Dispossession of a Duke (House Morten Book 1)

by Aer-ki Jyr

I'm a full time professional author who got their start here writing fanfiction. I was on a break and was reading a glut of battletech books when I got this story idea in my head. It stuck so bad I started to write it out and it ended up becoming a novel. Didn't have permission to write it, so I can't make money off it, but otherwise it's written as legit Succession Wars era.

3. Chapter 2

2

November 3, 2989

Federated Suns

Crusis March

Cholis

Morten Estate

10 months later…

Word that a Davion jumpship had arrived insystem hit the local news faster than the Duke could send official word to Stephan's comms office. From the ID he knew it was the promised arrival of his family, and given the distance to the Nadir Jumppoint where it had entered, it would be a 3 or 4 day trip by dropship to get here.

The Morten Estate didn't have a comms dish of sufficient power to reach that far, so he had to route everything through the Duke, including a request that the two dropships incoming land on a grassy plain at his estate, near to which a half completed ferrocrete pad was still under construction. After a back and forth argument over two days, including the Duke throwing his muscle around, the Captains of the dropships outright refused to land at anything other than a full-fledged spaceport, and even denied a very generous commission to make the short hop out to the Morten Estate to deliver his family directly.

One of the Captains said he was a civilian transport, not military, and would never see an inch of mud on his landing struts…along with a lot of other blusterous jargon. These were both House Davion Captains, and apparently they were as prim and cocky as their reputation suggested, and no local Duke and exiled noble were going to give them orders or bribes.

Thorsen was quite put out and immediately arranged a convoy with traffic control priority to take the Morten family and all their belongings straight to the Estate…which was where Stephan was waiting for them amongst the construction crews racing to get the four new buildings surrounding the mansion fit enough to live in. Their basic ferrocrete structure was in place…for he flat out refused to use wood frame structures even if they were faster to put up…but the interiors were bare with the electrical only partially installed despite the crews working night shifts ever since the jumpship arrived.

And to make matters worse, the expected 500 head count has expanded to some 736…for his mother had decided to use the already established adoption process to bring more people into the House in order to get them out here. It was an old custom where House Morten would recognize loyalty and skill more than their own bloodline, and the new adoptee would be treated exactly as all the other House members, including their own offspring.

He guessed that was what was required to get the Davions to bring them along…despite the fact that such adoptions had to have the First Lord's signature on them to make them legit.

He guessed his mother had done some signature forgery and backdating to make it all work. It wouldn't be the first time, but he wasn't going to complain about it. Not when they'd have a few more people from Neubenn to help them build here, but he hadn't yet gotten a complete manifest, and the message from his mother simply said to wait and she'd explain in person.

Which meant keep it off the comm channels, so there was some sneaking going on, and he wasn't about to interfere with the Davion people around watching.

So he stood amongst the hustle and bustle of the construction crews as they were also putting on the foundations for other buildings, expanding the basic road into offshoots, one of which led several kilometers down the valley to the location for the dropship pad that hadn't been ready in time.

Everything was a jumbled mess, but Stephan was suppressing a quiet smile. House Morten was finally here, which meant he and Roger, along with their now 28 person staff, would no longer be carrying the torch of civilization on their own out in this raw Cholis wilderness that was more a work site than a home.

But as they say, home is where the family is, and as he saw the first of the lead convoy vehicles coming up the long dirt road and flickering in and out of the gaps between the trees that lined it, the sense of being exiled to the middle of nowhere began to abate quickly.

The first truck was a three-parter, joined by two flexible ties, and with huge wheels that were eating up the bumps in the road with ease. The lead cab looked to be for passengers, while the box-like compartments behind were clearly cargo. Stephan didn't see the second vehicle behind them, so the spacing mustn't have been very tight. That, or someone wanted to get here ahead of the others.

Right on cue, as it stopped at the main gate unsure where else to park, a figure in a cape/jacket identical to the one Stephan wore jumped out of one of the doors and jogged over to him, her tightly braided blonde ponytail bobbing gently against her back as she came up to him and wrapped him in a firm hug as the other occupants slowly began to spill out.

"I thought you'd be first in line," he said into sister's shoulder as neither one wanted to let go after only a few seconds.

"I had the convoy keep back a ways before I could get a head for what we were dealing with," she said, finally pulling back and looking him over, putting a hand against the size of his face as if measuring his sanity. "How bad are you?"

"Davion made it clear I can't go back, so it's eyes forward now. I'm keeping it together," he said, finally cracking a tear as a pair rolled down her own face.

"That arrogant bastard," she said, hugging him again quickly before getting to business. "I pulled as much data as I could on the way in. The place looks small, but I can see you're already adding to it."

"I expected 500," he defended lightly.

"Well, Mother had other ideas. Do you have any portable shelters?"

"Just a warehouse of camping tents I had hoped we wouldn't need. The local construction crews aren't exactly what we're used to, and I had hoped we'd have another couple months. But still, I'm glad you're here now. It's been rather empty."

"Staff?"

"Bare bones, but we found a decent cook."

"Chef Talonson is one of the extras we adopted," Sarah Mortenson said with a smirk.

"Don't fire this one," he warned. "She's not in his class, but she picked up our recipe book rather fast. Work her in somewhere."

"Done. Do you mind if I take over here?" she asked, gesturing back to the crew of family members waiting near the truck not seeming to know what to do."

"Be my guest, Lord Morten."

Sarah turned around, walked three steps away, then belted out a string of orders that got the group moving. Four went back to start unloading the cargo, while two more ran towards the house, both of which were barely chest high and stopped to give Stephan a quick hug.

"Hey, no fraternizing with the First Lord," Sarah scolded them. "You're on a work detail, now move it!"

Stephan winked at both of his nieces, then silently pointed inside. They ran off eagerly to take an assessment of the rooms as per Sarah's orders, for both of them held a touchpad in each hand to start taking tallies of furniture and tagging waypoints for the cargo crews to begin an orderly process of unpacking all their belongings.

"How much did they let you bring?"

"Nothing large," she said, standing watch and mentally sizing up the estate for herself. "We were more concerned about people. They sold almost everything out from under us."

"I know. Total liquidization of all assets. Andrew didn't want us having any ties left on Neubenn."

"Grandfather stayed behind," she said, shocking him for a moment.

"They let him?"

"They don't know. We had to use a body double. He refused to leave, plus cited he'd probably never survive the high gs of dropship travel."

"Keep your voice down. We have a Davion Ambassador at Large occupying the guest house."

She frowned at him and he just rolled his eyes. "She's useful at cutting red tape and getting orders out. It also lets Andrew keep tabs on his investment out here."

Sarah stepped back to within a foot of him and lowered her voice. "I thought we were independent?"

"We are, but I wanted to maintain links to the Federated Suns. We need their economy, and this embassy. Legally, they can't give us orders here, nor Duke Thorsen, though he and I are getting along quite well."

"Embassy, huh?" Sarah said, thinking that through. "Taxes?"

"None. This is our comfortable base of operations," he said, stressing the word. "Those of us who don't want to go out into the barbaric should be able to make a life for themselves here. I didn't want to yank them completely out of the loop."

"They wouldn't give me any figures. How much did we end up with?" she asked, being the head of logistics for House Morten. She was always running the numbers.

"All said and done, we ended up with a war chest of 158.6 billion C-bills," Stephan said, adding in the '.6' because he knew she'd ask if he was rounding if he didn't.

"No pounds?" she asked, citing the currency of the Federated Suns. "Prince Andy really is giving us the boot."

"With all the purchases I've made, it's down to 117.3," he said quickly, drawing a stern look from her that said 'what the hell have you been spending it on?' "I placed a lot of orders on New Avalon, and have been working the local Comstar hub so hard I'm sure I'm funding half their payroll with outgoing messages. Most of the stuff, and people, haven't arrived yet."

"Such as?" she said with a glare.

"I've bought jumpships."

"How many?"

"Four," he said, seeing her star laser bolts at him.

"41 billion on four jumpships?" she said, her voice raising without her even realizing it, but Stephan just gave her a wry smile and leaned in a little closer, enough that he could feel her somewhat pounding breath on his face. He knew the typical Merchant-class ran from 0.5 to 2 billion, used and depending on customizations, and had expected her numerically calibrated head to explode. In fact, she was doing a good job of keeping the supernova contained right now.

"I had a chance to obtain a Sequoia-1," he said whisper quiet.

Her jaw dropped. "How the hell did you…" she said, thinking hard. "Agrocom?"

Stephan nodded. The multi-planet corporation had been involved in a large scandal recently, with it going into limited bankruptcy.

"They put two Sequoias up for sale, and with Andrew feeling sorry for us I got him to buy one of them, then turn around and sell it to us at cost. It'll be a few years before it can get here, but I thought it was a long term investment we shouldn't pass up."

"How much?"

"32.1 billion."

"That's damn cheap. Those things are virtually never for sale. House Davion must have got a discount!"

"I don't care how, it's ours now. Feel better?"

Sarah blew out a long breath, with her lips quibbling a little as if a child blowing bubbles. "It'll be useless in the near term, but long term…yeah, you did good brother. And I hadn't really expected to have over 100 billion to work with anyway."

"Where is Grandfather staying?"

"With Baron Vitron, of course," she said, citing his lifelong friend. "He's just an anonymous house guest and going to stay there for however many years he has left."

Sarah dug something out of a hidden pocket and held it up in front of him.

"He said his goodbyes to all of us, then we used a double on the trip over so Davion would think he was still with us. He said to give this to you. I haven't read it."

Stephan took the datacard and made it disappear into one of his own pockets with the skill of a practiced magician as the first of the boxes made its way past him and into the house. He nodded to more of his extended family as they passed, with the two younger girls directing them to where they needed to go.

"So what are we looking at here?"

"Not very many assets on world," Stephan said, clapping another nephew on the shoulder as he passed. "This estate has enough wildness with it to build up the basic infrastructure we need without prying eyes on us."

"I thought the prying eyes were here already?"

"They're banished to the guest house only, and the road. The Ambassador at Large is Carroll Davion, and her name has already been useful in expediting shipments here."

Sarah's eyes flared, and he could see she was hating the Davions for what they'd done as much as him.

"Mixed bag," Stephan said. "Andrew has given us a window of opportunity if we can grab it."

"First name basis now?" she mocked.

"Not to his face, no. I don't think I'll ever see him again anyway. I've got his mouthpiece of a niece to talk through. We've got a new trade route opening up to here, at his expense, and a stipend of 50 million every year for 50 years. After that both go away, but if we get enough economic pull the trade route might stick on its own accord. He didn't send us out here to fail. He's gambling that we will succeed. I think father had a far deeper relationship with him than we were ever told about."

"What's he get out of it, other than us out the door?"

"For your ears only, sister," he said, leaning in to whisper. "I don't know how. Maybe he was feeling really guilty at the time, but I got the blueprints to Star League-era equipment out of him, the entire Federated Suns tech tree, for us to build and, one day down the road, sell equipment back to him. All the way up through mechs and to jumpships."

He pulled back, seeing the shock in her eyes.

"Are you serious?"

"I didn't expect him to give it to me. When he did I just ran with it."

"So he wants us to sell him stuff while he goes around blowing factories up that otherwise could have produced it?"

"More like sell to future generations of Davions. He knows this is going to take a long time to pay dividends to the Federated Suns. Maybe he expects us to fail and just wants to let us play, but I'd bet part of him, because of father, thinks we might make good out here and wants to cover that eventuality."

"He gave us Star League blueprints?" she whispered, still not believing it.

"There's even a Sequoia-4 in them. I didn't even know those existed."

"They don't," she assured him. "Is it something his people were trying to come up with?"

"No, I looked these over dozens of times. A good chunk of the stuff is straight out of the Star League era, plus other add-ons. They've been sitting on a lot and he said he gave us all of it. I tend to believe him, but keep this to yourself. Don't even tell Mother."

"You're a better negotiator than I thought, brother."

"I had no time to plan. He said he wanted to compensate us for the loss and I just started spitballing. He offered us another world of our choosing…small ones, but if he can dispossess us of Neubenn…"

"…he or his heirs can take anything away, except if we're independent."

"He can use battlemechs to take that away," Stephan pointed out, "so if we're really going to be free, not just in a legal sense, we're going to have to earn it the hard way. But I don't want to make an enemy out of him, or the Federated Suns. We're supposed to be a seed that could grow into a moderately sized ally, one with economic power forefront."

"So he can buy what he otherwise can't produce much of?"

"I don't think the Dracos can get out here to blow up factories, do you?"

"If they wanted to, they'd find a way."

"Which is why all of this is off the books. He assured me censors were going to prevent news of where we disappeared to from getting out for as long as possible. We set up here, then disappear into the Periphery before anyone catches wind of it…with his plausible deniability intact."

"Still, I can't believe he let us off the reigns and made all of these arrangements when we had nothing to bargain with."

"Again, father's influence I imagine. So he's a frenemy, not an enemy. Don't let the Davions here get the impression they're the latter."

Sarah huffed as the moving teams came back out to grab more boxes. "It'll take a while before I'm willing to believe that. They stole everything from us."

"And gave something back. A lot back, actually, contingent on us making use of it. As I said, it's a seed he's planted. An independent seed that, if it grows large enough, he won't be able to control."

"So that's the game then. Hope he ignores us long enough to make our own way out there? Assuming he doesn't want to expand the Federated Suns further using us to do the dirty work for him?"

"If he does, he made a very bad choice giving us those blueprints. I'm not worried about him reneging on the deal. It's his heirs that might. It's hard to say right now, but here's hoping for his long reign."

"I won't say it, but I see your point. Alright, the rest can wait for later. I have to keep things organized here or this is going to turn into a mess," she said as the second vehicle in the convoy was audibly approaching down the road, but not yet in sight. "I'll let you meet and greet while I get to work."

"Glad to let you," he said with honest relief.

"You said the cook's decent?"

"There's a table with food already on it for you guys to snack on during the unloading."

"Thanks for thinking ahead there. We haven't eaten since we hit atmosphere."

"I'm not terrible at logistics, you know."

Sarah smirked. "Yes you are. Compared to me, at least. Go say hello. Mother is in the third car."

His older sister disappeared inside the house in a flash, now on mission and at her usual breakneck work pace. She'd get things squared away here as best they could with the lack of space currently available, but the idea of some of them having to sleep in tents was…well, it was better than not having his family here. And now that his older sister was on top of it, it was time to find his other 7 siblings and Mother, not to mention see how many useful personnel she'd managed to conscript into the family at the last moment.

"No Grady?" Stephan asked hours later after everything had settled down and the 8 Lords of House Morten were unceremoniously sitting around a campfire as the mansion had become far too claustrophobic to work in. A lot of the kids had volunteered for the tents, while everyone else was setting up on portable beds in large rooms as if they were a barracks, with several areas designated as 'free zones' for people to mingle in and get some work done. The rest were outside on the terraces or taking walks around the few paths Roger had managed to cut in the grounds.

Everyone was adapting, and frankly glad to be off the dropships that were even more claustrophobic, but this was still going to take some time to get used to and the less people in the mansion the better.

"We couldn't risk anyone high profile," Vander Morten, Lord of Military Operations said reluctantly. He wasn't a sibling, but one of his 6 uncles, and twenty six years his senior. "Grady is as high as you get. Taking the best mechwarrior off world would never have passed the Davions' notice."

"Shit," Stephan said, knowing that was one more close friend he was losing to the eviction. When he'd heard people had been adopted, Grady would have been the most likely candidate, so he'd hoped without getting around to checking until now.

"And we can't call them here later?" Paul Morten, Lord of Economics Management asked.

"I can't even send messages back, though I suppose if they find their own way here that's not something the Davions can stop. But no one knows where we are and they're going to keep a tight lid on it."

"They can't keep rumors from spreading. The traders will see, especially with all the orders you've put in," Kevin Morten, Lord of Training, said flippantly.

"They can try, but yeah, eventually word will get back. In ten years from now, and even if they found out, how many could afford to get out here? I'd like to put something clandestine together to facilitate that, but at this point I think we just have to cut our losses and recruit new people. The fate of Neubenn is out of our hands. I only hope the First Prince keeps his word about nailing House Derren into their grave if they mess it up."

"Then he moves some other morons in to replace them," Sarah scoffed.

"I've had a long time to think this through," Stephan said, poking the fire with a stick to reposition a log for better surface area over the flames. "Bad things are probably going to happen back there, to people that are under our protection…but we no longer have the ability to protect them. It was taken from us. It goes against my instinct, but I think we just have to mentally let them go. Their fate is out of our hands unless they suddenly show up at our doorstep, and trying to have Grandfather orchestrate something could put him at risk, so that's out of the question."

"That doesn't sound like you," Jared Morten, Lord of Agriculture and the oldest of anyone in the circle at 67 years old said with a warning in his voice.

"No," Stephan said, holding up the datacard that Grandfather had sent for him. "It's what I was told to do. And frankly, it's the decision I'd come to already, though now I can stop hating myself for it. This House keeps what we hold, and now we have to admit we no longer hold anything on Neubenn. Not even Grandfather. His fate is his own now, and he's officially renounced his family name so we get it through our heads to forget about him. Our future is in the Periphery, and we're not supposed to waste time worrying about Neubenn or the Inner Sphere. That was his last and firm order to this House."

"I hate to say it, but Grandfather is right," Sarah said, throwing something into the fire rather hard as her emotions boiled into visibility as usual…which made her a very poor diplomat when she was pissed about something. "We need firm ground to rebuild on, and anything in the Inner Sphere can be yanked away from us. This Estate has to be looked at as transitional, even if we're legally independent. We have to back up that independence with a real economy and military. Real leverage enough to protect us against another backstab. This far out, I doubt they'd bother to send too many troops to do it, so the distance should protect us if we can get dug in firmly enough."

"My thoughts exactly, but stop worrying about the First Prince. He didn't send us out here to fail, so as long as he's around let's just assume we're not going to see Federated Suns troops or mercenary units knocking on our doorstep. There's a lot of smaller threats than can squash us easily until we get some mechs here, and right now our economy is being funded totally out of our bank account. We have to start generating income, so the sooner we can get out there the better. I've already hired three expedition teams to survey systems known and unknown. The first passed through here a month ago, the other two haven't come through yet. The one that did is the short mission, the other two are longer. Within 13 months we should have the surveys from 8 worlds close to here in the Periphery. Five are mapped, three are not. Hopefully there's something there we can start with. Until then, we work on building up this Estate and training new recruits for…everything."

"I've got three trainers with me," Kevin said, "and we're lucky to have nabbed them into the family. We're going to have to train a training staff before we can even get to new recruits."

"Let's just officially call this operation 'Pain In The Royal Ass," Stephan said, summing up his feelings on the matter. "And I think the only way out of this mess is to dig ourself out of it as fast as possible. I have the feeling if we delay, if we do anything other than build at a breakneck pace, an unpleasant fate is going to catch up to us."

"Logistically you're right," Sarah agreed. "But you're worried about someone other than House Davion coming after us, aren't you?"

"I don't know," he admitted, "and that's what scares me the most. If Father was assassinated, we still don't know who did it. And if he wasn't, I'm stuck chasing paranoid thoughts forever without any way of finding out for sure. We're exposed out here."

"Maybe that's part of the reason why the First Prince wanted everything kept hushed up," Rannel Morten, Lord of Technology…also unofficially referred to as 'TechLord'…said as she looked up from the touchpad that had been consuming every hour of her day after Stephan had given it to her. "This data is exposed as long as we are."

"What data?" Vichni Morten, Lord of Natural Resources…aka the 'catch all' Lord…asked with a frown.

"Something I was able to negotiate for," Stephan answered, glancing around to make sure there was no one else nearby. "Technical blueprints for everything the Federated Suns has, a lot of which isn't in production and is Star League era."

Vander had a spit take from the thermos he was drinking something fruity out of as it missed Sarah's head by a few inches, close enough for her to smell the strawberry in it.

"He gave you what?" he whispered.

"I know why these aren't in production," Rannel said, biting her index fingernail for a moment, a sign that she was about to comment on something she didn't fully understand.

"Give me the bad news," Stephan moaned.

"It's not bad, just complicated. First off, not everything is here. I mean, not everything the Star League had, so this isn't a master copy of their tech tree. If I had to guess, a lot of these files were individually recovered and put together in this collection. It's still damn impressive, and I've learned more in the past 6 hours than I have in the past 6 years, but these advanced blueprints are full of holes…no, that's not the right word. Everything is described here, but it's like putting together a piece of furniture following an instruction manual. It shows you exactly where to put the screws and how many of them there are…but if you don't know what a screw is, or how to get one…let alone build one…you can't build what's in the blueprints."

"So we're missing the screws?" Stephan asked.

"It's small stuff, really. Pieces of it exist in legacy works still in operation. We could theoretically pull those parts and put them in to fill the gaps, but we can't manufacture them. Either we don't know how to build the screws, or we do but we don't know how to fabricate them. There's a highly complex alloy detailed here for mech mynomer fibers, but the tolerances in the mixture are so precise I don't think there's a single metalworks in the Inner Sphere that can get the ratios precise enough. We know exactly what needs to be done, based on these," she said, gesturing with the glowing touchpad, the only other illumination aside from the campfire and distant Estate lights, "but if we don't have the industrial capability to put it together, we can't produce anything from it."

"So it's a trojan horse?" Vander asked.

"No, no," Rannel said, shaking her head furiously. "These are precious, and one day when we figure out how to make the 'screws' we can recover this lostech. As it is, there's more than just Star League tech in here. There's all the present day stuff, and we know how to make the 'screws' for those, even if some of it requires very expensive production facilities located only in a few places across the Federated Suns, but I can guarantee you that if we sold this on the black market, we'd rake in trillions of pounds from corporations drooling over this tech. Davion must be spooning it out in little pieces to certain industries to keep them loyal to him."

"And yet he gave it all to us?" Paul said disbelievingly. "There has to be more to this than you've told us, Steph."

"I know there's more than Andrew told me, and I think there was something between him and Father that Father never told us. I suggested getting the specs to make jumpships and other big ticket items, but I never mentioned lostech."

"Internal Davion politics?" Sarah speculated.

"We're out of the loop here," Stephan corrected her. "And he wants us to stay out. That's the whole point of this operation."

"Then he wants a copy of the lostech outside of the Inner Sphere for some reason," Ranna noted the obvious. "The question is, why?"

"Maybe he thinks we can unlock it?" Sarah guessed.

"Maybe he thinks it will be destroyed," Vander amended. "If another big war is coming and the Federated Suns is vulnerable…as you inferred earlier…maybe he doesn't want it lost again."

"Regardless, we've been given a hot potato, the only protection for it is that nobody knows we have it or where we are," Vichni said. "That's either insanely wise or recklessly crazy…and since he's giving it to the people he just backstabbed, I'm inclined to go with crazy."

"He's not crazy," Stephan said, putting an end to that line of thought. "But I think he is losing control and desperate for a way to stabilize matters. Maybe he sees something coming that we don't."

"That doesn't explain why he made this deal on a whim," Sarah pointed out. "Maybe buying some of the stuff we build later doesn't explain it."

"So that's part of it?" Vander asked.

"He said he saw us as an investment," Stephan said, finding it easier to think when he had the other 7 brains of the family leadership throwing out ideas simultaneously. "Not for the short term, but for his heirs, hoping we'd have their back some day in the future."

"With or without a knife in it?" Vichni said, slamming a fist down on his own knee as the pent-up anger over their dispossession was still fresh as ever.

"I don't think we're ever going to know," Kevin said, leaning forward closer to the fire as if his mind was made up. "We know what was done to us. We know the chance we've been given, and the bewildering lostech blueprints we have…which are legit, I assume?" he said getting an emphatic nod from Rannel. "While I would like to know as much as anyone what's really going on, I think we should focus on getting out into the Periphery and not look back. If someone is going to try to mess with us, they'll have to do it out here. The stronger we get…coupled with the distances involved…will give us the protection we need. Wondering what the First Prince is up to is, at this point, wasted energy."

"How can you not wonder?" Sarah asked.

"I already did. I don't have to keep wondering. We've got a mountain of work to do just to survive out here as more than tourists or locals. That I can analyze, attack, and overcome. Chasing mysteries back in the Inner Sphere that we've left behind and won't be returning to is next to impossible, so why waste the effort?"

"We don't have the Neubenn Intelligence Corps to work on finding anything out anyway," Stephan said, forcing himself to agree with Kevin. "So if we're not going to solve this riddle, let's just play dead as far as the other Houses and realms know…as the First Prince wants us to do…and build quietly and quickly before someone realizes what we've got."

"That's dependent on the First Prince's security in giving it to you," Paul reminded him. "There could have been a leak already."

"Possibly, but I'm not worried about that for some reason," he said, knowing that was strange given how paranoid he was feeling about everything else. "He assigned us one of his fellow Davions as go-between…"

"…and spy," Vander added.

"And spy, but one in the open whose access we can control. Once we move into the Periphery, she doesn't come with us. She stays right here. So unless they can get moles amongst our people, we're in the clear once we get out there."

"But we still have to defend this embassy? Rannel asked, glancing up from the touchpad for a brief moment. "Or are we ditching it as soon as possible?"

"No, we're holding this as our connection to the Federated Suns. We're not enemies, we're allies. Andrew made that clear to me. A link is intended, and this planet is going to be that link, even later on."

"But everything else?" Vichni asked.

"Everything else will be outside his view. I've got scouting and survey teams commissioned to check out not only some of the known Periphery systems, but also some of the unknown. If one of the latter is valuable, we'll literally be off the Federated Suns' map."

"They'll just track the trade routes we set up," Paul said, throwing cold water on the idea. "We can't actually hide out there if he wants to find us. Not without breaking ties and going really far out."

"We don't have the resources to do that," Sarah said dismissively. "Not even close."

"We don't even have rooms yet," Vander pointed out.

"Alright," Stephan said, coming to a decision. "Unless information lands in our lap about whatever is really going on back there, we follow Grandfather's advice and just turn our back on it and focus forward. If it comes out here, we'll figure it out and deal with it then. As of now, we're on the edge of nowhere and hardly anyone wants to come out here. Assuming we're going to be left alone for the next decade, what are your thoughts about our prospects?"

"That all depends on what's out there," Paul pointed out. "And we're not going to know anything for at least 13 months?"

"Nope."

"Well then, I guess we work on integrating ourselves into the local economy and building up our Estate and workforce. The big decisions will have to wait for later."

"Easy for you to say," Kevin disagreed. "I've got all the big decisions right now."

"None of us is on vacation," Sarah sniped.

Paul held up his hands in surrender. "All I mean to say is that the future of our House is not going to be decided in the next 3 days. We've got work to do, but it's not going to be consuming every hour of the day. So let's just take a breather, start putting the first few pieces in place, and feel this out as we go. Other than Stephan, we're all suffering the effects of dropship travel, and I for one need to breathe something other than stale, recycled air for a while before I get my full sanity back."

"Among other things," Kevin said, citing the lingering wounds done to the family.

"Immediate work first," Stephan said, "but as we wait for stuff to get delivered, let's try and organize some recreational activities for the House. Get out into nature as groups and do some bonding and healing before we end up stretched across multiple star systems."

"That will be something new for us," Sarah noted. "We've always been in comms range of each other."

"I hadn't even thought about that," Rannel said. "How do we make that work?"

"I've had some thoughts, but nothing concrete yet," Stephan said. "It's one of those things we don't have to worry about for years, so we can get back to it later. For now, we're all here…at least all that are coming…and if this House is going to survive, we need to get our feet on solid ground once again."

"It's felt like an earthquake ever since we got the news from New Avalon," Vichni said.

"And it's going to take a while for us to adjust," Kevin continued. "Who do you want seeing to these recreational activities?"

"I'm sure Mother will handle it best," Sarah said before Stephan could even utter a syllable, but he just nodded in agreement.

"I haven't sat around a campfire since I was in my teens," Rannel said, finally shutting off her touchpad and leaving her face lit only by the orange firelight. "Somehow it's starting to eat away the pain and loss."

"Back to basics," Kevin said, having been around many campfires taking trainees through various wilderness exercises. "It's a good choice of a world to reset ourselves on, and I like this Estate. The land, anyway. It feels like a fresh start."

"But the manor decorations are horrid," Vichni burst forth with a laugh to follow.

Stephan only smiled. "You should have seen the stuff we threw out before you got here…"