A man out of time, and almost out of time (SIOC)

by cliff.west

You all can thank, or curse, Chris O'Farrell for giving me this idea. An OC/SI gets ripped out of his home dimension when the Dragoons were testing a repair on one of their supporting jumpships. What will happen next, and will it change the whole Inner Sphere?

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

By Cliff

Fact Checked and Sanity Checked by Drakensis

Editor (that I at least sometimes listen to, so the screw ups are all mine) Drakensis

Blackwell compound, New Valencia

FedSuns

Aug 3025

Drake almost kissed the heat- and flame-scarred ground once he had landed at the drop port set up near the outskirts of Blackwell's main facility on New Valencia. The man from Earth thought that Zero G was so much fun that it felt like he would need to pull out his pubic hairs one at a time to match that level of joy. And now the displaced man doesn't know if extended dropship travel was any better while under a 1+g loading after days of the experience. It was a week of travel from the jump point to orbit, two days of slowly spinning in space in near orbit, and then another half day of clearing 'customs' before they could see the skies. Drake now thought that space travel is soooo overrated, and he thought that he knows why Elon Musk had refrained from going up before being ripped away from that universe.

Mendenhall had been looking forward to talking to Minuet after all of this time traveling with only one person that he could talk to. Franko was okay, but Drake kept getting the feeling that he was okay talking to him or putting a bullet in his knee in equal measure. Oh, and she was an above average cook, knew the right places around town to get good food, and she always smelled so good.

Now Drake fought down a snort as he was thinking. Yep, it's been too long, being too close to too many men, all for way too long. I so need to see a woman, and it wouldn't matter if we had that replay of 'that night' or not.

The trip over from the space port took over two hours even with a hover sedan, not that the man from Earth noticed. He had fallen asleep even before the high-tech sedan had exited the outermost security fence of the civilian side of the drop port. It took a good shake from the Wolf Net Agent to get the other man to wake up when it had come to a stop within the middle management rated housing area.

"You know that no amount of beauty sleep is going to help that ugly mug." The man born in Clan space had to jerk hard away to avoid the incoming haymaker launched at him before he had even finished his statement.

The displaced man opened his eyes and looked around before eye locking the other man. "Pot meet kettle," was his only retort.

As they pulled the small bags from the trunk that he had used during that trip to have a secret meeting with the senior players within the Dragoons the man from a different universe was almost sleepwalking. He was so tired from the distress of the jumps, heavy burn, and then Zero G sickness that he was not paying attention to the warning bell going off in the back of his mind.

Then the main door opened to his home and a stranger was standing in the doorway, this made the combat veteran come to a stop in a fight, flight, or freeze mode.

The stranger had reached out to help with the bags but stops when he noticed the wild eye look in the other man. Then Franko speaks. "Drake this is Joseph Wily, he will be your new roommate and security officer."

Drake passed over his bags and when the third man turned to return inside the house, he swings around to look at the Wolf Net Agent. "What about Minuet? I don't need another babysitter without a neck."

The look on the other man's face was still as stone. "She is having to do some training; can you just give this a try without showing your butt."

With so many years in the big green machine, the short cut brown haired man knew when it was time to drop a certain subject. With a head nod in understanding he followed the Wolf Net agent into the place that he was living in. The first thing that the man from Earth noticed was that the home's entertainment system had four different physical sports playing. The only thing they had in common in the sports was that a ball was used in the events. Nothing more was said as the head of house went to his room.

The space travel had left Drake tired and in a dire need of a shower, and three hours later it was the rumbling of his stomach that motivated him to get out of bed to make his way to the large kitchen. As soon as the ex-NCO walked into the main room his vision was assaulted by images on the holo display. It was showing four more sporting events, this time two of them were what might be close to soccer matched with tennis and what looked like a mixed team playing indoor volleyball.

The primary resident of the home quickly warmed up some breaded chicken with the newest batch of dipping sauce that he gets a royalty from on a plate. He took up a seat in the overstuff recliner made from a design in one of the sheets of paper from a different universe. Now comfortable, he took a few test bites and satisfied that he was not going to toss up the food he settled in for dinner, only then did the home 'owner' look at the four displayed sporting events.

With a slight frown on his face Drake looked at his newest babysitter sitting on the universe's most uncomfortable bench seat couch. "Joseph…right?"

The short dark-haired man got a positive head nod and a grunt from the no necked man with to long of hair looking between the holo display and the noteputer in his hands. After a few seconds the man from a different universe figured out that he was not going to get more, he finished his line of thinking. "Is there anything else on?"

Now the babysitter looked up and gave the package a questioning look. "It's the playoffs."

"Which one?" The US Army combat veteran could not help but be confused because where he was from only one sport had a playoff at a time.

He only could clamp his mouth shut and the confused guard pointed to the holo display with four different sport shows playing out. Drake didn't say more and knuckled down and ate his dinner and tried to be social. That act of socializing lasted for less than an hour before his aversion to most sports kicked in and he retreated back to his bedroom. He returned to the main living areas of the home ten hours later. It was much to his annoyance that his roommate was already up and the holo display active with ball-based sporting events.

The only break from sports for the man from Earth was when he spent time in the backyard or the few times that he could talk the other man into a movie from a different universe. It was that or rise well before the sun and park his body on his chair and never leave…. not even to take a water closet break or risk the display being change to sports when he was gone. He could have raised a stink with the no necked man, but the crazy uncle had a saying that had rung true. That was that a person didn't want to make certain people mad at you, those were the people that cooked the food, covered your back, or shared your bed and unfortunately this man fell into one of those three categories.

Drake rolled his eyes as he paced around the room that was the office and training room for this home. No, he is not my babysitter. He is my 'new' house mate. The snark was dripping with every word that fell from his lips that only he could hear.

"After all it's odd that a single man has a house this size in the family housing area. Yeah, right." Again, it was with snark that words softly filled the room as the man from Earth paced and talked to himself. The displaced man went to work on finding out how to contact Minuet.

It only took him two days to want to track down Franko and find out who he needs to shoot to get his old babysitter back.

It was a few days later that Drake is giving Franko a level look and added another log onto the fire that is his list of reasons that he wants Minuet back. "I mean who does not think that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie! Oh, and he doesn't get the humor used in any of the Lethal Weapon movies. I think he has spent too much time sniffing gun oil during his school years. Also, I'm okay watching sports, but not every frakking hour that your eyes are open? Man, that is pushing the line on that kind of entertainment. Watching the mech battles and duels coming out from Solaris? Well, I could spend the time for a few hours a week…. Tops. But the rest of the time? I like watching something that is not sports related. There is a reason that I didn't live in or over a sports bar back in Texas!" He was on the warpath and steamrolled the conversation.

Franko taps the tray holding the lunch that Drake had interrupted. "Hmmm. I will have to check on that. That is not my department." He looks at his watch. "Now, I have a meeting. I'll will let you know if I find out anything." The agent quickly leaves the irate ex-NCO in the lunchroom with his mouth still hanging open.

###

The head of Wolf Net did reply to Drake's last email about Minuet coming back, by inviting (nee ordering) him to a meeting at the field offices. That email had told him that he was to pack an overnight bag but be prepared to be working some very long hours, and a car would be sent for him. The displaced man didn't think that much about some of those details, until his roommate/watcher put a second overnight bag filled with his stuff outside of the bedroom door that sounded on the heavy side.

The man just gave the Army NCO a look with a slight smirk on his face. "Man, you are as subtle as an Atlas walking across a parking lot full of window glass." He didn't need to open the bag to know that they had found the rest of his battletech books, but he was not going to check on that one book that could cause so many clanners to lose their ever-loving minds. There was a reason that he had made many small caches of those books spread out in places that should have made them very hard to find.

Drake gave a slight head shake to his roommate, and then he made sure that he was ready. He even had most of his handwritten notes with him when his roommate said that his ride was waiting in the driveway. When the door to the back seat closed and he was alone it only took a quick look to show him that his watcher was heading back into the house. A short head turn forward showed him the back of two helmets, so it was not like he didn't have a watcher with him.

The displaced man was almost relieved to know that his roommate would not be working with him today. As they drove, he thought that he picked up the two other vehicles falling in with them as they drove out of the housing area. It was surprising that the meeting was not in the main office building of Blackwell, instead he was driven to an area that was not far from the test range and outside the massive anti-mech wall that went around the company's grounds. He had no idea what that would mean, but it was different and that could be good or bad.

Drake looked forward and pitched his voice to carry to the front seat. "If I didn't have the two bags of clothes in the trunk, I might have been more worried about the situation." There was not a reply from the two leg- breakers in the front seat.

The hover car made a final turn and Drake saw a good sized one-story tall building surrounded by a very tall wire fence. The first thing that jumped into his mind was that this looked like a SCIF from his old world. It was that or an ICBM launch facility, but battletech was not known to have any of those left so he discounted that idea as quick as it popped into the man from Earth's mind. The hover sedan was waved forward, and a heavy fence was quickly rolled closed behind them.

The one-time Master Sergeant tested the door in the sedan and kept a smile from growing as he found that it had been unlocked. He took a step out and while he was looking around the passenger in the front seat exited and removed the two bags. Drake took the two heavy bags from one of the massive men and as he turned, the ex-NCO saw what looked to be a wood covered blast door as it swings open.

A young, tall, and well-muscled girl walked out into the clear day, and he just had to open his mouth. "Shouldn't you be in school? Your parents might wonder if your cutting class to be with your boyfriend practicing for your prom."

The girl snorts and jerks the two bags out of Drakes' hands only to pass them into one hand like they were full of feathers. "What does that say about you, old man, that your first thought about me is what I would be doing at prom?"

As the girl steps to one side with the two heavy bags like they were nothing and Mendenhall has to think about what she said. Only then did he see the weapon in the back holster the girl was packing. "Well, you do look like you should still be in school. But you're not my type. I like women that can get into bars without getting IDed." Inside his head, the girl was marked as a foster of the Dragoons.

The young woman with two bags in one hand leads Drake into a room deeper into the building. From the inside, the single-story building looked more like a bunker than an office building. They took a turn, and the girl looked over at the stranger and in a low voice she asked. "Are you ready for this?"

Drake keeps his eyes forward as they walked. "I was ready to beat some info into someone's head, even if I have to use my bare hands to do it for months."

Thanks to his time with Franko on the trip back from the edge of Combine space, they had worked out that Drake's old Intel job was not going to line up with Wolf Net or 7th Kommandos. He was neither fish, nor foul, nor good red meat, but that didn't mean that he was not valuable to both groups and many others for that matter. The head Wolf Net agent had told him that he thought that the man from Earth was worth more than a dozen mech regiments. Only it was going to be up to the displaced man to prove this to the rest of the Dragoons.

As soon as Mendenhall walked into the room, he was put on edge. Between not knowing who he was going to be talking with and feeling a little down about not seeing a certain female for a while now… it had been a dull time. No matter what he had said in the corridors, Drake was not on his A game like he really should have been. There was only so much that coffee and fake motivation could do for a person.

The room that he had been taken to was only half full of bodies already in seats, and it looked more like a classroom than a briefing room for a military unit. That is if you took away the drab concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. After Drake heard his bags hitting the floor, he made eye contact with Franko standing at one end of the room like a wall flower…. a very dangerous wall flower.

Franko only gave him a little smile and he seemed to blend deeper into the wall as if by a magic spell or something. It was almost hard for Drake to follow the agent as he moved around the edge of the room until he was at the head of the center table. Then it was like a spotlight was turned on him. The Wolf Net man went from nondescript and forgettable to being like he should always be the center of attention.

Drake put his hand in his jacket pocket and found a note that should not be there. He slowly pulled it out like it might bite him in…. the finger. When he opened the small slip of paper? He could not help but to fight down a smile as his brain worked on the contained words. 'The gloves are off…for now.' Oh, he was so going to love this.

Franko saw the other man reading the note that one of his people slipped into his pocket, and the smile that crossed his face was enough to let the agent know that this was going to be a 'good meeting' as his training back in Clan space would have called it. With a smile the Agent looked around the room before he started speaking. "Now that we are all here, we can start this meeting. Please look around this room."

After a few seconds of seeing only a few of the heads turn, he started speaking again. "Each person in this room is here for a reason and represents a key discipline that was noted as being needed for this little project by people way above our paygrades." Franko put his left hand on his chest. "I am just representing Wolf Net as far as this project goes…. so don't think that this is a Wolf Net controlled operation."

That was only surprising to a few of the people in this room, and this didn't even get a batted eye from most of the meeting participants. "You all have been read into what we are calling the Caveman program, and nothing we cover in this room will leave it. This is by written order of Stanford Blake and co-signed by the Wolf. I can provide a copy of this order, if you so wish, to prove to you the confirmation of these rules. The Wolf wanted me to pass along, that what we do here could be the key to the survival of the Dragoons and possibly the whole of the Inner Sphere.

"These will be all of our primary jobs for the near future, and so, I would like to welcome you all to the newest and smallest division of Blackwell. Before the question is asked, they are still working on getting some open office space for us to use. We have the working name of the Strategic Homeland Investigation, Evaluation, and Logistics Division. The current plan is that we will be housed in one of the smaller buildings on the Blackwell campus, but one that is secure enough for our mission. Yes, I also know that the name is odd, but it will help keep any of the other divisions R and D departments from thinking that they have any sway over what we are doing."

Yep, Drake blew hot coffee out of his nose, and he could not help himself. Then his mouth opened between coughing to try to make sure he understood. "So, we are going to be called Shield?"

Someone with a Gamma Regiment patch piped up before Drake could object to the name. "Yes! We are the Wolf's - or the Dragoon's - shield! That is kind of fitting…I like it." Drake could not tell if the guy was pulling his chain, or maybe he really liked the name made from that very odd and long full name.

The man from Earth lost the first vote of the meeting on what he really would have like to change their name and motto to. After the vote was conferred on the name of this Division of Blackwell, Drake made a note that he needed to check all of his devices and data to make sure that he had deleted any information related to the TV show Agents of Shield. It was already too late for movies like Iron-Man and other MCU movies in the collection that he had watched after coming to this universe.

While the man from Earth was trying to remember if he had anything to prove to those in this room that SHIELD was a bad name with anything in his shed the meeting had moved along without him. While he was distracted trying to come up with a way to get this name changed, Franko threw him under the bus in front of the whole room.

"Drake, this is your show, and you have had the most time to think about this kind of thing. So, why don't you start this ball rolling?" From the look on his face…this move was planned.

The old NCO's head shot up to look at the standing man but thankfully his mind to mouth filter was working. So, he only was thinking…. very loud. You shit! You were planning on doing this for some time, and you 'forgot' to tell me. The room was quiet as all eyes turned towards Drake.

Yep, I have a roll of duct tape and a tree with his name all over it, thought Drake. Next note, put pepper in Franko's tea the next time we are in the Mess Hall. That brought a tight smile to his face.

Drake kept his mouth shut instead of telling Franko where he could start himself. The ex-NCO had been in charge of meetings and Intel teams before, so it only took him a few seconds to get his mental feet back under him for what he now thought was a major goat rope. Thankfully he was able to use the time it took to walk up to a whiteboard at the front of the room to get that mental work done so that he didn't look like a fool. By the time that Drake reached the board he had an idea of what would be his ice breakers.

"Okay what are our goals?" When he looked around the room it was deadly quiet like he had just passed a ninja fart in a minivan.

MSG Mendenhall accepted this at face value and turned to the board standing behind him, and with a little flourish he pulled out a marker. "Okay short-term goals and issues. It will be focused on dealing with the Combine and them working on companying storing 'our' people until the contract is over. Mid-term? Now that is the coming of the Clans to kill anyone who will not bow down to the 'trashcan born' and the rest of the military caste BS. Long term goals. Now that is combating ComStar, ROM and the fanatical group with the working name of Word of Blake."

After writing those names on the white board, Drake put columns down the board between the three types of goals that he had just listed. When he turned around, he could tell that the people in this room were now very much invested.

Drake knew that he had the room in his hands, and he drove on like a bulldozer going over kiddy sized go-carts. "What can we do to help against the Combine?" He waved his hands to indicate that he was talking to the whole room.

Again, the room was quiet, and a little smile came to his face as he led the room down the path that he thought that they needed to go. "I suggested that we put Freezer tech heatsinks into maximum production levels if not a few gears more to increase the numbers coming out already. But how do we get them to the boys and girls out front in time enough to be useful when the Combine does something dumb?"

Franko was now standing in the back of the room with a sly little grin on his face that only Drake could see from the front of the room. When the agent spoke up all of the heads in the room turned towards him. "I dropped off the first batch of 300 when I had a meeting with Standford, and we are now cleared to keep making them as fast as we can. Wolf Net thinks that they can get about 100 a month to Hephaestus, if things don't go too far off the rails. I know that Blackwell already has one line working on making more 2nd gen heatsinks, but they only have one work shift. They are already working with some of my people on training more workers, with the proper clearance, to increase production to first add a second and then full three work shifts for real twenty-four-hour production. But we don't know what the total output will be until everyone is on the production lines and they start to see what it can do."

Franko was not going to say that Blackwell was only making a few dozen older generation heatsinks a month in 3024 to supply the Dragoons and to put some on the open market. That last part had been to keep the facade of Blackwell making spare parts for anyone with the funds, but it was going to be interesting… in the Combine proverb kind of way to keep what Blackwell was doing out of the hands of the ISF or MIIO.

A man with a stylized 7 and a dagger going threw it on the shoulder spoke next to the group. "Mr. Mendenhall, I'm Anton Shadd and Colonel Wolf has ordered one of the 7th Kommandos dropships to always be making runs between here and the station… to support what Wolf Net is also going to be supplying. By the end of the year, we will have three full teams of Kommandos that will be living on Hephaestus station full time as extra security. This is just in case those ISF kids try something…. naughty. It will be their dropships help in running that mission with help from Wolf Net."

The man gave a grin that reminded Drake of Shark Week and spoke aloud. "The Kommandos know how to be sneaky." There was not a person within or outside of this room that would dispute that claim.

The old NCO just nodded his head at the quite room, and then his eyes shot open. "Sing! There is some guy, clan-born, with a name like Sing. He is a weak link and knows about the plan for protecting the dependents incase the Combine goes all Anton on the Dragoon's dependents." Drake had only gotten to that part of the Wolves on the Boarder when he had to give it up to Franko.

He kept talking and only shooting the odd look towards where Franko was standing in the back of the room. "Maybe we can use him to plant false information for…. the ISF to use?" Now the man out of time made sure not to look at the agent and kept only looking at the Kommando sitting a dozen feet away. It was a good bet that this was something that had been left out of the briefing that the rest of the room had received. "Please get with me later. I might have some ideas that are a little more subtle than your group is used to needing to be." Drake gave a little grin and waggled his eyebrows toward the rest of them. "Or you can teach me a few tricks. Maybe Wolf Net also have some ideas that are not well known that could be useful." He saw Franko's hand point two fingers down and away from his body and the NCO dropped that line of conversation like a hot potato.

Besides he was working on trying to remember the whole name of the guy who sold out the Dragoons last time, but he was at a loss, and he only had a few pages of that book about the Dragoons before the 4th SW with him. The NCO in him really wanted to make sure that this loose end was handled before families and other noncombatants died. He thought that it was a particular kind of low life that would put children, and other noncombatants in the line of fire just out of spite.

Drake had a flash memory of a saying his grandfather said that was supposed to be an old wild west law. 'That man just needed to be kilt.'

Now the man out of time looked back to Franko and pitched his voice to carry just a little louder for the whole room to hear. "That is good news about the heatsinks. Tell the boys and girls on that production line to cut out the coffee breaks…forever." Drake let his face drop into a frown that was only for show. "So, we will lose mechs and other combat units when converting the heat management systems on them for a time. What else do we have? I know that Blackwell modified and beefed up the bones on the old 75ton Marauders to make the 100-ton ones only the Dragoons can use. How many of them can we convert a month, and do we need to have a talk with GM to get more of the bare chassis on a long-term contract?"

A throat was cleared by someone wearing a power suit seated off to one side of the table with a name plate of Erik Madhava and all of the eyes of the room turned in that direction. "That is not exactly true information, that you are thinking about." An arm waved in the air as a dismissing gesture. "Oh, at first, we did it that way on the MADs. But we quickly found out that the numbers of available Marauder chassis that had good enough skeletons to do that kind of work was low. Besides, if it was that easy to do the required modifications? Then the Hephaestus could do all of the work, like they already do with the Archer W's and Wasp W's. They turn out one of those whenever they recover an old enemy Archer from the battlefield, or a pilot takes a fancy to the modified Wasp."

Drake didn't say anything for a few seconds as he worked through this revelation. That was new information for him that he didn't remember from any book off the top of his head. "That is a good point, and it opens up another question that might be useful for the whole group judging by the looks. What can Hephaestus do and what can it not, in meeting our short-term goals?" He was trying to get everyone on the same sheet of music.

The power suit wearing individual looked very uncomfortable and then shot a look over to Franko that was almost a plea for help. Who just tilted his head and raised an eyebrow back at the suit in a silent command. Erik seemed to visibly deflate as he started to talk. "It can rebuild just about anything seen in the Inner Sphere, but it can't build anything new in measurable numbers. It has a bunch of late SLDF mech and other repair bays with some very sophisticated diagnostics equipment built into them from Clan Space."

Captain Richard Heutzenroeder from Gamma Regiment had a contemplative look on his face. "And how does it do that? This is the first time that I can remember anyone talking about what the station can and can't do."

Erik made an adjustment to his suit and looked over the room and looked a little uncomfortable. "I was only on the station for a few years before Quo took over. Now you put in the wreck…. let's say battlemech. You tell the interface of the repair bay that the wreck is a given model of a Flea. The system of the bay scans it, and accesses the support systems of the mech. After about half an hour of diagnostics testing, then it starts pulling all of the damaged parts off from the hulk. Say the engine, one of the Martel 3cm lasers, and the armor is all shot full of holes. All of it is pulled off, and then you put the right replacement parts into the feed slots on the outer part of the bay. In a few hours of it working, then out walks a fully repaired 20ton mech ready for final check out and reissue to a pilot. If a laser needs a new lens or an engine needs to be repaired? You just add the listed parts, and the bay will do the work for you. You just have to go in clean up the mess of old and damage parts after the mech leaves, but that is only grunt work."

The suit seemed to have been very happy with his little pun and kept right on talking at the room. "Now could you make a new mech, say a Warhammer in the same bay? If you had all the parts on hand, all you would need is to have the right leg structure, hips, torsos. and gyro put together first and then let the repair bay start to work. Given enough time, and the right spare parts fed into it at the right time. Then you could, in theory, have a new machine….. in maybe about a week depending on the size. But please don't hold me to those times, I'm pulling this from old memories about long ago briefings."

Now the smile grew larger at the attention Erik was getting from the rest of the room. "Oh, and we have five or six Marauders IIs ready to go. We are just waiting to ship them out to the Dragoon's regiments on the next cargo dropship heading towards the Combine. The production line we have set up locally for them is not ideal, but we make one every 3 or 4 months with our current manning." What he had not addressed was how fast they could make more if they had more manpower, more parts, and more time in the production hall. That was something that was not talked about in polite circles, at least that was the way he had been taught.

Drake smiled and he could see that it distressed most of those in the room to know how few new mechs could be handed over to the fighting parts of the Dragoons currently. "Okay, now that was a good brief."

The Master Sergeant had the urge to do a slow clap, thankfully he held that in check. "I think we need to open up the lines to get a lot more production out of all of your people. I also think keeping a dozen Marauder IIs on hand will be very helpful if Wolf runs into issues that were not planned for. You never know when a rainy day might come up and 1200tons of Whoop Ass is just the thing you need to save the day. We can work on ways to get them out to Combine space or wherever Wolf wants them dropped off down the road." He was not going to say anything about how they could be used to help defend the property of Blackwell in case they were raided by the Dracs or someone working for or with them.

"But - But the cost!" Erik looked to be about to turn purple and his head was whipping around so hard that he might need to see a doctor for whip lash when this meeting was over.

Drake went a little NCO on the fat little man like it was just the first day back after a long weekend,…after a long field problem,….and the Class 6 had a big sale. "Butts are for wiping after a really good latrine break! And yes, it will cost some money! How much is not planning for shit, is going to cost us all in blood?"

He took a second to get his voice back under control at seeing the concerned looks coming from some of the other people within this room. "How about after we get a company of those beast in storage, then we can sell one out of every two of the new production of the next group coming off the lines on the side market to get funds coming in? The Dragoons have a lot of friends, maybe more than we currently have enemies."

Now that he had his inner NCO back safely in its mental box. "Yes, Erik I know that we will need to clear it with the boss first. But we are a mercenary unit owned company for Frak sakes and we have to let him know that the idea is possible for him to at least think about it. We can also open a repair department to rent a few mech bays on the Blackwell grounds, how about charging the renters extra if we have any repair techs that want some overtime, and we can sell them the spare parts available that are cleared to be use by outsiders. If nothing else the 2nd New Ivaarsen Chasseurs or the Planetary Militia might pay to have access to them until word spreads around the FedSuns. I was told once that there is nothing that travels faster than a HPG message, other than rumors."

Franko had read the reports about the entertainment show call Battlestar Galactica from his team, and he about blew snot out of his nose at hearing that…odd word used in a meeting like this. He was so enjoying watching this man from a different world bash these people, and unlike many in this room, Drake had nothing to lose.

The man from Earth was on a roll or was it just rolling over the man in a suit that cost more than a hover sedan. "Yes, I know that we are going to need the money! We need to up the orders for new Hornets and Flea class Battlemechs along with anything else that we are buying on the open market. What do you think is going to happen to the price of certain supplies when the word gets out that the Dragoons and the Combine are having issues or other rising tensions around the Inner Sphere? We also know that the 4th SW is coming in less than three years. For the first time in history, we not only know that a major war is coming, but we also have a good idea when it's going to slap everyone else in the face. Let's be ready for it and not be looking for that stuff after the horse has left the barn and standing in line with everyone else with our wallets out, shall we."

He stopped talking and moved to sit on the table edge. "What can we do about the level of current Badger, Bandit, Kestrel, and Peregrine production that the public already knows that Blackwell makes? And before someone opens their mouth and puts their foot in it all the way to the hip this time. Yes, a lot of the reasons they are wanted is that those designs are connected to the Dragoons."

The displaced man threw up his hands in an exaggerated move. "Okay and they are very rare designs outside of the Dragoon's combat units. Good! Let's use it! We are here to come up with ideas for our bosses to support or shoot down. But by God, we will give them as broad of a base of ideas as we can to at least work with. And as my grandmother told me, if you don't like it. You can see your own ass right out that door, and don't get hit where the good lord split ya'." He needed to push these people to take this mission seriously and not just another step in a war that they have been seeing for the last two decades.

The ex-soldier had to stop talking to get his breathing back under control as his voice went into outside volume levels. Drake knew himself well enough that he was really getting ready to lose his self-control and go right for some wall-to-wall counseling. "Now besides some very good repair bays, and even more income if we can import the right parts for them to use on planet effectively. We can make on planet a few new assault mechs, a hover tank/APC, light track Tank/APC, and a couple of different VTOLs. That is not going to be enough! What else can we produce?"

The man from a different universe started pacing around the front of the room like a caged large cat. "If we screw this up? Who do you think the surviving warriors are going to come looking for first, if they don't have the needed weapons to defend themselves with at the front. I can tell you one thing ladies and gentlemen; it won't be me or the other guys further back off those battle lines. I'm looking at them right in front of me. Anyone want to start a little office pool on what that outcome is going to be when they come asking some very pointed questions to you all?"

A woman smiled and looked around the room at the shocked faces before speaking up. "Mary Jones, and I'm the site lead for all production around here." She shoots a withering look to the suit. "Erik is the head of the Marauder II line, but I'm his boss. You should know that we have a few dozen Peregrines in storage because they don't sell that well. I would suggest we use that production line on something else or for equipment to build other lines."

Mary turned and looked back to the short haired man standing at the front of the room. "Until today, I have been working with Franko under a written directive from the CEO. We can maybe double the output of our conventional vehicle lines without any issues. Anything more than that will dictate building new production lines or risk major damage to the established lines. It will cost tens of millions and take years to design and build a new mech and get it into production. Then we will need a few more years to make sure that all of the bugs are worked out before we can really start rolling them off the line and getting them to the front-line troopers that you seem to be advocating for today."

Drake gave the woman a level look and he felt his lips turn up a little. "Who said anything about a new mech design? The Lyran Wolfhound just didn't jump out and into full production in 3028. They had to be working on it for a while before it was 'released' to the Kell Hounds to test as you pointed out in your statement. Let's send someone with the right expertise out to them and offer to help the Lyrans in getting that mech into real mass production. Maybe we can get the groundwork done to put an inside line into making them here?" He had just off handedly referred to data that was only for Caveman cleared people and the room looked stunned as his dropping of this data and connecting the dots that none of them had managed.

Mary was made of some stern stuff, and she was not that phased by Drake's tone of voice and rose to his challenge as the first of the group to recover. "There are so many issues with that statement, that it's hard to know where to start. Even with all of the issues, the Dragoons are currently under contract with the Combine, and they are not friends of the LCAF. I would think that House Steiner would think that it's a security risk, and would they risk those light mechs being used against a friend like House Davion. Even if they somehow gave us a production license for the Wolfhound with strings attached that we could live with. It will still cost in the tens of millions and take years to build a mass production line for that mech, as I said before. You need to understand that we have been set up to work in hiding, not to be suddenly a major production center for the whole Inner Sphere to be able to draw on."

Now Drake smiled, and he thought that she is going to be very useful filling in holes in his knowledge. "You have a point."

The man from a different universe could see that Mary saw something coming, and Drake didn't disappoint with his new attack. "We are friends with the Kell's. So, it's about time that we see what doors that friendship could open for us. We could always say that we are like Earthwerks or Corean and use that precedent in any communications. What one side does in a House Lord's area? Well, it does not cross pollinate with the other parts of the company in a different House Lord's area. If it's okay for them….. then why not for us. I still think that we could maybe start talking to them, LIC might think of it as a way to use this product to get the Dragoons to leave the Combine…if they can give Colonel Wolf enough of a sweetener in a deal." He saw the shocked look coming back at him, it would seem that no one had thought about that line of possibilities.

Franko's head shoot up and at seeing the odd look the man from Earth stopped talking and waited, and after a few seconds the agent spoke. "I wouldn't call the Kell's Hound friends. Wolf Net has kept an eye on them but besides a few bar fights on Galatea we don't have any deep or meaningful contact with them…. at this time."

The ex-NCO didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Really?" At the look from the agent, he continued without his mind to mouth filter working. "Well damn. How about we work on that? They have skills and will back up their friends to the hilt if not further."

Drake did a turn and went back to the white board and wrote a single word on the side. "Now, what about Outreach?" He was not going to say that the Dragoons would be on this side of the boarder before the start of the 4th Secession War in 3028. That was something that would only be known to a very few until after the issues with the Combine had been concluded.

Now it was the turn of Lt. Shadd from the 7th Kommando and Franko from Wolf Net and its representatives to shoot each other looks. Franko didn't say anything, so it was the recovering Kommando that had to speak to the group. Very few even among the Dragoons knew that something special might be on that planet before that accident at the jump point. "Outreach? Was that the planet they held the Martial Olympiad on? How could that be helpful to us in dealing with the Combine? Well, it might be useful in training up people to fight the clans and ComStar. Only it is under the Crappies control, and I don't think they will let us rent it from them."

Lt Shadd was watching the room from the corner of his eyes, but it was Franko that spoke. "We know that Outreach had an aerospace fighter production facility before the fall of the Star League. It also had support bases for all of those units that were there training. I think it was so that they didn't have to import or keep so many spare parts on hand during those unit tests." While Franko was still talking. Drake also was looking around the room and he could see the lights starting to come on behind their eyes.

Mary rocked back into her seat and her eyes looked to be half closed. "Yea, now I remember. But I would think that those aerospace lines would have been totally picked over by now. It still would take a lot of money and time to get those light aerospace fighters back into production of any level, and I think that those small support areas would require both more time and funds to get each of them back online. Do you think that the Wolf would pick up a contract with them next?" Her look turned sour, probably thinking about the last time that the Dragoons worked for House Liao.

Damn it! She has a point, thought Drake.

MSG Mendenhall knew that it had taken years and years for them to repair Outreach in his old timeline and even then, it would only make a trickle of machines for the whole planet. That production had been enough to rebuild and support five mech regiments and some extra, but not enough to supply the whole of the FedCom.

"So, we need production lines that are already there but not being used by anyone and that were hidden by the old owners?" Drake's voice sounded off, and everyone could hear that he was distracted.

He could hear the snorts and see the rolling eyes behind him, but he didn't care. The displaced man was trying to pull something up from deep in his memory. It was there, but faint and he started mumbling the longer that he thought on the problem. "NUgin, nuwget, Mugin. Damn." The rest of the room comes back into focus. "Okay who knows a metric crap ton about the Star League Civil war?" That got Drake a lot of blank looks.

Drake's questioning tone finally got some knowing looks and Franko raised his hand before he spoke. "I know quite a bit, and I did some papers on that era back in my 'school' days. Now it's still kind of a hobby of mine." He was not going to say sibko even in this room, so he went for using the term school instead.

Before he could get on a roll, the displaced man had to get what he "knew" out into the air. "Good! Stefan Amaris set up hidden factories all over the place to support the Rim Worlds military and the Secret Army that he used during the uprising in other parts off the edge of explored space. Right?"

Now it was Franko's turn to have a lost look. "That is a theory that many believe about how so many enemy mechs, and tanks seemed to pop out of nowhere that SLiC didn't know about. Then again, there are about a dozen others."

Mendenhall could feel a smile coming to his face, and he made sure to keep an eye on the guy from Gamma regiment. He was going to come unhinged if Drake didn't miss his guess on his temperament. "Do you have a star map of that area? I remember that the Lyrans took over most of that area's useable planets when the SLDF pulled back out to go after Terra. One of them had a factory making a massive number of mechs for the fat man. It had a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese based name."

The ex-NCO could see the blank looks coming back in a flash of an idea, but he knew that he needed to buy some more time for his mind to work on this question. "Okay maybe we need a break to get our minds back in the right frame of mind. Why don't we take a short break?" About a third of the room rose and left almost before the last word fell out of his mouth. The rest started just to move around and talk softly among friends.

Franko went to the central mounted hologram display in the room after most everyone went for a coffee or bathroom break. It didn't take him long to have an image of the Old Rim Worlds Republic showing like it was magic hovering in the room. Drake gave him a head nod before making a fast break for a latrine if Franko was right about how the other man was holding himself as he headed for the door.

##

Drake was the last one of the small group to return from the break, due to being stopped a dozen times between the briefing room and the latrine for questions that mostly were work related. The path back had not been as full, but there had been a few asking questions that Drake had not thought were related to this meeting and took too long to answer. He was getting very tired about being asked if he ever met General Patton and the like.

The local top Wolf Net Agent and the displaced man-made eye contact as soon as he had entered the room from his break. As the pair walked around the 3D display that hovered in the room in data, the man from Earth saw the signs of data overload coming his way. "Okay that is a whole lot of worlds! I didn't know that the Rim Worlds was that large. Can you cut down the display to only the worlds that the Lyrans took control of after the SLDF left?"

The hovering image changed almost as soon as Drake stopped talking. "Okay that is better, but I'm still not seeing it. Can you limit it to planets that they took physical control of with a landing force that also had a known battlemech production or some kind of mech supporting facility on the planet?"

Franko looked at the other man for a few seconds before he went to work, and this time it took a few minutes for the image to start to change. But this time when the screen next changed it was very noticeable and it kept slowly changing. Then Drake could see worlds starting to wink out from the display and the data got more manageable for him. When the display was down to only a few dozen names and light points. Drake's eyes found it after starting to really look at the names on display. "There! Kwongjong-Ni! That's it!"

The officer from Able Battalion of Gamma Regiment and one of the tech researchers leaned so far forward in their seats that their heads interfered with the edge of the holo display. With a touch to the icon with the name attached on the display. Text showed up hovering in midair so that the rest of the room could see better.

The researcher was a faster reader than most people in the room and spoke first. "But that factory was destroyed by the Great Star League during the invasion to build the support bases needed for the assault on Terra. The LCAF only landed to take what little remained after the General's troops took what was needed."

Drake's smile made Franko almost feel sorry for the rest of the room, he could tell a bat was about to be used on them. "Yes, it was. But there was something useful that was left behind that no one found for a very long time. There was a second production facility and I think it was the larger of the two facilities on that planet. It was using the smaller factory to be a cover for the smuggling of mechs from the other to help in the opening stages of the uprising. I think that it was one of the places that they at least used to make a lot of the Rampage Battlemechs for the bib-wearing fatman's plans." Drake was waiting for Captain Heutezroeder to react to what he had just said, and the mech jock did, but only after he remembered that name of the mech that he had just dropped into the room mostly full of clanners.

"The Rampage! You have got to be kidding! Those are pure crap machines! You want the Dragoons to put real warriors in those things, Caveman?!" The Captain was turning red at his ear tips. And if the mechwarrior had been part of the Word of Blake, the clan raised warrior might have been shooting Drake with lasers coming out of his eyes.

Franko shot the other man a look at using Drake's code name in public as some kind of insult and at a volume that it could have been heard on New Avalon. The displaced man just smiled and fired right back at the clan warrior. He had been thinking about what others would think of RWR items for a while and he had reviewed the design in notes that had been saved in his laptop's cache areas from reading a few different messaging boards to refresh his own memory.

When the clan warrior stopped to take a breath, Drake struck snake quick. "Where do you think that the Lyrans got the Zeus from? I thought you guys like the Zeus of battlemech, because there are many Dragoons being on record saying positive things about that design. Defiance Industries has been using those testimonials for the sales sheets and other ads when I was watching the matches last night."

The captain from Gamma regiment looked like he had been smacked in the face with a rotting fish, and Drake kept right on going like a dog on a bone. "Let's look at the facts, shall we? The Lyrans absorbed most of the Rim Worlds in 2784. Defiance put out statements that they had a prototype of a new assault mech they just put on the drawing boards in 2784. The same one that they had gotten the first mass produced run walking off the lines in 2787 at the Hesperus factory. They had a huge public relations event to show off the design, so the dates are public."

Drake pointed over to Mary Jones without breaking eye contact from the battlemech Captain. "We already know that it takes years and years to do something like that from scratch. Let's look at them side by side to compare them if that is not enough for you. They are close in mass at 80 and 85 tons. They also have very similar firepower listed in the public domain. The Rampage has a bigger autocannon, and the Zeus has a bigger LRM package as the standard fit. They even have a similar weapons placement, if you look closely enough at them….. side by side. And if the Lyrans had kept the PPC, instead of what they did, it would have the same damage profile of the autocannon on the Rampage."

Now Drake was so glad that he had paid closer attention to this little war back on spacebattles and the old classic battle tech page. They all had beaten this dead horse four ways from Sunday seemingly every few months. Who would have thought that it would come in handy for him? Well, Drake for sure didn't see this coming or he would have been a lot more prepared with a copy of everything that had been published and a copy of every page on Sarna. That is as they say, life is 20/20 hindsight.

Mary spoke up again to the room. "But the production plant was destroyed, and it must have been looted down to the foundations by now. It still would take a decade to rebuild the covering factory from those foundations, and by now someone must have found this hidden facility that you have been talking about." You could see that she was still thinking about this new information, and only reacting out of spite or maybe out of habit to this new idea.

Drake smiled a smile that he would give to his E4s that he was about to take to school on military subjects. "Oh, they did. Defiance found the other one, and was able to get it into some kind of production in the 3070's. I would take any bet you would like to make that they are looking for it right now. Do I think that it would take a lot of work to get it back into full production? Yes, yes I do. But in that time, they were able to put about half a dozen different mech designs into production and in good enough numbers to fight a war with one side using warships and tossing around WMDs like they were cheap party favors from hell."

Franko looked over at the man standing at the front of the room with a funny look. This was hitting him just as fresh as it was everyone else in the room, and that was not something a leader of Wolf Net was used to. "How do we find it? A planet is a big place to hide something like that. If it has not been found already, that means that they were very good at hiding it for almost three hundred years after the full might of the SLDF had given up on looking for it. And it still will take a huge amount of money to get them back up and running after they have been found. If everything works out? How would we keep it quiet so that the Lyrans don't just come and take it off our hands….. for safe keeping?" He was not going to say that this might be a way to give House Steiner enough of a show of good faith to be willing to give up the Wolfhound licenses to the Dragoons.

Drake kept that same smile on his face that he had used while dealing with a member of the E4 Mafia. It was pure Yes, come to me, said the spider to the fly. He hit the planet icon and the image changed to show the on-file orbital shot of the planet that could have been many decades or even a few hundred years old. "But I know that the facility is not on the land of the planet, it is under the water. This says that the planet has 63% water coverage, and that counts the lakes, rivers, and two large polar ice sheets. I would also bet that it's going to be closer to the old space port, so that it would help with smuggling the production off planet and at the same time cut down on cost of transport."

Now Mary was the one now leaning forward into her chair, and you could see the wheels turning like an Indy race car over revving running down the straight away. "Searching the water would be costly, and you would need some special equipment. Still, this factory wouldn't be too deep in the water column. It would have to be where most civilian grade cargo submarines could reach it without risk, specialized or military vessels used as a cargo transport has the risk of drawing attention for those limited production items back in the days of the Star League. That would further cut down the total area that we would need to look over very closely."

She stopped talking and was looking at the data and she hit a blue area of the planet and the image zoomed in a little more. "You're right, the seas are small, and very deep with shear drop offs coming from most of the shores. If this data is correct? It would cost some to get it re surveyed and it would risk some others asking why we are doing this kind of expensive and specialized work all the way over in the Commonwealth."

Drake was looking right at Mary, and he wanted to see if he was barking up the wrong tree or not with one of his key assumptions. "Yes, but this is where we get help from the outside of the Dragoons or Blackwell. I would bet that Defiance knows or strongly suspects that there is a major prize still hidden on that planet. We can trade 50/50 between Blackwell and them for the factory's output. If we can get them to supply the money and some crew, then we can supply a way to reduce the search area for them. Maybe we can find a Beagle Probe or two with a crew that knows how to use them halfway decently to help speed things up."

##

It was a long meeting! They had started well before lunch, and they didn't finally leave that building until well after dark. The only ones left in that room were Franko and Drake when the rest returned to their homes. With just the two of them in the room, the agent broke out the cold beers from a hidden cooler. They both needed more than one of them because Drake's brain hurt like it had been dropped kicked to the moon.

The man from Earth took a long sip of the beer and spoke to the grey concrete ceiling. "I haven't felt this mentally drained since I woke up in this messed up universe, and man that is saying something. At least this time not all of the brain sweat was mine, but God it felt that way." The other man in the room didn't see the need to say anything so he just took another sip from the bottle.

During the last few hours of the meeting all of Drake's TRO's had been broken out by Franko and many hands and brains had dug into them like they were gifts from the gods. Some of the books brought in by the ex-NCO were pulled out but most of the room went for the TROs. As the displaced man rocked back and forth in the chair with a beer pressed to his forehead, he looked over to the three full sized white boards. They all were filled with writing, and the huge desktop was covered from end to end with pages of notes and print outs that it had to have used a years' worth of budget just on paper and ink.

Drake's eyes were drawn to the one area right below the short, middle, and long-term threats that he had come up with on the board. It was the one labeled Golden Nuggets that drew his eyes the longest. It held names like Helm, New Dallas, Dark Nebula, some lost warships that some in the meeting had known about, Odessa, Jardain, Ross 248, Luyten 69-28, Freedom Station, and Kwongjong-Ni.

The displaced NCO gives a snort and looks back at Franko. "Man, I wish that I could remember more about the Hidden Five the Word of Blake used. Those could be useful to have and at the same time taking them out of ComStar's pocket."

Franko was slowly sipping his own slowly warming beer. "Knowing there out there is more than half the battle. At least the copy of TRO 3057 did point to a few areas and items that ComStar has in hiding that would be helpful. But it's going to take a lot of time, money, and resources to find. Then all of that would have to be kept quiet from not just the phone company."

"I still can't believe that you all didn't get a memory core when the Dragoons all were cut loose from the rest of the Clans." Drake took another swig of the beer and shot the agent a level look before he took another slug of his own beer.

The agent looked at the old soldier and took another pull of his own dark beer, but he kept his feet up on the table as if he was relaxing. "We did get a computer core, just not a full one that you're thinking of. We didn't even know about Prometheus cores before the Dragoons first got here. The Khan gave us all the military, medical tech, and Watch reports that Clan Wolf had access to at the time he left the Pentagon Worlds for that last supply run."

He had stopped just short of calling them 'the home worlds' instead of the Pentagon Worlds. "What did you expect from a trueborn warrior? It was what he thought that we'd need to help defend the Inner Sphere from the rest of the Clans. At least you got some of us into thinking about adding two new whole divisions to the Blackwell organization chart. I don't know if they will stick with Civilian Planetary Support Division, but Medical Division seems logical."

"Yeah, one of the best ways to boost military spending is for there to be more money lying around to give them. That means finding a way to expand the tax base for the largest area that we can in the shortest amount of time. There are a lot of planets around the Inner Sphere that only need clean air and water to make them useful. Then there are the planets that spend most of their income just paying to keep those two types of systems halfway working. The sooner they can recover, or they can divert those funds to something else, then the sooner they will have money to spend on the things we will be making for the open market of a more military mindset. And back home everyone complained at the cost of healthcare or how only the rich could afford the most cutting edge or best medical stuff. That is a lot of money still sitting on the table that we should be able to collect a part of for the Dragoons."

Franko got up and went to the mini fridge artfully hidden behind some fake cabinets at the back of the room and waited for Drake to finish. "I'm just surprised that we had that message waiting for me from Wolf giving us the go ahead to start getting the groundwork done to support your ideas. Still the funds that the Wolf cleared me to have access to will quickly be sucked dry with what most of your ideas are going to cost before too long."

"Well maybe the quip about Clanner thinking that long term plans are something that you do for things less than six months out hit a nerve with Jaime." That was what Drake meant to say, but all he got out was a deep burp that he felt down to his toes. Franko just snorted and passed him another bottle of cold beer.

"If this keeps up? I might have to have them clone me a new liver," said the Caveman as he took the offered bottle.

Franko didn't stop talking as he retook his seat and put his back feet up onto the paper covered tabletop. "I told Blake about your idea to stick to a plan that would avoid as many butterflies as we can for as long as we can, before we left in case things broke like I thought they would. I could tell that he was not impressed or even thought that it was something that was not likely to happen. That new message said that he and wolf now agree with you, but Jaime has taken the idea of asking for the Kell Hounds for certain types of help off the table. But he did like the idea of feeling out the Light Horse and Team Banzai for closer ties….. even those of the combat type."

The Wolf Net agent suddenly stopped talking and changed the grip on his bottle before making eye contact with the other man. "And did you know that you used us and we a lot today?"

Drake was listening to what Franko had said, but when he had put his boot covered feet down on the desk top it had blown several sheets of paper off the tabletop. The displaced man was fascinated as he watched as each sheet of paper flew off the level surface and floated one by one onto the floor. There was something about that image that was tickling part of Drake's brain.

Dig, dig, dig, dig. "Black boxes! Super light fax machines!" Drake shot up from this chair as he yelled the six words that made no sense.

Just as Franko's butt came up out of the chair, he looked at the other man like he might need a medical professional. "Drake?"

The man from Earth was a little wobblily as he stood and well, he was about half drunk already, right up until that flash of memory. "While Melissa Steiner was out playing Space Pirates of the Galaxy. She found a device that can send a message faster than the speed of light, without needing an HPG to do the job. This was something that was replaced by HPGs and mostly dropped from the rest of the Star League."

Drake started to pace around the room now a little more stable as he recited information that was a mix of what he brought with him and what he had found recently. "Yes, the HPGs are a point-to-point system with a fifty light years range and with as good as unlimited data sizes being able to be transmitted. Now these black boxes are more like a bubble and anyone within that bubble can read the short messages that are sent. The FedCom kept working on them after the first generation, and I think that they got them up to hundreds of light years range per day? I think? It's still too bad that this clan data core of yours didn't tell you guys about how to make more HPGs or even how to repair them…. other than slapping in a new part. I know you have HPG operators, but that is kind of like asking your average sedan driver to rebuild or make his next transmission with a few hand tools."

The man from Earth walked over and added (Stiner) Black Boxes to the Golden Nuggets in shaky handwriting.

"So, anything else?" Franko was not going to say that Drake had misspelled Steiner, he just would wait until someone else pointed it out to the odd man. That would also give him a chance to know if he was just confusing Melissa with her mother Katrina or the other man was already that drunk.

Drake refrained from his first thought about telling Franko where he could go looking for more information but stopped. "This would be easier if I had access to Sarna page."

The agent didn't reply to Drake's statement about something this world would never see. That was good of him, Drake was feeling his Wheaties enough to throw his half empty beer bottle at Franko's head. He was just waiting for a reason to see if he was too drunk to aim worth half a flip with the toss.

###

The topic for the Day 3's meeting, and yes, Drake had missed Day 2 of the meeting due to his hangover, thankfully it was only small group workshops. The very hungover man had woken up on a cot in a room that had a private access way to a small washroom well after local noon. Finding himself on that cot and the fittings of this room showed that he had been right, this was going to be his home for the near future.

The man with a fresh but outdated haircut stepped out of the small lavatory with and equally small shower still drying his brown hair but fully dressed. When he dropped the now damp towel from his head, he saw that he was not alone in the room and for a few seconds nothing was said.

The Wolf Net agent did an exaggerated movement to look at his wristwatch before making a statement. "You slept in today?"

Drake looked at his own watch and noticed that it was just a little past local midday. "It's your fault when you kept giving me more bottles after I had finished my sixth one."

Franko snorted, "Well if the Caveman is a lightweight then maybe he should stick to light beer if he can't handle a real man's drink. You missed the setting up of the small group meetings for the day."

'Caveman' gave the agent a single finger salute that hadn't changed in hundreds of years. "It was only the small group meetings scheduled to talk about what they could think of that Blackwell could make, if they had everything on the table."

He took a long drink from a nearby container of water with bubbles and after dropping the now half empty bottle back to the tabletop he looked back to the other man. "Maybe my absence will get the rest of the team used to thinking without me being around to push them to think outside of the box."

Franko adjusted his slacks to buy some time before looking up from his chair. "You could still join one of the teams? You could tell them that you had other business that made you late joining them."

The man from Earth does a slow head shake and starts putting on a set of well broken in boots he had brought with him. "No, I think that I will just take something for this headache and go get some vitamin D."

Seeing the set of the shoulders Franko fell back into old training. "Don't forget to take your escorts, we wouldn't want ComStar getting a free shot at you." This brought the intelligence trained NCO's head up and only after a few seconds he gave a slight head nod in agreement.

###

The displaced man was awake and ready to go for the Day 3 meetings and even was early enough to be the first person in the room by some hours. He spent time looking at the notes and he found that the old standbys that had drawn so much attention when the Wolf's Dragoons first showed up were listed. He was not surprised to find that making more Marauders IIs was put right at the top of the list for production. Annihilator and Imp classes of assault battlemechs again were a given, the Falcon was listed with a side note of that the Stormvenger plant was KIA'ed in 2789. Drake thought that what no one knew within the Inner Sphere could not hurt them if more Falcons started showing up.

He let a few deep breaths flow through his lungs before looking up and around the room when all of the seats were filled. "Well, here we go for Day Three. It seems that yesterday was…fruitful." He pointed to two lines on the board. "I took the time this morning and looked up some data, and I was thinking that maybe Blackwell can make some noise about wanting to pick up the old licenses to make the Javelin and Cyclops from the old factories on Caph."

"Mr. Mendenhall, I'm Efeso Collins the head of the legal department. What you're asking for has been done before, but it will take time and funds. Still, I will have some of my people look into that more closely to see what they can find." Lost in thought for a few seconds, the room was quiet until he spoke again. "While Caph does fall under FedSuns control it's a wrecked world just starting to show signs of coming back."

Drake gave a head nod to the lawyer and went to the next few names on the list. "The Firefly is connected to the now dead Coventry Earthworks Combine so that might be legal for more of them to be built by Blackwell. The Flea is made by Earthworks in the FWL, and I think that they are way too big to be screwing around with. At least for only a very light mech that other designs could do the same job."

Mary seemed to be tired and spoke up. "The Hoplite was a Martinson Armaments property, and I know that they still had an active office on Terra a few years ago. But they also had been made on Caph along with the Spartan and Kyudo. Those would take some grease to get transferred."

The Hornet was kicked off the list for production ideas as soon as it was brought up. It was made by Kallon in the FedSuns, and they were a major player in that realm. The group had them fall under the same category as Earthworks in the FWL. The Imp had no such issues, only that it was 100tons and would be a pain in the…. neck to make with what they currently had on hand. The Shogun was well liked, even loved by the Dragoons, but the design was owned by Mitchell Vehicles, and they were also closely tied to Terra. Anything connected to Terra was also assumed to be connected to ComStar and removed from the wish list.

The rest of the room was told about how Blackwell had been trying to work with Mitchell Vehicles even before the last supply run sent by Clan Wolf. They were not interested in letting go of that one design, and they had even gone as far as to trying to order that the Dragoons should turn over one of their few Shoguns in the Dragoon's order of battle to them to pay for the right to use their weapons.

Drake snorted when he was told this. "I would bet that this action was just ROM wanting to get a look inside one of the 'special' mechs that the Dragoons had brought with them. ComStar knows that they all should have been destroyed years ago, so the ones you have must have been built off the edge of the map."

Mary was reviewing some information on a digital pad and then spoke up and the smile was pure evil. "I think after the Lyrans take over Graham IV in this soon to be come 4SW, they might rethink that little plan."

She stopped talking and her eyebrows almost touched as she found information and started reading aloud. "That facility had been cleared to make Mercury, Galahad 2D, Heliopolis, Kanga jump tanks, both types of Hellcats and even the Colossus class dropship are listed as being made there." All of those were listed as possible items that Blackwell might want to get back into production if not just for the Dragoons, then for when the Clans showed back up.

The warrior from Gamma seemed like he was about to jump up and down in glee. "It would be good to get all those back into production. I'm sure that the tankers would love to trade in their old tanks for some Kangas. Any old SLDF combat unit would be better than the current designs that were being made across the Inner Sphere."

Drake had been sitting down when this had been said, and he dropped his head hard enough onto the tabletop that all of the eyes turned toward him. He looked over and saw that everyone was looking at him before fully lifting his head again. "Please don't make any more or waste the time working on the Kangas. It's just a blackhole for money and the waste of a production line for other 50ton tanks. Who needs a jumping tank anyway?"

You would have thought that Drake had just shot the Mech jock's dog with the look he was now getting from Captain Heutezroeder. He raised his head and tried to explain his line of thinking. It took pulling up data from the TROs and comparing the Kanga to other tanks of a like mass. It was only after almost two hours of passing data back and forth that it was decided that some of the old SLDF battle systems might not be that much of an improvement over what was currently on the battlefield.

The mechwarrior was still grumbling so a break was called, and on the way out. Drake did a chin point to Franko. When the two were separated from the rest of the group, he spoke in a low voice. "That is a few hours of our life we will never get back."

Franko could not help it and he snorted and had to fight down a smile, and not for the first time he found that Drake had a good turn of phrase that seemed to match the surroundings perfectly.

The ex-NCO was one of the first ones back this time from the break and he started looking down the list on the board. When everyone was back, he spoke up before Mary could take back charge of today's meeting. 'Ah Mary, I don't see the War Dog on this list. Is there a reason that I missed during yesterday's small group meetings?"

It was the suit that Drake had chopped up on day one that spoke. "That would fall undertaking a very long time to design. While these books are great, they are only ideas and simplified data to better fit in a game. There is just not that much to work with but see the parts that are being made by a third party already."

Drake has a sour look on his face, he really liked that design. Then he looked back at Mary, the Blackwell production rep and there was something in the way that she was shifting her weight on her feet that drew his attention. It should have been expected that she was hiding something and now he had a good idea what one of the things might be. He remembered a few details and thought that maybe a little push was needed.

In a voice that was only noticeable for its blandness. "Ah Mary… Didn't Snord send over the design data and even some examples of the hulks that they found. What have you guys been doing with them?"

Mary from Blackwell was not happy that she and by extension the rest of the Blackwell executives had just been tossed under the bus. She knew that there was only one thing that she could do, so she told the truth. She told the room about how Snord had given over the plans for the War Dog to her people some years ago and confirmed that the two damaged hulks of this design had been found in one of the bays under his base in Clinton, handed over in one of the exchanges between the hidden Dragoons and Blackwell.

Drake was all smiles thinking about that 75ton mech until someone had to come along and rain on his parade. Franko found the data on this mech in one of the TRO's and loudly cleared his throat. "Well, it's nice to know that Blackwell has done some groundwork on this design, but its full of late SLDF grade tech. Just from what I'm seeing on this, it's better than most Royal designs I know of." Those few words had bumped the design to the end of the list of its weight class at least until Blackwell was cleared to start mass production of that level of technology.

The man from Earth could be heard speaking in a soft voice: "Frakking micromanagers getting in my way of fixing things."

With the War Dog now moved to the side, the rest of the group worked on the remaining of the list. It was worked out that the Wolfhound, Spector, Talon, Starslayer, Sling, Stag, Clint, and Flashman rounded out the prime list of mechs that might be supplied by Blackwell…if things worked out. The data in the TRO's that had said the Clint was being or soon would be made by the Bulls raised more than a few eyebrows when it was pointed out to the group. Most of the rest of the list would be cut down as more was done or failed to reach the required base line required goals.

A voice that came from a person hidden from Drake spoke. "It would take a miracle just to talk to most of those companies, much less get the legal approval to make anything."

Drake felt his heart race and his fist clinched under the table to keep his voice level. "I would also suggest that the Blackwell legal department go looking around Lycomb-Davion on Demeter. They can't make the Guillotine and Awesome anymore, or Newhart Inc that can't make anything, or get Hollis on Cory to release the Osprey for us to make."

The list of orphaned or near orphaned designs went on and on and still seemed to grow every other minute as more data was remembered or found in the books from a different universe. This also brought up more and louder grumbling that they were wasting time on a pipe dream.

He gave a deep shoulder shrug, and the man from a different time brought up another idea. "We can always pull out the Dragoon trump card and go directly to the House Lords of Davion and Steiner. We can get them to tell those companies that if they can't make it, then well Blackwell can give it a shot." Now Drake was on a roll and looked to be vibrating in his chair. "Not only that? We will sell to their militaries some of the yearly production that the Dragoons don't need to keep their version of the mech mafia happy."

Mary, that until now, had seemed to be neutral to all this spoke up. "Those two houses might be on the top of the nobles of their realms, but they still have to keep the other nobles in line, or they will be replaced. Nobles that will own parts if not most of the companies that we have been tossing around like balls. That will cost them a lot, and maybe too much political capital with what I think that you are suggesting."

Drake had that smile that a shark would have loved. "Well, that still left open good old-fashioned bribery to get the job done. What House Lord would not want a few hundred double heatsinks that are better than any made in the factories of his realm? You want to talk about printing money."

He started laughing, and you should have seen the looks that were not being directed at Drake. It was like he had just killed the sacred cow in the field and then offered them a fresh steak from its carcass.

The legal suit spoke up again and the man from Earth could feel dread building up. "You can't call them double heatsinks. They are Super High Efficiency Heatsinks or 2nd generation heatsinks. If a fossil like you cannot use the right terms, it will look bad on the rest of us."

Mendenhall tilted his head and did a slow count down from ten. "Why don't you call Double heatsinks, double frakking heatsinks! You know that the press will stick that name on them anyway and that is going to be free advertising for us. Unless you want them to be called Freezers." The vote on that idea was split right down the middle between DHS and 2nd generation heatsinks.

The warrior from Gamma spoke up after that vote. "He does have a point about having a name ready for release for anything that has been lost to the rest of the Inner Sphere. If they can get those underwater production lines repaired? Well, you know that even if it is a Rampage line? You know that they will bend over backwards to get it working, it's an assault class mech. How about we make sure that it's never known by that Rim World name again."

There were almost a dozen name suggestions before Drake spoke up. "How about Jillbsy?"

Mary had been about to refill her watered fruit juice only to stop mid pour. "Jillbsy? What does it mean, and I bet that there is a story behind it." There was a little smile on the older woman's face.

Drake feels the mood as it lightens around the room. "It's another word for Ghost. I read it in a book a few nights ago by John Ringo."

Mary had an odd smile on her face. "John Ringo? Ohh I remember that tri-vid that came out about his cowboy life. My daughter wanted to be his wife and my son spent almost a year tossing out quotes, even when they were not appropriate for mixed company."

The room broke down as everyone brought up all of the Westerns that had come out over the last few decades. That was when Drake found out that the most popular forms of entertainment in the FedSuns were mainly focused on Westerns. The displaced man wanted to bang his head on the table every time the subject of Westerns came up again and again.

The man from Earth had tried again to get his idea for a name to replace Rampage, but no matter what he said they kept coming back to Ringo. They didn't even know who John Ringo the author was! All Mary and the rest could think after that for two hours was John 'Jonny' Ringo. Now the cover name for the Rampage was going to be the Ringo after the westerns. And if they can get any Rampages back into production with the Dragoons help? They will have to be called Ringo's in the sales book. All Drake could say after that vote was say ugh!

The idea to make aerospace fighters and dropships was squashed so fast that Drake almost didn't catch on. All he could do was make a note that he wanted to revisit that issue, after his fingers stopped burning from his last ideas being shot down so fast. He knew that fighters were going to be the best way to counter the hundreds of clan's warships when the time came to fight them. Well, that is as long as you have lots of fighters packing cans of sunshine to drop on their hulls.

##

At the end of another day of meetings Drake was drinking with Franko again. They had eaten a dinner that had been dropped off by someone as take out, it was nice take out, but still it was a takeout meal that was just this side of cool. The Wolf Net boss let out a burp that might have been caused by the beer… or the food. "Before you have that fourth beer and ask. Minuet is off planet; she had been preparing for an important mission before you were dropped in our laps. I can tell you that she is now on a mission somewhere on New Avalon working for Wolf Net. And no, I am not allowed to send her a message of any kind."

Franko shifted in his chair so that he could get a better look at the other man's face. "Drake, I need to know, why did you keep asking about her?"

Drake took another sip of his beer and he just popped off with the first thing that came to his mind. "I was looking for a dinner date?"

The Agent soo did not think that statement was funny. "You need to get out more and away from the entertainment stations and adult themed magazines in your shed."

I bet the roommate and watcher has been reporting on me to Franko and who knows who else about how I have been spending my personal time, thought Drake.

"You know that I have had two dates this month, and let's just say I didn't try that hard for a second date after with either woman." Drake gave Franko a sad look. "I did call them back; I'm not that much of a jerk. But after two no returned messages, I decided to move along and let them go about their lives without worrying about me being maybe a stalker. I just can't connect to this generation, and my dating pool is limited to who lives on the Blackwell compound or are cleared to work there." He stopped talking for a few seconds looking lost. "Maybe I just need to find a gold digger that is not working for one of the groups on the other side of the game board."

Franko looked over the beer bottle. "I can find you a book that might help with that." Franko almost spit up his beer laughing at the withering look Drake shot him.

##

The sound of a sedan 'key' card hitting the dish on the desktop brought up the eyes from the roommate, and he watched Drake's back as he went to the cooler and pulled out a beer. Boris waited and thought about this job and everything that he had seen and heard so far. He had been part of the close in security team for Blackwell VIPs going for a few years now, but this job had been a first. At first it had been just your normal babysitting mission you get with a VIP that had been receiving threats that had been deemed to be a little too realistic to ignore. With that kind of thing, you would move into a spare room to keep them safe from the knives in the dark. Only after the first day, Boris worked out that he was not just protecting the package from an outside threat but from the package himself also.

Boris had no idea what the package might be, but he was not a member of Blackwell that should have rated this service. After the first few days he knew that the package was an intel asset that seemed to be very important to the whole of Wolf Net. Boris had not been the first or even second given this mission, but he was at least the third roommate for Drake. The second member of the security team had to leave after he had a family issue that had him pulled out very quickly. So, when Boris walked into this mission, he had not been fully briefed, at least for the first week.

By now Boris knew that Drake had been the sole survivor of a misjump that ripped him out of his born time and dropped him here very much alone. He thought that there was more to that story, but Boris understood the need to keep things secret. It explained why Drake was having more than a few issues fitting in with what passed for normal life on this planet. On the plus side was that the package cooked, and it was like nothing he had eaten before. It was very good tasting food, but it did take some time getting used to it and Boris was just happy he didn't have to live off fast food… again.

Oh, and the package always had a few different types of beer rotating in the cooler that he was not only willing to share but most of the time almost forced them into your hands. Granted it was Blackwell that was picking up the grocery bill and even paid for a cook to come three days a week to cook and store meals for them. Well, those meals were for the package, but Drake hated to eat or drink alone and would share with him. It had not taken long for the cooks just to make extra when they would stop by.

Drake finishes with his second long pull from his beer bottle and sets down at the high bar that was the social center of this home. Boris could tell by the other man's face that he was going to have to write a report to his boss. "So, I take it that this date also didn't go well?"

The other man gave a snort that sounded a bit sad if you knew what to listen for. "Yeah, you could say that."

Boris did a come-on hand wave to the other man, and after a few seconds Drake relented. "All she could talk about was what noble was wearing this or saying that." He waved the bottle in the air. "Every time I asked her a question on what she thought on a given subject, she would refer to what some noble had said. I can tell you that got old, but at least I know she was not clan born with her nose so into the royalty thing."

The roommate gave a snort that threatened to blow beer out his nose. "Well at least this one was not all about mechs and mech combat."

Drake made a sour face, "Yeah that one was a full-on member of the Mech mafia. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her that I could drive a tank better cross country than most mech pilots could at the run." He now got a lost look in his face. "It does make me wonder if those Neurohelmets do something to the wearer's brain."

Boris tilted his head to one side and asked a question that he thought he already knew the answer to. "So, I take it no second date?" He was not going to touch on the idea that the neurohelmets were doing something to the pilots of mechs and aerospace fighters that made them so arrogant. There was the old joke about why mech hangers had such huge doors…. It was for the pilot's ego to fit through.

Drake did a short shoulder shrug. "I'll call her and thank her for the date, but I'm going to bet that she won't pick up. If I was not a fan of using professional Call Girls, I would say it was time to hit the strip clubs to get my mind messed with right now." He gave a snort. "Did I tell you the cliff notes on a movie called Pretty Woman?"

##

Notes

Omni Badger and Bandit. Yea the support and repair people around the Inner Sphere had to know that they were different but maybe they just like the pats on the head for getting them back into combat faster than something else.

War Dog: In TRO 3055R, it says Snord's Irregulars found them in 3052. They recovered "several chassis and blueprints" from Camelot command. But it was a Navy base, so why would they have something like that? So, I changed it to they found it when they were mapping the Castle Brian under their land grant.

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