Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

60. Chapter 60 The Bivouac system 7 Days 6

Chapter 60

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

The Bivouac system.

7 Days 6 Hours 13 minutes after the attack

More than two full minutes before the Tramp class jumpship arrived in the system, the defenders of the Bivouac system went on even higher alert. The E-wave was a lot weaker than the first time it had come into this system. That could be because it was a lot shorter jump, or that the jumpship was a lot lighter without the pair of dropships it had carried the first time it had been here. Robert was hoping that it was for both reasons. When the Tramp finally showed up, it did not deploy its jump sail, just like she had not done the last time it was in this star system.

The command crew in the system's traffic control were very good, and it didn't take long for the data to start coming into their systems. The Olympus station had an idea on when the next threat would come, so it's command staff had made sure that their best were on duty during the projected high threat time. That was one of the reasons that the Condor class dropship was slowly coming towards the jumpship that had just arrived. The new Tramp's systems all told their operators that there were no other jumpships at this jump point.

Everything looked like it was expected to be for the Confederation flagged jumpship. Well minus the Union class Carrier, it was missing from all of their scopes. But something felt off to the key leaders of the command crew on the invading ship. When the Condor class ship did not reply to the non-pre-planned radio challenge? The crew on the jumpship went on higher alert. The skeleton crew working the Condor had no idea someone from the jumpship was trying to contact them. Sometimes ignorance is not bliss.

The bridge of the dropship was to heavily damaged before it was captured by the local defenders and their allies. When it was captured, it had taken even more damage from the defenders and attackers' small arms. The massive Pitban 1350-XRB plasma thrust engines were being run from the engineering compartment by a group of people who were sweating buckets every second, as they nursed the damaged engines along at barely .5g. These few people were the sum total of the total population on this half-fixed wreck of a dropship. The mission for the dropship was not what you could have called as normal for a ship of this type. They were only acting as cover, and the abracadabra for the real attack.

The real fighters for this upcoming battle were some of the small craft that had been attached to the mostly wrecked hull in specially selected locations, until warnings had been sounded about the coming jumpship. The dropship was acting as bus, life-support, and the small craft held evac teams if the captured dropship decided that it didn't want to play anymore.

In a perfect world? The new owners of this combat dropship would have had the time to repair any damage before it was needed again. This was not a perfect world, and the locals had to gamble that everything would hold together just for long enough. The rest of the small craft were coming up behind the dropship at their maximum rated thrust. The huge dropship was acting as a Radar shield for all of the attacking small craft. That was the abracadabra part of the plan.

Attacking a jumpship had been butting right up against the rules of war used across the Inner Sphere; well destroying one was frowned upon by what was left of the Star League. If you were going to try to capture one of these craft? You had better walk a fine line and have a frak ton of lawyers on hand, cleared to work in the area you took the jumpship, and that were well paid. That was why the locals and Robert were going to use the small craft today. It also just happens that those small craft could pick up transmissions coming from the jumpship. And it was decided that they had to act, or they could lose the prize.

Before the invading LF Tramp knows what was happening around it, a wave of hidden Mark VII Landing Boats was moving out of the radar shadow of the Condor at full speed. They were making a maximum power burn to close on the Tramp. The crews and the passengers on those small craft were sooo not having a good time on this trip. When the computer said it was the right time? All of the landing boats did a flip to slow down and attach to the long ship like a perfectly timed dance. If you had not known any better, you would have thought that they had done this maneuver half a hundred times before today.

If the ship jumped before the landing boats were close enough? The energy wave would destroy them, and the jumpship's crew might not even know they were there. And they would not be with the jumpship when it arrived at whatever location had been preprogrammed into the jump computer. No one would even know, if the crew on those caught landing boats had felt any pain when they died or not. It was a horse race, but one that the Landing Boats had the advantage of being closer than they should have been when the target first noticed them.

The locals didn't have it all their way in attacking the jumpship. Unlike the other Jumpships in the Inner Sphere. The Tramp class vessel had eight large lasers to defend itself from attackers just like this current one. Each of the jumpship's weapon's turrets was only able to fire one time, before the attacking landing boats were attached to the jumpship's hull. There should have been either anti missiles systems or heavy machine guns as another layer of defense for the jumpship, but they were not there. The current ship's crew didn't even know that they should have those back up weapons. Thanks to the CC's tight control on information coming from outside of the CC. This crew didn't even know that new Tramp class ships were coming off the production lines in increasing numbers, and with the battery system that the crews had thought was lost to the sands of time.

The dozen Mk VII Landing Boats, four of them showing new damage, were able to put over one hundred armed and armored combat troops onto the massive ship. They came in on points that Copeland had pointed out as weak points for ships of this class. All of that information would have been expected from someone who had spent years on Tramp class ships like the M/V Styx was supposed to be. The crew on this new jumpship might have been Confederation military, but they also were support crews and there were only 25 of them. After dealing with the crews on those other ships, Robert and the locals were not going to take any chances. The attackers were going in what was called hard by people who did this kind of thing on the ground for a living.

Robert's teams were the great heavy hitters for the attackers, but it was Wilson's people that were a lot better at fighting in zero g. Robert's people had not been living in 0g for the last few years and it was showing to the people who knew what to look for. It would take some slick talking to leave enough believable hints that these teams were more used to fighting on the ground and not on another jumpship or dropships. In the end they just played up to the idea that the locals just spent so much more time in Zero g than any other sane group of people would think about doing.

############

Sergeant Joseph Shiners was strapped into his newly repaired Tornado PA(L) suit. He was looking off to one side of the airtight helmet that covered his face and head. It was a small screen and he used it to look at a grunting face of one of his teammates. They had been under almost 3gs of stress for more minutes than at any other time of his life. Those felt like the longest minutes of his life. He was going to be the point person to enter the Jumpship, and that made up for some of that stress. Even under the strain, he could not help but smile at that thought of the action they were about to undertake.

"This was going to be fun!" thought Shiners but not a word passed his lips. Just like any other Wolverine, he was always wanting to be tested against the best.

One second Shiner was under a heavy g load that make blinking hurt, and then he was weightless in another blink of an eye. He was in superman position facing a hatch with his safety harness still in place to keep him from floating or sliding out of position. He had no idea what a Superman might be, but that was what the locals had called it when they had been training together the last two days. He had his hands pointed forward over his head. Each armored glove hand now held a powerful Colonial made handgun loaded with Colonial made anti Cylon ammunition. On his back was a copy of the old Star League Mauser pulse laser rifle. That weapon had gotten more than a few longing looks from the locals. That is until they tried to carry one in the grav deck on the station for a short run around the deck. Then they were not so in love with the almost lost tech weapon he and his buddies were packing.

The pulse laser rifle was connected via a heavy but very flexible cable to his suits power supply. Once the power supply built into the weapon was depleted, power would be supplied by his suit to keep the heavy weapon in combat for just that much longer. At least it would keep him in the battle until another battery could be switched into the overly heavy weapon. It was going to be a balancing act because every trigger pull after the main battery was drained was going to cut down on how long the PA(L) could stay in the fight. He was thinking about how that was going to work in Zero G, and then he had other things to think about. He had never felt the hands cut the safety hooks off of the straps when a small yellow light showed they were close to the jumpship.

The hatch near the end of his fists blew open in between eye blinks, and he was sucked into the larger ship from the landing boat. Shiner saw more than felt that he "flew" into the other ship pushed by the differences in air pressure on the two ships. His armored body flew deep into the ship almost faster than the human eye could track.

As he flew down the long brightly lit corridor of the jumpship, his right-side armor was pelted with "something". He had no idea what had been fired at him, but his systems told him that nothing had "hurt" him and that it had barely registered on his systems as an impact. He had learned from the battle to take the dropships, that enough paper cuts could ruin your day. He would be very aware of any impacts of any kind on the armor. This was not even "his" suit of battle armor. "His" suit might be fixed in the next few weeks, or it will be used for parts to get or keep the other suits in operation. This suit's owner was in much the same condition as Shiner's old PA(L).

He moved his right arm just a little so fast it was a blur and out of pure muscle memory, and he fired in the general direction of the incoming fire as indicated by his built in HUD. He had no idea if he hit anything or not, but two or three rounds were headed down a side hallway with that one quick pull of the trigger on the colonial made weapon. Before he could do more than do that motion with his arm. His left hand impacted the wall, and this stopped him moving so fast that he bites his lower lip into bloody pulp. With a quick flip, he had his feet pressed on the wall and he started scanning the area of the corridor he had just flown down.

To his own mind's eye, he had been moving in slow motion for this part of the action and getting lined up for Phase II. To those who saw the action. They would later say he moved like magic. One second his head was almost touching the wall and the next he was facing back down the corridor he had just flown down. His team was still on the other side of the hatch. They would not enter the jumpship proper until he gave them the "all clear" signal or his life signs monitor said that he was badly hurt, his suit lost airtightness, or that he was dead.

Shiner used two fingers on each hand to finger walk and pull himself back the way that he had just came. This took less than half a minute thanks to him being in Zero g, and his hours and hours of hard physical training. He pulled is head over the corner that he had shot down, and he took a 9mm alloy bullet for his trouble. Shiner just smiled as the pistol round skidded off of his rectangle shaped armored helmet. He was safe thanks to that armored helmet and even his ears were not bothered by the gun shot in the metal corridor. Now he could see the target that had fired the pistol round at him, and he put three rounds from this colonial pilot's pistol dead on target this time. His left-hand clenching onto the ship's hard metal wall was the only thing that kept him from floating away as his body reacted to the recoil of the powerful weapon being used in Zero G.

With a body floating in the corridor leaking small and large balloons of red blood into the local area. Shiner spoke into the built-in radio of his suit. "Six Bravo. This is One. Clear for entry. Moving aft in Corridor C frame 46. Going towards frame 47. One Tango down maybe two."

Shiner didn't wait for a reply to come back about his radio transmissions. He pulled himself into the corridor holding the now dead body, and he started floating down the corridor near one wall. While he was still moving down the metal corridor with one hard push at a time, he first put his secondary pistol away into his holster and then the primary one followed suit. With his pistols out of his hands, he had to stop for a few seconds, and he pulled the more powerful and no recoil pulse laser rifle from his back armor attachment. There should be a defensive point 50m away down this corridor, and on his dominate side. He had the advantage that he knew where it was, and they had no idea when he was coming at them.

All Shiner could do was take out each group that held weapons as he found them. Oh, and make sure that no one got close enough to him to use another vibroblade type weapon on him. He gave a mental head shake, and his blood went cold as he had a flashback of the fight on that Condor. He had fought against Cylons and non-lethal missions with other Wolverines. The fight in this system had been his first combat with live vibro weapons. He had only thought that he was ready for that kind of combat. Now he knew of a hole in the Zero G training manual used by the SLDF. To fix that he would need to live long enough to get back to New Circe so that he could point it out.

The knowledge of his suits great power had been something that he had grown up with and taken in almost with his mother's milk. To see how a vibro weapons had cut into the armor around his forearm had been a shock. He had thrown up his arms to block the attack out of pure reflex, and it had almost cost him his right arm. It had been a close-run thing, but he had broken that high tech short sword with a hard downward slam of his other armored covered arm. He absentmindedly patted one of his double barrel pistols on his armored suit's thighs. He was not going to allow anyone to get in a hand-to-hand situation with him on this part of the mission. Not if he could help it any way. Combat has a fickle way of having her own plans, no matter what you might want.

60 seconds after Tramp class ship Zheng Yi Sao arrives in system.

Captain Zhang Bao of the M/V Zheng Yi Sao let out a little of the breath he had been holding. It seemed like the fix that the ship's master engineer had made was holding on the jump core. Still, he would not be breathing any easier until they could get his ship into a repair slip of some kind. His crewmembers were good, and it only took them a handful of seconds to get over the jump sickness that affected everyone, at least to some degree. He was just happy that they would not need to deploy the solar sail on this jump. They were only going to be here long enough to get the two confederation dropships that he had dropped off and their prize.

He kept his eyes on the screen that was connected to the powerful radar mounted on all of the sides of "his" craft. Before he could understand the data on the screen the operator spoke out. "Sir, we have a contact at 10,000 KMs." The voice was smooth, even, and it didn't carry a gram of stress that the human ear could detect.

Bao felt his eyebrows almost cross the huge forehead that his receding hair line gave him. His youngest brother had told him that he was going to go from having a forehead straight to having a six head, if he didn't see a doctor very soon. "Only one contact?"

The young radar woman didn't look up from her screens. She was scanning the screens as quick as she could, but there was only so much information that they could give her this soon after arriving at a new star system. "It will take longer for the Radar to reach deeper into system and then even longer to get a bounce back."

The jumpship's second in command shot an accusing look at his boss. "Sir? We are expected to stay at least 10 minutes after return. It's not like we are just dumping and running this time. The recovering ships might have had to chase the targeted dropship for some time before taking her." At no time had the jumpship's second officer thought that the Confederation dropships crews and assault troops would fail on their mission. The term would be called blind faith in any other military in the Inner Sphere.

What the XO was not going to say was that operation security had them restricted on Radio communications until they got to a certain point on the way back to a major CC world. It was thin but legal coverage that would be damaged, if some of the locals could pass along copies of Radio traffic that could point to the Confederation. Captain Bao knew that he had to be careful with what he said aloud, and he did that now by not saying anything else. You never knew who was watching and then reporting back to one of the Confederation's intelligence agencies what someone had said.

They had to wait, but as they waited the tension grew in the room. Slowly Captain Bao floated over to the radar station. And in a very low voice that would not carry more than a few feet. "Anything yet?"

The Radar operator looked up and over to the jumpship's commander. Not trusting her voice to not carry, she gave a slight negative head shake. Captain Bao felt ice water pour down his spine. He could see that the Condor was only about 60 seconds from their location, and it had not yet tried to slow down. Bao could not wait any longer, deep in his bones he knew that something was wrong. He works to pitch his voice to carry across the bridge. He was about to put his life on the line, much less his commander rank tabs.

"Comms contact that ship. Tell them that their old collar is being repaired, and they are to land on Number 3. Oh, and have them to confirm with a reply on the alternate 4 frequency."

The head of the XO shoots up. "But captain! There is nothing wrong with the Number 1 collar. You're breaking our communication protocols." The tone was soft, but the danger was dripping off his tongue like poison on a viper's fang.

Captain Boa let a sly smile cross his face and then he gives a nod to the comms station to do what he had said. "Really XO? I thought that the chief engineer said there was an issue. I guess will have to check, before we get out of this system."

Before the XO could say more, a shout rocked the eardrums for everyone in this metal box of a room. "New Contact! We have over a dozen Small Craft coming on hard! Oh GOD! Six are 15 seconds out!"

Nothing happened on the bridge of the jumpship for long seconds as the shock of those words made it past the muscle memory that their training had given them. Their brains had to work on the data, and the captain was the first to recover. "Jump us the hell out of here!" Boa had to protect his ship first than mission second.

The XO was the next to start to recover of the whole bridge crew. "We aren't ready! I have not loaded the next jump's coordinates!"

In the CCAF, it was the job of the jumpship's XO to make sure that the jump computer had been loaded and ready for this next jump. On their last visit to this system, they had been in and out in less than 120 seconds. That had been due to training and detailed written orders for them to follow. Being flexible was NOT a known hallmark of the CCAF and this time it was coming back to bite them in the back side of the dropship. Everyone had thought that they would be in this system for between 10 minutes and half an hour. Besides, you just didn't attack jumpships.

Captain Bao felt like he was just hit in the face with an ice-cold fish. He felt the rage building up in the pit of his stomach. "Well get it done! I don't care where but get something loaded! Or they are going to take this ship!"

The XO had been given the current job by the Maskirovka to keep an eye on things. His resume' said that he had been in space for decades. The truth was that he had only been in space for 18 months, before he had taken up this cover identity. The rest of his life had been spent in more ground base assignments. When things hit the fan today? He had to fight to remember what to do. It took him to long to remember the codes, and that was how he thought of those numbers, that had been used on the last jump from this location.

The XO had just hit the accept button on the jump computers main screen, when shaking could be felt by anyone in contact with something connected to the metal walls of the ship. The smile or smirk had fallen off the face of the young man like getting hit in the genitals by an Atlas. It went downhill from there.

The station that acted like the defense system manager spoke to the room. "The lasers are auto tracking. I have detected radiation coming off of those small ships. Oh god! They have enough Radioactive materials to crack a moon!"

The XO looked over to the ship's captain and he tried to keep his voice calm. "Sir! The jump computer is loaded. We can jump at your command!"

Many of the heads in the room slowly turned to look at the XO. The looks they were giving him was like he had a horn growing out of his forehead. The captain tilted his head to one side, and all thoughts of the XO's skills now exposed for everyone to see. This was bridge crew 101, and something that someone with even a few years on a bridge should know. "XO, we have to re-run the jump calculation for the mass of those small craft attached to our hull."

It was not a well-known fact outside of the command crew of a jumpship or some of the key members of the engineering department. When you jumped a ship across the stars? You had to know down to the gram the mass and exact density you were packing, because that would dictate down to the watt the amount of energy needed to shift to a new star. A little-known part in the assemblies that made up a dropship's mating collar was a very high-tech weight measuring device. It was like a high-tech digital scale, but so much more. That data would be sent to a jumpship's jump computer at the speed of light and there it was used to generate the needed jump coordinates. The mass of the Landing boats was known, and the total mass and size of the cargo bays were common knowledge for space crews. What was not known was how much and what kind of heavy metal and radiation shielding they might have in those cargo holds. There was a big difference in mass between 1m x 1m x1m square of water and the same sized box of Tungsten, Uranium, or Osmium.

The XO was visibly sweating, and the look of confusion plastered all over his face was there for the whole room to see. Captain Boa was watching closely his XO. He was a little surprised at the weak voice of the Maskirovka agent. "What do we do now?"

Boa used his legs to push off from the hard shell of the computers and he made it to a small box mounted near the main hatch. He opened the box to expose what had been hidden, but before he could reach into the dark interior. The deck started to vibrate and then voices started to come over the open speaker network that sent ice water down the spines of everyone in the command section. "Enemy boarders" began to sound from different areas around the ship.

Boa looked over his shoulder and passed through the air of the Zero G compartment a space rated laser rifle. "First we will do what we can from here. But I think that you might have more skill with one of these than anyone else on "my" bridge."

The XO's hand automatically grabbed the floating weapon, and they did a functions check on the weapon without his mind knowing that he had done so. He had no idea that this was the final straw that broke the man's XOs cover identity. He gave the captain a head nod and went out the main hatch to do his duty to the Celestial Wisdom. The rest of the bridge crew only looked at the now cleared hatch. There was nothing they could do until this "battle" was over. They were jumpship's command crew, not some PBIs in armored space suits.

##########

It took the mixed teams about fifteen minutes to take the key parts of the jumpship, so that they could keep in place without someone doing something really stupid. Also, the bank of knowledge of Robert's team, about the layout of the Tramp Class was extremely helpful in predicting defensive points that might have been set up. It was nowhere near perfect data, but it was very helpful data none the less. It would be later remarked that the data was almost as helpful as having the powered armor, that had led the attacks into the recesses of the jumpship.

The two groups did have to do a lot of damage in taking this ship, but the Tramp class was a civilian ship in the service of the old Star League. Much to their surprise of the boarding teams. The bridge crew had given up very quickly. Rumor had it, that the main hatch had been left open when the first boarding team had breached the local area. Those six bodies had been carefully taken from the jumpship's bridge to the space station. After what had happened with some of the crew on this ship and those dropships connected with it. They were not taking any chances with them causing trouble, damage or even deaths.

The current plan was that the command crew of the jumpship would be ransomed back to the Confederation. Each of the bridge crewmembers had papers that said they were members of one of the largest shipping lines working within the Confederation. Who would get the lion's share of this money from that ransom was anyone's guess? But Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale would not be seeing a dime of any of those ransoms. And that was perfectly fine with Robert, Jules, Jess and everyone else back on New Circe. He was getting something worth a lot more than some C-bills, that only had value in the Inner Sphere.

The locals should not have that much of a problem getting the repair parts delivered from the factories they still had in operation in local space. They would not even need to use some of the repair bays on the Olympus to get the work done. Thanks to the recordings provided by suits that reported to Copeland, the head repair crews already had an idea on what was needed to do a large majority of the work. It was harder to clean up the bodies and fluids after the battle was over.

Not one of the crewmembers from other parts of the jumpship lived to make it to the main space station. It was just another day fighting the CCs most fanatical supporters in very close quarters. Many in this system were surprised that the bridge crew had been taken alive much less without a shot being fired near them.

Little did any of the captors know, that the bridge crewmembers had been under orders to make sure that whatever happened. They were to make it back to key members of the CC intel and military personnel at a list of CC controlled offices to report what had happened to their ship. The surviving crewmembers of that jumpship had no idea, that they all would have accidents that would kill them within a few weeks of submitting their final reports. When this data was found out by some of the rest of the Inner Sphere's intelligence agencies, it was just marked down as the confederation controlling any lose ends in their preferred method.

########

Getting the Tramp class ship fixed and ready to travel again was going to be easy but finding a crew might be another problem. That was always a good problem to have, if you had to have one at all. Having an extra un-crewed jumpship just waiting around was rare outside of a TRI-Vid. There were a lot of people who would not mind working on an armed jumpship on the edge of human space. Most of the time? You didn't have a problem finding people who wanted to leave any star system in this part of space. The hard part would be finding the people who had the right skills, that you were looking for in the surrounding area and that you could trust at the same time.

So, after they got a crew and the battle damage fixed on the soon to be re-named jumpship. This star system would now have their own jumpship and dropships to take their products directly to the markets, all without needing as many middlemen as they have been having to deal with. And they could do it all on their own terms. This was going to be a huge boost for this systems independence and for it's future growth.

It took another three days to get everything taken care of, after taking the enemy Tramp class jumpship. Miss Wilson had some issues during these post operations procedures. It started when a merchant class jumpship carrying a Mule and a Leopard class dropship arrived at the jump point. The locals reacted quickly, and due to the stress of the last few weeks. They almost fired into the two dropships or jumpship with some of the light fighters left operational in this system. No one on either side knew where the situation was going, and only Wilson's command to stand down stopped the altercation from drawing blood.

When things calmed down and the hot blood cooled in those with fingers on triggers. Both sides were able to exchange civil communications. It might have been helped when the "off shift" sent a message to the new jumpship, and after all of the fighters had returned to closer CAP routes. The "off shift" gave the newcomers a copy of the AAR on the last attacks that had come into this system over the last few weeks. The duty shift teams from the Styx and the other jumpship in system passed along rumors and news that both crews had picked up in their travels. It was a sign that things were calming back down to normal levels.

The commander and crew of the new jumpship thought that they were going to be high jacked by this out of the way system near the junction of FWL, CC and the MC. Now that things were calmer, it was communicated to the command staff on the Station why they were here. They were just there to see if they could pick up some cargo and to get a few spare parts they were short on for the jumpship and the Mule. After explaining, in graphic detail complete with a list of the attacker's order of battle about the attack to the newcomer. The new people were not so upset about this near fight. They even were allowed to keep their own CAP of a pair of Stingrays launched from the Leopard class mech carrier near their jumpship. And the station would keep their own CAP very close to the recharge station, just to keep some distance between the two groups,

Most of the three days had been spent slowly moving the Styx out from behind the well-known radar shadow of the Station. She was the last of the pair of jumpships to be moved to a safe distance from the huge station. This delay and location did help with the loading of the almost three small orbital factories into the quickly disappearing cargo space on Robert's cargo dropships. Many things that happened during that time in the background and out of sight of any outsiders and even most of the locals.

Some of the locals were getting some quick classes on the old but high tech LF battery on their "new" jumpship. That the Styx didn't currently have this battery was something that had been kept secret from outsiders. So, when asked, Robert had said that the specialized skill crews were working on their own ship, and they could not spend that much time helping. After the locals were showed some things by Robert's limited crew, another feather was added to this system. It would seem that the LF battery system was something that the SLDF had thought of as civilian tech, at least for Hegemony flagged ships. Only the name for this system was different in the Old Star League data base than what it was called in the common vernacular of spacers in the 31st century.

When the locals started running all of the identification numbers, that they could find on the parts of the LF system they were working on. That was when they found something that was not even known to Robert's people. Even the SLiE and SLDF now used the term LF battery, and not high-capacity charging system. The locals should be able to make not only parts but whole sections of the battery the jumpship was using. The LF battery also was just a higher tech version of the batteries used in the Olympus class station. Only one of the changes, compared to the old-style batteries, was that they were scalable. What does that mean in English? They could be made in a lot smaller size modules than the average person in the Inner Sphere thought. The reason was listed as it was needed to help with moving them around a shipyard. Then you connected them like batteries in series or old time Legos after they were brought onto the required jumpship.

This was a good thing, because with the help of the limited crew coming from the Styx. They had found that over half the batteries on the newly re-flagged Tramp was rated as "about to fail". It would take the locals a long time to replace them, but the main jump drive on the jumpship was good to go for another trip between the stars. If the locals could dedicate one of the small factories sats they had to just making the LF batteries? It will still take them many months to replace all of the age damaged batteries in 100 ton lots. Still after they did that replacement of batteries on their jumpship. System Manager Wilson would be able to fix any other ship with LF batteries or sell the extra high-tech batteries to the FWL to help speed up production of the Tramp LF. You want to talk about a high value low risk product, this was it.

Robert was just glad to be looking at starting to head back home. He had a lot of goods, but he also had a lot of damaged equipment to deal with. Now that his ships were almost filled with items that were badly needed back home. There was not any reason that they should not start heading back, almost 4 months early. But as this attack had just proven. They were being watched very closely, and it was time to change Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale's pattern of life.

They only had one more stop to make before they could start the fast trip back to their home system. If they stuck to the deep black between the stars? He would not have to drag their heals faking that they were using a "normal" inner sphere jump drive. After a few short messages sent to the local leadership as general housekeeping and to keep the friendliness going until someone from the SLiE could return. Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale disappeared out of this system with as much fanfare as it had arrived with. The filed flight plan had them heading to the capital of the FWL with an unknown estimated arrival time. The only people that knew about this message was the local traffic control and the bridge crew of the Styx. The only ones that knew that it was a completely false flight plan were the bridge crewmembers of the Styx.

6 OCT 3050 Mission Three

The ltzehoe system.

The stop at Duke Terry's system came after a long run of hitting only systems that were empty of life, or just the deep dark lifeless space between the stars that few were brave enough to travel. Jess and Jules were a little concerned about stopping here, but Robert had planned on stopping back here from all most the time of the first jump after the Split system. The reasons given to the staff were even true, but they were not the only reasons that they would be stopping by. Many had forgotten about the huge dropship that had been commissioned to be dropped off here. When Robert had pointed this out, it had stopped any grumblings coming from the other senior officers in the little fleet. Robert had found it hard to believe that anyone could forget about a dropship almost the size of a small warship.

Robert had planned that they would be in this system for at least two weeks, but he was not going to tell everyone that part of his plans. Jess and Jules did not know about this detail of the plan until just before they made the last jump into the Bivouac system. If things went as well as Robert hoped, they would be heading back home after a minimal number of stops. Picking up so many huge items had negated the need to risk traveling deeper into the Inner Sphere. They agreed to the plan after they were brought into the loop so to speak. After all, both of them had a lot of projects that by stopping there would fulfill. And besides they still had some cargo space that could use some filling before they made dock back home.

The massive Behemoth class dropship was still floating near the jump point when the Styx arrived at the jump point. This time the massive dropship would not be empty, when they brought it back to New Circe. That had been part of the cost when Robert had signed his name on the contract. It was not filled up, but it did have some cargo. It was just some cheap bulk space safe cargos loaded before it was dropped off in this lonely star system without a crew.

The Hobgoblin was working with the fighters in the CAP at the jump point to get in some "good training", while a pair of Small Craft from the Hercules were attached and towed the massive dropship towards the jumpship. They had to move it the needed 1600 kilometers to one of the now open docking collars on the M/V Styx. After they got the dropship attached to the jumpship, no small feat with something with the shear mass of this dropship. It would only need a few hours to get power back on the massive cargo ship after the docking clamps and other umbilicals were attached between the two hulls. It would take longer for the huge dropship to be anywhere near being called habitable for anyone not in a full-blown space suit.

The crew of the jumpship would start moving space proof containers into the larger ship, as soon as there was something like a breathable atmosphere on the Behemoth. The less you thought about the temperature and the quality of the atmosphere on the huge dropship the better. The pumping of an atmosphere into the huge dropship didn't take that long, at least for one of the cargo bays. Before the dropship had been dropped off, it had been topped off to a "normal" level with breathable gasses. The dropship had "a sound hull" but that didn't mean that some or even most would not leak out into space if given enough time. Hydrogen was known to be able to slip between bonds of larger atoms used in modern alloys. But for a little leak to drop the air pressure down to a level lethal to any boarders took some time or a few leaks, and with something the size of a Behemoth class it took a lot of gases to refill.

It took a lot of work to get all the cargo moved, after the ship was deemed safe to enter for lightly suited crew. This time was cut short by using copies of the Colonial designed pilot's space suit. Still, they were restricted to only being able to move the items that could fit down the jumpship's corridors from the recovered cargo bays on the dropship and the cargo hold that the missing conventional jump drive had opened for increase cargo and passenger space. With all the Colonial made artificial gravity plate decking turned off along the way between those two locations? It was less tiring to do the work, but no less stressful. Items without weight will still had their mass to deal with. Anything that was not going to be needed soon, was packed down and moved to the huge cargo dropship.

Even when all of the cargo that was marked was moved to the huge cargo ship? It still did not even fill up Cargo Bay 3 on the massive dropship that was the size of a small SLDF warship. 25,000 tons of cargo was transferred in only a few days of very hard work, but they were very long days for everyone on those three ships. While that work was just started in moving that cargo. Robert was sending very carefully worded messages to Duke Terry. After receiving his messages, Duke Terry had started working on her part of the deal he had given her the heads up about.

All Robert needed to do, was when all of the cargo that could be moved, was to launch the White Rabbit and the Hercules towards the planet at a steady and public rate. Robert did not stop with those two cargo dropships. He was taking all three dropships with him, and they all would be making this run to the planet. Most of his crew in the flotilla were betting that this was going to be the last Resupply run to the inner sphere, at least it would be the last one for the rest of their lifetime. Robert and Jules stayed out of those conversations. All of the dropship's crews wanted to make the most of this trip, as they could get away with if not just a little more. They were going to pick up anything that might be of value or have other uses back on New Circe that might benefit the buyers.

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While the three dropships were going to the only life-giving orb in this system? The Styx would be taking the Behemoth class dropship down what was now known on the charts as "The Starry Path" and closer to New Circe. The Styx would take the huge dropship as far as it could in a given amount of time, and then she would leave it alone in space. It would be in a point of space that was between the stars and safe from someone just stumbling over it. Then the Styx would make its way back on a timeline that the convoy commander had dictated them to maintain at the start of this run. Robert's dropships would not lift off the planet, until the Styx had returned to this system again as a safety measure. It was going to be an interesting sale to any spies in the local area. Then again none of those spies knew about the Colonials or their special jump drives they had access to. Information was one of the key weapons in life and war.

When Robert landed on the planet at its only "real" drop port? He had to make a statement, which was to be published to this world every few hours. It was that he did not have any cargo to sell to the public at this time. It was not that Copeland did not have anything to trade, just nothing that was going to be available to the public or general population at this time. This was not something that was that uncommon in this part of space, but it did cause a few down turned faces when they read or heard the message.

Right after the three dropships landed, a large covered heavy duty flatbed truck showed up at just after local nightfall. The time waiting for the heavy truck had been used to set up cover that didn't look like cover to the average person, by a mixed group of dropship's crew and locals. Then two power loaders lifted and loaded the head capped Crab class battlemech onto the flatbed of the local truck. The almost complete mech would be taken directly to Duke Terry's compound under a cover that would keep prying eyes from knowing what was going on. The only people that knew about the mech were Robert's people and a very short list from Duke Terry.

A little over four million C-Bills worth of local produced food, cloth, and other consumer goods were traded for the wrecked machine on another set of the flatbed trucks that would filter into the drop port. This cost had come out of Duke Terry's pocket in one form or the other. It would take a long time to come up with a cockpit that would fit the downgraded Star League designed machine. But it was a mostly mechanically perfect 50ton battlemech, and there where very few of even wrecked ones like this on the open market in this part of space. Even then the only way you would get this design was for bucket loads of hard-to-find C-Bills, and it would be in amounts that were a few percentage points over what a new built machine would have cost at the factory.

It would have been nice if the crew working for Copeland could have brought it back to full combat effectiveness after they had taken control of it. Copeland had plenty of tech crews to support the Styx and the dropships. He even had a lot of techs to support the aerospace fighters, and he even had some people trained to support the two mechs and workmechs his command was using on this run. It was only that they had other duties for their normal day to day shifts to complete. Even if Robert had the parts, he just didn't have the man hours to do the work. At least not without making it some kind of punishment detail.

It did not take Robert long to figure out, that the situation on the ground was very tense between the locals and ComStar. Things were worse, if anything, since the last visit to the planet. Now that was saying something. Jess was wondering when the tar and feathers or pitchforks were going to be broken out by the locals. Robert had not been able to have any private communications with Terry or even see her face to face for a while after his dropships had landed. He hoped to change that tonight. Just as he was thinking about that was when the bridge called down to his cabin that a hover car with escorts was on their way towards them. Robert acknowledges the alert and left his cabin to meet Duke Terry at the passenger loading ramp.

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Robert was waiting in the cooling air of the late afternoon. In the fading light Robert could not tell who might be in the hover car. It was not the open top hover car that Terry had favored on his other visits to this planet. This hover transport looked like it had more in common with a hover APC than a VIP transport. What he could see very clearly, was that there was unrepaired damage on the pair of scout mechs running alongside of the hover car as an escort.

When Terry exited from what now Robert could tell was a 10ton class "heavy armored" hover limo, she looked tired to his eyes. She seemed to "perk up" when she saw him waiting for her at the dropship hatch. She didn't even wait to board the dropship before they had arms wrapped around each other like a pair of high schoolers at prom night. The two of them just held each other for what both seemed like all night and only a few seconds at the same time.

The meal the pair shared was not one made on the dropship. It had been delivered, but that didn't mean that it was not a top shelf meal. If you wanted something and you had the hard C-Bills to spend? You could get about anything you wanted delivered to your ship. All the duty cooking staff on the dropship needed to do was to keep it warm or chilled as the case may be.

Robert had no problem telling that Terry was under a lot more stress than was normal for a person that was the sole ruler of a whole star system. He was just planning on letting the conversation at dinner be driven by Terry and he worked on his listening skills. She was not going to let that happen after about ten minutes. She would ask about the different stops they had made and what kind of deals they had made at those strange star systems. When he had skimmed over the attack, she had stopped him and forced him to go into a lot more detail than he had planned on.

They had almost finished dessert and Robert decided that it was time to see if he could get a better gauge on the local conditions. He had the tacfax on the White Rabbit if he needed to recall the Styx earlier than planned. "I take it that you have been having an increase in problems while we were gone. Do you want to talk about it?"

Duke Terry looked down at the slowly melting ice cream and cake in the large blue bowls, but she didn't say anything for a long time. Then out of the blue she started talking in a low monotone voice. "ComStar was linked in an attempt to overthrow me as the leader of this planet. Well, they are linked good enough for me."

Robert put his spoon down, but he didn't say anything. It was something he had picked up from his first wife. If Terry wanted to speak, she would. And if she didn't, then he was going to let the subject just sit and they would finish the meal and after dinner wine.

Terry looked up from her bowl and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. "As you can see, it didn't end well, for the revolt. It has left hundreds of people dead in the streets, when it was all said and done. And that does not count those that were hurt, that had nothing to do with the revolt. The loss of my ex-husband hurt, but that was more of a political hurt overall. My son Tommy's death felt like a dagger in my heart. About all I can say is that he died the way he wanted, even if a parent should never live long enough to bury their kids." Her voice started to crack towards the end and small tears were coming out of the corners of her eyes.

Robert got up and walked over to the woman and put his arm around her. And then he pulled her deep into his chest. In seconds he could feel the tears wetting his shirt. Somehow, they ended up on the couch and she kept crying tears the size of small hover cars. Sometime during the night, she told him what had happened while he had been gone. He sorely wanted to tell her about his ex-wife that had died fighting the Cylons. He knew that he couldn't, but that didn't mean that he was not tempted to do something that could ease her pain. Sometimes it was nice to share with someone who had experienced the same pain as you were going through.

12 weeks ago

Terry was wondering the halls of her home, command center, traffic control center, and a half dozen other missions without any real destination in mind as her feet carried her down the halls of the large building. The last few weeks had been stressful, and she could not sleep. There were too many things on her mind for her to get some much-needed rejuvenating rest. One of the key problems she was having lately was called Chairman Eric Hale.

He had been one of her major political problems for the last ten years or so. He had only gotten to be the level of a major problem for her over the last few years. He was one of those people that you wished that you could go extra judiciary on, but you knew that it was a slippery slope that you feared to tread even a little toe on. Still every day you had to deal with the pain in the…neck, it looked like a better and better option.

He was spending money like it was water, and she could not find out where he was getting all of that money. What she and her people had found out the hard way was that it was not just cash he was getting an infusion of. He was using that money and power to undermine a few of her plans, but she had been able to keep ahead of him without too many issues over the last few years. It was when he opened the new school in the capital that he had paid for out of his own pocket, that she started to find out where he was getting his financial support from.

The school he opened had all of the instructor's positions for the 600-student capacity supplied by ComStar. Her first warning had been when no one could find out where he had been able to hire the personnel to fill the listed courses. Terry had started to sweat when the report had come to her of large passenger vans having left the ComStar compound on the first day of official classes. She had to hit the whisky early that night and for the next two nights, if just a little lighter than the first night.

That was the first, but it had not been the last hint about how much and where the support was coming from the current largest pain in her….neck. A few months after the school had fully opened, he had started publicly pushing any subject that ComStar was publicly supporting at the time. She had put some of her best people to keeping a closer eye on him after the surprise instructors' bit. She wanted a close watch on what he was doing and who he was talking with. After those first reports had come in, her warning bells started to ring at some volume. As long as her plans kept paying off the way that they had been doing, she was comfortable with the status quo. At least that was her public stance, and that stance was very popular with the people on this planet. Behind the scenes she started relooking at some privately laid plans. She was not the type to run from confrontation, but sometimes you had to do what you had to do.

That had changed when the pirates had attacked and ComStar had not come out of their compound to help the locals to defend themselves for the first time. That one act had cost Eric a lot of political points around the local area. But he had what seemed like a bottomless bank account, and he had made up most of those lost points in a few months of what seemed like bottomless spending and gifts that could not be back tracked. Today she was trying to figure out what his next move was going to be, and how she could best counter those possible moves of his and his benefactors. She was walking and thinking about what Eric was up to today, but not really knowing what was going on around her in the dark of her home.

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Terry was brought out of her thinking by an alarm sounding threw out the large building and then the sound of a nearby larger caliber gunshot. She was running with a pistol in her hand that she had purchased off of Copeland on one of his stops. She did not remember drawing the weapon much less putting it off of safe as she ran down the well buffed stone corridors. She came to a skidding stop as the sound of a second gunshot ripped through the air, and she saw her son fall to the floor of the traffic control room. The door had been opened, for some reason but she knew that it was against protocols that she had reviewed.

The man who had just shot her son was smiling as he turned to the open door, maybe drawn by the sound of running feet on the polished stone. He also might have seen her enter the doorway and the movement had drawn his attention. That did not matter, and it would be one of the mysteries of the coming battle. Neither did the fact that the tall thin man was wearing a set of ComStar issue body armor. Her mind was still not fully processing that her son was lying on the room's floor after a pair of gun shots had come from this room.

Terry lined up her weapon and then she put two rounds, center mass of the thin man. Both of the super hard and specially shaped projectiles were barely slowed down by the first two front mounted armored plates of the off world made body armor. Those two armor plates did cause the off world made slugs to start to tumble as they entered the creaming center protected by the body armor. The two rounds pulled the lungs, part of the heart, part of the stomach and liver out the back of the body as they plowed through the organic material. The tumbling rounds and their attached bone, flesh, and blood didn't make it through the second of the two back plates that was supposed to protect the spine of a long gone SLDF ground pounder. The last and outer most armor plate of the heavy body armor looked like it had been hit with a 10-pound sledgehammer by the time those two projectiles had lost the last erg of their energy. But it did keep the bloody mess from spreading and spraying on the expensive equipment behind the now dead shooter of Duke Terry's son.

Terry didn't drop her weapon as she ran over to the body of her son, that was now laying in a rapidly growing pool of bright red blood. She could see two large bullet wounds that were leaking blood out of her son's body. The boy had fought even after being both surprised and shot by the other man. Terry had been around enough blood to know that there was nothing she could do for her son. All she could do was hold him and try to let him know that she was there. He was holding his chest and he tried to speak up to his mother for one last time.

"I tried….. I was not asleep on duty. I thought he was my shift replacement. Then he shot me in the back?" Water started to run down his face as he fought to get a final approval of his mother and leader.

Terry was holding her son without realizing that she was kneeling in his still warm blood. Her voice cracked and things seemed to be getting hazy around her. "You did good Tom. You got him." She felt her son's last breath and she watched the light go out of his eyes. A coldness filled her. She was not filled with rage; she was filled with liquid helium.

She barely noticed the QRF team coming running into the room with weapons drawn and ready to fight a gun battle in a small room. The two medical trained members of the building security team had to bodily push her away from her son's body. A shout from one of the other members of the QRF team brought her around to look at a few screens set up around the room.

"Pirates have breached the outer wall! How did they land, and we don't know about it? Why hasn't the command center sent an alert?" The voice of the unknown NCO was colored with both awe and accusation in his voice at the same time. It was just enough to get everyone to look at the same screens.

Terry's head drifted up and looked at the other screens and now she could see fires burning in the town, outside of the drop port, and at the last line of defense of this building. They should have at least been slowed down at the main wall around this facility. "Make sure the invasion alert is sounded. I want everyone with a weapon ready to use it. And get a team to the command center!" Terry did not recognize her own voice. as it cut through the room like a knife. And later she would not remember saying anything after her son died in her arms on a slightly dirty floor.

Terry was bolting out of the room carried on the wings of Valkyries. She was down four flights of stairs before the QRF team could make a move to stop her. She was shedding the outer layers of her clothes by the time that she had hit the third flight of stairs like someone had put icy/hot in them. She was just getting down to her underclothes when she reached for her helmet and cooling vest at the base of her modified JagerMech.

By now she understood what was going on, even if she didn't understand everything right at that moment. This was not your average pirate attack that were so common on this side of explored space. This was an attempt at a change of the local government, and that was why Traffic Control did not pick up any landing dropships or arriving jumpships. The forces were already on the ground in the first place, or enough of them were on the ground to take the most important objectives first. The hard part would be to hold onto those key locations until more forces could land. Or if the leadership changed enough to support the attacks, then they would not need much more forces coming from off planet.

Her machine was just coming up to full power when her ex-husband comes charging into the mech bay also shedding clothes as he went. The power to the room went out not long after the heavy metal hatch closed behind him. He was also in mech briefs, but he had not reached his cooling vest before the lights went out. It would have been a little on the comical side, but he was not moving in the straightest of lines even before the windowless room was plunged into darkness. She knew that he had been drinking, it would have been a surprise if he had not been drinking or full on drunk by this time of day. Not long, maybe 30 seconds, after the main power went out, the expensive independent lighting system came on. Now able to see again, Terry waved to her ex-husband and pointed to the mech sized exit hatch. It had an emergency backup and didn't need power to open.

Just as the Mech sized exit hatch was almost opened enough for her mech to clear, heavy machine gun fire ripped into the almost company sized mech bay. The only thing those heavy projectiles hit, was her ex-husband. A dozen heavy rounds threw him back into the mech bay like a rag doll that had been subjected to the temper tantrum of a Red bull energy fueled toddler. Terry was already burning with cold rage, and she pulled the primary trigger to the stops for her modified and lovingly rebuilt machine.

Her targeting system told her she had a lock onto something outside the huge, armored metal access hatch and the targeting reticle was green. She didn't know it was a 35ton Firestarter she had fired at, until both of the double fire rated cannons fired off at full rated bursts. All four of her 50mm shells hit dead center on the light fire mech. It was like they were guided there by the hands of an avenging angel.

The center chest of the Firestarter held the thickest armor on the whole machine, just like was common on every battlemech going all the way back to the Mackie. The first three 50mm shell spent themselves breaking through the armor crust of the very specialized light mech. The mech's engine took some damage while the harder outer armored shell was taken care of, but the real killer was the fourth 50mm shell that Duke Terry fired. It went right into the device that helped keep the machine standing on its to narrow feet, the gyro.

Maybe it was all of the damage done to the machine in such a short amount of time, or the loss of the gyro. In the end it did not matter one way or the other. The gyro massed about 10 percent of the whole mech, and it was designed to survive some battle damage. It was made for a weapon of war, and they tended to get damaged as they went about the jobs that they were designed to do. But after they reached a certain damage threshold, the insides more or less shattered like glass. The specialized arson mech fell onto its back like a man kicked in the chest in some kind of action entertainment show on the Tri-vid.

While she watched the Firestarter fall backwards. Terry hit the switch and the maintenance cables came flying off the back of her machine to hang from the mech cubical until needed again. When she left the back exit of the almost mech company sized bay? She stopped only long enough to stomp down on the cockpit of the prostrated light mech with her mech's right leg. She mentally put a mark next to the image burned into her brain of her son laid out in a pool of his own blood.

Her next stop was to take out the fire support that was keeping most of her people pinned down on the inner layer of the defenses of her home/command center. When she turned the last corner of the huge and harden building that made up her command center and home at the run? She was already bringing up both of her mech's arms to fire their updated cannons at anyone that was not wearing her colors. The range was long, but she had spent a lot of time on the firing range in her life. She pulled the trigger and her pair of light Mydron Model Ds fired.

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A J Edger hover tank was stationary and pumping SRMs and 5cm laser fire into a pair of her people's defensive points. The enemy's fire was so heavy, that her people could not effectively fire back at the light hover tank. The Model D's were light weapons, as mech scale autocannons went, but she hit with both of them. One of the 30mm shells hit the turret side just under the SRM launcher, and the other shell hit on the flat back of the tank.

The second hit had barely missed the thrust engines and the steering vain needed to make a hover craft both hover and move across the battlefield. Each of the pair of these hits did very little damage on the hard armored skin of the tank, but it got the light tanks attention away from the pinned down infantry in the defensive points. The turret holding the laser and the SRMs turned to "see" what had scratched its paint.

A 35ton light hover tank had no business tangling with a 65ton walking main battle tank from hell. It did not take long for the crew to know that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It might have been helped with another strike on the armor and a small fountain of dirt nearby to knock the cobwebs out of their brains. Then again it could have been the shock of seeing something that should not be there that caused them to freeze like a deer in your head lights.

The delay in getting into motion and using the superior speed of the light hover tank, was what ended up killing them. Every heartbeat that they were not moving was letting a 64kph running wall of death get a little closer to them. Before the tank was moving and trying to open the distance between the charging JagerMech and give it a much lower profile for the mech to target. The security points the tank had been firing into now fired back into the still frozen hover tank. And the mech was able to put more weapons fire into it. That falls onto the list of bad things for the light tank.

Terry put two more rounds, one each from both classes of her autocannons, and this puts four of her shells into the area of her target. This in coming fire cracked some of the armor off of one side of the just started to accelerating weapons system. But the shells didn't cause enough damage to stop the now moving hover tank. It was a few of the half dozen single tubed man portable short ranged missiles that had a more telling effect on the still accelerating tank. The tank was not blown apart by these missiles strikes. But the now exposed aft thrust fans were blasted into fast moving smoking spare parts, all leaving the general area of the tank at very high speed in a high arcing fan of smoking parts and flames.

When the tank lost its momentum and came to rest near a thick retaining wall, it was quickly swarmed over by the local defenders. These were some of the same defenders that had been taking fire from the tank but could not fire back due to their lighter weapons. Only a fool would challenge even a light tank with only a light battle rifle in their hands. Terry saw them coming and activated both her radio and her external speakers at the same time.

"This is the Duke! I want prisoners! We need to find out who is behind this attack." She looked around as best she could with the heavy helmet attached to her body. Not for the first time, she was glad for the compressed 360 degree view her high-tech helmet gave her. She could see where "her" people had stopped the wave of attackers. Besides the hover tank there were bodies and half a dozen smoking trucks that looked to have been civilian before being used today.

The route to the main line of defense was clear and she approached it to draw any enemy fire that might be coming her people's way. She switched the radio to the command center for the defense of her home. "It looks like the main wall is clear. I will walk the wall but get the rest of the defense company out of the barracks and see about getting those weapons back online."

Terry made her way to the main gate that had been forced opened on the outer defensive wall, maybe by the now headless Firestarter at the back exit to her mech bay. She might not have been to an academy to learn how to be a mech jock or be a commander of mechs, but she had come up threw the school of hard knocks. One that if you were found wanting? Then you were found dead, and someone got your mech or used it for spare parts.

Her seismic sensors said something was heading her way, but nothing was to her left, right, or back. Those were all areas that were covered by her people. So, she knew that it had to be something heading towards the open gate from the other side. You can't target using just your seismic sensors, but it was useful to get a feel if something was coming towards you or going away from your location. After waiting for some long seconds and studying the incoming data. She knew that a mech was coming towards her, and it was either a light and fast mech or a large and slow one.

She took a deep steadying breath and stepped out to block the open gate with the body of her war machine. She scanned the open area, and halfway down the cleared ground between the high wall and the tree line, called a kill zone was a speeding Locust. Seeing the huge mech step out from cover must have surprised the light mech pilot. It started trying to get out of the line of sight of the heavier machine as fast as it could. It the mech would have had arms, it would have looked to have been part of a comedy routine.

Terry smiled, checked the range, smiled some more, and then pulled the triggers. Two 30mm shells and 4 of the 50mm shells were fired from the ultra-class cannons. Even if she still had the two 5cm lasers her machine normally had, she could not have fired them at this range. The shells flew towards the rapidly gyrating light mech too fast for the human eye to track. Terry was a good shot but this time her mech had been moving, the enemy mech was not only moving, but it was moving in almost 3 dimensions at the same time. This was what you would call a more than slightly complicated fire control situation.

She still was able to get a hit with one of the 30mm shells and two of the 50mm ones. None of the anti-mech shells had seemed to have done any real damage to the Locust. And the mech finally was starting to open the range by running parallel to Duke Terry's JagerMech. It looked like it was going to get away, but it only looked that way.

While Terry had been getting into position and then firing into the light mech. Her personnel were racing to the tall wall that made up the main defensive line for this compound. Duke Terry had spent heavily on getting weapons for her people, but she could not get as many as she wanted or as cutting edge as she would have liked. Normally an anti-mech wall like this would have remote control heavy mech scale weapons turrets managed from the command center liberally sprinkled along its length.

The Locust was about to transition from this "cruise" or a walking pace to going towards "flank" or running pace when the ground erupted around the light mech in dirt and flame fountains. Some of the gunners had made it to two of the LRM 10 turrets, one on each of the side of the gate, and they had fired. Before those missiles had finished falling, a second set of LRM 10 turrets fired on the light mech. Not many of the missiles hit, but it was enough in addition to what Duke Terry had already done. The light mech was knocked to the ground like someone smacking a mud puddle with the flat of her hand, only it was metal that was flying into the air.

Duke Terry walked up to the light class mech and put her right arm holding one of the Ultra Autocannons and the lighter D model, so that it was only a few meters from the cockpit glass. Terry was not even going to try to talk to this mech jock. She might just decide to pull the trigger and to hell with her own orders to take prisoners. She had to stay just like this for a few minutes until a hover Jeep came out from the main building. When they exited the small hover truck, a half dozen armor troopers climbed over the light mech packing weapons and powerful hand tools.

With an evil smile on her face Duke Terry left the ground team to deal with the mech jock. She was betting that he was not going to like the handling they were about to receive at the ground trooper's hands. It never was good to be captured by the people you and your friends had just been trying very hard to kill. Terry had heard more than one story from passing mercenary units about how they had to do something like that in the past. Most of the time it was very touch and go with some true horror stories thrown into the verbal mix. Right now, Duke Terry didn't care, and she had other places that she and her mech needed to be.

##########

Machelle looked down the sights of her uncle's Vedette model tank at the road leading up to the main house of this extended family. Duke Terry had let some of her key supporters know that she felt like something was in the wind, like a fart in a car. Machelle was working up to joining the local militia, maybe even getting one of the mech driver's slots. To keep her options open, she had taken to working on and with the Vedette tank of her uncles. She had worked hard at the sometimes menial and dirty tasks of maintaining the tank, and when the alert was given. She had been surprised when she was told to take command of the tank and go down here to the first choke point.

While she was covering the road from her hiding position, the older people of her family were back at the "big" house working on figuring out what was going on. While the old fogies, as she called them were doing that. They were also collecting up people and weapons to defend the family lands and workshops. Soon an old Armstrong J11 autocannon was brought down on orders from the fossil brigade. A few years ago, that 50mm autocannon was the prize possession of her uncle. It had made this tank, a real tank for the first time in who knew how long. Earlier this year, he had been able to get a "new" Armstrong Spitfire JU22 from MMM to replace the age of war tech weapon.

Not wanting to throw the old autocannon away or even sell it, some ideas were kicked around anytime a group got together late at night with a few beers. Somehow a heavy duty off road capable carriage was made and the old weapon was turned into a real field gun. To show her that the older generation was not totally around the bend. The towed Armstrong J11 Autocannon was set in a pre-dug pit, that with her current location, made for a very good crossfire point at the edge for the family lands. Now all the field gun and tank had to do was wait or hope that this was all a bad dream, or that they would be left alone.

The nice thing about having a tank, it was that this one only had an ICE engine, so that when it was shut down. It was very hard to detect, much less negate by current tracking systems built into battlemechs. In convers, she didn't need her fire control sensors to tell her that something big was heading her way. As the waiting was wearing on them. The ground was setting off her seismic detectors and the data was sent to the tank's sensors. This alerted her fellow crewmember and the team manning the field gun to know that they were about to have some unwanted company. Her heart stopped when the two mechs made the turn that let her see them for the first time with her own eyes. It was just too bad that now she was wishing that she could use some brain floss to remove that vision from her memory.

She was about to tell the towed gun's crew to abandon the gun, and for them to use the drainage ditch to get out of the line of fire. Then something about the two mechs drew her undivided attention to them. She was what was derogatorily called a mech fan girl and she knew it. One of the things about being a Mech groupie, was that you tended to hang out with others of a like mind. To establish and keep your position in that type of social group, they would test each other on a regular basis. They would come up with some of the most off the wall trivia to gain respect from their peers. You not only had to know all about the Blackwidow down to the most inane level of detail. You had to know a lot about the different mechs around the whole inner sphere.

Those days of playing stump the chump with other mech groupies was now going to pay off for her in the real world. The magscan and other sensors now said that almost 100 tons of mechs were in the area. She looked harder threw her targeting scope, and she then fed the data into her IFF system. She was not to surprised that it came up blank on knowing what was coming towards her. But she had won some social points on knowing something about what was coming towards her. The IFF system just confirmed that she was going down the right chain of thought about the rare mechs coming down the road towards her concealed location.

She activated the landline between her tank and the towed field gun on the other side of the road. If they were even just a little lucky in the next five minutes? They could defeat these guys, as long as she was right, and the attacking mechs didn't have any reinforcements coming up to quickly behind them. She also was about to put all of those extra classes in tactics to test. She knew that there were only about a dozen things that could go wrong with her plan. And any one of them would kill her, her tank, and her crew faster than you can say mech groupie.

The two 45-ton mechs continued down the road like they owned it. They looked like they had no idea that they were being watched, to Machelle's untrained eyes. They kept getting closer and closer to a point on the map. And the only action from the two hidden weapon systems, was to let the main house know what was coming up the road. They crossed a line that was only on some navigation gear or on file at the capital, and still nothing happened.

Machelle kept her self-assigned target squarely centered in her sights about a meter from the long-barreled weapon. The target had been selected because of the limited travers of the field gun and the need to concentrate all of the defenders limited firepower on one of the pair of mechs. The enemy mechs walked right by them, and now the thinner armored back was facing the two autocannons. She could have fired at point blank range, but that would only have killed both the field gun and her tank maybe ten seconds later. So, she waited until the target was perfect. Then she pulled the trigger when the target passed a fence. They were using the bare wood and wire device used to keep the beef cows on this part of the land for ranging information.

#######

One second it was just another late afternoon day, and the next the world seemed to fall around the mech's ears. The right most Quasit took three 50mm shells straight into the back armor like a hammer strike from the gods. When all of that energy was absorbed into the broad back of the wantabe mech. It forced the arms to fly wide like a real man back shot in one of those cheap tri-vid movies. The Quasit might have been a workmech at heart, but it still carried a lot of very good armor plate.

The smoke had not cleared from the autocannons firing, and the Quasit was still falling to the ground when Machelle was yelling into her helmet mounted pickup. "Get us moving! Get us to Point B! Fast!"

The Vedette backed out of its hiding position and headed down the road as fast as the tracks could tear up the asphalt. Machelle looked threw the sights of her tank, and she could see the other Quasit kneeling down. It was like the 45ton machine was kneeling down and it was checking the pulse at the neck of a metal clad person. Machelle would swear that the other combat workmech was looking right at her when her tank started down the black top road. With a grin she fired another set of double 50mm shells at the still stationary target standing still in the middle of the road. She again scored a double hit with a strike on the arm and torso on the sole standing combat machine.

The race was on. Now you would think that this was a fleeting chance for the tank to escape and live for anything more than a hand full of minutes. But thanks to the breadbox like turret on this class of tank. The driver was pointed down the road that the enemy mechs had just walked up, all while the commander/gunner were facing with the ex SLDF designed autocannon over the engine deck on the aft of the tank. To pull this trick off, a mech would have to run backwards, and that was easier said than done.

Machelle's driver needed to only stay on the road until they could make it to the next pre-made firing point dug on the property of a friend of the old man. The field gun was lying low and were basically hiding and the gun crews were doing a lot of preying. The longer that mech stood near them, the more they were putting loads in their shorts. Well, there was this one guy who didn't. But a few days later she said that she passed a diamond larger than her engagement ring. Just before the ranged opened to the long range bracket from the medium range bracket of the KWI knockoff. Machelle fired a single round of 50mm at the mech. This time she missed her target by a mile. Still, she was only trying to get the mech to follow her and stay out of the range of the SRMs, MG and 5cm laser it was packing. The real threat to the tank was the chest mounted Fairway 5 LRM, and she could hand out up to twice the damage that the Fairway could do if all five missiles hit her.

##############

Machelle was thrown into the sighting system of the autocannon when the tank came to a bone jarring slamming stop without warning. When she came back into her seat. She fired the autocannon just as a brace of LRMs overshot her tank, and they hit where she might have been if not for "falling" into this position. It was just too bad that her next shot from the autocannon also missed its target like the missiles had.

Before the Mech could close in to much on the hull down tank, it shot out of its cover heading down the road at top speed again. For the next half hour Machelle and the Quasit played a very lethal game of tag. Machelle learned two main things during the exchange of weapons fire with the security mech. One was that it was a lot harder to hit a target that was running, and it sucked even more if you were also being bounced around at the same time you were trying to fire. After her first set of hits, she had not been able to score one more hit on the enemy. At least she had been smart enough to go back to firing single shots as she dragged out the engagement.

#####

Machelle felt like she should have blood coming out of her ears. Her tank had been hit a dozen times by the long-ranged missiles, but thankfully they were still in the fight. By now Machelle had no idea where she was, but she had faith that the driver would keep to the plan they had worked out. She started to line up for another shot when the top of her tank was covered in flames and another explosion caused her to hit her head for the fourth time today. She was not so much seeing stars as seeing stars having stars that were seeing one hell of a fireworks display.

Machelle had no idea if the grinding sound was coming from her head or from the tank. All she knew was that she had blacked out, and she was having a real hard time breathing. "What happened?" She had no idea that she had spoken aloud and that her helmet mic had picked up her words.

A tired voice came back to her slightly ringing ears. "That last hit took out our engines and both of our tracks are showing red lights. I think we are done." He was quiet for a few seconds, and then the mic picked up his labored breathing and then his curses. "Crap, my hatch is stuck. Do you have a big pocking wrench on you?"

Before Machelle could say anything more, their world was again rocked. The top of the turret flexed down towards her head, and then something pushed them sideways by what seemed like 100 meters or more. Machelle hit the sighting system and she got way to close of a look at the Quasit security mech than she had ever wanted. She was able to throw her head back into the brace just in time for the security mech to punch into the top of the tank turret with one of its huge fists. The turret rang like a bell again, and the metal over her head flexed down and stayed that way by what seemed like a few more inches.

Some people in this situation would have just sat back and waited to die, but not Machelle. She made herself look as she saw the 45-ton security mech draw its right arm back like a cage fighter punching down to finish off his opponent. As she was watching, the back of the mech was washed over in flames and instead of a fist coming down on top of her head. The whole mech looked to be falling right at her, only it was not an optical illusion of some kind. It was really falling towards her, yes gravity sucks. Something hit the tank that made Machelle think that the enemy mech was shaking it like a dog on a half rotten bone. Machelle blacked out again and she was just along for the ride, and that was a good thing. Her and Mark's restraining belts broke, and the two organics were bounced around like bee bees in a 50ton washing machine. Shock is your body's way of telling you that you soooo don't want to remember what is about to happen to you.

###########

Old Man Wilcox watched as some people worked on his old Vedette tank. Currently there were two solid streams of large, heavy, and bright sparks coming off what had taken him most of his adult life to bring to back to life. Now it might never move again. He let his eyes wonder the area at what was the bigger picture. Draped over the tank like some kind of drunk was a human shaped 45-ton mech. They hoped that the two-man crew of this 50-ton tank was alive, but they would not know until they got them out of the wreckage.

When the tank commander had reported back what her plan was. He had gotten everyone he could to support the tank as it played whack a mole with the attacking mech acting as the big hammer. The tank was to draw the attacking mechs away, after they had sprung an ambush on them to try to reduce their numbers. They were to use some scouted out areas to draw the mechs away until they could circle back to the first ambush site. He had known that the tank commander would not circle back.

With every rocket launcher and missile in the local area, he had led them in a lost cause. They had passed the ambush site with the crew of the field gun holding the pilot of the fallen security mech hog tied in a muddy ditch. So, they had pushed on after a pause of only a whole minute to get an update on what had happened. When the little convoy had made a last turn on the road that led to the Scott's lands. They had seen that the 50ton tank was disabled, and the enemy was beating on it out of shear spite. The smart thing would have been to stay at range and use the Mech's weapons to finish the fight. Instead, it had gone hand to hand and had forgotten to keep situational awareness.

There was one thing on this planet that was not in short supply, weapons wise. That was one shot SRMs and LRMs and ammunition to feed them. Over a dozen trucks of all kinds, wheeled, hover and a few tracked ones had been rapidly modified with basic missile launchers. They had quickly emptied out the stockpiles of missiles and launchers on the farm. When they had come around the corner and saw the mech assaulting the one defender for the local area. They had launched everything they had without any orders being given or even heard if they were given in the first place. Over 100 missiles of all types had been launched in the span of a few heartbeats. "Only' many dozens had hit, but it had caused enough damage to take the mech down in a few seconds. It was just too bad that it also was enough to knock the mech off it's feet and onto the Vedette tank. It would be fixed, but who knew if it could be rapidly repaired for any future need, or would it be up to someone in the younger generation to spend most of their lives working on it with their spare time.

They had capitalized on that mistake of the mech jock not keeping an eye out for any reinforcements the tank might have called in. In one tidal wave of missiles that they had fired. Most of the trucks only had iron sights or grease pencil reticles drawn on windshields as fire control systems. They had done more damage to the local area than to the security mech. They had just been lucky that none of the more or less blind fired missiles weapons had hit the tank. Still that much fire power had hit the mech like Thor's own hammer. He doubts that there was going to be few useful items left of this mech, but then again maybe they could use parts from it to fix the other security mech at the ambush point. Then again, he could try to find enough parts to fix both of them.

The whole reason he had spent so much time into getting that tank repaired and then upgraded had been to defend his property, his family, and the rest of the planet. In that order. If he could recover and return to service even one of those security mechs? He could do all of those missions, but better. Now he knew deep down that an updated workmech was not going to stand up to a "real" mech. But as had just been shown to him and everyone living within a hundred kilometers from here. They could take out a 50ton tank that was updated and out massed the security mech.

If Machelle was still alive? She would be getting the repaired Security mech or a real one, if he could find the mech. Finding the money was going to be less of an issue, if Duke Terry was still in charge of the planet. He knew, from someone trying to sell those things to Duke Terry almost a year ago. That the price for each one of those security mechs ran as high as 4 million C-bills for the militia mech. He thought that 3 million was a better bet, but the salesman had been adamant about the "battlemechs" real cost and value. That kind of money could get her a Spider or even a Valkyrie to pilot. Hell, he might even try to pick up one of those Wolfhounds the LCAF now FedCom, Dragoons, and other top of the line mercs were using.

The old man was brought out of his deep thoughts when a shout came from the turret and the tank's hull at the same time. He smiled, it looked like both the tank commander and driver were still alive. Before he could leave his perch on the hood of his favorite truck. Another one of the youngsters walked up to him and passes him a note.

The old man reads the note and then looks over to the small mountain of metal. "Go and tell Duke Terry we will head over. Also let her know the details of this attack." He pitches his leather lung voice to carry over the milling crowd. "Okay Boys and Girls. There is another attack going into the Winchell family mine. The Duke has asked that we go help them out. Anyone that wants to stay can, but I'm going to see what I can do to help them out."

He climbed back into the royal blue modified truck and started up the overpowered ICE. He had already made sure that any extra missiles had been loaded into the best of the launchers and then made sure that the best gunners were on them. Everyone else had rifles, pistols and a few semi-portable Vipersting 211 Machine guns were spread out between them. He didn't need to look behind him to see who was following him. The MC might be dominated by women, but he was "the old man". And they would follow, are they would not, and he didn't care. There were others that needed help and "he" had been asked to see what he could do to help them. As they drove away, he could not help but smile as the other gun trucks fell in behind him. in his mind's eye he was impressed at how even the empty missile carriers looked ready to do battle one more time.

#####

With her home, command center, and traffic control for the star system safe from any would be attackers. Duke Terry went to the next area that was being attacked, even if they could not report the attack. She just followed the sound of guns, and the growing number of columns of smoke rising into the air. She knew that her people would slowly but steadily turn the tide of the surprise attack back onto the attackers. Her people had lived long enough to gain experience fighting against the many pirate attacks launched against this planet, and she had been expecting that something was in the wind. Even those that were isolated in the opening attacks, would know what to do.

The attacks had been spread out over every project that she had been working on to bring her people a better standard of living and to better defend themselves. As the attackers were thrown back and the defenders were finally able to get reports back to the now back in operation Command Center. The damage was recorded and then a report was sent to the Duke, as she moved from hot zone to hot zone. Sometimes just seeing her mech approach would cause the attacker to back off and try to blend into the background. As each attack point was defeated by her people. This would free up more troops to help turn back attackers in other locations, or just reinforce those that had been depleted in beating the attackers off.

##########

Mech warrior Jane Lock was angry, sad, and feeling half a dozen other emotions all at once. The attack had come out of nowhere. One second, she and her wing woman were patrolling the space port and the next they were taking fire. Her longtime friend Jackie and lance mate had been walking around the drop port doing just another patrol. And the next second LRMs and other weapons fire had put her Wasp 1L on to the ground, and she had not moved. When all of the fireworks had stopped? Jane saw what she was up against.

Coming through the high but weak fence going around the drop port was a Vindicator, a Catapult, and two Scorpion light tanks. Jane could clearly see a coat of arms painted on the bows of the two of the tanks, and she had no need of that brightly painted badge to know that the Catapult belong to Chairman Eric Hale. He had been very proud of this newly acquired machine, and he had gone to great lengths to let everyone know about it at even the vaguest opportunity.

The smoke coming from the freshly fired weapons on that mixed lance was all the proof that Jane needed to know who had just fired at them. There was no way that she could stand up to that much mass and firepower in her light mech. She did the only thing that made sense to what her training had said and what her heart railed against. She quickly pulled back deeper into the space port. Her compressed 360 degree view of the battlefield showed her, in graphic detail, when the Vindicator came up and kicked in the cockpit of her friend's still prostrated mech.

She used her jump jets, higher ground speed, and high metal cover from around the space port to not only get away but also to stay away from these attackers. Her only break in her hard driving was when she contacted the militia's command center to let them know about the attack and to ask…..beg for help. She almost tripped over her mech's own feet, when she was told about the scale of the attacks happening around the planet. Knowing that help was going to come, but that it would not be quick, Jane changed her plans. She was going to go from scouting and hiding, to attacking when she could and reporting back the location of the lance of combat power.

Jane looked at the digital display of the local area, but she had to zoom out to get a better idea of the area. There was no way that she could stand up to any of the mechs, they were way outside of her weight class. She only had the 5cm laser in her right arm and a pair of SRM tubes. That was not much firepower to work with. And the less you thought about the armor her bug mech sported, the better. She scrapped the first few plans that came to mind with depressing speed. She just didn't have the firepower to make them workable, and report back, much less live. She needed to find something, that she was going to be better at, than anyone in this combat lance.

Then she smiled, there was one thing that she had working for her. She had been walking around this spot on the planet every other day for the last few months, and that had to mean that this was something she could use. She quickly plotted all of the data that she had on where the enemy might be and had been so far. When she ran the data backwards and forwards, she saw something. Now she started moving at Flank speed before she cleared her screens out of planning mode. She needed to clean the screen, so that she could concentrate on what she needed to do.

She zigs zagged around one of the large metal obstructions of the drop port and then she was finally behind and then between two large warehouses. She was focused on the opening ahead of her that was between the two warehouses and an open area on the edge of the drop port. It was the perfect spot if you wanted to emplace a long-ranged gun to cover a huge amount of space. But it was not of such a high value, that you would put a mech there to cover it. Or at least that was what she was hoping. Ahhh the plans of mice and men. She had no idea what she would do if God laughed at her, or what she would do if that demon Murphy came out of his workshop to say hi to her. It was the only plan that she had to work with.

####

Jane felt her body lean to one side as her mech made the corner at full speed. She had to do a minor adjustment to her mech's posture. It was when she felt her mech's feet start to slide on the ground because of how tight she was trying to make that turn at so high of a speed. She was already moving as fast as her Mech could go and there was nothing she could do to increase her ground speed. All she could do was drop her head a little, so that she can literally chase the roadrunner down the gun barrel.

She was rewarded by her run and her choice of cover as she came around the huge building at her mech's top speed. She saw her target, a Scorpion tank with its 50mm cannon. It was pointed to cover the open expanse of land that needed to be covered. The mass and metal of the huge warehouses had kept the Wasp's approach covered. The tank had forgotten about keeping fully 360-degree alert when fighting in a built-up area. Fighting in a city was hard, but getting good data from your sensors in a battle around an active drop port? That was 10 times harder with all of the powerful engines and heavy movement in a confined area.

The light tank's crew was not asleep, just surprised. Still, it was able to both fire first and hit first of the two combatants. That was thanks to the turret spinning so fast to bring the charging light Mech under its main gun. When Jane fires, she puts her 5cm laser and both of the smoke trailing SRMs right into the back engine grill of the Scorpion. Just like that, the light tank lost almost every bit of armor off the armor covered engine and fuel tank.

Quickscell, as a company, didn't have a good reputation on making quality tanks, mechs, or anything else that carried their makers marks. This Scorpion was one of the reasons for that bad reputation. They would sell to anyone who had the money and the dropships to pick up the product at the factory's main entrance. Most of the time after a unit received something from Quickscell. They would have to spend many hours and not a little money, before the "new" combat vehicles could go into combat and not kill the crew before they could see an exchange of gun fire. This Scorpion had issues with its SitiCide 100 liquid fueled engine and fuel pump, that had plagued this crew and its hidden support teams.

When Jane hit the armor over the aft part of the tank with her 5cm Laser? It behaved as you would expect, and the armor melted off at a rate that would protect the crew as well as items like the Basix 200 Comms and the OptiSight 12 Targeting Tracking System. If that had been the only hit, then the tank crew could have gotten a second shot at one of the lightest mechs seen in combat. But two heavy warheads found the same now weakened armor plate while it was still hot from the focused energy of the 5cm laser.

Those two warheads combined did almost as much damage as the single 5cm lasers. Where the laser "just" cut or overheated the armor to get it to separate from the tank's hull. The SRMs also had a blast and concussion effect on what remained of the armor plate covering that part of the low-cost tank and even cheaper made light tank. So besides blasting more armor off, it also shot armor shards into the aft equipment bay of the Scorpion. That same bay that held the engine, fuel tanks, and the fuel pump that all were at best faulty.

The 2 hot shards of metal that had been the back side of the armor plate of the tank came flying through the engine compartment. They moved like hot metal knifes threw the overly tight compartment. One hit the SitiCide engine, but not hard enough to "mission kill" the tank. That title would fall to the second glowing orange hot hunk of sharp metal. This fragment bounced off the top of the engine and caught some of the leaking fuel coming from the faulty high speed fuel pump. This caused a fire to burn that was both very hot and somewhat short lived, but it burned up all of the free oxygen in that area.

The metal kept flying and it knocked the fuel pump halfway off the top of the ICE engine all while it was pumping more and more raw fuel into the air. This was not what would kill the tank, at least not directly. The inner bulkheads were made just as cheaply as the rest of the tank, only this bulkhead was not made of armor steel. And that hot metal cut through the cheapest made metal in the Inner Sphere like it was butter. The vacuum behind that passing hot metal pulled a lot of that vaporized fuel into the next area of the light tank better than any fuel pump made by Quickscell. Okay maybe that was not such a great example.

The next compartment held all of the ammunition for the Deloeon 5 autocannon and the low powered ammunition for the bow mounted 20mm heavy machine gun. The lone long metal shard should not have been that much of a problem with modern ammunition. But that hard metal was super-heated, and it was pulling in a large amount of atomized fuel into the ammunition compartment. When the hot shard became wedged into one of the feed racks for the Deloeon, the fuel air mix caught up with it.

Now when something like this happens intentionally on the battlefield it is called a fuel air bomb. When it happens within the confines of a tank? Now it is just called a dead tank crew. A dead crew that will not need caskets, much less an open casket. The fuel air mixture ignited and in less than a single heartbeat for a teenager about to get their first kiss. The ammunition went into very unfriendly mode under the heat, blast, and pressure of the enclosed fuel air bomb. The turret, complete with cannon and basket were blown off the top of the turret like a dropship on overthrust. It was like watching something with ACME printed on the side.

Jane was surprised how fast the tank came apart under her weapons fire. She was so surprised that she stopped moving to watch something she didn't know was possible, much less had she seen it happen before. While she was watching the light tank's hull shooting flames out of the turret ring like it was some fireworks set off by a god, LRMs started falling around her. These new fireworks got Jane moving again as she now fought to stay alive.

#####

It took longer than she would have thought possible to get away from the 65ton Catapult that had surprised her. The other pilot was good, knew the local area, and it also had jump jets. Oh, and it had about 6 times the fire power and with longer ranged weapons. Just when Jane thought that she was out of danger. Next thing she knows it drops 30 LRMs all around her. But thankfully only a dozen hit her, and they were spread all over her torso, legs, and arms. When her computer said that she was without a doubt out of range of the Catapult. She did a fast turn and gave the other mech a single finger salute before being given cover by a nearby warehouse.

She took time to hide, so that the heavy mech would leave the area before she started looking at what her next move might be. Jane was working her way around and towards an access point that would control the access to the drop port, and she was looking for something to kill. She doesn't want to tangle with the Catapult or the smaller but still larger than her mech, the cappie made Vindicator. She was almost there when she intercepted a message to the command center. It would seem that some of the Civilians were helping by being spotters or scouts for the groups fighting for Duke Terry. The report only said that a tank was heading towards the Sale Warehouse.

She was willing to bet some armor plate, that the reported tank was the second Scorpion tank that she had seen at the start of all of this mess. She kept making her way in that direction, but she kept under cover as much as possible. She would freeze whenever she would see a flash of light or hear a loud discharge of possible weapons fire. It was slowing her down, but it was the way that it was trained for her and her mech to stay useful on the battlefield longer. When she would not read any weapons impacts or there would not be a follow up flash or crack. She would press on towards where off worlders and even locals would buy and sell weapons. She was almost not surprised when it was reported that the light tank was set up to cover the set of doors that lead out to the general public access way on that building.

When she was about a kilometer from that building, she crossed a set of tracks that her scouting warbook said was a 97 percent match for a Scorpion class light tank. She kept one eye or ear on the seismic sensors, and she keeps the other eye out where she could see the tracks. She was still keeping between cover naturally provided by the space port.

Jane kept looking to work out a way to attack this reported tank. After her first run in with a tank of this class. She was very aware that if she got hit to many times with that Deloeon cannon. She would be getting a free ride into the air. Of all of the mech training she had undergone, punching out on an ejection seat had been the worst. She so didn't want to find out what the differences were between training and real life in that course.

The building was over 500 meters long, and about 50 meters wide, and was first built to be a backup command bunker and built to take a near hit from a dropship having landing issues. Or as they say in the space transportation business, dropship falling down and going boom. There was no way that her light mech would be able to bull her way through a building built so damage resistant as this one was. That left her going left, or right down the sides of the heavy building. She was shifting to try making a run going off to her right when she looked up.

She had gotten some data from her sensors, but even more data had come from reports that she was eavesdropping on. These reports were coming in every few minutes and they seemed to show that the tank was not moving and was still near the main building entrance. While she was looking up there was a loud report and huge flash of an autocannon firing. With this new data, she pulled the straps tighter around her body. She was about to do something that she only had done about two dozen times in her whole short life. And most of them had been done today, and all of them had been spur of the moment and not planned.

With those final checks done, she walked her mech back away from the building by about ten long steps. With a deep breath she pushed her mech up to flank speed. When it looked like she was about to do an mech size imitation of a bug on a window, she hit the jump jets. Now with flames coming out of her mechs legs and back she rose into the air. One part of her mind noted that the top of the building she was flying over needed to have its roof resurfaced. When the edge of the hard building almost went out of sight from her cockpit. She knew that she was not going to be doing one of the famed and dangerous Death from Above attacks onto the light tank.

While she was still falling and before her jump jets fired again to arrest her fall. She fired her 5cm arm mounted laser. She would have smiled at seeing that the laser hitting the well sloped bow of the tank, but she had too much to do to keep from doing a face plant into the hard concrete. While she was feathering her jump jets, to make a landing instead of a crash. She hit the seldom used switch that would flip her right arm mounted laser, so that she would have unobstructive use of that arm and hand. She was about to be too close to the enemy to risk losing her most powerful single use weapon. Things were about to get really close and personal. With an evil smile on her face, her mech's knees and hips flexed as they took the falling mass of her mech. After all they were called jump jets and not hover jets or flying jets.

###########

Duke Terry had been following those same reports that Jane had been, and she also had not been transmitting her location or intent on the radios. Any local connected in any way to the planet's militia would know what radio channels they liked to use. There had not been time to come up with a different set of frequencies. This was one of many things that she was going to have a meeting about when this was all over with her staff.

Terry came around the corner to the huge building that she had taken so much effort to get the needed modifications done and then keep filled. She was expecting to take out some kind of tank in this area. She thought it might be a light tank of some kind from the reports she was getting, but there was only one way to find out. That was to step out and as they used to say in the old west, she would need to stand and deliver. So, with both sets of her autocannons up and ready to fire she stepped into the opening and stopped dead in her tracks.

What she saw, was something she never would have bet on seeing in a million years. Right in the main entrance to the sales building was a Wasp class mech and a Scorpion light tank locked into close quarters combat. The light mech looked to be one of her 1As, but it had the long barrel of the autocannon in its powerful hands, both of them. Those mech hands were using the barrel as leverage and it had lifted the tank's front half off the ground. The bow of the tank was so far off the ground, that the Wasp was delivering repeated kicks to the underside armor of the tank. Every few seconds there was aloud Clang! as another kick to the thin anti-mine armor of the light tank was delivered. It was something right out of a Tri-vid. It would have almost been funny, if those kicks had not more than likely have killed the crewmembers of that tank.

Duke Terry walked her machine closer to the two combatants, and she could tell when the other mech warrior noticed her approach. The leg being picked up and then stopping before it struck the bottom of the light tank again, but it was still swinging in midair was a dead giveaway of the Duke being spotted.

When the head of the light mech turn towards her. Terry activates a private laser com between the two mechs. "Are you done yet? We have other bad guys to string up by….their private parts today. I think the one you've got is done."

A young woman's voice comes back threw the speakers in Terry's mechs. "Ah…. Yes ma'am. Just making sure this guy knows better next time. If you spare the rod, you will spoil the child as my mother used to say."

Terry almost snorted in amusement and cried at the same time, when she thought about her now dead son. "I'm not up on the duty roster, and I don't want to let the Councilmen know that I'm on the battlefield. So, who are you and give me a sit rep."

Jane Lock reported her name, rank, and unit she belongs to. She told the supreme leader of the planet about the ambush on the other side of the space port and the loss of her wing woman in that same ambush. She even covered the stoving in of the other mech's cockpit while it had been laying defenseless on the ground. Jane had to take a few breaths before she could continue with her briefing, but she got threw it without her voice catching to many times.

Duke Terry was thinking long and hard about what she had just been told by the young woman. That was a lot of heavy firepower in this one smallish area. Her 65ton JagerMech matched the Councilmen's Catapult, but she only had a damaged Wasp as back up and wing man. Then again all she had to do was keep them occupied until other help could arrive. And the longer they were allowed to move freely, the more damage all of that weight of metal could do. But how could she do it? Then Duke Terry thought about the detailed report that Mech warrior Lock had just given her. Slowly this gave her an outline of an idea.

#########

Jane moved, stopped and then moved again, just like she had been trained to do. She was scouting in what was called "movement to contact" formation. It was hoped that moving like this would keep her alive long enough to report back to headquarters what she had found by bumping into them. She was closing in on the spot where she had last seen the enemy Heavy mech. Just as Duke Terry had asked her to do.

Jane looked at her magscan and it was as flat as a well-groomed lawn. Well, it was as flat as one after her systems matched what they had recorded in this area before the fighting started today. She had to fight to keep her breathing level as she passed the spot that she had last seen the Catapult. She also had to fight to keep from looking over her shoulder even once. The systems in her mech were sensitive enough, that her head and cockpit would move to follow her own real head turning. That would have ruined the planned surprise, and thus the need to keep from looking over her shoulder. Humans have a need to see stuff with their own eyes and not just see something projected on their display screens.

All of Jane's sensors were quiet and they were not giving her any hints on what to do next. She was alone on the pointy end of the stick, just like a scout was supposed to be. After looking at the MFD that held her path she noticed one spot on the display. She looked closer, well if he was not in the last place that she saw him. Then maybe he was hiding out in the first place that they had crossed paths. She didn't turn or try to contact Duke Terry. She just adjusted her course and heads closer to one side of the drop port.

Duke Terry was watching the light mech move. It was hard to keep her larger mech in step with the lighter one. One was that the young mech warrior was not trained in this type of movement. So, it was all on the Duke's shoulders to know how to use the other mechs movements to help cover her own movements that could be picked up on seismic scans. She had no idea where the young woman was going after the expected place to find the other mech had been a bust. When the light mech started moving again, Terry could tell that the other jock had an idea of where she wanted to go. All she could do was follow the light mech and keep letting it be bait, in a very dangerous game.

Jane fought down a smile as her magscan picks up a large metal object that was not supposed to be there, and it had not been there the last time she had been on the other side of that building. This time her movements in her light mech were not that fluid. She was dragging her right leg, like it had taken damage in some previous battle. She kept doing that for the last few hundred meters on the line that would draw any attackers like it was honey to bear. There was now blood in the water as Jane transferred from scout like bait to full on bait.

Terry got very tense when she saw the light mech start to drag its leg. That was the sign that she had picked up signs of a target, and she was going to try to draw it out for the Duke's larger and more powerful mech to deal with. Terry looked around and found a good spot that could or at least should keep her out of sight if things went according to her plan. It was not much of a plan, but it was what they had to work with.

The Wasp was gone out of the Duke's line of sight for almost 5 minutes and Terry was expecting the whole world to light up in weapons fire every second of her wait. Then there were flashes in the sky. Terry didn't have to have her mech's systems to tell her that it was a flight of LRMs. Her heart almost stopped at the thought of 30 LRMs pounding on the light mech. Then as the systems counted the numbers of explosions, they stopped at 15.

The enemy mech had only shot half a broadside at the "damaged" enemy mech. Jane had reported that the Catapult had shot at her with 4 or 5 sets of LRMs. But she had no idea of how many missiles were used each time she was fired at. This would have left the Catapult with only 3 or 4 reloads left in each of its Holly 15 Long Range Missile packs. But Terry had that number in her mind only because she assumed that things were too hot for the mech to be pulled out and reloaded somewhere. If she was wrong, this was going to get very bloody.

A few seconds later Terry saw the Wasp coming back her way. It was still limping, but it was covering the ground only a little faster than what the Heavy Class machine could do. Terry had a tight lip look as the range numbers steadily dropped on her displays. Before she could decide when to fire, the enemy mech fired off a brace of six of the 5cm lasers it was packing. "Only" 3 of those 5cm weapons hit the Wasp, and none of them hit the back. Each leg was taking a hit and left arm was soaking up one of those 5cm weapons.

The use of those weapons moved Terry into thinking that she was right about the Catapult being low on missiles. Between the heavy load of 5cm lasers being fired, the running mech now was in a high heat condition. The Catapult was now glowing on Terry's display like a pocket sun. You would not risk such a large heat load if you were looking at fighting another mech, and you had plenty of ammo for your lower heat and longer ranged weapons. There were only one or two reasons that was in "the book" for that type of action. But that didn't mean that someone could do something out of accident or shear spite to mess up someone else's well thought out plans.

Terry already had her arms up that held all of her mech's firepower. She looked down to check the status of her weapons and her ammunition remaining load. With a second flick of her wrist, she activated her radio on broad band for the whole world to hear what she was about to say. Well at least everyone in the drop port, the nearby city, and anyone in low orbit. It might go a little further if someone was able to pump it into a comms re-trans system.

#######

"Eat hot lead, you SOB." Terry yelled into the local airwaves.

As Duke Terry was talking, she took one half step forward to give her a more stable firing position for her many autocannons. She was unloading everything she had at full rating rate of fire. Jane was already dodging to one side to finish clearing the line of fire before Terry had pulled the trigger. She had been moving in such a way that she would mostly be out of the line of fire of the Duke, but there was no way to stay totally out of the way and keep acting the way bait should. It was a fine line and she had pulled it off expertly, even with only a couple of years at the controls of Mechs and workmechs.

Terry had the advantage of surprise and she scored hits with almost all of her first round of shells. She only missed with one of the 50mm and one of the 30mm. The enemy mech was still in a high heat situation, but it was now in a life and death event with the few heartbeats for the heat management systems to work their magic. It fired its right shoulder LRM launcher in reply to Duke Terry's vocal and physical challenge. It was a rushed shot and Terry only took a few hits spread out all around the front of her machine.

The two heavy mechs were a lot alike, both were the same mass and both machines lacked arms. The Catapult carried two LRM 15s and the Jagermech was packing 4 autocannons. Also, both mechs could not get to close to their targets or their weapons and fire control systems would have problems working properly. Both machines were now out in the open for this fight. This was going to be more like a boxing match and not a battle you would expect on a modern battlefield.

They started to walk around in a large circle as they fired away at each other with laser, missiles, and autocannons weapons fire. They were firing away at each other and mostly missing with what they were firing. After the third exchange of weapons fire, the Catapult stopped firing its LRMs. Terry had to fight down a savage grin. If her math was right, the enemy mech was out of long ranged firepower and she was not. She started to try to open the range, so that the other machine could not use its many 5cm lasers against her even by accident.

Jane saw the Duke starting to pull back from the Catapult and she panicked. She thought that something had happened to her planet's leader and for the first time in all of the battles that she had been in today, she broke with the plan. She had been overwatching the battle to make sure that no one came to interfere with the battle or try to attack the duke from behind. Jane hit her jump jets and aimed to distract the other mech. Taking a 20ton mech against even a battle damaged 65ton mech is listed in the 31st century's dictionary as a classic example of a suicide mission.

Terry watched not in horror, but maybe disbelief was a better word. She kept pulling back to stay out of range of the 5cm lasers as she watched a train wreck about to happen. Only she had no idea how much of a train wreck she was about to witness. She was thinking that the young warrior was going to try to do one of the famed Death from Above. Terry was fighting her own overheating issue and had gone back to only shooting single shots out of both of her KWI knockoffs.

Jane brought her mech down behind the larger mech, but due to some bad math. She missed her expected landing area, and the enemy mech was a few to many meters away. That was kind of okay for Jane who was not trying to use the moving larger mech as a landing spot in the first place. She would have loved to have done a DfA, but she was not sure enough of her skills to pull off one of those maneuvers. She hit the ground and ran towards the back of the Catapult like a runner coming out of the blocks in a track and field race.

Jane closed in and she was riding her own high heat curve. She hit the button, not her main trigger, and a pair of SRM's left her mech. And she had kept running up right behind them. The heavy missiles warheads hit the right shoulder of the Catapult and they went to work on the huge shoulder mounted LRM launcher. Before the mech could react, Jane came charging in and landed a pair of hard strikes with her two battle fists. It looked impressive as all get out, there were sparks, flames and even parts of the mech flying all over the place from her battle fists. And as impressive as it looked, it was all show and no go. The only real damage done to the enemy mech was the LRM launcher being taken out of action. The same LRM launcher that was now out of missiles to use.

Then it was the turn of the Catapult's pilot to get a little payback from the small mech's attack. The Catapult was called a chicken walker by friend and foe alike. This was due to the mech's backwards knees, ones that were well like a chicken compared to a human. This let the mech do some things that a "normal" humanoid mech could not do. Just like an ostrich, it could kick backwards. That is if the mech jock was good enough to pull off an attack like this. It would seem that this pilot was good enough, just barely.

The 65ton mech kicked back with its right leg and foot with all the force that a heavy class mech could generate. The strike hits the 20ton mech dead in the center chest. It was like watching a professional kickboxer plant one right into the chest of an 8th grader. The light mech went flying back about a dozen meters from the impact and the pushing effect of the huge mech's feet. One part of Terry's mind was sad and then angry as her brain processed what she was seeing. Instead of pulling back from the other mech, she let it have everything she had. At this range and at a target that was not moving. Well, she put every shell right into the targeted point on the machine. The pair of 30mm shells might not have been the best use of heatsinks, but that was all spilled milk. All six shells hit the same area of the mech that was still working on bringing its kicking leg back under it.

That much damage was too much for the other mech's pilot and gyro to handle. It fell over onto its back like a huge tree after lumber jacks had a go at it. Just as the mech came to a rest. It auto fired the cockpit ejection seat to save the pilot from the catastrophic situation, that they had just found themselves in. Only it just happened that when the Catapult auto fired the ejection seat, it skipped across the ground and into the upturned feet of the Wasp. It was about as bad as you could mentally picture it, and that was even before the ejection seat separated from the pilot and went skywriting in the air over the warehouses.

Duke Terry could not help but wince at the sight and still she could not totally take her eyes off the scene. She had been hoping to capture Eric and put a stop to this nonsense by cutting the head off the proverbial snake. With the mech down, she walked her JagerMech around to see if she can still use the body. While she was walking around the down Wasp, she was able to kind of see into its cockpit. She had no idea if the mech warrior was alive or not from this high point of view. She could only tell that the young woman was not moving, but she hoped that the mech warrior was just knocked out from the fall or kick. She had proven to be worth the cost of her training today and could hold promise for any future growth the militia might undergo.

###########

While Terry was looking down at the sprawled-out form of the light mech, she had forgotten to keep an eye on what was going on around her. Her first warning that she was in trouble was when the sky lights up with a purple-white glow a half second before she was hit. Terry was hit in the back with the Ceres Arms Smasher PPC and most of the Ceres Jaguar LRM 5. Terry was not the best mech warrior the Inner Sphere had ever seen, she spent most of her time working on being the planets and star system's primary leader and on the range. She was barely able to keep her mech on it's feet from the shock of the damage to her mech's back. After a few stumbling steps, she was able to stay on her feet and started trying to move forward as fast as she could. While she started moving in a controlled manner, she looked at the damage read out.

She had taken internal damage on the right arm and both cannons in that location were now out of action. She spent to long looking at the damage on the MFD in her cockpit. Before she could do an arm flip to bring the other mech under fire with her other and last of her arm mounted weapons. She was hit again, and this time she took the damage on the left arm and left back torso. She wanted to cry as the red now outlined the last of her weapons, she was now a weaponless 65-ton moving target. She also was kicking herself for not being faster at doing the arm flip to at least get one barrage fired at her attackers.

One thing about being a mech without any weapons, it lets you focus on just your piloting skills now that you don't have to do little things like firing back at someone trying to kill you. Terry brought her mech up to its flank speed as fast as it could accelerate, and she started looking for some cover. She only looked behind her once to see who was attacking. Her heart sank when she saw that her attacker was the 45ton Vindicator.

She leaned a little too close to a tall wall of one of the nearby warehouses and with a bone jarring thud and crash. She was stuck and she knew that she was about to die as she fought to free her weaponless mech. When she focused on the part of the screen that showed the Confederation made war machine closing in on her, as she watched she jerked her controls in desperation. She was not going to just sit here and be a target for someone to just walk up and kill her. She was not the type of person that would just quietly wait to die. She was going to keep fighting until her last breath. Not once did she think to punch out of her mech on the ejection seat. What she didn't know was that one of the techs had broken it by accident, and it would not work unless she hit both overrides at the same time. So, the manual and auto eject mechanisms were offline.

As she was watching the enemy mech getting closer and closer she realized that the other pilot was playing with her, much like a cat plays with a mouse. Terry could feel her anger rising as the enemy approached using overly slow foot falls to drag out the stress for her. Now she was wishing not only had she kept the 5cm lasers, but that she could have moved them to cover her back. As thousands of different things were going through Duke Terry's head as she fought to free her mech from the huge building. Fate steps in.

The skies light up again and Terry's full attention is drawn to what is going on behind her with a slight wild look in her eyes. She had not noticed, and it seemed like the enemy mech jock had also missed it. But an Enforcer class mech in the Duke's colors came up behind the slowly walking Vindicator. The dark running mech had closed into point blank range and fired it's full weapons load into the back of the Vindicator. The Chiscomp 43 missed, but the Federated autocannon and the ChisComp 32 had no problem finding the target to vent their energy and shells into. The force of the impacts of these hits pushed the 45ton machine and it almost falls on it's face.

Duke Terry could not believe her eyes, that mech should not be there. There were only three pilots that were trained on that particular mech design. Her Ex-husband and her son were dead, and the other pilot was half a planet away on holiday. As she watched the Enforcer came running up on the still standing enemy mech. She could not help but wince as she saw the Enforcer start driving the weapon pods on the end of the arms into the back of the Vindicator like they were battering rams. Only they were not battering rams, they were very hard to find and specialized mech scale weapons. Thankfully only four strikes in total were needed to force the enemy mech's jock to punch out and into the late evening air.

######

Duke Terry watched some of her people use the equivalent of pitch forks to march the Vindicator's pilot to the nearest police station. Near as she could tell the auto eject system had shorted out under the assault on the machine's back armor and it had sent the jock on a short, surprised, and painful ride into the cool air. He had not been on the ground for more than a few seconds before some angry space port employees were on him like a pack of dogs on a peanut butter covered three-legged cat. Terry was thinking that he was just lucky that they didn't use the lines on his parachute to hang him from the nearest lamp post. There was a lot of barely controlled anger out and about.

Her mech was still stuck in the side of one of the warehouses, and it was going to take a lot of heavy equipment to even get it moved. It was going to take a lot more parts and time to get it back into operation. After shutting it down into standby mode, she had to use the emergency ladder to make it to the ground. She was met by the downed Wasp by the other pilot, and she found out who had been piloting the Enforcer. She was one of the backup Wasp pilots. By the time that she had made it to the mech bay and having found nothing to pilot in her area, but still wanting to get into the fight. She had gone looking for something to get into the fight with. Being used to working with the Wasp class, she had forgotten about how fragile the weapons on the larger mech might be when she went hand to hand. She was the backup pilot for the light mech because she was very green. As in, she had been just promoted up from workmechs only two weeks before today.

It had taken both of them to get the damaged hatch to the Wasp's cockpit open. Terry had seen death before, many times before today's battles. It only took a second for the smell to hit her nose and then for it to make its way to her brain. It was the smell of death on a battlefield, and the pilot was dead or so close to it that it would not matter. Not when the body let go like that, and the stink of exposed intestines and other organs filling the small cockpit.

Terry held the younger backup pilot back and crawled into the cockpit to do one last check. The smell almost made Duke Terry gag, but she pushed on into the tight cockpit of the scout mech. She found the open spot between the helmet and shoulders when she reached down, and she didn't pull back at the touch of cold skin. Terry held her hand on the exposed skin of the mech warrior more than long enough to see if there was a heartbeat of any kind. There was not, and Terry made her way back out of the wrecked mech's cockpit.

She met the eyes of the woman waiting for her and she gave a negative head shake, and she could see the other woman's eyes get wet at the news. Terry looked around her and something came to mind. "I wonder how the rest of the guys are doing?"

#######

Mech warrior Kevin William was the sole male on the guard shifts this week. The MC was dominated by women and males had to fight very hard to get the best or most prestigious jobs, like say being a mech warrior. He had to work twice as hard, all because he could pee standing up. Duke Terry might have been a woman. But she was very well known about putting her foot down on any form of favoritism in the defensive forces on the planet, or anywhere else it might raise its ugly head. Still more and more of that attitude was seeping into everyday life on the planet as more and more contact was made with the MC.

Kevin was aware that there were some within the government that wanted to swing back to a totally male dominated society. That would take it back to the bad old days when it was like it had been before Duke Terry had come to power and the increased contact with the MC. Kevin thought they were just as nuts as the ones that thought women should only be the ones allowed in the leadership positions of the planet. Still, he was now the prime pilot of a battlemech. It might only be a light Javelin 10N, but it was still a battlemech and not a workmech. Still being in a workmech was better than being in a grunt position with a rifle that would have been his only options before Duke Terry had come to power. He had no idea where Duke Terry had been able to get this Federated Suns designed mech, and he didn't care. It was "his" and it was fully functional. To Mech warrior Kevin William this was just another mark in his book that whatever Duke Terry was doing? It was the right way to do things and everyone else was just trying to undercut her because of how good she was at the job.

Kevin had been checking out some reports that had come in reporting odd heavy weapons fire where there should not be any. After some checks it was found to be weapons fire that the local military was not responsible for. So far, he had not found anything. But he had planned on staying out here as long as he could looking for "something". The more hours he had at the controls of a real mech, the better he would be and the higher he could be rated for getting some extra range time. At least range time was cheap for this mech. They made the missiles that the twin 6 pax SRM used on planet by the ton.

Kevin was back tracking from another dead end, when a faint radio message leaked threw his speakers. The Fuel Cell engine factory was under attack by persons unknown. The Fuel Cell engine factory was another one of the things that Duke Terry had brought to this world. As with many other planets, someone on those planets could hand make things like ICE or Fuel Cell type engines. There were always too few of them, they took too long to build, and they were very low powered for most large scale uses like workmechs or large cargo movers.

What Duke Terry had done was to gather as many people as possible with the right skills, and then worked on getting them what they needed to make more, faster, and larger Fuel Cell engines. Currently they could only make engines good for passenger cars, vans, and up to medium sized cargo trucks on this planet. Still every few months an update to the factory would be done and a new and more powerful engine type would start to be built. Kevin thought that soon they would be able to make replacement engines for the slowly growing number of workmechs the planet had in operation. What he didn't know was that a small but growing number of those Fuel Cell engines were going off planet to help speed along the growth of industries on this planet. That also was one of the reasons that currently the factory was under attack.

It didn't take long for Kevin to have his mech moving along at a solid 97kph. When the ground threatens to slow him down. His Rawlings 95 jump jets would cut the delay by 180 meters or so every time he fired them off. He did take the time to let higher command know about the attack, and he was disturbed to find out about the general attack going on around a large percentage of the planet's surface. Command told him to support the security forces at the factory and report back when the threat was contained.

He also was getting a running update from the factory on their situation. The first attack had been by infantry carried in some cargo trucks. They had surprise working for them, and the attacking infantry had made it almost into the factory production area before they were stopped and then pushed back to the main gate. That was the first alert that Kevin had heard thanks to the attackers taking out the long-range comms before they were pushed out. Now on full alert, the factory staff had put every one that could use a weapon into the defense of the factory.

By now there had been a second attack and this likewise had been beaten off. It had been another infantry assault, but they could see threw emplaced sensors that another and heavier attack was coming. Kevin had to fight the urge to lean forward to try to milk just a little more speed out of his mech when he had been given his last update.

When he was still over a kilometer from the factory, the third attack was forming up to go in. By now he was close enough to get a live feed of the attack, and his heart sunk as he saw how the attack force was made up. He could just make out three huge off world made cargo trucks that might be holding more infantry. But the reason for his anxiety and him almost having a miss step in his running machine was what else was on the battlefield. The heavy firepower and support of this attack was in the form of a pair of Flea class mechs and a Pegasus class hover tank.

######

The attack was being led by the heaviest unit in this attack force, a 35ton hover tank. That hover tank out massed Kevin's mech by 5 tons, had a matching set of large SRM launchers, and those dozen tubes of SRMs were backed up by a 5cm laser. The hover tank also was faster and more heavily armored than his Javelin class mech. Then there were the pair of light mechs supporting the tank in this attack. These were not good odds, but as he watched the number shifted his way in just a little bit in the blink of an eye.

The hover tank led the attack crossing an open field heading toward a battered part of the outer wall of the factory's main defensive line. When it looked like the hover tank was about to get into firing range, it….fell. One second it was charging forward, and the next if fell into a hidden trench. The whole tank fell from view into what looked like a anti mech trench or tiger pit. Kevin had no idea what happened at first and neither had the two supporting mechs. They advanced for a few more meters before pulling back.

This delay in launching the attack allowed Kevin to make it to a low ridge overlooking the open field. With his mech's enhanced systems they let him zoom into the area that the battle was taking place. Now he could see what had happened to the hover tank from a better angle. The hover tank had charged over what had looked like an open field. A hover tank works by riding a cushion of air that let it cover any open ground, mud, and even water at very high speed. But what it needed was something for that air cushion to push against to lift the weight of the tank.

The trench had been built many years ago, even before this factory had been first set up in the hollowed-out cliff face. They had used old fishing nets and covered the open space in nets that were squares that were meant to catch a variety of local fish larger than a man's thigh. Over the old fishing net went a layer of very large leaves that would act as mulch for a layer of grass growing over the nets for the next few years. When the air cushion had pushed into the rotting leaves and grass covered fishing nets it held…for a second or two.

Then the mulch had given way and the air cushion had nothing to hold it when the air suddenly went to the bottom of the trench that was deep enough to have hidden an Atlas. The hover tank had nosed dived into the trench about as fast as it had been traveling across the field. As the hover tank fell into the dark trench. The hemp fiber fishing net was sucked up into the liquid fueled internal combustion engine powered fan blades faster than you could follow with the human eye. It was like a string from a rug meeting a vacuum cleaner for the first time, it was sucked up deeper into the workings of the hover tank the longer the blades turned.

Kevin knew at some level that the tank was out of the battle. He tried to make a mental note to keep an eye in that direction until this battle was over, just in case. Now that left the two mechs for him to have to deal with and Kevin looked at them next. The warbook said these mechs were Fleas and one part of his mind knew that they were made in the FWL. Then his mind started working down the facts. Like most mech jocks worth their salt, they knew details about a lot of different mechs. As they moved higher in rank, sometimes this skill got rusty. They also tended to keep up only on the mechs that they would or could see on "their" battlefield. And that was why having an updated warbook was so important for a mech. It was doubly important out on the edge of the house space because of the sheer number of different mechs you might run up against.

The Flea was a 20ton machine that had the same engine as his heavier Javelin, and this alone was going to make them faster than his mech. The Flea would have thinner armor and the pair of 5cm lasers were a very near match for one of his 6 pack missile launchers, but there were two sets of them. The flamer was more of an afterthought weapon, and really only good for fighting infantry or heavier tanks in a built-up area. In the end he was going against two mechs that combined had near his firepower, more armor between them, and they both were faster than him. He needed something to even the odds, and then his eyes moved along the road from the main road to the front entrance of the factory and an idea took hold.

Kevin had been told that radio communication might be compromised in an open transmission to "Forces loyal to Duke Terry". Kevin was new to the planetary military, and he had not been in the military game for that long. He had a good idea on what not to do because he had a little more common sense than the gods gave a goose. He slowly picked his way down the ridge and tried to come in behind the attackers. That should have been harder than it was, and it would have been, if he had not correctly guessed how the enemy was going to launch their next attack.

Kevin broke through the tree line only about 100m from where the heavy cargo trucks turned infantry carriers were parked. He only thought for a second about firing some of his SRMs into the stationary targets made by those huge trucks. But he kept is fingers off the triggers, he had bigger fish to fry with his limited supply of missiles. Now clear of the tall trees he pushes his mech up to flank speed with his targets fully in view. It would not take him long to start closing the distance on the lighter mechs forming up to attack the factory.

The Fleas were faster, but they had to cross some open land at the angle to try to throw off any defenders aim. Kevin knew that they had to cut back at a sharp angle to make it to what had turned out to be the bridge over the mech trench. That was not the only way for them to get over the anti mech trench according to "the book". Kevin knew that the Fleas didn't have jump jets. So, there was the climb down and then climb up option. But ohh wait the Fleas don't have arms or hands. So that left them using the bridge as the fastest and safest option, and Kevin was moving as fast as he could to reach it.

If there were any drivers sitting around with the trucks? They could have radioed a warning about the mech coming up the backside of the twin Fleas. Only no one had the time to radio a warning, they were too busy working on wounded infantry. Kevin had no idea that this happened behind him, he just kept hoping and praying that the trailing mech would not turn around to early. All he could do was keep charging up the road. All he could hope was that the Fleas would not notice him as a threat machine coming up behind them, and the defenders would not shoot at him thinking he was just more support for the attackers. Talk about a catch 22 option in a plan you forgot to consider.

Kevin was so surprised that he almost jumped out of his ejection seat when the alarm sounded to let him know, that he had just entered the outer range bracket for his twin 6 pack SRM launchers. He smiled under his helmet, and he kept going. The Fleas were now on the road, but they had not yet pushed up their speed up to flank speed. Kevin was still making up ground on the two lighter mechs. When the range was down to the short bracket? Kevin pulled the trigger and 12 fat bodied short ranged missiles left his mechs huge launchers.

The range was so short that 10 of the dozen missiles hit the trailing mech. Then Kevin came charging up the smoke trails of a dozen fat and extremely fast missiles. The downside of that charge was that it cut down on the effectiveness of his visible range system without him taking the time to adjust his sensors. Just before he reached the trailing Flea, he saw the missiles impact the 20ton machine with ten orange and red flowers. He was about to go with Plan B and kick the other machine, but soon it was falling forward onto its pointed bird like nose. With the first mech on the ground, Kevin kept his speed up and closed onto the last enemy mech.

Kevin was now clear of the smoke, and he could clearly see the next target. It was a little over halfway across the bridge over the anti-mech trench. He was surprised that the other mech had stopped, and then his heart almost stops when the 20ton mech started to slowly turn and face him. The countdown clock for his missiles to be reloaded was still running. Not for the first time he was thinking about how long it took for those missile systems to cycle to get another dozen missile rounds from the magazine into the devices mounted on his huge chest.

He could do this level of math in his head, but one part of him knew that his mechs only weapons would not be ready to fire in time. Then he bites down on his mouth guard and got ready for what was about to happen. This was when Kevin was hit by two 5cm lasers on the right torso and left leg, and still, he didn't stop his run. The notes that he had read while training, had said that a Javelin should not get into physical conflict with another mech. Kevin was just hoping that this was just a reference about getting physical with a heavier or like mass mech.

The Javelin was more than a bit nose heavy, and that had caused more than a few issues for its pilot. The frame was so small, and each six-pack SRM launcher was so large that the mech had a chest that was the size of some mechs that were almost twice its mass. The huge chest of the Javelin hit the lighter mech first and at an odd angle. The bird like legs of the Flea, helped it in many ways during combat. If the Flea had been hit by another mech. The torso should have flexed down and lowered its center of gravity so that it would help keep on its feet.

That was where the odd design of the Javelin came in. When Kevin hit the other mech with the huge chest, it shoved the 20ton mech's torso up. Kevin's systems alarm told him that he could fire again, and he pulled the primary trigger to fire off both missile launchers. Maybe it was the running, the chest-to-chest crash, and to much adrenaline supplied by the pilot. Kevin watched as 10 of his 12 SRMs went sky writing off behind the other mech to land somewhere in the tree line parallel to the factory he was trying to protect.

Then Kevin was reminded about the flamer mounted on the center torso of the enemy mech. Flames came roaring up around his cockpit and in that second Kevin filled his mech shorts and it was not with coolant fluid from his cockpit. Kevin reacted without thinking and used both of his mechs overly small arms and punched/pushed at the enemy mech with everything he had. That was enough to end this part of the battle.

The Flea was off balanced, and its center of gravity was all out of whack. If the mech had arms they would have been windmilling like a keystone cop. Without that reaction to help counter the moving mass of the push and gravity. No one would know if that windmilling would have stopped the Flea from starting to fall backwards off the bridge and into the deep concrete lined trench. All Kevin could do was watch, and the mech was moving like it was in slow motion, as the mech slowly went ass over tea kettle into the dark bottom of the trench.

Kevin's head came up as the sound of missiles went racing over his head. He tracked the sound and the data displayed on his HUD. Fountains of dirt started rising around the Flea that he had shot from behind. It had looked like the light mech had tried to stand up, but it stopped moving as soon as the dirt fell back onto the ground. The factory had a pair of LRM 10 turrets, but that was pretty good shooting for what amounted to iron sites. The missiles had landed close enough to scare the other mech jock into powering down his machine.

Kevin moved closer to the down mech and watched as many people that look the worst for wear in the tree line started moving around. But they were out of range of Kevin's SRMs and the two LRMs launchers from the factory. He watched them load up bodies, both mobile and on stretchers into the huge trucks before they drove off. Kevin didn't want to risk an enemy mech at his rear, it was powered down but who knew if the pilot would power it back up and try to take him down. With things now calmed down, Kevin radioed back to base with an update on the damage done to the factory by the attack. He didn't cover the damage done to the defenses or the damage done to the attackers. He was not surprised that he had been ordered to stay right where he was until further notice.

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Terry tells Robert about the loss of most of her bulldog and missile carriers crews early in the attempted change of government. Someone firebombed the duty barracks or thrown them at the crewmember's homes as their first moves in their attack. Not many of the crews were outright killed in the attacks, but many of them were hurt and so were a lot of their families in the cases of the home attacks. No one could prove who had been involved in those firebombing attacks, but there were a lot of people looking for them. And a lot of those people doing the looking, were not "legal" law enforcement officers of any kind.

######

By dawn the next day, and after a long day and night of attacks that got gradually smaller and smaller as the hours ticked by. Eric was reported spotted by people who were paid or had volunteered to keep an eye out for him. It had not taken long to work out the Catapult pilot was not Eric. Who it was, was anyone's guess, but the best bet was on a pirate…er unbonded mercenary. The only thing Duke Terry's people had access to had been the legs and the hands to use as identification. Everything else that was left was just so much red biomatter that had to be cleaned up with a sponge.

Eric and a group of about ten others were seen heading toward the ComStar compound early in the morning. They were not rolling heavy, having only hover APCs and a few up armored flatbed trucks with SRMs, but they were rolling fast. Terry redirected all of the troops that she could to this location, even if it put some areas at risk for more attacks.

She was not going to let him get away, and she would move heaven or earth to keep that mental promise. Eric had made a huge blunder and after the attacks had started on over a third of the planet. He had made a public notice that he was "relieving" Terry of the duties of a Duke. He had thought that his forces had her locked up in the disabled command center, when in fact she had already been seen by a small but quickly growing number of non-militia members moving around. That pre-recorded public announcement had not gone over quite as well as he had expected that it would, when he had come up with the idea. It would seem, that Eric had been surrounded by people that thought like him or told him only what he wanted to hear. After living in an echo chamber for so long, he had believed his own press. This official statement came back to bite him very hard in a place he didn't want it to, less than an hour after it had started broadcasting. He had been very surprised when someone had gotten onto his compound and had firebombed his limo.

As soon as some of the local militia had showed up at the ComStar compound. The gates were slammed shut in their faces and the phone company had moved their own guard force to the walls of the compound with surprising speed. It was almost like they had been very close by and waiting for the right time to show their weapons. Eric had been able to get inside the compound by the time this happened, but he lost almost all of his lieutenants to do it.

About half of those lieutenants had been captured alive, and they stayed that way to be transported back to the command center where they were under heavy guard. She did not start the first legal action against them until a few weeks before Copeland had returned to this star system. She had been using how those Lieutenants were treated, to act as a wedge to get ComStar to release Eric to her. There were not many ways to get leverage over the interstellar phone company, but she would take any small one she could grasp.

She could not delay the trial by too much longer, not after the detailed casualty list was made public along with the preliminary report that listed off the damage done in the attempted change of government. Every factory, mine, and storehouse had been damaged in some way or the other in the fighting. The damage to the space port and city was comparatively light, but very visible to the largest concentration of people on the planet. Besides the loss of life, every one of her hard to acquire tanks, mechs, and most other heavy weapons had been damaged or made non mission capable in just a few days of fighting.

It was only by a stroke of luck that the aerospace fighters were not damaged in this little civil war. They were on patrol or had been able to launch and not get caught on the ground. Being worried that this was just the opening move of an invasion from off world. They had taken up position to provide high CAP over the space port and planet. If things had not shifted her way, she would have called them down for some close air support faster than you can say, big hammer.

Even with the six damaged but recovered mechs and the six tanks that had been smuggled on to her planet by the councilman and lost to her forces. They were not going to help that much repairing all of the damage to the planet's defenses in the short term. Most of the tanks were junk in more than one way. The J Edgar and the Pegasus were the only ones that were not thought of as a waste of money or junk when they were new. The rest of the recovered tanks and other heavy weapons were going to be used for parts to help with repairs. What was left of their hulks were going to be put in storage for any rainy day or good idea fairy that might come flapping around.

Duke Terry had made sure that the local militia commander had not given anyone any grief about non militia keeping the two Quasit security mechs, or any other weapons they recovered during the fighting. Besides giving her some points with one of her closest supporters, who had captured those Militia mechs. It also would show that if you supported her, you would be rewarded. Besides keeping what you killed had been ingrained into the local population even before the 1st SW.

They might be 45ton machines, but Duke Terry would rather have a 30ton "real" mech of almost anything. She still would be able to call on those security mechs, if she needed to. All without having to use the militia's budget to maintain them or try to find spare parts to keep them somewhat in working order. She also would be able to tap any worthwhile pilots they might train to pilot them when she got some replacement battlemechs. Win/Win/Win for Duke Terry.

She was hoping to get the Firestarter and the locust back into the field not long after the rest of her "normal" command was back in operation. They were going to have to scrap one of the two Flea class mechs to get one back up into fighting trim. Finding parts for the rare FWL made machine would be hard, but not as hard as it would have been a few years ago. At least not with the amount of trade going on between the FWL and the MC for the last few years.

She had seen the trap that the CC had used when selling or sending support in the form of Vindicator class machines. She was hoping that she would be able to part out the Vindicator mech and undercut the CC's prices but still get top C-bill for the slightly used parts. Well, the parts that she could not use for her own people's needed repairs. She was very tempted to just melt down the Catapult and use the metal to make a huge hand jester visible from the main gate of the ComStar compound. She knew that she wouldn't do something like that, life is cheap in this universe but not battlemechs. And a 65ton fire support mech was hard to find this far from a major production center. If it came down to brass tacks? She would have it parted out and sold to make a nice down payment for a Marauder that MMM was turning out a lot faster than she remember that they could a few years ago.

She was still slowly rebuilding from the civil war, but her heart was not into it. That is until Robert and his company sent her a message, about being on his way back to her system with items to trade to her. It was like someone had given her a battery replacement just by reading the short message. She was fully back into her "true" form an hour after the coded HPG message had been in her hands. She had no idea that the only time that message had been in any ComStar facility, had been when it was printed out on her planet.

He had told her that he was going to trade a damage 50ton mech for items that her people could produce. That did not mean that it was going to be easy for her to come up with the required payment. It was a lot of money but not as much as it could be, because the mech was not currently operational. Because of the damage, it could not fall under the budget of the planetary militia by law to oversee. The good part was that her planet had lots of farms and ranches to pull from, to make the desired payment method. And the Hercules was a huge cargo ship just made to carry low mass and high bulk items like this planet could make.

She spent the next month, after getting the alert from Robert, to buy the items on Copeland's attached wish list. There had been two problems with this work, one was finding places to store everything that she had been buying. The second one, was that she had to do the buying without driving up the cost for her and other people that now needed the same items but did not have her deep pockets to compete. Oh, number three was that she would need to protect the purchases she or friends of friends were making for her on the sly.

The idea of Robert coming back got her moving again. She now was visiting every damage site at least every few days to be briefed and shown the progress of the repairs. Her renewed energy level infused everyone around her, and more work was being done than when she was in a funk after the attack. Very quickly most of the repairs to the infrastructure were completed, and the factories and mines were soon back into full production. The repairing and replacing of weapons and other off world supplied items were going to take a lot longer to get back to normal. They were pushed behind on any plans to expand or improve output those facilities had in the works. In other words, it was just another Tuesday on the edge of explored space.

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Now that Robert and his dropships were here? The warehouses and storage areas that Duke Terry had been using started to empty at the rate of hundreds of tons an hour. It took three days just to get the outlying storage points emptied of products. Robert had almost 25,000 tons of stuff that he was looking to pick up, and a large and growing population that needed to be supported on New Circe. While Terry was sending all of the "stuff" that she had been stockpiling, to pay for her new mech or parts supply. Robert had been doing other deals with the locals, to pick up more.

Robert was using local supplied bank notes and C-bills to buy items on his wish list. Still with the huge buys going on, it started to drive up the cost locally for the supplies he was taking off the market. Duke and her contacts had been working behind the scenes, so that it would not cause major problems after Robert and his ships left. Then again, he was dumping a boat load of money into the local economy from many different infusion point locations. What was called hard currency was very hard to find, in this part of space. Much less in the amounts of hard currency that Robert and his people were dumping to fill that Mammoth and cargo Union class dropships.

Terry and Robert were able to spend a lot of time together, and even half a dozen security people from the dropships were moved into Duke Terry's place. This was done all so that Robert could spend more time with Terry and less time traveling between her place and the dropships. They spent a lot of time just traveling around about half the planet as a group. They were sightseeing and checking out the weapon and other factories, that Terry had put together over the last few years and a few other locations she wanted to show off. The damage to these outlying sites were barely visible even to a trained eye like Roberts and Terrys.

Robert could see why her people were so devoted to her. She was moving Heaven and Earth to not only raise her people up, but to make it so that they could also be as self-sufficient as possible. She still had a long way to go, but she had big plans and she was pushing them into physical being as best she could. Maybe they were too big of plans, even for her lifetime sized plans. She had been planning on a few replacements to carry on her longer ranged plans, but the recent attacks had put up more than a few small roadblocks to that idea. Now she was starting to draw up more radical plans to help her people. But the idea of who her people were had been cut down by a good bit.

Jess put together a briefing on what was going on in the rest of the Inner Sphere, reference the new invasion Terry had first warned them about. It was made up with a lot of the information about the invaders that MMM and some others had right. Jess had dumped the data that they knew was just crap. After all it was not like anyone was going to get a copy of this briefing and pass it to someone connected to a spy agency of the Inner Sphere. Jess did not say anything about the clans or the SLDF Returning, but anything that was known to be false, was pulled out without thinking about it. The data was still at best months old, but it was a lot better than anything Terry or the nearby planets had access to. It gave Terry a lot to think about.

Things got a little touchy when a Merchant Class Jumpship arrived at the zenith jump point. It took some time for it to contact the Traffic Control for this system, but once a few messages were exchanged between planet and deep space. The system came off invasion alert soon after those few messages. The ship had come from the nearest MMM satellite office, and they had the proper codes that matched what Terry's people had on file. They were right at three weeks late on arriving, according to the last message Duke Terry had seen from MMM. They said that they had sent an updated arrival date in a message, via HPG, but for some strange reasons they were not logged into Duke Terry's system.

Duke Terry had the required tons of ammunition ready to go that MMM was looking for and had been sitting on for more weeks than she had planned on. The bunkers all of that ammunition was stored in had not been damaged that badly in the attacks led by the councilman still hiding in the ComStar compound. Ammunition bunkers were designed to not let their cargo get damaged, or to damage other areas when things went sideways with the items they contained.

Robert and Jess were brought into this very personal matter while the cargo dropship was all most finished burning towards the planet. When he and Jess were briefed on what was going on between this planet and the local area. Both Robert and Jess could see the information that Robert had given to McDonogh was being used. Jess and Robert also played dumb during that briefing the MMM mission commander gave to Duke Terry and "her staff and advisors" after they had landed. Terry and her staff thought that it was all of the hard work that they had been doing to get that attention from something the size of MMM. The new arrivals from MMM wanted to change how they had done business as recently as just a few months ago when MMM had sent for its last shipment of ammunition made on this planet.

The mission commander had the idea that this mission was going to mix in a trade of weapons, for some of the ammunition that they had asked for instead of C-Bills in a bank. This was a major change in the agreed upon contract, and three thousand tons of various ammunition was not going to be cheap. Terry would have loved to trade all of the ammunition, for some new mechs and the parts that her militia needed to get the damaged ones back into the lineup. But then, how would she pay for all of those thousands of man hours and the raw materials that went into making those exports? It was a very fine line she was going to have to walk.

A factory refit upgraded Phoenix and a new upgraded Shadow Hawk would cover most of the price for this shipment. Enough cash was also being paid, that it would cover most of the "basic" cost of making the items being traded to the off-planet company. The rest of the funds would be transferred from what was left of the funds in the militia budget accounts. It was mostly just a shifting of digital money from one account to another one, and then to another set that would end up being moved into even smaller accounts belonging to the people who had done the work.

During a break in the negotiations for this new deal, Robert told Terry in private that he had been the one to drop the hints to a key leader over in MMM that she might need weapons and could make even more ammunition. She had not been that happy with Robert, letting so much information about her capabilities out to a stranger. He had gotten her back on track when he had brought up the information about the massive invasion of two of the major powers in this part of space? Ammunition was going to be a very high demand and expendable item, maybe higher than even when the SLDF had last gone to war.

She would not be able to make a deal like this, if she was not already selling so many other combat supplies to other visitors from the local area and it had allowed her to slowly grow the production capability and the needed workers. She signed the agreed upon modified deal, that would trade huge amounts of ammunition for two mechs every three to four months to MMM. The size of the machine was going to be relevant to the size of the load of ammunition they were going to pick up at the time. If they were only getting a few hundreds of tons, and then the mechs might be smaller class Mechs. Say like a Locust, Wasp, or Stinger. All of the machines were going to be the very basic models without any upgrading as the rule, but that could change without notice. If Duke Terry didn't like the machine that the traders were going to offer? She could always get a C-Bill transfer from the main office of MMM after the ammunition was safely in a MMM warehouse off of this planet. The last part was not ideal, but it was a good faith contract.

It also was a very good deal that she had been able to make with a company like MMM. She had no idea that the MMM group working on the deal, had been brief by senior leaders in MMM to not try to skin this cat to closely. Or they would be skinned similarly by the head office on their return to a company facility. Most of the people on this mission thought that MMM was priming this area for a friendly takeover by the head office in the next decade or so. It was so much easier to win people over with sugar than vinegar. You can all ways pass them the vinegar after they were close friends and then laugh it off as a practical joke.

Terry and Robert were betting that the mech would be trade ins or maybe rebuilt trade ins to MMM for credit on an updated machine they were making or refitting. Terry was thinking that she might be able to sell or trade any of the mech units she didn't really want to other planets or visiting mercenary units, but only after she got her mech battalion that she had always dreamed about. As long as they were not Vindicators, Dragons, UrbanMechs or some other mechs that were not popular with even mech pilots that have lost their rides. They should have a nice market for even a bug mech out this far on the edge of traveled space.

Terry was also thinking about what an additional jumpship coming into her star system three, four, maybe more times a year was going to do for her planet's economy. Just like on this trip, the jumpship brought two dropships to this system. The second dropship was not doing anywhere near the sized deals that the MMM charter ship was making, but they still were spending money that was going to pump up this planet's economy.

She might not be on good terms with ComStar, but out here they also had to buy supplies from someone. Unless ComStar wanted to put a huge and recuring dent into their budget, that meant at least buying food from the locals. And the more jumpship traffic in this system would also increase the number of messages the HPG would have to deal with. She also would have no problem selling to the mercenary units they were hired by ComStar or the MC, and or any unit that the MC was rotating around to keep the local area at least safeish. The taxes she would have to pay back to the central government of the MC would cut deep into those profits, but it would not take even most of them off planet.

The traders from MMM had some news, that was a bit shocking to Terry but not so much for Robert and Jess. It was that more and more worlds were falling, and many famous units had started to flee the invasion forces going into the Fedcom and DC. They also told anyone that would listen that by the beginning of the New Year. The MC military would be able to field a fully upgraded Mech Regiment, with support, all as a single dedicated combat unit.

Also, if things kept going the way that they were currently going? The MC would be the second largest producers of Star League level weapons in the whole Inner Sphere. The only key states that the companies of the MC were not selling to, were the Confederation and ComStar. Robert and the MMM team did not bring up the information about the Bear Slayer class IER PPCs that were on the market and were better than any SLDF made ER PPC. It had never occurred to Robert to tell Terry about weapons like that.

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When it was time for Robert to leave the planet, it so happened that all five dropships lifted off of the drop port at the same time. Two dropships were going to one jump point, and the other three dropships were going to the other jump point. All of them made it to their waiting jumpships, that were there to take them to different parts of the galaxy they called home. One dropship would have one of the largest shipments of ammunition to leave one planet since around the time that the SLDF had left this part of space. The other jumpship was carrying the most cargo that anyone had brought back to the home system, short of a major years long supply run. They were leaving a planet that would have food and other commodities prices raised by twenty percent for the next four months. It would level out as the supply situation worked out the kink that having so many cargo ships landing in such a short amount of time had caused. This was just too rare of a circumstance that they could not plan for it, at least not without wasting a lot of that same food that had left the planet.

When the Styx left this star system, it was carrying the cargo conversion Union, the Mammoth, and the modified leopard class light carrier. With a burst of energy from the mobile HPG, the modified Tramp class ship was gone. A day later the MMM chartered Merchant class jumpship was jumping out on its own run back to the people that were paying the bills. The intelligence some of these dropships had been gathering and giving had not been all one way. There had been ten full time members of the security department for MMM, and a half dozen members of the security service of the MC on those two dropships. They were checking out this female Duke and just happened to luck out and run into a very talked about Salvage Company. They had no idea if they had found anything new, but the link between this Duke and the leader of that traveling company was very much confirmed.

Robert had his command stopped in the Split system and run more scans on the dropships and jumpship. They also activated and retrieved the data from the spy systems that had been left here. Jess and her team went through the data that they pulled for the two full days they were stuck in this star system. While they were doing that, the Styx was gathering more data with the ship's sensors. But they had quickly determined that they were safe for the time being. They still did the HPG burst trick before they left the Split system just to make sure that any spies that might be lurking in the local area would still be kept in the dark about her engines. The Styx and her brood of dropships fell back into the pattern that they had used before to travel in the Inner Sphere. It was felt that there was no need to have the Leopard scout any nearby star systems.

####

Three days later they found the Behemoth right where the Styx had left the huge dropship. It only took a few hours to drag the half-loaded dropship to the drop collar that the Leopard class carrier had been using until they had arrived in this area. Soon she was docked to the spot that the Hobgoblin had been riding and taking power from the jumpship. The Leopard CV would stick close to the larger jumpship for the rest of the way home.

This was going to use more fuel, than was used on the way out from New Circe. It did not take long before this became a problem. After they ran the numbers on the fuel usage verses what they had left in the tanks. They would send a tacfax with two plans that the staff on the Styx had come up with. Plan One was they would send the location of the massive dropship to New Circe, and the nearest patrol would pick it up. Or the Styx would come back after refueling and then bring the huge dropship the rest of the way home.

The reply message on the faster than light communication had pointed out an error in the math the staff of the Styx had used. Jules had not been happy with higher command finding a simple math mistake. The people involved had not like the "remedial" training he had come up with, and they would be a lot better at math when this trip was over whether they wanted to or not. They would not need either one of those plans, and the mass of metal arrived with almost dry main fuel tanks. All of the ships made it back to the L1 point over their home without any more issues. Well, that is but for a few more grey hairs that had been acquired while watching the fuel level get lower and lower.

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Notes

Attackers on Duke Terry: 1 Firestarter, 1 locust, 2 Fleas. 1 Vindicator, 1 Catapult, 2 Quasit. 1 J Edgar, 4 scorpions, 1 Pegasus and 6 inf companies. The scorpions were all parted out and the hulls put in storage.

Why not a tank battle: I completely forgot about them in the latest update. The Bulldog is one of my favorite tanks and I missed the perfect place to write about them in combat. I will have to see if I can redeem myself next time, if I have the opportunity.

What is the Ltzehoe system exporting. Currently they can make any SRM and LRM. They also are making all Level 1 autocannon rounds. They can make tons a day at this point. They do not have the tech base to make Level 2 ammo, so they have been pumping the money into increasing the total production level of what they can. After Oct 3050 they can fill a Buccaneer every month with their production, and it will grow every three to four months as they see the need is still needing to be filled. But the upper limit is a Mule sized amount every month. They are supplying the whole planet's need and a dozen others. Now that MMM is buying as much as they can to resell to the MC and to fill the need from the other powers that are shipping ammunition to fight the clans. This will dump a lot of cash and other trade into this system.

Why was the old jump core pulled from the Styx? The Styx's jump core was very old and when it was due to be put in a major overhaul. It was decided that just using the HPG trick and a colonial drive would be a better use of resources. The old core was recycled to support the war effort. This also added more cargo space, and every ton of cargo was very important for the war effort. It also allowed for more hidden areas for intel equipment and additional crew quarters.

What is going on with Super jump style drives on New Circe. They are still working on the super jump capabilities. When it is finally put into use? The warships will take up the limited yard space and it would be a long time before the Styx could be refitted if at all. They just don't have the people and the infrastructure to do the work very fast while so much effort is being used to fight the Cylons. Yes they know that it would be useful, but there is a reason warships do 30knots and freighters do only 18 to 20 knots in RL.

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