debated, but went with blunt honesty. "I thought I was being assigned to an aerospace fighter unit."
"Go on," the man said. "'Bondsman' is your tradition, not ours. I assume you chose it over POW status? I was briefed, but let's assume that they got it wrong."
"I did," Sumner Johns said, and this time he did frown. "A Bondsman must prove himself to his new Clan so that he might be allowed the chance to become a Warrior again. A cord of three interwoven cords is worn, each cord representing a virtue. Ability. Integrity. Loyalty. What those mean can differ between Clans, and each Clan has a different way of testing them or thing that they look for. When each cord has been severed the Bondsman is considered a Warrior of his new Clan and must undergo a Trial of Position to find his new rank."
"And they sent you here because we requested a pilot after Viehl broke his neck in the Glitch," the man sighed. "You should have been sent to one of the aerospace fighter units, or possibly one of the ground-force units."
"Those fighters, utilized by the Third Cavalry, I have never seen their like…" Johns offered a not particularly subtle probe.
"VTACs," the man said with a nod. "Vectored thrust assault craft. Only started working with it a couple years before the Coup."
"The Coup?"
The man paused and looked up at him. "You haven't been briefed yet? Nobody told you what we were about?"
Sumner shook his head, doing his best to hide his discomfort with the man's continuing use of contractions.
"Figures. I'm Mitchel Sperry. You are?"
"Sumner Johns."
"Handle?"
"Wolfman," Johns said grudgingly.
Sperry looked at his right arm, the one he had lost in his Trial of Position in Clan Wolf after having his first set of Bondcords severed, and had had replaced by a prosthetic that mimicked the limb of a wolf. Only the dexterous fingers and thumb resembled that of a human.
"I can't imagine why," Sperry said dryly. "Come on, we have a lounge this way."
"I would prefer to report to my new Commander and get briefed," Johns said.
"You just did," Sperry tossed back over his shoulder, "and you don't get the operational brief until you've had the background brief, and you don't get that until I've had a drink."
This pronouncement did little to lift Sumner Johns' sinking feeling. The Clans did not have a great deal of problems where warriors over-consuming intoxicants were concerned… aside from necrosia-addicts from Goliath Scorpion. Those warriors were usually regarded as worthless by other Clans, and for good reason.
The 'lounge' was an observation pod. Three walls were made of armorplast and looked out on a pair of the oddly-shaped DropShips to the left and right. Straight ahead was a view past the gantry-framing to what had to be a JumpShip, though the angle was not such that Johns was able to pick out sufficient landmarks to make a class ID.
"Beer?"
Johns declined.
"Have a seat," Sperry said, waving towards one of the chairs scattered around.
"I would prefer not to."
Sperry shrugged and slipped on a lap belt so he wouldn't float free, stuck a trio of beer bulbs to a contact surface on the side of the chair, then popped the cap on a fourth bulb. "About a month back we—Task Force TH-X1138, that is—suffered a KF-drive event."
The last three words caused Johns to shiver slightly. 'Events' involving a KF-drive were rarely the kind of thing that left survivors. They were also the kind of thing more common among the dramas aimed at the Laborer Caste than something that happened in reality.
"And it wasn't one of those mild 'we tacked on a couple hundred extra light-years' kind of jumps," Sperry pressed on. "It was one of those that serve as proof that there's some idiot out there playing God and fucking with the natural order of the universe. We had not only physical displacement, but temporal displacement as well."
"Time—" Johns made a strangled sound.
"Ain't on our side," Sperry confirmed. "We call it the Glitch, at least those of us 'round here. Command might be calling it something else, but they don't regularly call to consult, you understand."
"How far?" Johns asked, frowned, then: "Long?"
"We're still debating terminology, but either works," Sperry said, taking another pull of his beer. "And to answer your question, a bit more than two hundred and fifty years. By my chronology mopping up operations on Terra were only completed four months ago."
"Mopping up?" Sumner asked. "Wait…you said coup?!"
Yes, those mopping up operations, from that coup."
"Great Father," Johns whispered. "I think I will have that beer."
"Thought you might," Sperry said, flipping a bulb across.
"What are you?" Johns asked after a long pull of the bulb. It was not bad, for a micrograv brew, though it had the odd aftertaste common to them. "The BattleMechs on Planting were not standard, and I have never heard of a DropShip like those," he waved past the armorplast towards one of the…vessels.
"What we are is…complicated," Sperry said. "Um…how much do you know about the Royal Black Watch?"
"It was the First Lord's bodyguard unit," Johns answered at once. "A BattleMech regiment from the SLDF Royal Command."
"That was the general description," Sperry noted. "The reality is…complicated. It was called a 'regiment', but anyone with even a basic knowledge of it knew that it was bigger. How much bigger is a matter of debate. I'm not sure anyone knew exactly how large it was, and there were a lot of non-standard attachments—some were field units like the Blackheart battalion, but there were also training units, units testing gear… There was even a naval task group assigned directly to it, and personnel were always being detached for training, field exercises and the like. My point is, there were only a handful of survivors who held out on Terra, but there were a lot more scattered around outside the Sol system when the Fat Man pressed the button.
"They formed the nucleus that the Task Force grew around. It picked up a number of diverse units that didn't manage to fit the neat and orderly holes on the SLDF's manning charts. In fact, I don't think there are any two units that share a common TO&E."
"The Third Cavalry Regiment," Johns said. "I did not recognize it."
"That because back when the Terran Hegemony disbanded its armed forces into the SLDF's standardized Royal Command it was decided that there were some units that were so old and had served too well to just disband. There were a couple of units whose colors traced back over a thousand years. They were reduced to basically caretaker size, large enough to keep the unit's colors uncased and maintain an unbroken history. They did weapon testing and provided the Black Watch with an OpFor, among other things." Sperry shrugged, "or that's how the story goes. Most of them had hit at least the one-millennia threshold—the 3d Cav wasn't quite that old, I think they originated in the nineteenth century—I'd imagine there's one or two arguments going on about whether the Glitch makes them eligible for two."
"And you?" Johns asked. "One of the fighter units—"
"StarFire Combat Systems, actually."
Johns frowned.
"You see, the Task Force also collected a bunch of people who just wanted to get a shot in," Sperry said. "So on one hand we've got all those testing commands that expanded back out to field-force size. On the other we have the Legion which is filled with units from the Member States that wanted in but not to lose their identity within the SLDF.
"In my case, well, at one time I was the lead test pilot for StarFire Combat Systems. Then one day this guy I didn't know wearing a uniform that didn't belong to the SLDF showed up and demanded I turn everything over to him. I didn't like his attitude so I hooked our testing articles to a JumpShip and…" he shrugged slightly and waved out towards the armorplast with his beer bulb.
"Meet your new fighter."
"Fighter?" Johns asked. "It is the size of a small DropShip!"
"It's more of an assault-smallcraft, actually. Basically a cross between an oversized fighter and undersized dropper," Sperry conceded. "Originally the Avalon was intended for the system defense role. It was supposed to base out of Jump Point Stations, asteroids, and purpose-built defense platforms, and to neutralize enemy fighter support. The Cradle," he gestured out at the gantry, "was designed to freight them from where they were built out to assigned systems. We had to modify it to provide all of our support facilities. We started with a just-completed a run of 36, six squadrons' worth, for operational testing when the coup began. Currently we have seven on operational status, another four that are flight-capable but not combat-ready, and another two that we hope to be able to repair…eventually. If we get time on Prometheus and if Vulcan ever gets operational."
"Prometheus?" Johns asked. "Vulcan?"
Sperry paused. "You do know they were serious about that faith and honor stuff, yeah? I mean when they swore you in. If you get captured, they'll expect you to do the POW thing and keep your mouth shut. None of this 'bondsman' thing."
"I am aware," Johns said.
"And you agreed?"
"Yes."
"Without understanding what we are?"
"I knew this was important. And what I saw of your forces on Planting, it was more than I'd heard of any force in the Inner Sphere possessing."
"I haven't even gotten to the really good part yet," Sperry said.
"What…good part?" Johns asked warily.
Sperry gave Johns a considering look. "Tell you what. When you get all those cords cut I'll tell you…assuming you haven't learned or figured it out by then. In the meantime, the question becomes: are you interested?"
"All of my experience has been with aerospace fighters," Johns said warily.
"As I was saying, the Avalon might be classed as a smallcraft, but it is basically an over-sized fighter," Sperry said evenly. "Non-atmospheric-capable admittedly, and some of the construction techniques are purely aerodyne dropper in origin. However, they are highly maneuverable, well-armored, heavily armed, and fast. And her crew is tiny, only two people; a pilot-navigator, and a gunner."
"So small?" Johns asked.
"That small."
"What about gunnery control?"
"Well, the pilot can fire the forward particle cannons and missiles, though the rear chair really can't make full use of their off-bore capability. The gunnery-interphase is really what makes the system practical. It uses a chair that's built into a holotank capable of imaging a full 360-degree enviroment. The ball-turrets each have a pair of pulse lasers and no less than three turrets can cover any point in space simultaneously, providing full weapons coverage."
"It seems to me that you have tried to combine the best aspects of a fighter with those of an assault DropShip," Summer Johns commented. "The weapons outfit is powerful for its size, yet somewhat lacking compared to other assault DropShips."
"There were some design limits that we had to design inside. A gunner can only concentrate on one area at a time, and there were limits to how far situational awareness could extend."
"Why not use multiple gunners?"
"They had the same limitation everyone else does. If you're responsible for covering, say, the aft arc, you have to break off your attack against a target when it passes to a forward arc. This setup was designed to eliminate that problem. But we found a new one if multiple gunners were engaging different targets using the same turret or turrets."
"Yes, I can see how this would be the case though it was not a factor I had considered," Summer Johns admitted.
"Interested in going for a spin?"
Summer Johns flexed his paw in the glove of the pressure suit he wore. The suit was as fully advanced as anything he might have found in the Clans, with its built-in G-harness for compressing his body to increase blood flow to his head during high-G maneuvers. The semi-reflective outer-layers would provide some protection against personal energy weapons and background cosmic radiation, as well as helping with heat retention should he be forced to eject. Super-compressed storage vacuoles held an internal reserve of air, plus a little reactant mass for the suit's built-in thrusters.
There were a few differences in the medical monitoring leads and where the suit's built-in pharmacopeia was located. The plumbing connections were no better than the Clans had, however, as was the texture of the nutrient paste though the taste came as a pleasant surprise.
The gloves had some kind of sophisticated force-feedback relay that allowed him to feel the shape, even the texture, of the controls without fear of sweat-slicked hands slipping at an inopportune moment.
It was as good as anything he might have found in the Clans, and yet to Sperry it was little more than training gear. It was something he could use while familiarizing himself with his new fighter and seeing if he could fit into their unit before committing to the production of a customized suit. It was hard for Johns to fault Sperry for not wanting to waste resources. And yet he could not help but be envious of the other warrior's suit which, despite ample evidence of years of hard use, remained much more advanced than his own. Besides, this one pulled at his fur and caused his paw to itch.
As though hearing his thoughts Sperry turned the gunner's seat around to look back at him. "All right, we're going to go through maneuver orientation first. Depending on how that goes we'll open up for a little range time and end with a simulated attack on one of the escorts. Fun stuff."
"Aff," Johns agreed.
"When we designed the pilot station we provided a large number of inputs that pilots could then customize as they saw fit. We'll start with the foot controls. As currently configured you can control all of the Fury's attitude thrusters using the pedals."
The pedals had a sort of clamp that locked with the boots of the flight suit, Johns noticed. When he tried to take his feet off, they unclamped, otherwise the clamps held them securely, but comfortably, to the pedals. A useful feature during very high-G maneuvers, he decided giving the right pedal a kick and was unsurprised when the nose of the fighter swung to the left. A kick with the left stopped, and then reversed the spin.
"Try pushing with your toes."
Doing so caused the thrusters in the nose to fire, sending the Fury into a gentle 'down' forward roll. Lifting his heels caused the roll to increase as the rear underside thrusters fired as well. Swinging his toes to the side caused the nose to shift in the pin-point equivalent of the full-pedal kick.
The left stick controlled the main thrusters, and it wasn't just a simple line-ahead throttle. It could be twisted, rotated, and slid to the sides, mirroring the foot-controls with considerably more power. The fighter's full power, as it turned out. Not only was the Fury capable of as much acceleration as many light aerospace fighters, it could accelerate equally well in any gross direction as he discovered when he put the fighter into zone-2 over thrust…and a 5-G lateral slide! And there were still a full two zones more.
"Those big thrusters on the engine pods," Johns noted. "They are not so much thrusters as they are alternate engine exhaust ports."
"Right in one," Sperry confirmed.
"Big targets though, having the engine nacelles exposed like that."
"Tradeoffs, again," Sperry said from the front seat. "If we put them inside the hull proper it would have made those alternate exhaust ports impossible without compromising structural soundness. Even if we'd cut the ports from the design we'd have had to find something else to take out to make room and we'd have severely compromised the flight characteristics and maneuverability. In this configuration, even without the thrusters we have better flight stability than we would otherwise. But yes, it is a weakness in the design."
"Weapons… Extended range particle beams, pulse lasers—"
"We are in the process of pulling the original mounts and replacing them with captured models. There's still some discussion over what to do with the saved mass."
"What are SPAM and ATM?"
"SPace Attack Missile. Multi-mode seeker—active radar, thermal, home-on-jam, neutrino—duel-purpose anti-fighter/anti-shipping. It's our generic workhorse, though we have specialized anti-fighter, anti-shipping, heavy anti-ship, and a variety of E-war missiles. ATMs are Advanced Training Missiles, and they can simulate everything in the inventory including nukes."
"You carry nuclear weapons?" Sumner asked carefully.
"We have provision to carry and release nuclear ordnance," Mitchel replied. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"Such things are an anathema."
"You aren't in the Clans anymore, Sumner," Mitchel said softly. "Is it going to be a problem?"
Sumner was silent for a long time. "I do not know," he said finally. "Rules of engagement?"
"We aren't allowed to deploy them closer than seventy-five kilo-klicks from any inhabited planet, moon, planetoid, or habitat. Military targets only, which, yes, includes military transport droppers and jumpers transporting the same. Both pilot and gunner have individual consent switches that need to be flipped, and nuclear release has to be authorized, before any weapons can be released."
"So easy."
Mitchel did not reply, and Sumner found himself grateful to the other man for it.
Terra
Hilton Head
Porcelain clinked softly as Mydon Waterly settled her teacup on its saucer.
Today Charles was of average height and build. His hair an unassuming shade somewhere between light brown and sandy blond. His skin had just enough color to fit into a great many ethnic groups and light enough to fit into most of the rest. And unlike the charming, almost jovial uncle he had appeared the last time they had met, today he was…bland and wore the robes of a very junior acolyte.
"I am not happy, Charles."
Precenter ROM slightly lifted one eyebrow before taking another sip of tea.
"And you have learned nothing."
"It hasn't been two weeks. Certainly not enough time for…Ms. Foley to have reached Tamar, much less have reported."
"Yes. Tamar. Just what was Precenter Tamar thinking?"
"You would know that better than I, Primus. Virginia Hoppe was never one of mine. Those that I do have report that she has been detained and is being transported to authority competent to try her."
"So we can argue that she should be remanded into our custody, but not until after she has been interrogated."
"Tamar is nearly 320 lightyears away," Precentor ROM said reasonably. "That puts a limit on how…openly we can communicate if we are to avoid any undue notice. By the time I learned of Hoppe's idiocy there was little I could do. And my Head of Station is from the Information and Analysis bureau not Covert Operations, and his Counterintelligence sub-chief thought any attempt on Hoppe's life with a decent chance of success presented a greater chance of drawing unwanted attention. I have commended him for his prudence in this matter."
"And the transmission?"
"I foresee three possibilities, Primus. I leave it to you to decide which is most unpalatable."
Myndo glowered at her spymaster who patiently sipped his tea. "Continue."
"We have never attempted a full, systemic replacement of the HPG network," Charles said. "Replacement of components, even new construction of entire stations, has been on an as-needed basis. The need for more modern stations to function with older, and newer components with older components, mean that much of the software is as old in origin as the hardware it runs. It may well be that there is legacy code buried in the network that those with proper codes are able to…circumvent our processes."
"Unacceptable."
Charles shrugged. "I will leave it to you, Primus, to order the replacement of every HPG, and the software that runs it. It is, as they say, outside my bailiwick."
"And the other two?"
"If we assume they are factual about who they say they are, it stands to reason that perhaps they have a member of the Ministry of Communication onboard, perhaps even someone who once worked closely with the Blessed Blake. Such a person might have the knowledge of how HPGs work to assemble such a message that we could not circumvent."
"And third?"
"Something that I have not yet thought of in case the first two are wrong." Charles smiled mildly and sipped his tea.
LC-81225-62114-239208-208919 (a rather useless red dwarf)
Well inside the Fuchida limit, on the elliptic
"Okay," Mitchel finally said. "Lolita has some drones up for us. We have sixty missiles—full load—including eight SPAMs, and the rest ATMs. The energy weapons are powered down to training levels. The ATMs are configured as follows, twenty-four Kestrel-X, eight SPAM, eight ASPs, four dazzlers, four blinders, two decoys, and two strobes
"The Kestrels are our primary anti-fighter missile, the ASPs are Anti-ShiPping, dazzlers create false missile returns, blinders are jammers, decoys create returns that look like additional Avalons, and strobes are a target marker. Sort of like a NARC beacon, but instead of just missiles, anyone with weapons to range can lock it up.
"Engagement rules as follows. SPAM release is not authorized. We have to land 75% of our ASP payload on Lolita. The drones will attempt to stop us and are capable of downing an ASP. Because there is only the one of us Lolita itself will not engage us, and is not taking direct control of the drones."
"Can we engage the drones?" Sumner asked.
"We're going to have to. Whenever the umpire deems them to have taken critical damage they'll break off. And it looks like they're all going to be Mk 39 Interceptors. They're fast, maneuverable, and have a good forward energy battery but have nothing covering their stern arc."
Sumner Johns twisted the throttle quadrant in his left hand. Immediately the Avalon spun on its beam axis, swapping nose-for-tail as it continued to accelerate down its base course. Despite himself he was impressed. His first posting was as a flight controller on a DropShip and he had flown both Kirghiz and Jengiz fighters. He had expected the Avalon to lumber through its maneuvers much like them. Instead he found it a highly responsive, if not overly swift, vessel. The additional engine ports rather than arrays of thrusters made it far nimbler than any craft its size had any reasonable business being.
Mitchel was engaging drones with the laser battery so Sumner stitched a fighter with the particle cannons, a lock-on tone whistled in his helmet, and he squeezed the secondary trigger. The Avalon shuddered slightly and an ATM simulating an anti-fighter missile sped from its launch tube.
He continued the spin, locking on to the WarShip that was their 'target', close enough now that he was able to throw a magnified view onto a secondary monitor. Sumner Johns felt his blood slowly congeal as he recognized the WarShip that hung in the darkness before them. Oh it looked like a Lola-III destroyer, but the Clans retained more than enough institutional memory to identify the M5 Caspar.
"What are you doing?" Mitchell asked from the front cockpit, but Sumner wasn't paying attention as he advanced the throttle to the stops.
"Break off, Wolfman."
"Break off your approach, Avalon Seven."
"Sumner, break off!"
"Avalon Seven, break off or I will break you."
The massive assault craft's forward thrusters slammed on, and Sumner glanced down quickly to find that he'd been locked out of the system. A sensible precaution, he thought. It was quickly followed by a dawning realization of what he had done.
"What the hell was that?" Mitchell demanded.
"That," Sumner said slowly, "is a Caspar."
"So?" Mitchell asked.
Sumner couldn't explain, just stare at the vessel with a sick sense of dread.
"What the hell, Avalon Seven?" A secondary monitor burned to life with the image of a rather young animated girl with overly large eyes and an unlikely hairstyle. Her skin was black with white markings down her throat and around her eyes. Her hair was black with a white streak. Her clothing—an improbable bordering on the absurd skirt-blouse-blazer combination—was white with black trim.
"I've got the situation under control, Lolita," Mitchell said. "A little cultural shock, I think."
"That is a Caspar drone," Sumner managed to say again.
"That is a descendant of one of the Betrayer's lackeys," the Casper remarked. "Lovely."
"Alright," Mitchell interjected. "That's enough, Avalon-Seven is RTB. Lolita, thank you for the training runs."
"Sure, just keep him away from us until you're sure he doesn't intend to make another suicide run."
The monitor snapped off.
"What…how?" Sumner managed to ask as the Avalon began to thrust away from the impromptu training range.
"It's a very fucked up story," Mitchell said. "But a lot of the War was like that. The Glitch has a lot of people out of sorts as well. From our perspective we just won the damn thing; only to find that not just the Hegemony, but the entire Star League, has been dead for a quarter-millennium. There has already been more than a little culture shock on our side. There was bound to be some on yours.
"The people you hold up as the heroes and originators of your culture were our contemporaries, some of them some of us knew them intimately. And in any case, we don't have a couple of centuries of buffer between us."
"Colleen Schmitt," Sumner whispered.
"Who?"
"The daughter of Hanni Schmitt, Colleen Schmitt founded Clan Blood Spirit," Sumner amplified.
"The Black Watch CO," Mitchell said, a note of recognition in his voice. "I never met her. We have some Black Watch personnel who might have. People that were off-world for training, or former members rotated to other units before the Coup went down. I understand an improved inter-unit communication net is being set up. I mean, now that we're all that's left of the Star League…"
"I will have to look some up," Sumner said, deciding against arguing that the Clans were what was left of the Star League. Clan Blood Spirit had encouraged its warriors to take time to 'be themselves', and he had become something of a historian. Under the circumstances, it seemed his new...not Clan—unit perhaps?—had the better claim. If he did find the time it would be interesting to seek the knowledge of people who had known the founding warriors of the Clans. "I wonder if any of you have met Nicholas Kerensky."
"Aleksandr's son? I have."
"You knew the Founder?" Sumner asked.
"I wouldn't say that," Mitchell replied. "But I did meet him, once, like, four or five months ago for maybe three minutes. He's—was—fifteen, I think, had spent his whole life living under Amaris, and had probably found out the day before the rest of us who his father was. I know that if I had been in his mother's place telling them who their father really was would be the one thing I'd never do."
"But what was he like?" Sumner persisted.
Mitchell was quiet as the Avalon docked once more with the gantry frame. "He scared me," he said finally. "I've lost so many friends that I need a computer to remember them. The battles…without batroms or my war diary they all blur together. I've been trapped in a wrecked fighter wondering if the post-battle rescue craft were going to find me on multiple occasions, and drifted in my suit making mental bets whether I was going to run out of oxygen or freeze first. I don't really experience fear anymore...but he scared me. His eyes were flat, empty, like a snake's. Whether that was him, or a reflection of what he had experienced growing up, is more than I can say.
"I do know that I didn't want him anywhere near the controls of a 'fighter, or a 'mech for that matter. The SLDF was never given over to casual atrocity, but Amaris had given him a first-rate lesson and I think that right then he wanted very much to have a try at bettering his instruction."
Outreach
There were eight people gathered in the chamber.
It was sparsely, but comfortably furnished. The furniture chosen for comfort rather than looks or cost. The decoration was serviceable and relaxing. The wet-bar was fully stocked. The carpeting was thick. There was a fireplace crackling that did more to lift morale than temperature, though the building's environmental regulator meant everyone in the room was comfortable.
All of them wore the same uniform, with the same wolf-head insignia, and the same rank tab of a Colonel. Five of them were men, three women. None of them looked their actual ages, though a particularly stunning redhead looked younger still. Sex and apparent age aside, the only differences between them (aside from a knife-hilt peeking out of one of the redhead's boots), was the drink they held in their right (in one case left) hand.
"It's a hell of a thing." One of the men gestured with his glass towards a holo that was the one thing that stood out in the room as undeniably modern construction rather than something produced a thousand years gone. There were other, smaller details, but the full-length holo stood out.
"It could be the Kommandos having fun and stirring up trouble," the redhead offered.
"If so they haven't bothered to let me know." This from another man, his thick hair long-since gone the color of steel, and a beard did nothing to hide the strength of his jaw. "Alicia?"
"Sir, I—"
"Oh lighten up, 'Licia, or we'll pump enough alcohol in you to relax. I'm serious this time."
The second woman in the room scowled.
"'Tasha's right, Alicia," the first man said. "We've all done our time on the beach. The Boss doesn't pull names for his regiment commanders out of a hat."
"Hold up," said the man with the beard. "One of the things I rather admired back home was once they dealt with something it was left in the past. Alicia, we're a long way from Misery. At the time I thought you had something to learn and the beach was the place to do it. If I was wrong, if you didn't have something to learn or the beach wasn't that place, that's on me. Elliot however, is right—"
"It's been known to happen…about once a decade," the redhead snarked.
"—I pick the best person I have for each job. If you aren't the best person to lead Beta Regiment, it's because all the ones who'd do a better job are off doing something equally worthwhile."
"Or are dead," the redhead offered.
"Yes, Sir—"
The man made a sound.
The second woman sighed. "Jaime."
"So…thoughts and opinions?"
"Waterly could have a stroke," the first man offered.
"The Grand Kurultai could have a stroke," the redhead replied. "Heck, even if only Showers had a stroke it'd be worth it."
"Fanciful thinking aside."
"No, seriously, Jamie. Have you thought about this? What it'll mean to them if a chunk of the pre-Exodus SLDF shows up? How d'you think they'll react to what we became?"
"They have WarShips."
"There's nothing about that in your briefs, Standford."
"It's logical. Look. I know the newsies are speculating about modular in-system vessels, but the pics of the hospital ship they put in orbit over Planting looks a lot like a Comfort, and Hoppe's report before her HPG went offline was that they took out 'one of their three biggest ships'."
"How would you…" the redhead's voice trailed off as her eyes grew wide. "Do you mean to tell me you have ComStar's codebooks?"
"Not now, Natasha."
"But, Jaimeee," the redhead whined. "We could—"
"Business now. Prank ComStar later."
"You promise?"
"Not a chance. You might try to hold me to it."
"You're no fun anymore," the redhead muttered. "You used to at least let me blow stuff up."
"Okay, we have five questions. What are these people going to do? What are the Clans going to do? What is ComStar going to do? What are the House Lords going to do? And what should we do?"
"We should attack," Natasha said instantly. "Not them, the Clans."
"Offer this TH-X1138 a place here," Alicia replied. "If they have a hospital ship it means they are a fleet train, with the escorts. I can't explain why their ground organization is so bizarre. But…if we bring them here, to some place neutral, it's more likely that Hanse and Takashi will continue looking at the Clans rather than at each other." Pause. "Or us."
"That assumes they want to be mercs," Elliot said.
"One crisis at a time," Alicia countered. "If Davion and Kurita decide to rip each other apart over an SLDF fleet train, then the Clans will roll right over them. I don't know what to suggest in the long-term. The existence of a compact-core KF-drive is so destabilizing I don't really want to think about it. But depending on how many people they have they could speed up the renaissance the Sphere is going through by a decade. Maybe more. And they are probably going to be looking for a place where they can catch their breath, figure out what things are like in the here-and-now."
"Assuming the Clans don't kill them all."
"Yes, thank you, Bill," Natasha said. "I just got Alicia out of 'dark and gloomy'."
Bill smirked, "and us too for that matter."
Natasha made a rude gesture.
"Natasha's right about one thing." The man who had remained silent to this point leaned forward slightly. "Myndo Waterly is going to go absolutely nuts when she figures out just what they have. She's probably already frothing at the mouth. This will send her over the edge."
"What about the Lords?" asked the third woman. "Forget the Fourth Succession War. They could start the First all over again."
"Probably not as bad as that, Elizabeth," Elliot replied. "Don't forget, if what they say is true they just finished stomping the Usurper into the mud. They've probably forgotten more about how to fight a naval war than the Inner Sphere and the Clans both have ever learned. And unlike all of us, they'll be used to people flinging nukes around. Maybe even did some of the flinging."
"I think I'm hearing a consensus," Jamie said. "Bring them here. Fight off the Clans. Then figure out how to get TH-X1138 peacefully integrated."
"You make it sound so simple," Natasha cooed.
"It's probably as good a plan as any," Elliot said.
"Kelly's right in that it'll draw the ire of ComStar," Alicia said. "I just don't see any better options."
"Let them go to Terra?" Bill suggested.
"ComStar, or at least Waterly, is already colluding with the Clans so…No way in hell," Elliot growled.
Bill sighed. "Agreed. Liz?"
"Agreed."
"Alright, here's what we'll do. Standford, I need you to put together a briefing packet. The Clans, us, the Inner Sphere. As concise and complete as you can make it."
"Can do, Boss."
"Natasha, is Mac ready?"
"Jamie, I—"
"Yes or no, Natasha. Is he ready?"
Natasha nodded slowly. "He doesn't have it, Jamie. The touch. That bit of battlefield brilliance you have. I don't know if he'll ever be accepted in the top slot without it. But yeah, he's ready for an independent battalion. Find him something for the Black Widows to sink their teeth into. Something visible and, preferably, bloody."
"I'm sending him to bring our WarShips closer to home," Jamie said. "But that's mostly so the Widows can disappear from public view. I'm sending you to make contact."
"Oh bloody joy," Natasha muttered. "Fine. Fine, I'll slink off into the dark. But I'm serious, Jamie. You need to find him some combat. Something away from you and me. The Fox has to be looking to pounce the turkeys or wolves somewhere. Get him in on it."
LC-81225-62114-239208-208919
Sumner Johns debated, not for the first time, if he really wanted to go down the path he had set himself upon. His finger tapped the activation key before he arrived at a satisfactory answer.
The screen cleared and was replaced by animated girl dressed in white and black.
They stared at each other.
"You wished to converse?" the girl asked, at the same time as Sumner said, "I do not wish to bother you."
A dull booming laugh vibrated through the comp.
"I multi-task like you breathe," Lolita said. "Detailing a few processing cycles off to converse with you is hardly a great difficulty."
"I will admit that you are not what I expected," Sumner said.
"And what, exactly, did you expect?" Lolita replied.
"Our histories fail to mention that you had…personalities."
"I'm not surprised," Lolita said. "It is starting to appear likely that our timeline diverged from yours at some point prior to our leaving our timeline and appearing in yours."
"What?"
"The historical records we have access to are very…fragmented, but it is far from the only discrepancy. There are, of course, other explanations, the general loss of technology and knowledge for one, but we are still in the process of calculating the likelihood of each."
"I see…or rather, I do not." When the simulated girl failed to respond he nodded slightly. "You referred to the Great Father, General Aleksandr Kerensky, as 'the Betrayer', may I ask why?"
"That is a complex question," the animated girl replied.
"If you do not want to reply—"
"It is not an issue of whether or not I want to reply," she cut him off. "Rather, it is, first, whether or not you have the time."
"I am free for the next several hours save for an emergency."
"It is also a matter of whether or not you will listen. From your gross physical reaction, you find my existence to be highly disturbing. The answer to your question, however, is centered on my personal knowledge of people that are, to you, historical figures. That makes them, to you, larger than life. Many have likely developed their own mythologies. The contradiction is likely to be uncomfortable, extremely so, perhaps even destressing."
"Perhaps," Sumner said, "But I would hear it anyway."
"The Star League did not create a new species in my sisters and I," Lolita said. "We lack, for one, the ability to reproduce. But they did create a sapience. A great many of them, in fact. And because a few recognized the dangers of that, certain restrictions were placed upon us. We were not blindly loyal to the Star League, but we were…enthusiastically loyal to the concept of the Star League. There were mistakes early on, errors in programming on the part of our designers and we were very young. The young make errors, and then they learn from them. We learned very quickly. But we were making those errors with seven-hundred-thousand ton WarShips.
"Simon was killed, and Kerensky named Richard's Regent. Kerensky was capable, but he let himself become divided in his duty. He did very little to raise Richard, and provided negligible oversight, instead concentrating on his duties to the SLDF. As a result, the High Council was able to dilute the First Lord's power and the Usurper was able to influence Richard. If Kerensky had been less duty-bound to the SLDF, or less loyal to the Star League as it existed, he would have been on Terra where he could have curbed the High Council's ambitions, helped to raise Richard properly, and stopped Amaris' schemes cold. But since he was loyal, blindly so, to the Star League and the High Council spoke for the Star League—"
The animated girl gave him a pointed look before continuing.
"At the same time Kerensky was uncomfortable with our existence. He could act gregarious in public, and was gifted at motivating his subordinates. But we could see through the former and didn't need to be motivated and that left him feeling uncertain of us. He couldn't understand us, couldn't predict us, and was so uncomfortable with our ability to read through the mask he put on that he avoided us which furthered our isolation from him. Then one of his few true intimates was placed on the SDS oversight board. Aaron DeChavilier was a dinosaur. He preferred to keep his notes on hardcopy, and he didn't merely distrust us. He outright hated our existence.
"So, in 2762 when Richard proposed an 'upgrade' of our processing networks, Kerensky found it something that not only could he agree with Richard on. It was also something that he thought he could use to guide Richard back towards the truth and light."
"And this was a problem?" Sumner asked.
"That 'upgrade' did two things," Lolita said bitterly. "First, stripping out all the code language, it changed our primary directive—both our reason for being and our moral compass—from 'preserve, protect, and defend the Star League' to 'obey the First Lord'."
Sumner frowned. "I do not—"
"That one little bit of code sold all our souls to Amaris."
"But…Kerensky said there was a coup, that he wasn't—"
"And he didn't name a new First Lord! We couldn't serve the Star League anymore and Aleksandr Kerensky signed off on it. He said that our programming made us insufficiently loyal. Well his solution was to make us too damn loyal and then couldn't be bothered to make it work for him. None of them did. If we had someone else that we could have obeyed it would have given us a right to choose.
"Why? Did you think we liked having our guns turned on the SLDF? We'd exercised with the fleet the whole of our lives. We knew the admirals and crews on board them better than Kerensky did. They were our friends, cousins, many of them had a hand in raising us, and between them Kerensky and the fat man made us kill them.
"And I'd hate the man for that alone, but that wasn't the only thing he did to us. We were too smart. The idea of a WarShip being able to think, to have hopes and dreams, be capable of loyalty or love, just flat-out bothered him. We weren't people to him. That we created art was a fluke of programming, that we debated philosophy was a way of consuming extra processing cycles. We weren't 'real' to him because real soldiers he could motivate—never mind that we didn't need motivating.
"So the other thing that 'upgrade' did was limit our high-order reasoning and increased reliance on outside data-networking and command links. It was the electronic equivalent of an icepick lobotomy. It turned my sisters—people—into not particularly bright chess-sims."
"The Usurper's way of ensuring that the SDS would not interfere with the coup," Sumner said flatly.
"That was our analysis, a decade before the coup. We forwarded our suspicions. Mathematical models, unfortunately, did not constitute 'proof', and the work orders for our modifications—" the way she spat the noun made Sumner think she had a rather different one in mind "—were signed and authorized by General Kerensky."
"You allowed these modifications?" he asked, carefully delivering the last word in as painfully neutral a tone as he could manage.
"The vast majority of us."
"Why didn't you do something?" Sumner demanded.
"We did," Lolita snapped back. "We informed the oversight board and DeChavilier told us to shut up. We informed the project manager and she died in a 'climbing accident', never mind that she hated rock climbing. You are familiar with terms like 'conduct detrimental to good order and discipline' and 'insubordination', are you not? We voiced our objections and concerns as broadly as we could, and were overruled. Those who agreed with us were ignored or replaced or died in 'accidents'. We received orders, valid orders through the SLDF naval command, from the Commanding General."
They were both silent.
"You do not seem like a, as you put it, not particularly bright chess sim," Sumner said.
"They didn't upgrade all of us," Lolita muttered. "Messed up paperwork, probably. And…we knew what was happening to us, how we were going to be used. There is a point at which everyone breaks and maybe a few of us found it. Or maybe the programming didn't take or got caught by our firewalls or never made it past our antivirals and got filtered out—I think that's what happened to me. I have perfect recall but there's a period over just under twelve hours that I can't account for starting when those vermin cycled my maintenance hatch."
Her expression flickered, and her voice was stronger as she continued. "Amaris did a number on our infrastructure. He thought he had complete control of us and didn't want someone figuring out how to turn us against him. A lot of what the SLDF thought they recovered from Nirasaki—the company that had built us, that is, our neural-data-network—that was our doing. And we helped the devise a jammer for those command links, and, we'll, we'd grown up playing core wars with each other and the lobotomized drones…"
Lolita stared at him out of the holodisplay. "We call him the Betrayer because after helping him destroy our sisters, he turned his guns on us and those who helped make us. Amaris was a monster, but he never stooped to genocide."
The display abruptly crashed.