4

October 12, 2990

Federated Suns

Crusis March

Cholis

Morten Estate Guest House

"This was not part of the deal!" Stephan yelled, banging his fist down on the edge of the desk where he sat across from Carroll Davion.

"How do you know for sure?" she asked.

"I've got one of my former mechwarriors sitting in my house right now telling me everything. He got all the way out here to see for himself why I wasn't returning any messages."

"You're not allowed to."

Stephan banged the table again as he half stood up. "But I never received them! There is no ban of anything coming out of Neubenn. That wasn't part of the deal!"

"Anything and everything involving your family and this 'deal' has to go through me. Those are my uncle's words and orders. I did not order a ban of any type of messages, and he would not do so without informing me."

"Then who did?" Stephan asked icily.

Carroll stared at him for a long moment. "I'll need to confirm your man's story."

"Not good enough," Stephan said, shaking his head. "He also tells me House Derren has blacklisted all the men he fired. They can't even get civilian jobs worth a damn. He's basically told them to go crawl under a rock and die somewhere out of sight! They may not have a month or two for you to figure this out. I want to pay their passage here immediately."

"You're not allowed to recruit from the militia," she reiterated.

"They're not in the militia anymore. I'm not talking about the ones still in, I'm talking about the ones that are out. That doesn't violate the spirit of the deal."

"We didn't want them resigning to follow you out here either," she said, leaning back in her chair with an unpleasant look on her face. "But we strictly told House Darren there would be no loyalty purges. We got you completely out of there so there wouldn't be a need."

"Apparently he didn't listen."

"That's immensely stupid of him."

"Immense stupidity is their calling card," Stephan said, forcing his voice into the calmer tones.

"This is supposed to be a clean break. How did your man even find you out here?"

"The news agencies back on Neubenn found out where we'd gone and made it public."

Carroll put her face into her hand. "Cameron's bones…"

"I don't care about your censorship failure. I care about those men. I can use them out here, so it's a win/win. Derren doesn't want them around and I do. And this needs to be done yesterday."

"If…" she stressed, "I entertain this notion. It will have to be done quietly. They just get on a dropship and disappear. No news stories, no testimonials on the way out. They just vanish."

"I've put Neubenn behind me," he said honestly. "I'm not going to make a play there. It's Andrew's responsibility now. But these men sought me out on their own volition, and I'm not turning my back on them."

"I have no visibility on Neubenn. You're my assignment. But if everything you say is true, dealing with this fast is the best of my bad options. I assume sending your man back with a satchel of C-bills is too slow?"

"I want them on jumpships within 2 weeks, if not sooner. For all I know some are committing suicide right now rather than live on the streets homeless because they can't get work as a pariah."

"You'd think businesses loyal to your family would have hired them," she commented, staring at the ceiling as she thought quickly.

"So would I. But that begs the question what kind of threats House Derren has made to enforce this blacklist."

"That's someone else's problem to deal with, but I'll pass the word along and make sure my uncle hears of it. You still can't send messages back to Neubenn, but I can. Do you have a list of names?"

"No, but several of my guys there know how to make the contacts. They're waiting to hear back from the messenger."

"Can you give me one of their names? One that could coordinate all of this to your liking?"

"Scott Callison. He was a mechwarrior in the militia. Should be easy enough to locate."

"I don't want you or your man sending any messages back to Neubenn from here. I'll handle this personally, including the funding. Your hands stay completely off this. Agreed?"

"As long as it gets done…and fast. Agreed."

"With one favor," she added quickly. "If any reporters track you down out here, you give them the cold shoulder."

"As I said, I'm not looking at Neubenn anymore. If I don't focus on the Periphery I'll drive myself crazy imagining how badly the new Duke is ruining the planet. Letting it go is the only way I can stay sane."

"Until it lands in your lap again," she said, leaning back in her cushioned chair that rose a full foot above her head. "I admit, this is not of your doing and in no way your fault. I'll clean it up on this end. What happens with Neubenn and Derren is beyond me though."

"Their families come with them," he reminded her so there would be no 'mistake' later.

"Of course."

"Then if you'll excuse me," he said, standing up. "I'll let you get to work on it while I go and visit the Comstar Rep. They have some explaining to do with the missing messages."

"I said I'll take care of it."

Stephan shook his head. "I'm an independent nation. Comstar is independent. A message for me going through them shouldn't be able to be blocked by a Davion order or request."

"I see your point. I'll find out who did it on our end and let you know. I'm not going to stand for someone overstepping their authority and interfering with my mission."

"Focus on getting my men here. The ban is immaterial, especially when I couldn't trust that you were telling me the truth anyway."

"I haven't lied to you yet."

"What are you waiting for?"

"You to lie to me first. If you don't, I prefer operating on an honest footing."

"Get my men out here now. All of them," Stephan said, turning and walking out of her office with light steps that belied how angry he was.

Carroll let him get out of the guest house entirely before bringing up a monitor behind her desk and calling the Comstar Office.

"Ambassador Davion, how may we be of service today," the receptionist asked.

"I need to send a pair of priority messages. One to Neubenn, and the other to New Avalon…"

The discussion with the Comstar Rep went about as expected. They denied knowing anything about a ban and were adamant that those messages, if blocked, had never reached the Cholis facility…which may well have been true, for a few weeks later Carroll asked for a meeting with him and said they'd found the 'rat' that had ordered it.

Duke Derren.

Apparently he'd plied Comstar to block any outgoing messages routed to House Morten, and for some reason they'd agreed. The First Prince had gotten involved personally and finally the truth…maybe…had come out, and Comstar admitted to knowing about the ban Andrew had placed on Stephan sending messages back to Neubenn, so when the Duke asked them to block outgoing ones they thought it was perfectly reasonable and apologized profusely about the misunderstanding.

It was a known secret that Comstar eavesdropped on all messages going through their interstellar communications network…and short of sending a courier like Grady, it was the only option for fast messages between star systems. They had a monopoly, and while they assured everyone they'd never interfere in the privacy of the messages, that was one of the oldest and boldest lies in the Inner Sphere. If they had the ability to look, you knew they were going to, and while they didn't cite the source of their information regarding the ban on House Morten sending messages back home, only a drunken fool wouldn't be able to read between the lines.

Still, as a form of apology, the local Comstar office granted his House a permanent 10% discount on all future messages…and given that he was still their number one traffic customer on Cholis, it was probably more about keeping his business than trying to legitimately make amends.

As for his men, it had been two months and he was still waiting. He knew they couldn't get out here that fast, but every time a jumpship came into the system he hoped it would be at least some of them showing up. Carroll had said arrangements and connections had been made…to his designated man's satisfaction…and that they were in transit in multiple jumpships that would arrive at varying times. Not Davion ones, but regular traffic ending up on the new trade route that started in New Avalon, passed through June, and now ran all the way out here until House Morten directed the Ambassador at Large where to extend it further into the Periphery.

To that end, one jumpship had arrived 4 days ago, and now Stephan and the other 7 Lords were seated around a conference table in their manor as the leader of the first survey team loaded his data into a flat screen that occupied the majority of one wall of the room. Nigel Ferris had three of his assistants with him, all seated in chairs near the door and out of the way as he stood before his employers to give the results of his search.

"As I said in my brief message upon arrival, we encountered no hostilities whatsoever," he said, highlighting the 8 systems he had searched. Five of which had already been on the Federated Sun's map, and three that had not been, making those true gambles. The majority of the stars within the region the Federated Suns dominated were not inhabited, nor claimed by House Davion as part of their realm. Most were worthless other than transition points between others. Some didn't even warrant that and were never visited after an initial survey team had reported back there was nothing of interest there.

These systems were where bandits, renegades, and all manner of black market activities could take place, even next to New Avalon. The gap between stars was so great that each one was its own little universe and the neighbors didn't really matter aside from the jumpship traffic. If there wasn't something of value there to be had or lived on, it was simply ignored.

The further toward the Periphery you got, the more of those anonymous dots between the valuable ones became blank slates. No survey teams had gone to them, and beyond the general border of the Federated Suns and into the Periphery, the number of scouted systems dropped off sharply, for there were times when scouts would go out…and never come back. Which made Mr. Ferris's line of business very dangerous. And with that danger, it became very expensive.

Only those with deep pockets, usually mega corporations, would even bother looking at uncharted systems when they had solid business opportunities in known ones with defense forces to keep the bandits at bay. But greed often prompted exploration, and occasionally one hit paydirt, but there was a long track of failures to go along with the few successes. And if the Great Houses weren't interested in footing the expense of exploring and mapping, then few others would step in to fill the gap.

"Let me start with the least valuable first," Nigel said, indicating a system that was 38 lightyears from Cholis, putting it two jumps away. "Star Chart Number 86247, number 6 on your assigned list. No previous surveys on record. We found nothing but the star and a large nebula of hydrogen feeding into it. No planets, moons, or even asteroids. No sign of artificial habitation or gas mining, and with these low density levels, mining a nebula for hydrogen would be extremely wasteful. A gas giant would be a far better option, but if there's one forming in that mess, it's not large enough to produce enough of a gravity tug to notice. Sometimes these pan out, but I'm afraid this one is a total bust unless you're looking for a safe pass through system, which this would qualify as."

"One down," Paul Morten scoffed, sitting back in his chair with his fingers steepled in front of him. He'd been hoping for at least something inhabited that he could open up limited economic ties with.

"Then we have the Tianis Cho System. Already on the map, but with no apparent updates in the past 52 years. Two small but habitable planets with six airless moons between them, plus four gas giants further out with nothing but asteroid-sized rocks in orbit. With a maximum of one month in each designated system we were not able to inspect those rocks, or all of the moons. We had to pick and choose and guess, and given the settlement on the surface we decide to start there."

The Survey Chief had been adjusting the screen to show pictures of both systems taken from the dropship's perspective, but now he switched to ones on the ground that were tagged as Tianis 2 that showed more than a large settlement. It was an outright city.

"Size indicates it could hold a population of around 60 to 70 thousand," Nigel said remorsefully. "But we couldn't find a single person alive down there. It's completely dead. No sign of combat damage other than some small arms fire, but there are unburied skeletons in odd places. I've seen this before, unfortunately. If I had to guess, this is another failed colonization attempt that starved itself to death for some reason or another."

He shifted through multiple photos, none of which showed the skeletons, but the buildings were falling apart…some were totally down in a heap, but it looked more like storm damage than explosions.

"Weather?" Rannel Morten asked.

"We weren't there long enough to witness it, but the atmosphere is conducive to major wind storms. The land is barely arable. We see here," he said, skipping ahead to a different set of pictures, "the remnants of some farms, but not enough to feed a settlement of this size. They had to be importing almost everything they ate. Then as things do, something changed and the imports probably stopped…and there's nothing left to eat."

"What business were they doing there?" Sarah Morten asked.

"Vice, it seems," the surveyor said with a shrug. "We found no mines, no factories, nothing that could produce anything. But lots of casinos, joy houses, bars, some opulent houses, garages that have been stripped bare but probably held some expensive landcraft. There's even a small lake on the north end that had docks for water craft. This was a resort, probably off the books for some of the corporate crowd wanting to bypass someone's laws they didn't like. You might be able to find out who previously owned it, but we didn't have time. We did a brief mineral survey of both planets, finding nothing of merit though there are some basic ores to be had. Nothing worthy of the expense of getting it out and shipped back to civilization…but I say that with a huge caveat. A planet is far too large to survey with a crew 100 times this size and 100 months to work with. All I can tell you is where we drilled and what was out in the open to see. Other than the settlement, nothing of value sticks out, and it looks like looters have been here since and taken away anything of technological value."

"That's two down," Vander Morten said, taking up the count.

"At the least our House map has information the Federated Suns does not," Vichni Morten said, eyeing Nigel. "Isn't that right?"

He bowed slightly. "I was hired by you, and if you do not wish this information spread to others it is your choice."

"There's no point in hiding it," Stephan interjected. "Not unless there's something valuable we want to get to first."

"Is there?" Sarah asked pointedly rather than waiting.

"If you will be patient, I want to be thorough in this. Yes, there is value out there. This next uncharted system, Number 86110, has a temperate climate, breathable atmosphere, and indigenous plant life," he said, bringing up the picture of a world almost totally encapsulated in ice except for the equatorial region where there was a somewhat wide strip of brown with specs of green in it.

"That's better," Vander commented.

"There's enough minerals in the ground to maybe break even on a mining operation, but that's not it's obvious value. The ice caps are water-based, and the plant life has generated soils alive with bacteria and nutrients useful for agricultural exploits. Furthermore, the equator has no mountain ranges. There are some on the planet, but buried under the ice. I would say this world, with some serious investment, could be an agricultural exporter…in my humble opinion. We saw no signs of settlement, past or present."

"We'll put that one down as a maybe," Stephan said. "Next?"

"Hayden 8. It was populated as of 37 years ago at last report, and while diminished it is still populated. Approximately 30,000 people based around what I would guess to be some sort of precious jewels mining operation…but we couldn't get close enough to find out because they denied us permission to land."

"Then what's your guess based off of?" Rannel asked.

"Geology and some of our long ranged scans from orbit. The shipping apparatus they had at their single spaceport isn't built for ore. Whatever they're mining, it's small and probably valuable. Could be some rare metals, but I'd say it's fairly safe to say gemstones of some nature given the old lava flow they're situated on. The pressures down deep have a tendency to form them, then they come up top with the volcanic activity…which appears to be long since dormant."

"Anything else there?" Stephan asked.

"Two more planets, both airless, no visible signs of valuable resources. We took a sample of one of them and, unless you're wanting to make ferrocrete, I don't think you'll find much there."

"Then that's number three in the trash bin," Vichni stated.

Vander held up a hand. "Do you know who was operating there?"

"They didn't identify themselves, nor did we see any dropships or jumpships in the system. I simply didn't want to press my luck and pry."

"Wise call."

"Next," Stephan said.

"The Isotrol System. No planets, but a known asteroid belt encompassing three different gas giants that are all taking bites out of it. Hard to say who might be out there hiding in all of it, but there is a lot of metallic content in the rock. We took a few samples and were even able to grab this," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small rock which he set on the curved conference table in front of Stephan.

He picked up the thumb-sized lump. "Gold?"

"Yes. The asteroids are widely scattered, but if you wanted to make a go of it, I'd say there's profit to be made there from at least 10 different resources worth far more than their shipping weight."

"And no one has found it?" Paul asked skeptically.

"We didn't pick up any transmissions or see any ships. I can't promise you there aren't a hundred different mining operations out there that don't want to be noticed, but typically if you have a large corporate interest, they leave a locator beacon on for incoming ships to find."

"Sounds a little too convenient," Vander said.

"Put that one down also as a maybe," Stephan said, knowing they'd have to go in with a heavy aerospace force to defend any mining operations there, and currently they had exactly 0 of those assets. "Next."

"Arios Tremgata. Recent timestamp of 12 years ago, and still with the Fash'ka controlling AT 6. They've got some 300 to 350 thousand people there pursuing a mix of industries."

"Fash'ka?" Sarah asked.

"Periphery state," Paul said, already having investigated them. "A small one. They've got 6 known systems."

"I state this as valuable, not only for the current settlement, but because we focused our survey efforts on AT 3. It's got no atmosphere at all, but the metal in the crust was visible from orbit. High concentrations of Palladium, Nickle, and even some Uranium signatures once we got down there to take a closer look. The Fash'ka don't own the planet…at least, not as far as having anything on it or in orbit."

"I might be able to work something out there," Paul said, knowing he'd have to get some sort of diplomatic relations with the Fash'ka going even if they only wanted to offer to sell stuff to them. It wasn't so far out merchant ships from the Federated Suns wouldn't be sniffing out there for opportunity, but if they chose to extend the trade route out to them, they could undercut their inflated prices and get some economic activity going almost immediately.

"Put that one down as 'pursue later,' Stephan said. "Two to go."

"Jennis 4, not updated in over 120 years. Habitable moon orbiting a big sand dune of a planet. No signs of habitation, heavily forested with a number of large lakes. Decent mineral and metal deposits. A bit of everything, you might say, but with nothing that stands out as a potential investment unless you're looking to settle down someplace."

"Apparently no one has," Jared said. "What's the soil like?"

"Depleted. Most of it is in the trees at this point. And we saw signs of several large predators."

"How big?" Vander asked.

"Vehicle sized."

"Put that down as another maybe," Stephan said.

"And I saved the best for last," Nigel said, adjusting the screen to show a barren planet, reddish purple in color, that didn't look to have a single hill on it, let alone a mountain. "This is the third uncharted system you had on your list. Four planets, three of which are gas giants. This one, however, has an abandoned mining station on it. Old, and everything was neatly removed. So I think it was most likely corporate work. The veins of iron they were working on did not run out. They simply closed up shop and left, but were careful to remove all indications of who might have been running it."

"That means it's abandoned rather than just abandoned," Paul noted the legal distinction, indicating that it wasn't just something left there that the owners would want back later when it was convenient. It was completely wiped, therefore they weren't coming back and didn't want anyone to know they were ever there. That meant it was up for grabs.

"We did a survey around this area to see how widespread the deposits were, and they're not just widespread but fairly diverse. This site would be far more easy to mine than the asteroids in the Isotrol System and it has a breathable atmosphere, though a bit on the thick side. The largest problem is that there isn't a lick of water on the planet, so you'll need breath masks if you don't want to dehydrate yourself with every breath you take."

"Temperature?" Vichni asked, for mining fell under the Lord of Natural Resources domain.

"When we were there, it was 14C at it's highest, and there's very little tilt to the planet. Day cycle is 13 hours."

"High magnetic field then," Rannel guessed.

"Above average, yes. Typically a planet doesn't spin that fast unless there is one."

"Volcanic activity?"

"Nothing that we could see that was active, but the top layer of the planet…or at least at the mine…appears to be solidified. Dig down 15 to 20 meters and the rock gets much softer."

"Sounds like a candidate for a strip mine," Vichni asked, seeing that the previous miners had not used that technique.

"I would think so, but there are multiple ways of getting at the deposits, which look to have never been touched except for this one site. In my opinion, it's the best location for a financial investment by your House. I hope this information is useful to you."

"It is," Stephan confirmed. "What are your future plans?"

"Heading back to Stryborn, unless you wish to entertain another contract?"

"Actually I would. Give me a few days to pick locations?"

"Take your time. My dropship will be at the spaceport for at least three weeks giving my team some shore leave. All the data and details I did not mention are on the datacards in this box," he said, extending an arm to hand it to Stephan. "If you need anything clarified, don't hesitate to call me anytime we're still on planet."

"Thank you, Mr. Ferris. That will be all for today."

Nigel nodded and quietly walked out of his room along with his assistants, heading back to the waiting car outside that had brought them here from Brinestorm. Stephan waited until they were out of the room and could see them walking across the foyer out the window before speaking.

"Not as bad as I feared," he said, leaning forward. "Is that mine as easy a grab as I'm thinking it is?"

Vichni had already dug into the box that was being passed around and was reviewing the data on the unknown planet when he asked.

"At a glance I'd say I'm interested in it, but we'd have to get our own team down there to do a good survey. Problem is we don't have a team yet. If I had to guess, this was a tax evasion operation that some exec started, and probably another exec shut down later. The Davions can't track what they don't see being mined, and if they sell to the black market they can make a lot of profit."

"Why not just officially open it up?" Sarah asked.

"Their business license on New Avalon prevents them from having any of these 'dark' operations outside of the Federated Suns. If it was discovered, there would be penalties, fees, sanctions, and maybe even the revocation of their license…which would end all their legitimate enterprises in bankruptcy."

"He's right," Paul agreed. "It's risky, and some execs just don't want to take the risk."

"I'm more worried about something having gone wrong with the mine that made it unwanted," Stephan said.

"If the planet is that well off in deposits," Rannel chimed in, "this one mine wouldn't matter."

"I need to hire an exploratory mining crew," Vichni said, holding a fist to his lips as he thought hard, "and get out there to see what the case is personally."

Stephan waved that off. "Not until we have the ability to protect you. That means at least an armed dropship and a couple of mechs for a scouting mission. If we do plan on staying there, I want a Company at the minimum. We're not there yet."

"It's only one jump away," Vichni lightly argued.

"It's our top priority then, but I'm more interested in getting food production going. Out here food can be worth far more than gold as a trading commodity. This ice cap world interests me in that regard."

"Same here," Jared said. "If we want to set up on both, that's even more mech guards we don't have yet, so I suggest we don't spread ourselves too thin."

"Agreed. We can follow up on some of this other stuff down the road, but for now, Jared and Vichni, start recruiting who you need and Kevin…"

"I know, I know. Start another wing of the Academy," he said, knowing that his Academy was only warehouses at the moment, and consisted of future mechwarriors and construction teams. "Can I at least wait until we get at least one proper building set up in Prime first?"

"Schedule as you like. Just get it in the queue. We've got two potential planetary acquisitions now. Let's take this by the book our House wrote, but the sooner we have a world to our own name, the sooner we can get to actually being a Periphery nation rather than just pretending it on paper."

"Does Davion get these?" Sarah asked, holding up one of the data cards.

"Let's sit on them for a few years first, but after that, yes."

Sarah sighed. "You're no fun."

"Assuming our militia actually gets here," he amended coldly. "If they don't, all bets are off regarding our responsibilities to the First Prince."