Chapter 54
By Cliff
Beta and Clean up: Not done
Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop
26 Dec 3049
New Circe L1
The SLS Kaga, a Samarkand block II carrier, was carrying a mixed crew that had been slowly learning to work together. It also was carrying a mix of SLDF and Colonial made and manned combat equipment. The Carrier was carrying 36 Saber 27b aerospace fighters, and all of them were crewed by Colonial pilots in one bay. The other combat fighter bay was carrying 24 Avar class omni fighters and 12 Kirghiz omni jump fighters that had been bought or made by the SLiE. All of the fighter craft in this second bay were piloted by SLDF personnel, but some of them were ex Colonial or ex Cylon POWs. The rest of the crew of the ship was almost perfectly split between the two different key subgroups. This 500m long ship was going to be the flagship for this mission, and after the first surprise test. She and her crew had proven that they could do the job when they had cleaned up the battle between the SLDF Navy and ComStar.
Commodore Drake looked at the display that had been fitted after the Kaga had come out of her last refitting cycle, that had been fixing issues found by that little shakedown cruise. She now had all of the latest bells and whistles, which any of the warships of the SLDF navy were outfitted with. That included a full command suite to go along with the artificial gravity plates on every deck on the old warship. Losing the 150m grav deck had allowed for this command suite modification to be fitted to the old carrier. The 60m hamster wheel deck was still operational not far from the secondary command center. It had been decided that it should be kept just in case they had to protect "the secret" from anyone that the Flagship might need to host.
This was Drake's first combat fleet command, much less his first joint fleet command. It was made up of his command and six Colonial ships. The largest was the recently recovered 1280m long Delphi Explorer. The rest of the fleet was made up of two 595m long Geminis Transports, and three recovered 545m long Gideon class Transports. They had been recovered by the SLDF and Colonials over the last few years of combat against the Cylons as the opportunity presented itself.
All of those ships had been run threw a refit cycle on the Station, even if it bumped "normal" warships out of the queue so that the work could be done. The Colonial made Zephyr was going to be attached to his fleet, until she was needed for the second run to Jess's toy box and another mission, that was not being talked about outside of a very secure facility. They were going to miss her firepower and experienced multi-disciplined crew that the ship carried on this mission. It was going to be a dangerous mission to go all the way to Barbados and a few other nearby systems. They were to get there and recover any space assets that they could find in that area once and for all. Then they were to work their way back to New Circe collecting other space projects as they went. It was a very complicated plan that had been put together by the planning cell in high command.
The idea was to get all of the high value assets that were closest to clan space, first. That plan had been the one that his people had planned and trained for over the last many months. It was also the plan, that was canceled by those in positions way above his pay grade. At the last minute, well the last week was when the change came down to land on his desk. A Frago had come to him in the form of a senior person from Admiral Franks' office. It is hard for a Commodore to yell at a Rear Admiral, and not get into a measurable amount of trouble. The pair of them were close enough in rank that they could talk frankly in the Commodore's office. No yelling was allowed, even in a private meeting, but they could talk frankly without crossing the line.
With so little time to plan around the new directive that he had just been given. Commodore Drake's small staff fell back onto the stored information that they could access from their ship's orbit or access from The Station behind them. They were going to follow along the lines that had been just used to do the last Pilgrimage led by Copeland and his SLS Styx. As each target was "found" along the way, it would be loaded on to whatever ship was the best fit for the high value object. This was the hardest part of the training for the small fleet's personnel to have to master. Then that ship would return, alone, to New Circe with the found ship strapped to her outer hull. After dropping the recovered target in orbit over New Circe, the hauling ship would pick up an escort dropship now attached to the leaving jumpship. There had not been enough time to get those escorting dropships ready for the sudden change in plans. Also, it was now expected that some of the ships on this mission might not be fully utilized on the run back to New Circe.
Now thanks to the preplanned route in the database of the Traffic Control Headquarters. All of the returning interstellar ships would know where the rest of the fleet would be at any given time on their way to Barbados plus or minus a few weeks. This recovery method was the pattern that they would follow, until the fleet made it to the huge ship called SLS Maverick. That was where he was going to have the next major or critical job for the SLDF Navy. The SLS Maverick also was very close to the original Exodus Road that their ancestors had used, and it looked to be in use again by a huge amount of clan forces.
One of the things that the mission commander knew that the rest of the crew didn't, was that he knew the reason for this mission. It was very doubtful that any of the recovered warships would be put back into service for the SLiE. At best they would be slowly stripped of parts to support the rest of the SLDF Navy. That would only happen to the best or most useful of the hulks. Most of them would just be stripped and the hulls turned into feed stock for the factories in New Circe to make more useful and supportable weapons to defend the human race. The only reason to recover these old wrecks was to keep them out of the hands of the rest of the clans. Anything after that was way down on the list of what the SLiE needed or the likelihood of them implementing.
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The first ship they picked up was the Volga class Warship called the Rawhide. She had been able to fee from the battle in Gamma 1551 AW, but her damage had been too great for her to last too long on the run from clan space without a Yardship. And not long after connecting back up to the rest of the Wolverine fleet, her drive had given out under the damage and strain it had been working under. By now she was more of an armed and armored hulk, than a large cargo carrying warship. Her cargo bays had long ago been stripped to the deck heads. This had been done by passing Wolverine and Dark Caste ships over the last almost two centuries of her floating in the depths of space. She and a newly marked and almost empty Star Lord Class jumpship were collected by one of the Gideon class vessels. The mass of metal was sent back to New Circe in one mass of life supporting moving metal.
Next was one of the Geminis class Freighters collected a pair of Invader class jumpships, both with a full set of dropships and returned home after the next two stops. The last Geminis class colonial ship was attached to the SLS Munich, the 840m long Cameron class Warship. The Colonials jump engine engineers knew that this was going to push the almost 600m long Colonial ship's jump drive right up to the limit of what teams on New Circe thought was possible. Still, this had been one of the ships of newly found targets by Copeland's command. Until they could get this old Snow Raven ship, and its two combat damaged dropships back home. There was no way to know what had happened to cause the Munich to be lost in this part of space. All they did know was that it was full of dead bodies, and full of supplies that said the crew had died quickly from whatever happened to them. A quick death was about as much as you could hope for when traveling through interstellar space and you had jump engine issues.
It was only the Kaga and the Delphi Explorer that found themselves with the Potemkin class ship, which had belonged to the Wolverines and went by the name of SLS Maverick. Thanks to SLIC, Drake knew the history of this ship, even if the location had been lost in the mist of time for the general population of the SLiE. This ship had been turned into a type of flytrap, long ago. She was close to one of the side travel lanes that the Exodus fleet had used. She had lost her old jump drive while running from the rest of the clans. She had been battle-damaged and abandoned to be left to drift at the zenith jump point of this red dwarf star. The small fleet she had been working with didn't have the resources or the right ships to repair her and time was short. No one knew if the rest of the clans were baying on their heels like the hounds of hell.
After a dozen jumps from the scene of the last battle, everyone had thought that she would make it safely away. That was when her jump drive had developed a major crack after a "Normal" jump of 28 light years. The skeleton crew had been lucky, that the ship did not suffer a miss jump when the core almost snapped in half at the base of the primary and secondary power conduits. Still her core was done for, and there was nothing that could be done outside of a yardship, and even the main Wolverine fleet didn't have one of those rare vessels. While they had evacuated the ship, the second failure had happened to the great warship.
Somehow a very toxic leak had started in the engineer areas, and it had quickly flooded the whole ship to a hazardous level with toxic and exotic chemicals. It was an odd mix of very alkaline base gasses that normally were not an issue for spacers, unless it was in a gasses form. Then it would eat threw any "normal" space suits that was standard issue to the SLDF and the Clan Fleets. Since it was alkaloid based, it would not set off any alerts on the space suit's built-in threat sensors, because they were rigged to detect Acids, radiation, and low pressure. Unless you were in a very specialized protective suit? Your first warning you had of the danger was when you had your first leak detection alarm screaming in your ears.
They had to leave the ship as it was, until the first run back to Barbados. It just so happened that this run was even before they had founded New Circe. When a team on a SLIC run ship had stopped by to check on the ship, after fifty years of it being left alone by their Clan and any other group the Wolverines knew about. They were shocked to find that it had been disturbed.
They had found an unknown dropship that was attached to one of her supposedly empty 25 dropship collars after jumping into this system. That dropship had caused some….issues for the small inspection team in a jumpship that was not flying the flag of any group with in the Clans. They should have obeyed their orders and left this system as quietly as they could. About the only thing that the spy craft could pick up on its quite extensive surveillance systems, was that the attached dropship was as cold and dead as the warship that it was attached to.
When the specially outfitted crew of highly trained volunteers had entered the cold and dark warship? They had found what remained, of what looked to be a Rim World recovery team. Where had these former enemy spacers had been hiding? That was almost as important to find out, as what had happened to the rest of the clan forces. The bodies of the Rim World Space Navy personnel and their dropship were left as they were with as little disturbance as possible. They were searched for any information, but thanks to good forensic skills. The bodies looked to have been replace just were they had been found by the SLIC team.
The small team had recovered a few key supplies from the warship's sealed cargo bays. It was the commander of the team back on the jumpship, that had come up with the idea of the fly trap. Before they left the hulk of the old warship one more time. They had opened all of the main hatches, but the ones to the cargo or other storage areas, that were bait if this plan was to be successful. They then added more of the right chemicals to raise the alkaline level up by three orders of magnitude higher compared to the high levels they already had found. Besides adding more chemicals, they also had added a solar powered battery to keep the toxic mess moving around the warship and to the right levels of lethality at the majority of the locations within the Potemkin class ship. Many remarks would be made about the sanity level of that SLIC commander over the next few decades, before he died of "natural" causes while on a long vacation.
By now there were two dozen more small and medium sized dropships attached to the hull of that troop cruiser. There also was evidence where a team or two might have tried to blow a hole into the tough outer skin of the vessel to get in or maybe out of the death trap they had found. Whoever had done the firing and weapons damage had not succeeded in their tasks.
Now it was time to collect the trap and any attached flies. It was going to take time to do this, and that was why the Delphi Explorer had been picked to do this particular lift. She had the room for both the special crews and the huge amount of specialized equipment needed to do this task and be prepared for any unforeseen issues. If they just blew an airlock or something like that? There was a good chance that it would damage some or all of the items they were also wanting to collect, beside the hulk of a warship or its attached dropships.
Still, it would take weeks to get the old warship and attached dropships cleaned out of the toxic gasses that permeated the collections of weapons of war. They used the same techniques that Robert and his people had pioneered, to move large warships after the ugly and grim clean up tasks had been completed. After they sat the old SLDF warship forward of the engines on the Colonial made ship. It would take a few tries to get the huge corn cob just right on the back of the Colonial ship.
They worked to attach an access tube between the two ships after the computerized jump tests had been completed. There was a lot of work that could be done while they got ready to leave and while the pair of attached ships were on the way back home. The SLDF didn't have time to do one job at a time normally, much less not this close to Clan space. There was not much to be learned from what the flytrap had caught that the crews could use to any immediate effect. The attached SLIC teams to the Delphi on the other hand would use the time to slowly sift through any recovered files and other detritus, which the attached dropships might still have in their computer banks and cargo spaces. They would even be the ones to have to deal with the husks that were the human bodies.
The Kaga waited until the four Colonial ships had returned to the location of the old corncob looking warship, before she started on her last leg of the mission. They spend the next few days after the fleet had rejoined to have some non-workdays. They were recovering from all the stresses of the trips all the ships had undertaken by this point. The trip deeper into the threat area would be even more stressful, without having some down time to get some relief before they started moving again. It also just happened to give time for the Delphi to make her run.
It also would give Commodore Drake time to think about the latest wrinkle that high command had thrown into his lap. It would seem that higher command, and maybe with just a little push from SLIC, had been reviewing all of the data that had been collected in this part of space over the years. So instead of just another escort dropship being sent out. One of the ships under his command had picked up something else. Another combat ship was added, and it had its own mission statement to fulfill while he did the job that he had been briefed on. Supposedly the only thing he was on the hook for, was to make sure they stayed with the convoy on the way back. And if he believed that little fiction, he was a munchkin. Still having a Jump Overlord full of combat troops was a nice addition to his command. It was just too bad that they would be off doing their own thing, at least once. The combat unit looked to be perfect for a scouting force.
Jump Overlord SLS Claws
Unnamed system 354 light years from Gamma 1551 AW
(Okay I just wanted to take TRO: Golden Century out for a spin. )
Colonel Aamodt looked down at his data pad again. His orders said that this system might hold a clan support and supply base of some kind. He had no idea how SLIC and the other Intel people might know this, but he had orders to check it out. Besides the thin information about the maybe Clanner Base, the rest of the information on this system was even thinner than usual. It was almost like none of his people had been in this system before. But if that observation was true? Then how had SLIC known that a Clan supply base might be on a planet here? It just didn't make sense to him, and that sinking feeling he had only got more nagging the more time he spent thinking about it. But at least he had a Tac Fax to send any information or a plea for help back to the local Fleet commander. A fleet commander who just happened to have a heavy carrier under his command.
Colonel Aamodt brought his heavily modified Overlord class dropship into this system using the Colonial made jump drive. That was what brought him the information, that they didn't have that much system data on this place. Still, it had taken two jumps to get him within one travel day at 1.5g relative thrust to the only life supporting planet in this system. Even if he knew were the target planet had been in relations to any possible hazards. He would not have jump right into orbit over the blasted thing. The last thing he wanted to happen, was the people on the ground seeing his ship just appear in orbit as if by magic.
The over flying dropship spent the next two duty shifts mapping the planet and the surrounding space in as much detail as they could. It was midway through the second shift that they found what they might have been sent here to find in the first place. It would only be many years later, that he would find out that the base he found was not the Galaxy supply Smoke Jaguar base they had been sent to find. Still, it was not considered a waste of time by higher command. It was just pointed to as a data point that somethings were different than the wrecked cutter had data for.
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Blood Knife looked out from under cover at the huge dropship that had landed at the mouth of the valley his group was temporarily calling home. He and his group had been in hiding on this planet for the last few months. They, meaning He, had a falling out with one of the more powerful Bandit Caste clans about 8 months ago. Knife had only been able to save about half of his combat and manpower when he had been forced to flee the common base they had been using. He had thought that the part he had saved had been the most valuable to him. Now it looked like he might have been wrong about not making sure that the jumpship's crew were loyal to him, and that the Mule with the support staff and what he had thought of as junk had a matching level of dedication to him. He had thought that after he had killed the previous commander in a circle of equals, that his destiny was finally starting to unfold.
As it turned out. The reason for the falling out with his adopted clan had been true. Blood Knife was still too much of a true born Clanner and not enough Dark Caste survivor. He had been only thinking about combat units, and not about the people who maintained his machines or the ones that put food on the table. Now his command was down to 24 mechs that could take the field of battle. That number would have to drop some more, if he had to shift some of his repair techs into finding food. That was a sour spot in his mind. He had sent "his" dropship with his XO on a Tramp class jumpship passing by. It was to be taken to a nearby Dark Caste base to make up for his mistake in splitting from the larger Dark Caste clan.
As Blood Knife thought about his second in command, his mind went to the calendar displayed on a screen off to one side of his mech's cockpit. He had hoped that she would have been back by now. But she still had a few more weeks, before he would have to start to worry if she had abandoned "him" and what remained of 'his" unit. After all she was his second in command, and she would not leave him out here to die a slow death on this lost planet. Surely, she had forgotten about that night on the second day after the falling out with the other Dark Caste. What was NO between warriors anyway? He was a true born Star Captain after all, and she was only a free birth.
Many hours later Blood Knife was looking at his data displays trying to glean more data from his systems. His systems said that it was a modified Overlord, but it looked….different enough to his eyes that it should be a different class of vessel. The same was true of the mechs walking around the grounds around the dropship. His warbook could not tell him what they were, but it gave a range of possibilities. It was like they were something not known to the Clan.
That had to be impossible, and so too help him get his mind wrapped around who they were. He had sent his computer to work out the camouflaged pattern painted on the mechs that were at the opening to the valley. Every group of clans used painted patterns to break up the outlines of their combat machines. They each were of a little different in pattern, or even the exact mix of pattern, and the shade of colors they used. But each mech, tank, or infantryman would be painted in that pattern, and it was information like that was tracked. You just had to know what to look for and then ask your TT and S system to look for it. That had been the last trick that his old Falconer had taught his Sibko, before they had gone out to earn a spot in their clan. All he needed to do was give his old computer the time to work out what clan these Solahma were from now that he had given the command to his TT and S's warbook files.
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"Colonel Aamodt? We have been picking up an intermittent contact 2km to your north for the last hour. Now it just gave out a full blown Hyper Spatial scan, and it's pointed right towards Bravo Company." The too young sounding voice of the sensor operator on the jump dropship Claw came into the ground commander's ear.
Mark didn't even miss a step as he processed this new information. "I copy. Do you have the dope on who is out there?" If the huge systems on the Claw couldn't make out what was out there? Then he was going to have to send out one of his Mercury III's to use its Beagle probe to find out what was going on before someone walked into trouble.
A stress sounding voice came back over the speakers in the mech's cockpit. "Sir, I can count 24 point targets, but at this range and with them not moving. That is about all I can tell you, but there could be a few regiments of hiding tanks and infantry out there and I could not tell you. At least not until they start moving or firing at you."
Colonel Aamodt made a sour face, but he was not that surprised by the reaction from the young woman. After so many years of fighting Cylons. He had gotten used to being able to have more Intel about the ground battle from a heavy warship in orbit over his head. Well, he always could do the recon the old-fashioned way, and send out a scout mech.
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Blood Knife watched as the unit at the mouth of the valley started to shift, and he was wishing that it was a sign that they were getting ready to leave. They might not leave the planet, but they could at least leave this general area and search somewhere else that he was not hiding in. He had no idea what the small mech that was closest to him was, but his sensors said it was a 30ton light mech of some kind. When it made a turn to face more or less in his direction. He knew that it was a scout mech, and that "his" unit had been spotted.
He was not going to be brought down while he was in hiding like some kind of rat. He was going down fighting against the Clans that had thrown him out. He was dead anyway, so he at least needed to go out on his feet instead of on his knees. Besides if he took enough of them down, they might see that he had been right all along and welcome him back into their ranks.
Now he was wishing that he had forced those lazy techs to get his updated Demolisher assault mech ready for battle. All of his assault mechs were down and not ready for battle. The Techs had told him that for everyone assault mech they could down check, they could keep 1 of the heavies and a medium working. At the time it had made since to him, after all no one was trying to kill them at the time. So, he had agreed with them. Without another thought he powered up his Minsk, and he didn't need to see to know that his wingman in an Excalibur EC was right on his heels.
The wave of enemy mechs came charging out of cover within a few seconds of their commander. They had been expected to fight, but only against the lowest of the low in skills and tech that the Clan could detail to do the job to hunt the dark caste down. That would make sense that their warbooks would have a problem identifying the enemy to their front, at least that was what Blood Knife had thought.
That was not the case. This was not a clan unit much less a third-rate unit that was looking to die in battle, and the clan leadership was willing to let them do so. This was a professional unit that was packing weapons that in some cases was better than what the best units in the Core of Clan space had access to. They also didn't fight as individuals, like the clan liked to do. They fought like they were at war, and it was war to the hilt. The attackers or defenders of this planet had more mass, but the strangers had more machines, better weapons, and they fought as a team before.
The Minsk was known to be a command mech, and it drew heavy gauss rifle fire until it dropped to the ground as soon as it started to charge. It took down two Mercury III's with it to the ground thanks to its own twin clan grade heavy weapons. Blood Knife had been incensed that this unit would not identify themselves or fight like true warriors. Then he didn't have to worry about anything anymore, when a gauss rifle round from an enemy 75-ton class machine ripped his cockpit clean off. Callahan Munitions' slogan had come true again.
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Colonel Aamodt moved his Fjellhas a little to the right, and he lined up his heavy weapons. He was again thankful for the lessons learned fighting the Cylons. He was packing three tons of ammunition for his projectile weapon protected by CASE. The Rifle was backed up by a LR PPC and 5cm lasers along with enough heatsinks to stay in the battle, as long as he had armor plate to protect the weapons and him.
He didn't smile as his crosshairs turned green again, he watched as a silver blur connected the two mechs for an eye blink. This lasted for only another second, before the wingman of the two Lancelot Cs on the battlefield was hidden from sight of the Colonel. Then it cleared the dust cloud that had been made up of all of the armor that had covered the right leg of the mech from hip to toe. The enemy 60ton machine didn't go down, but it now had a hitch in its step as it moved behind a set of trees breaking the line of sight between the two combat machines once again.
Before he could get another shot at the heavy machine, one of the Wolverine III's put a LR PPC into the same leg on the Lancelot C. Without any armor to protect that leg, it snapped off at the knee and the running mech face planted into the rocky ground at a full run. The 55-ton SLiE mech didn't have time to enjoy the kill before it was showered in 40 LRMs guided by Artemis IV.
The Lupus Omni that fired those first 40 missiles had stopped moving and let loose with another double salvo. It got a gauss round and a purple-white ball of a PPC blast from his new command mech. Then a heartbeat or two later a LR PPC and an ER Large laser from the modified Wolverine omni hit the same old mech. That much fire coming from the lighter machine had put it into a heat issue, but the damage had followed so quickly behind the first hit that the dark caste machine was blown on it's back in a fountain of dust.
The Battalion commander started looking around the battlefield, but his command was working as they had trained, and the numbers were almost equal now. Movement out of the corner of his eye drew him to see were a Mercury III was going after what his systems said was a Drift Shag. He had no idea what a Drift Shag was, but it did look like a 35-ton Falcon C to him. He was just about to pull the trigger for his LR PPC when the enemy mech's pilot punched out of the oddly named light mech. Now for the first time in this battle the numbers were on the SLiE's side
The Battalion commander activated his radio, after all he was the unit commander and not just another gunfighter. "Scout 4 you're too far out, come back in. Crushers keep pulling them back with us."
That little distraction allowed a 50ton Fox to get a good firing solution, and 30 improved LRMs found his mech. He rode the bucking of the shower of death like the combat veteran he was. He didn't even look at the damage screen when he fired back at the Fox. His Gauss round when high and landed many KM's behind the target, but his LR PPC hit the right torso of the Fox. That one hit was quickly joined by a pair of LR PPCs in that same location from a pair of Wolverine IIIs. The Fox had CASE to protect that area from destroying the whole mech, if the LRM's and MG ammo had a close encounter with hostile fire. Still the Star League era extra light engine sooo didn't like the weapons fire. It shut down before it could Stackpole all over the general area. It was now out of the fight and now Mark and his lance could look for other targets.
But it did not die alone, one of his 45ton Stag III's was spread out on the ground off to his left. They could not afford to do this for long. He checked his data displays to command his unit to victory. "Okay people priority target is the last Lancelot, then the Lupus, then all of the Coyotls. After them? You are to put the rest of them down as fast as you can. Keep the range open!"
The battle lasted for another hour before the Dark Caste unit had given up. The last two mech jocks had powered down their half wrecked mechs and surrendered to the better unit. Those two battered mech jocks showed the colonel were the rest of the group had been hiding in a shallow cave system and blind tree covered ravine. Aamodt had to admit, that he never would have found the hiding place, if he had not been looking for something hidden on the planet's surface. The survivors of the dark caste unit all seemed very surprised that they were not just shot or chemically sterilized as soon as they had their DNA tested.
Mark was disappointed that there was not a dropship to load this unit's wreckage and surviving personnel into. The Dark caste survivors had been more than happy to talk to the medics that had been riding in their modified Overlord after they had gotten over the shock. Aamodt was thanked almost to no end, when word spread among the group of survivors that the leader in the Minsk had been killed in the battle.
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While they were dealing with dark caste survivors, one of the scouts found what they had been sent here to find. It had come from hints given to them by the dark caste survivors, that had the Wolverine scout look in the right spot. A very lightly manned and very well-hidden Watch outpost was found almost 400kms from the site that the Dark caste members were hiding. It had looked to be aligned with the Smoke Jaguar clan, and it had been on the other side of the mountains from where the battle had taken place. It was not very likely that the watch camp might have missed the dark caste arrival, and then the arrival of the Claw in orbit over the planet.
Mark used the non HPG device to send a message asking for help recovering this area. The Overlord didn't have enough lift to recover and protect the SLiE from being found when the Clans return to this planet. Even if they were down a dozen mechs and almost that same number of mech warriors, this was a lot to clean up and store. The jump Overlord was not a cargo ship. Colonel Mark Aamodt would oversee the ground operation until one of the Colonial cargo ships could arrive in orbit over their heads. This was something that had been hoped and planned for, just not having to fight this heavy of a unit in the prosses.
Colonial cargo lifters and passenger lifters added by an expanded support team carried by the mother ship went to work. First, they stripped out the hidden Watch base, while Mark and his people worked on cleaning up the battlefield and the Dark Caste base of the major items. When the primary task was done, then they could lift up the newest bondmens and what was left of their weapons to be stored in the cargo holds of the Gideon Class Transport. It would take some time to get everything cleaned up so that no one would know that Clan Wolverine had been here.
It would take weeks for the newest group to be added to Clan Wolverine to realize, that this ship was unlike any Clan made or old Star League ship they had ever been on. It would be almost a year before they could start to come to grasp just how much different this group was from the Clans they had been running from.
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It was over seven weeks later that a Dark Caste Tramp packing two combat dropships and a cargo carrier arrived at one of the jump points. They were coming to "have a talk" with the man that like to call himself Blood Knife. Okay they were there to take the people and any equipment he had, and they would be rolled back into the greater forces of the dark caste as a whole. The ruling groups could not allow this upstart to attack the hand that was feeding everyone, and that had been the reason for the break with Blood Knife. They had tried to talk to him a few times, after he had taken over this group. And the last time he had made a run for it, before they could get everything in place to block his moves. It had only been by a stroke of luck that the second in command of this unit had wanted to listen to the leadership of the Dark Caste. Now it was time to roll this little problem up.
Thanks to the help of the defecting officer, they knew were Blood Knife had hidden his base down to a 1km square on the planet below. And that was when things got strange for the visiting Dark Caste unit. On the way down, the huge burn scar that could only have been made by a landing dropship was seen just as they started their own triple dropship landing on the planet. On the ground they had no problem finding the sight of the battle. It was hard to hide the burned trees and blasted craters from LRM's, SRMs, and Autocannons and the burned remains from energy weapons fire. There also was no way to hide all of the armor fragments, which were made when modern weapons hit modern armor. There was no way to tell who had been fighting, only that two good sized forces had gone after each other with hammer and tongs not too long ago.
That had been odd. Then they had found Blood Knife's camp site right where they were told, but it was empty. Now that had been a real head scratcher. It was completely gone. They could find were people had been living for some time, but it was only some trash and marks on the ground. It was like they had just been disappeared, like in a horror movie. The Clan claimed not to like wasting anything, but they rarely cleaned up a battlefield like this. Most of the time they would just leave the dark caste bodies where they fell or where they were shot after captured by the warriors. There were not any bodies and old food containers, much less the things that the rest of the clans found to be unclean. You know like the two ex-Wolverine mechs captured from the Snow Ravens this group was known to have taken with them when they had fled from one of the main Dark Caste bases.
This hidden area gave the whole new dark caste group the chills. This whole planet was making them nervous. It normally was the dark caste that played games like this on the Clans. But there were certain clues that you could find, that is if you knew where to look. They did look for those clues and they couldn't find any clues on who might have done this. They only found more light and useless wreckage and some discarded blood-soaked clothes that DNA said belong to Blood Knife. The dark caste mission support crews and warriors refilled the three grounded dropships as fast as they could. They even averaged over 1.5g thrust heading back to their jumpship. They would report that one of the units sent by the Clan to hunt their kind down must have found Blood Knife before they had, and they had left no survivors.
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Almost two months after the dark caste jumpship had left this system another ship came knocking. It was a Hunter class jumpship with a very small Smoke Jaguar painted on its nose that arrived next. The single K-1C dropship it was carrying made a slow speed stealthy approach to the planet. This mission was only to rotate the crew that had been watching Dark Caste movements near the routes that the Clans were using to support the invasion of the Inner Sphere. They were not that concerned when they over flew the different sets of dropship's burn marks on the planet's surface. This was unclaimed space and its closeness to other areas, which were traveled by the dregs of the human race. They were not even that concerned when the watch outpost didn't respond to close range radio calls sent out by the K-1C.
When the small craft landed it did so in a shallow pond less than a dozen KM's from the hidden Watch outpost. The plasma thrust would evaporate the water and when it returned, it would cover the marks burned into the now hard packed mud. The hover car made it to the well-hidden outpost and reported back that the base had been compromised. What should have happened was that the relief crew should have fled back to the K1 as fast as they could.
Instead, they and the rest of the crew of the K1 checked out the stripped base. They could find nothing but a shell of the underground base. Even the crew bunks had been removed along with all of the spying equipment that had been painstakingly collected for this base to use. The HPG and its broken external power supply were also missing. It was like they had never been there from what the new crew could tell.
The Watch team was just about to make a burn for their jumpship, when they were told to wait and keep the site safe until a larger team could get there. That was going to be almost a four month wait, thanks to travel times to a place this far from the core clan worlds. By the time that a Clan built Tramp could make it there, the ground team was ready to leave. The Hunter would not be staying and the K1 and its whole crew was left behind. The ground team would report that many times during the night and sometimes during storms, they would hear voices on the winds. When both dropships returned to the jump point and transmitted their final reports threw the HPG on the Tramp. All of the leadership on those two teams concluded that the Dark Caste had somehow attacked and captured the Smoke Jaguar watch base, and then they had stripped it of materials before destroying the bodies of the Watch teams.
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1 Feb 3050
Gamma 1551 AW Barbados
Commodore Drake looked around the star system. It had been almost 30 years since he had been here the last time. What most of them didn't know, was that this was going to be the last mission to this system for at least the next decade if not longer. He had a mental bet that it would be a full generation before people from New Circe saw this star system again. In 30 days, the only people coming here would-be Dark Caste, some other Wolverine friends, and maybe the Clans. Commodore Drake was betting that ComStar would not be stopping by over the next few years, not with so many Clan units moving around this area. After reading the after-battle report on how well their "Fleet" had stood up to the SLiE. He assessed that they would be dead meat for any of the heavy warships that the other Clans had in their order of battle.
Drake looked around the bridge of his carrier and he laid eyes on his XO. The XO was not from New Circe but was born on a planet called Picon. Before he could say anything, the oddly sounding English came from the short man. "Sir, the CAP is out and forming a patrolling bubble. We have 6 more fighters on alert standby. I would like to stand down the rest of the fighters."
Drake nodded his head. "I agree, and double check the location data that Copeland's last mission provided. When we have a bubble clear of unknowns out to 6 light hours? Then the recovery teams can jump to the cache point and start working on those warships."
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Two weeks later the Delphi Explorer was now fully loaded with the Egg Sac strapped to her outer hull. She was also now holding all of the recovered cargo, Watch and Dark Caste prisoners they had recovered in another system. They had planned to keep them on the Kaga, because she was designed in a format that they might be used to. Drake decided that maybe keeping them off balance was a better idea after he had time to think about it. It was very unlikely that any of them had seen a ship in the same class as the Kaga, but there were certain design components that were common between all Inner Sphere based designs. The Colonial ships would dumbfound them even if they didn't notice that their cells and every room that they used was not on a hamster wheel. They would never be able to tell anyone, at least not until they got back to New Circe. And there was no one on that planet that would care what the bondsmen had seen.
While the rest of the teams were working on the two warships, about 6 thousand tons of hidden supplies around the star system was collected. It was a rainy-day cache, but the Wolverines had been on the run before. And they knew how and what a group on the run might need to make the difference between life and death. Most of those well-hidden cache sites would be collected, but a few select others were left behind. Those recovered caches all held items that were not easily replaced on New Circe. And that was not the only mission that Commodore Drake was overseeing.
The data that Copeland's last visit to this area had generated was used again. The jump fighters were scouting the local area looking for a few key items. And as before they found something that had been missed or had showed up after Copeland had left. One of them was a fully loaded Star Lord class Jumpship. It was as cold as the background of space in that location, when one of the jump fighters found it. The Gideon's Son II was a Gideon class colonial cargo ship, and she should be able to recover this little prize.
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Gideon's Son II showed up in a blur of motion that was invisible to the normal clan sensors. The Colonial made ship didn't move for almost half an hour. They were soaking up every scrap of information that they could, so that they could find out if this was a trap. It had only taken ten minutes for the light speed sensors on the colonial ship to "find" the target.
They were just about to launch a scout Raptor to get a closer look when an alarm sounded on the bridge of the converted civilian ship. "Jump ship inbound! It's not a Colonial or Cylon!" The voice lost some of the stress in his voice as the shock wears off. "The Computer says they are 7 minutes out."
The old Captain had been an engineering officer on a ship like this in the Rag Tag fleet when it finally came to a stop over New Circe. He had his captain's papers for over a year now and had signed on with the Colonial Navy. They had been mostly running supplies, but he had lived through more than one Cylon attack. He also had made a supply run back to Colonial space thanks to the Cylon modification made to this ship's computer control runs to the jump drive. So, he might not be an old hand at this game, but he knew the score and the risks.
"Hold the Raptor and shut down our output! I want us in a complete passive mode! Put us to max thrust and don't worry about the fuel. I want us behind that gas giant's nearest moon with an orbit to get us behind the big boy. Ten seconds before they are due in, I want you to cut power to the engines and we will coast on passive. We will wait and see what is going on." With his orders given, all he could do was wait.
Between 7 and 10 seconds later, the jumpship arrived at the normal jump point. Then it was not alone as another jumpship arrived. Soon it was a full convoy made up of 6 Star Lords and not all of the carried dropships were cargo or mech carriers. Soon a cloud of fighters started forming around the newly arrived ships. It was looking like this mission was blown. The crew knew down to the minute how long it would take the jumpships of this class to recharge around this type of star. It was only a matter of doing the math.
The Captain of the Gideon's Son was willing to wait, 3 combat dropships and 3 cargo ships full of supplies needed to keep units like it fit for battle, was too good to leave behind. Still, it was not worth losing his ship or letting the Clans know about them. There always was a chance that this convoy would not notice or not send a unit over to check out the lost treasure. All thoughts of a quick recovery of the dead jumpship and dropships went right out the air lock. It was when 3 of the over 2 dozen dropships in that convoy were cut lose and they headed towards the dead Star Lord 12 hours after the convoy had arrived.
The Captain made a sour face at the data feed being relayed to the larger ship from a Raptor with a line of sight on the "normal" jump point. That this convoy was using IFF that said it was Clan Wolf had not made him very happy. He had spent weeks reading about what the rest of the Clans had done to the Wolverines so many years ago. "Well, that Fraking tears it. Recall the Raptor and spin up the drive. This mission is blown."
It took only a half an hour for the slowly moving Colonial made but SLDF crewed Raptor to slowly make its way back "behind" the planet. With the huge mass and magnetic disturbance in the area, it would have kept the Gideon's Son II from being seen by Cylon Basestars. Even the Star League Bug Eye would not have seen the modified cargo ship leave, even if they knew what to look for. And unless the Clans had run into the Cylons, it was very doubtful that they would have known even what to look for.
The Gideon's Son II only needed to jump twice to get back to Barbados. The Captain had to look up the counter message, that they had received after letting the Flagship know about the failed mission. He had no idea what "sometimes you get the bull and sometimes you get the horns" meant. After a few minutes of thinking, he had to fight down a smile as he worked out the meaning.
They might not have been able to recover that jumpship, but 4 corvettes were recovered from "close" to Barbados. They were not all of the same designs, but they looked to be repairable. There were more "lost" jumpships and warships, but they were found in systems or near systems that had clan combat units present. Some of them looked to be worth the effort, but it was against orders. All Commodore Drake could do was to mark the locations in the Nav logs of his flagship, make a report to be filed on the fleets return. Oh, and contact any person that he could bend their ears, for him to be on any return mission to this area of space.
On the first of March of 3050, the fleet was gathered and the long run back to New Circe started. They would not be stopping in another star system unless it was an emergency until they reached that hidden system. It was hoped that the convoy would make home port around 30 May, but that would push the jump engines of the fleet and the huge loads they were carrying. They had the fuel to burn, and they needed to get away from this part of space as fast as they could.
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Helios Delta
Canceron
1 Feb 3050
Captain Theodore Roscoe leaned back in his yard chair. There was nothing for him to do, so he started to relax and thought about taking a nap in the late afternoon sun. He was just on the edge of sleep when his eyes roamed over to the modified boat shed a few hundred meters away. He could not see "his" ship, but he knew that it was sitting right there. They had been back in "port" for three weeks now. His ship was not operational, and it had been that way for longer than 3 weeks.
They had been on another scouting mission when they started having issues that they didn't have the parts to fix. It was only by a stroke of luck that they were near another hidden group of Colonials when it all went sideways. They were able to get a message to the underwater fishing dome and lived to talk about it. The fishing/farming dome had been able to flush one of their few larger underwater craft to help the stranded SLDF vessel. They found the SLS Sneaky hiding as a small island as it floated in a slow current running between two larger islands. The ship was down to only enough power production to move at a few knots, make fresh water, keeping the flooding under control, and keep the inside hull temperature reasonable for the crew.
It should have taken the Colonial 7 more days for the "island" to be towed back to the base island. But luck was with them, and they were able to use the help provided by the Colonials to "fix" the leak. And the ship was able to at least make it safely to a depth of 30ms and return to the surface. With this done, the Colonial ship could increase the speed of towing at night. After all an island moving along at over a dozen knots against the wind might have drawn some attention. Still, it was not something that Ted or his crew would want to have to endure again.
The Battle Armor scouts had still been able to work the local area, thanks to the increasing number of small craft they had recovered and then repaired. It would limit their range and the loads that they could carry, but they could still scout and do a little raiding against the Cylons. They were careful to keep those "loud" missions as far away from this island, without leaving a pattern for the Cylons to follow.
The break down had caused a few issues back home. Ted had to send a few pointed reply messages, that had wanted to know why his combat vessel was not back in operation yet. He had pointed out, in some very blunt language. That the Sneaky had been in combat for almost 8 months without any support. On the last message he had pointed out that a mech could not stay in combat that long with only a small parts stash and its pilot to do all of the work. He needed both parts and a support crew if he was going to do any more missions. As it was, the SLS Sneaky had done everything asked of her and she had killed 6 Heavy Raiders, 2 modified Raiders, and her mounted Laser had fried more than half a dozen Cylon outposts. That didn't count all of the frakking civilians it had helped get off this planet.
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The traffic flow was not one way from this planet. Thanks to the Ragnar anchorage, at least one Raptor was stopping by this planet every week. That was the same for the dozen planets that used to be Colonial planets. The "outer" outposts also received both supplies and other support, but at a lower level than what was going to the planets. Now a Raptor could not carry that much in the way of supplies but some beat none, any day of the week. And that small trickle of support was all that was needed to get the survivors to start effectively fighting back against the Cylon invasion. Many would prefer to fight and maybe die fighting the Cylons than leave the planets they had been born to.
Those small craft might not carry that much cargo, but they were both stealthy and sneaky. That was the only way they could live to make it around the Cylons. It would be on those small ships that the replacement parts would make it to his little island. Much to his surprise, the one thing that they were okay, supply wise, was torpedoes. There were many things that his crew could use their free time to cause the Cylon problems. The extra SRTs and LRTs were just icing on the cake, and the Colonials enjoyed the extra mines. This was his last thought as he drifted to sleep with his almost glowing white legs exposed to the warm bright sun.
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The Number One threw the weapon against the nearest trees, and the air was filled with curses from his shrill voice. Then he had to quickly jump to one side, as the weapon came flying back towards him as it rebounded off the nearby tree. As he regained his balance, he could re-see the battle site that had brought him out to this little corner of this planet. The center of the battle or ambush was the still burning captured Colonial APC. By now he could tell that it was not worth recovering. It was more or less blown in half. The Cylons were now very well practiced on knowing when something was worth the time to recover and return the items to the battlefield, to fight the rats that the human race had become. It shouldn't have been that way, but that was the way it was.
The One looked back down the road, and he could almost play in his mind what had happened in this latest ambush of "his" forces. The Number Four that had been riding in the light weapons turret and leading this patrol. It would have been heading down the road and he would have been scanning the areas to the left and right of the roadway as they drove. That had not helped him in the end. Somehow the humans had been able to load enough explosives into a drainpipe running under the road to both snap the APC in half, but also blow a trench across the two-lane road. The One had no idea how they did that, but the number and size of these "mines" were increasing on Canceron. The attacks all around old Colonials space were rising. Not every planet was at the same level, but they all had up ticks in the number of attacks on the Cylons. The size and firepower of the attacks were also rising if not exponentially to the number of overall attacks.
The One kicks a rock, hard, and watches it fly through the air before it disappears into the tall grass near the tree line. The Cylon Empire was building up a line of support bases running from Colonial space towards where they think that a large group of humans might live. He still didn't know about them coming from "The Earth", but they were human and that was enough for him to want to kill them all. Now they were having to defend those small but growing support bases from both the humans and the Rebel Cylons from periodic attacks. The building, expanding those growing numbers of bases, replacing combat losses, and making more scouts was stretching "his" resources to the limit. Now things were starting to fall apart in this part of space. That had not been planned on, at any point in the plans to kill off the human race.
He was fuming, "This was not the way it was supposed to be!" After he had ordered the heavy use of nuclear weapons and the landing of Centurions to kill any survivors. That should have been the end of the human race. But noooo, he had not been able to do that. The others had wanted to find out how to make babies, and they had stopped his ground combat units from wiping the humans out while they were still reeling from the surprise attack. Now they had taken to the hills and dug in for the long hall. He was starting to think that the only way to get rid of the last of them was to blow the planets apart. They were like larger versions of rats, and rats were still a problem on most areas in the Cylon Empire. Just like humans.
Now it looked like he was going to have to add another or more to the point more demands on his "Empire's" limited production abilities. Not for the first time he mentally kicked himself for blasting all of those human factories into craters at the start of this new war. Now he was going to have to start new production of combat vehicles that had not been seen since the end of the War for Cylon Independence. The only good thing was that they had the plans for all of those types of Rhinos, and armored personnel carriers on file.
He was about to smile, but a deep frown crossed his lips instead. He was very short of recovered Colonial ground combat equipment, and it would be some time before he could get any replacements made. He was thinking that he was going to have to send some of the others to look for any armored vehicles in the still glowing human cities. He would make sure that none of his line were in a Plutus bank car. If the humans could take out a "Real" combat APC. Then a heavy truck with extra metal on the sides to keep human criminals from raiding the cubits they carried, that was going to be a death trap. Maybe a dump truck fitted with thicker if weaker metal plates would work better. He would pass this along for maybe one of the other Fours to take a look at. It was not worth the time for any member of his line, they had more important things to work on.
The One slowly turned to get a good panoramic view of the local area. Then he stopped and looked at a mix group of old 005 and newer 017 model Centurions. "Recover any data recorders and return to base. We are done here." The One turned one last time and walked over to the modified Heavy Raider. There was nothing more he could do or find out here.
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Deep in the woods and on a small rise overlooking the ambush site, a man not born in Colonial space turned and looked over to a woman who had been born on this planet. In a low voice, "Those extra charges might have been a little too much."
The woman let her field glasses fall just a little to expose dull blue eyes to the man stretched out beside her. These were the eyes of someone who had seen too much, in way to short of time. "Maybe, but now they are down one armored car and the road is cut. That will cut down on those Frakkers driving and looking around in this sector. At least until they rebuild the bridge, that we blew last week on Highway 6."
They didn't say anymore until the Cylons had left the area, but they didn't miss any movements below them. They were still not going to do any major movements, for a while. The Cylons had sprung a few ambushes on humans that had returned to sites, that they thought they had seen all of the Cylons leave from. But if the Cylons were hiding, then it meant that they had shut down most of their counter scouting systems. The SLDF Scout now looked closely at the LMG that had been left behind as the sun sank behind the pair of humans.
"You know if they look at the register number on the butt plate, that it's not going to match in any database in Cylon hands."
The woman rolled onto her back and slides down the reverse slope of the little wood covered hill. While she was still on her back, and she looked up at the sky and her voice was low. "That was not one of the new builds, but it was one of the recovered and repaired LMGs. Still, you can bet you don't want to be Frakking Billy for the next few weeks. The Sergeant will be tearing into him as soon as the medicos finished patching him up."
What was not needing to be said, was that most of the weapons coming from the New Circe factories were not marked like other Colonial made weapons. At first most of the new weapons were used for parts to get more overall weapons back into operation against the Cylons. Now those new off planet made weapons were going right into the hands of the people who were fighting the Cylons. The fact that one of the resistance's few heavy weapons was left behind for the Cylons to find, was not lost on her. She was not even military before the new War, and she knew that something like that happening was not good.
As she looked up, she was thinking that maybe they had over done the explosives. They had needed that LMG to counter the Centurion and Human forms that the APC had been known to carry. With the cracking of the armored hull. The LMG had not been needed, and the blast had almost killed the ammo bearer and the gunner was going to need more than a few stitches.
As with many things, this mission was not just to kill Cylons or take out an APC, that the Cylons were using to hunt the surviving humans. This target had been one of the newer Colonial Ground forces Wolfhound IFVs. The hope had been that they would be able to recover the two mounted heavy machine guns and the heavy twin barreled 20mm KEW mounted on the IFV. If the military support on New Circe could copy the twin barreled 20mm KEW? Then It would add a new weapons class for the survivors to use against the Cylon ground and air assets.
That part of this mission had come down from what was accepted as the local command of the ground forces for fighting the Cylons. June had no idea how political that decision had been. Not taking out and or recovering the HMGs or leaving the light KEW behind would have caused future issues for her little unit. So far everything, weapons wise, had been coming from or somehow connected to the leadership that was off of this planet. This would be something that had come from them, or at least that could be what "they" sold it as.
The ground team didn't care about these political games. They just wanted to kill Cylons and free any humans they found along the way. The SLDF teams were thinking and acting like this was something out of the stories from the Black Watch or even older stories. This mind set was slowly spreading to the crew of the Sneaky and the crews of the support ships like the Raptors. The heavy weapons would be pulled out of the wreck, thanks to the fact that the ammunition had not "cooked off". It would be some time before anyone knew if they could be returned to combat or not.
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Canopus IV
1 April 3050.
The Main office of MMM
The room was huge, and it should have been on the top floor of a huge building that tried to punch through the clouds. But this was after the fall of the Star League, and that would have been a quick way to suffer a decapitation strike and loose the whole building. The CEO of MMM, Gavin Priest-McDonogh, looked around the room. This meeting had been on the calendar for some time, and most of the people in this room knew what it was about.
Gavin didn't rise from his chair as he addressed the room, it was not that kind of a meeting or briefing. "Thank you all for coming. We all know about the new find that we are working to add to our corporate balance sheet. I am happy to say that we will be putting our first payment in early. We are not being charged interest rates on "The Loan". But the sooner we can get this red ink off of our books, the better we will all feel about it." He didn't need to say that investors would also look forward to seeing that red number get smaller.
Gavin looked around the room, and he was given positive head nods from the mix group of men and women. Every person in this room had been made very rich by working for MMM at this level. Also, everyone in this room was very smart but some were not as smart as they thought they were. Gavin knew that some in this room would be replaced in the next two, or three years at the outside if he was a betting man. He had kept his cousins report on that these strangers buying up as much stock in MMM as they could afford quiet.
After so many years working as a viable company. MMM had many billions of shares on the open market, and that didn't count what was held by the family. Still, these new people had money, lots of money, and they had tech that no one has ever seen or even dreamed about. That was on top of being able to find lost Star League bases and who knows how much Royal level Star League tech at their fingertips.
Gavin did not smile as he talked to the group of power players in the room. He was not worried about losing his family's company. Whoever this new group was, they were more of the silent partner type. All he needed to do was find the right way to slip them into the leadership slots, but at the same time maintaining some leverage on them. That way they didn't try to do something he would have to make them regret. He and his family had been doing this kind of juggling with Andurien, or Earthwerks, or Irian even before the fall of the Star League. He was expecting that dealing with this new group would not be that much different than those huge interstellar corporations.
He made a mental note to buy is wife a nice gift before he went home for the night. He had made a comment about how dull his job was getting a few years ago. She had reminded him about tempting fate, and he might not live to regret it. Still, it was just another day as the CEO of MMM. He had been in so many of these meetings, that he knew what parts he didn't have to really pay that much attention to.
That all changed when they got briefed about the Heavy Aero space division. Gavin had taken the profits from that division to make the advance payment. That made sense and cents to the accountants, that newly found facility was going to fall under that division. Most of the people in this room didn't know this, but some of the smarter ones did.
The briefer was almost glowing as she spoke. They were turning out Lion class dropships and spare parts as fast as they could, and they still could not keep up with the demand for that class of dropship. The MC had decided that the next 4 would be the last of that class of dropship that they were going to buy, for now. That was bad news for MMM, and it was something that the MC's government was keeping quiet. They had expanded about as much as they could currently afford to do. When more funds came in from sales taxes and import and export fees. They would look at another round of expansion for their military. It was a fine line for them to walk, after all this feast could be quickly followed by a long famine. That didn't mean that they would not be buying up every bit of updated weapons they possibly could on the parts market. It was cheaper to update a tank, fighter, or mech than buy a new updated one.
Gavin was not that worried about the loss of Lion sales to the MC military. The sales on the local Mercenary market might not take up all of the slack, but the sales coming from Outreach would. If not? Then the FedCom was always sniffing around on planet. The RCTs they were making could suck up decades of production of Lions alone. The only thing that was in short supply, as far as production went, was enough aerospace fighters. Gavin was even thinking about if they could make the command version of the Dictator. If/when they could make copies. The MC would use the Command Variant Dictators as political coins worth more than the cost of buying the specialized dropships.
Gavin had a slight smile at what he would get for those political coins. He knew that they would get at least one by the end of the year, and maybe a few more by the end of the next. Even if the dropships were of an older design, there were only 2 command ships in all of the area that the MC claimed control of. The rest of the meeting was covering things that he already had known or knew enough about, that it was not a surprise.
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Notes
Status of SLiE Fleet support at this time. The SLiE is stretched to the breaking point with the war against the Cylons. They are to the point of robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep their warships in operation, and they were running out of Peters and the number of Pauls were growing. They are just too small of a population base to support this many warships, aerospace fighter squadrons, Mech, tank, and new battle armor units. The main reason for recovering these targets is to keep these warships out of the more populous Clan's hands, but they can not bring themselves to just nuking the hulks. They have plans, more like ideas for some of them. But will they turn out or will they just be staff exercises in planning. That is for the future and the power of Plot.
Hiding a ship as an island. See HNLMS Abraham Crijnessen in world war 2, it really happened. There are somethings that happened that if you wrote them, they would make fun of you.
Colonel Mark Aamodt's unit and mission. 1 lt Co, 1 lt/med Co, 1 med co with Wolverine III's and Stag III's (only four heavy mechs in total Fjellhas). Looking for a clan support and supply base for a Galaxy sized unit. Smoke Jaguar watch base and hidden bandit caste unit found instead.
Blood Knife Dark Caste. 24 operational mechs. Split from main dark caste but sent XO to make up and take him back. Has the following mechs Demolisher EC (down) 4 mechs and 8 tanks down for maintenance or being stripped of parts. Minsk, Excalibur EC, 2 Lancelot C, 2 Lupus, 2 Falcon C (drift Shag), 4 phoenix Hawk EC, 4 CS-1 fox, 3 coyotl, 2 enfield ec, 2 starslayer ec, Mongooses Royal. Devastator EC, Thug, and two other assault Pulverizers need heavy repairs. Dark Castes thinks Clan took out Blood Knife but not sure. The Jaguars think Dark Caste took out watch base. This battle was fought three times in the local FLAGs. The force generation rolls were not kind to the SLiE, but I kept them. For this story I could not let the SLiE lose, so I had to keep reducing the Dark Caste tech until we came up with this list.
Barbados: There was a plan to have a naval battle in Barbados, but I was not in love with the ships in Golden Century. I had already had a few aerospace fighter battles, so I just drop the anymore issues in Barbados idea.
Commodore Drake's command. leader of recovery of battlefield with Kaga and 6 other Colonial ships (1280m long Delphi Explorer, two 595m long Geminis Transports, and three recovered 545m long Gideon class Transport.) 36 Saber 27b aerospace fighters and all of them were crewed by Colonial pilots, 24 Avar class omni fighters and 12 Kirghiz jump fighters on the Kaga.
Picked up: The stripped hull Rawhide (Volga class) 1 Star Lord (3 dropships), 2 Invader class (6 dropships), SLS Munich with 2 DS full of dead crews (Snow Raven Cameron class 2 combat dropships), flytrap battle damaged with crack jump drive SLS Maverick (Potemkin)full of dropships. 1 DS is Rim World Navy. The Egg Sac (Potemkin), Congress class frigate, 4 Corvette class warships, and 4 other jumpships.
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