Raiders of the Lost Urbie part 1
-
-.
Lynchburg
Abandoned System
Federated Commonwealth
Date unknown
The JumpShip SLS ARENDAL hung motionless in space with its wide Jump Sail deployed behind it, billowing from the pressure of invisible solar wind. The ship had to wait a full 178 hours to recharge its Jump Core.
The Captain of the Monolith glanced boredly down at the system's information.
Even inside the Crucis March, there were dead and abandoned worlds. Although a great bulk of them were lost in the chaos and murder of the first two Succession Wars, plenty of other worlds were also abandoned for economic reasons.
They were approaching the area of Davion space known as the Outback, where the income divide was even more stark, where the might and prosperity of the Federated Suns were absent. These were forgotten, poverty-stricken worlds, where you might find a single school for an entire planet.
The Federated Suns didn't care for them. Even a mighty nation with the largest and most well-trained military in the Inner Sphere could not divert any resources into improving their lives - or rather, one might imagine that the reason the Outback was such a region of the lost and forgotten was that everything important had to go towards the military.
When you had the Draconis Combine with their total war footing constantly trying to invade and destroy your culture with their all-conquering Imperial Japanese fantasy obsession, weakening the military was a nonstarter.
As soon as you get up, you get knocked down. No one was allowed to keep an advantage. That was the reason for all these cross-border raidings. Depots. Industries. Power plants. Water purifiers. All had become valid military targets.
Lynchburg had a world with 1.08 g surface gravity, an orbital period of 2.9 Terran years, and high equatorial temperature of 36 degrees. To live here, they needed domes.
"With a poisonous atmosphere, it's no wonder this place got abandoned," he muttered to himself. "Before this was Korvitz, another lost world. After this it's Covington, with B-rated HPG. Anyone tracking us would be two weeks out of date."
A-Rated HPG stations transmitted and relayed information from systems around them every 12 to 24 hours. B-rated stations transmitted every few days.
The Eridani Light JumpShip operated under military rules, not commercial ones. Other JumpShips holding station on the Nadir and Zenith Jump Points could read usually read each other's IFF, exchange gossip and electronic media, and tattle about it when they reach the next system. The ELH wasn't obliged to file a jump plan when asked by an inhabited world in a system for them to squawk out via HPG (as filing regular jump paths was important for civilian trade and transport), but it was convenient anyway to use a dead world for the shortest jump path.
Commercial JumpShips avoided dead systems as a rule, because with no one else to notice it was a perfect pirate ambush spot.
"Poor earthbound sods," said the pilot. Even if a JumpShip had .1g station-keeping drives that could not get it anywhere, a pilot was still needed to do careful precise work like aligning the JumpShip carefully towards the star to deploy the Jump Sail cleanly, or to shift facings to present anti-meteor armament."Why do people have to be so fixated on planets, anyway? Trying to settle all these barely habitable worlds, for what? A station would be easier."
"Stations have a maximum capacity," replied the Captain. "You can't just keep adding more blocks to a station, grav decks and life support become too unbalanced after a while. But even the poorest rock in space if it has anything close to 1 g. That's what makes a planet worth the hassle."
"What, sheer mass?"
"We are monkeys clawing at the stars, but in the end this monkey just isn't made to live in zero-g. I haven't set foot on a world in thirty years now, and I don't miss it one bit. But without our grav deck… no, the entire Inner Sphere wouldn't function if JumpShips couldn't support their crew."
"Ugh, we're crowded enough as it is. If only we could expand and build in more grav decks."
Unfortunately that was not how JumpShips worked, what with 95% of their mass required to be the germanium Jump Core that allowed them to travel 30-light years per week, and there were no shipyards anymore that could modify JumpShips on order. The wars made them priority targets to such an extent that
1. WarShips were made extinct,
2. JumpShips were considered to be too precious to damage and it was estimated that across the thousands of worlds in the Inner Sphere, new JumpShip production per year was only about 12.
The Monolith-class JumpShip was the largest civilian JumpShip ever constructed. Sure, WarShips could go over a million tons, but the Monolith at 430,000 tons and nine Drop Collars to bring along DropShips through interstellar space was hardly a tiny thing either.
The Monolith-class was so large it had two counter-rotating 105-meter diameter grav dects. They rotated to provide the feeling of 1 gravity at the inside rim due to centripetal force. Without it, long-term habitation of the JumpShip was impossible, as a JumpShip lacked fuel reserves or any necessary acceleration to move in towards the system.
These gravdecks, functioning similarly to that of a station, spun at a leisurely 4 rotations per minute - slow enough that even ground-side visitors and their inner ear can adapt with only a day or two of acclimatization.
Whole families, whole generations, lived and died on Jumpships that were often centuries old. Without them, interstellar civilization would grind to a deadly halt.
Imagine, never knowing the ground.
Imagine, being stuck for a year with bored landlubbers.
The last time this needed to happen was when the entire Eridani Light Horse had to move from Steiner space to Davion space, but that was two decades ago.
"How much longer is this going to take?" asked the pilot.
The Captain, for reasons of operational security, could not answer that. He could only say "We're not even halfway there-" to the many groans of the crew.
-.
Kaiyuh System
Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
Date unknown
Kaiyuh was a moderately advanced world, only a single jump away from the capital of the Crucis March Edgeward Alpha Combat Theater, otherwise known as the Chirikof Operational Area. This region of space used to be controlled by the United Hindu Collective, which later voluntarily joined the Federated Suns in 2540. The Star League, for comparison, was founded in 2571.
Although the system was far enough away from any war border with House Kurita, House Liao, or even House Calderon, it did possess a recharge station at the Nadir point which could house defensive fighters.
The SLS JumpShip ARENDAL emerging at the Zenith point was suspicious, as it could get a clear run to the planet.
The Captain had to talk away at sixteen minutes delay radio calls from the planetary monitoring stations that they had no hostile intentions and were only recharging for the next jump. Emerging at the nadir point for recharging was irrelevant, the charge times between the solar sail and trickle charging from a station were the same anyway.
They dutifully had to reveal the name and registry of their JumpShip and the high-level authorization from the AFFS.
Why couldn't they just turn off their transponder? Because that is a pirate thing to do. It would be even more suspicious that a massive vessel like a Monolith is going around without declaring their registry. At least with ELH credentials and mostly empty collars, the most that could be said was that they were off to a sanctioned AFFS operation somewhere and people should stop asking.
"If there's anybody listening in, if the Taurian Concordat have any agents at all at Chirikof, they would know about the Eridani Light Horse and they would be sure now we're headed towards Taurian space. JumpShip sightings are open-source information," the Captain reported to the highest ranking Eridani Light Horse officer on board.
Who just happened to be Major Edward Stimson of Stimson's Stealther's Recon Company.
"At least we're now halfway there," he sighed.
-.
He recalled:
"Sir, with all respect, you can't be serious. You can't stick MechWarriors specialized in Recon into a dropship for a year - they'll lose their edge!"
Brevet General Armstrong shook his head slowly and raised a palm. "Major, you already know where the cache is. And let's be honest here - as much as you like being able to quickly reposition with your Scout Company, you got badly slapped down by the Dragoons. That's nothing against you, it's just that you don't have the tonnage to solve that kind of problem."
"So you're saying this because I'm expendable…" he sighed. "We can't help the Light Horse fight as we are now."
"You're Dark Horse and I trust you. And whatever happens out there, you have the ability and the mindset to deal with it. I'll reassign some high-firepower Medium Mechs to fill out your company, but remember - this is the most important thing for the whole of the Eridani Light Horse since we decided to allow lending our services as mercenaries two and half centuries ago."
"It's that important? Two regiments of fast Mechs are nice, but even as I want them, that sounds too much for what we're getting."
"There's more at stake here than I'm able to say. But if it's true - what you will find there will change the Inner Sphere forever. If it's true."
And at the present, he thought "I should spread this misery around."
-.
-.
The SLS ARENDAL had two grav decks. One was mainly for JumpShip personnel and their families and internal technical facilities. It was their home. But it was only in the past two hundred years that this needed to happen; originally designed she was an SLDF troop transport instead of a commercial civilian DropShip.
Its grav-decks were 105 meters in diameter and 15 meters in breadth at the rim. This worked out to about 326 meters walking circumference at the rim and almost 4 kilometers square of floor space. And it wasn't like a grav deck was hollow all the way to the core.
The outermost rim deck was the most important as it gave the full 1g experience at 4 revolutions per minute. This deck was subdivided into three portions with a 3-meter wide corridor in the middle. Two communal areas, and two berthing sections. A pie chart was the easiest way to visualize this. 15%, 35%, 15%, 35%. One 31 meter long section, followed by a 132-meter long section further subdivided into 18 rooms with 7 bunks each, then another 31 meter dining and entertainment area, then another 18 rooms. This was sufficient for 126 (252) people in standard berthing. If necessary, a third bunk bed could be wedged in there to allow for 126 more soldiers and personnel to find rest.
With two such grav deck arrangements, the ship had maximum sleeping facilities for 504 people.
The next deck above that, stacked like the floor of a building over a 10-meter tall 'roof', had a circumference of 263 meters and would experience .80 g, still comfortable enough. This one had first-class/officer quarters, apartment-like quarters for one or two persons with built-in lavatory facilities and personal storage, communal bathing/swimming pool, and the kitchens.
Then the third layer above that, 32 meters away from the core, would still be rotating at 4 rpm same as the outermost deck, but those inside would be experiencing .57 gs. Feeling half the weight of everything, this deck would only have 201 of circumference and would often be used for machine shops and storage. Steerage berthing, usually little more than suspended hammock/sleeping bags could be placed here, but most people if given a choice would rather sleep out in the corridors of the outer deck if you really needed to cram in the number of inhabitants.
Then going inwards would be motorized handrails to enter the corridors leading to the next gravdeck, at minimal gravity.
Grav Deck One, forward towards the prow of the ship, was the home deck. Grav Deck Two was for passengers.
In addition to shipboard crew, in theory a Star League Navy Monolith could support an entire Battalion of troops and crew, which could be anywhere from three hundred to one thousand individuals.
Here was the pilot's problem and why he thought it crowded: Eridani Light Horse soldiers were considered family by default and were not numerous enough that they had to stay out in the external deck. The duration of travel was long enough that they could not keep separate berthing; might as well get to know each other to stave off boredom.
On board were 6th Recon Battalion (Stimson's Stealther's) of the 151st Dark Horse Regiment, composed of the Command Lance (Stimson's Guards), 2nd Recon Company (Nightcrawlers) Command Lance and Strike Lance, and the company's Air Lance composed of two Heavy ASF. This was a total of 12 Mechs and 2 ASF, plus tech crew, all fitting into one Union-class DropShip. 6th Recon needed behind the 4th and 8th Recon Companies of the Battalion, plus all the support tanks and artillery, at Colchester.
If this group now ever needed to fight, they were a mech-heavy force. Unlike tanks that needed three or more crew, each BattleMech needed only one MechWarrior pilot. All of these fit on one 3600-ton Union, which had its own crew and techs, plus enough berthing for support personnel. BattleMechs were ton for ton the most efficient war machines to ship across interstellar space.
Then the 11,200-ton Mule in the opposite collar had their own crew and more techs and drivers for recovery and transport vehicles.
In total: sixty-four people.
There were sixty-four bored-ass people onboard and it had been four months. The same walls, the same people, every day. They were not monks and this was no prison. People had gone insane from shorter durations.
-.
-.
The children had the run of the ship. While it was good for children to have their education and socialization done on-planet and be molded into the culture of the Eridani Light Horse, children of age for 'elementary education' could have that education well enough inside a JumpShip. Just as the ELH had their own culture, so did a JumpShip had its own spacer culture and it was good for a child to spend their childhood with their parents. JumpShips due to their rarity - and the extreme rarity of such an impressive vessel as a Monolith, it was statistically safer to raise a child inside a JumpShip than on a world that could be subject to retaliatory raids and sabotage from the Eridani Light Horse's enemies.
But because they could not be left unsupervised when they didn't have their own school hours, everyone usually had breakfast at the Mess Deck. Because the floor curved 'up' it was convenient for one end of the communal area to have one massive flat projector screen for TV and movie showings.
From the screen and the speakers around the dining area, rousing trumpets blared and a deep voice announced:
o- From days of long ago
o- From uncharted regions
o- Of the universe,
o- Comes a legend.
o- The legend of Voltron:
o- Defender of the Universe!
o- A mighty robot,
o- Loved by good
o- Feared by evil.
o- As Voltron's legend grew,
o- Peace settled across the galaxy -
"Yaahhh!" the JumpShip's children happily greeted the intro to this ancient cartoon show. They occupied the tables closest to the screen.
Further back, looking at them, sat some of the pilots of 2nd Recon: Jack Finsrud, Terry Lyttle, and Barbara Mosley.
"I think Exosquad is better," said Jack as he sliced into his pancake.
"Ugh, you would," Barbara groaned. "They're basically just tiny Mechs."
Jack pointed with his fork. "Well what about you then? What do like then, Miss Discerning? The ancient wisdom of Dragon Ball? The timeless pathos of Sailor Moon? The gripping war records of GI Joe?"
This whole thing would probably be far more maddening if it didn't come mysteriously with a large bank of positively ancient lost media from the 20th century Terra. General Armstrong knew that morale was influenced by food and drink, so spared no expense to load up the JumpShip with a large supply of the highest quality consumables.
But in over four months with nothing to do but to watch things, exercise, train in sim pods, sleep, wake up to do nothing but to be paid to sit around, day after day after day seeing the same walls, they had mostly run out of things to talk about.
There was a rumor that the offices had advance screenings of newer stuff in straight sessions of newer stuff instead of waiting for them to come out in the schedule.
"The Centurions," said Barbara.
Jack Finsrud blinked. "Okay, that is a solid choice, I can accept that."
Terry began humming "Da dooh da duh da dee de. Du dat du dat duh da dee dih! They're heroes in a half shell and they're green-!"
"Oh you suck!" Barbara hissed at him and covered her ears. "Now that earworm is going to get stuck in my head for the next hour!"
A triumphant cadence filled the room again.
The children over at the far end spoke along with the dialog "LET'S GO VOLTRON FORCE!"
Lions roared. Lightning shrieked. A snare drum spun out a heart-pounding beat.
o- "Form feet and legs-
o- "Form arms and torso-
o- "And I'll form - the head!"
o- Roar. Roar!
The children made "RAWR!" noises.
"Ugh, I hate kids," moaned Barbara.
"It's a rerun," said Terry. The man was not so little, nor even ironically large. He was just so sadly average. "Children are fine with themed day reruns, it's like an emotional re-awakening. Or are you talking about how you got us baited into this detached duty?"
"Just because I welcomed that kid into the Eridani Light Horse-"
"Ahem. Because you sat into some sensitive information you're not even telling us about -" grunted Jack.
"This is good for you anyways, isn't it? By the time we get back, people will have forgotten all about you being that girl who got beat by an Urbanmech in a race," Terry said with a gentle smile.
Barabara let out some deep gurgling sound from the back of her throat and seemed only half-convinced.
"Good morning, troopers!"
"Sir!"
The three MechWarriors stopped and stood up as soon as they heard their lance commander's voice from behind them. Captain Raymond Allwine slashed down the air with a knife hand. He was a very proper officer and enforced discipline, but he was just always so unbearably nice about it all. "Ease off, crew. I'm just here to tell you we're all supposed to report to the sim pods at Oh Eight Thirty. We've got another team-based scenario training coming."
Barbara grimaced and murmured "Okay, that's interesting, but please not -"
"That's right, boys and girls! IT'S URBIE TIME!"
"Nuuuu….!"
-.
-.
Macintosh System
Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
Date unknown
Macintosh was originally named Drekos by its predominantly Greek settlers, however the planet's name was changed to Macintosh during the time of the Star League when Apple Computers Interstellar made the planet their headquarters. The world which shared a name with the system was advanced and heavily industrialized with an A-rated HPG.
People on board the ship could use this chance with a high speed connection to get updated from the Inner Sphere and download newer holomagazines and vids.
"Are we there yet?"
-.
-.
Jacobabad System
Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
Date unknown
Another abandoned system, the namesake world Jacobabad had a breathable atmosphere, a year length of 1.7 Terran years, and surface gravity of around .95g. Even the distance to the jump point was only 12 days. It was a mystery why they abandoned what would otherwise be a good farming world.
"Are we there yet?"
-.
-.
Csomad System
Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
Date unknown
A mining world with a toxic atmosphere and surface gravity of 1.16 g, it was nonetheless still settled with a population of 68 million. However, this was far enough in the Outback that HPG service didn't even exist. They had a 'Pony Express' system when a JumpShip would show up every three months or so.
"Are we there yet?"
-.
-.
Dumassas System
Unclaimed Space
The Periphery
Date unknown
Situated 2 AU away from its parent star, Dumassas was a cold world with a year length of 3 and 1/2 Terran years, but it had a breathable atmosphere and surface gravity of .95 g. They were now out of Davion Space and were one jump away from violating the Taurian Concordat border.
"Are we there yet?"
"Yes, we are fucking there yet!"
-.
-.