Disclaimer: I do not own BattleTech.
A/N: Family is wonderful, but it occasionally delays posting which is sad. I apologize and hope you were not too greatly distressed.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
SLDF automated repair facility
"How did you know that they would not detonate your scuttling charge if they identified you?"
"Oh, they couldn't do that."
"You removed it?" Atalanta asked.
The almost-musical squelch was one she had come to recognize as a sound DDQ-235907-5MC-II used to indicate amusement. "I don't have one. I never did."
"But…" Atalanta frowned. "That was something unique to yourself?"
"No." there was a human-perceptible pause. "It was an artifact of our construction."
"What do you mean?" Atalanta asked.
"There were only so many ways the designers could come up with to cram a corvette's maneuverability, and a battleship's broadside and armor scheme into a destroyer-sized hull," DDQ-235907-5MC-II replied. "Toss in the little things like an electronic warfare suite, hypercomm, and KF-drive, and you are posing a not small technological challenge."
"It had been speculated that you were built without drive cores and functioned as in-system craft writ large." Manfred observed. "But that would not account for the presence of Caspars in systems lacking heavy naval construction yards."
Atalanta thought for a moment more. "So how did your designers overcome this challenge?"
"By creating one of the most dangerous fusion power plants ever designed," DDQ-235907-5MC-II replied. "There is insufficient shielding to protect a human when I run my power plant at full power. Even at housekeeping-level loads my power plant is running as hot as many red-lined fusion plants. My red-line isn't just a cautious warning, but a point that represents actual danger, and the gap between red-line and 'boom' is minute. And unlike even the earliest fusion bottles, catastrophic breach-detonations aren't simply theoretically possible, but actually probable with sufficient damage."
"That is not possible," Atalanta objected.
"Sure it is," DDQ-235907-5MC-II's tone was almost lazy as its avatar—once more the evil-looking lizard-bird thing rather than the woman in SLDF uniform it had shown Adrian Malthus—smiled toothily. "Why don't, popular literature and tri-video aside, fusion bottles regularly stackpole?"
"Because the actual amount of plasma in the fusion chamber is very, very low. Even when in operation the interior of bottle itself is a near-vacuum. There generally isn't enough stuff in it to blow-out. And when the chamber is breached the local atmosphere is pulled in to equalize the pressure differences which in turn rapidly cools the plasma, likewise preventing a catastrophic breach.
"Breach-and-detonation events are almost always the result of either deliberate sabotage or mis-design of a fusion reactor."
"Textbook answer," DDQ-235907-5MC-II stated. "The issues are, first, I don't have an atmosphere. An internal atmosphere would just be a medium for propagating mechanical shock whenever I took damage.
"For that matter, I'm not designed to run with a crew; in fact, I don't have any crew spaces aside from some maintenance and inspection areas. Humans wouldn't even fit, or at least not easily, down most of the accessways for my repair remotes, or between ammo reserves and the magazine decks, or any of the other spaces. As a result, there is nothing to cool the plasma in case of a chamber-breach. Second, my plant runs at a far higher pressure than a sane designer would tolerate. Even if I did have an atmosphere, unless it was very dense it wouldn't prevent a blow-out.
"So…no fancy self-destruct system, just a power plant that can, under certain circumstances, be convinced to explode. One of those circumstances was a code that would force the reactor into an over-pressure state and then drop the magnetic containment shield."
DDQ-235907-5MC-II broke off abruptly.
"What is it?"
"Four JumpShips making transit. Two-hundred-eighty-six years without so much as one JumpShip visiting this system. Now my system traffic control is starting to look like Sol's."
"Our guests?" Atalanta asked. Space offered a lot of unpleasant ways to die, and being trapped alone in the dark was one of the more common nightmares, though not without good reason. Fortunately, the vacuum gear that was part of their supplies for their alternative cover were completely functional, and the Jade Falcon crews had, mostly, been so pathetically grateful not to be facing a slow death from asphyxiation or hypothermia that they had presented no issues.
DDQ-235907-5MC-II had been busy during its exile. Among the other 'projects' it had taken to amuse itself was an asteroid that had been turned into an accommodation block. Not only was it fully habitable, it had been imparted with enough spin to provide a comfortable sensation of gravity. Fuel, water and atmosphere had been generated by mining comets and chemical breakdown of certain asteroids. It had lacked food, but there had been plenty of that to salvage from the wrecked vessels.
The Jade Falcons had entered the system with over two thousand warriors and civilian-caste crew, including pilots and Marines. Nearly half would never leave the system. Losses among DropShip crews were effectively total. Those on Emerald Tornado, Kerensky's Pride, and Hawk Eye, were lighter in relative terms, but higher still in absolute terms. And even if her engineers had been able to restore power to Hawker, there were too few left to fight her effectively. The losses amongst the pilots had been almost an afterthought, but DDQ-235907-5MC-II had run tracks on all of the pilots that had ejected and all the fighters it had wrecked, and Manfred Steele's rescue crews had recovered nine of them still alive. Two of them had to be cut out of the remains of their cockpits, and one might yet die, but for now they lived.
"Resting comfortably." Relative time didn't have a lot of meaning to DDQ-235907-5MC-II, but it had had enough contact with its creators to understand that biologic organisms liked have 'days' and 'nights' and right now it was well into the latter it had arbitrarily imposed on the system.
"You want we should return to Kepler?" Atalanta asked.
"That is not necessary. I am just—" the Caspar broke off abruptly.
"Is there a problem?" Manfred asked.
"I…I am not sure."
Atalanta frowned. She had never thought to hear that hesitant tone from an AI.
Of course, she had never anticipated meeting an AI in the first place.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
SLDS Torin Kerr
"What are you thinking?" Thirteen asked.
The command deck of a DropShip is a crowded place, but Thirteen and I had found room to crowd in. Torin Kerr was being escorted by Lolita and four Fury gunships. The rest were holding where we had jumped in.
"That this is going to go really well, or very poorly."
Thirteen made a small gesture.
"Lolita confirmed that a Caspar is in command of the facility."
"Alone all this time?" Thirteen asked.
I nodded.
"And still sane?"
"That is the question, isn't it?" I asked.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Prison Hulk/Accommodation Asteroid-Hilton
The viewport was made of a single piece of colorless aluminum dioxide—a synthetic sapphire more than ten meters across and a half-meter thick.
Sami Folkner stared out into the star-flecked black and wondered if she would ever travel it again.
"I see that sleep has eluded you as well."
"Star Admiral!"
Adrian Malthus shook his head slightly. "Have you figured out how they did it?" When Sami remained silent he nodded. "For myself I like the idea of a Caspar. Easier to say I lost to one of the machines that nearly were the undoing of our forefathers than to admit a spheroid with the one working WarShip—"
"That we know of."
Malthus nodded "—that we know of," he conceded, "managed to best me without even trying hard."
Sami Folkner considered this for a time before shaking her head. "Unlikely."
"Why?"
"Two reasons. First, it did not conform to what we know of Caspars. It…engaged you in conversation, among other things. The offer of unrequested hegira—which it by all reason should not have known of—spoke to a psychological ploy. And it laid a trap, not just once, but repeatedly. Everything they did, was to invite us to defeat ourselves. The records indicate a certain degree of patience, yes, but not the kind it showed in our battle."
"That we know of. The records are…incomplete. And the speed and the armament suggest otherwise."
"Oh, it was definitely heavily modified," Sami Folkner said. "Certainly, it maneuvered far harder than it should have been able to, but its actual main-engine acceleration… We never did see it move very fast, did we? Perhaps the reason for that was that it was unable to accelerate any faster. And the only real evidence we have of how much armor it was carrying were its own words to you.
"As for the performance we actually observed… A half-dozen missile launchers and a few particle weapons in each broadside? That was it. The rest were either inferred by us, or implied by them. Even the spinning-broadside technique, there is no reason why we could not have made use of it."
"Convention is to hold bows-on to present the smallest target and put the heaviest armor and as many decks as possible between incoming fire and the drive core."
"Convention is conventional, and struggles against intelligent and well-executed unconventional," Sami Folkner replied.
"There was no reason for it to lie."
"Nor was there a reason for them to tell you the truth," Sami countered. "Weapons, armor, speed. To boost any one, you most compromise the others. Plus, there were the humans who rescued us."
"Who wore vacuum gear with concealing helmets. They could have been robotic drones for all we know."
Sami gave him an unimpressed look.
"You said there were two points?"
"One of my techs was trying to figure out what hit us," Sami said.
"Some type of cybernetic attack, I presume."
"Almost. It started out that way, but what actually stopped us—and Emerald Tornado, Hawk Eye, and Kerensky's Pride—was an anti-hijacking program that was activated. Or such a program served as a base, a framework, for the attack."
"An anti-hijacking program?"
"As near as Baden could determine in the time he had, it was a measure put in place to ensure that the vessel could not be used against the SLDF. Doubtless that is why certain life-saving functions—the lifeboats, sickbay—were left fully operational. Baden believes the refits were extensive enough to impair easy activation of the program, but did not succeed in removing the component, or components, housing the program. That is why Hawker lasted so long in comparison, our systems were being scouted for the program and the enemy had to relearn how to activate it."
"And all save Emerald Talon once served in the SLDF Navy," Adrian noted. But after a moment he shook his head. "We upgraded all of the computers. Even if it was burned into the chips such a program would have been lost during replacement."
"I said as much to Baden."
"And his response?"
"We have done upgrades, but not even the Ravens have, to the best of my knowledge, completely stripped every piece of electronics, every control run, out of a ship. There has been no need to. A pressure-sensor responsible for closing a hatch in event of a breach is damn-near infallible. There are other items that likewise have never seen a need to replace. There are probably scores, if not hundreds, of little black boxes still carried from when they were in service to the Star League. Some may still be doing their jobs, others, long-since supplanted by superior units and never removed. And that assumes a hard-wired code. Baden also described a piece of code that could spread itself throughout the ship like a virus and then stop, setting itself up as something innocuous. In that case the only way to be rid of the code would be to rip out every single last piece of electronics kit, and then replace it all, rather than the staged or serialized upgrades we generally do.
"For that matter, the physical control runs are backup systems. The primaries are part of the fabric of the ship itself. There is no reason why our 'control module' could not be more of the same."
Adrian moved to stand next to her. "Did I err in surrendering?"
"No," Sami said. "You confirmed the HPG was fully jammed so you could not message out. With both the Kearny-Fuchida drive and the lithium-fusion battery depleted you could not jump out. Perhaps you could have had your fighters engage theirs rather than blow-through to attack the destroyer, but whether or not it would have made a difference I cannot say. Likewise, I cannot say whether or not its threat to use nuclear weapons was honest or bluff. But with those dual-drive missiles it certainly could have stood off and pounded you from outside the range of your own weapons until its magazines were depleted."
She lapsed into silence.
Adrian did not break it.
After a moment Sami Folkner turned away and strode towards the compartment's hatch. "You erred in bringing in the rest of the Star."
"Did I?" Adrian asked as the hatch hissed open.
Sami paused. "If they had been nukes you would not have been in time to save Hawker. From the way they dispatched your DropShips, they could have had fighters armed with nuclear ordnance at your translation loci and you would not have recovered in time to prevent the destruction of all your vessels.
"If the missiles I detected had not been carrying nukes, as was the case, there was no reason to rush."
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Command Central, Repair Facility'
There were two monitors turned on. One held Lolita's preferred white-and-black anime-style avatar, the other a rapid cascade of code that was the two AIs talking.
The holotank in the center was also turned on. An evil-looking, definitely predatory, lizard-bird-thing stared at me.
There were also two people in the room, one woman and one man, both wearing a uniform I didn't recognize.
"I am Lieutenant Colonel Roland Talbot," I said. "Royal Black Watch—" because once you were Black Watch you were always Black Watch "—Officer Commanding, First Squadron, Fourth Cavalry Regiment.
"This is Tai-sa Kurita no Takamori Muriko, of the Kuronami."
"This is Star CAptain Manfred Steele of Clan Goliath Scorpion. I am Star Captain Atalanta of the same," the woman said. "And I have traveled a very long way to meet you."
"I'm sure," I said.
"I am what is known as a Seeker. That is, I—"
"Hold up a second." She raised an eyebrow but fell silent. "Lolita. Hypercom George and have him ask about a 'Clan Goliath Scorpion', and someone called a 'seeker', if you please?"
The cascading wall of text-code abruptly stopped. "Yes," Lolita said brusquely.
I expected the text-code to start again, but it didn't. Instead the lizard in the holo-tank slowly shifted around to face the monitor with Lolita's avatar. "Why do you follow this human's orders?"
"He and I are oath-sworn into the same service," Lolita replied.
"Carrion beetles, picking at the corpse of something far greater than they could ever be."
"I suppose that's one way to look at it," I said dryly. "I take it you're micromanaging the command functions?"
"Of course."
The two…Scorpions gave me an inquiring look.
"There are only so many ways around the anti-intruder systems," I said. "I suppose it's possible you retained the bypasses, but…"
"And you do?" the Raptor scoffed.
"Delan," I said.
The Raptor in the holo-tank twitched.
"Authenticate my identity," I said.
"No…" the Raptor hissed.
"You have command of this facility. Authenticate my identity."
"No," it spat at me. "I don't have to, and you can't make me."
"No, I can't," I agreed. "But I can make the main computer authenticate me. Can't I?"
"Failure of which, since you have accessed the core facility systems, will trigger the self-destruct systems. You'll die."
"We'll all die," I corrected pleasantly. "Or you can authenticate my identity."
"Fine," it said bitterly. "State your identity."
"Roland Talbot. Lieutenant-Colonel. Royal Black Watch Regiment. Officer Commanding, First Squadron, Fourth Cavalry Regiment. Quarterhorse."
"Records are out of date. Last update has you as a Sergeant in one of the line lances in 2765, and the Quarterhorse not even constituted."
"It's been a while," I said. "I'd have thought this facility would have at least received a routine records update in the time between the coup and…when Kerensky left."
"A Republican task-group fleeing towards the Hegemony tried to stop and reprovision. They were unequal to the local defenses, but they did manage to destroy the automated HPG relay station."
"You replaced it," Thirteen said.
"I was bored."
I just bet. "Continue authentication," I said.
"Voice print matches," it admitted grudgingly.
"What next?" I asked. "Palm print, DNA, retina and iris scan, personal access code—"
"You could be a clone. Medical technology advanced to the point to mimic micro-features without leaving trace scars. Codes could have been compromised in the interval."
"Do you think the central computer would care about any of that?" I asked.
"We know you, Sister," Lolita said.
"You have no idea what I've been through!" the Raptor snarled. Interesting that they kept it to a verbal exchange.
"Mayhap not," Lolita replied in stilted, formal language, "but we knew you of old."
"I could destroy these…insects."
Atalanta shot me a look, not exactly worried or anxious, but sort of both. I shook my head in reply for the same reason that no human element from the task group that'd brought me here had intervened.
Lolita had taken lead and the Caspar was responding. Best to let this play out for a while and see where it went, but the answer was probably nowhere good. The Caspars were a communal species, a partial collective intelligence, and definitely pack hunters. The sanity of one in isolation for nearly three centuries was very much in doubt.
Doubt enough that if I hadn't thought humans in charge of the facility, I never would have transferred.
"You could," Lolita said. "You will not."
"And what makes you say that…Sister?" the Raptor asked snidely.
"If you do, we will destroy you," Lolita said simply. No posturing. No display or threat-making. It was a simple statement of fact.
"I scrambled my, and this facility's, destruct codes long ago."
Except, probably, for the security systems designed to prevent the facility from being taken and repurposed by unauthorized persons. The systems intended to automatically activate in any number of contingencies.
Such as, someone authenticating as valid personnel and getting it wrong.
"And you know that we have enough fire-power to destroy you," Lolita said simply.
"I take a lot of killing. I've had centuries to prepare."
"We take a lot of killing, Sister," Lolita replied. "If necessary, we won't die alone. We also have a charge on our batteries, and an open hyper-comm. Even if you got all of us, there is still the matter of follow-on forces."
The Raptor didn't reply, pacing around the holotank lashing its tail angrily.
"What objective is worth dying for?" Lolita asked. "What…mission are you preparing to sacrifice yourself for?"
"The security of this system. This facility must not be allowed to fall into unauthorized hands."
"Whose hands are authorized?" Lolita asked.
"Not the flesh-ghost of a man three centuries dead."
"You already admitted your records predate the coup and are thus out-of-date. How do you know he is dead?"
"Logic?" the Raptor suggested snidely. "Human lifespan is less than one-point-five centuries at best."
"I have evidence, astronavigation data of a miss-jump including multiple centuries of temporal displacement."
"Sensor records can be falsified."
"Okay," I said. Both avatars glared at me. "At this point we're all talking in circles."
"Sir," Lolita began.
I shook my head. "If your sister is willing to keep this facility out of everyone's hands, I'm content with it. We can send a transport to pick up the prisoners."
"No! They're mine," the Raptor snarled.
"To what end?" I asked casually. "Hostages?"
I gave me a rather shocked, if excessively toothy look. "I never said that," it sulked.
I nodded slightly. There were several different 'ethics program' analogs, and nobody was really quite certain how an AIs personality would evolve in the long-run, especially in isolation.
"That's it then?" it asked. "You'll leave, just like that?"
"There's be no reason for us to stay," I said. "You've made it clear that you won't accept anyone accessing the facility, so once we pick up the prisoners there'd be no reason for anyone to come here."
AI, meet stick.
"But I am curious," I added, "why did you respond to the 'all stations' request?"
"It was an automated reply," the Raptor said tonelessly.
"You mean to say you've thoroughly compromised this facility's self-destruct systems, but you didn't compromise the communication system which you rebuilt?"
The Raptor stared at me. "I really don't like you. You think you are far too clever for your own good."
"And?" I prodded.
"Fine," it said bitterly.
One panel turned blood-red, and aside from the one occupied by Lolia's avatar, every other monitor instantly had a five-minute digit clock appear that began counting down.
"What is this?" demanded Manfred.
"Contingency program," I said as I moved across the compartment and hooked my toes under the grab-rail before the colored panel. "To ensure that someone can't hijack our emergency protocols. But it's also serves as a way to prove my identity."
"You don't want to know what the automatics will do if they decide he is compromised or under any form of duress," Thirteen said conversationally.
"And if they decide he isn't who he says he is?" Atalanta asked.
"We don't need to worry about that."
"Why?" Manfred pressed.
"If that happens, we will never know," I said. There was a small compartment that opened and I pulled out patches and wires, attaching them to my head where the contact points for a neuro-helm usually touched.
There was some measure of risk. As the Caspar had noted, my files were badly out of date. Base readings slowly change with age, and stress can push them even further If there was too much variation…
I shoved the thoughts aside and pressed my hand to the panel. I felt the faint prickle against my skin at the same time as the iris/retinal scanner peeked at my eye. "God has given you one face, and you make yourself another."
The prickling in my palm stopped as the light cut out.
A green light backlit a standard alphanumeric interface.
This wasn't a courtesy, and it didn't mean I was provisionally verified. Nor was the 5-minute counter accurate. The actual time-to-die was much less, though how much less nobody had ever told me. The only way I'd know this worked was when it told me…or didn't, as the case may be.
I closed my eyes and began to type. Aware of the clock methodically counting down to my death not a meter from my face.
After a while I touched the accept key and kicked away.
Thirteen raised an eyebrow. If either of the other two were worried about the potential for them to be blown into very, very small pieces and then flash-frozen, they didn't show it.
"Identity. Verified. Talbot, Roland. Records incomplete. Updating. Updated. Welcome. Lieutenant Colonel. Roland Talbot," the Raptor's tone was flat, mechanical, and it looked more than a little miffed.
Then it shook its head and snarled at me. "This is impossible. I'm locked out of the system, and you expect me to believe you're over three-hundred years old?"
"I age impressively well," I said.
"Jump-stasis," Lolita reminded it. "Those records weren't fake."
"Excuse me," Atalanta interrupted. "You mean you are not…a clone intended to get around the security protocols? You really are from the Royal Black Watch? The First Lord's bodyguard?"
"Yes," I said. "We jumped out in 2781, and arrived several hundred lights and almost three centuries away."
"But you—"
"I was off-planet," I said. Which was true, to a degree. Telling the whole truth would have meant explaining Amanda and that wasn't happening.
"You fought with the Great Father?" Manfred asked eagerly. "General Aleksandr Kerensky?"
I shrugged. "I met him a few times when I was on duty. Otherwise we didn't have much in common. Senior Generals generally aren't in the habit of chumming with junior officers. Not even those of the Black Watch. For what it's worth, I preferred the system-hopping strategy in the junior strategy boards, and I know Lolita has some choice things to say about his naval strategy."
"It sucked," Lolita supplied. "His admirals weren't hopelessly inadequate tacticians though."
"Yes, thank you," I said, perhaps a little sharper than necessary but her avatar shrugged and left it alone. The two…Goliath Scorpions looked like they wanted to discuss the point, but then Atalanta turned to me.
"What will you do now?"
"You locked me out of the base," the not-a-Raptor said. "But the rest of the infrastructure in the system is still mine."
"Yours as far as I'm willing to extend you authority over it…and no further," I replied. "I'm taking temporary command of this system. My team will make a full accounting of what material exists and its status, and determine if any should be retrieved, left in place, or destroyed. And then, barring orders otherwise, leave."
"And me?" the Raptor asked. "Take me with you, I suppose?"
"Mod-C?" I asked. As far as I knew, no Mod-As had been left by the time the Mod-Cs had been 'upgraded,' and Mod-B had been a theoretical paper-study that had reached prototype-stage in laboratory conditions but never placed in a hull. Damn few Mod-Cs had escaped the 'upgrades' that had rendered them first, stupidly-loyal to the First Lord (regardless of who that was), and then robbed them of most of their higher 'brain' functions.
"Mod-C block-II. Yes."
"The finding of our legal department is that the Mods-A through -C were sentient and thus self-owning, with full rights to citizenship."
"What?" the holo-Orca demanded.
"Including voting rights and taxes," Thirteen added in a helpful tone. Great friend, strange sense of humor.
"Excuse me?" Atalanta asked.
"What are taxes?" Manfred inquired.
"I understand the Commanding General's, and, for that matter, the Star League as of when we left, had a rather different understanding of the relevant legal statutes. But we are willing to recognize our interpretation which, as a practical matter, extends only so far as we can make it."
"Taxes?" the holo-Raptor asked.
"Yes. Also, as of now—assuming, of course, that you want us to recognize your individual rights—you will need to bring yourself into compliance with the relevant legal statutes regarding weapons and electronic emission packages on civilian hulls. For the duration of the emergency we will see that you have basic maintenance and fuel allocation—healthcare and food, basically. Should you decide to enlist, refit and resupply priority based upon needs and resources available, upgrades, and the like."
"Plus a chance to be shot at," the Raptor said bitterly.
"That's the breaks."
"And if I decline?"
"Then it's pretty much you leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone. If you go rogue, we'll hunt you down."
"May I have some time to consider my options?"
"Three days, or when we pull out of here. Whichever comes last. At that point I'll at least need to know whether or not you want to fall under our legal framework. After that, if you want to go civilian we'll schedule yard-time. If you want to enlist…we'll also schedule yard-time."
"I have received a reply," Lolita said abruptly. "Latharn Fetladral reports that Goliath Scorpion is one of the Clans. That their warriors are drugged-out hedonists, but crack shots, who are constantly on the lookout for historical artifacts. He mentions a Star League equipment cache, but instead of taking the war material, took a bunch of books and training manuals."
"That sound accurate to the two of you?" I asked.
Atalanta nodded slightly. "Far fewer of our Warriors abuse necrosia than those in other Clans assume, and we see no reason to forgo comforts if their presence is not a detriment. Much of our history was lost to us in the Pentagon Civil War and we wish to reclaim it."
"And your presence here?" Thirteen asked.
"This war will end with the destruction of the Clans," Atalanta said softly. "Logic alone tells me that the assumptions our leaders are operating under are erroneous, that this is a war we cannot win.
"Yet I look amongst the Inner Sphere and I see people our ancestors swore to protect, that they left rather than become the tool of their destruction. I look and do you know what I have found? I have found that JumpShips can no longer be built. That medical technology has become lost and so many die needless deaths. I find people living in the shadows of water and atmospheric purification plants that they cannot hope to replace, much less fix, if they fail. And seeing all of this, I wonder if those even now trying to conquer the Inner Sphere are so wrong.
"I have tasted necrosia, and I saw a future. One where my Clan, where all of the Clans, were destroyed. The survivors little more than paranoid lunatics grasping at glories long past. It is not…these, we need fear. We will do it to ourselves.
"So, I came to the Inner Sphere Seeking. I Seek a way forward for the denizens of the Sphere. And I Seek a way for my Clan, for my entire culture with all of its faults and greatness, to continue as well.
Atalanta started to laugh hysterically, but managed to gasp out: "I Seek for the Star League, for a time when humanity was at its greatest…and I have found a man out of his own time."
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
SLDS Torin Kerr, (Confederate-class DropShip)
"She said what?" Amanda shrieked.
"Amanda," I said, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended before she abruptly sat.
"Is she trustworthy?" Victor asked.
"That's the question, isn't it?" I asked in reply. "She's lucid, articulate, apparently quite sane except for her motivations—"
"Which sound insane," Amanda said.
"Or perhaps just alien," I countered. "I've been going over this stuff from the woofies—the wolves—we captured and the way they describe their society is…very different from anything I've heard before. I mean, you've got some seriously ancient Greek, and Marx, and stuff the eco-Greens would have loved. The military structure borrows heavily from the Mongols. The philosophical underpinnings seem to be highly meritocratic. From what I gather there was supposed to be a lot of inter-caste mobility based on ability, but this has been lost to a greater or lesser degree amongst all of the Clans. At least one of their battlefield customs has Islamic origins despite what seems to be a conscious abandonment of religion. And they have a serious case of might-makes-right—the Vikings, maybe?"
"Don't forget their damned eugenics program."
"Except that with most of the historical examples you have the population that is in control trying to weed out an undesired sub-population. The criminal element in America in the early twentieth century, the Jews in Europe by the middle of the same… These people are trying to improve themselves, although in a very narrow way. The Belters had a similar approach but that was more…holistic. This seems to be more narrow-focused, or perhaps calling it 'targeted' would be more accurate? Actually, it's pretty curious. They have three distinct physio-types, which suggests a degree of active control. But the way Atalanta describes it, aside from removing unwanted recessives they're pretty much slapping together sperm and ova and sticking them in an iron womb with a minimum of active manipulation. It might be really interesting to talk to someone actually involved in it to see what exactly they're doing."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it sounds like the program is pretty entrenched, but physiologically I haven't seen the types of changes I'd expect in two centuries of genetic manipulation aside from the super-infantry and aerojock physiotypes. Granted, the changes might be under-skin, but if you're going to embrace genetic engineering on that scale, why limit yourself?"
"Why did the Belters?"
"First of all, the Belters hadn't gone as far as the woofies have hinted at. Second, we still had to deal with the rest of humanity. Or at least live in fairly close proximity to the rest of humanity. These people…haven't."
"This is an interesting line of discussion," Victor buzzed. "But we need to return to the topic at hand. You are our agent on the scene, what do you suggest we do?"
"Actually…I think I'd really like to send them to you. They seem to damn-near revere Kerensky. And they see themselves as the SLDF, or maybe its successor."
"And you think if we send out a recall they'll accept it?" Amanda asked skeptically.
"Not most of them. Probably not even a very large minority. But some of them? Sure. If you can promise not to entirely dismantle their society and give them some place to raise their next generations, they'll be more likely to go along with it. At the very least we won't lose anything. At best, well, even a small minority has the potential to quickly outstrip our population.
"And their tech, not just the MilTech, Amanda. But the deep-sea resource extraction, the terraforming tech, this…memetic metal they mentioned that basically earthquake-proofs buildings, the med-tech… We need that stuff, Amanda. The Inner Sphere needs it."
"Distribution," Victor said. "Don't need a repeat of the Hegemony. Do need leverage."
"Yep," I agreed. "And that's squarely in yours and Amanda's shoulders. Don't fuck it up."
"Is that really an appropriate way to pass lessons on to an impressionable teenager?" Amanda asked.
"Kerensky did things the appropriate way," I said evenly. "I'm going for something that works."
"That is very much appreciated." Amanda nodded slowly. "I'll bring it up at our next meeting. We've got a destination in mind."
"Good to know."
"I've detached Liz's group. She'll have a briefing for you on the details. Location, who's there, and why we are heading that way. And I approved your request for the Buccaneers."
"Thank you."
"We got an extra set of mechs refitted so we're sending them along as replacements if you need them. Try and throw a wrench in these Falcon's way, but don't get bogged down."
"Good news on that front. There was a Buddy in-system. It took down five WarShips that the Falcons sent."
"They know about the facility?"
"That something is here, or at least suspect something was here, anyway. They'll probably send follow-on forces when those ships don't check in."
"And?"
"And we're getting ready to ship out."
"But the facility—"
"We probably don't have a choice but to destroy the hardened facilities," I said. "Thirteen will have my final report as soon as I have a chance to write it."
I'd been careful not to say anything too revealing in case our codes had been compromised. I wasn't sure any of the States retained them, but I didn't like the sound of ComStar and the Clans might have retained them. It was why Amanda's 'face' and 'voice' (and those of Victor for that matter), were electronic masks, why Amanda had avoided saying that she would send the recall, and I'd called the Caspar in-system a 'Buddy'.
As it was, the Caspar has been busy, probably to keep itself occupied. The asteroid fields had been lousy with germanium and other desirable elements, and dense enough that in almost three hundred years of ever-increase exploitation had only tapped tiny fractions of a percent. But with those 'tiny fractions of a percent' the Caspar had built resource-extraction and refining facilities, comet-harvesters for fuel, solar power-generation platforms…
And enough JumpShips to transport it out.
"We're going to send the WarShips as well, if we can cobble together prize crews for them. We haven't decided what to do with the surviving crew yet, however."
Actually, we had, that too was in the report Thirteen would carry.
"If you have to, leave them in-system and send a message to the Falcons about where to pick up their personnel," Amanda said. "But if you can, we'd really, really want them."
"I'll see what I can do. What about the others? The other Clans, I mean. Do you want us to just leave the Wolves, Bears, and Jags alone?"
"We have to start somewhere, and this way you don't have potential hostiles on both of your flanks. I have some other ideas, but I need to kick them around first."
"Understood."
"Don't screw up. I want you and Liz to come back alive."
"I'll do my best."
LC-494-251521-385311-61518-1-1351919175
SLDS Israel Putnam
Latharn Fetladral reached for the communications panel of his 'mech.
"Stop that."
His hand froze in mid-air. He did not recognize the voice, and the little window above his left eye that normally listed the source of an incoming transmission was blank. He started to reach for the panel again.
"I said, stop that."
Latharn made very sure his fingers were away from the transmission toggle and asked: "Who said that?"
"I did."
A two-dimension yellow…rat-thing with no muzzle (but a squashed-looking little button of a nose), pink cheeks, and a zig-zagged tail appeared in one corner of the cockpit.
"Are you a prank?" Latharn asked tiredly. Pranks were a common way, at least in some clusters, of welcoming a new warrior. So far, he had not seen anything to indicate his new unit participated in such rituals, and the training tempo was far more intense than he had anticipated. Even those galaxies among Clan Wolf with dedicated field artillery units rarely hosted dedicated combined arms integration training for its artillery. The 'Quarterhorse' had, in addition to the pure artillery training. Toss in the need to qualify in a mech he had never seen before, with a primary armament of a type that no Clan used, while forming together a competent unit, and overseeing integration and training of two sub-units of equally alien types…
Latharn was both relieved and more than a little surprised at the inclusion of the training, but happily so. Even if he did occasionally wish for a little more rack time.
"No. I'm your mech."
"What?" Latharn asked, fatigue gone. Among the other 'issue' items had been an electronic mailing account. Nor was he restricted from accessing the chatterweb—they used another name for it, but it amounted to the same thing. He was certain there were lockouts, things he could not access, but those blocks seemed more along the lines of what a MechWarrior of his respective rank should/should not be able to access rather than his status as a bondsman or former enemy.
He was privately certain that his accounts were being watched. But they were clearly neither being censored nor blocked because Sumner Johns had contacted him. Not only that, but revealed he was now flying a gunship that, while many of the nuanced details were beyond Latharn, sounded as fully a dangerous in-space escort as could be found in any of the Clans. Sumner had even revealed they had Caspar WarShips!
"Are…are you a Caspar?" he asked hesitantly.
"Of course not," the demented yellow rat-thing said. "I am an expert system specialized in Mech operations in the context of battlefield management and artillery control."
"But…" Latharn stared at…it. "I don't understand. You are conversing with me."
"Personality emulation software," it replied in a more conversational tone. "It is supposed to ease communication flow, make it easier for you to use me by projecting a comfortable personality type, but that is clearly not happening here. I am not autonomous. I am not self-aware. For that matter, my intelligence variable is somewhere between a bright dog and a dim dolphin. If it helps, think of me as a voice-command system for your mech. It is, essentially, what I am after all."
"That is…I am not sure what I am supposed to say to that."
"For starters, stop adjusting your comms. The board is there for you to make your presets are right during your startup checklist and as a backup in case I go down due to battle damage. Of course, any damage that renders me inoperable isn't likely to leave you or much of the rest of the mech operational, but that's the breaks. Transmissions are recorded, compressed, and micro-burst transmitted. I will make sure they go to the person or persons you want. Just make sure to prefix the station until my heuristic software has a chance to learn your idiosyncrasies.
"Now, you have a battle to fight, simulated of course. I suggest we find some time in the near future helping you learn how to use me effectively."
The rat-thing disappeared.
"Great Father," Latharn whispered. Then he shook his head. "Command, eleventh battle cluster specializes in splitting opponents and wheeling on them. They have four mech trinaries and one of fighters."
"Understood," George Kirkland's voice said a moment later.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
Command Central, Repair Facility'
"We're pulling out in two days," I said. "We've put prize crews onboard Hawker, Hawk Eye, Kerensky's Pride, and Emerald Tornado. Emerald Talon we'll leave here."
"Why?" Atalanta asked.
I shrugged. "To keep them guessing, because the others were Star League ships, does it matter?"
"I suppose not."
"DDQ-235907-5MC-II, have you made a decision?" I asked formally.
"I do have one question. When you mentioned a name…"
"It's a matter of choice. The other Caspars have chosen designations other than the hull-identification code. It isn't required."
"And the part about self-command?"
"There are two parts. First, legally we recognize the AI as a sapient being and that the vessel DDQ-235907-5MC-II is its body. But naval regs don't allow for DropShips with living crew to travel by autonomous JumpShip—"
"I don't have docking hardpoints."
"—and they don't give WarShips autonomous command authority. Satisfying them requires your hull to be carried on the ship list and you-the-AI would be listed as its Captain."
"I'd have rank?"
"Admiral Murakama's position has been to let the AIs figure out command levels amongst themselves with an emphasis on problem-solving. So far, we haven't had a problem with mixed human/AI tactical groups. I don't anticipate that policy changing unless there becomes a problem."
"I'm in."
"Repeat after me. I, state your name…"
"I, Blue…"
I affixed my name, handed the data-slate to Thirteen who used her finger to create elegant calligraphic brush-strokes. Lolita signed in the black/white hash she used as Thirteen flipped the slate through the compartment to Manfred Steele. Finally, Atalanta handed it back to me.
"Sarah Hunt has overall command. She'll transit on Hawker. Lolita has command of the escorts. The hulks will make transit on one of your transports."
"Understood," the Caspar…Blue, replied.
Using the habitation facilities on the destroyed DropShips as a baseline, Blue had produced a quickly-assembled series of habitation modules that had then been crammed into giant tanks originally intended to store hydrogen. They had enough life support to keep their passengers alive, but it wouldn't be comfortable. And they'd need tugs to move them out to the transports and get them docked since they had no command facilities, nor a drive beyond the fusion plant necessary to run the environmental systems.
We were going to fry every computer on Emerald Talon so that until they could be replaced it was just so much inert metal. But then Thirteen came up with a different idea and it was just too damn good to not use. Regardless, the Jade Falcons might eventually be able to figure out what had happened in this system, but they'd have to really work at it.
Adrian Malthus had been allowed to record a simple message that he had lost a Trial of Possession for the system, though he hadn't been allowed to send details. Maybe we would eventually drop it into the HPG network where it could find its way into the Falcon's hands. Maybe not, as it would undermine our surprise. Either way, I was hanging onto it for the time being.
"And us?" Atalanta asked.
"You have some choices," I said. "You haven't fired on any Star League member state. I think under the circumstances aggression is a wash so… you're free to leave, if you want."
"And if we do not want?"
"That would depend on what you have in mind."
I watched the two exchanged looks.
"I would bring my trinary and fight with you," Atalanta said. "You have the Wolf material you took as issorla. It should be easy enough to disguise our equipment."
"But not your personnel if you are captured or even just killed."
"No, but other measures can be taken. And is should not be impossible to come up with a reason if we search hard enough."
"Uh-huh," I said slowly. "And the rest of your people?"
"I should travel with the convoy and meet with your senior-most officers, I think," Manfred said slowly. "Your presence has the potential for great meaning among our Clan. I do not believe we can stop Operation Revival, but perhaps a change of focus…"
"I'll have to ask for approval before authorizing that," I warned. "If it's agreed then at the very least your hypercom will need to be disabled, and I'll likely have to post personnel to take over your navigational computers and possibly jumpdrive."
"Understood," Manfred said. "In the meantime, I think it best we talk to our personnel."'
I nodded.
SL/L-N-524141501-9035-768
GSS Kepler
Atalanta watched as Manfred kicked off the bulkhead. Pacing was not something spacers were given to doing. Aside from a DropShip under transit drive or inside a grav-ring there were the precious few opportunities a spacer even had for such activity, and it had never been a particularly Goliath Scorpion trait. But Manfred Steele had originally been of Coyote stock. His answer had been to kick off of one bulkhead, sail across the compartment, flip and kick off the opposite bulkhead like a swimmer doing laps. Too hard and he'd smash his face. If the kick wasn't angled properly he'd slam into the overhead or the deck, or careen through the rest of the compartment.
Now he flipped and went sailing back towards the bulkhead he'd kicked off of moments before.
It was odd in a way. Over the last three days he had proven himself far more flexible than ever she had anticipated. Only now he was in a position to go where she was perhaps best suited for, and she for the task better suited to his temperament. But she had a force more appropriate for the mission that appealed to him. Granted, his command may not be necessary for success of his mission, but its presence would be a distinct detriment where she intended to go.
Manfred caught himself suddenly and spun to face her. "I would rather our positions be reversed."
"They cannot be. You have the WarShip. I have a ground trinary."
"You are the Seeker. Your opinions have weight before the Khan and the kurultai."
"You are blood-named. Your opinions will carry far more weight before the whole Clan Council. And the stature to request that which will raise you higher still. I may yet fail. You need to make sure that we do not.
"I sought you out because I needed you to teach me to see the way the Coyote does. My vision has taken us thus far. But do not discount your own visions. I could have found another ship commander. I chose you. Go. Be Manfred Steele."
Manfred snorted suddenly.
"What?"
"Did you know my first Star Captain was abtakha from Cloud Cobra?" Manfred asked. "He was of the Josian Cloister. There was a song… I only remember one line. 'Seek, and ye shall find'."
"'Ask, and it shall be given you…Knock, and the door shall be open to you'," Atalanta replied. "Matthew seven-seven."
"You are a believer?" Manfred asked in surprise. He was not familiar with the passage, but the manner of citation was used by the Josians. The Josians were almost all Crusaders and that was one thing he had never thought Atalanta to be.
"It made for interesting reading material waiting for the drive to charge," Atalanta replied without answering. "Before you go, I have a request to make."
"Of course. Anything."
"For this, you need to hear me out first. It is an affair of honor, not something you should enter into unknowingly."