February 2, 26 years post Fires of IBIS.

I had expected that conflict on Rubicon would grow rather rapidly. Everybody had.

Even still, I was surprised by just how quickly things had gotten out of hand.

The outsiders had arrived on schedule, as expected. Into the system right before the end of the year, and making landfall on the planet only just after it.

It had taken less than an hour for them to get into a conflict with a local Doser faction. See, one of the larger corp groups had made a decision that they were going to get ahead of the game and exploit some of the local resources on the planet- in the form of a Grid. They had picked a Grid that seemed in relatively good condition, which hadn't been too far away from sites of interest.

And, in doing so, they had promptly plodded directly into an entrenched area.

Just some evidence that money couldn't buy sense, I suppose.

Now, theoretically speaking, the corp did win that engagement. Their enemies were wholly destroyed beyond recovery, they gained access to the Grid, and they could salvage and repair.

Practically, however, they had inadvertently run dick first into enemy territory, and they'd eaten a loss of thirty three percent of their combat forces getting themselves out of the situation. Worse, however, is that multiple non-combat transports had been shot down, which had royally fucked a significant proportion of their resources and logistics.

At least one of those transports had been food. Significant, years-long supplies of food. It was a bit up in the air at the moment for how much that single transport represented of their total supply, but still, that sure as shit wasn't something you'd want to lose on the very first day.

It remained to be seen whether they would cut their losses or double down on sunk cost fallacy, but either way, they'd gone from being a group of potentially significant trouble to about number twelve on the list. They were behind significantly, now.

If the situation had stopped there, it would have been just a footnote.

Unfortunately, and providing yet more evidence that money couldn't buy sense, some of the other newcomers, more specifically three of the first corp's would-be competitors, when they had learned what happened, had promptly and independently decided that instead of settling in and entrenching, this was a great opportunity to wipe out one of their rivals and absorb their assets early.

Then they ran into each other and realised they all had the same idea. And now all of them were on the line because they had no safe-spots, so they really had to get vicious in order to not lose everything.

And the situation escalated from there.

First they savaged each other. Then they got the bright idea of dragging others in. Then they remembered that they were corps and that they could just pay people to involve themselves.

A few missile strikes for a fistful of COAM. What's not to love?

And so we arrive at 'now', where there were dozens of brushfire incidents all over Belius, and everybody was getting involved in it.

... So, admittedly, not actually that much different from normal normal, just busier now that 'a fistful of COAM' had been added to the list of reasons why anybody should do anything. And also with more than the usual belligerents.

"Mercenaries will be here sooner than I thought at this rate." Flatwell sighed, leaning back in his chair. "I suppose I should have accounted for the lack of sense the average corp possesses."

"I do think we have to give the PCA a least a little bit of credit, here." I pointed out. "Picking groups that would go down in flames so violently like this was a genius move on their behalf. They're getting a remarkably large amount of 'evidence' as to why their presence and actions are 'necessary'. And hey, for the moment, the RLF isn't very involved."

"It won't last." Flatwell noted. "More COAM on the local markets means more activity from BAWS. However, BAWS has its limits on how much food and medicine it can stock, and therefore limits on how much can be brought. War machines will be more available, and with more war machines, those groups are eventually going to poke at us."

"Something we both expected." I agreed. "Just not so quickly."

And of course, it wasn't stopping the PCA. A conflict even close to an RLF facility was reason enough for them to come in and lay down the law- nevermind that the RLF was sometimes not involved at all beyond watching.

He closed his eyes, nodding as he did. "How's Dolmayan?" He asked, after a few moments.

"Doing about as well as we could hope." The Firekeepers had been a little overawed to have him on base for three months, and that had been reduced by only a very small amount when they learned he'd be spending most of his time under medical attention. "No complications so far, but he's going to need every second of these three months for his convalescence. He's thankfully an easy patient, but he's also been bored enough to hand the Firekeepers their own asses at every opportunity."

Flatwell's mouth almost twitched into a smile. "I hope they're not discouraged?"

"Far from it." If I had eyes to roll... "They're enjoying the crash course greatly, even if the course is mostly them crashing into the ground. Still, they are learning something and he is keeping skills sharp, so I won't complain. What about you? I noticed a couple days ago that the Enforcement System went on another seething spree. Those six degree temperature jumps are usually yours."

"I tricked them into blowing up one of their material supply caches." He shrugged, like it was no big deal. "A Doser/Corp conflict drew some of their forces away for a small period, so I took the opportunity to steal a few things and leave some thermite trails in the line. When they inspected it on schedule..." He waved a hand.

I laughed. "That would do it." And I knew the incident he was speaking of, to. By 'one of their material supply caches', he meant 'an entire squad of replacement MTs and also an LC'. "You took some data on the LC, didn't you?"

"It was unfortunately nothing new." He shook his head. "I also have to thank you. Thanks to the supplies you've gotten us, we didn't have to go into full rationing last month."

"Quite excellent." I smiled. "It won't take long for the PCA to realise, though."

He was a bit too composed to grimace. "I know. I've got a plan in mind to take an important logistical asset that should help us move things around a bit more. It should be ready to go when Dolmayan has recovered."

Oh? Interesting. "I'll make sure Dolmayan's gift is prepared, then." ASTGHIK was a solidly built machine, but it was also quite old by this point. Even just a complete restoration would do quite a bit of its ability, but what I had planned for the mech was more along the lines of refurbishment rather than restoration.

The outside would be, for the most part, the same. The insides, though... That was a different story.

ASTGHIK was for the most part a fairly standard BASHO model, excepting the fact that it used a Coral Generator. There was a Furlong Dynamics FCS, a second generation model developed alongside Furlong's transition to specialising in missiles, so it had pretty decent performance in single-locks and middle-range brackets, and not great performance everywhere else. This did, at least, contribute to Dolmayan's choices in weaponry: a Ransetsu, excellent at medium-range; a Pulse Blade, which was melee and therefore didn't care about the FCS very much; a napalm bomb launcher, also good in medium-range and with a wide enough AOE that it didn't worry too much about accuracy in close-range; and a 4-cell homing Missile Launcher, excellent for single targets.

It wasn't a bad AC by any means, and in the right hands, like Dolmayan's, it was indeed a very dangerous one. With that said, there was definitely room for improvement.

First, the BASHO Frame. It was stock-standard stuff, over two decades old. It was bulky, heavy, and it had a lot of space inside once you ripped out BAWS'... less than incredible engineering. Out came BAWS, in went RRI. Just like that, the performance parameters were already higher than before in pretty much all areas. It was hardly shape optimised, but it would work.

After that, it was a series of replacements for some of the smaller components. The Generator was upgraded into the IB-C04 model that my Firekeepers were currently using, which would serve his purposes better. The Boosters, Kikaku models, did not get changed, only completely repaired because they were actually quite excellent. The FCS was replaced completely, exchanged for a general-purpose model that I was still in the process of developing. It was still better than the old piece of garbage in pretty much every way, losing out only slightly in single-target missile locking performance. It would open up his options quite a bit, to say nothing of what would be developed in the future.

I couldn't do much for his supply of weaponry, unfortunately. Coral may be in abundance for me, but the RLF had much more uses for it, and they were still in the slow process of ramping up production through multiple areas. It couldn't be rushed, and if Dolmayan took my armaments, then he'd either be relying on me for resupply, or he'd be all but literally taking from the mouths of the hungry.

I did plan on giving him the non-Coral weapons, though. Those were not subject to the same problem of needing Coral, even if they also didn't suit his style.

"I'm sure you'll both appreciate the effort." I continued, putting that out of mind for the moment. "It's about the best I can do at the moment unfortunately. We, too, are about to have a busy few months."

"You're readying to go loud?" He straightened up.

"Just about." I answered. "I've been eyeing up Grid 339 for the moment."

"Southeastern Belius." His head tilted to the side, considering. "Outside the PCA's typical monitoring areas. Terrain is cliffs, cracked dryland in the summer, and unstable wetlands in the winter. Not an easy to access without aerial transportation. And yet, a decent material wealth readily available from nearby mountain mine zones. " He made a noise of understanding. "You'll be using a lot of drones, then?"

"Yes." And this is why I liked working with Flatwell. "Grid 339, I've found, was a Grid that specialised a significant proportion of its volume into material processing. Turns out that most of it is actually still there, too." And hadn't that been an interesting discovery? All it needed was a few weeks and I could get most of it online and ready. That was a lot of material there. "I'll make sure it's defended enough to handle any common stuff, and it will be perfectly serviceable bait for the PCA's attention. I'm kind of curious as to how far I can push this before they come in enough force to crack down on the place."

He raised an eyebrow. "Hence, southeastern Belius. One of the least populated areas on the continent, aside from the contaminated North."

"Far enough out of the way that nobody else will get hurt from the whole thing, and far enough that it's going to take a significant amount of the PCA's forces to deal with it." I agreed. "I expect it will last long enough to pull attention away from your side of things, at the very least."

"I see. Good luck, then." He stood up, nodding at the screen.

"I should be the one telling you that, my friend. Still, I'll take it. After all, we're both going to be living in interesting times."