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.

67. Chapter 67 Late 27 or Early 28 July 3051

Chapter 67

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

Late 27 or Early 28 July 3051

Ltzehoe system

Near orbit

By the time that Captain Defoe and her fighters made high orbit over the planet, the situation on the ground had noticeably changed. Reports were coming up from the ground force commanders, threw the planet's space traffic control, which said that the attackers were starting to pull back on all attack points. The "pirates" were not running, but they were falling back in good order. It was almost un-pirate like. When pirates pulled back, under pressure, they tended to turn it into a rout. To see one doing a very good fighting retreat was very odd.

The pirate's mech forces were acting as a rear guard, and their overall larger machines were taking a toll on the lighter machines and tanks that Duke Terry could field to defend her people. What was missing on the battlefield were the forces under the Com Guards control. Duke Terry was making some political hay at ComStar being missing from the battles with radio broadcast directed at them but not encrypted and over many open frequencies so that the locals could hear it.

While this all was going on the Long Tom Cannon mounted on the Fortress class dropship was still dropping huge rounds into Duke Terry's main compound at what had to be at its maximum fire rate. All while the huge dropship sat safely behind a set of high hills between the two locations. That long range and powerful weapon held the locals at a decisive disadvantage. For once Defoe thought she understood why the clans thought that artillery was a dishonorable way to fight a war. Then again so was using air support to pound on your enemy when the defenders didn't have any fighters to stand against her.

The new information caused Captain Defoe to change her attack plans, again. She had planned on her fighters to first bomb, and then they would make gun runs focused on the Seeker class dropship. That should have caused the bulk of the pirates to start pulling back from Duke Terry's forces at a faster rate. Then it would force the pirates into going towards the two remaining dropships. Pirates tended not to last long when they could not get off of a planet they had been attacking. Now that plan was not going to work for Captain Defoe and support in the defense of the locals.

Defoe needed to make the pirate commander nervous, or more to the point. She needs to make him more nervous than what he already was with the current situation crumbling around his ears. She looked around the display that showed, at a near real time data flow. She and her staff could see what was going on with the attackers of the planet like they were gods on high. Her eyes come to rest one more time, and on one particular area of the planet below them. They could see what was going on, but she didn't know why they were acting like that. She needed to shake the enemy commander to his core, and then she smiled.

The Fortress class dropship was a well-known command ship going on now for hundreds of years. With an evil grin, Captain Defoe had an idea on how to get the little Frakkers on the ground their full and undivided attention. It would not pin a large force of tanks on the planet, but it still would ring one frakker of a large bell for all of the Pirates on and off the planet to hear.

A few minutes later, as the six fighters from the Hobgoblin were starting to go down into a lower orbit an updated attack plan was sent to their pilots. Nothing much was said at the last-minute change of attack plans as it was reviewed by six sets of eyes and brains. This group of pilots was older, on average, for both of the SLDF Navy and Colonial Navy. Both of those organizations were well known about changing missions and tasks on the fly. If you were not mentally flexible? Then you might want to find a new job, or the odds were good that you were going to be shot out of the sky by a more mentally flexible enemy.

The four smaller of the fighters were going to attack a target from higher altitude, and the pair of Sleds were going to be a little closer to the ground. The Stuka's would be releasing their deadly payload of the few light bombs that they were carrying at lower altitude. This was to increase their chances of scoring a hit or a near enough miss that the light bombs would still cause worthwhile damage to their target. They also would come in on the target only after the lighter and at one time faster Ironsides fighters had completed their first bombing run on the target.

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

The four borderline overloaded Ironsides class fighters lined up, and they made their bombing runs in pairs. Each craft dropped eight medium sized bombes with one pull of a trigger fitted to the pilot's control sticks. When the bombs fell, the now lighter fighters were able to add more power and conduct more radical maneuvers to avoid the returning fire. Behind them PPCs, Lasers, Autocannon shells, and LRMs crisscrossed the sky as the defenders tried to remove the attacking fighters from the sky. This was a combat dropship and one that had been in production going all the way back to the 2600s. That it had been made for over a hundred years before the fall of the Star League was impressive, and that was a testament to this class of ship's capabilities on the battlefield.

Most of the bombs hit the stationary target that was tens of meters wide as well as not moving, but not all of the bombs had found their target. Not even Clan tech level targeting systems and pilots were that good, even with all of the years of combat and flying experience that could be added in. None the less, the heavy dropship was rocking under the impact and near misses from almost two dozen weapons that had been brought all the way from New Circe to be used in anger. This rocking motion was felt by the crew of the old ship as each metal egg detonated on or very close by. The smell of fear was ripe within the metal corridors of the great ship like a spicy fart in a car with the windows locked closed. After so many years of fighting, the crew had come to think of their dropship as indestructible with its thick armor and powerful weapons to protect them.

The bombs that had been dropped were not the right type of bombs to be able to take out something the size and heavily armored as the Fortress class ship was. The Star League in Exile had specially made armor piercing bombs, which had been developed for that kind of mission. But none of those specialized weapons had been loaded onto the Hobgoblin or any of the other ships in the convoy before they had left New Circe. The weapon was not covered under the protocols about high tech weapons going to the Inner Sphere. It was just that they had not been needed and very little time had been spent looking around to see if anyone in the Inner Sphere had AP bombs.

That Robert had carried any bombs at all was only done out of old habit and long forgotten rules for the SLDF Navy. All of the combat that Copeland had faced on his missions had been space based and against other aerospace fighters or the odd jumpship and dropships. That those standard bombs were carried was almost a testament to the inertia of the planners on New Circe. The standard blast warhead equipped bombs worked better against fortifications, troops, tanks, and mechs. Those had been the expected targets on the old supply runs that had been made before the coming of the Colonials to New Circe.

While the dropship was still rocking and with armor and hull plates still sliding off the great egg-shaped hull in a rainstorm of melted and shattered metal and ceramics. In a blink of an eye, more armor was blasted off the enemy dropship. The Fortress class ship had lost, more armor than the largest of the attacking combatant had massed. Not a soul on this craft knew that this was only the start of their troubles with the new arrivals into this star system. One or two of those crewmembers would wonder about how the mission had gone so wrong, so fast.

The two 100ton modified Stukas class fighters came back around in as one unit to add their own weapons fire to the damage that their squadron mates had already done to the Fortress. The Stukas volley fired all of their 8cm lasers into one side of the grounded dropship before disappearing over a ridge line. That was while the dust and smoke was still rising from the light bombs, that they had dropped on that location. Behind the speeding (well speeding for a Stuka) pair of Stukas was a lone dropship crisscrossed with great red and orange lines of melted armor caused by the strike of 8cm lasers. All of that laser damage was all on one side of the dropship.

It was like some toddler had used a set of God sized colored pens to mark great arcs of hot death over one side of the ship. The High and then Low level air attacks had thrown off the gunners in the dropship. But the dropship's gunners still were able to score a few hits on the slower moving Stukas all before they were able to put a ridge line between them and the dropship's weapons. It was hard to hit a target if you couldn't see them.

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

The SLDF could have replaced those old age of war tech 8cm lasers with more powerful, and longer ranged ones, but then each of the fighter craft would have carried less weapons. As Robert had said when asked if he wanted these two fighter craft replaced or their weapons updated to at least old Star League tech. He had replied that quantity had a quality all of its own. When he had to clarify that statement? He had told them to leave the Stukas alone until the age of war weapons were no longer supportable by his team.

Right now, Robert and Defoe thought that they were good enough for their needs. But Robert had told the ground base staff to please come up with a plan on updating those craft in the future. Robert knew that at some point they would run out of spare parts for those old weapons, and he would have to spend more and more time looking for replacements on his runs to the Inner Sphere. At some point it would just be better to replace the weapons or the Stuka spaceframes. Robert made a note to start looking for a pair of replacement dropper choppers on this supply run. Robert had not asked, but he was betting that he was not going to be able to tap the SLDF stocks on New Circe for one. But you never knew what his people's leadership might give up, if he asked in just the right way. He could always just pick some space frames up in the Inner sphere and have the ground support people on New Circe or his people to update them.

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

As soon as the Stukas were out of range and out of line of sight from the combat dropship. The dropship's gunners turned what remained of their weapon's turrets back skyward and started looking around for any other threats above them. They were expecting another air attack, and this one should have been at a higher altitude than the last attack. Too bad for those gunners, it was not. Two of the updated Ironsides fighters came in low enough that the tops of the trees barely passed under their wings. The Ironsides fired their Long Range Extended Ranged PPC at "Bear Slayer" levels of damage and range.

And as the pair of fighters came into closer range, a wall of SRMs was launched by ten Yeager-6 SRM delivery systems coming from the two attacking craft. It would take a lot of hits from those very fat short-range missiles to eat threw the thick armored hull of the command dropship. Then again a few of those missiles were bound to have found craters left from the other attacks, that might have happened today or on some other recent combat the dropship had survived. It would not take that many hits like that to ruin your day, even if you were in a dropship with the reputation of the Fortress class. And sometimes you are a victim of your own reputation.

Those were the only four of Robert's craft that made gun runs on the recently upgraded Fortress class dropship. They had not done enough damage to ground the hard to kill military ship, but it did ring the bells of everyone that lived through the attack runs as well as shake their morale to the bone. Sometimes that can be enough, and sometimes it just made the target fight that much harder. The remaining aerospace fighters did not even try to kill the dropship, which was not their mission in the first place. You have to leave an enemy a way out of the battle, or they would fight to the death. That had been a fact of war going all the way back to Sun Tzu in 500 BC on old Terra.

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

The six fighters quickly reformed so high overhead that no one on the ground could hear them as they passed over head much less target them. The fighter squadron had a good bit of distance to travel to reach their next target and mission on the list that they had been given to support. Now that the primary reason for the assault was done, they were in a fuel saving orbit high overhead. They would mainly now be keeping an eye on things from this location.

The attack on what was most likely the command dropship of the Pirates, had been for a set reason. Defoe and Copeland both thought that the attack commander was in the Fortress, but it was also a good bet that the leader of the Pirates was on a different dropship. He or she also could be in one of the mechs or heavy tanks doing battle on the surface of the planet. This was the Inner Sphere and commanders were known to lead from the front in battle, even when it would have been better to command a battle from a command center.

It took some time for the data to be worked out that would allow the staff on the Hobgoblin to do some of what was called battle damage assessment. After the six craft were brought in for refueling and a quick reloading of the limited ammunition that had been authorized for them to use and the all-important medical check. It was now time for those six fighters to have some more direct effect on today's battles.

Captain Defoe was watching the reports coming in from the ground, and from her ship's own systems like she was one of the old Colonial Gods. The attack on the Fortress did not affect the battle going on below the high flying carrier, at first. A little while after the attack on the Fortress by the aero fighters, the rate of the pirate retreat picked up, but not by much or even close to the expected amount. Then she gave orders for the attack to go in on the 6,700ton Seeker class dropship two hours after the attackers of the Fortress had reached orbit. This close ground attack would be by all six of the convoy's heaviest fighters. They would "only" be using their built-in weapons, but that was not a small amount of firepower.

The other change from the attack on the Fortress was going to be the number of attacks the fighters were cleared for. They were to make repeated attack runs on the grounded combat vehicle transport using energy weapons or the clouds of deadly SRMs/LRMs. The Seeker was almost twice as big as the undamaged Union, but it had weaker armor and weapons. This was done so that the Seeker could carry more of the light vehicle bays so that it could now support a reinforce battalion of pirate tanks.

On top of that known fact, it was the only dropship that had not been upgraded in the weapons area by someone before this attack had been launched. The knowledge of the lack of upgraded weapons was quickly passed between the aerospace pilots and to the command center on the dropships. From Robert's dropships it was quickly passed to the planet's command center. They would not be able to use this data, but Defoe didn't know that, and she had no way to know that kind of information about the locals.

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

The six SLiE fighters attacked the Seeker in pairs. This was dangerous after the dropship was alerted that it was under attack. But it gave the attacking fighters time to review the results after each pair of attackers. At least the gunners on the dropship had 120 seconds between each attack pair. Each of the attacking pairs had gone after a different side of the dropship to test its defenses and to keep the gunners on all sides on their toes. This made it very dangerous for the last set of fighters, but a 100ton fighter was a lot better able to take those hits. That is as long as no one caught a golden BB. Still the pair of Stukas were the last to attack and put the final nail on the information gap for Duke Terry and Commadore Copeland.

Now the fighters could see the blood in the water, and they were looking forward to adding a dropship kill to their squadron's kill sheets. It still took a total of six attack runs made by all of Defoe's fighters to visibly disable the Seeker class ship. All of the fighters were empty of missile reloads and were running very hot as they pulled away from the coordinated attack. That was when the long jets of multicolor flames shoot out of the nose and portside forward hull of the grounded dropship. The dropship looked like an egg that had been dropped from the top of a building without any impact protection provided by the students. Huge parts of the hull were blasted high into the air and littered the open field in wreckage.

With the "real" primary target out of the picture, in a permanent way and now spread out in a wreckage and flame covered field. The fighters had once again return to the Hobgoblin for repairs, refuel, and reloading of their weapons. The Seeker had fewer weapons than most combat dropships, but it held more weapons than most aerospace fighters carried. They also were old tech weapons, but there were a huge number of them. It was just a matter of math before some had to hit the attacking aerospace fighters.

That was when Defoe and her staff were told that the pair of Vulcans were out of the fight until someone could go recover them in deep space. They had not only delayed the enemy aerospace fighters, but they had also removed them from the local battle space as any future issue. It had taken the pilots some time, but the local fighters had been able to "kill" the better trained pair of enemy fighters. That had taken a lot of luck and gunnery skills, but it had cost the locals.

While Defoe's fighters were being recovered on the dropship, the situation on the ground collapsed, from the pirate's point of view. All of the mechs, heavy tanks and infantry made for a least time path for the two remaining dropships as fast as they could. It was like someone had turned the lights on and the cockroaches were running for whatever cover they thought that they could find. Sometimes that shadow was not cover, but the shoe coming down to kill them. Such is the life of pirates… well they were also a type of a carrion insect.

The light and medium combat vehicles that the Seeker had carried now had a different problem to deal with. They now had no way to get home, and there was a bunch of very upset and heavily armed locals close by to those pirates. The same locals, which they had been killing for the better part of the last three days. The other dropships were not in a mutual supporting configuration due to the need to attack so many different targets spread over half a planet in such a short amount of time. The person that had been the "Liaison Commander" had been thinking that spreading out would be better to take out their assigned targets. They had forgotten the old rules, that were there to stop defeat in detail. Something that was now a very real possibility for the pirates.

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

The mercenaries that were really pirates in everything, but official name had been tasked to kill the militia, take out the local leadership, damage any local industry they could find, and steal whatever they could grab while they were doing the above jobs. The pirates had not been expecting the locals to be able to get any reinforcements, much less this quickly and this powerful. That was not true for the paymaster, he had just not told the "hired help" every bit of intelligence that the paymaster had at their fingertips. It was just to ingrained into ROM to give out any information, much less all that might be useful for people that were within ComStar much less outsiders.

They should have had at least two weeks before anyone could arrive to help the locals, but only after a message had been sent from the local HPG. The paymaster had a very good idea how long it would take for an HPG message to be sent out. That should have been close to the second Tuesday of next week. The Pirate's "normal" command staff also had not believed that the locals would be anywhere near this stubborn in the face of so much firepower. Only a few years ago a single lance of light or medium mechs would be enough to take a whole world, much less a short but very heavy regiment. The possibility of this level of reinforcements had not been in the very complete data files that even the company level commanders had been given. There were more than a few angry pirates trying to get back to their dropships to find out why they had been surprised this way.

That did not mean that those light and medium tanks didn't try to get away from the overly armed and overly aggressive locals. The start of the pullback had caused a lot of damage to the local defenders. The locals now were attacking and falling into ambushes and kill sacks set up by the slowly pulling back pirates. When the retreat turned into a rout? The advantage on the battlefield fell to the locals once more. The tracked vehicles had no chance to make it to the cover of the remaining dropships, but the hover ones and maybe some of the faster wheeled ones might be able to pull it off. That was if they were just a little lucky. It was every pirate for themselves or at least it looked that way to the people following them.

###########

It took only between a few seconds to a full minute for the local defenders to react to the shifting tactical situation. But when they did realize what might be going on? They again went after the rapidly withdrawing pirates with just a little too much zeal than might have been safe or even legal under MoC laws. This mainly served to drive the retreating enemy harder to get to their pair of remaining transport so that they could get away from the blood mad locals.

One of the things was not noticed until a lot later about this group of pirates. It was that no one noted that this pirate group had not fielded VTOLs in this raid. VTOLS were fragile, but fast and cheap. But they were lightly armed and armored when compared to a ground vehicle of the same mass. Fast and cheap would have been a good fit for a pirate force, but they also needed more man hours to keep working. Due to the light weapons and increased support, they were not hallmarks of this attacking pirate force.

The slower of the damaged tracked vehicles of the pirates were the first to fall to the local now attackers. The first none motive damaged units to fall behind were Scorpion light tanks, but then heavier Hetzer assault guns and Goblin medium tanks would soon follow them. For the locals, sometimes it was a case of the dog catching the car. A 200mm Crusher SH autocannon would make life hard on anyone that got to close to them.

Then the slower wheeled combat vehicles started to falter in what was now without a doubt a rout. Battle damage also started to cause some of the faster pirates to lose the foot race they had found themselves in. Of their own accord, the pirates started to break up into smaller and smaller groups as some tried to stay together in mutual support. But still as motive hits by LRMs, SRMs and even lucky strikes by machine guns could cause a track or lifting skirt to be thrown or to lose effectiveness. And those groups of pirates would get smaller and smaller.

As these new damaged ones started to fall behind. They were soon to be swarmed over, and they would be taken out by hand thrown firebombs that had been made in kitchens and bathrooms. But these numbers of lame units started to increase as the few local's missile armed light hover tanks and cars slashed in and put in only enough damage to slow the fleeing pirates. Then the locals would work on the next nearest enemy with their weapons fire. Those few local hover missile carriers did not get away Scot-free, and many of them were also taken out of the battle due to battle damage and dead crews.

The people of Ltzehoe also knew the local area a lot better than the pirates, and they were able to get some of their Bulldog tanks in position to ambush the fleeing enemy on a few occasions. Most of the time those ambushers would only get one or two hits on the pirates, before the speeding enemy vehicles cleared the improvised kill zone. But with each 8cm laser or SRM that the tanks were able to hit with, would help the rest of the local forces "catch" a few more pirates. The Bulldogs were to slow moving cross country to keep up with the fastest of the pirates, and then they would take up the mission of working on any damaged knots of pirates still working together. Sometimes the lighter armed local would give the heavy tanks enough notice to pull out of sight and ambush a faster group of wounded pirates coming up behind them.

Only six light hover vehicles made it to the nearest dropship, the Union. One of those was a light APC that was painted all white, it was escorted by a light scout that was of a design that no one on the planet had seen before. The other four hover warcraft were a mix of Saracens and Scimitars. If anyone had been able to take an image of that light and very fast hover machine and then they had shown it to the reinforcements coming to their aid. Copeland's people would have been able to identify it as a very well-maintained ex SLDF Gabriel class scout.

That hover scout was something that had not been seen within the Inner Sphere until the Com Guards had started to be rolled out to "defend" HPGs around the Inner Sphere. Still, they were very few known to have been seen over the width and breath of the Inner sphere, and they had rarely been seen by none ComStar eyes. The hard part would be how to tell the locals what it was, all without breaking cover as knowing a little too much about the equipment from the fall of the Star League or those used by the Com Guards a long way from this area of the Inner Sphere. But no one had been able to get an image of the scout or even get a shot into it. It would always seem to know where the ambushes were going to happen and avoid them.

With the loss of eight mechs to the locals, and about half of them had been lost before the destruction of the Seeker class dropship. So, there was plenty of room on the Union to take the fast hover craft and their crews on board when they were ready to start lifting off and away from this area of the planet. Outside on both the remaining dropships a defensive line was formed with the fleeing ground forces stopping just under the guns of the combat dropships. They did not have a jumpship to flee to so they could not light off their huge plasma engines to leave this planet. Those tanks and mechs would be the QRF to help defend the remaining dropships.

With all of the firepower located in one spot, Defoe did not want to risk any more air attacks on those to knots of heavy firepower. Even if she wanted to and she had the bombs to do so in the first place. She had been ordered to stay in orbit above the planet with her full fighter compliment. It was just in case things went sideways for the locals, and Robert's ground team that was about to enter the battle. Airpower is a very powerful weapon, if you use it correctly. But it had been known for dozens and dozens of generations that airpower does not win wars. It can only help with battles, if you were willing to pay the price. And like any weapon, airpower could be broken if it was used the wrong way or by someone who didn't understand the limitations of any weapon.

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

The Bad Kitty was on her way to the planet at very high G's. The attempt to take the enemy jump ship had failed, if that had been the plan in the first place. As soon as it was clear that the dropship and twin fighters were heading for the second pirate point. The jumpship had left the system, to who knows where before the Bad Kitty could bring it under her guns. The Commander of that ship had risked a fast charge to top off the power needed to leave this system almost three days before she should have been able. Well….she did a fast charge or some way the Invader class dropship had been fitted with a LF battery, but she had not lost one of her three drop collars.

Near as anyone in the Intel section on the Styx knew, the pirate jumpship had not sent any warning to the ground units that they were leaving Ltzehoe. One second, they were there and the next it was jumping away. Without a "target" for the modified Lion, her pair of fighters, and her battle armor to be occupied by? Robert turned his sights onto the nearby planet to get some satisfaction. That satisfaction would be taken from the grounded pirate forces. Robert had not said anything, but he was more than a little surprised that the jumpship had just left the forces on the ground without so much as a "by your leave or go frakk yourself".

With it confirmed that a Lion class ship along with enough air support to make a mech regiment commander happy was on the way down to them, and with the loss of one dropship already? This mission now was going to be hard pressed to break even for the pirates, even ones that had major outside support willing to pay for this level of mayhem. Unlike the new jumpship that had popped into a different pirate point than the attacking pirates had used. The mission leader of the pirates knew where the ride had gone, and more importantly he knew when it would be coming back to this system. Sometimes it was good to be the one that had come up with most of the contingency plans for this goat screw of a mission.

Defoe and Robert had been right about one key item with the limited Intel they had been able to gather on the command and control of these pirates. The mission commander for this attack was in the Fortress class dropship, but he was a ComStar Senior Adept and not just your run of the mill mercenary or pirate. The pirate commander had been on the Seeker class dropship when they had landed to start ransacking this planet. It had only been by chance that the ground unit commander was on the Fortress for a meeting when the Tramp had arrived over their heads. The ground force commander was not a happy man, even before he had lost his "home" to reinforcements that were not supposed to be there.

The loss of the dropship and the damage to the command dropship was too much even for the ComStar commander to have to deal with. He orders all of the land forces to board their ships at the load master's discretion, just as the enemy combat dropship entered the upper most layers of the atmosphere. Maybe the ComStar Adept thought that the landing dropship would give him some cover to launch his dropships out of this fiasco he had found himself in.

Too bad for the hidden ComStar Adept, it did not work out that way. It didn't even work a little bit like the way he thought it would. He had been a graduate of Sandhurst and he had thought that he was prepared for battle. He had even graduated at the top of his class and any other classes on tactics that he had sat through. He had never realized that book learning and combat experience were two very different animals. The Hobgoblin was on the other side of the planet, and the ComStar Senior Adept had taken this as a sign from Blake that the Carrier was out of line of sight of the ground forces. He had passed the orders that were given to the two different helms crewmembers. And his desperate plan was started into motion with a few flips of switches and pushes of buttons.

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

For the last few hours, the combined might of the local defense was pounding the slowly vanishing light and medium vehicles that had been carried by the Seeker but that had not been able to reach the safety of the dropship. With the two knots of defenders around the dropships now getting thinner, a lot of the locals shifted their attention to those targets without being order to by Duke Terry. There was no way for the command center on the planet to know where all of the local defenders were located, much less know that they were doing at any given time. It was not like they had a chain of command more than just a few friends deep, and those friends were armed with they had from granddad or what they had picked up from dead pirates.

Seeing what was going on with the attackers seeming to be getting ready to leave the planet's surface. Defoe even released the two fighters that she had kept for self-defense incase the pirates had reinforcements coming in and had coasted into the battle area without being spotted. Defoe's command had not just been waiting in orbit sitting and spinning on their thumbs while people died on the planet below them. Two of the Ironsides were able to pull in the pair of militia Vulcans back to the small carrier in time before the pilots ran out of air.

The pair of local fighters just needed some fuel for their engines and a few cans of LOX before they were ready to join the battle once more. The pilots on the Vulcan had not even noticed that the crews on the small dropship were a little more awkward in how they moved in Zero G than was normal for a company that spent so many months if not years in zero gravity. The pair of Vulcan pilots were a planet base fighter unit, and they didn't have any dropships to work off of, so they didn't know the difference.

After topping off with fuel and air, the two militia heavy fighters were on their way to the planet's surface and their still hidden bases somewhere down on the planet below. Defoe had her teams keep a close eye on them just so that they would have an idea of where at least one of Duke Terry's hidden airbases might be. After they landed, the pair of 80ton fighters were not seen back in the air for some time after they landed. Defoe was about to ask the Planet's command center about how the Vulcan crews were doing. Then she changed her mind after thinking that the locals might considered this restricted data.

What she did do was let the command center know what her plans might be, and she kept them in the loop on any information that the small dropship had detected. So, Copeland's fighters returned to the battle after those crews had some much needed rest. Defoe's six fighters were joined by the surviving local aerospace fighters, and as the two dropships started to lift off from their locations. They were some small fishes attacking a pair of large sharks. Only these sharks had most of their teeth pulled, but not even close to all of the teeth had been pulled. It was just another day ending in Y for the crews on those aerospace fighters.

The Fortress was the first dropship to fall from the sky when the twin Vulcan aerospace fighters were able to put hard hits from there many heavy autocannons into the now exposed engines of the damaged command dropship. The Anacon B500 engines on the command ship flared brightly, before most of them went cold like a light switch had been thrown or the fuel supply was cut off. The Fortress had always been known for having systems that needed more care, and they still broke down more frequently than on other classes of dropships. Even from high orbit, flashes of flames could be seen coming from the aft of the dropship. Soon they were followed by huge showers of sparks between the tongues of long flames that were the bright red of unburned fuel.

The old dropship fell over thirteen thousand feet to hit the ground with a crash, which was both heard and felt all the way to Duke Terry's underground headquarters. The crash site of the 6,000ton dropship was swarmed over by the nearest locals, like ants on a hotdog at a picnic. They might not have been official members of the militia, but they had weapons and they were angry ….very, very angry. Anything after that was more or less academic for the old Fortress class dropship. Not one of the surviving crew of the dropship lived to see the sky again, even if they had lived through the crash. Never punch out over the people that you have just bombed; they might not like you.

The enemy Union dropship made it to almost to the edge of space before it to was falling back under the pull of the planet's gravity due to battle damage to the Star League V250 engines. Between the pull of gravity and the damage done by the six upgraded fighters under Defoe's command that ship was dead. When the dropship hit the ground after its near escape, it burst opened like an over full water balloon dropped from your high school's roof. The impact was so hard that the fuel, air, and other things flew away from the crash site before it ignited like a huge fuel air bomb.

There was not any need for a salvage team to be immediately sent to that location to check on that crash site. The forest fire alone was enough to keep any ground-based units out of the area for a week. The crash area was marked by the over flying fighters and the location data was passed along to Duke Terry at the command center. No matter what happened to that wreck, some things would be recovered from that Union that would be useful for the locals. It was not likely to be weapons, but you never know, and someone would get the idea to check it out from ground level over the next few years. There had been too many Tri-vids of someone finding a crashed dropship and then being set up for life with what they had found for this not to happen.

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

When the Bad Kitty cleared the plasma fireball made by her shedding speed into the upper atmosphere of the planet. There were not any major formed enemy units left to do battle with, but that didn't mean the pirate attack was over. With a few quick bursts of thrust and some gimbaling of the engines the falling dropship adjusted her landing spot. This was something that a combat dropship could do better than a civilian design. Both types of dropships could still do it, but the military ones could do it easier and they were a lot more accurate in hitting the last second landing zone than a civilian ship could.

The Bad Kitty had not been aimed at the drop port as she came down from orbit. Robert was planning on putting his few ground forces against the heavy mech and tank force nearest to Duke Terry's home. But with that force now gone from the planet. The new target area was the last reported location of the massed pirate task force of tanks. Robert was not sure that all of the enemy units were that out of the fight as some on the ground might think. He had read too many reports about Cylons from Colonials and about Colonials made by the Cylons. One thing had been common, and that was that they would not give up.

The cargo conversion Union did not have mech bays or drop chutes that was normal for a ship of that class. The Lion that Robert was now using didn't have that problem. But using the Mech drop chutes took a lot of training, and that training had not been done by his current crop of mech pilots in a very long time. Even his ship's crew had not run the required maintenance checks on the drop chutes and tubes on the way to the Inner Sphere. Right now, the only safe other way to exit combat mechs from the dropship was for the ship to land and let them walk out of one of the bay doors and down the ramps.

The great ship called Bad Kitty had barely shut down her engines and the flames were still licking at the sides of the craft as the first of the great war machines exited the warcraft ready for battle. Only one cargo door was open and out of it "ran" a Black Knight that "quickly" was followed by an 80ton Awesome class battlemech. The massive combat machines took up positions to cover the ramp with their heavy weapons.

About 90 seconds after the pair of great war machines came to a stop. They were quickly followed by the lighter Sentinel and the 55ton ex-Wolf's Dragoons Hoplite that had been updated by a team back on New Circe. The now fully deployed mech lance took up positions further out to cover the exit for the rest of the company of mechs to follow. The lance was there to draw in any one dumb enough to fire at them instead of the dropship.

When nothing happened for about 5 minutes after the lance was emplaced outside of the Bad Kitty. The rest of the mech company followed the lead lance out into the open air one at a time. There could have been more Black Knights and Lancelots class mechs that the SLiE had in great numbers on the Lion class ship, but that was not Robert's style.

Beside SLIC might have had issues with this idea, they thought of it as the difference between a cargo mission and one finding a lost SLDF base. Sometimes people in the Intel business could not change fast enough after they had gotten used to working a certain way. The Black Knight and Lancelot class machines were the most popular and produced mech in the SLDF ground forces, before the Mercury III Omni took that title only a few years before the Colonials had found them. It would be some time before another mech would reach those numbers anytime soon. Before the Colonials had come, the new Pulverizer was the odds-on favorite to reach those numbers.

Robert knew that getting alot of those old Star League based design mechs would have caused issues with Intel or just news groups in the Inner Sphere, so he had not even tried. So, he had asked for the Wolfhound, Axman, Challenger mech and the rest of the mechs that he had brought back from the Inner Sphere. All of the mechs that any Intel agencies in the Inner Sphere would know that Robert had been able to acquire in his travels. Again, two birds and one stone.

That had not been enough mechs to fill out the full mech company that higher command thought was needed to make sure the mission was successful. Those last slots had been filled by a pair of Black Knights that Admiral Xi had used along with two of the oldest Wolverine mechs on New Circe. They were called Wolverine II in all of the paperwork that the SLiE had access to, and they had survived fleeing Clan space as well as the first operation against the Combine to free slaves and gathered supplies.

They and their pilots had been used on other supply runs over the years. By all rights both of those machines should have been put in museums, but that was not the Clan Wolverine's way. They did have museums, and they held mechs from around that time. But these Wolverines also had not been put into caches, so that they could be called back to war like a lot of their sisters. These two had been "gifted" to the families of the original pilots. The current pilots for those two Wolverine class mechs were older than Robert, and they were even too old to be called up to fight the Cylons unless New Circe was invaded.

These two Wolverine class mechs had started life as WVR-7Hs that had been in common use within the Royal Brigades before the SLDF had fled the Inner Sphere. They were very good machines and were filled with late Star League weapons technology that had been added by their current pilots. Those non active duty pilots had not had access to third generation or what was called Clan tech weapons in the Inner sphere. That kind of weapons tech was just to expensive for people on a fixed income.

They also looked just like any of the hundreds of the other Wolverine class mechs still being made and used within the Inner Sphere. The one update that separated them from the rest of the mechs of their class that had been done, was the replacing of the old Ultra class autocannon with an artificially down rated LR PPC to a Bear Slayer level of power. That was a nice updating to weapons that now could cut almost a ton of armor off a target, all without the issue of the autocannon jamming, or ammunition exhaustion, and the ammunition exploding due to enemy action. It was a very impressive upgrade for the 55ton mech.

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

Robert's company of mechs did not stay as one group for long or even near the grounded combat dropship. They broke up into combat pairs or teams, and then they went hunting for enemy tanks or other pirates that they might find. It did not take long for each of the mech teams to get into contact with the nearest local commander. The Mech pilots merely asked to see where the nearest enemy tanks might be. For the most part the locals were happy to see mechs that they were told belong to a name that had become famous as the harbinger of good luck.

The data was passed to the mech pilots and then almost Clan grade weapons or better reached out and they took lives like a sickle to ripe wheat. Copeland's mechs did not get all of the remaining pirates that day, but anytime a local reported that they saw a pirate tank. A pair of his mechs would head that way at their best speed to check out the report. Most of the time it was a false alarm, but not always. And when Robert's mechs found pirates they would cut them down and leave again for the next reported location.

A mix lance of smarter or maybe just luckier badly damaged Pegasus and Scimitar medium hover tanks lasted for a full month, before they were captured by a group of local militia members that found them late one night. That lance did not put up a fight when the firing had awoken them from their sleeping bags. The whole lance had run out of food three days ago, and they were trying to work out how to give up without being shot on sight by the locals. That was not a small problem for the group, or a group like them. They had not even put out a night guard to alert them of anyone nearby or walking up on them while they had slept. They were just ready to end this mission and try to get home as best they could.

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

Robert was in contact with the traffic control for the rest of the day as his mech company fanned out around the local area looking for any surviving pirates. When things looked to have turned the corner and the fires have seemed to be burning themselves out. He gave orders to launch the dropship up into the air and to re-land at the space port near sunset. He and the local traffic control did not designate a landing area for the Bad Kitty. The dropship's pilot just picked a spot on the ground and gave a short prayer that he did not damage the ship on landing. What he did to the ground and the rest of the local area was less of amental issue for him to have to worry about.

Once Copeland and his crews were back to the "real" drop port, Robert stayed in contact with the rest of the command thanks to the command facilities on this larger dropship. He had no idea that the facilities at his command were better, by size than what this or most planets in the Inner Sphere had access to. Only Duke Terry had a lot more people to handle the workload, which the computers on the Bad Kitty let the smaller crew do the same job.

There was not much else that Robert could do to affect the ever smaller battles going on around about a quarter of this planet. All he could do was count the maybe wildfires that he could see from the top of the Bad Kitty, and he wonders about the number of dead that each one of those fires represented. Every few minutes his eyes would go to one of the side displays on the command deck. This one showed the location and status of the ComStar compound on the other side of the capital city. It now looks to him to be more like a prison instead of something that was bright and the perfect model of the future it was supposed to represent.

That compound was not dark, but it was not glowing with all of the excess white and multicolored lights like it had been during his other visits to this planet. This ComStar compound had looked like any of the others of this size. SLIC said that ComStar only had about a dozen different designs of a compound in all of the Inner Sphere. Robert had a good idea on how they had come up with this data point.

With every third time he looked towards that compound? Robert would have mental images of those Black Knights and Wolverines kicking down that main gate. Then he was mentally seeing them put a torch to that small part of this planet. He had no proof about them being behind the attack, and any attack on that location would cut off a planet or a whole realm from the rest of human space for who knew how long. That was not an issue for Robert, but it would have a major negative impact on Duke Terry and her people for a very long time.

Nothing happened all night, at least nothing happened that was a threat to Robert's command. It was just as the sun was raising again that his company of battlemechs started to come trickling back home to the drop port. Only a few of them had burnt paint or pitted armor plates, none of them were damaged in any way that would have affected their combat power. At least nothing was damaged that could not be fixed with his on ship supplies. Those mech bays and their specialized personnel were already going to prove their worth on this mission.

Now that he had some mobile defenses, even if they were made up of very tired pilots. Well other than the well-hidden platoon of light battle armored troopers, that were on high alert all through the night while the mechs were away. After the mech jocks got some sleep, they would relieve their smaller friends on guard duty standing outside of the Bad Kitty. No matter what, the gun crews on the Lion would keep everyone covered with their clan tech weapons spread around the hull of the combat dropship.

The Axman under Copeland's command was the last mech to make it back to the drop port. It was quite a sight to be seen by the city and anyone in the drop port. It was slowly dragging a damaged Hetzer and a damage Vedette tank out of the nearby forest. They were "pulled" threw part of the town between the forest and the drop port. It was like a hunter showing off his hunting skills to the rest of the village. So, the 65ton mech had the cannon barrels in each of its hands and it used them to leverage up the 40 and 50ton tanks. The front wheels of the Hetzer were a blasted ruin and would not have allowed "traditional movement". The angle of the mechs arm kept a lot of the mass on the remaining back wheels of the assault gun type tank.

The Vedette class tank was a "true" tank with tracks in place of thick wheels that limited the terrain it could traverse at any real speed. The tracks on this tank seemed to be okay, and they were rolling over the drive wheels and return rollers with ease as it was also dragged through town in the right hand of the hulking mech. It was easy to see by everyone that both tanks were damaged to even the untrained eye.

The Vedette class tank still had the Axman's 7-ton axe lodged into the top of the bread box like turret, all the way to the eye and shoulder of the head. It was in impressive display, no matter how you cut it. The battlemech did a little show and it "dropped" the two damaged tanks at the main gate of the drop port, all before making its way the rest of the distance to the grounded dropship. Just before the mech entered the dropship, it turned and gave a slight wave to the crowd that had gathered at the main gate. A few hours later a cargo truck and crane arrived at the main gate. It took the pair of heavy trucks over an hour to retrieve the jammed axe out of the top of the 50ton tank and bring it back to the Bad Kitty.

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

Robert was relieved when a certain heavy armored hover car made its way to the landing field while the sun was still not directly overhead. It was being escorted by a pair of battle-damaged Wasp class mechs at the run. When the hover car came to a stop outside of the Bad Kitty. The light mechs formed a line between the armored heavy hover car and the rest of the drop port. The escorting machines looked like they were about to fall over. If they had been humans, it would have looked like they had just run a marathon. And more or less they had done just that to keep up with the armored VIP mover. It was just another sign about how close it had been about dealing with the huge pirate attack on this planet.

Before Terry could make it all the way to the top of the loading ramp, she was met and wrapped up in Robert's arms in a powerful hug. They didn't move for what seemed like a long time, just holding each other on the ramp of the combat dropship. Slowly the world leaked back into the awareness of the pair and then they slowly separated. The pair withdrew to his cabin, so that they would spend the next few hours in private while getting to know each other again. The crew of the dropship made sure that no one interrupted the two people without needed to be asked by Robert or anyone else. Besides the command crew knew some of what the future was going to hold for her and maybe some of the other locals that supported Duke Terry.

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

Terry was laying in the crook of Robert's arm as they laid in his bunk, and she looked around the cabin from this point of view for the first time. "Well, Robert. I have to say that I like your new upgrade of living space."

Her eyes went over to the small cooler and hot plate built into the far wall of the cabin. She felt Robert stiffened and not in a good way, and for a few seconds she thought that she might have asked something wrong. To say that their relationship was complicated was an understatement to the word complicated.

Robert had to force himself to relax again and keep his breathing as steady as possible. He knows that she had "felt" him react to her loaded question. "Thank you. My Boss used it on her trips when the risks were….elevated. And with how things were going the way they were? I asked to have it for the room for the mechs and the added firepower she was packing. Oh, and the updated commander's cabin is nice."

Terry got up from the bed and she started getting dressed, and Robert took it as a sign that play time was over, for now. After getting to his cabin, they had maybe said four words to each other before she had "jumped his bones". Not that Robert minded one bit. But now it was time to find out what the frak had been going on since he left to go back to New Circe. He had two reasons to find this out and only one of them was for the reports that he would need to fill out for SLIC and the SLDF military even before he got back home.

Robert went to the icebox and pulled out a juice box that he knew Terry liked, and then hit the auto coffee pot fix mounted on the wall. "So, it was as close as it looked? I take it that ComStar didn't come out to help defend against the pirates again."

Terry made a face that said she was about to spit on the floor, but at the last second remembered that she was on a spaceship and that action was not acceptable. Instead, she put her thumb nail under her two front teeth and flicked it in the general direction of the ComStar Compound outside of his dropship.

Her tone was as icy as deep space when she spoke. "That for ComStar and their contracts. They even sent that waste of skin councilman off the planet instead of handing him over to the local courts. Not that it did him any good." She let an evil smile come to her face.

She had an evil smile and that twinkle in her eye as she continued. "MIM picked him up over in League space, and he has been in their care ever since. I offered to pay for the ammunition they need to use to shoot him. MIM has yet to take me up on that offer, but I'm patiently waiting and hoping that they will. Still, ComStar flat out lied to us! When that Invader class jumpship showed up at the pirate point? They would not contact traffic control, but ComStar said that they had been contacted by them. And that this ship was only here to get supplies before making a counter pirate patrol further out in uncharted space."

She looked like she was almost about to punch one of the metal walls of his cabin, and Robert kept his mouth shut until she was ready to talk some more. "We were almost caught flat footed, because of those lies. When they were about 6 hours from orbit? I knew something was wrong, and I put my people on alert. When my ready craft made an inspection pass on those three dropships? They blew all four of my Sabres out of space. The Slayers got two of them and the dropship's guns took out the others in a surprise attack. Then they were able to put in an attack on my airbases after they took out my ready fighters. Even hit the ones that I thought were hidden from anyone before the dropships landed."

Robert stopped what he was doing and looked over to the woman. "I saw the two Vulcans and then six of your light fighters help my pilots. You were able to recover them, but how did you do that if you lost your airbases?"

Terry had an odd little smile, and then she raised her eyebrows. Her voice was so low and husky that it made the smaller of his two heads to start doing the thinking for Robert. "Now, Now Robert. A Lady needs to keep a few secrets are you might lose interest in her. But yes, "we" were able to recover from the surprise attack."

Now Robert smiled and went back to making them something quick to eat. It was only eggs and toast, and the eggs were far from fresh and out of a can. But it was good, and it gave them something to talk over that allowed for breaks in talking without being uncomfortable. When it seemed like Terry was okay, he took the first step into what might be a minefield. "It looked like they learned a few things from the last attack on you."

Terry took another bite of the eggs on her plate and washed them down with some juice. She loved the odd spices that Robert had to add to his concoction. "Yes and no. They had a lot more firepower, and they did not spread it out as much as the last time someone tried to throw me out of my chair. They also had that damn Long Tom cannon of theirs on this try at the prize. That was a new wrinkle, and I can tell you that I will want to get a few of those things. After living under them dropping shells on my head for three solid days, I can see why the militia wanted a few of them. I will find the money, from somewhere to pay for them."

Robert took his own bite of fried canned lime stored eggs, and he waited but nothing was said for a while as both took slow bites of the food. Terry started talking again out of the blue. "It was just too bad that someone kept their mouth shut on this attack, so I can't pin this attack on him or them. They brought more and heavier stuff with them, but this time most of my armor crews were not taken out in their homes before we knew the attack was coming in. Still those heavy and assault tanks backed up with medium and heavy Mechs and artillery was brutal. My people were able to pull more than a few rabbits out of the hat, and most of the pirates were on the overconfident side. Still, we were one bad battle from losing it all. I'm just glad that we were able to rebuild and expand after that last attack someone paid for and then we rolled box cars when it came to the execution."

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

She would leave the dropship at nightfall, and this time she made a more sedate trip back to the planet's command center. It was dawn on the next day when the Mammoth class ship called Hercules made its own landing at the drop port. Her massive side mounted Bally Tech Super 40's cut a huge blood colored flame streak in the early morning sky. Duke Terry had wanted Robert to show that things were going to get back to normal, and she had asked for him to bring her down. The sooner people did think that they had survived this attack. The sooner that they could both start and finish rebuilding from this latest attack and get ready for the next one.

And there were few better ways to show that, then have the second largest class of dropship ever made making a landing at the local drop port to do some trading with the local leaders. Robert had made sure that he published the shopping list for this planet as soon as they could and before the Hercules had started her landing approach. Then Robert took a few extra steps to make sure that people knew that he was there, and who he was supporting by doing business with her. It mostly was a political game, but right now that game was very important to his mission.

Robert did have a pair of his mechs sent over and standing at the main gate of the ComStar compound. They were not right outside the gate of the phone company's compound. No, Robert had them standing across the road from the main entrance of the compound. They just happened to be looking like they were ready to bum rush the gate of the ComStar compound at any second. Every few hours the mechs would change from standing near the compound to keep both groups on their toes. The pilots of the Assault weight Awesome and the lighter but just as intimidating Axman tended to want more of the shifts than any of the other mech drivers. There might have been a game or three of dice to decide who and what mech got to put the fear of mech combat into the robed wonders behind their walls.

This action taken by Robert had not gone without protest from the leader of ComStar on this planet. This protest had been issued on a live video message, which Robert had taken even though he knew it was a risky call to accept in his current mood. Robert knew that it was going to be a hard test to keep from saying something that might come back and bite him and his mission square on his fourth point of contact. But this was like watching a car sliding down an icy hill, he just could not help himself but to watch what was about to happen.

Robert had surprised himself when he realized that He had not said a word while he "listened" to the tongue lashing being given to him. The same could not be said of the staff that were watching this "person" ramble on. Robert was just glad that they had muted the mic pickups at their stations. And when the ComStar Adept had stopped talking to take a breath, and it seemed to Robert that he was about to start repeating himself. Robert had given the person on the image a hand jester he had copied from the Colonials. That had been his only communication to the ComStar Adept so far, well after he had accepted the video link.

The Colonials referred to it as a single finger salute…in civil company that is. Surprisingly it had a direct analog that had only dropped in popularity during the later parts of the Age of War. It had been replaced with other gestures that conveyed the same basic intent. Robert had cut the line as soon as he had seen the jaw swing open at noticing his hand jester and the look of understanding crossed the ComStar representative's face. Robert had left the bridge after cutting the line to ComStar to get some fresh air and just to feel clean after dealing with that slime ball.

Robert stayed in the background as his two ship's Captains went about selling and buying what was needed at the base of the two dropships. Besides the drop port and the outside of the ComStar compound, the crews were sticking close to the dropship. Robert was even keeping his people out of the recovery of any battle sites, even the ones that they had help make on this part of the planet. Robert and his people were not laying claim to any of the pirate mechs or tanks that had been taken out by their weapons or actions. Not even the two tanks that the Axman had dropped off at the main gate of the drop port would be claimed by Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale.

His people didn't need the age of war level weapons and these people, his friends, could very much use every last bit of it. Copeland's staff were not picking up that much on this stop, but they were doing more than a little selling of cargos to the locals for funds. Things like high efficiency or double heatsinks were soon flying off the ships by the gross lots. This soon after the battle, everyone thought that the damage that had been done was the worst case. And if they had the money? They were buying up spare parts or replacement weapons, and more than a few had made at least base inquiries on buying one of the mechs that Robert had at his command. Even if they could come up with the money, Robert would not be agreeing to sell one of his dozen mechs carried by the Bad Kitty.

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

Terry was keeping Robert updated, as there were any changes going on around outside of the areas that he could not keep a physical eye on. During one of her updates, that she gave in person and in Robert's private cabin. She told him that they had taken an amazing amount of damage in the many day's battles. It was a long list of damage and Robert was betting that it was not complete, he could only hope that some of it was not going to be as bad as it currently looked. But Robert knew that forever one time that it was not as bad, there were half a dozen times that it turns out a lot worse than first thought. All you had to do was take your car to the repair shop after a wreck to know this little fact of life.

It was going to cost her people a lot, and not just in money, to put everything to right after this attack. Duke Terry's people told her that they should be able to put enough captured equipment back into operation to add two more companies of light and medium vehicles to what the militia had before the battle. Even the hulks of most of the pirate tanks would donate parts to get other tanks and weapons back in operation. Or the parts would be found on the hulks that could be traded to others for the right parts they needed to support the planet's militias rebuilding.

They even were able to pick up some, not many, but some parts of the wrecks of the Seeker and the Fortress dropships. It was just too bad that only metal was going to be recovered from the crashed site of the updated Union. Still the hard metal would find some uses or it would be smelted down to make something that the locals can use. Very little would go to waste, not out here on the edge of commonly traveled space. The locals had paid a huge price for this small windfall of high-tech resources, it would be a waste not to use them.

That was a letdown about the wrecked dropship, but the combat forces from the Fortress was going to let them pull maybe six heavy tanks and four heavy and one assault mech back into operation for the locals. And that did not count the upgraded weapons from the command dropship that were repairable. It was not going to be cheap, and it was not going to be fast. But in a few months, if things worked out. The local militia would be adding some huge firepower for the local defense units. If they could find the right pilots and crew? It was going to make it harder for any other attacker to push Duke Terry out of her job.

It was just too bad, that when the Invader class jumpship showed back up into this system. That there were not any fighters or combat dropships that could make the trip to the zenith jump point in time before it could quick charge his engine and then leave again. It did not even send a message to the planet after arriving. It had just arrived and sat in that jump point like it was waiting for someone to meet it. Only there were not any drive plumes that could be seen in that area of the star system while the jumpship waited.

Robert had been able to confirm to Terry that this lack of radio communication was true and not ComStar playing games again with her. That didn't mean that a few messages were not aimed at the jumpship so far away from the planet. One was sent from Duke Terry threw the Traffic Control Center at her home. It was a little on the colorful side, and the rumor of it went around the locals faster than an HPG message crossing a light year.

Her first message basically told them thank you for the spare parts, and next time she might just add a jumpship to her military. This little message had been off the cuff, and she had only been able to get it out because she had been in the Center after three glasses of wine on an empty stomach. The second message was a little over half an hour after the first and after some more wine ingestion. It was a bit more descriptive of what she was going to do to them and their paymasters the next time they meet. It did not take long for a copy of that message to make the local news. Someone had even made sure that it was even sent to Duniansire on the next transmission bundle from the ComStar HPG. Terry and Robert would claim that they had no idea how that happened, and they were not lying. Neither one of them had planned on that happening.

Robert used the attack to bring up a subject that Terry had mentioned on his last trip to this planet. Now that Jess was on the ground after catching a ride down on the Hercules. They could start working on some plans that were based on facts and not thin air and wishful thinking on members of the SLiE's part. It had been a quiet meeting between the three of them, and they brought Terry in on a few more details that she needed to know to make her decision. One of them was NOT that Robert's people knew about the clans, they had left them in 2800s, and had been hiding ever since. That would have to be covered at a later time, and in a location that would protect New Circe a lot better than a dropship's meeting room.

What did they cover in that meeting? Well Jess went into some detail that their people were in a war and that they still could lose it against a powerful enemy. That enemy that Robert's people were fighting was the reason for the supply runs that Copeland and these ships were making. Jess went into detail that the enemy they were fighting didn't care what flag you followed. They would just drop an over large number of nuclear weapons on you until you were blasted into ash. And they would do this without a second of hesitation on their part.

The main problem in the meeting had been when Robert had handed over an official looking document. It had been the one that SLIC had drawn up for him to officially pass over to Duke Terry. He had been told not to say anything about it before he passed it to the Duke, and he was to have witnesses for the passing of the documents. It was one of the many hints to Robert that SLIC and other parts of the SLiE were not sure about Robert and his interactions with this person from the inner sphere. Robert had no problem going along with these orders, only because he would later be able to use their over reaction against the people who had come up with them in the first place.

The document went over all of the rules that she and any of her people that wanted to leave with her would have to live by. That is if they still wanted to leave and have a place to run to. If she or the others did not want to live by those rules? She and they could stay on this planet, and Robert and his company would still trade with them. But they would not be able to leave to come to Robert and Jess's world. It would be an all or nothing deal on the rules. The rules had been written in such a way that it was very brutal and without any legalize or colorful language to "lighten" or offer loopholes of any kind.

Robert made a personal plea, that she just could not tell anyone about what she knew about them, even if they stayed behind. Terry had been very quiet throughout the whole meeting, and she did not give them an answer right away. This turn of events was a disappointment for Robert, as he had expected to get a positive or a negative answer right then from Duke Terry. It was a major concern for Jess, when Terry had refused an answer in any way when the meeting was concluded. She did not want to have to kill Terry. Jess had orders that said that she would need to do just that, if Terry backed out of the plan in any way. Sometimes those in SLIC had to do jobs that they didn't like, and then she would have to keep this act and information from Robert. That was not something she was looking forward to having to do also.

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

Duke Terry spent the next two days thinking about what she had learned in that meeting with Robert and Jess. She was about to decide something that was going to have a major impact not only for her, but for any of her people that joined her in fleeing this planet. Would she be jumping out of the frying pan only to fall into the bonfire? What was the turning point that made her jump one way or the other? The turning point was in her version of a staff meeting with her command group. That was when things changed, and they cast the dice that might divert more than one major river that was the human race.

They were not tired of all the fighting, but they were more worried that it was only a matter of time before they were overrun by someone. They did not mind the fighting, but it was just that they were so outnumbered every time they were attacked by forces that seem to grow in number and size of the weapons that they could use against them. Right now, they were down to a under strength tank battalion and a whole six mechs. The Security mech and Javelin would be the next mechs to come back online to give them two fully repaired lances. What if someone attacked them before they were ready? Yes, they could rebuild, and they would be stronger, but would they be given that time to rebuild. And then there was the needed time to train people on the new weapons or bring up people to replace the ones that had been hurt too badly to still be active defenders.

That last part had been the key, and it struck a chord with Duke Terry. That was when she brought the rest of her council in on her Exodus plan. She did not go into the details that she had been told by Jess and Robert, only that she had been working on these plans. To a person, they all agreed to the rough outline of her plan, and to a person they wanted to join her on her Exodus. And when this meeting was over at the planetary command center. They went about all of the tasks that they would need for Operation Exodus to be successful. All of the communication used by this group would not say the word or the idea they were working on a mass plan to leave this planet. It would be using the code name "The long ranged rebuilding plan" when they were updated anyone in "the know" about Exodus. It was not a false name, just one that had a different meaning for who might have been using it and any ears that might be hearing them.

That night after her staff had returned with their first update to the planetary leader on Exodus, Terry invited Robert and Jess to come to her place for dinner. It was two days before Robert and Jess were scheduled to leave for their next stop of this supply run. When Jess, Robert and one escort were brought into the home/command center for Duke Terry. They were quickly brought into the large dining room that they had rarely used before on other visits. The pair of them had seen it a few times, but they had been told it was for official meetings and dinners. Only this time the room was not empty when Robert and Jess were shown it. Robert could feel their guard get very tense at seeing all of the other faces around the room when the huge doors were opened.

Terry had started making introductions as soon as she saw the look in Jess's and Robert's faces. She also was going into a lot more detailed than was normal, as she went around the room before they all could settle down and have a meal together. It was during this meal that Duke Terry announced that she was going forward with her Exodus plan, and everyone in this room had agreed to Copeland's terms as pointed out in the document he had given her.

You could have knocked over Jess with a feather, but all Robert did was give a grin to first Duke Terry and then to Jess. They spent the rest of the mealtime eating and working out a few more details that only Jess and Robert could help the locals with. Jess was almost as happy as Robert was at this turn of events. Robert was going to be able to see his girlfriend on a more regular basis, and it also opened the door for Jess to pull out Don from the Inner Sphere using the same reason that they could get Terry out. Then there were the other things, which would help the people of New Circe thanks to the clearing of this first hurdle. From the looks around this room, it would seem that these locals were just as happy as Robert and Jess were that they would have a place to run towards that would welcome them with open arms.

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

The day before the time that Robert and his two dropships were to lift off from the space port. An MMM operated and expected jumpship with more than the two dropships it should have been carrying arrived in system at the very close pirate jump point. The Invader class jumpship was coming in with some reinforcements that Duke Terry had worked out as a side deal with MMM and the MoC in case they were attacked again. It was going to cost her some ammunition and other political points down the road, but they would be on planet for a few months doing training and helping the locals recover from the latest pirate attack.

Robert hoped that they were also bringing some extra repair parts along with more mechs and tanks. He had over seen the sale of a dozen different weapon types to Terry and her militia during their stay and with the new arrivals of the MoC/MMM mercenary unit. The only people Robert did not sell to while on the planet. They were groups that Terry did not like or was suspect of not being loyal to her in some form or the other. You know, kind of like ComStar.

Robert had been surprised to learn that the 5cm Pulse Laser like the very detailed knock off of the Type 2 Blankenburg and the Raker-IV sold better than any other weapons he had for sale. Well, that and the Double heatsinks that they had "sold out of" on the first full day of opening sales on this planet. But Robert did not have any standard armor plates or the other normal things that a battle damaged mech or tank needed to get back into operation. Robert made a note to send back that any supply of old tech armor that might be in storage and was not needed, might have an open market out this way. This note would be sent out Via TacFax along with all of the other reports that needed to be sent back to New Circe. Who knows when someone might act on it, at least not without Robert getting hip deep in the issue when he gets back home? Now that was anyone's guess.

Robert exchanged a final radio message to Terry, as they had become accustomed to doing. Robert found that he was happy with leaving her this time. He did not say anything to anyone about these feelings, but he did get a few sidelong looks from Jules while he had walked around the command center of the jumpship. Robert waited until the last fighter was recovered onto the carrier before clearing the convoy to jump. Robert wanted to leave the bridge with that last message, but he knew that it was not a good idea. He had not waited to read the hard copy notes Terry had passed to him just before they had lifted off from the planet. Between those notes and the final message, Robert felt pretty good about what was going to happen in the next few months.

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

Notes

Machelle's lance: Machelle is in an updated Clint from MMM (ppc, 4x ML, and dhs), Mechwarrior Kevin Williams in Javelin. Shariff in Quasit, newly repaired one-time wasp pilot that pummeled vindicator in Crab (rumor has it that a heart replacement Magna 250 with DHS and one erppcs is on the way. This factory mod to the Clint has to be fast and cheap in manhours and parts to be worth the effort of MMM.

Chapter length. I cut part of this chapter and moved it to the start of the next one due to the length, even before I got to the spacing needed before posting. It just kept growing and I needed to find a way to get this posted more quickly and I ended up moving more and it bumped again.

Copeland's mech company. Axman, Hoplite, Wolfhound, Awesome, Challenger, Cataphract, 2 Black Nights, 2 modified Wolverines IIs, and 2 Crabs.

Chairman Eric Hale see chapter 60.

Personal note. About halfway through this chapter is where I started adding new skeleton and major muscle movements to this story. That was after Feb 2019 and this story was "only" 670 pages long. We are now at 1700 pages posted. It is hard for me to believe that this has lasted this long and seems to still be going strong in my mind. Thank you all for joining me on this epic and I hope that this has proven to be worth your time.

31