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.

82. Chapter 82 14 Feb 3053

Chapter 82

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

14 Feb 3053

Odessa

Nondi Steiner looked at one of the many countdown clocks mounded around her. She felt a surge of power that she had missed after being gone from combat command for so long. The mission she was on, was only possible because of a long list of firsts. And in her opinion, there were a few to many items in that category of not being done in living memory. That was not a good thing, in her normal operations book. To distract herself, her mind when back to what had caused this mission to be launched in the first place.

Nondi had never seen her sister's child this upset in all of her memories. They had only been on Outreach for 36 hours before a message had been given to her to pass along to the LIC's home office on the Lyran home planet. The message had been coded, but that was normal for the Royal family, and it was short. It had come down to "I'm coming home, fast, and get my army ready for war. Oh, and someone needs to saddle my pale horse." That little message was co-signed by Melissa as co-ruler of the FedCom, and it gave Nondi over all command of this mission.

Many within the military staff sitting on Tharkad had no idea what the Dragoons might have done to upset the two women that much. They only had more questions when Nondi had told them that Hanse Davion was doing the same thing on his side of the FedCom. Some gold encrusted fools had fully expected to be leading a massive assault into Outreach as soon as Nondi and her niece had safely made it back home. Oh, how wrong they had been. At least they were wrong about the location of the main target that they were going to have to plan to attack.

Katrina Steiner was not a screamer, and neither was Melissa… the same could not be said of Nondi Steiner. She had developed into a mega screamer when the occasion even remotely required it in her mind. The younger woman that was the Co-leader of the Fedcom had come off the dropship quiet and as cold as any glacier on this very cold planet. Even Victor and Nondi had been frozen face when they had exited the dropship, and they had not said a word as they made it to the hover Limos to take them to the capital of this half of the FedCom.

When the military leadership of that part of the FedCom had seen Nondi and Melissa? They found themselves looking forward to seeing if she was still a winter Lyran or if she was more of a summer leader of the FedSuns now. The trip to Outreach had only been the third time for Nondi to see Victor and the second time for her to see the younger Katherine. Nondi had hoped that she would be able to have some good family time. Then the Dragoons had dumped all over that idea and now she had a mad on to make someone pay for raining on her family time.

The heat had been blasting at full power in the expensive VIP dropship transport when it had landed on the capital of the Lyran side of the FedCom, but it was as cold as it always was outside on the planet's surface. The outside temperature matched the feelings coming from the passengers. This only changed when they had made it onto the walled in grounds of the Triad. It was only then that some of the key staff that used this planet for a headquarters had been brought into the meaning of this surprise visit. Nondi had been selected to do most of the speaking in the most secure room within the Triad. All Melissa Steiner-Davion could do at first was to spit out one word replies and grip her mother's old office chair with white knuckles. Only part of that was they younger woman acting, she was in fact mad….very. very mad.

Melissa had been at first mad enough that she had wanted to break out the nuks to be used on the moon going around Odessa IV, and then she was going to launch a ground assault onto Odessa III to work on the removing of Count Fisk at sword point. Well maybe it was at something like Atlas or a pair of fully loaded and crewed Overlord point. Swords might have been too much of a FedSuns type of thing for this part of the FedCom to willingly accept. That also had been Nondi's gut response at finding out that a sworn Noble to House Steiner was already bending the knee as well as his back to ComStar.

After the upper staff was brought in on part of the news. A few of the more senior members of an already senior staff were ready to see if you could drop enough nuclear weapons to make a star go nova on you. The math said no, but that didn't mean that there were not a lot of leaders that wanted to give it a try anyway. You never know, it would not be the first time that those number generating people had been proven wrong in the last few decades. The top of that list that was said to be impossible would be the longer ranged 5cm laser that was looked at before the coming of the Clans. After some of the heat had gone out of some of the people in this meeting, and their mental powers came forward in their brains one more time. Then even smaller scale nuclear weapons were referred to less often.

Nondi warmed up and became the yeller she liked to be, and soon the paint on the walls of the room would start to peel until Melissa used a tone that her mother had used before to take control of the meeting. "We need to play this smart. They have at least six warships in that star system, and who knows what else that might be concealed within that hidden yard ready to be used in combat around that gas giant. Then we have Fisk, his command staff, along with whatever his family has been able to hide from us for all of these years for our forces to have to deal with on Odessa III. On top of all of that, there is what ComStar might hold in hiding on that planet. We also need to do this in a way that we don't get any political push back from the Estates General or the public." The younger woman was surprised that she was able to keep her voice so calm, and she mentally thanked her mother and aunt for all of that training as a teenager to be a leader of one of the five great houses.

########

Duke Morgan Kell had been quiet for most of the meeting, but he had seen enough combat against the Clans to give him some confidence to speak in this venue with so much brass. He hated the battle of politics, and he felt more comfortable on the "normal" combat battlefields with mechs and not pure political minded people.

The Duke took a little breath and then spoke for the first time in this meeting. "If we can take that Navy support base? That would cut down on the time that it would take to get our own wrecked Warship naval units back into space. It could also maybe give us a working support base and something that "we" can convert into building new real warships. Camelot Command is nice, but it was very effectively stripped before we found the damn place, and its now behind Clan lines anyway."

Duke Kell belongs to a growing group that knew about Camelot Command that thought that it was only a matter of time before one of the clans found it and took it away from the FedCom defenders. After all the Clans had access to all of that Star League data, and that was the same data that had been used to relocate that old base in the first place.

Nondi gave the younger man a look that should have made him melt, but it just seemed to bounce off of him like water off a duck. Kell had just asked a question and made a few statements that many of the other staff were wondering about, but they had not had the mental power to connect those dots. And then have the needed guts to say them aloud in front of their peers, much less in front of the two powerful Steiners.

A voice from someone else in the room broke the quiet before the silence stretched out to far. "And what will the Federated Suns side be providing to help us with this issue?" The tone was clear even if the person was hiding their Skye accent.

Melissa spoke in "that tone" again, but this time it was directed to a wider audience, and she went off script. "My husband is dealing with his own issue at this time and will not be able to support the great power of the Lyran based military. There is a report that there is a like world as this one but only a single jump from New Avalon. Which he will be neutralizing much like we are going to do with Odessa. That is why "we" are here. He was worried that "we" might be at risk until he and his combat forces have "taken control" of that system." She was hinting that she was acting to take on Odessa without her husband fully knowing what she was up to. It was to help with the thinking that the Lyran side was a military equal partner in this political group.

Nondi knew that she and her Niece had the decenters in this meeting outnumbered, but something made her look to her grandniece. It might be time to remove a piece off the board for those that liked playing political games to gain power for themselves at the expense of the greater good. Nondi and Melissa had seen some of those most disturbing reports from LIC. "You have been quiet? What do you think about this, Katherine?"

Katherine was looking down at her young hands that she had folded into her lap to hide them from the rest of the room. "I don't know. Or maybe it's that I just don't trust that what I want to do, is even close to being the right thing to do. More? I don't think you all should trust me with anything that is this important." She had not looked up the entire time that she had been speaking.

######

Duke Morgan Kell picked up the tone with alarm and shot his Niece a look to let her know that it was her turn to explain. The head of the Steiner family reached out her hand and patted and then rubbed her daughter's back very softly for the entire room to see. Then Melissa looked over to her aunt. It was time to let the rest of the leadership of this part of the FedCom know what was going on. It was just as Nondi and Melissa had worked out on the fast trip from Outreach, to find out about one of the results of the medical tests. Even years before the coming of the Clans, LOKI had reported that some power players within Lyran space had planned on using Nondi's sister's namesake against the rest of the FedCom.

Melissa put some softness into her voice that was not all connected to politics. "The Dragoons found that she has the genetic predisposition for a severe case of Dobrowski Depression A Syndrome. While we are here? "We" will have some local Steiner doctor's double check their findings, and we will see what treatments they would recommend. The Dragoons have some treatments on file that are reported to be somewhat effective, but they might be a little too close to the Clans in the eyes of a lot of our people."

Melissa gave the older woman a look out of the corner of her eye, but Melissa kept her focus on the rest of the room. "When those medical professionals all have had a "reasonable amount" of time to work, and they have come up with nothing with a proven track record of being remotely effective? Then "We" will go with the ideas put forward and filed by the NAIS doctors. They will just happen to be the same treatments that the Dragoons have come up with, and most of the doctors managing her treatments will be Dragoons or Dragoon trained."

House Steiner medical issues had been a common feeder for many types of media around the Inner Sphere for way too many decades for anything to be held in secret for very long. This should be the fly in the ointment for some people that had fingers in this room. With Melissa's statement she had taken control of the information.

You could have knocked most of the room over with a feather at this news. Nondi was still coming to mentally deal with her own health issues, ones that had been the main reasons that she had not been able to have as many kids as she had wanted. Nondi and Melissa let this news sit just long enough before bringing the meeting back on track. This group spent the next hour reviewing the information that the Dragoons had given the leaders of the Steiner family about this once hidden space base in the Lyran part of the FedCom for as long as the Star League had fallen.

######

LIC would be sending out someone to the Odessa star system as fast as they could. Still, it would take time to get effective agents in place and then it would take even longer to get some effective intelligence out of that system. While the number of LIC agents grew at an almost alarming rate for this kind of operation in the Odessa system? Some of the key players within LOKI had been quietly warned to stay out of this particular issue, or Nondi and Melissa would finish what Katrina had started. Only they would do the work with anything but a fine touch…. on the meat cleaver. The term used was hinted at that they would bring flamethrowers to any office they found if LOKI caused any troubles. There were very few in LOKI that thought that the message was just an empty threat. They would take the warning and back off, but that didn't mean that they would not put their own eyes on the situation in that star system…just in case they were needed.

The massive attack going into Odessa system had been first planned for launching around Christmas, but then it was quickly pushed back to New Year's Day of 3053. When they were still not ready to launch this massive operation even at the end of January? It was grudgingly approved to have it pushed back to the day of 14 Feb 3053. Nondi had made a pointed comment that if it was pushed back again, then a lot of people were going to need to look for a job outside of the military or other government connected service. Not one word about this mission was sent via HPG to anyone that was working on these plans or working on plans that Operation Nordic Hammer was going to affect downstream.

It had taken some time to get the right combat forces in place in such a way that they would not be noticed by those who were going to be meeting these attacking forces face first in the coming battle. It had been quickly worked out that this was going to be a two-pronged attack on the Odessa System. One attack force would be jumping into a pirate point close to Odessa III and landing two Lyran staffed RCTs. They would land along with the freshly rebuilt 1st Kell's Hound to round them out with their heavy clan based firepower. That should be enough manpower and firepower to deal with the rebuilding Dragonslayers Mercenary regiment and the recently identified 1st Division of Blake's Will that had been found hiding on that planet by LIC.

The second attack force was made up of five warships coming from the Wolf's Dragoons as its core and acting as escort, and heavy fire support. The FedCom still didn't have the first RX-78's ready to be launched, so a deal had to be made with the only group that had warships and that the FedCom at least halfway trusted not to backstab them during an operation. The Lyrans side was moving every assault dropship and carrier that they could, they were to act as support for those warships within one jump of the targeted star system. This and the assault going into the Versailles star system would be their combat debut for many of these new dropship's designs or recent modifications done to older designs and their crews. That could be a good thing, or a very bad idea if any major flaws were found due to enemy actions.

It was a strong Black Ocean Navy, but it was not as strong as it looked to those that knew more than just the basics about "real" WarShips. Only the Dragoon owned WDS Mars and WDS Athena were fully functional, as far as warships went. The two Dragoon Lola IIIs assigned to this mission had enough trained crewmembers that they could move and shoot the Warship's weapons at the same time, but not with much skill in either collective group tasks of warship operation. The remaining allied warships were in a very different…boat.

The WDS Beowolf only had enough crewmembers that were good enough to act as a huge CAP over the "normal" jumpships that had been needed to carry all of the assault ships, carriers, and landing forces going to the small moon orbiting around Odessa IV. The cruiser WDS Alexander was stripped of any crew to fill in the critical areas on the other warships assigned to this mission, but she had been left behind in the Outreach system right were only a handful of MIIO agents could see her.

######

When the timer reached Zero Terra Standard Time on the clocks spread round this huge task force? Interstellar ships spread out between seven and twenty-nine light years from a star named Odessa moved as if by one hand. Nondi and the Lyran part of the FedCom were about to change how a lot of people within the Inner Sphere thought about Valentine's Day, at least for the next few decades. Her showing up was not the first action in this operation, but it was going to be so much more visible to an incredibly large number of people in that one star system than any of the other of the attacks. That visibility would be used as the hallmark of the start of this battle in the history books.

Attack on Ruins of Gabriel.

The gas giant planet called Odessa IV was only a few thousand kilometers from a safe area to jump into, but only if the jumpship's navigator had the right numbers to plug into the navigational computer. Otherwise, it also might help if they either clanked when they walked or had a firearm pointed at their heads at the time of the jump. Then again if any ship using ComStar supplied navigation data would not let something like that happen. It was called a code lock in software terms and only someone digging through a billion and a half lines of code might have found it.

That code locking had been the first change made on the ships that had been assigned to this mission. But thanks to the data first provided by the Wolf's Dragoons, this was proven to be a valid data point for the extremely highly trained navigators handpicked to be used in this operation. The supplied data also gave the attacking force an orbital time of the real target for this part of the mission. It was again proven that Intelligence drives operations even in the 31st Century. Still good intelligence could not overcome for a bad plan.

In this case, the data that Wolf Net had proved was better than what the still shattering ComStar and its ROM agents had access to… on average. If ROM had been acting like it had been back in its heyday, like say some time back before the time of the Clan Invasion? This FedCom operation would have been handled a lot differently.

Focht was working hard on bringing ComStar into line with what their stated formation was even before General K had left, and that didn't sit that well with many members of that group. Then there was the fact that the most fanatical and a huge amount of funds had been slowly bleeding away in some battles on the other edge of the map far from the Clan invasion routes for a few years now. Those splinter groups might have all been under the banner of ComStar in the past. But now each of those groups were doing their level best to wipe out or at least drown the other groups in blood of any of the other splinter groups or the now main organization still called ComStar. The FedCom was planning on taking advantage of this distraction to launch this attack.

This was going to be the largest Black Navy operation that had taken place within the Inner Sphere going all the way to the battle that ended in the loss of the LCAF Invincible back in 2853. Even the Clans had not thought about having a space battle of this size during their invasion planning, thanks to the data supplied by the Dragoon Compromise. This attack was going to be a first of its type for a lot of people, but the units that were the best in this part of the Inner Sphere would be leading this attack. At least that was what it looked like on paper….if you squinted your eyes just right. Then again you fight with what you have on hand, when you have it, and not with what you might wish to be able to fight with. At least thanks to the Clans, many senior staff members had at least been looking at what it might take to fight a battle in deep space using Warships on one or both sides. It was well known within military circles that you will get nowhere fast by planning on how to fight the last war. Well, that is besides filling a lot of body bags.

########

Within only a few seconds after arriving at this star system with its attacking force. The Wolf's Dragoon WarShips Athena and Mars were coming charging out of the jump point with their guns blazing after arriving with the rest of this part of the invasion force. Right behind the two charging warships came the FedCom flagged aerospace fighters, then comes the assault dropships, small craft like the "New" Lupus class battle taxies supplied by the Dragoons were next in the assault waves, and then finally came the dropships carrying the "normal" landing forces that would be needed to take the small moon under new management.

Most would have thought that the Wolf's Dragoons would have led the way in the boarding actions on those enemy warships, with every Elemental class battle armor they had been able to build or recover on the battlefields. But that class of clan battle suit were huge, and the Clans knew that armored battle suits that large had a problem moving within the corridors of the old SLDF designed warships. What would work better in this type of action would be the lighter types of PA(L) suits, which also just happened to be more easily replaced by most of the combat units within the rest of the Inner Sphere at this time.

#######

Captain Della Nichols was on the command bridge or what the old SLDF would have called the Flag Bridge on the Soyuz Class cruiser now called Athena. Della knew that she was not a real warship commander, but she was the best that the Dragoons currently could call on to fill this type of position. So, she had been given the job, with a pat on the back and some good wishes on the job that she was about to undertake. The party afterwards had not been a joyful one, but one that had her trying to drown her sorrows while others celebrated. The simulator data they had was not helping that much in her confidence building, not with a starting point of being in command of a Leopard CV for the last dozen or so years.

Now this mission only had two "trained" warship crews going against six known warships sitting outside of the shipyard the attackers were trying to put under new management. Those were some long odds to fight against. Then again, the Dragoons had fought against long odds dozens of different times, so what was one more time to be added into their books. At least that was what she was telling herself every time that her mind had a few free seconds before they had jumped in and started the charge into the enemy's long and very sharp teeth. She was just very thankful that she had not had that much free time to dwell on the future.

The sensor director spoke out first after the two Dragoon warships had started pushing the enemy warships as hard as they could. That meant that the Mars was in the lead of the assaulting force and the heavier Athena was coming up behind her out of the jump point. "Admiral! We have six warships outside the yard. Three are cold, they are at anchor! We have heat coming only off of two Essex's and a Black Lion class warship. The ECM receivers are picking up a Needham and a pair of Diamond XR3's, but they are not even currently at standby power. Those three warships are still coming up with the power on their main reactors!"

Fleet Colonel "Acting Admiral" Chandra's eyes were just blinking under the g loading, but her mind was in full hyper drive mode. She didn't even try to look over at Della sitting just a few meters away from her. By now Chandra could mentally see the grin on the other woman's face. "Did we catch them really at anchor? Did I just pearl harbor them?" Thought the officer as she got ready to fight her first warship on warship battle.

Now the acting Admiral smiled a smile that showed too many teeth. "Comms! Let everyone know that we will fire into that Black Lion first. Boarding teams need to go after those other warships, make sure to point out that they are to take over the ones that are cold. We need them to stay out of this battle!" She didn't need to say about how that would also keep friendly fire out of the question for those boarding crews. Close counts when dealing with capital scale weapons being used by green crews.

Besides it would have been a nightmare to try to land a small craft on an actively firing and maneuvering warship. The Intelligence gathered for this mission had told the war fighter that there also should be an old Baron and two Lola III destroyers in the local area outside of this base. This information had been gathered by the oldest of techniques known to man. That was by using big frakken telescopes. If she could make sure those three "smaller" warships were out of the game? Then she might not have to break out the few nuks that the Dragoons had been able to fit to the missiles sitting in the arms locker of her warship.

While the comms station reacted on her orders, the ship's captain did a half turn of her head to direct her next round of sound waves. "Fire control…. You may fire at will, and check to see the status of the launching of our CAP."

#######

The Athena was a Clan modified Sovetskii Soyuz class warship, and her twin huge Killer Whale class missile tubes spoke in anger for the first time in almost a hundred years. The missiles were quickly followed by the "cheek" mounted triple turreted Sorenstein 45a capital grade Lasers. The also cheek mounted Barracuda class missile launchers were quiet…for now. They might be needed in a different part of this massive battle, so it was best to save the few reloads for them until it was worthwhile to use them.

The Black Lion class warship was a beast of a warship, and it was well known to be death on a plate for anything that might be unlucky enough to find themselves under her guns. Only this time the beast of the Black Ocean was sitting still and without any of her offensive weapons manned, and even her defensive weapons were not ready for combat at this point of the battle. The E wave caused by the attacking force that had just arrived had been kept a short as mathematically possible. The Entrance Wave normally grew larger with the size of the jumpship and the length of the jump that she had just made. That was why the Dragoon warships had been the closest to the target than most other jumpships assigned to support this mission.

This short of an expected advance warning meant that only three of the Blake's Will Warships that held crews were still in the process of rushing to get to their posts when the heavy energy lasers hit the target that was hardly moving. "Only" five of the class 45 lasers hit the side of the huge ex-SLDF, and ex-ComStar warship that was as still as death…. at least in space terms. A pair of the smallest naval autocannons made were fired from the updated Mk 42 Vincent class corvette, and they had followed the lasers from the Athena. Then had come the pair of "slower" Barracuda class missiles launched from the small corvette now called Mars.

The last of the weapons to arrive to this deadly little party were the pair of massive Killer Whale class missiles that had slammed into the same side of the old SLDF battle cruiser. That was a huge amount of damage to be given out, and to have hit the same forward flank side of the great but very old warship. Still all of that damage had only been able to do, was make a hole that was just short of being a breach into the hard and thick armored hull of the Black Lion. There was a reason that she was called a battle cruiser in the first place, and she had just lived up to her class's name. Oh, and Battle Cruisers were listed as Capital ships, and by definition they were supposed to be hard to kill.

The speed of the attacking Dragoon warships allowed for the range to rapidly fall, and then the first major systems to come online for the Black Lion were the set of huge Carston Pegausus engines on the enemy warships. All three of those massive engines had gone from cold to over thrust with a single push of a button that had just turned green. That was both dangerous and damaging to those massive engines, even if they were not a few hundred years old at the time of the latest round of abuse was given to them. The huge enemy ship was able to get its nose turned just in time for the next round of attacking weapons fire to arrive in its general area. Fewer weapons hit this time, but the Black Lion was one of those odd ducks that had thinner bow armor than was mounted along her long flanks. Still as the lasers and other weapons played along the nose of the battle cruiser, it looked to have not done any "real" damage to the hulking warship.

The huge weapons on the ComStar warships took time to reload, and by now the crews on the Black Lion were now mostly at their battle stations. The helms people on the same warship were now ready to make the enemy's gunners job harder, and soon the ComStar trained crew was making adjustments that made it harder for the enemy's long range weapons fire to be effective. Still the crew on those two Dragoon operated ships had plenty of time to train on how to use the massive warship scale weapons. But in the end, it had only been training on those skills along with the needed collective tasks. The Dragoons had a measuring stick that they could have used, but who would really compete against the Snow Ravens.

Now the difference between the green crews on the Dragoon's Clan updated warships going against the regular rated crews manning the ex-ComStar ship was going to tell. So more of the Dragoon's weapons fire had ended up missing the huge enemy warship, but the guidance packages on the huge Killer Whale class missiles took deep bites out of the sides and nose of the white painted warship. Now it was time for the ComStar trained crews to do their jobs.

The massive Scarborough 30 class Naval Autocannons on the cheek mounts of the Black Lion fired for the first time in anger in hundreds of years. The Dragoons were just lucky that the enemy's missile launchers were taking longer to bring into action than the capital class autocannons. The Dragoons also were lucky that the "real" broadside of the Black Lion could not get a good line of sight on the smallest warship of the Dragoon's fleet. Still, that left the four of the huge guns on the port cheek side that fired towards the fast but lightly armed WDS Mars.

########

The wildly diving and twisting light Dragoon warship was hit solidly…once and a second massive shell passed so close to her, that it left a crease in the aft top armor half a meter deep. That one solid hit by the heavy cannon shell slammed into the hull of the corvette, and it blasted all of the armor off that location on the warship like Thor's own hammer. The massive engine on the corvette went from over thrust to idle as its main power plant was SCRAMed by its computer support system. This automatic shutdown was done as a safety measure to automatically try and save the corvette. Sometimes it even worked, this was one of the recorded few times that it had worked in helping save the wounded warship.

The Mars looked dead in space for many long seconds, and then the forward Barracuda launcher fired off a pair of missiles that headed towards the growing wave of ComStar aerospace fighters just now coming into the battle. The pair of very smart missiles went after the largest of the enemy fighters that they could see, and every one of those fighters were outright killed or at least disabled for the rest of this fight. The small…well smaller and faster missiles would keep any enemy fighters away from the crippled corvette. At least they would while the rest of the crew on the small warship fought to save lives, and at the same time that they worked to try to save their now very battered warship.

At about the same time that the Black Lion had fired its nose cheek mounted weapons into the Dragoon corvette. For some reason only three of the four nose mounted Scarborough 30 capital autocannons were fired at the Athena. All three of the capital weapons hit the Dragoon ship like the back hand of an angry god. One heavy autocannon strike landed on the nose and two hit the starboard forward side on the WDS Athena. Where the Black Lion had a thick coat of armor over her hull, the Soyuz had almost half of that amount of armor to protect the great warship. The one autocannon hit took out just under half of the armor fixed to the nose of the attacking Dragoon cruiser. The two starboard autocannon hits reduced the armor on that side of the warship to be now thin enough that the next hit would remove the last of the armor protection in that location and then get at the softer insides of the clan updated warship. The ship was badly hurt, but she was not dead, at least she was not dead yet.

The crew of the WDS Mars was just trying to get their ship under control and bluff the enemy fighters into staying away from them for just a little longer. The green gunners on the Dragoon cruiser had a larger target to fire at, but they still missed with all of its energy weapons. Thankfully the guidance package helped the Dragoon crewmembers, and again both super heavy missiles slammed into the Black Lion. The first huge missile hit the nose of the ex ComStar owned warship, and that hit had finished blowing off the armor in that location. The huge missile warhead still had enough power remaining to rip into the bones of the old warship. Crewmembers on the Black Lion in that area died and her systems shut down or shorted out as they tried to protect systems further down the power stream from any damage.

Then the second missile hit the same area of the Black Lion that had been hit at the start of this battle. The heavy warhead made short work of the remaining armor, and then it also dug deeply into the old warship. The already cracked bridge section on the Black Lion was voided into the cold of space in a rush of outgoing atmosphere. The outrushing was quickly changed, and a wave of fire rushed into the bridge, and the old warship's crew died at their command stations before they felt too much pain. The warship died and the last command was sent from the now dead fingers activated the old warship's weapons, but without the updated information from a biologic brain or the silicon fire control system to be effective. It was wasted capital grade weapons fire, and the last gasp from the old SLDF warship crewed by people fanatically loyal to what they thought Blake wanted was useless.

#######

The unengaged pair of Essex class ships now called the Enlightened Spark and the Salvation charged passed by the wounded ComStar cruiser at their maximum rate of acceleration. The two Blake's Will destroyers did a slashing firing pass on the enemy heavy warship painted red and black but not squawking an IFF. The speeds were high, all of the warships were doing their best to not be hit, and everyone was being pressed by the huge g loading they were under thanks to the over thrusting engines. It was something that only highly trained crews could do with any chance of success, and the ex ComStar crews on these two destroyers were not as well trained as the Black Lion's had been. That had an effect on the ComStar attack that was distressing….at least to the ComStar trained crews point of view.

Some of the Whirlwind 20 autocannons and Magna 35 lasers running down the left side broadside of the destroyers were fired in anger. These weapons hit the non-engaged side of the Athena, and those hits went from the bow foresides going to the aft sides. But the last two autocannons hit the very aft most part of the Dragoon crewed cruiser. The nose and both triple guns bays on the cheeks on the Enlightened Spark and the Salvation reached out into the wave of dropships racing towards the battle instead of trying to engage the already damaged enemy warship that was closer to them.

In a blink of an eye one of the new non prototype Claymore class assault dropships became the first dropship to die due to the weapons fire coming from the Blake's Wills warships. Then almost between eyeblinks a pair of Avengers and a Union died right behind it. The Union class dropship had died along with her crew and a dozen Clan warriors from the Smoke Jaguars and the Jade Falcons that were carried in her mech bays. Those warriors died along with their almost priceless omnimechs that were to land on the small moon.

The two ComStar painted destroyers flashed passed the side of the Athena as she opened up with some returning weapons fire on the pair of destroyers. The Athena hit mostly nothing for her troubles. The combined speed of the crossing warships was just too much for the green Dragoon crews to be able to deal within the real world even with computer aided fire controls systems. Then the design of the Sovetskii Soyuz came into play in this battle for her own advantage.

The six Imperator 20 class naval autocannons and four Ceres-N medium class NPPCs that were mounted on the aft of the Athena fired at the seemingly less difficult to hit aft sections of the two Essex destroyers. Still the green gunners on the Dragoon warships "only" hit with three weapons spread over the two bright sets of engines. The Enlightened Spark took two Imperator 20's class capital autocannon shells into her aft section, and her huge engine shut down automatically. But still the Blake's Will warship didn't go totally dark with the loss of its main engine. The Salvation took a massive Ceres class NPPC into its own engine, and the more powerful and destructive energy blast didn't finish bleeding out until it was almost into the middle of the old destroyer class warship. It was a very hard hit onto such a small warship.

######

Acting Admiral Chandra looked through her clear helmet to the Flag Bridge of her flagship. She could see the heat simmering in the air like ghost fingers moving around the metal walled room and going between the space suited figures. Not for the first time, she went through the age old argument of fighting a ship with it holding an atmosphere within her hull, and work hard to avoid blowing out the hull due to damage. This was one of the reasons for not fighting without an atmosphere. If you were fighting a warship in vacuum? Then when the heatsinks could not vent the heat fast enough in combat. Then the atmosphere within the warship would take just that much more heat away from the weapons and very fragile sensors. That was all so that the crews could fight just that much longer and maybe win the battle. But fighting that way was not without risks.

She had to hope no one's suit radio was currently out of operations while they were still at their stations. In this kind of heat, that would have killed anyone not in a heavily insulated space suit in a few minutes. Then again that was why you trained in hand and arm signals as well as flashing light codes using your suit lights in your warships training class. Suddenly the room cleared, and Chandra could feel her suit try to puff out. That was a sure sign that the damage control officer was remotely checking suits telemetry and then selectively doing a controlled venting of high temperature spaces. And just like how an air can gets colder the longer you hold down the trigger, the room would start to cool down all for just the cost of replacing the O2.

While the admiral was thinking about that, the ship's commander's voice came over her own suit mounted short ranged radio. "Okay get us flipped around. Cut all weapons fire and try to dump this heat before we all have heatstroke."

The voice stopped for a few seconds, and then it picked up again in that calm voice that commanders worked so hard to develop. "Have the helm work on getting us into orbit near something that looks important on that rock. Have the gun crews ready in case they have to deal with a working SDS systems…..just in case."

While the captain of this warship went about the plan for the next part of this battle, the fleet commander looked to where the rest of this battle was taking place. Each of these two different officers had their own jobs that needed to be done, and they didn't have the time to look over each other's shoulders. One part of the Admiral's brain noted that she didn't seem to need to give many updated fleet wide orders just yet. That was either because they had a good plan after all, or they were about to get the gods own ambush pulled on them.

#######

Now it was time for the attacker's assault dropships and first wave of aerospace fighters to fight the defenders and also try and take out the two now gravely wounded enemy warships. This part of the battle was where the Dragoons were going to fight with a tech edge for the first time in this battle. The Dragoons didn't have that much top of the line clan tech for their aerospace forces to use, like omnifighters. But when the Dragoons had first come to the Inner Sphere, it was quickly found out that some warfighting designs were not known to the locals. The Athena's 20 fighter bays, the 10 fighter bays on the Congress class, each of the Lola IIIs fighter bays, and the Mk 42 Vincent all had been filled with the stored highest of the high end Royal SLDF only fighters or Golden age style fighter space frames. They were the space frames that would have stood out to much to the rest of the Inner Sphere….even for the Dragoons to be able to deal with.

The aerospace fighter forces raised and trained by the Com Guards had been hit very hard in the proxy battle for Terra. They had been going up against Clan omnifighters crewed with the best clan pilots available. All with mostly SLDF militia grade fighters and a lot less training. Then there had been the fracturing of the combat forces under the ComStar flag. What also had depleted the numbers of aerospace fighters even further than this, was what the splinter groups had been able to access. Those had not been the only drains that they had to deal with, only the two most major issues that everyone connected to ComStar had to deal with.

The next major drain that the splinter groups of ComStar had been the not so civil war that had broken out on Gibson. That had been where the fighters these warships should have to call on to help defend themselves had been sent to many months ago. This transfer from the warships was done as well for most of the few aerospace fighters that had been held on the space rock for years in case of emergency. It was hoped that those fighters would help in the recovery or protection of other units that would support Blake's Will. They not only were covering ground forces, but also dropships, jumpships and the assets that only a handful knew about. Blake's Will had been able to successfully infiltrate and then take over two warships controlled by other splinter groups.

Where the local ComStar/Blake's Will base might be short fighters and the pilots needed to operate all of them, higher command had left the base with a very special card that they could play in case of emergency. There were old SLDF made drone fighters…lots and lots of drone fighters that the old SLDF had left behind for local defense or just to get them out of everyone else's sight after the first reported run ins against the SDS drones were leaked. After the final liberation of Terra by General K, the whole SLDF had a major issue with drones of any kind. The local ComStar commander didn't have all of them ready to launch, but they had over half of what had been left behind by the mighty SLDF ready for at least limited combat.

Blake's Will was mostly made up of ROM assets and personnel along with the most fanatical of those that had been held within ComStar's rank and file. The Ruins of Gabriel had been one of the five areas that had been hoarded in case of emergency by some of the key members of ROM over many generations. Everyone that knew about any of these bases had been expecting that these hidden assets were safe from any outside threat as well as most expected internal threats to ComStars own hidden end goals. After all they had been successfully hidden from the rest of the Inner Sphere for hundreds of years already. Anyone that would have talked would have done so by now or they were already handled by Blake's Wrath. What more did they have to worry about?

The locals in this star system's political leadership slots had bent the knee to a certain leader within ComStar, all the while playing lip service to one of the scavenger lords. If there would have been any attacks planned on this hidden shipyard and support base? Then the local leadership would have known about it, and then they would let the base know as soon as possible if not a little sooner if only to protect themselves. That had not happened, and the defenders of this carefully hidden base were caught very much flat footed by this surprise attack. Then there was the sheer size of this surprise attack, after all this was not the 1st SW or early parts of the 2nd SW.

In less than half an hour after the battle had started. The mix of Dragoons and FedCom forces had taken control of the local space around the rock that held the hidden SLDF base. Unless it was a major enemy warship that tried to breach the main hatch to the base, nothing was getting off of that rock in one piece. Now it was time for the attackers to open the rock and see what the old ComStar and the new Blake's Will might be hiding there for all of these years. The hard part was to do the opening of the base without making it useless to the new owners at the same time. You know the little things that always turns out to be the fly in the ointment or the monkey with the wrench. There were just some things that could not be planned for.

########

Captain Elson Novacat (and oh how he hated it when that rank was used to address him by anyone) made a slight adjustment in his Elemental class Battle Armor. It had taken some time to get this "new" suit to feel just right, at least now that the heavy g loading was done. Well, more to the point, the heavy g loading was over for now.

Elson had been assigned to Kappa battalion when he had been cleared to rejoin the Glory Road, and this unit was full of his fellow clan Bondmens and fitted with "real" combat equipment. They had been assigned to this glorious action as soon as the Dragoons had signed the contract. At no time did he think about the lost honor of taking enemy warships, not when there was a major base from the time of the founding father of the clans to do battle over.

Elson Novacat had been watching and evaluating these Dragoons almost from his first day of him "belonging" to them as a bondsman under Clan law. Elson had quickly found them wanting, and he thought of them as being weak…at best. Being weak in his eyes should have been a death knell for the Dragoons, at least it would have been under Clan laws. Then there was the average age of the warriors that took up prize spots in "front line units". During his down time between training events, Elson had been making plans to make the Dragoons into "a proper" Clan unit. One of those plans would have him challenge and winning the senior command slot of this newly formed battalion.

The next step would be harder, but Elson would take over leadership of one of the "regular" five line regiments under the Dragoon's corrupted flag. That would get him on the council of colonels that governed all of the Dragoons. That would leave him only one spot down from being the leader of all of the Dragoons. After that? All he needed to do would be patient in his waiting for the right time to launch a trial of position to be the top Dragoon. The Wolf was old, and it was well past time that a more genetically pure warrior took over the reins.

Elson was thinking that he would use the Dragoons being so weak against them, and that he should have no problem winning said trial to be the top dog of this splinter group from Clan Wolf. With him at the head of a unit of this size? He then would lead them back under the true leadership of The Clans to get his just rewards from the iLKhan. He doubted that he would even need to demote to many of the old hands to cannon fodder to cement his position before taking them back under "Real" Clan control.

One part of Elson Novacat's mind noticed that the dropship was under power again, but he had been carried in what seemed like a few hundred times in dropships, so this was below needing to be fully noticed by his brain. The Leopard Elson was riding in was an old Dragoon dropship, one that had been taken in hand by the Dragoon's support command over a decade ago. The Dragoon's had the mech and fighter bays ripped out sometime in the late 3040s to give the dropship a new job. The now removed old mech and fighter bays had been replaced with new and hand built bays. Ones that could support "proper" battle armor for combat, and it even kept the ability to orbital drop the 1ton suits if it was deemed worth the risk to the suits. It was not a real combat dropship in the captain's eyes, but it had turned a useless dropship into one that could do the job.

Soon this dropship would land, and soon Captain Elson Novacat would be able to exit the brick like dropship to gain glory for his name. That newly found glory would help Elson on his taking of the next step in his complicated plan to dominate this unit that should be more proper clan like in his eyes. Elson Novacat was thinking about his future when his body started to die.

Captain Elson Novacat died when the dropship that he was riding in had started to come apart under the surprise hammering of enemy ground to space mech scale weapons. That hammering had come by the way of the now newly exposed heavy weapons turrets of the ex SLDF support base. The attackers were lucky that they were not capital scale weapons. It would be found out later that those heavy weapons had been removed and then used to get more warships ready for combat a few years ago. It had been done in a rush so that the same group that had been causing issues over in MoC space would get "handled". Now it looked to have been a penny wise but very much pound foolish..at least thanks to hindsight.

But the ground and maintenance crews had left behind plenty of mech scale weapons that had remained scattered on the outside of the huge base to defend a massive area of the small moon. It was just unfortunate for the defenders, that those weapons emplacements had not been crewed with the best gunners that belonged to Blake's Will. Then again if you throw enough crap at the wall, something is eventually going to stick.

Elson lived long enough to see the slab of concrete used as part of the base's radiation shielding needed to protect and conceal the facility from any watchers. He didn't have time to scream before the impact cracked open the face plate of his battle armor. He tried to breathe vacuum for the first and last time in his whole life. That worked out about as well as you would expect even with the Harjel fitted in between the layers of his battle armor.

Not long after that crusader minded ex Nova Cat had died, the rest of Iota battalion landed, but they were short one battlemech company. Kappa battalion landed not long later and short most of its assigned one battle armor company. Then the rest of a mixed regiment of FedCom Battle Armor, Mechs, and "normal" armored space suited infantry landed on the surface of the large asteroid or very small moon to do combat with the users of this base.

The leading Dragoon forces had been able to quickly find and breach many access points into the base not long after the reinforcements had arrived at their locations. After forcing the entry points for all types of attackers, the massive elemental class battle armor had to divert to the larger entry points scattered around the surface of this orbital rock. As expected, the 1ton suits could not use the personnel corridors of this old SLDF base. The mix force of Dragoons and FedCom "ground units" used multiple attack avenues and they rolled through the base like their lives depended on it. Well, because it did. Shock and firepower were the words of the day.

########

The grounded Dragoons and FedCom units would not have any more reinforcements available to use, at least not until the battle armor used to take control of the cold warships were released. When the cold warships were cleared of any on board threats, then those highly trained combat units would then take control of the three now wrecked enemy warships. Only after that, then could they be re-tasked to the nearby moon's surface.

It had not taken that long before the last of the space based ComStar warships were no longer combat effective or a risk to anyone else in this star system. The heavy Dragoon fighters had taken bites out of the hulls of two of the Blake's Will warships in-between butchering the enemy drones and few manned space fighters painted white trying to defend the once hidden base from this onslaught. The attackers might have been outnumbered, but they were not out gunned or out skilled… for the most part at least.

One of the known problems with Old SLDF Navy designed Warships, was that individually they were very short on any effective aerospace fighter defense weapons. The Essex class of destroyers only had a battery of three of the barracuda class missile launchers with 30 reloads to deal with any attacking space based fighters. It had not taken long for those few weapons on the Destroyers to be silenced by the dragoon crewed fighters focused weapons fire. Then the small craft carrying boarding crews would make sure that those few anti fighter weapons stayed that way for the rest of the battle, much less would the heavy weapons be turned onto the dropships or onto the surface of the nearby moon and support base.

######

It took the combined attacking ground forces fighting in low gravity inside the huge base almost half of a day to clear the first stage of the battle. After that stage of the attack plan was complete by the removing of all or at least most of the major combat forces by them means of killing or capturing them. Then it would take combat engineers and specially trained other teams to clear the base of any threat that might lose the new owners this massive and priceless support base. All of that planning and care still would not stop a lot of repairs needing to be done at a later date by the new owners. Thankfully that was not unexpected for the people who had given the orders to launch this mission.

When the attack was launched, the security team on this station had numbered "only" 50 warm bodies. That would give them 18 armed personnel on each of the three duty shifts for the space base to leverage in its "normal" operations. In after thoughts and also noted in both the FedCom and Dragoon AARs, it should have been a lot heavier. But ROM could not just pull new people out of thin air that had both the skills and the faith that was required to do this job to ROM's satisfaction. ROM had special training and reviews needed for those that watch the watchers.

The security personnel assigned to this base were mostly there to keep a lid on things when the stress of hiding on a space rock got to some of the support personnel. That had happened about every few weeks even before the coming of the Clans, and surprisingly it was less common after they had started their invasion. Still the average ComStar personnel had access to some heavy weapons, but the personnel were not ready to fight in death pressure at the time of the surprise attack. However, the attackers today were ready to fight in death pressure, and they had heavier weapons and outfitted with the thickest armor that was possible in the lighter gravity on this moon.

Slowly the bases security teams, now fully called up when the base was finally breached, were cut down or blown out into space by the mix force of zero g trained Dragoons and FedCom combat troopers as they moved room by room and corridor by corridor. These ComStar security teams and support personnel had not died alone in this clearing. It was when those trained teams were augmented by those without much combat training but willing to kill heretics that might have shifted the battle into their favor. Then again, the attackers counter this change with just the use of a lot more firepower and even more ferocity in their tactics.

It would take days if not weeks for every one of the rooms inside of the huge base to be cleared of any possible booby traps that had been left by trained and untrained crewmembers on this huge base. The SLDF did not tend to make small things, at least not when it came to supporting their massive war machine. This had been a major support base designed for supporting two "whole" fleets in peace time, and then surging capability to support up to four full strength SLDF space fleets in a time of war. At least it should have been able to support those numbers of combatants for a short period of time on paper.

In reality, it had supported even more during the later days of the Civil War and before the Exodus of the surviving SLDF military. If things happened even close to what the FedCom leaders had planned? Then this base would be supporting the building of a new fleet to fight what had become of the SLDF after that same said Exodus. This future fact or plan would bring many a smile to those that would be working on this base in the future.

Odessa III.

New Bealton

This part of the attack didn't start right when Nondi Steiner jumped into this star system. Many hours before her arrival into this star system, teams of LIC agents and members of the Seventh Kommandos of the Wolf's Dragoons went into action on the planet. The two different core groups of special forces were outfitted with the best stealth equipment that each commander could get to their teams.

Also, each group of Special Forces didn't have all of the support that they were used to having at their beck and call for a mission like this. That kind of support can take years to be developed, and time was something that the Dragoons and the FedCom forces felt was in very, very short supply for this mission. Besides, the locals were very, very good at keeping eyes on those that they knew were not born on this planet, it was a trust thing and those not born here were held in a low trust situation out of hand. Then again LIC and the 7th Kommandos were very good at getting into places that others wanted to keep prying eyes away from. It kind of was in the job description.

The small teams went out from their dispersed safe houses at the set time without knowing that much about the other teams even if they had the same boss. Well other than knowing that there were other teams of SF working on this planet, and that allied SF teams were supposed to also be on this mission. There were some people that needed to die in the next few hours, some were listed as needing to be taken out for the betterment of the human race. Then there were others on the target lists that high command wanted to be taken alive, but the grabbing teams were to make them not able to support the coming fight at least.

Like ghosts out of some types of popular fiction, these groups of very highly trained and expensively equipped personnel went out to support detailed plans for this attack. Many within the 7th Kommandos could have used the powerful Elemental type battle armor that the Dragoons were now making, but those things were not stealthy…..not at all. They were big frakking hammers, and sometimes the working SF teams needed not to be seen, at least not seen until it was time for the blood to start flowing as the SF team's primary mission.

Just as the small but powerful bombs and also carefully hidden devices went off around New Bealton. Those specially made devices had been hidden in various ammo dumps, communication nodes, and half a dozen different types of targets that the locals might need if they were attacked by a large force. While the shock waves of sound and flames were still echoing across the landscape, then the SF teams went into action. Confusion started to grab the planet by the short and curlies, but the devices were centered on the Capital city of the planet New Bealton and the city of Moseby's Crossroads. The use of those FedCom and Dragoon made bombs and jammers were not totally restricted to just those two cities on this planet. The key limiting factor on their spreading was that there had only been so much time to plant those devices. While confusion was rapidly growing around the planet, another group slipped into the royal bedrooms of the Odessan Royal Palace.

The bad part was that the Palace was sitting in the center of the city called New Bealton, and it held over a few million people that were more than likely very loyal to the local leader. The Nighthawk PA(L)s slammed into the bedrooms with a crash, and faster than you can say "What do you think you're doing." The small group of operators had very quickly captured Count Nicholas Fisk and his two kids Luther and Leon Fisk. You would be very surprised what the right copy of "lifestyles of the Rich and Noble" could provide for a snatching team with the right skills.

The wife of the Count was currently not in this star system much less being on this planet. She was not scheduled to return to her home for another few months…..or so. In truth, she would by now be in a well-hidden safe house starting to be asked some very pointed questions by people trained in knowing what to ask and telling if someone was lying. That operation had started about the time that the first jumpships had fully arrived in this system under a guard force supplied by LIC. This was to keep her out of the limelight and also to make sure that someone in LOKI didn't do something that higher leadership might not have approved of. It had happened more than once before and the leaders of the FedCom were not going to risk a repeat of that public event this time.

#######

Corporal Karl Green was the current point man as his team worked on exfiltrating from the Royal Palace of the Count. They had with them all three of the targets that his team had been assigned to take off the game board. Karl was running point mainly because he was outfitted with his newly made Nighthawk class suit, the newest PA(L) on the whole team. One of the nice things that had happened after the cover had come off of the Dragoons, was the upgrading of the weapons and weapons platforms that they could use for the first time for many of the members of the mercenary unit.

Besides the PA(L) upgrades, many of the members on this mission had traded in their older Mauser 960 that had been thought of as "just" Lostech only a decade ago. Using weapons like that had only been plausible to use by units with the reputation of the Dragoons. Now many of the operation groups within the Dragoons were carrying what had been marked as Mauser 960Cs on the inventory list, but you also would have had no problem finding a Blazer, or SRM pack, or other weapons that were still very uncommon being used by Kommando teams.

Most of those latter weapons were a bit of overkill for this type of mission, at least for the point man on a snatch, grab, and exfiltration mission with the HVTs. Karl was packing a nice new auto rifle that had started coming out of the MoC a few years ago. This one was fed by a specialized feed system that someone in the Dragoons had come up with to carry a lot more rounds for this type of weapon. For someone the size of Karl, a box filled with 600 rounds of ammunition was not that big of a deal to have strapped to your back on top of his "normal" mission load. The "special" rounds that they were packing on this mission were something else, and they could punch right through body armor like a knife through butter. It was even somewhat effective against light battle armor, and you didn't even have to know where that many of the weak points were on a given design of PA(L) to make these new rounds effective on that mission.

This weapon was "only" a slug thrower, but it was a very efficient weapon as long as you were not having to deal with clan grade battle armor. If Green ran into a point defense area that his rifle might not be that effective against? Well, then behind him was a trooper packing a clan designed Mauser 960C, and behind him was a PA(L) with a Blazer laser rifle in her hands. She also had a heavy battery pack on her back to keep the double barreled heavy energy weapon in the battle just that much longer. Behind these three troopers came the mission leader with the Count over one of his armored shoulders, and then a following trooper doing a fireman's carry of both of the Counts two kids was behind him.

Green cleared the next corner of the hallway, and he took two more steps before coming to a full stop without making a sound that carried even a few inches away from his body. He was getting some IR bleed over coming from around the next bend of the stone corridor on the stealthed inside display on his armored visor. The last time this IR bleed had happened, Karl Green had almost shot one of the large cats that the family or the staff of the palace maintained as pets or rodent hunters. He slowly feeds a wire thin camera around the bend to stealthily get a look at what might be waiting for him and his team. So far, this Dragoon team had not been found out by any of the locals. The fires burning around the Palace and in the town was keeping eyes pointed outside and not this deep within the Palace.

As Karl took in the image displayed on his HUD from the thin camera. He knew that this was going to change the sneaking about game that the whole team had been playing so far on this mission. Green's heart skipped a beat when one of the guards manning a defense point that had not been reported to them moved towards him. The heavy weapon's point held what looked like a light MG, but each of the four people at this point also had handguns and what might be a few shotguns over shoulders. Karl knew that they had to get through this guard point and turning around was not an option at this time.

This team and its three pack of HVTs had to get down that corridor for another 78 meters, down six more flights of stairs, then go 500meters down another stone corridor that now was a deeply buried underground hallway of the castle. The exit of this…. facility was going to be by using diving bubbles and the sewer system. It was not the best smelling way to exit a building, but how many security people really check the waste leaving a facility much less doing so during high stress times? That answer would be rarely.

Karl made sure that the rest of the team had images from his camera, and then he pushed two buttons on his left gauntlet that would send preset ideas of what he wanted to do to his team leader. Then Karl waited and watched, while the team commander reviewed his data. After what seemed like a few minutes, Karl's HUD was updated to let him know that the mission leader agreed with his plan. This was not a Tri-Vid show, if you were going to do something that was off book? Then you might want to let your back up know what you were about to stick your…..foot in. The tap on his shoulder let him know that the rest of the team was ready to go loud, and then run at the best speed that the PA(L) would let them to clear the area. If they went loud, then slowly and stealthy moving around was no longer going to be worth the risk to the mission. The 7th Kommandos were all about making sure that the mission was done.

#######

Karl Green took a steadying breath, then checked that his weapon and the heavy box magazine was ready and that the feed shoot was clear of any visible binds. Then Karl took one last look through the wire cam, before he had to retract the spying device to keep it safeish for future use. It was time to go, and Karl stepped out into the middle of the corridor, and his weapon went into automatic fire. Karl had no idea that this rifle had been based on a Colonial weapon, and only the very best ammunition was supplied to the 7th Kommandos for both training and operations. The shooters and the supply people on the Dragoon's home world had no idea that the rounds being used by one Karl Green had been designed to kill something called a Cylon Centurion on planets that were so far off the edge of the map as to not even being marked as "There be Dragons here".

Karl's rifle was held at his hip and his light powered armor systems held the weapon steady as a fixed coax-mount on a main battle tank, and the suits fire control systems kept the oddly shaped projectiles going right where Karl wanted them to go. The first person to get CPL Karl Green's weapons undivided attention was the local guard that was walking between the firing point and the corner of the stone line corridor that Karl's team was hiding around.

Normally a light weapon like the one in Karl's armored covered hands would have both rose and jumped around firing at its full designed cyclic rate. Then again, the team that had designed that weapon had not known that something like the Nighthawk powered armor even existed. The targeted person was wearing body armor, very good body armor, the best body armor that ROM had given to their local puppets to use. Still that body armor didn't help the poor sod standing less than two dozen steps from Karl and his death dealing weapon. The first round hit the body armor where the average person would have their heart. It was quickly followed by three more shots that struck in the general upper chest area of the local as the weapon vibrated in the shooter's hands.

The body of the local was falling back and still it was being hit by the anti Cylon projectiles coming from the colonial designed weapon. Karl could "see" some of the rounds impacting behind the standing and nearest target. Slowly and with small hyper controlled movements made possible by Karl's training, he walked the oddly shaped 7mm projectiles into his next target. The woman that had been sitting in the gunners' area of the light machine gun lost her head, and it was quickly followed by the loader who was just now turning to see what was making all of the noise. Three rounds hit the third person that was covered in enough useless armor to hide the sex of the third person at least until they were put in body bags a few hours in the future.

The fourth person was the last to die manning this defensive point, and they had lasted the longest of all of them. That person had started running at the very first sounds of gunfire in the enclosed area of this part of the palace. They had just died tired when a line of projectiles from Karl's weapon had punched into the thinner back plates of his body armor. Karl kept his finger in the trigger well until the last body fell out of his line of sight. When his weapon stopped its death rattle? Karl quickly scanned the rest of the corridor over the smoke rolling off the end of the barrel like a pair of wavering ghosts out of a campfire story. Karl crouched walked and started checking to make sure that all of the threats were down in this localized area.

When Karl reached the fourth bleeding body, the one that had been trying to run, he found that it had been blown in half. By then the second member of his team was covering him from the light machinegun nest. A heartbeat later the whole team knew that it was now clear of any near-term dangers. The team in "light" power armor went to a full run, and they thundered down the stone tunnel sounding very much like a very large herd of stampeding elephants. There was no longer any reason to be quiet now that gunfire was currently echoing around a good part of this building. The team would make it to the exit point without further issues put up by any of the locals.

######

By the time that the Dragoon team made it to the exit point. The three targets for this mission were now awake, but the high tech gags they were wearing had kept them silent. Only one Dragoon trooper kept the three HVTs under a mean looking weapon pointed in their general direction. Even for a member of the 7th Kommandos, it was hard to wave deadly weapons under the noses of children. But the adult working for ComStar was in a different situation. The outer "glass" of the suits was one way, but the body language said that they were not just threatening the lone adult. Sometimes the power of suggestion is greater than the power of speaking.

Two members of the Dragoon team were pulling out survival bubbles normally used in case of emergencies on a civilian cargo hauling submarine, and now those devices had been repurposed to support this mission. The three "civilians" were forced into the clear hard plastic bags, and the life support systems were activated just as quickly by the Dragoon team. It took all of 30 seconds for each of the three life bags to be checked for safety by one of the Nighthawk suits.

The point man in his Nighthawk suit went into the water first, and then the backup point man went into the foul water a few seconds later. The three HVTs were pushed into the dark hole in the huge sewer pipe next. The last Dragoon had the hardest job of making sure the access hatch was closed behind the team before they started moving "downstream" with the targets and the special forces team.

As the old saying goes. "Needs must when the Devils drive." The Nighthawk suits were sealed for space operations and the smell and wetness was not going to be an issue for the battle armored troopers to have to deal with while on this mission. Well, that is until it was time for the post mission tasks to be done. That was when someone was going to have to clean the outer hulls of the suits in almost microscopic detail before they could undertake the next mission. That would not be making anyone very happy. Then again that would not have been the worst thing that this team had to clean out or off of their suits.

The team would float, in the dark, for the next few hours until they were dumped into a large river downstream of the planet's capital city. This was a river that should be far enough out of the way of the coming major battle for the capital of this planet. From there, they would wait until one of the 7th Kommando's dropships would be sent down to pick them up. Now all the Dragoons would have to do was keep all three HVTs alive as best they could. What was not covered in the briefing and orders was in what order the HVTs needed to be protected in. This team had unofficially decided that the two children were more important than the old Count. They just had neglected to let anyone outside of their team know what they were thinking. That decision had fallen squarely into the prosses of begging for forgiveness instead of asking for permission or approval.

Sometime later the Count of Odessa would be having a meeting with one of the senior members of House Steiner, one that he would not soon be forgetting…Well he would not be forgetting it, until the firing squad took his life. The wife and two kids were taken into "protective custody" while a lot of someone's talked to them about what they might or might not know. It was quickly found out that they didn't know anything related to the Count's acts of treason against the FedCom, Lyran Commonwealth, and or House Steiner. They would be given new names and moved to a planet in the "Outback area of the FedSun's part of the FedCom.

They would just be footnotes lost in history. Even when found by the press many decades later. The small family group would never give interviews about their disgraced father and the long line of family that had been willingly working for ComStar and not the leader of the Steiner family as they had been sworn to do. it would be a closely held secret that House Davion made sure that the two boys each would be given a Centurion class Battlemech after graduating into the local planet's militia. The mother would be given enough funds to buy a little estate that she had always wanted. These events would cement this family's loyalty to House Steiner-Davion.

Odessa III.

Moseby's Crossroads

Suzanne Mulvanery was spot lighted in her office by a single overhead light that bathed a cone of stark white around her in a cone of harsh illumination. Her unit had been headquartered at Moseby's Crossroads as it was rebuilt into a "real" major combat unit of Blake's Will. She snorted at that word and the idea of rebuilding. It was more like building instead of rebuilding her unit to better support Blake's Will. Her unit had not been a cohesive combat force before when ComStar and the Com Guards had started to come apart at the philosophical seams.

Suzanne only had three "real" books on her desk that also held the replacement for an arm that she had lost to the Clans. That "new" arm's fingers were now drumming on the hard covered top of one of those books. That one book was called Demons and Angels Throughout Human History published in 3050. Another one of her books was written by Blake (himself), and it acted as guidance to those like her. Those that now believed in what was written within the covers word for word and that it had come from the Great Blake himself.

The last book on her desk was stamped 1st Blake's Will Division: The True Devotion. That book was her order of battle that she was supposed to build to, but the book was in two parts. The True Devotion was going to be what was listed as an IV Beta as the now corrupted and ruined ComStar would have put it. After the battles and losses taken on Gibson. That rebuilding now was going to take far longer than had been first hoped for when that book had been first given to her. She didn't doubt that this building of her division could, would, and should be done. Only it was going to take much longer than had been first planned to get all of the work done. Oh, and the expected equipment to do that rebuilding would now possibly be very different.

Currently, this unit was a mixed mash of combat power that had been gathered on this part of the planet. One fact that was very hard for her to take, was that it was a major combat unit absent of all aerospace fighters. This was a major violation of the combined arms combat doctrine that she had been trained in. The other concerning fact was in the odd collection of ground combat power that she could call on. Long gone was the idea of limiting the different types of combat power used to make up a full combat unit.

At her command, Suzanne's division had a core of "true" SLDF militia mechs, then there was a thin smattering of recovered Clan tech mechs for more focused heavy firepower. She also had a few more of the Clan busters' style mechs than she did of the true clan mechs. She had been lucky and a shipment of 70ton Dragoon class battlemechs and assault class Grand Crusaders that were fresh off of the Terran and Mars production lines had arrived before that pipeline was fully closed off to Blake's Will. Those fresh mechs had joined Jackrabbits, Jokers, Nexus, and Raijin classes of mechs that had been needed to rebuild the Com Guards after the losses on that Blake forsaken planet. Now they would be doing Blake's Will under her tutelage.

She was not looking forward to when she was going to have to start using "lower" grade mechs and tanks bought through the local Count from the normal FedCom suppliers to finish filling out her unit. At thinking about that, she mentally kicked herself. Some of the new mechs and tanks coming off the lines around the Inner Sphere were better than the SLDF Militia mechs and tanks that made up the core of her unit. As long as no one looked too closely at the money that the Count was using, or other agents needed to do the buying, that supply line of new machines should remain open.

Suzanne could even count on some Bander made 75ton Bandersnatch class battlemechs coming to her in the near future that would be fresh off the production lines. Suzanne also had even seen a copy of a supply report that crossed her desk, that said some Battle Hawks and Bushwackers were coming along with some extra upgrade kits as soon as some clandestine shipping could be arranged. So far, the only letdown in the supply situation had been the loss of mechs made in the holy Sol star system.

She had no idea where the rest of Blake's Will were going to get more major combat units on the open market now that Terra was out of the pipeline. But there had been rumors going around at her level that said soon new designs would be coming, but the issue would be shipping them that far from the repaired factories to make it to Odessa. Susanne gave a snort and gave the hard covered book a hard thump. She would believe that when she saw them and not a second before.

Her combat division was up to strength, at least it was by the book on her desk. But that was only if you counted almost every truck and APC needed to move the ground troops as her "core" combat strength and not listed under the supporting equipment appendix. Then again, the 1st Blake's Will had a lot of higher end tech weapons thanks to being this close to the clan front. That should be enough to make any three mech regiments want to be somewhere else instead of standing still and fighting The True Devotion. Suzanne had a slight smile on her face for reasons besides the firepower that was at her command. It was that she was sure that they had Blake on their side for whatever it was that she wanted to do. That last item was worth another full heavy mech division of highly trained combat personnel, in her humble opinion.

#######

That was the last thought that Suzanne had before her aid came crashing into her office with a full head of steam and yelling at his full volume. "Incoming jump alert! We have someone coming in at a pirate point! A huge one!"

Suzanne rose like someone had put a live power wire in the cushion of her office chair, and then she asked the first thing that came to mind. "Are they ours or an allied splinter group?''

She knew that it was a dumb question as soon as those words had left her mouth. They were too far away from Gibson or any large group of likeminded Com Guards for any of the known group to have the strength to need a huge jumpship to carry them. Besides they would have used a normal jump point to come to this star system, and not risk using a pirate point and wrecking a very valuable jumpship that Blake's Will needed.

She made a sour face as her mind caught up to her mouth. "Never mind! Alert the unit… and prepare for combat."

Suzanne rose and started moving towards the combat command center in not a slow walk, but it was a very measured faster pace. Suzanne would wait until she found out what was happening, besides combat might be something that they could avoid if she had the right information. After all, only those very high within the still forming organization called Blake's Will knew that her division was there on this planet in the first place. The rest of the Inner Sphere should be safely ignorant of what was hiding on this planet.

One part of her mind was hoping that she would be able to take out her Dragoon class battlemech that had replaced her rebuilt Crusader for its first taste of real combat. That old Crusader had never worked right after being put back together, and it had also needed about double the maintenance hours of any other mech its size under her command. That rebuilding had been very much needed after she had lost her arm when a Clan Wolf painted Timber Wolf had shot the old mech into its larger component parts from a long distance. Susanne was looking forward to seeing how the newly made IER PPC matched with the pair of LB-X 10s autocannon shotguns on the AEM-01a worked out in real combat.

######

An hour later, Susanne would be kicking herself for thinking about how great it would be to use her new mech in combat for the first time. That was when the HQ's radio set to the planet's emergency network started screaming out an alert in a voice that didn't belong to any leader on this planet. Nondi Steiner was coming, and she had brought hell with her. The people on the planet had about half a day before two Lyran RCT's and the 1st Kell's Hounds would arrive. Then they would start to land to address the charges of treason against Count Fisk and the occupation of this planet by 1st Blake's Will Division. The Steiner had used her division by numbers if not by given name, but from what Nondi Steiner already knew about the Blake's Will was disturbing on so many levels for this division commander. Her ROM training was screaming in her brain to run and that the mission was now well and truly blown up in her face.

This disturbing news had sent a shockwave that had moved at the speed of rumor going around the planet. The still recovering division had not put in their "normal" defensive fortifications as you would expect for a unit being on this planet for so many months. Those were things that could be seen from orbit, and even Count Fisk and his staff could not keep everyone out of this area of the airspace all of the time. That didn't mean that the Blake's Will had not been able to put in a few defensive points over the last many months on top of what had been planned for. It was just that they were very well covered, and that this area had only held enough forces for a level III, and even a light IV was almost six times the size of the old hosting unit base.

LIC had been able to find the ex-Com Guard base with ease, and then the agents had found enough of the fighting positions to pass the warning of their presence up their chain of command. The True Devotion was still working on basic field works when things changed again for the local defenders. The Com Guard and ROM trained unit had expected that the reinforced two enemy RCTs would land some distance away, and then they would do a movement to contact into the very teeth of the defenders. That was what the book said the enemy should do. So of course, the attackers had changed the rules on the Blake's Will and its allies.

####

The two battalions' worth of mechs from the 1st Lyran RCT and a mech battalion of the 1st Kell Hounds did an orbital drop right on top of Moseby's Crossroads. That had been a very risky move, and not only if there had been any local aerospace fighters for the attackers to deal with. But that was why you had escorts for operations like this. As it turned out, the updated 1st Kell Hounds and the 1st Lyran aerospace fighters had not been needed to clear the air for the high altitude drop.

And after the FedCom mechs were down and the dropships carrying the rest of the mechs, infantry, battle armor, tanks, and artillery had landed safely nearby to the now burning city. The core of the attacker's CAP was "allowed" by the local defenders to reset with fuel, and some of this refreshed combat forces were diverted to provide some much needed close air support to the surviving mechs doing battle from the orbital drop.

The Kell's Hound 1st Regiment had gone to Luithen with Clan mechs that they had been able to buy or trade with the Dragoons to get. They had been able to recover enough battlefield salvage to replace all of their combat losses of the clan grade mechs in that unit, and they even had been able to push a few extras over to the still rebuilding 2nd regiment. The rest of the 2nd Kell's Hound now were fitted with each mech or tank having some clan grade weapons. That is if not being given full blown Clan made second line machines or the odd recovered third line clan machines.

Nondi and her staff could have brought both Kell regiments along for this attack, but some of them were needed to keep an eye on things north of the treaty line. Still Nondi had wanted some of the Kell's on hand for this operation. That might have been because her sister and her niece had trusted them in most cases over "normal" regular Lyran commands. Oh, and they had a lot of clan tech weapons to use against an enemy that had access to the renowned tech base of Terra for generations. That Clan tech also would come in handy if they ran into any Com Guard recovered Clan tech mechs and the odd weapon pulled from that one huge battlefield used in the proxy battle for Terra.

######

Lt Vera May Akins had fallen a little further out than the rest of the Kell's Hounds mech battalion that she was assigned to. Her 55ton Ryoken didn't have jump jets, and the single use solid fueled jump pack had been damaged in the landing after being launched from low orbit. She had to take even more time than it should have to get the now empty four-ton devices off of her left leg. It was when the mounting clamps on the Inner Sphere made device had refused to release from her clan tech level mech. She had to fight to keep from mech punting the spent rocket pods into the next city block when they had finally been convinced to let go of her mech's legs. Vera was so hoping that no one on the ground had been able to record all of the mech gyrations she had to execute to get the empty tin cans off of her machine.

Now Vera was hunting for some Com Guards or ex Com Guards to if not kill, at least remove them from actively participating in this battlefield. With three battalions of Battlemechs dropped on the local's heads, and the rest of the combat firepower threatening to come towards the city from the dropship's LZ. Things were a mess, and the attackers needed to keep things looking that way until the support units could get unloaded and then come to support this part of the attack. The last thing anyone wanted was to be the star of an update to the old movie called A Bridge to Far. Its all fun and games until your called to testify before a government body.

The LT had no idea where the rest of her unit supporting the 1st Lyrans might be located. There were plenty of signs of battle spread out all around her, but nothing seemed to be currently active near this location. She checked one of the readouts on a large MFD that her mech was fitted with by its original owners. Vera had been lucky that this mech was "found" in its prime configuration, and its firepower was based around all energy weapons. The Kell's and the Dragoons had captured all kinds of clan weapons, but finding enough clan made ammunition had been just a bit harder to be found by the recovery crews. They could hand make replacements, but that was both slow and very expensive for the two mercenary units to undertake. That might change after most of the rebuilding from this war was completed and funds could be sent in that direction.

So, every clan mech in the Kell Hounds had those ammunition dependent weapons replaced with energy based weapons and with as many spare clan grade heatsinks that could be fitted to handle the added heat loads generated by these energy weapons. It was that or fit some of them with Inner Sphere tech weapons, and that was seen as a degrading of the clan made omnimechs capabilities. But so far there were more wreck omnimechs than there were active Inner Sphere piloted clan omnimechs to use as spare parts donors to keep them on the battlefield.

With her long ranged 8cm lasers in the arms and the side car mounted 5cm lasers fully charged and ready for combat, Vera went looking for a fight. 216 combat units vs 69 units of the battlemechs that had survived the orbital drop should make it a target rich environment for one side or the other. It was almost a letdown when the first enemy target Vera had found was not a battlemech but a Nightshade class VTOL. The enemy VTOL had popped up over a small building, and then it had been hit by an 8cm laser and two of the three overpowered 5cm lasers that she had fired at the VTOL as a snapshot response to the surprise.

That amount of weapons fire was just a little of an overkill in most ways that you would look at it, but the VTOL had surprised Vera. After her now hot running mech had a chance to vent some of the excess heat, she went looking for more enemies to shoot at. She had no idea that her quick kill of the VTOL had prevented it from reporting her location to its higher headquarters. As far as anyone in the Blake's Will command structure knew, it was that the 25ton Nightshade might have crashed due to mechanical failure on the over three hundred years old craft. Com Guards and now Blake's Will had been dealing with that sort of thing for some time now and the staff fell back on old training without even realizing that they were doing such a thing.

#######

Vera continued on with her plan of walking around the city as her mech cooled down looking for trouble. The city was called Moseby's Crossroads, a city of over a million people, so it would not be called small by any real standard. The next target was harder for her to kill, but after a few shots from her energy weapons and it was a done deal. The Magi was a fast tank, with a flank speed listed as being 81 kph, and maybe a little more. But only if the wind was blowing the right way, and it was going downhill at the same time. Then again, the 55ton Ryoken was faster than the Magi at clocking in at 97 kph at its maximum speed. Her battlemech also was packing a lot more longer ranged weapons than the SLDF designed heavy tank.

The crew of that heavy tank had been smart, and after seeing the recovered clan medium class mech they reacted very quickly. They had simply put the pedal to the medal, and they had tried to escape certain death by the grace of the god speed and her right hand, the angel of maneuvering. Vera had let the tank start to open the range after first seeing it, and it was not out of any kind of malice on her part.

Vera knew that she was better at longer range battle than the stock Magi class tank could possibly be. And when the tank was at the edge of the Age of War tech 5cm lasers fitted to the heavy tank? Vera started firing her second generation extended range 5cm lasers in anger for the second time in this battle. While the Magi might only have short range weapons, it did have a thick and very hard armored skin to keep the crew alive. Lt Vera May Akins had not needed to employ her heavier and hotter hitting 8cm lasers in this part of the battle. This battle was going to be a marathon and not a sprint, and heat management was key to staying on the battlefield longer.

After a dozen hits were scored on the heavy tank from those pair of super charged 5cm lasers, the Magi lost both of its heavy metal tracks. Vera could have kept firing at the now pillbox in all but name until it shot flames out of the top of the tank. But without a turret to keep its limited firepower as effective weapons systems after the tank had lost its ability to move on the battlefield. Now the Magi had found it's self a pillbox armed with "only" three Randal Hellbitch 5cm lasers and two Ramsey 65 12mm machine guns to its name. It was now with a heavily damaged armored skin that the tank powered down its fusion engine. That had been to say that it was surrendering to the Mech jock, and it was out of the battle.

It would not be until later, that she found out that the tank had fired into a Lyran infantry platoon and later at a battle armor squad after she had left the area without killing the tank's crew. It would seem that the surrendered crew only thought they had given up while the enemy mech was around to enforce it quitting the battlefield. When the mech was gone, then the tank crew got back to fighting the war. The pair of units had then worked together and made the tank…no workee, by using a liberal coating of inferno jell and a flare gun.

Thinking that the heavy tank was now out of action. The LT had continued working her way to the area that the map loaded into her mech had said was a possible defensive point. That should be where she would find the enemy or others from her unit that would be sent there to take out the possible defensive point and anyone that might be using it at the time they arrived. It was a plan, just not much of one. There was an old saying about a soldier could not do wrong if they headed towards the sound of battle.

When Vera was standing outside of the structure, she was let down that it really was a parking deck and not an enemy defensive point as it had been marked on her maps. There were no enemy units or even any friendly units in this location or any signs of their recent passing through that area. With only a pause of a few heartbeats Vera again went looking for trouble. The only question would be how long it was going to take her to find that same said trouble. She was a whole lot of trouble on a mission of looking for a place to happen all over someone.

######

Suzanne Mulvanery was even angrier than she had been after finding out that one of the scavenger lords had found out about this hidden world. She had been in her mech when word had reached her that the Ruins of Gabriel was also under attack by warships, all while the ground forces were getting ready to repel this invasion. It was soon clarified that it was not a warship that was attacking the great black ocean naval base, but warships. That was as in many of them, and they were attacking the massive base at one time! Not one of the reported five attacking or supporting warships had been using any IFF transponders. But they had to belong to the FedCom or they would not be attacking in the first place, all while three major units known to be Lyran were attacking the planet's surface. This was too much to be a coincidence.

Yes, Blake's Will and ROM knew that the Wolf's Dragoons had six warship hulks, but they were supposed to have been just moving wrecks with nearly busted jump engines…at best. Still finding six warships in the Outreach system had come as a nasty shock to everyone within the Inner Sphere, and that counted the members of ROM among that number of shocked agents. The Wolf's Dragoons were damn good at hiding things from ROM and other groups, but some things were just too large to keep hidden for very long. Wolf Net had known this for some time, and they had planned accordingly for the best outcome for the Dragoons. Only most of the intelligence gathering agencies around the Inner Sphere didn't know about that Wolf Net plan.

That had not been a nice Christmas present for ROM to have to deal with when the first images of those old warships were first running up the food chain of ROM. So, the attackers had to be FedCom units… or the Clans….or maybe it was that the Clans were working with the FedCom. An attack by "only" the clans were quickly ruled out, because the Kell's Hounds and the 1st Lyran RCT had been positively identified, as well as Nondi Steiner's open radio address to the planet. But where could the FedCom get one functional and combat ready warship, much less almost half a dozen of them all at once? After getting a headache thinking about that, Suzanne just pushed the idea of warships out of her mind and worked on the current problem of beating off an assault onto the surface of Odessa III.

Early in Suzanne's career, she had found that she always thought better while sitting in a battlemech's cockpit. That fact of her personality had saved Suzanne's life today, when a lance of assault mechs had very literally landed on her Division's Headquarters building. That much metal had first landed on the roof, and then it had fallen all the way through the fixed site communication section of her division, and into the basement of the large but apparently weakly built building.

Suzanne had not stuck around the wrecked building after getting over the shock of the surprise party crashers. She had quickly left the area as the guard mechs and her limited amount of battle armor that she had been hording to be used at the right time in a city battle went into action to defend the division headquarters from the lance of attackers. It was very much a case of use them or lose them….or was it use them and lose them? Well, you can never go wrong by heading towards the sound of battle…. or can you? There are very few simple things in the world, and warfare is sooo not one of them.

That one move made by the heretics had not so neatly head capped the command and control of the recovering and building 1st Blake's Will Division. It had been done just as effectively as the Clan Wolf had done with their smaller Elemental suits. Suzanne had a backup command center plan set up, but it was just that… only a plan. It also was based on a plan that no one had planned on that they would be needing in the first place while on Odessa III. It was going to take time to get there and even more time to get it working on a wider focus than "just" a level III that it currently was supporting in this defense against an invasion.

#######

After the Percenter had gotten the steps working to retake control of her division, she went out looking for something to kill. She was calling it "leading from the front", but that would imply that she was intending on exorcising command and control on the battle while she was at the same said battle front. Susanne had been called ten kilos of crazy in a five kilos sack when she had been younger, and she had not changed that much in the passing years. She was on the edge of doing something rash, when she found a lance of one man light hover scout craft with the markings of the 1st Lyrans on the nose, sides, and top. Unhappily for her, she had not been able to engage them with her weapons much less physically attack them before they were able to get into cover thanks to their blazingly high speed and very small size.

Later she smiled a death's head grin and fired her two LB-X 10 autocannons using cluster rounds on the lead pair of Drillsons class heavy hover tanks she found next after losing the very small hover scouts. The cloud of hard and fast darts had sand blasted the lead hover tank, but there was a reason that the Drillson is called a heavy hover tank. She might have killed it, if the Blake's Wrath IER PPC had been able to hit the speeding hover tank. The tank's front mounted LRM rack was not able to fire back at her, but the turret mounted 8cm laser and pair of Hovertech SRM pack 2 could and did fire at her. The 8cm laser missed the heavy mech, but two of the fat short ranged missiles hit the cockpit of the charging Rim World design but newly Terra made 70ton battlemech.

Besides ringing the bell of the person that was supposed to be leading this whole division, those pair of missile hits made the unhinged pilot even more unhinged. Still to this day, most doctors would have not thought that little feat was possible after reading her medical files. Those two missiles also took half the armor off the top of the cockpit, but the real damage was done to the supporting systems of the pilot. The pilot would have to look very hard to find this damage done to the inner workings of her new mech. But all of the rest of the outside world knew that Suzanne Mulvanery was not replying to any attempts to contact her from that second of the battle going forward. Many years later it would be found that this lot of Dragoon mechs had faulty radio shock mounts for the long ranged communication devices. Sometimes you will trip over a piece of straw while reaching for the stars. That had been true in the Middle Ages as it was today.

A 50ton tank should not be fighting a 70ton battlemech, much less doing battle when the tank had exactly zero updated weapons to fight with. Oh, and the attacking mech was packing more firepower than the average Royal mech of its mass had done before the fall of the Star League. There was only one way that this part of the battle was going to end, and that was with one dead hover tank. It would not have mattered if the second hover tank could have been able to help its wingman out or not. In a strange turn of fate that happens surprisingly often in battle, these two tanks had been supporting what was called a headhunter unit. And it had unknowingly or just out of sheer dumb luck, they had run into the highest rank combat officer for Blake's Will on this planet.

Suzanne had a slightly feral grin on her face when she pulled her primary trigger and the three heavy weapons on the new Dragoon class mech yelled their rage at the hover tank. The wildly evading hover tank was able to avoid about half of the cluster darts heading its way. And when the dust settled, there was little to show the mech jock for the damage that she had inflected on the target. Then the speed of light weapon like the PPC went straight and true.

The crew of that tank might have lived long enough to scream before they died after the tank was wrapped in the not so loving embrace of the energy from the IER PPC. The final act of this show of destruction had been when the ammunition for the Hovertech, Light Crossbows, and the two Kickers MGs blasted the tank into so much hot flying metal confetti. The tank crew didn't die before half of the Light Crossbow's missiles slammed into the following mech. The tank's crew were just out of range of the shorter ranged of the Hovertech systems at the time of their death. Not that there was much that they could have done with that system, in this kind of fight. You only got lucky so often before the other side got its shot to even the playing field on today's battlefield. In the end, it was the attacking battlemech that scored the last points in this lethal game.

Suzanne smiled and there would have been a glint in her eyes if anyone had been in the cockpit of the mech with her. She had killed her fair share of heretics in her life already, and she had gotten a huge rush every time she sent some more to see that the Word of Blake was true and not their blasphemy. Suzanne quickly looks around, and she can feel the blood rushing to her face. The rest of this tank lance was gone, but she made a promise to add more of them to the list of corrupted souls that she had sent to see Blake.

The Dragoon was soon up to its maximum rated speed of 64kph, and she was on the hunt for more heretics to kill. Head down, Suzanne went around the corner of a huge building at a speed that was just short of being out of control going after the second Drillson class hover tank. She fired off her improved PPC, it was not reliant on ammunition, and overusing it would not limit her time on the current battlefield. That was something that she learned from fighting the Clans, you had to manage your ammunition for the long game. After all learning is a two way street, if you were even half way smart anyway. She had enough heatsinks that running and firing her Blake's Wrath class IER PPC would not be a heat issue for her to have to deal with. That was the nice thing about the mixture of energy weapons and freezers type heatsinks.

What she didn't know was that the two hover APCs she had first seen had been modified from what that design was meant to support. The 1st Lyran Guards was a top tier unit within the FedCom, and as such they had been at the top of the list for both supplies and updated weapons that had started to flow into the FedCom combat forces in ever increasing numbers. The pair of heavy hover tanks were just the cover and escort for the pair of APCs that held the real headhunters. The surviving Drillson tank had taken off to draw the attention of the heavy mech away from the real mission and to act as a sacrificial lamb if that looked to be needing to be done. The second hover tank would stay just close enough for the enemy mech to see or pick them up on its sensors before going to flank speed and drawing the battlemech further away from the APC's and their cargo.

######

The two heavy hover APCs looked for a place to hide as soon as the lead hover tank was "found" by an enemy mech. Soon after splitting up, the lead APC had found a parking sign pointed under a large building along its line of travel. Just before the last heavy hover APC started down the ramp, four huge doors on the top of the hover craft popped opened and four human like shapes launched up and out of the hover craft. The laws of physics carried the four sets of battle armor into the glass fronted building like a quad set of one ton two-legged wrecking balls.

The pilots of these four 1-ton suits had been very well trained, and as soon as they "entered" the tall building. They were able to rotate in the rooms and cover the back of the hiding APCs with their light weapons. The lead Hover APC pulled off to one side and slowed down, but it didn't come to a full stop. This allowed the slower quad legged battle armor to start to exit their still slightly moving hover carrier. Each one of those suits held more fire power than the APCs that had been carrying them. But there was a reason that they were called Sloths in the first place, besides that they had four legs and not two legs that was common with Clan made battle armor.

All of the moving parts had just stopped when the sensors of this headhunter unit had picked up something moving, something that more than likely was not friendly. The combat unit would hold off in engaging any major combat units until the team's main mission was over. They were to hold fire even if they were fired on by light mech scale weapons. Now if it looked like the mission was blown, or it looked like the two squads could be wiped out? Then they could fire everything they had at any enemy attackers.

#######

One of the armored human like mini mech's high above the parking garage was looking towards were the seismic system said to look. "Ceee 2 this is India 1. I have one Ryoken class mech in 1st Kell's colors coming towards us." As he watched, the running clan mech went by his location that was almost eye level with the cockpit of the running mech. "It is passing by, and it looks to be back tracking our line of travel. Maybe they are heading towards Delta 1 and Delta 2?"

The Inner Sphere was still working on ways to do the different missions that have been found that needed to be done on the current battlefield. One was the headhunter mission, and the clan Elemental type armor in the hands of a few of the Clans had proven to be very effective in that combat roll. The heavy class hover APC could carry more than just a squad of four 1-ton suits. Instead of just filling the rest of the open space within the APC with more battle armor, which would make a nightmare for unit management, or just using the open space in the hull to carry more cargo. Oh, it did carry more cargo, but also some space was sliced off for a two persons command crew and radio operators needed to do the communicating.

The commander of this mission was in Command 2 or Cee2, and the backup leader and radio operator was carried in Cee 1. It was dangerous work, so a backup commander was deemed necessary for most infiltration missions. The commander in the second heavy hover APCs put his noteputer down. "Comms, slug an update about the UI heavy mech to it. Also send the data where Delta 1 died and where Delta 2 might be heading."

The commander rereads the message in his hands. "Sierra team, deploy to the ramp we just went down. India team are to keep over watch where they're at. We are change of mission and holding until re assignment is passed down. A close assault lance fell onto our target. Even a blind squirrel gets lucky once in a while."

Having two Atlases, a Banshee, and a clan weapon updated Challenger falling on your head was a bad day for anyone. It was going to be a worst day for the unlucky fools that all of that heavy metal fell on even if they had jump packs. "Last word had it, that they also ran into some battle armor and some medium mechs around the primary target. They did see a Level II of SP artillery running away from that location while trying to get some elbow room. We are ordered to lay low and stay in place until the brass have a new mission for us to try our expensive training on."

The last bit of his little speech had been in a tone of voice that said he didn't trust higher command to find their own boots, much less be able to give them a valid new mission worth their time much less the cost of the training this unit had undergone. Outside of the two now motionless hover APCs, the four legged mini mechs moved around to get in a better position to cover the access ramp to this huge underground garage.

######

Vera jerked her head down and off to one side. Now she was looking at one of the side mounted MFDs, and she had to fight to keep from missing a step with her running mech. She knew that data had to have come from a hidden friendly headhunter unit or deep scout unit hiding somewhere nearby. It was just a point to their favor that she had not noticed them in her cutting-edge clan made battlemech as she passed them very close by.

Vera slowed her mech down to a walk, and she then took the time and really looked at the data that she had just been sent. It showed a location were a 1st Lyran hover tank had died and where a second one might be heading. The data burst that had been sent to her also held some data on the attacker of that now dead friendly tank. It didn't hold that much data on the Unknown (UI) class of battlemech, but it was more than she had before passing that hidden friendly unit.

The UI mech had been at a reported speed of 64hph, massed 70tons, mounted at least two LBX-10s type autocannons and a Bear Slayer knock off of the IER PPC. Normally it was not wise for a 55ton mech to go chasing or hunting down a mech that out massed you by almost 15tons. Then again this was a fully operational clan grade omnimech, and they had a different set of rules to fight by. Well, they could use different rules in how they could be used in combat. But only if the pilot was good enough to play by those modified rules of combat. Vera thought that she was that good, and now it was time to prove it.

######

Vera found herself moving towards the north and at the same time skirting away from the main battle lines forming up on the edge of the city. She was moving down a wide alley way or small road when a large slab of metal with some black fabric under pinning crossed her line of vision in a flash of movement that was almost too fast for her to see. Just as the hover tank shot past the line of sight at high speed from Vera's location, smoke trails from ten long ranged missiles and a blue energy bolt crossed going the other way.

The weapons fire had to be going towards whoever was chasing the hover tank, maybe to try to deter any pursuit if not kill the pursuer. Soon a humanoid battlemech came crossing that same wide alley mouth, but it was too fast even for a Clan mech to target effectively. Still, Vera now had a target that she thought that she was looking for. Now all she had to do was kill it, and hopefully kill it before it killed some more of her countrymen. One part of her mind noted that the color scheme on the mech was odd, and not any type of camouflage she had seen before.

Suzanne had her head down as she dodged to one side just in time to avoid the incoming missile fire from the hover tank. The 8cm laser had still hit her on the right leg….again. Suzanne fired her IER PPC and one of her autocannons in reply to this damage. So far it seemed that the enemy hover tank had been driven seemingly by the hand of Blake himself. By now Suzanne was worried about the ammunition that the bins her mech held, even with her mothering her shots. By all rights she should have been able to kill this tank four times over, but still it was alive, well, and firing back at her. Then there was the heat that an alpha strike would add to her running behind the hover tank at her fastest speed. Suzanne knew that she had gotten some damage on the enemy tank, which was the only reason that she had been able to keep after the normally way faster hover tank. if she would have been just a little more focused on the situation? Then maybe she would have realized that she was being led around the battlefield by her nose.

Then some of the cluster rounds from her last shot did something, and smoke started to pour out of the air intake covers on the top of the tank. Suzanne grinned as she saw the tank slammed down on the ground with one of its slab sides due to losing lifting power on that one side. The turret soon had flames shooting out of five or six spots in the armored top holding the tank's main weapons. Susanne let a little growl slip out of her mouth as the flame grew in intensity seemingly in between her eye blinks. Suzanne slowed her mech's run and took her time lining up on the now still and powered down tank with her powerful energy weapon. The crew of heretics were still inside, so in her mind. This was still both a valid and worthwhile target for her to fire into again.

########

Just before Suzanne pulled the trigger one more time, she was slammed forward into the crash straps of her piloting/ejection seat. Thanks to long years of training, and some combat time under her belt. Susanne's eyes quickly went to part of the compressed screen that showed what was behind her all without letting her mech fall face first into the street. Suzanne's eyes went wide when she saw something out of a nightmare. A clan omnimech was coming up behind her at the run! And for a few seconds, she had a flashback of her last mech before getting a mech that she had no idea was a copy of a mech used by the Usurper to kill SLDF personnel.

The armor on Suzanne's right torso and right leg were now in the red. If she took another hit there, it would start cutting into the mech's metal foam bones. Without thinking about it with her full brain power. Suzanne dodged to the side just in time for a pair of 8cm lasers to miss her, but they still passed close enough to her mech's outer hull to burn some of the red shading to black paint that she had started to use on her unit's combat machines when they were not in the field. Suzanne flipped the weapons arms on her mech and snapped fired, and she was rewarded with a hit with her Blake's Wrath PPC that made the lighter mech stagger a little in its run. Then she saw that there were four silver flashes on the outer hull of the clan mech as cluster rounds hit the center torso of the running Clan mech. That was all that showed of the result of the mech sized shotgun weapons fire on the mech grade armor. As soon as she fired, her feet and arms were moving to get her war machine to face the new threat.

Suzanne yelled in frustration as she saw the red outline around one of her autocannons that had showed up after that trigger was pulled. She looked up just in time to take a pair of 8cm laser hits, and a 5cm blue beam of energy from the Clan mech. The arm mounted heavy weapons fired from the captured clan omnimech had hit, and they blasted two thick lines of molten armor across the chest of the Dragoon class mech. All they did was blast armor off those areas, but it was one of the 5cm lasers that had been fired which caused the most issues with the 70ton mech. The right arm clan made 5cm laser had missed the head of the 70ton machine, but the other 5cm laser scored a hit to the Dragoon's leg that had caused almost as much damage as an age of war 8cm laser.

The Drillson hover tank called Delta 2 for this mission had been aiming low when it had been drawing off the heavy mech from the rest of the headhunting unit. That meant that most of the hits, besides the ones made by the Light Crossbow missile launcher, all had been in the legs of the Blake's Will heavy mech. The hit from the overcharged clan made 5cm laser cut through the last few millimeters of armor plate on that mech's leg, and almost all of the energy cut into the leg bones of the enemy mech.

If that energy beam hit had just been a point on shot, it would not have been that much of an issue for the ex-Com Guard pilot. But this energy shot had been moving down, so the cut went from knee to the foot on that mech's leg. The parts that let a mech this massive "walk" were not thin or even light weight, but they also were not that resistant to mech scale weapons fire. That was why some smart people had been paid a huge amount of money to develop armor plate.

Before Suzanne could fire again, her mech fell forward but at a slight angle. Like a drunk giant metal man, it had crashed into the side of a building that just happened to be near her mech. Suzanne blinked her eyes open, as the pain in her shoulders worked to overcome the fog lingering in her brain. Then Suzanne tried to move the legs of her mech, and she could feel the grinding of something on something else that didn't like the action she was attempting to inflict. Most of the sensor displays that she could see were blank, and three of her MFDs were spider wedded with thick and thin white lines running across their displays.

Anything put into a battlemech was well known for its durability, so seeing the broken screens was a concern for the pilot. After a few tries of moving her mech's legs and body. Suzanne thought that she was about able to get her mech out of the building that she had fallen into headfirst. The hit to the head had made her forget about some things, like how she had wound up falling face first into the building in the first place. That little gap might have been filled with useful information.

#######

Vera smiled when she saw the enemy heavy mech fall face first into a tall building thanks to the damage that she had done to that leg. It didn't move for a few seconds, and Vera was not willing to fire into the back of the enemy mech at this time. She had no idea if the ammunition carried by this new mech was protected by CASE or not, and at this close of a range it could be an issue for her to worry about. Also, the engines that were put into mechs were powerful, but it was mainly thought that they didn't tend to go into aggravated unfriendly mode due to battle damage.

But that was only if you saw the event from a few Kilometers away. If a mech's engine was damaged badly enough? It would take something as hard to kill as a mech and in a blink of an eye, that engine could turn it into small metal parts. Those flying metal parts would hit hard enough to make a Chemjet cannon shell seem like a gnats kiss on the cheek if you were too close to that kind of an event. Then again, there were all of those rumors that said some mech's pilots were able to get their engines to explosive deconstruct themselves as some kind of final act of defiance.

Vera took the time, and she checks on the hover tank, and she could see two people hiding on one side of the now very wrecked FedCom tank. They could have been locals, but they were hiding on the offside from where the ex-Com Guard mech had been standing. Vera waves her right arm weapons mounts at the two hiding troopers by the tank, and one of the pair of bodies waves back to her. That was about as good as you can get in a war zone most times for an IFF.

Vera jerked her head around when the external mics picked up the unmistakable sound of metal dragging on ferrocrete. The still Unknown heavy mech design was starting to move, and its one full functional leg moved to be more under the main body of the mech. To Vera it looks like the one fully functional leg was almost able to lift the mech out of the now wrecked building. The other leg of the Dragoon was jammed up, so it was most likely just going to be useful as a peg leg or a brace. The UI mech driver had to have some very good piloting skills to be able to get her "armless" mech up when the mech had fallen face first into a building.

Vera walked her 55ton clan mech right up behind the larger mech. She picked up her mech's right leg and she slammed it down onto the back of the enemy mech. This action forced the larger mech back down and a little deeper into the half failed outer wall of the now mostly wrecked office building. After a few seconds, the ex ComStar mech tried to rise again. Vera made a frown, and she slammed her mech's right foot back down onto the broad metal back of the enemy mech again with just a little more force. She then leaned a little more forward and she tapped the back of the cockpit with the weapons barrel of one of her two 8cm lasers.

Vera was a little shocked when the enemy mech tried to rise for a third time. Vera quickly slammed her mech's foot down for the third time, and this time she did it with all of the strength that she could generate from her battle machine. Getting a weapon's tap on the cockpit was one of the ways to let a mech jock know that they needed to give up. But for some reason this mech jock was not getting the normal grade of battlefield hint to let them know that their part in this battle was well past being over.

After the very hard slam of her foot, she did the weapons tap thing one more time and this time Vera went one step further. Vera activated the short range radio built into her mech as standard equipment. This was going to be a wide band but short range broadcast, and it was focused on the frequency that the SLDF used for SAR and still used today for that same mission. No one remembered why, but that frequency band was called Guard to this day.

#######

Suzanna was again slammed into the retaining straps of her ejection seat as something impacted on the back of her mech's cockpit. When the Radio spoke, she gave it a snarl knowing what was coming after the pair of thunks on her cockpit. A female voice came through the speakers mounted around the cockpit that had been put there as a just in case of something happening to the brain bucket that the mechwarrior might or might not still be wearing. It was a well-used safety feature after the 2nd SW. It had been when in order to save weight most of those speakers in the helmets had been removed so that new House militia units could upcycle their older and better helmets to front line mech units to use in combat. Those new helmets were then called and still called, trashcans, by those that still had to use them.

"Oh, Blake's Blood" said the short division commander to no one.

The voice lost some of the softness, which Vera was known for as her normal speaking and singing voice. "You're done. Power down, or I will have to melt you down right here, and right damn now."

Suzanne hit the button to activate the radio that had just shown to be able to receive RF waves at this setting. "Blake will send your black soul to hell! I will rip your heart out with my bare hands! You will not be allowed to stand against the wrath of the just! Blake's will be done!"

Vera "felt" the enemy mech start moving again under her own feet as it tried to move against the mass of her mech standing over and on top of the almost prone enemy mech. Vera half closed her eyes, and she pulled a secondary trigger on her right control stick. The clan made overpowered 8cm laser mounted on the right arm fired into the back of the enemy mech under her feet. The energy beam and heat slammed into Suzanne's cockpit, and it had started at her bare back. Without knowing it Vera had just finished head capping this unit. That was well as protecting the rear of any friendly units fighting the unit that was living up to the name of True Devotion in all the worst ways that humans can. The bad part? It was that many higher ranked people in the FedCom were not surprised in the least about these reported events. Yea, they might have been a little on the jaded side.

#######

Senior Corporal Gordon Gollob was looking out some of the broken windows that might have been done by one of the battle armor suits, or maybe they were broken from the sonic boom of the landing dropships. Then again maybe the shock damage was done from the falling cocoons that had covered the falling mechs as they had dropped from very low orbit. He was in what was now called The Inner Sphere Standard Battle Armor by everyone, and that included the logistics people sitting deep in Combine space. It was not a bad bit of warfighting kit. It also just happened to be the first battle armor suit made in the Inner Sphere that was not hand built, or some glorified prototypes, or made for the crowd's pleasure in the Class 1 arenas.

When they had started this mission, his battle armor had been packing mech scale machine guns fitted in the modular Weapon Mount that took up most of his right arm (TRO 3058U page 27). That was thought to be the best weapon to use when you were going after a command unit that was sitting where they thought that they were safely behind the main battle lines. The two APCs held enough small lasers in storage to refit the squad while on this mission. There were even rumors that said if they ripped out the command chairs and radios from the supporting APC's, then they would have enough storage room for Flamers and even some one shot SRM 2s for field refitting of the battle armor while out in the field or while on mission.

That would be for later. As it was, if he went back to the APCs for a new weapons fitting? It would require that the driver of the hover APC and someone from the "command crew" to help refit the new weapon onto his battle armor. Well, the other battle armor troopers could help him, but that would mean time getting out of and then getting back into their own battle armor. It could be done, but it was going to be a pain in the fourth point of contact and tradeoffs would have to be made.

Gordon got his mind back onto the job when a red light started slowly flashing on his battle armor's HUD just a few inches from his nose. Gordon took the time to review the war book loaded into his suit supporting computer equipment, and he was surprised to see that the battlecomp had no idea what he was looking at. Well, command had just given them a new mission to take out any enemy scouts that might be on this side of the city. This could be the perfect time to start acting on those new orders.

Gordon activated his built-in short range radio. "Cee2 this is India 4. I have a UI 25ton mech with jump jets coming along at close to 75 kph. Looks to be following that Kell's Hound mech that passed us not long ago."

The radio spoke a reply on a frequency that carried the reply for both squads to hear. "India 4, this is Cee2. India 4 will keep an eye on them. All India units be prepared to swarm. Sierra units fire when it passes your location. I want you all to Clip'm."

Near the ramp of the garage, the four legged battle armor suits shifted just a little as the four quad legged suits made sure that they could clearly see the road running outside of the parking deck. These were not the "normal" Sloth class battle armor suits that had just started to be put into full and now at maximum rate production at the start of the Clan Invasion. The pop up mine launcher had not been well liked by the few suit pilots that had survive first combat with the Clans.

Now the 1st Lyran RCT was a high-profile unit, and the support unit attached to them was very highly trained and had a certain…gift or even talent in making additional modifications. This operation was testing one of the latest good idea fairies that had infected that support unit. Most of the popup mines and launchers had been removed in this unit, and in their place were a pair of one shot twin tube SRM racks that were "extra" from the IS standard battle armor units. The 75kg weapons were kept under cover until the now stripped down "pop-up" system activated to clear the fat missile tubes from the hull so that they could fire without endangering the battle armor pilot. At least that was what the mechanics had told the pilots. And everyone knows that mechanics would never, ever, lie to a vehicle's operators…right?

########

The battle armor team had no idea that the mech heading towards them was based on a mech called the Jackrabbit in the history books. Skobel Mech works was pumping out those older design Jackrabbits and the better received Jokers as fast as they physically could. This new production version of the Jackrabbits light mech replaced the huge but light damage autocannon with an 8cm laser. Seeing that there was a need, or more to the point, there was an outstanding order for "new" light mechs that could jump and pack a lot of "lostech" firepower. Older tech firepower was acceptable but the mech better be packing a lot of it. So, the R&D team from the Skobel factory in what had been called Russia looked at the Joker and pulled out the cutting knives and went to work.

First the design team had ripped out the engine from the Joker and replaced it with a larger Nissan 175. The heavy autocannon or PPC along with the missile weapons, ammunition feeding mechanisms, and ammunition were next to come out of the donated light mech. Then they had added a whole new weapons suit that should be good at medium range and still be able to cut down anything that the new mech could not outrun…. on paper.

It was a good idea, and it looked really good on paper. Oh, and ComStar wanted every mech that they could get their hands on, and they were paying cash on the barrel head for each mech that walked off the production lines spread out around the Sol star system. This one had been secretly diverted to Blake's Will by an administration person that had already fallen afoul of the mole hunters that had been lately working overtime in ComStar.

The mechwarrior at the controls of this light mech had not been a survivor of Tukayyid. He had only graduated from the Com Guard training academy a few days after the start of the battle to see who would control Terra in the future. He had been so shocked at the announced changes planned for the Com Guards by the new leaders of ComStar, that he had left the organization in disgust. He had more or less floated around the local space around Terra, but he had believed in the classes that he had sat through about the Profit called Blake. So, he had ended up willingly joining the most radical groups that had fled ComStar. He had thought that he had found a new home, and peace. But what really is peace when you were a mech pilot?

#######

The first warning that the pilot of the Nexus had that he was under attack, was when the McArthur anti-missile system mounted on the left torso went active. Without actions needing to be done by the young pilot, it had shot two of the missiles out of the air. After all, that was what the automatic settings were for. Those two missiles were only a few of the many missiles that had been fired at him, but they had left two nice red bubbles in the air near the light mech.

The nose mounted twin 3cm laser mounted under the cockpit of the Sloth battle armor could only target at certain angles, and the suit's pilots could only see the walking mech from the knees to its toes. It was not much to see, but a mech was not that small when compared to the rest of the world. Eight 3cm lasers went out from under the nose of the four Sloths, and they cut into the nearest mech's leg. But "only" five of those light speed weapons hit their assigned target. The energy bolts were followed by the smoke trails from the four short ranged missiles coming from the backs of each of the oddly shaped mini mechs.

This light mech also had a slight issue with the leg armor that would come back to haunt many of its pilots in the future. It would be noted later that the mech's leg bones could stand up to more damage than the outer armored skin was capable of. The leg bone of this light mech snapped at the knee due to all of that enemy weapon's fire. It was when a pair of SRMs hit the light mech and the last of the bones gave way, and the mech fell to the ground with a mighty crash. It was a falling metal tree, and when it came crashing down it was a major psychological event for all groups involved in this action. After that fall there was no way that anyone was going to be using that part of the road again. Well, at least not until a recovery team had a few hours and a lot of crane support on call to clear a path on that road.

#######

Gordon was just getting ready to run towards the enemy mech behind a thick panel of one way glass many meters above the ground. Then just before he started into that run and then hit the jump jets to commit him to the attack on the enemy mech. Gordon saw the enemy light mech start to fall, and it was falling in a way that you could tell that it was not at the command of the pilot. Instead of running those last few meters, the four human like battle armor suits walked to the edge of the building and looked down through the thick one way glass. From this overlook, the battle armor squad could see the mech laying on its back many levels below them and blocking the local road.

The leader of this IS Standard Battle Armor squad was a senior NCO, and after looking back to his three squad members. He pointed down with one finger then made a fist with his off hand. That was the only command that was needed, and they had not needed words to be sent over the radio. The four suits went out the window in a wave of metal, just under more coordination than had been first planned for. When the bipedal armored suits had fallen about halfway down towards the pavement? The back mounted jump jets fired for the first time after coming out of the back of the transporting APCs. Each member of the squad was going to pick a different area of the fallen mech to land on. The mech was down, but there was a mech pilot that needed to be taken care of before they can call the task done of taking out this one light mech. If the pilot wanted to be…..difficult…. about exiting the down mech? Well, then there were always the breaching charges.

#######

The landing pattern on the fallen mech was set threw long hours of training, going back to when this unit only had "normal" jump packs to pull off this kind of attack. The squad leader landed near the top of the head of the battlemech and then the Number 2 and 3 members of the squad landed about at ear level on the mech. Gordon landed right on the glass of the cockpit that separated the mech warrior from the rest of the world with a thud that he felt through the armor of his feet. The cockpit glass was strong and thick enough to not shatter when the 1ton of metal and person hit it while still moving at "only" a few KPH relative to the mech. The smoke from the jump jets quickly was blown away, and Gordon could look down into the mech pilot's ejection/command seat without difficulty.

Gordon had to fight just a little to keep from falling off of the sharply curved metal and glass that made up the cockpit of the light mech when he shifted his body to look down at such a steep angle. He could not tell if the mech jock was a male or female, not under that helmet and body coverings. Normally, due to the heat mechs fought at, you could tell if the pilot was bare chested or wearing a sport support from this location. This mech jock was wearing a suit, which might be a copy of the old SLDF cooling suit that he had heard about, but he had never seen one in person. It looked like someone had added sports pads to this suit to Gordon's untrained eye.

Gordon waved his arm mounted weapon at the jock, and in the other hand he showed that he held a breaching charge universally used for knee capping infantry to use on mechs. By the way that the mechwarrior froze at the waving hand holding the block of explosives, Gordon knew that the point had been made. Then the head started to move, and Gordon thought that this might get bloody after all. Gordon made a face as the jock started to thrash around in his ejection seat. This looked to be quickly going sideways, he had seen something like this from a few clanners that he had helped put in this situation before ComStar had gotten publicly involved in that war.

"Boss, he is not liking this." Gordon stopped talking and jumped just a little when a holdout laser was fired from inside the mech's cockpit. The fast draw sidearm had "only" marked up the battle glass a little bit that Gordon was standing on. The mark on the hard glassed looked like the laser bolt would have hit him in the head, but only if the shot had made it through the armored glass. "Yep, he just took a shot at me with a holdout pistol."

Gordon looked away when the hatch to the cockpit was pulled open a little and a grenade was tossed into the small cockpit by Number 3. This battle armor squad had only brought with them two different types of grenades for this headhunting mission. Those were all FedCom made HE-Frag, and smoke grenades, just like the "Normal" leg infantry used most often. Gordon didn't think that they would use a smoke grenade in this situation. When the little bundle of joy making went off, the battle glass under Gordon spider webbed, but it still didn't give out under his weight. Gordon just hopped forward a little to clear the top of the mech's head before he might fall into the cockpit, which would have been more than a little embarrassing for the rest of his team to see. All he cared about was that it was not going to be him or someone from his unit that was going to have to clean up that mess that the fragmentation grenade had just made in that mech's cockpit.

(Well, that battle didn't last long, and yes it was run at a FLAGs. Light mechs, city fighting, and battle armor do not mix. Oh, the house rule was that in an ambush you get a free first shot. And yes, I hate the pop-up mine system on the Sloths.)

######

After the now re-tasked headhunter unit had taken down the Blake's Will light mech that had wondered a little too closely to the FedCom headhunters. The two squads of battle armor were told to move from this building to better help in the taking of this city from Blake's Will. The two support hover craft would stay hidden in the parking deck under the now damaged tall office building.

It would not take the two Battle Armor squads long to find another place to hide in a city this size. They had seen a few nice spots before the drivers had taken the two APC's down the ramp to that parking garage of that first building. The battle armor squads had spent many long training days and nights just looking for places to set up for ambushing. They also had learned a few tricks from the play book of the clans.

The next group of the local defenders to fall to the battle armor squads were a half dozen cargo trucks modified with bench seats to better carry what was called dirty "leg" infantry if you wanted to start a really good bar fight. At the time of this ambush, those trucks had been filled with infantry and three full autocannon crew teams. The gun crews were to work the three Class 10 towed field gun type autocannons that some of the trucks had attached to heavy hitches below the tail loading gates. The three trucks that were not towing the heavy guns were towing trailers filled with ammunition for the huge 12-ton guns.

The small lasers on the Sloths did great work on the trucks and the towed guns. The machine guns on the IS standard battle armor were wayyyyy more effective at taking down mass of infantry outfitted only in "normal" body armor. The two person staff in both Cee1 and Cee2 reviewed the data and notes were taken about both attacks. Those notes would be needed to make the reports post mission. Reports that would have to be done on the ride to the jump point, and while this unit made a much slower trip back to its "normal" bases set up to fight the Clans.

#######

Their next ambush that the battle armor wanted to try was blown when one of the new Mercury Mk 97s found them first. Just short of the attack point, the MK 97 Mercury was able to pull back before the short ranged weapons of the Battle Armor could take it down. The systems on the Sloth said that they had been exposed by the Beagle Active Probe fitted to that machine. That Blake's Will "light" battle machine had to pull back even further from the battle armor's location when it was clipped by a PPC blast made by a Lyran piloted Warhammer. Nothing quite acts like a distraction for a light scout mech, like when a Warhammer slaps the center torso of your mech with a PPC blast. Can you say needing a spatula to clean out your cooling suit? I knew you could.

Now that the front lines had caught up with the headhunter squads of battle armor and their heavy hover APCs. The whole headhunter unit rejoined up and started following behind the FedCom battlemechs. More than once the jump jet equipped Battle Armor suits would rocket out of the top of the lead APC to…come to grips with infantry trying to launch swarming attacks on the friendly mechs. Also, those twin 3cm lasers on the Sloths were able to cut through the fighting positions that this group came across as they worked deeper into the city. Those smaller lasers could take out the defensive points without bringing down the whole building along with it. That overkill had been very common with most mech scale weapons used on anything larger than a light mech as a general rule that dated back to the early days of the 1st SW.

It was a near perfect show of combined arms warfare, one that had not been "officially" planned for at this time. Yes, this FedCom had just gotten done fighting the Clans. But both core political bodies in the FedCom had been fighting "The normal enemies" for hundreds of years before this war, and it was expected that this would be happening again sometime in the near future. After action reports were to be done, and those reports would be divided over what tactics might be useful against other houses, what would work against the clans, and a small pile of reports that might hold tactics that would work against both types of possible enemies.

######

Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte was the leader of this lance. It should have fallen to a young officer to command this unit. But with the war just coming to a close against the Clans, surviving ones of those were hard to find in the numbers that the LCAF or FedCom needed to fill all of those empty slots. Besides she was already slotted to go to a military academy in the next year as a Mustang, so why leave the slot empty until she left.

That appointment to an academy was thanks to her skill fighting the Clans, and not for any blue blood that was not running through her veins. A promotion of what the FedSuns called mustangs was rare, but it was an almost unheard-of event within the old LCAF. Oh, and it help that she was piloting a Clan updated weapon version of an Inner Sphere Marauder. It was a mech that she had captured, but in doing so it had cost her the family-owned Phoenix Hawk. The already clan updated mech had a huge amount of firepower compared to any "normal" Inner Sphere mech in the Marauder's weight class much less compared to what the lighter Phoenix Hawk was packing. But when you do a DFA off a building, all of the fire power in the world was not going to help you if it was pointed in the wrong direction.

She had sold the wreck of her family mech to pay for the repairs on her "new" mech that she had claimed post battle. After surviving her first battle in the beast, Monique also paid to have the mech fitted with some captured clan grade heatsinks after ripping out the older generation systems. At that stage of the war, she didn't even have to pay any bribes to keep the ride that she had claimed. It was one of the advantages of being an owner/operator of a mech that had been fighting for first the Lyrans and then under the FedCom flag.

She was now officially piloting a zombie mech. One part of Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte's mind wanted to drop that clan made double rate of fire Class 5 autocannon for a clan grade ER PPC or maybe a Bear Slayer type PPC if the popular clan weapon was not available. But that would be sometime in the future, and as long as she was in the 1st Lyran's she would not have to worry about running out of the right kind of ammunition for that ammo hungry beast to shoot. Hand making the right ammunition was expensive per round, but the military budget for the FedCom was massive and they had many hands to do the work.

Monique looked at the data about her lance being displayed on a small standalone screen that was just used for lance management. The old SLDF had planned on the Marauder class battlemech being a command mech, so it was fitted with some very nice data management support systems. There were many, many jokes about the mass of a Lyran scout lance. Well, this was not a scout lance, but a battle lance. And yes, it was a little on the heavy side for the average house or mercenary unit that would field something like a Battle lance in combat. So maybe some things were true about Lyrans and the way they fought a war.

The Staff Sergeant was brought out of her revelry about the future modification to her mech when the sound of weapons fire rang threw the mic pickups. She could tell that the fire was coming from the front of her little column as they slowly made its way into the city. Her current point man was in a Warhammer, and that was the only mech in her lance that was not updated with some tech that was better than Age of War. She would not have had that "old style" mech, if the "normal" one had not been down check before this mission had even made the final jump to this battlefield. Still having an old mech in the lance was better than going into battle down one machine before you even had fired the first or received the first shots in anger.

Monique made her voice as level and as calm as she could, and when the report didn't come right in. She opened the radio after a slow count of ten. "Mechwarrior Thomas, what is going on up there?"

When the voice came back to her over the Lance Radio net? It was delayed, and the voice sounded a bit shaken to her ears. That was not something normal for a lance made up of combat vets like this one was made up of. It was also off in a way that you could tell that the speaker didn't have German as his first language. "Staff Sargent, I think I need to quit drinking."

Monique made a strange face that no one else would have been able to see. Mechwarrior Thomas was known as the teetotaler among this lance. He was not known to drink distilled spirits or think that much of beer or have anything much stronger than the odd glass of wine at social meetings. Something very strange must have happened, but the young man had yet to report it, and the rest of the lance was about to stack up behind him in a slow motion traffic jam. Doing something like that was a death sentence, just like the LCAF/AFFC had done to too many Clan Stars. And this unit had plans to do that same trick as many times as possible to the clans after these planetary issues were resolved and they could get back to "the real enemy".

Monique quickly grew tired of this game. "Mechwarrior! I asked for an update about combat, and not what your drinking habits in the future might be."

The voice was still shaken but a little more stable. "Staff Sergeant, I was shot at by a hover tank that was mounting an AC-5 type autocannon. Then it jumped over the top of a building to get away from my return fire. Somebody please tell me, when did they teach tanks how to fly? Tanks can't jump…can they? What kind of tank can jump, and why would they make one?" The voice got a little more hysterical at the end, and it just didn't sound that way to the lance leader.

Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte didn't know what to say at first. A jumping tank was not something that you ran into that often in this day and age. Then she had a flashback of her first anti pirate mission in the Periphery almost a decade ago. Her company had run into a mostly wrecked hover tank that would hop across the battlefield like some kind of legless mech. After that flashback, then she remembered the updates on all of the mechs and tanks that the Com Guards had flooded the FedSun and Lyran Commonwealth with at the end of the 4th SW. There had been a lot of updating done to the warbooks, but that point's Warhammer might not have gotten those updates to its battlecomp. They had been in a great rush to get it ready for this combat drop at the last second. Now it looked like one of the corners that had been cut was updating the mech's battlecomp.

Monique used a tone of voice that worked to get some men to calm down in battle. It was just too bad that it was the same tone of voice that would cause a woman to have some issues when she was at the bar. "Mechwarrior Thomas, take a breath and calm down. That is a Kanga class hover tank, and as to why someone would take the time and use the funds to design something like that? Well, the SLDF did some crazy things back before they fell. You will need a crystal ball to talk to them or talk to some of the clans to find out if they remember why they were made."

Sergeant Hanotte checked a readout on the rest of the lance. "Mechwarrior Harrison, move up and replace Thomas on point, for now. Thomas, fall back to the back of the line and cover our rear. You have been up there long enough." The last was not totally true, but it was the right thing to do until the younger man got himself back under control.

Harrison was piloting a new War Dog class Battlemech that Blackwell Corporation had started selling at the end of July of 3052 to anyone with enough C-Bills in the bank. Rumors running the net for the last few months had it that the War Dog had been a late prototype SLDF mech. That the Dragoons had access to plans like this, was thanks to their history of coming from the clans. Currently there were not that many War Dog mechs in operation off of Outreach, so it should be a surprise for these Blake's Will fanatics to have to deal with.

No sooner had the 75ton War Dog taken the point for the lance than two light mechs started to plink at them. You would think that a light mech taking long ranged autocannon shots at some enemy mechs armed with Gauss Rifles, PPCs, and Clan grade 8cm pulse lasers would be the recipe for a few dead light mechs. But these UI mechs mounted the until now an equally unknown Armstrong JJ-Lite class autocannon. This Class 2 type autocannon had the longest range of anything, but a clan made weapon of that same autocannon class or artillery.

Each of the autocannon shells hit was like a single SRM missile strike, so when those long ranged shots did hit. It was not that much damage that was done to the targeted mechs. It was more trying on the nerves of the mech pilots at being shot at, but not being able to reply with your own weapons. And getting on the attackers' nerves was just what the light mechs wanted to do, and it looked to be working on the Lyrans.

#######

The Caesar 3R battlemech was thought of as something of a joke, at first. Originally it was thought to be the public face of the reverse engineering of a version of the Confederation designed Cataphract that the FedSuns was working on in secret. Instead, they had been really working on the totally new Axman design of battlemech. Then the bean counters had found out that it was not that bad of a mech design after all. Besides its last public "review" had come at a time when any new mech, much less one packing so much firepower, was badly needed to fight the rampaging clans and the tech advantage they held. The down sides for this battle, was that the Caesar 3R was designed for the standoff fight and not city fighting. But then again, it did pack a lot of firepower that could lower the boom on someone that got to close.

Kind of like when a certain jumping hover tank came landing ready to shoot into the back of a War Dog running point for your lance. Only the Caesar's pilot was not looking the wrong way, he had been expecting that the repeated fire from those two light mechs was all smoke and mirrors. The arm mounted Johnston high speed Long ranged PPC went wide, but the round from the Poland Model A hit the right side of the hover tank before it could start moving after landing and well before it could try to fire its autocannon into his lance mate.

The watermelon sized ferrous shell didn't pack any explosives. It was just a very hard and moving very fast object. It slammed into the flank of the tank like a supersonic wrecking ball sent by Hades. The armor on the tank was hundreds of years old, and it shattered like glass from the front bumper going all the way to the aft bumper along that one side. Still the armor did its job, and almost all of the energy from that one flying watermelon strike was absorbed in most of that shattering effect of the armor. But that was only almost, and what remained of that one metal watermelon now had no armor to stop it as it kept going down the path that the Caesar's pilot had sent it on. Four metal shards from that round cut through what remained of the tank's hull like it was so much ice cream under a blow torch.

The first shard from the gauss round hits the ammunition area that supplied the General Datatech Vertical Launch SRM-4 system. A system that was almost full of short, fat, and very powerful missiles at the time the intruder arrived. With all of those reloads cooking off as close to simultaneously as a human could tell, the remaining armor just acted to direct the blast wave.

If there had been a turret on the tank, like was normal. The blast would have "just" killed the crew and then toss the turret a dozen or so meters away from the rest of the tank. There even might have been something useful left behind on the tanks hull. But without a turret to act as a pressure relief valve or it being fitted with a CASE system built in before or after it was built? There were very few ways for that blast to go after it got started. And so, the whole top of the tank's armored skin lifts off the hull. The top of the armored hull flies threw the air and at the same time it folds up like a metal taco from the gods. The metal taco lands a half dozen meters from where the rest of the tank "had" been. Now the only thing left behind of the old tank and its crew was burning and shattered metal scrap only good enough for the recyclers.

At seeing the death of the hover tank, the two light mechs reacted like most people in a green military unit would. They made to go help the beleaguered and now very dead crew of the medium tank, all without calling for support or help of any kind from higher command. All that did was get them killed along with the tank crew a bare few minutes later.

Now the Jackrabbit was better armed then the newer Nexus that it was based off of. The Jackrabbit also had more armor spread around on their hulls than some of the other newer designed mechs. But they still were light mechs that crossed a line on the map that let first the gauss rifle on the War Dog speak, and then it was joined by twin clan 8cm pulse lasers along with a double strike from the one clan made high speed autocannon mounted on the shoulder of the Marauder. The only FedCom flagged mech that didn't fire at the two wildly charging light mechs, it was the old Warhammer at the back of the line of mechs.

After each of the Jackrabbits had taken a few hits from heavy weapons. The pilots knew that they had made a mistake, and they tried to pull back out of range of the long ranged and very powerful weapons. But by now that option was out of the question. The only way to get away from the Lyran heavy mechs, which also were heading towards the light mechs that had been keeping their attention, would have been to run and run very fast. But turning the mechs would expose the back armor on their mechs, and light mechs were very well known for their light armor on the front of the machines much less for what armor was left to cover their backs. That back armor could have been just thought of as hopes and dreams versus any real thought of providing protection from the average weapon that was found even on the average Age of War medium class battlemechs. Such was the life of a light mech's pilot, until they ended… just like those two now gunned down light mechs that had been first built to support the Com Guards before being diverted to Blake's Will.

######

The next battle happens just after Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte's lance had made sure that the two light mechs were really down for the count and not playing games. There had already been a dozen reports of enemy mechs and tanks that had been seen powering down, only to come back online and fire into the now exposed backs of the FedCom units. Or they would wait for their Lyran or Kell attackers to leave the area, and then they would wait for any follow-on units that thought the way was clear of enemy combatants. Only to ambush them while the new arrivals thought it was safe from the surrendered Blake's Will unit.

By now all of the attackers going after this Blake's Will units had taken to making sure that legs were blown off, and if that action had not worked. Well, sometimes it was hard to know where you were putting your mech's foot down in the middle of a battle. The BattleRom carried suitable noises that would let the investigators think that it was an accident and not malice on the mech jock's part, or it could provide just enough coverage so that a blind eye could be turned from higher command. After all the enemy pilots could have just pulled the lever and taken "the ride", and that would take that option off the table for the future of what that enemy mech might do. It would not be known until much later, that the Blake's Will support techs or the pilots themselves had disabled all of the ejection's seats for the battlemechs for the whole division.

#######

On a major street over from where the hulks of the two Jackrabbits were cooling in the local planet's winter's cold air. The Lyran lance was moving very slowly as they went deeper and deeper into the embattled city. They had just killed three combat units, and the Com Guards used combat unit centered on the number six. That is if that Blake's Will subunit was at full strength when it went into battle today. There had to be three others out there, and the odds were that they would be close by the dead tank and pair of equally dead light mechs. And Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte and her lance were right about there being more friends of the now dead light mechs.

The ambush started as little more of a rush than was maybe planned for by these defenders. It had started with an Excalibur dropping LRMs and gauss rounds on the Lyran battle lance at extreme range. That mech was giving cover to a running Shootist that needed to get close enough to bring its Deathgiver class 20 autocannon into action. The Shootist was considered a bodyguard mech back in the time of the SLDF, so it had a Blankenburg extended range 8cm laser to give some range over its main heavy but very short ranged weapon. The weapons fire was spread over the three mechs that the two Blake's Will mechs could see.

That left the older tech Warhammer still covering the back of the Lyran lance and out of combat…..for now. And well, that mech jock was not having a good day. Mechwarrior Thomas seismic detection systems picked up that something might be coming up on the lance. The battle going on behind him was causing some issues for the systems that while well maintained, but it still was over two hundred years old. It was only thanks to his combat experience that kept him focused on covering the rear of the lance and not keep looking "over his shoulder" to see the action taking place near him. His job was to make sure that no one came sneaking up on the rest of the lance from behind while it was being attacked from the front.

Mechwarrior Thomas just had enough time to call out the contact to his front before an IER PPC hit him in the torso of his mech. "Contact rear. Crap I'm hit. This jerk has a Bear Slayer." Thomas's bad day was still going strong, and it was about to get a shot of coffee and not in a good way…. for him. He had been given two surprises on this day, so surely there would not be a third…. right?

Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte had just fired off her autocannon at the Excalibur and got a pair of hits when the alert was sounded out of the approaching threat from behind. She noticed that the LRM pack on the Excalibur's left side of the mech was now missing a few tubes thanks to her high rate of fire Class 5 autocannon. She was halfway through the turn when Thomas's distressed voice came over her speakers again.

"Ah Staff Sergeant! When did Black Knights get issued a huge damn sword!? Or the three 8cm lasers with a Bear Slayer mounted on the arm? Ohhh crap! I'm punching oooooout!" Anything that followed was drowned out in a rush of sound. The speaker picked up a sound that a trained ear of a combat mech vet would know was an ejection seat's rocket lighting off within the confines of a smallish mech cockpit.

Now Monique could see the Warhammer, and it was down with the top of the head having a new skylight. The black legs shading to red at its head painted Black Knight was still standing to the side of her down lance mate. It looked like it was working to pull the huge sword out of the side of the old Warhammer. The rising top of the ejection seat was just within her field of view for a heartbeat. That was just long enough for her to know that her trooper was taking "the ride".

The Staff Sergeant could see where some damage was done to the red and black painted Black Knight, but she didn't know if it was from Thomas's weapons or not. The enemy mech was just out of range from the old Age of War tech 5cm lasers that she should have been packing, but it was in the sweet spot for her twin clan made 8cm pulse lasers and the double rate autocannon. She had not wanted to risk hitting the now empty Warhammer, but she had little choice. So, she had aimed low anyway when she pulled the primary trigger.

All of her long ranged weapons went true, and she hit the modified Black Knight hard with her weapons fire. Two of the clan made pulse lasers hit the mech hard in the right leg. This hit removed enough of the armor that the leg only had a thin outer layer of armor left, but it was too bad that no damage was made on the insides of the Blake's Will flagged battlemech. The twin 50mm shells that left the clan made autocannon slammed into the left arm of the enemy mech. When the smoke cleared, the huge sword now had a back that looked like a pair of saw teeth had been added to the weapon, and the black and red mech stumbled back under this assault. That stumbled helped pull out the sword from the now pilotless Warhammer.

The pilot of the Black Knight was good, they did not just give out a clanbuster type battlemech to just anyone that could use a brain bucket. In most cases, they were even better than the few lucky pilots within Blake's Will that were able to strap into the high tech killing machines captured from the Clans. Besides not being blown off their feet after being hit that hard and losing very close to two tons of armor. That was just a sign of the skill of the pilot behind the controls of the modified SLDF machine, and only another experienced pilot would have known this. Oh, and the Staff Sargent was a very experienced mech pilot in her own right.

The right arm had snapped out and the ComStar made knock off copy of the Bear Slayer IER PPC's energy bolt hit the chicken walker mech in the left torso like the backhand of the gods. The Black Knight pilot would have loved to have added the 8cm pulse lasers in its center chest mounted and the two 8cm lasers mounted on the side torsos to its weapons fire. But they were still pointed at a now combat ineffective Warhammer spread out on the pavement. The pilot of the Black Knight might have wished to have pulled the triggers anyway, but that would have put too much of a heat load on his mech.

The two mechs circled each other while the Black Knight tried to head cap the command mech that mounted the hated clan weapons. The Staff Sergeant was aiming low, and she was staying away from the half missing sword on the enemy mech. Monique was head bobbing to the left and right at random intervals, when she saw how the other mech was targeting her. These erratic maneuvers made it even harder for the enemy mech to score a hit on her.

While Monique was dodging the enemy fire, she was able to fry some of the bones and joints with her autocannon fire that almost made the Black Knight fall to the ground. It might have been a true stumble, but then Monique made a "pump fake" to get closer to the enemy mech. The other pilot fired off all of its energy weapons right where she would have been, if she had been really diving in for the kill on the stumbling mech.

With an evil grin, she pumped both of her overpowered 8cm pulse lasers into that same leg of the Black Knight that the autocannon had hit. One energy blast made a clean miss by going between the legs of the Black Knight, but it was so close to the hips that many pilots would flinch after seeing a replay of the battleROM. The other 8cm pulse laser hit dead on the leg that had already lost all of the armor and had taken some damage to the mech's leg bones. Even before the energy beam was done doing it's deadly business, the battle was over.

The leg separated from the old mech at the hips, and this time there was no saving the Black Knight from the falling, and it crashed to the ground. The mech's impact with the ground forced the massive fusion engine to shut down, just to keep it from blowing the mech apart. The mechjock at the controls was also still knocked out hours later from the fall. He was found when the post battle cleanup reached this point of the battlefield, still dead to the world but with a steady heartbeat. The concussion could have been a major health concern, but the FedCom MASH truck and its attached medical teams pulled him through without too much trouble.

#######

The lance leader didn't have time to rejoice at her kill. In the compress view display of the battle going around her was full of data. She saw the Shootist get in close enough to land its torso mounted Deathgiver autocannon fire into the right torso of the Caesar. That one hit from the massive autocannon over matched the armor in that location of the FedCom made battlemech. That location had been one of the few areas on that mech that had not been hit so far in this running battle, and that was one of the things that saved the life of the mech pilot. It also showed one of the glaring issues with that mech. It was just an egg armed with hammers, and in city fighting that was a very quick way for your family to get an insurance check.

The Kallon Royalstar class armor in that area just went away, and what was left of the heavy shell kept right on going into that side torso on the mech. The first internal damage the mech received in that hit was to the fragile energy jackets mounted on the gauss rifle that was just finished recharging to fire another shot. All of that stored up energy in the charging jacket had to go somewhere, and it was fed into the sides and back of the mech. The huge GM 280 extra light engine lost all of its shielding, and it just barely shut down in time to save the pilot from going on a ride into the sky or having a very messy death with a closed casket full of rocks. The Shootist would not have long to enjoy her victory over the Caesar 3R under her command.

The War Dog had been exchanging gauss rounds with the faster Excalibur, but that was a losing game for the lightly armed Blake's Will mech. A few seconds after the 1st lyran mech had hit the pavement, the ex-Com Guard mech was also falling like a metal tree less than a kilometer away from his down comrade. The two remaining Lyran mechs were out of range of the huge Deathgiver Autocannon on the Shootist. But it was not out of range of the gauss rifle on the War Dog or the long range of the clan 8cm pulse lasers.

The pair of veterans of the Clan front used this range advantage ruthlessly against the ex-Com Guards trained pilots. The last Blake's Will mech fell before it was able to score more than twice with the Blankenburg 8cm laser mounted in the right arm. The red and black mech was put on the ground before it could render the last two enemy mechs of this lance combat ineffective with its weapons fire. But the last two Lyran mechs in this area each knew that they had been kissed before this part of the overall battle was concluded.

The battle for Moseby's Crossroads lasted for the rest of the day and long into the night. That was when the city was declared safe. But it still would take another few months before the last of the hold out Blake's Will infantry or others that had taken up arms against the Kell's Hounds or the 1st Lyran were taken care of one way or the other. They could have all been from Blake's Will and its support staff, or just some locals that had something on their minds and wanted to kill someone that they felt was in the wrong in some way.

Odessa III.

New Bealton

Nondi Steiner was in the HQ vehicle of the newly rebuilt 4th Lyran Guards watching the battle lines slowly tightening around the capital city of this planet. Her recorded message was now on a nonstop loop that was still going out over the local radio waves, and for the last hour it had been going out over a hack made into all of the local entertainment channels. The only way not to hear her voice was to turn off every entertainment receiver and not a few military ones that had been added just to make the local's command and control that much harder to be effective. The military term for this type of action was "active" jamming", and this kind of thing had been going on long before humans had set foot on Luna.

Still, it would take some more time before most of the average persons or troopers on the planet to know that Nondi Steiner was here and the "official" reason why this battle was taking place. Nondi had already been briefed that Count Fisk and his two kids had been successfully removed from the Capital, and soon they would be loaded onto one of "her" dropships. Between their capture and the taking down of the Blake's Will unit on this planet. Many of her goals for this mission were complete, but she was looking at making a clean sweep of this whole mess.

This bit of news about Fisk had an unfortunate downside, in that the militia and mercenary defenders had no one that could give them orders to stand down in a remotely legal fashion. If she rolled in hard, like she wanted to do. It was going to cause more than a few political issues down the road for her and her niece to have to deal with. This would mainly be in places like the Province of Skye. But just that one area could cause major issues that her Niece did not need to have to deal with on top of everything else. That was why Nondi was paid the big bucks, and it would be up to her to find a way to fix this without it blowing up in her face or her niece's face …too much. It also was the main reason that one Nondi Steiner was on the ground for this operation and not say like sitting in a warship out near the newly secured shipyard. She needed to be close to where a boot to ass might be more effectively applied…. if it was needed after all.

That defusing was why she was also currently watching the monitors as a well "loved" 10-ton hover APC was escorted under a flag of truce. It was coming from the edge of New Bealton and going through the battle lines. This should be carrying the commander of the largest mercenary unit in this capital, or at least someone that could more or less legally talk for them. As that hover craft came closer to the 4th Lyran's HQ and as the seconds passed by. Nondi took some time and reviewed the data on this unit that had been supplied to her after some pointed questions were given to LIC and MIIO on the other side of "her" niece's realm.

Nondi made a sour face, and she made some quick notes to have a little talk with a few people with too much gold on their uniforms for the realm's own good. If she had her way? Someone was going to be sporting less gold on their uniform, that is only if she could not get them removed totally from the military. Politics at this level was a form of warfare, and in warfare you don't always get what you wanted.

The Dragonslayers had been on a garrison contract as they rebuilt and worked on some "internal" issues that had come from fighting the clans, and in particular fighting the Jade Falcons. Those battles against the Clans had cost the Dragonslayers a large amount of equipment and personnel. Those two things had been the main issue between them and the FedCom Rep that currently had a case going before the MRBC.

That court case revolved around the fact that the mercenary unit had withheld some of the captured Clan technology from the Federated Commonwealth, but it had been for a very good reason. In order to keep the mercenary unit focused on the job, "someone" in the mercenary's chain of command had been feeding them incorrect information about the location of the captured Dragonslayers personnel. That was not the only issue, but it was an important one. It was a big enough of an issue that Nondi was going to have to personally address it to try to work on a resolution.

#######

Nondi was in full Steiner mode when a tired looking major came into the field office that was just a tent with metal supports to keep the space dry and out of the wind. Nondi returned the salute and pointed to an open chair, without saying a word until the other woman took a seat. Nondi was angry from many reasons, but this woman was only a small part of that anger. Nondi's heat was more focused against ComStar, Blake's Will, and one Count Fisk. Oh, and she was mad at LIC for not finding out about the issue with this star system that had been going on for "only" a few hundred years right under their noses. Talk about one heck of an intelligence failure! After this was all unclassified, this story was going to have to be added to a lot of military textbooks and not a few political science ones on what not to let happen.

When she had her voice ready to give just the right tone, she started this meeting. "So, are you here to tell me. The leader of the LCAF, why you have not stood down as I have ordered it?"

The mercenary woman flinched a little, but she quickly matched the angry look with one of her own. It was just a lot less intimidating than what a senior member of House Steiner could generate seemingly at will. "WE heard the published statement, but we are under contract to Count Fisk…by name. Besides we didn't know if what the message said was true are not. After all, we have been lied to before by this government…..more than once."

Nondi felt her eyes get larger before she could lock that movement down like the professional that she was. The mercenary officer had just said that the noble born Nondi Steiner of House Steiner might not be trustworthy enough for a lowly mercenary major. Nondi still had to bite her tongue as she thought about the recent past history of this unit one more time and its dealings with "her" part of the FedCom. "Well, as you can see. I am real, and I am here to deal with Count Fisk and his co-conspirators." She didn't need to say what would happen to those that got in the way of her dealing with those people on Nondi Steiner's little list.

The major didn't move a muscle at the last statement. "Yes, you are here. But that doesn't change the fact about who has signed our contract now does it."

Nondi wanted to smile, but she didn't. "Yes…you are under contract with Count Fisk. I have read the copy of your contract that is on file."

Now Nondi passed over a document that was made of very high quality paper with lots of stamps, wax with odd impressions in it, and lots of different colored ribbons attached to the bottom of the page. "This is from the Estates General, and it will be posted at the end of the month on every planet on this side of the Federated Commonwealth. Count Fisk will be no more, and Odessa will be under a military governor until this mess can be cleaned up to the satisfaction of House Steiner and House Davion." The last part was Nondi just throwing in something at the last second, but not for an instance did she think that Hanse or her niece would counter what she had just added off the cuff. Both royals were very upset about what this planetary leader had been up to.

The female major leaned forward and tilted her chin up to see the document a little better without getting out of her chair. It was boarder line insulting to do this to Nondi, but with the Dragonslayers past… Well, the Major could care less, and besides she had been born in the FWL and not Lyran or FedSuns space. "Really? But legally he is still the Count of Odessa until the end of the month, and we will have to go with our last orders from our current contract holder. "WE" could change our defensive stance, but only after we get confirmed orders. And those orders will need to be written in a way that no one could later claim were given under distress or even under some form of torture. The MRBC and its lawyers are very clear on this, and they have come down hard on mercs in the past for playing games that were not nearly as grey as this one is."

Nondi was starting to like this woman, and that could be good or bad for the Major as well as for the rest of the Dragonslayers on the other side of the still forming battle lines. The jury was still out on that one. "Fine, let's do some horse trading. What would it take to get your unit out of the city, and into a field camp until the courts can rule on this?"

The major had an odd little smile on her face. "We are mercenaries, but we are under contract. What guarantees do we have that you will not change your mind after we move, or if the MRBC rules against this move and calls it a breach of contract. But then they fail to put the count's name on the ruling as the reason for us stepping to the side?" She was being a devil's advocate and at the same time reinforcing her opening statements.

Nondi rocked back in her chair, but her face was like stone. "I think that you will find out that the MRBC will accept that it would take time for some paperwork to be filed all around the Inner Sphere. And "We" would not hold you in breach of contract no matter what they might say about the current situation."

Nondi pulled out another document that was thicker and she slides it over the top of the field desk that she was currently using. When the mercenary major had leaned forward to see what was on the document? Nondi leans a little bit forward and then points to a name on the first document. "You will see that this document was signed by Mellissa Steiner-Davion, and that envelope has a letter written and then signed by Hanse Davion in his own hand."

The Major didn't take the documents in her hands, but she gave the "head of the Lyran Commonwealth" a level look. "WE are still taking a risk that we could be held for breach of contract by someone over at the MRBC, and they are the group that every other person will check before hiring us." She put stress on the last few words.

Nondi now let the working face show some more of her anger. "Fine, and I think that I see what the real issue is."

Nondi passed a noteputer that held one of her remaining trump cards she had in this meeting. "This is what LIC says you withheld from the FedCom on your last contract. If you pull out of the city, and take up a camp outside of the defensive lines until this is over? Then your unit will turn over ten percent of the listed Clan tech to the 4th Lyran. You will select what ten percent from what this list has noted. The MRBC will be informed that "we" of the FedCom are dropping all of the points in the case that was filed against the Dragonslayers. It will be noted that the FedCom was in error in filing that legal brief in the first place, to help smooth things over with them."

The Major looked like she was about to come out of her chair. "We don't care about the damn weapons! It was never about the clanners weapons!"

Now Nondi let some warmth come to her face and voice. "Yes, I read the Dragonslayers defense papers that were filed with the MRBC for your defense. We will give you every scrap of intelligence that we have about where your family members might be. Some of it will be wrong, or at least not as complete as you all might want. But I will make sure that you get everything from LIC that they have reference to your people. What you do with it? That would be up to you, but I think that the FedCom will pay nicely for some raids into clan occupied space above "the line". If you know what I mean?" Nondi knew that any raids this unit did would help counter the reports about the now weakened three stars of Clanners searching the Inner Sphere.

It had been suggested that Nondi could have just wavered the "missing" clan tech weapons issues, but she had wanted there to be some kind of pain when it came to countering the orders of the contract holders that the mercs had been working for. The major's eyes went wide, and the two women talked for another twenty minutes before the mercenary Major left and Nondi had to deal with another issue that needed her personal touch.

######

Half an hour after the Major's hover APC had disappeared back into the city of New Bealton things started to happen. On the edge of town, a convoy was seen flying white flags slowly leaving the area. It quickly became clear that the convoy was being escorted by mechs and tanks as it started leaving the capital city. The last mech and the one that was covering the back door of the convoy was a Zeus class Battlemech. That was the known class of battlemech to be the ride of the CO of what remained of the Dragonslayers. A few flashes of weapons fire almost caused the evacuating convoy to come under fire by the front lines of the 4th Lyran. That is until it was noticed that the escorts of the convoy were only returning fire at someone deeper into the city all on their own. Things seemed to be well in hand for the convoy.

All of that changed in almost a blink of an eye. It happened when a medium mech lance supported by a pair of old SLDF Zephyr class tanks arrived on the scene. Tanks of that type which had not been seen outside of an HPG station or on a propaganda show, and both would have been supported by the Com Guards. It would seem that the local militia had access to two of these very rare tanks in their order of battle. Now it also would seem that more of the members of the local militia were objecting to the mercenaries deciding to stay out of this little civil war and not sticking with the published contract. There were two more company sized mercenary and three more lance sized mercenary units still within the city that had refused Nondi's orders to stand down. If the locals didn't stop this, those other units might get the same idea as the Dragonslayers.

As soon as the attackers on the Dragonslayers convoy had cleared the city, it was noticed that the FedCom battle lines were quiet. The 4th Lyrans let many targets clear the area and thus letting the city defenders think that the Lyrans would not be going to support the turncoat mercenaries. At a command from the 4th Lyran headquarters over two companies of very heavy Lyran mechs fired into that local militia mech lance and supporting tanks pressing the Dragonslayers.

When the last militia mech died before it could retreat from their attack on the convoy? The two 4th Lyran mech companies had rushed the battle lines around the city, and they quickly finished off another two mixed companies of mechs and tanks crewed by local militia. Between the Dragonslayers regiment pulling out of the lines, and the loss of almost a battalion of militia combat forces and other small mercenary units in one general area of the city. That had been the cherry on top, and most of the rest of the surviving militia decided it was time to just let the nobles work things out in a more civilized manner.

Odessa

Post Battle a month later.

This meeting was being held across five planets and almost a thousand light years all at the same time thanks to many HPGs being lined up just right. This should have cost as much as a locust class battlemech for every minute that it was active, but "The new" ComStar was doing this one meeting free of charge. It was pointed out that this was a onetime event, and that ComStar could not afford the wear and tear being put on the HPG systems without due compensation. Almost all of the stations used in this meeting were crewed mainly by members loyal to the FedCom, at least as far as everyone in this meeting knew. It was up in the air if this was true are not.

Both sides of the FedCom had not known that much about the Operation Scorpion attacks and interdiction, for many reasons. Then again, the FedCom had taken notes about what had worked and what had not worked during the FedSuns communication Interdiction the last time ComStar had used that political card. They had over a decade to come up with a few counter moves, and they even had been able to test many of them without the First Circuit of ComStar finding out.

LIC and MIIO had been able to get some very highly specialized teams to some of the two parts of the realm's key HPG stations starting after the 4th SW. One of the jobs those teams had to perform would be to "help" a special group from LIC to get the HPGs back up and running without ComStar needing to be present. When word reached them on the Black Boxes of another Interdiction being launched? All of those slowly growing number of teams went into action after the sealed orders were opened.

The few remaining Com Guards and ComStar troopers had been very surprised that the FedCom had been able to really be in control of some key stations when Operation Scorpion had been launched. But the FedCom could not take control of all of the HPG Stations, there just was not the number of properly trained people to do something like that. It had taken two weeks for Focht to get any of his "cleared" ComStar teams to most of these other key planets. And that had been on top of trying to stay on top of ComStar as a whole. Later many would point to all of the issues needing to be covered with so little planning that had allowed for those religious splinter groups to act with such a free hand.

######

When the new Com Guards and ComStar support team had arrived on Odessa III? That had caused some issues when the sight of a ComStar painted dropship was seen on the drop port at the capital city. The Blake's Will supporters in some of those supporting stations had come out of the woodwork to kill the crews exiting from the ComStar flagged craft and those that had remained on the dropship. The Blake's Will attackers ran right into the teeth of a mix force of FedCom and Com Guards that had been waiting for them to react in just that way. Many times, throughout history, it has been found that it is better when your enemies come to you all in one wave instead of having them going to ground and being a pain for years to come.

Nondi had not been surprised by this action, and she had been happy that it had happened at the time, even if it stuck her with a larger repair bill when the fighting was over. The fanatical supporters were killed in the expected attacks on the arriving ComStar dropship, and this kept LIC from having to dig out too many fanatics in the city in the next few years. It also just happened to get the ComStar teams and members of the FedCom to work very closely together for once, but not hopefully for the last time. She felt that this was an added bonus, combat can make very strange friends and bedfellows.

##

Nondi Steiner forces her face to go very still, and she put all of those thoughts about the past back in the mental box. She did this action when the first people to show up on the set of screens became visible. She was a little surprised that it was Jaime Wolf and not his now official second in command Maeve that she saw on display first. Then Hanse was next to show up on another display screen, and he was quickly followed by his wife. She was just as quickly followed by Nondi and Morgan Kell being shown as outgoing data from the Odessa system. Nondi and Kell had been the last due to some technical issues at their HPG.

Melissa had been the first to talk in this gathering of power players. "Nicholas Fisk along with his son Luther and Leon Fisk have arrived on Tharkad as of this morning. The Estates General will convene a courts review in about four hours. One of the jumpships tasked for this blew a seal that caused a delay in getting these proceedings started. The hard part will be in keeping those kids alive when the prosecution data gets released on the first full day after the start of the Estates General's review." It was the law that any treason charge filed against a noble must have all documents made public on the first full day of the trial.

There were only a few ways that a noble could be stripped of their titles in the Lyran Commonwealth side of the FedCom. But most of those would still have significant political fallout for the "Archon". Having the Estates General doing the dirty work was a risk, but the data that they had been able to gather and the proof of the old SLDF Navy base that he had been hiding was as near to damning as you could get with a pack of lawyers. Still the leaders of the FedCom had planned for this, and the splash of political blood would only fall on one Nicholas Fisk.

Hanse Davion nodded his head to his wife that was almost halfway across the Inner Sphere from him. "Okay, with that out of the way. The mission on my side of the sphere went about as well as we could expect."

Hanse let his face turn even more fox like. "As our little scout reported to us about Taussen/Versailles. The locals didn't have any warship support, so our aerospace force was quickly able to take control of everything from the orbitals out to the jump points. The defending ground forces were a mixed force of combat units, which folded under as soon as we had dropped the whole 1st FedCom RCT on their heads. We now have a high tech planet full of people that think that the rest of House Davion abandoned them over a century ago.

Hanse's face fell a little and a sour look could be seen without any political skills needing to be used. "It is going to take some time to get them to believe that "someone" was hiding them from my House and the rest of the Inner Sphere. And during all of that time a group within ComStar had been brainwashing them. We did already find out one of the reasons why everyone thought this was a dead world. The population had been hiding under and mining out the largest mountain range on this planet. It also looks like ComStar had a large mech and small tank factory on this planet, which they were almost done in working on taking it out of mothballs. All of those will be useful within a year, even if we have to fly in people to man those factories."

The Fox shakes his head slowly side to side. "No one can find any records of a mech or any tank factories of any size being built on that planet going all the way back to the founding of the Star League. I have to wonder, if it was moved there after the 1st SW? Or if it was built by the Star League and hidden from my house all of those years ago."

Hanse made a sour face and looked at one person on his own set of screens deep within the HPG station of Avalon. "Nondi, how did the operation go for you? Have we found out what ROM and this Blake's Will group were really hiding?"

Hanse was not going to point the finger at Focht's changing ComStar for being the group responsible for what they were dealing with over the last few months. Most of the leaders in this room "thought" that Focht had not known about this base or the one they had found at Versailles already. It was just too far outside of his known character. Even thinking about that, it still left this group to clean up the mess.

That had left three other planets that the Dragoons had passed along to the leaders of the FedCom when they had been on Outreach. It was known that Focht had not known about Operation Scorpion, and he had acted very quickly in first stopping that mad scheme, and then reversing it as fast as he could. Shooting the leader of the First Circuit of ComStar in her poisonous head had that kind of effect. But who knew what else ComStar might have been up to for all of these years working in "the dark". Then there were the questions of what was on those other three worlds that had not been in FedCom space.

Nondi was not smiling, and you could see the fire burning like blue ice flames within her eyes. "Well, we don't know what they might be hiding on the parts of Odessa III that we didn't land on. It was a breadbasket world feeding the rest of this part of space for a long time. We will have to check under every rock to see what they might be hiding. After my deal with the Dragonslayers and after a short firefight, New Bealton fell quickly to my forces. In other areas we were not as lucky." She gave the man next to her a head nod to take up the story. After all, more people within and without the Inner Sphere knew his face better than one of Nondi Steiner.

########

Duke Morgan Kell spoke next to the meeting of power players. "The 1st Lyran and 1st Kell's Hounds went after what was called 1st Blake's Will Division. They were not ready just to roll over and play dead, even after we put three of our best mech battalions on top of them from an orbital drop. They didn't fall until both the 1st Lyran and my unit's main body had entered the city of Crossing's downtown. We lost almost 20 percent of our fighting crews, and we are down around 45 percent in hardware even after the first round of field repairs was completed. We might get another 4 or 5 percent of those crews back into our combat power within the next month or two."

The Duke stopped talking for a few seconds to let those numbers sink in. "As we expected. This unit had some clan tech weapons and even a few fully operational clan omnimechs in the field that both of our units had to deal with. They also had some of those Clanbuster or some "true" Royal grade mechs to call on, but all of that was not a surprise. We did run into some Unknown mechs during the fighting, but the ComStar teams gave us the data files on them after they landed. So, they are not unknown any longer. They were some new mechs that the Com Guards are fielding that we didn't know about until they briefed the ground forces in the post battle clean up." The Duke was going to have some pointed words with both LIC and his unit's own intelligence shop when things were on a more even keel.

The duke had a slight sneer on his face. "Some of those new mech designs didn't work out so well, for their pilots. Someone on Terra thought that weapons over armor was a good idea for the pilot's long term survivability on the current battlefield. I think Focht will pay some good coin to get our battleROMs to prove my points on how wrong that idea turned out to be."

Nondi put her hand on the man's arm to keep him from taking over the briefing, Morgan had a bad habit of doing that kind of thing in the past just in normal briefings. Morgan Kell had turned into a major showman in his later years, not that he didn't have that bend when he was a lot younger. When Nondi knew that Morgan had stopped talking, she addressed the group.

"And what about the capital damage out at Odessa IV?" Nondi was looking at the screens that now held the two Dragoons she had expected to see. One part of Nondi's mind noted that she didn't remember when the second Dragoon officer had popped onto one of the screens. Not one person noticed that there was some kind of interference on both of the Dragoon's screens. Many years later that interference would be pointed as to being the first clue that the Dragoons were not above keeping more than a few cards very close to their chest, and hidden even from their 'closest" allies.

#######

Jaime Wolf gave the woman a level look and the screens barely toned down the power he put into the withering stare. There was no way that anyone in these rooms knew that he was using an HPG that was not on one of the warships near this planet or on Outreach. The Dragoons had lost the last of the few HPG specialist left to them when the Combine turned on the Dragoons before the start of the 4th SW. They had been able to train up only a few using textbooks and notes on hand, but it was all book learning and wishful thinking for the effectiveness of that "training" on maintaining those systems. That tech gap had changed radically when the Nova Cat's embassy on Outreach was set up. Part of that tech gap being filled was a closely guarded secret of the Dragoons. The last thing that the key members of the Dragoons wanted was for ComStar to find this out. Wolf Net had dug up more than a few times when a space rock had landed in just the wrong place after the Exodus.

Maeve Wolf made sure to use a clear voice as she took over the Dragoon part of this meeting. "We have pulled back all of the warships and support ships when we turned over the space station to the detailed caretaker crew. The Dragoons lost half of our two space assault Battalions assigned to this mission, and even with what we call our Golden age fighters, those drone fighters were hard to kill. Our fighter unit personnel losses are a little over 30 percent, and that was after we used all of our SAR assets to get to them before they ran out of air.

Maeve Wolf could see the shocked look on the other faces, but she kept talking at her measured tone. "The warship Mars was almost a total loss when they took on the covering Warships over that base. If we could build new warships? We would be better off just scrapping the corvette and replacing her hull with a newly built vessel. The same is almost as true for our Soyuz class cruiser that we call the Athena. Even our two Lola IIIs class destroyers were damaged in some way when the drones were able to break through the CAP and screening dropships to get at them. The Dragoons are now down to two warships and one of those has some major computer issues that have yet to be worked out. We are going to want to claim salvage of both capital and tactical assets in accordance with our contract. We will have to do that, just to get us back to strength in weapons and pay for the compensation for our dead and missing."

Hanse had been the one to sign that contract with the Dragoons, and it had covered things that had never been written about in a mercenary contract before in living memory. There were things in the contract that could not be referenced in any of the books that anyone that knew about this attack could find. Hanse cleared his throat, but his voice was as steady as ever. "What about those "other" capital assets?" The "leader" of the FedCom was almost worried to find out what the Dragoons might be about to ask for.

Maeve Wolf looked down at her notes to buy some time. "We found a Baron class and two Lola IIIs class destroyers without even caretaker crews on them when they were taken by the boarding teams. There is the Black Lion Cruiser and the two Essex class warships that were heavily damaged in the opening stages of the space battle. We were lucky and that nuks were not needed to take them out of the fight. After we took the base? It was found that it was almost full of all kinds of Warships, Jumpships, and Dropships. We have not been able to power up all the ships or find much information in the base about what their status might have been before our attack was launched. But those computers were not totally useless in getting some information."

Maeve was drawing this out, but she had already sent this information to Jaime, and she wanted to play a little game on these people. She wanted to play up the drama just a little, this was a first of its kind of meeting and the Dragoon XO wanted to milk it for as much as she could. "We found two more Essex class vessels going by the names of Dawning Horizon and Divine Forgiveness. We also found them still working on powering up a Dante class warship called Narbonne II. Another found warship was one that Wolf Net knew as the Suffren, the lead ship of her class inside the base, but she is unfinished outside of her jump core and navigation computer." She stopped talking at the sudden intake of air coming from those that this was new and surprising information.

Maeve gave a cocky smile to the camera pick up at seeing the shocked looks from some of the most powerful power players in the whole Inner Sphere. "Oh, that is not all. It would seem, that ROM and Blake's Will had been collecting all kinds of deep spaceships for some time and bringing them all here for stripping or repairing. We also found a Naga class old destroyer flagged as the Intolerant, a McKenna class battleship that we have not found the name of, and a Tharkad class cruiser that the betting pool thinks is the Invincible. We also found a working Monolith, two Star Lords, three SLDF Navy Tramps with LF batteries, a Bugeye, and the runt of the litter is a Magellan class jumpship. There are also over a dozen mostly stripped hulls of other warships, dropships, and jumpships stuck in the back of the main working areas of this base."

######

By now all the video screens were quiet but for the sound of some very heavy breathing coming from someone. Maeve had sent all of this data to Jaime with her ideas on what to do with it. But the leaders of the FedCom might not have listened to her, but they would listen to The Wolf. By now all she could do was sit back and take some notes for the next phase of this meeting. And she started doing this action when Jaime made a show of cracking his knuckles on the screen. That sound of the bone-on-bone grinding seemed to bring everyone back to the real universe.

Jaime had a smooth look on his face as he got down to brass tacks. Most people didn't know it, but he was the one that would write up the contracts the Dragoons took. At least he would get it down to some detail, but the legal department would make sure that it was all good before the signing ink was allowed to touch the pages. "Now as per my contract to support this operation. I want to remind everyone that it was an operation that was planned with the core data that we supplied to the FedCom without cost to the leadership of that political body. The Contract states that The Dragoons are allowed to take up to 50 percent of all capital assets and the cost of rebuilding and repairing any damage to our own capital assets are to be paid for by the FedCom. I will cut to the chase." A slight grown came from the screens. Everyone could feel the shearing about to start on this sheep, and everyone knew that it was going to be very painful.

The Wolf looked at Nondi seemingly right in her eyes. "I am not going to get between a Steiner and any Tharkad class warship, much less if this one turns out to be The Invincible." He next looked at the screen that held the face of Hanse Davion. "I also am not going to get between a Davion and a McKenna class battleship."

What Jaime and Maeve had really thought, was that it would be too hard for the Dragoons to crew that battlewagon, no matter how much the Dragoons could and want to use it in their total order of battle. Just thinking about what they could charge someone for the use of a McKenna would make the Dragoons accounting department swoon. The Tharkad class cruiser was just a very old and a one of a kind vessel that would make it a major resource drain, one that would be that much more of an issue for the Dragoons to have to deal with on top of its high crewing requirements needed for that very old vessel. And all of that would have been on top of the political issues that keeping her would cause the Independent Duke of Outreach and the Dragoons.

"Now the Black Lion is a little smaller than the Athena, but she is also very much a blasted wreck of a warship. That also goes for the two Essex class warships that my warships fought to keep them off the rest of the dropships on this mission and also away from Odessa III. I will want the two Essex class in the base to help with my two damaged vessels of that class. I claim the two Lola IIIs in the yard as replacement for my wrecked cruiser. The Dragoons will pay the cost of repairing the Black Lion and the Mars to the FedCom for their eventual release back to the Dragoons. But only after the repairs are completed to both parties' satisfaction. I also would like the Dante, Naga, and the Baron destroyer classes of warships. I would suggest to the new owners of the Odessa IV Naval base that the unfinished Suffren be traded back to ComStar for helping in training up the crews needed to run the repair slips long term. After the active ships are moved around a bit? There is more than enough room in the repair slips, to house the Black Lion, Mars, and the two Essex that by then should also have been taken under the Dragoon's Flag."

Everyone started talking at once, but Jaime was watching Maeve out of the corner of his eye, and she seemed as cool as ever. He was walking in lock step with her plan, and he wanted to see how she would react in a meeting with this much brass. Jaime was pleased to see that she was a still as a stone wall, just like she had been trained by Wolf Net to be in times like this.

Now some might think that Jaime was giving up the barn for a few cows, but it only looked that way. He still was going to have a hell of a time getting crewmembers for these remaining warships still under the Dragoon's colors, much less the ones he just reached out and said was his. Training new crewmembers for warships was going to be a major issue for not just the Dragoons to have to deal with in the near term. That deal to get a corvette to be the center of his warship school was looking better and better every hour. He might even be able to get the FedCom to pay for expanding his training for his warship crews.

Jaime knew that there were some hidden gems still on the metaphorical table to be horse traded over. The Magellan was a nice scout vessel, and it was already fitted with a fully operational HPG within her hull. The Bugeye was a very high tech or even bleeding edge tech level of a spy ship that also had a built in HPG, but no one knew if it was functional are not. LIC or MIIO would sell their mothers to get a look inside one of them much less being able to use one or both ships in operations. Then there were the three Tramp class jumpships fitted with LF Batteries. Those jumpships would be tailor made for high speed cargo runs or supporting good sized raiding missions. That was something all sides in this meeting could use to very good effect, even against the clans.

The Dragoons also were not planning on claiming ownership of the shipyard, or even half of the shipyard that they could legally by contract claim by the Mercenary command. The Dragoons just don't have the people much less have enough of the right people to do that job so far from their headquarters on Outreach. At least not and work on what Jaime had them working on currently, much less covering the massive cost involved in running half a major shipyard. The Dragoons had spent blood and assets to take that base from Blake's Will, and Jaime was not just going to give that kind of thing away, never again. Now Jaime might have done something like that back in 3009 or even back when they had fled Combine space, but not now.

Even after this meeting was over, nothing was a done deal in the legal sense of the contract. It would not be a done deal until the paperwork had been put through the lawyer's laundry a few times on all sides of the deal. Still the Monolith and two Star Lords between them would free up ten merchant class jumpships that had been needed to support the movement of RCTs during the war with the clans or other powers within the Inner Sphere.

Adding those three jumpships to the military would allow up to ten jumpships to be added to the shipping lanes in the FedCom in just a few months was a huge deal for that power block. Then there were all of those dropships, jumpships, and warships that were in various degrees of being hulked by Blake's Will. Where ROM might not have thought them worth the effort, the FedCom might be willing to invest the time, effort, and parts to at least get some of the dropships and jumpships back into service. ComStar had access to the largest fleet of civilian jumpships within the Inner Sphere, and every other House was chronically short of those ships.

#######

The last part of the meeting was the rehashing of what to do with the other three worlds in the data that the Dragoons had "found" and then had passed along to the FedCom. The group didn't trust even this new version of ComStar, so code words and phrases were used that LIC and Wolf Net had put together some time ago for a one-time use. The news about these hidden worlds had not been passed/traded to the FWL, Combine, or the Confederation just yet. The time was coming close to when it was going to have to be done.

The leaders of the FedCom had to make sure that the data was good, before any transfer should be done. That was the secondary reason to have launched both of these raids in FedCom space. If the data was handed over and later proven false by the new owners. It could have blasted apart the united front that the Dragoons had helped put together to fight the clans. Now all they had to do was work out what the price was for the data that had pointed MIIO and LIC to these two worlds and maybe others in the different house lord's areas.

When it was done, the Dragoons would get all of the data and even a few slots on the R and D teams for the projects working on the FedCom's X-pulse lasers project as well as the three Tramp LF jumpships found in the shipyard. Later it would be found out that those three Tramp Class jumpships had been built in the Sol system decades after the SLDF had undertaken their Exodus. The TDF would be invited to see a copy of the navigation data on those three jumpships. That was because it would also seem that these three jumpships had been used in the Vandenberg White Wing affair. There were few things worth more than money, and the of those things within the Inner Sphere were information, jumpships and weapons technology. That the weapons technology was in an area that not even the SLDF had been able to break into was just a nice serving of icing on the Dragoon's cake. Also, the TDF might be more willing to trust the data coming from the Dragoons than if the jumpships were connected to Fedsun or FedCom ownership.

#####

By the end of the week, the data they had on Herakleion or Jardine would be passed along to the leader of the FWL…Thomas Marik. This data was transferred at some cost to the FWL, if it proved useful. That cost would be for the next three shipments of upgraded kits to be free for the FedCom, with the FWL government footing the bill to the manufacturing companies. The FedCom could have gotten more but for the failing health of Thomas Marik's son at the NAIS main hospital. The Dragoons part of the deal would get all of what they needed to put the Magnetic-Pulse Warheads into production on Outreach and not even having to pay a licensing fee. That these weapons existed had been a surprise to both LIC and MIIO, but then again Wolf Net had been able to pull out some large rabbits out of their collective hats over the last almost half century.

There were some facts that the people in this meeting didn't know about the FWL. The current leader of the FWL had been trained on Jardine and he was not a Marik. He knew a lot about the planet, but its location was not one of those facts that was known to him. With the death of the crazy Marik on Gibson, the fake Marik had to make sure somethings were cleaned up so that they didn't blow up in his face some time down the road.

The little Civil War that had been fought on Gibson was proof that some of the members of ComStar were as crazy as bed bugs to anyone with eyes and two brain cells that were not fighting each other. Little did those leaders in the meeting know, it would be that this little bit of information would put the last torpedo needed to kill a marriage between the FWL, ex ComStar groups, and the Confederation for at least the next generation. It also would cause a wall to be thrown up between the government of the FWL and the slowly healing group called The Word of Blake. This was a huge butterfly that had just flapped its half a galaxy sized wing.

After some pushing by Victor, the Combine would be informed of Tangerz or Mayadi as it might be called now on the ComStar supplied navigation charts. That contact would have to be handled with a certified ambassador just so that no one would have to use the gardens on the Black Pearl. Jaime and some of the other key leaders of the Dragoons had not been happy about this move. But technically the FedCom could use this information how they wanted. And if the Dragoon's balked to badly? Then they would be locked out of any deals, and the Dragoons were not going to be locked out of getting at least something of a payday for this once in a lifetime information.

Besides the issues with the Dragoon's past could get them some political coins from the Combine that Jaime planned on using in a later game. The ISF had already picked up on some of the things that the FedCom had found with this core information. So, the Combine had been more than willing to pay through the nose to get some of the data and any "true notes" on the FedCom operations. The Combine had traded the C3 master and slave systems to the Dragoons as their payment. The FedCom would be able to buy as many Rose class cargo dropships as they wanted, with four of the dropships given over for "study" on a handshake deal. There was an upper limit on the number of those hulls, but no more than half of the total production for any given year for the next decade could be bought by anyone remotely connected to any part of the FedCom.

Jaime was thinking that he might need to use some of the now implied political points to get the Combine to work with the Nova Cats. More of those points were gained when Jaime had agreed to pay a fee on any slave and master C3 systems that were sold to a limited list of third parties or lost in combat. The Nova Cats in turn would then owe the Dragoons more than a few high level clan grade coins. Those coins that might or might not save a lot of blood from being spilled down the road for that Clan, the Dragoons, and the Combine. All of that would depend on how some things worked out in the near future. If all else failed? Then the Dragoons could just keep those political coins in the metaphorical bank for use against some future need that the Combine might be able to provide. Ah the game of politics…the second oldest profession in human history and very closely related to the oldest human profession.

Besides these two planets thought to be in the FWL and Combine space, it was suggested to pass along to those other two House Lords a few hints. One hint would be that they might want to invest in a major re surveying of all of their claimed space…kind of like what the FedCom had done to find these two golden nuggets and the hints of others. At least that resurveying had been the cover story that now turned into a real mission for the FedCom.

#######

When the Combine was able to free up a Swords of Light unit to check out the star system, that they had been given by the FedCom ambassador. They "only" found what they at first had thought was a dying planet. It was exactly what you think you would get, that is if you were testing bioweapons on a planet that had once been used by humans. After a closer inspection, the 3rd Sword of Light regiment found a half a dozen good sized domed cities spread out over the whole planet. Domes that were filled with people that were highly trained in the medical sciences up to the bleeding age level of technology that not even the SLDF had thought about looking into.

That planet would soon become the center of medical research and training within the whole Combine. In some areas, this planet was more medically advanced than what the MoC could claim, but only in a few very highly focused areas compared to the broad-based medical tech that the MoC could claim. Besides the FWL's Jardine, the Combine got the least world for short term military value. A lot of those funds that the "new" medical school generated went into "fixing" the damages that had been done over the centuries around the Combine. So, that "new" planet might not make weapons, but they paid for a lot of weapons production for the DCMS.

######

Nothing would be said to the Confederation about Sharpe or Obeedah, besides the hint about relooking all of their claimed space for worlds that might have fallen off of the map that was leaked to many ears. To no one's surprise the leader of the Confederation didn't so much as offer a free meal for the two person team that made this "official" suggestion for that resurveying a few months after those leaks.

The whole data packet would be passed along to the St. Ives Compact using only the most highly placed confident. If they chose to use this data? Then the St Ives Compact would invest a large sum of funds to increase the numbers of Victor class assault mechs that the FedCom could buy from them. The Dragoons and FedCom would also get all of the data on the "fixed" Triple Strength Myomer project that the Confederation and St. Ives had put into production back in late 3050. At least this was a project that LIC and MIIO had known something about. The leadership of St. Ives jumped at the chance to do some looking around with the possible pay out like this.

That "Breakaway" state would not receive as much of a windfall as the FedCom did, but it took one more piece off the board for some splinter groups. That value didn't even count when a Thuggee community was found on that planet. On a "lost" planet that turned out to be so close to already claimed St Ives space a few months after receiving the data package. The Thuggee seemed to have been very surprised when some combat dropships filled with highly skilled fighters had come flooding out onto the planet's surface.

That had been an ugly fight that had almost saw the release of chemical weapons on that seemingly perfect world by the Thuggees. The "limited" release of the WMD had "only" killed many thousands, and they all were in that one compound were the release had happened. Thankfully the release was on a small island that also was far from any major population centers left on the planet. A few artillery strikes combine with cheap building practices, and a large dose of graft while building the labs and storage areas can sometimes come back to bite you right in the ….toe. The Thuggees had a problem trying to breathe after the gas was released in the underground base. After the first test came back, the St. Ives unit just poured every drop of Inferno Jell they had down the bases vents, and then they let a remote detonator do the dirty work.

Still, that had only been on one island about 17 kilometers across in one area on a whole planet. A planet that was full of islands like that or larger islands that had a lot more going for them with very little additional investment needed. The rest of the planet was almost a paradise with great beaches and islands just begging for tourist to show up and spend their money. It also was a completely self-supporting world for the Inner Sphere. It even was very close to a major shipping lane between what had been part of the Confederation and the Federated Suns.

Oh, then there was a massive mostly mothballed space station in orbit over the planet. One that had a crew made up of a few hundred ex ComStar personnel that had been working themselves to death trying to get it back into operation as fast as they possibly could. There were not any jumpships, much less warships at the almost stripped navy support base that had looked dead at first look by any visitors to this system. But they did have a great many repair slips just sitting there, and it had only been stripped of warship supporting equipment by the SLDF or ComStar. That had left the civilian supporting areas mothballed. The "new" support base should be able to start turning out Invader and smaller jumpships with just half a year of more investments.

After the Compact force had captured the space station and the first round of interrogations were completed. It was found that the planet also held dozens of dropships full of supplies needed for the planned work. They held almost everything that was needed to support the un mothballing work that was needed to be done on the station for the next year. It was all just sitting at cleverly hidden drop ports on a few of the islands found on the planet. Most of those supplies were in four huge cargo dropships with small and under armed crews. The rest were carried by Mule and Buccaneer class cargo vessels scattered in hiding around the planet. Thankfully, none of those dropships were on that island used by the Thuggees.

Blake's Will was also identified as being "in control" of those three other worlds to match the ones that the FedCom had already retaken under their control. Odessa was just listed on many intelligence reports as another Lyran Count working on overthrowing the Archon. But it was one noble that was supported by an "unknown third party" when word of the found jumpship repair base over Odessa IV made it into the press.

The loss of so much support was a strike that was going to leave that group called Blake's Will in a lot weaker position than any of their most pessimistic plans had called for. That all made the surviving leadership very mad at a long list of groups within the Inner Sphere. It was just too bad that they had no idea about the Dragoons or the key SLiE involvement in these actions that had cost them the Hidden Five Worlds. But was that all of what had been slowly hidden from the rest of the Inner Sphere by some parts of ComStar and ROM? Only time would tell what might have fallen off the map to be used by those with a need to be a power player within the human sphere.

########

Notes:

Operation name: Operation Nordic Hammer because The New Saint Valentine's Day Massacre might have just been a little over the top.

Notes on space battle. Round 1 real good rolls on a nonmoving targets (only 1 frakking crit). Round 2 Black Lion moving, but not maneuvering, good rolls but warships have faced nose to nose (3 crits). Round 3. Green Vs Reg rated crews. All Dragoon warship fire misses, but two Killer Whales. 1 hit nose, 1 hit fresh armor on Black Lion (1 crit). Mars loses all armor on port forward and half of SI, 2 missiles hit 2 Ahabs class fighters and the corvette keeps shooting buccaneer missiles until she is dry. Round 4: 2 Killer Whale hits. Nose and weakened side cleared armor and reduced SI to 30 on Black Lion. (Crits finish killing Black Lion's bridge, DC, fire control, and engines). Return fire from Black Lion misses or cannot fire due to damage. Round 5. ComStar Essex's make slashing attack on unengaged side of Athena and fire into the dropship fleet (kills three dropships. The Aft sides and aft weapons fire from Athena and she now has a major heat issue. The Enlightened Spark takes 2 NAC hits, and the Salvation takes 1 M-NPPC in aft.

Other notes on space battle. Good god, a Vincent is a death trap! The hit that should have killed it missed by one, so I wrote it up as a grazing hit. Dragoon and FedCom fighters take out two dozen com guard fighters and almost four dozen drones. Attackers lose 9 total dropships but many more damaged by Blakes Will fighters, Enemy DDs, and ground based weapons. Della Nichols was a Lt and she was listed as commander of the Leopard CV Akaga (Wolf's Dragoon 1631).

The battle for Moseby's Crossroads: Lance of hover 2 tanks (one killed by Dragoon), 2 heavy hover APC, 1 squad of sloth, 1 squad IS standard from 1st Lyran. Sloth (SL) vs Nexus. Popup mine removed for Sloths for 2 X SRM2 OS and IS have only mgs and satchel breaching charges. Lyran Staff Sergeant Monique Hanotte was leading her unit (War Dog, Warhammer, Caesar 3R, Marauder C) (the MAR was in MUL 3050) The Marauder C swapped the PPCs for a pair of Clan-tech LPL and the standard autocannon for a Clan UAC 5 model, clan DHS, but retained spots for the IS medium lasers. The munitions for the autocannon were also protected with CASE. Attacking Blake's Will LVL II has a Kanga tank, 2 jackrabbits, an Excalibur B2, a Shootist 8a, and a Clanbuster Black Night IER PPC in place of ER PPC, and has a 5-ton Sword.

Known warships at the space yard. Baron, 2 Essex Enlightened Spark, Salvation, 2 Lola IIIs, and a UI Black Lion are outside. Inside the yard are 2 Essex Dawning Horizon and Divine Forgiveness along with the Dante Narbonne II and the unfinished Suffren, a Naga class marked as the Intolerant, Blake's Sword McKenna class battleship, Tharkad class CA Invincible. A Monolith, 2 Star lords, 3 white painted Tramps LF, Bugeye, and Magellan. There are dozens of other warships, jumpships, and dropships that are in different stages of repair or scrapping. I rolled (random number generator) the ships and I can provide the roll sheet via PM for those that might want to check my work. But I did fluff the Tharkad in place of rolled Cameron, after all I did write it.

Dragoon's warship fleet to be. 4 Essex, 4 Lola IIIs (they had two already), Baron, Dante, Naga, Vincent COR, Congress, a Aegis, Black Lion, and Sovetskii Soyuz. They do not have even half the crew for all of these ships. It will take years to get the crews ready.

Length of this chapter. Sorry for the length, but I couldn't find a good break point. It also would have meant almost a month break in closing out this event. I just hope that you all enjoy this over the holidays.

87