Chapter 32

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

1 Mar 3048 Leo vs Leo

Xanthe III on the way to Lopez.

The clearing of the boarders from the corridors of the White Rabbit had ended another chapter of the battle, but it was not the only battle going on in this star system. The last part of the overall battle was playing out in the deep cold and dark of space. It was far away from any planet or other natural space object. Battles in locations like this had not been seen that often in the Inner Sphere. At least not after the middle of the 2nd SW.

The enemy Leopard had pulled out all the stops, when it looked like at least one of the boarding ships would make it to the small cargo ship. It quickly had left the modified space passenger liner behind, like it was standing still. It kept going at maximum thrust when the last of the fighters that the Carrier had carried and was its long-ranged attack force, had died. The loss of those fighters did not mean that the dropship, did not have its own teeth. It was why this class of ship was thought of as the perfect raider around all corners of human space before and after the 2nd Succession War.

The enemy dropship passed the target Blockade Runner and moved to intercept its near sister. It needed to buy time for the boarding crews, to do their jobs and take control of the cargo ship. Now that it was where it needed to be, and she blocked the other ship. The pirate leopard cut the power back just to keep the distance the same between it and the contested dropship. It also means that it was getting closer to the jump point every second.

Before the enemy dropship could engage the Hobgoblin. It first was attacked by the three remaining Ironsides fighters. The three ex Star League fighters fought as one craft and tried to focus the damage they could put against the target on one location. Six PPCs could make even a dropship like the Leopard take any attack very seriously. It was during the second mass attack by the three fighters, that the SLiE were surprised. Right up until then, the SLiE thought that they had the technical edge in this battle.

The three fighters had pulled out of the attack and overflew the nose of the fighter carrier. The formation had loosened up, and the weaving had stopped. Now that they were out of range of the dropship, it was a waste of time and fuel to keep doing such maneuvers. That was when Gwen took two PPC blast to her engines and she died before she knew that she was going to die.

This unit had been in the Draconis Combine not too long ago. The leader of the whole Draconis Combine might still have the "Death to Mercenary" command in public, but other leaders and warlords knew that they needed them. The attacking unit commander had been able to get the local Warlord that had hired them, to "give" them some of the "new" Star League grade extended range Particle Projection Cannons. It had been part of a larger plan put into place by ROM, but it would now be used to good effect on this mission. The other two weapons were on their way back to a testing facility. ROM wanted to see it they could be tracked back to equipment "traded" to the Combine before the 3039 war, or if they were connected to the data coming out of the Helm's core.

Two of the 7ton weapons had been installed in the nose of the dropship. They had replaced the older style PPCs, which had been there only four months before. This generation of ER PPC did not hit any harder than the older weapons, but they reached out further to touch a target. To get that range? They were very hot weapons, and this ship had not been able to get an upgraded heat control system to handle the additional heat. That was part of this "contract". ComStar was going to update everything on the ship up to Star League levels in every way possible. It was to be the rewards for years of faithful service to that interstellar corporation. It also would be a test for an upcoming design to be fielded to the Com Guards. The crew was firing these new weapons as fast as they could recharge, along with every other weapon the dropship possessed. This tactic had worked with the older style of weapons, and why change when something worked.

The enemy dropship also did not have any upgraded targeting systems software or even much experience working with the weapons. That meant they were not the best, at putting them to the best use as designed. Soon the fighters and even the Hobgoblin were picking up the climbing heat level, that the overuse of those weapons was causing on the other carrier. The two remaining 65ton fighters were just flies compared to the 1,600ton ship. Still they did the job that was needing to be done. That was to keep the enemy dropship looking at them, and not looking at the White Rabbit. The job had only gotten a little more dangerous. Now that the surprise was exposed, it would be harder for the enemy craft to get any more major results.

When the Hobgoblin started getting close. The other leopard took up the challenge and the two dropships started trying to kill each other. The pair of dropships soon were acting more like two fighters, than almost 2,000ton carriers. While the whales were firing at each other? The flies were also able to attack, with some cover provided by the Hobgoblin. This was spreading out the weapons fire and rapidly overheating the enemy ship, as it tried to defend against two and sometimes three different sides at the same time. During the fight some telling blows were made on the engine by a massive wave of short ranged missiles launched from the wings of the two remaining fighters.

The dropship had thick armor and the paper cuts of the fighters were still cuts, which could draw some blood. On this attack run, the two fighters pushed into knife fighting range and fired a full spread of the fat short ranged missiles into the aft of the craft. The last run had damaged the dropship and took out the aft mounted large bore laser. With the loss of this long-ranged weapon, the two craft decided it was time to push in very close to the enemy vessel. The missiles were short ranged, but they packed a large warhead. One that was almost twice as heavy as what a longer ranged version did. The wave of explosions started at the very aft of the ship, and then it started to slowly move toward the nose of the ship as the fighter carried weapons went to work.

The missile strikes were felt by all of the 21-member crew of the dropship. It was just a set of rumblings, that is until something broke. The massive 400ton engines shook when a pair of missiles slipped through a hole in the armored skin. The sudden loss of efficiency was felt as the thrust dropped off by a very measurable amount. That was the first hint that something was wrong, and it was not the last indication that the Sundog was in trouble.

The ship started an un-commanded hard loop soon after, as one of the avionics bays started to burn in great white arcs of power. The damage control personnel would not get to the fire fast enough, because of damage done to the bay of nearby heatsinks. They were already spraying the area with hot and toxic fluid, which kills some of them in a few hours. This was the paper cut that would cause the horse to be lost. For the want of a horse, the battle was lost.

On the outside the dropship still looked normal, and maybe the sudden maneuver was to throw off incoming fire or to offer fresh armor plate to a threatened side. If they had been a "fighter" from the twenty or twenty-first century, a tell-tell sign of damage would have been smoke coming out of the engine. That would have been a sign to everyone, about the damage done to the drive system. After all it was that way in all of the entertainment shows that had air or space battles.

It would take a long few minutes for the sensors on the convoy ships to pick up on the change in the dropship's plasma drive plume. This would be marked as the beginning of the end for the enemy dropship in all the records made of this battle. As each weapon was fired by the hiding Star League Navy ships. More and more systems would start to first fail and then fry on the pirate ship. Between the loss of systems and loss of crew, the effectiveness of the enemy Leopard kept dropping.

The enemy warship would not go down easily, but it was going to lose. The Hobgoblin picked up a radio transmission, in the open, between the last two small craft and the enemy dropship as more and more of the dropship was falling off due to weapons fire. "They were doing a "full" attack, and they would know in twenty minutes if they "took" the ship."

No one on the Hobgoblin knew what this might mean, but they did know that the White Rabbit was on her own. They figured out that it was some kind of code, because nineteen and a half minutes later. The very badly damaged Leopard tried to disengage from the remaining fighters, and the Hobgoblin. It looked like a panic run for safety of the Overlord, and for the Invader class jumpship to take them all away from this battlefield.

The commander of the enemy dropship made his first big mistake, when he did that. It's very hard to pull away from an attacker mid battle. Most of the times you just die, with a sword or gunshot to the back. When it exposed its weaker armor and armed aft, the SLDF Navy went to town. The armor and weapons were already damaged from the attacks from what the Ironsides had done, when they had tried to take out the engines.

The Hobgoblin fell in and lined up on the exposed aft of the enemy dropship and fired. The wing and nose mounted 20 tube long ranged rockets left 60 fire trails in space, as they raced to close the distance to their target. They were joined by another 60 flame trails, which was the last of the ammunition ready to use by the old pirate ship that now was in a real navy. Still it would be the pair of large bore lasers in each wing and the pair of PPC's in the nose, which would be the bringers of death for the rest of the fight against the ComStar funded ship.

The enemy ship had not been giving quarter in any of its battles, and it was not expecting to be getting quarter in this one. They were a mercenary unit, but one that was not known much less well known. Plus let's just say. That most of the jobs it took were more than a little on the grey side, or all the way into criminal or pirate. Most other mercenary units and even local leaders would just have thrown them out of the nearest airlock. The pirate fought until the chief engineer lost the fight to control the massive fusion plasma drives and the growing number of fires within her hull. The almost 400 tons of abused mix of metals and ceramics turned into a fireball, which was about three hundred meters in diameter at its widest point. The engine was now more like a short-lived sun, than something built by the hands of man.

The flash of energy was so bright, that even the auto shield built into the massive armored glass on the Hobgoblin was not up to the task of fully dampening the effect. Everyone knew what had happened. For a few of them, it was not the first time they had seen a ship's engine have its own lunch or something that was equally energetic. The Captain of the Hobgoblin did not need to be told what happened. She was one of the few that had seen this happen before, and from a lot closer point of view.

"Okay give me an update on that Overlord and the White Rabbit. CAG land our birds and see how many are safe to re-launch. Let's start looking for anything that we might easily salvage. We are a salvage and resale company after all." This last part got a round of chuckles from a very over stressed bridge crew of the carrier. She was looking at the screens hoping that she could find two locator beacons out there among the cold of space.

The last craft to land on the carrier was the Stuka. It was the slowest, and it took almost two hours to make it back to its mother ship from his location near the enemy dropship and jumpship. By that time. Things had been worked out enough, to figure out what had happened out in this part of the deep black. The only items that might have been worth saving floating in the local space, were the two Dragonstars. That is until the head of engineering of the White Rabbit found "the crack". It went all the way through the hulls of both ships to a varying degree.

The engineering team had dumped the computers to some removable data storage devices, for exploitation later. Then they cut the parasites off of the hull of the blockade runner. They would keep speeding out into deep space between the stars. In a few weeks the pair of hulks would not even be a risk to navigation, at least within this star system. The fleet of two dropships started boosting again towards the Tramp waiting at the jump point, but at a safer rate of thrust.

Commander Copeland was reviewing the data coming into the bridge of the dropship. It was not that good; besides that, at least they were in one piece. Robert was reviewing some intercepted radio transmissions, then he felt an itch. The longer he spent reading those reports, the more powerful the itch became.

"Communication! Please point a narrow beam transmission right at the Overlord. Make sure that the auto encoding is offline. I want them to have no problem picking this up and understanding me. The message is. Let Igarashi Miya of ComStar know. Good try, but we are still not going to give up who we are on contract with. We hope they gave you a good support package for this job. Looks like you are going to need it. Message Ends." Robert could not help but smile as he spoke.

Jess was also smiling. She was thinking that whoever was on that Overlord, was behind this attack on them. As soon as Robert had said the name. All the parts fell into place out of the blue, and she agreed that ComStar was the most likely group behind this attack. She also liked that her boss was letting the other side know what he thought of them. It might be poking the lion, but sometimes you just had to do it with a big pocking wrench.

The trip back to the jump point only took another five hours. This was a lot shorter, than the planned burn towards the planet. No one was able to sleep or rest for those hours, even at only 1G of thrust. There was way too much to do, on both of the dropships. As soon as the two dropships arrived at the jump point. They docked to the larger jumpship. The now active artificial gravity plating was an asset to the crews. It would make it easier to help the wounded from the attack, if nothing else.

The Styx "was not ready" to do its next jump. It should take another two days to recharge the drives. They could "fast" charge the drive, but that was risky, and you did not want to blow your jump drive. At least not in a system, which you had just been attacked in. And Robert wanted to show the "Other Guys" that he was not in a rush to leave. It was another poke at the Lion. Besides they could use the time to make more repairs.

While they waited to charge their drive. Robert called a meeting of the senior staff. Everyone was tired. Still this was a good time to bring everyone up to speed on what had happened in other areas, and what they had done afterword's. Robert looked around at the group, and everyone had large dark bags drooping from under their eyes. This was displaying evidence of the lack of sleep and stress they had been under.

Robert decided right then, to be the one to break the ice. "We knew that someone was tracking us, and that they were hiring mercenaries or pirates to do the dirty work. We will be leaving this system in a dozen hours, unless someone has information that dictates a delay or a rush. During your updates, give me a go or no go for jump." He was just as tired as the rest of the crew, but he was forcing his voice to stay upbeat.

He looked around the table and the heads were nodding, but they were not talking. "Okay next bit of news. The Overlord did not launch any fighters, or any other space support craft for that matter. "We" think it might have been a command version of that class. The second item? It is that the Invader jumpship must have fast charged or hot loaded its jump engines. As soon as the two small craft launched from the jumpship, they collected the life pods with the help of those two other Dragonstars from the Monarch. We think that they were left behind at the start of the mission to be some sort of cover or escort for the jumpship. The jumpship took the Overlord and a Union that lifted from the planet, when they jumped out. That was half an hour ago."

The rest of the room perked up at the news. The smaller dropships did not have the equipment or personnel that the 660meter long jumpship carried. The numbers of dropships and the number of collars were not adding up. Everyone in the room could do the math. There was another enemy jumpship out there somewhere.

Robert let the quiet of the room stretch out. "We have been contacted by the planet. In fact, we have been contacted by two different groups from the planet. One contact was from the Class B HPG ComStar compound on the planet. They are saying they were "attacked" by a pirate unit, and they have suffered damage to their major systems and cannot currently transmit messages out of this system. They want us to carry word of the "attack", so that the FWL and ComStar can send help this way."

This drew a round of rolling eyes and out right dagger looks, from around the room. "The second group is saying that they are from the local government and defense force. They said that whoever attacked them? They did not do that much damage, but that they now have pulled out. They did report. That the mercenary scout lance, who seemed to be the ones that warned us of the trap. All of them had been wiped out by some very high tech mercenary or pirate unit, that landed on a Union class vessel."

This information was met with a slight rumbling from around the metal walled room. "This mercenary/pirate unit said, and they had documents, which said they were hired by the FWL when they landed. They were also told that the HPG is down, and they also would like us to carry word out about the attack. I have agreed to their request. I almost authorized a hidden message to be sent out by our HPG, to warn of a pending attack in the local area. I just can't find a way for it to get out, that does not cause us more issues down the road. I also have thought about sending down the Rabbit, but the risk is too high." He didn't need to tell the group, that he had not replied to the information request that had been passed up by ComStar to them.

Robert looked around the table. "That is all the information and updates we have gotten from the Styx. The Captain of the White Rabbit is next and will be followed by the Hobgoblin."

The Captain of the Blockade Runner let out a little breath and then straightens up in his chair. "We are shipshape and operational. We are still repairing some of the weapons fire damage to one deck. The hull and engines of my ship are sound. We have not lost any more people, now that we have the medical equipment from the Styx to support us. We also have not lost any of the "passengers". We have them stripped to their undergarments, and in one of the larger rooms….without gravity. They are not going anywhere but they are not talking, yet. My crew will need up to ten days to fix all of the visible damage from the action inside of my vessel. We have the entire electronic data and anything else we could pull out of the Dragonstars. It was not much, but we got it all. We collected all of the uniforms and weapons and put them in storage."

The Captain turned to look at the fleet commander. "The item that is driving me crazy, is the dozen of the PA(L) suits that led the boarding action. We are still checking what is left of them out. I have made sure that those items are not going to be found, by any future inspection teams. I will say that they are some kind of knockoff of the Nighthawk. Nothing like this is known to be in production, before the Star League fell. This is a game changing weapons system, and one that Higher Command will want to see. I can have a team working on it, in their free time, but right now they are still patching up holes and dents in my ship. When they find out anything more? I will pass it along, but it's going to be a while. From all of the reports I have seen, so far that is." The Captain stopped talking for a few seconds as the rest of the room made a soft rumbling sound.

When he was not asked to stop, he started talking again. "The traps, Blazer rifles, and Colonial tech auto rifles worked even better than my security people had hoped. The only area we are short in, is good body armor. What we have is the best we can have under the protocols, but standing up to battle suits? Well, it is going to be ugly. That is in anything, other than a fixed defensive point." The news of the battle suits had already gotten around to all of the attached ships on the Styx. To have it confirmed….was a distraction.

The Captain of the Hobgoblin was the first to come around. "A Command Version of the Overlord, new style of Battle Armor, and a Leopard CV that was packing Star League grade PPC's that looked to be knockoffs or very closely related to the Blankenburg line. The Inner Sphere is getting to be a very dangerous place!"

Now all the eyes were on him instead of the White Rabbit. The White Rabbit's Captain nodded to let the other Captains know that he was done with his part, and the other man could start his briefing. "I didn't mean to jump in like that, sir. We were able to recover four fighters. Currently we have been able to get one Ironsides and the Stuka on CAP. We have another Ironsides ready to launch if something nasty happens. They are not fully repaired, but they can fly. The third Ironside is in bad shape. The techs don't know if they have the parts to fully repair it. They are in fact thinking that they might have to use it as a parts supply for the other two craft of that type. We did get two confirmed anti Cylon charges going off, on the two craft we lost."

It was not long after the Colonials had made contact with the SLDF in Exile that a modification had been made to all space craft. It the Cylons got their hands on the inner sphere weapons or clan technology? They might be able to turn the tide on the human race. To stop this? It was decided that if it looked like the Cylons might capture a ship? It would be blown apart by a suicide charge. It would blow up the crews and the ship, all in one shot, leaving nothing recoverable by any side. The two explosions that had been picked up by the Hobgoblin might have been set off by the fighter pilots. Or it could have happened by enemy weapons fire. In the end? It did not matter; the secrets were kept from any outsiders just the same.

The Hobgoblin's Captain was not done. "I have been given a list of items, which the techs need to restock our supplies. The only items that they are not critically short on, is Star League level tech items. I think we will be able to find what we need on Andurien or a planet like it."

When the Captain stopped talking for almost a minute. Robert took control of the meeting. "I'm sorry for your loss, Captain. Make sure a copy of your supply lists are given to all three cargo masters. This is the reason we have cash on hand." Finding parts was going to be a lot easier than dealing with the lost pilots.

He looked around to the other Captains. "Make sure we have a complete list of all needed parts and supplies given to all Cargo Masters. I will also need a copy of those lists. You can bet SLIC and High Command are going to be picking at scabs like this when we get back. I want all items topped off as soon as we can, but I don't want anyone to know how short of supplies we are. The last thing I want is for someone to think, that we can't defend ourselves and they force the issue. I also want detailed reports, on all advanced technology that each of you all have seen used against us. I want as much ammunition on hand as I can get, when we get back home. So that we can bring bigger hammers to defend ourselves with, next time. If the techs think they can use them? I want enough of the ER PPC's removed from storage and put on the surviving Ironsides. If that is it?"

Robert looked around the room and no one indicated that they had more to say. "Okay! Jules let's keep to the plan and jump to Lopez. Thank you all for coming and we will meet again after Lopez." Robert had already prepared another mission for Kimberly and Lora to work on. He wanted to reward whoever had warned them. He was going to authorize some kind of reward, after he found out what had happened.

Exactly at the time that Robert had given in the meeting. The modified Tramp class ship left this system, and it arrived at the Lopez systems jump point. As soon as the Styx was safe. Jules transmitted the information from the government/military contact on Xanthe III. The official message from ComStar was "lost" before the Styx arrived in the Lopez system. It was like someone had kicked over a hornet's nest, four hours later. It must have taken that long for the information to be passed from a radio techs hands, to someone in higher command.

Robert was lucky because he, and the other three dropships were already on the way dirtside when the nest started moving. Jules and the Styx were getting a friendly visit from the commander of the nearby recharge station. Robert would have a matching meeting, once they were on the ground on Lopez. The locals were surprised when they asked for proof of the last attack. So, Robert turned over the 6 surviving captured personnel still in their undergarments to a very shocked investigator.

Less than 4 hours after he had turned over the "Pirates". Things started happening on the drop port of the small hot world that had two suns. One was that the local garrison commander, had opened his supply caches to Copeland's cargo masters and pocketbooks. They were able to pick up all of the armor plate, electronics, ammunition and hundreds of other spare parts that they needed, at the cost that the FWL paid for them.

There used to be a major aerospace manufacture on this planet, and according to local lore it had been destroyed by the Cappies. It had happened in one of the many times that this planet had changed hands between those two great houses. That history was working for Robert, and his people this time. The Cargo Masters were able to pick up some normally very hard to find items, to make flight certified aero fighter parts for New Circe. Those items were not cheap to acquire, even with the good will the locals currently had for Copeland's people. The specialized equipment looked like they only needed a good cleaning, before being put back into a factory.

They were able to trade the last of the Colonial weapons, and all of the Blazer rifles on this planet. At least the ones that were not now issued to the crews of the dropships, for counter boarding operations. They also sold computers to both the locals and tourist, who had come to see or ride the flying Dragons on this planet. It was a very productive five days for Robert's people. They were supposed to have lifted after the fourth day, but the last critical case was not released from the main planetary hospital for another day.

It was worth it, to have Jennifer not needed to be rolled out of a van in a wheelchair. She would walk under her own power up the loading ramp, if very slowly. She limped up the personnel access ramp into the White Rabbit with her chin held high. One item that Robert had been able to gather was not on his shopping list or RFI. He was able to watch the loading and launching of an almost regiment of Battlemechs and tanks from the local drop port. They were on the way to find out what had happened on Xanthe III.

He also was told a few of the rumors that were going around the drop port. One was that MMM had an Ultra class cannon factory in operation somewhere within MC space. They also were selling upgraded Marauders and Shadow Hawks using those same "new" cannons. They were supposed to be selling the new cannons to any one on friendly terms with the MC. The final major rumor and it was one that was going into the logbook. It was that MMM was going to be the center of recovered Star League weapons technology for this whole part of space.

On the burn to the jump point. Commander Copeland was contacted by traffic control and asked if they would delay their jump to the regional capital, for another 24-36 hours. Two other jumpships were going that way. They were a Merchant class and a Star Lord class, all with a full load of civilian dropships. It was hoped that the armed Tramp and Leopard class Carrier would be helpful. Copeland's people were doubling the firepower of the group. Robert was okay with it, because after this last attack. He wanted more witnesses, when things went sideways again.

Notes:

The loss of the two Ironside's pilots. They might have lived, but Gwen's charge went off due to weapons fire, and the other might have been able to punch out. That would have risked being captured, and the Wolverines had a policy for that.

Styx waiting. They are down one third of their fighters. They would be just a little gun shy for at least a few jumps.

Specialized aero fighter equipment. New Circe needs all of the fighter production it can get.