Battletech Welcome to the Jungle

So, I was anticipating another chapter of combat on Sevren, but I got a surprise instead.


Landing, Sevren, Sevren System,
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
January 24th, 3016

I sat onboard the Implacable and watched as Archduke Kelswa’s ‘secret project’ marched off their Dropships to an ecstatically cheering crowd.

“Well, at least the citizenry is happy,” Julia said. For the moment, the exterior cameras were relaying a better shot than the news cameras were, and much of the Warriors’ leadership had congregated to watch.

She was right. The civilians of the newly liberated world were almost out of their minds with glee as Battlemechs, first a Griffin, then a Vulcan, stepped out of their landed Union. They’d have been happy enough to see a strong permanent garrison arriving anyway.

That the massive war machines were painted in the iconic orange with black stripes of the 1st Tamar Hussars in their full parade-ground finery as the newly reformed unit stepped onto the public stage for the first time in two-hundred and fifteen years …

If Colonel Weintraub hadn’t been notified ahead of time so that he could have his entire roster of MPs and a full regiment of regular infantry to backstop them, the people would have flooded into the streets in an attempt to get close enough to touch them.

From a PR perspective, it was about as perfect as the propagandists could hope for. A Lyran world reclaimed welcoming an icon returned from the dustbin of history.

Much better than green Mechwarriors tripping over their own feet trying to stop and crushing a bunch of civilians into paste.

“They’d be a lot less happy if they knew just how green their ‘valiant defenders’ were,” Rowdy opined.

“They’re nowhere near ready to deploy,” Jimmy agreed.

“Gotta get experience somewhere,” Foehammer disagreed, the grey-haired man really didn’t look much like his daughters. Both of the twins really favored their mom in looks and build, but they’d definitely inherited their old man’s love of Battlemechs. “With the Jägers being stationed here for the time being, they’ll have a good opposition force to train against, and the Combine doesn’t look like they’re going to be back any time soon. Not with three regiments on world for the next few months.”

It was a fair point. There was a reason the 8th Donegal Guard was staying for at least the next six months, and it wasn’t because the Archon had reliable regiments to spare.

“I was talking to Colonel Shaw a few days ago. He mentioned he’d been lobbying for a second Jägers regiment,” Meidlin mentioned.

“It would’ve been cheaper, that’s for sure,” I agreed, “and Shaw’s developed good doctrine for most terrain.” It was easy to underestimate the Jägers, but their force mixture made them a surprisingly dangerous threat.

Really Kelswa had overreached himself, spending long-hoarded favors and Kroner with abandon to amass the Battlemechs and pilots needed for a full regiment. He’d have been much better served if he’d listened to Colonel Shaw and added a second regiment to the Tamar Jägers, instead. Not only would it have eased training concerns by giving him a broader cadre to draw from. It would have left him with at least some reserve of Mechs and trained and experienced Mechwarriors and the capacity to maintain those reserves.

On paper, he had the capability to buy 36 Mechs a year. In reality, even just buying Vulcans at 3.5 million C-bills each, that would be 126 million C-bills. Since they were both House rather than LCAF units, that money was coming out of Kelswa’s pocket rather than the Archduchy’s as a whole. That wasn’t chump change, and it wasn’t sustainable. Laying hands on good Mechwarriors in quantity was, if anything, harder,.

Actually, since the formation seemed to favor the heavier side of the medium weight bracket, he had probably spent more than 150 million C-bills for each battalion. Even counting the battalion of ‘Mechs he’d reassigned from the Jägers, that was 300 million C-bills or so spent in two years. Considering the actual buying power of a C-bill, that was more like three billion dollars.

And that was just part of the equipment cost!

I took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, the conversation continuing unheeded.

I was getting way too irritated over something that wasn’t any of my business. Mostly because I was still unhappy with how things had ended here on Sevren.

What it came down to was that we’d done our job too well. While my Command Lance was linking up with Devil Company near the defense line, and First Battalion was taking up their own positions to the left of the road, the DCMS were falling back under cover of the wildfire.

They’d really sold it with their aerospace assets. With Slayers and Shilones acting like they were flying top cover for an advance, my air crews hadn’t wanted to poke their noses into a hornets’ nest of anti-aircraft fire when they couldn’t even see the ground for the smoke. And I hadn’t overruled them.

So the first indications we’d gotten that the Combine was pulling out was when their Dropships boosted for orbit.

It was a hell of an anticlimax. They’d even been able to secure enough jumpships to carry their remaining conventional regiments away. All the 8th Donegal had managed to round up were some militia.

I shrugged to loosen up my shoulders, which I’d been hunching. Even thinking about it made me irritable, but it wasn’t like we’d gotten nothing out of the deal. Our paymaster was pleased with our performance; even if we hadn’t managed to lure the Combine regiments into a decisive battle, we’d still taken down two battalions of Battlemechs and account for two regiments of the Combine’s better conventional forces. The way things worked out, it wasn’t like the Dragon was going to be getting much in the way of salvage back either.

Kelswa got a planet back, relieved some of the pressure on Tamar, and put the critical factories on Sudeten three jumps from the front. Now the Lyran Regulars would probably be enough to defend the planet, since there was time for another regiment to rally to the sound of the guns in the event they were attacked.

It would also allow Colonel Shaw and the Jägers to be deployed alongside the newly reformed Tigers. That might be enough to keep them from the sort of initial setbacks that the Jägers themselves had suffered on Memmingen.

Besides, with our performance, the Warriors were almost certain to get our Elite rating back from the MRB, and the boost to our reputation for having gotten the better of the Teak Dragon would almo-

The communications officer burst into the small lounge I and the rest of my senior officers had been watching the parade from, a look of alarm on her face.

“The Combine just hit Volders!”

Aaaaand that was the sound of the other shoe dropping.


Outbound from Sevren, Sevren System,
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
January 26th, 3016

The Bad Dream had been holding down the garrison on Volders, and, according to reports, were well prepared when the 17th Rasalhague Regulars landed. Amusingly, given how the unit was formed, they even managed to lure the 17th’s ASF wing into a two-pronged attack from above and below.

Using their experience working for the Combine in decades past, the Bad Dream guessed that the Combine would focus on their Battlemechs. So they painted a Battalion of militia vehicles in the Bad Dream’s colors and deployed their real air defense vehicles under camouflage well ahead of their lines, then dragged the air engagement over them.

The air defense radar on a single Partisan could feed targeting data to a company, and the Bad Dream possessed a Lance of them.

The result was the Combine taking nearly three squadrons of losses in exchange for only a squadron of downed Lyran assets.

Which was a good thing, because barely twenty-four hours after the 17th made landfall, the 7th Sword of Light and the 9th Rasalhague jumped in system.

Outnumbered three to one, the Bad Dream would likely have come to a bad end if they hadn’t taken such a bite out of the Combine’s ASF assets. As it was, they were forced to depart, but got away with few losses.

Effectively, we’d traded one planet for another, but for once the Lyrans seemed to have come out ahead on the deal. The only negative, cutting off one of the three safe routes to Kobe, was more than balanced out by the reclamation of the easiest route to Tamar. That’s certainly how Lyran media was spinning the conflict.

Still, the Combine would be claiming that victory as well, probably by exaggerating how much damage they’d done to my command’s Lostech equipment.

Either way, both the LCAF and DCMS would be consolidating for some time, months at least. That meant our contract, which had included remaining in place in the event of a counterattack, was complete.

So we were headed to Tharkad. I was really not looking forward to that at all. We’d gotten a message that the Archon had arranged a Command Circuit for us. It was a great honor, and I was probably going to need to be put in an induced coma to keep from literally throwing up my own stomach.

It was going to be an interesting couple weeks.


Approaching the Zenith Point, Sevren System,
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
January 31st, 3016

It had been an interesting few weeks.

Julia tapped on her desk as she tried to finish up her reports. Aunt Katrina had asked for her thoughts on both the strengths and weaknesses of the TDR-6S. Honestly, that one was mostly complete, but she was trying to go beyond the basics.

It was easy to forget in the wake of finally making ‘Mech Ace, but they wouldn’t have even survived to make landfall if not for how well Weber's modified Centurions had performed.

So she was also writing a report on the Warriors’ ASFs. Even with spending time each day talking to the pilots and techs in the Implacable’s Aerospace quarters, she still felt out of her depth.

Still, she was learning, and if the numbers didn’t seem quite right to her -ten tons of armor! A third of the ASF’s mass!- she couldn’t argue with the results. Weber’s ASF Wing had accounted for more than their fair share of kills against the Dracs, and they’d done it without taking a single loss in return.

No wonder that the records of SLDF kit seemed almost magical! She could see the necessary tradeoffs in the designs, but the envelope was so much further out than the current state of the art’s compromises between mobility, firepower, armor, and heat curve. For example, she would put Gungnir up against anything in the Heavyweight bracket one on one. Frankly, if she was on her game, she could possibly take two ‘standard’ -5S Thunderbolts with him, although that would be tricky.

The most intensive repairs the Warriors’ ASFs needed were a pair of engine replacements. Since they were XLFEs, that was expensive and the parts were only available on Catachan, but it was so much quicker and cheaper than replacing a whole squadron of birds, which is what the 8th Donegal was going to need to do. For that matter the Jägers were down to two ASFs total after the engagement.

How many times over the Succession Wars had the Commonwealth lost Dropships full of men and material because of their poor Aerospace showing? She didn’t know, but she was willing to bet that it had happened more often than she’d like. She made a note to emphasize that in her report for Aunt Katrina and LCAF High Command.

She glared at where she was stuck for the moment, lacking the proper terminology to describe what she wanted to convey.

Checking the time, she switched back over to the Thunderbolt report and tweaked a couple phrases, then moved one paragraph to improve the flow. She gave it a final read and clarified a point in the training recommendations section before saving and closing the document.

It was closing in on eleven hundred hours, so she made her way up to where the Aerospace officers would be grabbing lunch. Lieutenant Anderson had told her that Captain Richthofen would be better able to answer some of the more technical questions, so she was hoping to find him today.

Sure enough, the man was precisely where she’d been told to expect him, tucked away in a corner of the cramped mess catching an early lunch. She grabbed a sandwich before heading over to the table.

“Captain Richthofen?” She asked politely as an opening gambit, concentrating on reading the man’s mood.

The pilot looked up from his meal and grimaced.

“Hell, what’d they break now?” he demanded sourly.

“Ah, nothing that I know of?” She responded, then continued before she could stop herself. “Is that a frequent problem?” She inquired, reminding herself that intelligence was vital for success.

“They’re pilots,” Richthofen explained, “I swear, if they aren’t getting in trouble for ruining a flight suit today it’s only because they’re plotting how to break something ten times as expensive tomorrow.”

“Well,” Julia temporized, “they’ve been quite helpful to me so far, but I’m looking for some specifics about the Centurion’s performance that Lieutenant Anderson didn’t know the answers to. He referred me to you for the details,” she elaborated.

“You’re writing a report on our Centurions?”

“Yes,” Julia stated simply, sensing that the man wasn’t one for coddling or bullshit. “It’s going up to Asgard. With luck it will get listened to there. We could use the improvement in our ASF mix.”

“And you like them?”

“Yes,” she repeated, hiding her aggravation with the long experience of the shark tank of dynastic politics.

Richthofen grinned.

“Pull up a seat, Hauptmann,” he said, indicating the chair opposite his own. “I’ll be glad to give you a hand. On one condition.

“Tell me, what do you know about the Stingray F-90S?”

And that was how Julia found herself writing three reports.


Nadir Point, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 4th, 3016

Twelve jumps in four days had been enough to keep even Julia, who’d never had so much as a flicker of TDS, from sleeping well. So it was with tired eyes that she worked to put some polish on ‘her’ third report.

She had been briefly pulled away to handle the necessary paperwork for the crates of winter dress uniforms that had been waiting for them, courtesy of LCAF Quartermaster Corps and Aunt Katrina. Judging by the wool and fur in the crate that she had inspected, the Archon planned to introduce Weber to the snake pit that was the Triad. Julia knew where her aunt and mother sourced some of their favorite winter dresses and the fabric was quite distinctive. At least the new uniforms meant that it was unlikely that anyone would freeze to death if another blizzard moved in. Well, so long as it was only a light snowfall. No more than one and a half meters or so.

Thankfully, Captain Richthofen was both willing and able to recite the shortcomings of the LCAF’s ‘official mutilation’ of his favorite ASF at length. Otherwise, she’d never have had time to get it to even a semi-completed state so quickly. The man had quite good points about the vibration problems of the autocannon replacing the PPC while supplying less firepower. That made up for the need to polish the wording and remove some of the more colorful ‘observations’ about LCAF Procurement during the burn in. Besides, she knew for a fact that General Schmitt’s tastes for companionship ran toward Canopian pleasure circuses rather than terrorizing barnyards.

“What do you think about moving the section on the nose structural members up to here,” she suggested. “If it’s really such a major issue for extending the life of the airframe, we should give it more emphasis.”

Richthofen grimaced as he set his coffee bulb to drifting near the desk.

“Yes, it’s an important point, but I think it works better to support pulling the autocannon in favor of a PPC rather than the other way around,” he said.

Julia wasn’t sure she agreed, but she was willing to admit that Richthofen knew his audience better than she did. Also he was a pilot, and she was not going to joggle the elbow of an expert in his field. She would ensure that the report reached the eyes of people who could judge his thoughts better than she could, which was what was needed to make any significant changes.

Any sort of issue that inflicted unnecessary metal fatigue on the frame of a Battlemech would definitely demand attention from Mechwarriors well aware that part of their prestige was passing down their ‘Mech to their descendants. Maybe the innate fragility of an ASF altered the calculus.

“Doesn’t matter a hill of beans if you solve a generational problem only to create a weakness that’ll see it shot down in its next engagement,” he explained, confirming her diagnosis. “Better to make the point about a PPC’s additional damage being more valuable than lower heat production now that freezers are available again.

“Then, support that point with the argument for decreased wear and tear on the frame and the removal of the magazine easing logistical concerns. And the removal of any chance for a golden BB to cause an ammo explosion.”

“Jawohl, that makes sense,” she agreed as she made the suggested changes to the draft. Suddenly Captain Chapman’s voice came over the loudspeakers.

“Prepare for transition to thrust gravity,” she announced. “Next destination, Tharkad. Estimated arrival in orbit: seven days.”

It would be nice to be able to get some uninterrupted sleep, but as Liaison Officer Julia was responsible for communications between the Warriors and the LCAF, and there were certainly going to be enough of them. Plus politics were about to rear their ugly head once more in her life. Unlike the Rasalhague Regulars or the Teak Dragon, she couldn’t just shoot these foes in the face with cluster rounds. Even if she truly wanted to more often than not.


Inbound from Nadir Point, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 11th, 3016

Coming out of my induced coma was the best I’d ever felt after a dozen Jumps. Considering that I’d finally woken up two days after the jump, and I was still feeling a bit muzzy for the third, well …

Still, I’d had several days worth of paperwork to catch up on, and Julia had been kind enough to drop by and warn me that the delivery of heavy woolen and actual fur uniforms meant that the Archon intended to welcome us at the Triad.

I’d finally gotten confirmation of that when ground control finalized our landing pad: a military base in the shadow of Mount Wotan where the Star League era fortress of Asgard was located.

After touching down and the initial security sweep by the First Royals, we were finally allowed to head out towards the imposing edifice.

I was instantaneously thankful for the cold weather gear. The Holdfast was way up on the side of a mountain, but it was damn near on the equator and a tropical cloud forest was a much different beast than an arctic tundra.

If they had been using old-fashioned thermometers, I was half convinced that the mercury in the bottom would’ve been frozen.

Most of the troops and crewing the Implacable had been sent to Tharkad City where hotel rooms and generous expense accounts awaited them, but Julia and I had been requested for a debrief along with whoever among my senior officers might have something to contribute.

Since I’d left Foehammer to ride herd on my other four Dropships for the return trip to Catachan and Sammy wasn’t really comfortable as a Captain, that meant Meidlin Levy. Even I wasn’t crazy enough to take Richthofen within screaming range of anyone important in the Lyran Aerospace Corps.

It helped that I was fully conversant on what our Centurions could do, so I could cover that if asked.

The trip to Asgard made me grateful for heaters, because I was no longer acclimated to winters in the northern Great Plains. When we arrived…

Okay, I was impressed. The underground works on Catachan had seemed pretty impressive to me, but when you drove into a mountain through a cavernous passageway meant to allow a Lance of Assault Mechs to march abreast of each other, well that was on an entirely different scale.

My sense of direction was pretty good, but by the time we’d driven for at least fifteen minutes then walked for another ten, I was thoroughly lost.

Which is why I was surprised when we were ushered through another secure door and found ourselves face to face with the Archon and another woman who clearly shared the Steiner appearance. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, but unlike the Archon seemed to disdain makeup entirely compared to Katrina’s subtle but effective usage.

She also bore a General’s rank insignia and her eyes were intent.

Meidlin and Julia popped into reflexive salutes. I, on the other hand, wasn’t under contract nor technically a subject yet as the ruler of a neutral planet, so protocol was a bit more complicated.

“Archon Steiner, General Steiner,” I said with a bow. “Thank you for the invitation and the heavy uniforms. I enjoyed not picking up any frostbite on the way to the car.” That appeared to be enough to remind Captain Levy that she wasn’t a member of the Walking Hellfire anymore and in my peripheral vision I saw her blushing, though she held the salute.

Fortunately for her blood pressure, Katrina simply returned the salutes, then extended a hand.

“That was good work on Sevren,” she said as we shook hands. “A very professional job on the Rasalhague Regulars, and no matter what the Voice of the Dragon is saying it isn’t often that a regiment of the Sword of Light cuts and runs.”

I shrugged, peripherally noting Julia call the brunette general ‘Aunt Nondi.’

“My people were enthusiastic to get some of their own back from the Teak Dragon. I won’t say we paid them back in full, but we assuredly cut down on the interest owed.”

Between what we’d done to their recon battalion and their aerospace wing, we’d actually more than equaled the losses they’d inflicted on the Warriors my Grandfather had led, but the inconclusive end to the fight just wasn’t emotionally satisfying.

“There was more to this than just revenge,” she stated, eyes focused and intent. “You had a plan going into this operation.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “Nothing nefarious, but yes. There’s only so much testing you can do of new doctrine in exercises.”

That drew reactions. Nondi seemed sceptical but Katrina looked interested. The Archon leaned forward and met my gaze.

“It’s the extra speed, isn’t it?” she demanded, and Nondi’s expression smoothed out.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “It isn’t a major factor now, but once we’ve got wide-spread implementation of XLFEs, the entire paradigm is going to change. If nothing else, eventually the Dracs will steal some or manage to reverse engineer some salvage. How would you like to face a Dragon that’s armed with a PPC and an LRM-15, and carries almost as much armor as a Thunderbolt? Because they could do it,” I asserted.

“We’ll need to write the manual of employing fast units with both heavy weapon loads and heavy armor, if vulnerable side-torsos, then learn how to beat units operating with doctrine based on that manual. We’ve had five years, and Captain Levy’s done a good job, at least in my humble opinion, in forming an effective playbook. But we needed to test it. Find out what weaknesses needed shoring up and what strengths we could build on.”

“That alone might be worth elevating you to a Dukedom,” Katrina said, “assuming Sevren wasn’t a one-off success.”

I shrugged.

“We’ve run through a lot of hydrogen and training rounds testing it. One thing I can tell you is that good long-range gunnery is an essential element. Advanced Neurohelmets and targeting systems help there, but exercises in field conditions are really the only thing that can build enough experience.”

“Those get awfully expensive very quickly.”

“As expensive as replacing Battlemechs and Mechwarriors? Especially these Battlemechs?”

Katrina raised her hand: a fencer acknowledging a strike.

“And what is this doctrine you’ve developed?” she inquired.

“We’re calling the type of regiment a Harquebusier Regiment, after Gustavus Adolphus’s Swedish Light Cavalry.

“The first step is aggressive scouting and scout hunting. The objective is to put out an enemy’s eyes, either by destroying all his scouts or by forcing them to stay close to supporting forces. The second element is artillery with a Battlemech’s mobility, and scouts trained to call the shots for them, fast and accurate. Once the scouts are suppressed, use rapid hit-and-fade artillery strikes to draw out enemy forces. If artillery, counterbattery it. If aerospace forces, intercept them, if ground forces, isolate and obliterate.

“Deny the enemy information, deny him cohesion, then once he is disordered, defeat him. It doesn’t matter how fragile our side torsos are if the enemy starts the decisive engagement with half-stripped armor from artillery barrages they can’t reply to.”

“And what if your enemy just prepares defenses and sits inside them, forces you to come to them?” Katrina asked.

I smiled.

“Then they’re ceding the initiative. I can think of perhaps one Combine officer with the moral courage to do that, and stick to it while my forces destroy every useful bit of military infrastructure on the rest of the planet. The bigger potential problem is an enemy officer aggressive enough to reason that my artillery can’t be fast enough to outrun him. The Combine fields much more light hardware than we do. Some of their regiments have enough fast ‘Mechs to try to swarm and overwhelm our Mediums. That, however, is where our Heavies come into play. Place them in good terrain and lead the enemy force to them. Anything light enough to keep up with the retreating Mediums isn’t going to be heavy enough to withstand a strong counterpunch. And if they’re smart enough to try to close quickly and overwhelm our foothold on a world …

“Well, that’s what Assault ‘Mechs are for.”

“And how do you counter that strategy?” Katrina asked.

“That’s a work in progress. With conventional forces? Lots of ASFs and artillery or with minimum three to one odds and responding to your scouts contact reports with Wing-strength ASF strikes.”

The Archon smiled and started trying to poke holes in my arguments.


Hours later, we reconvened after a short break for an informal supper. Captain Levy had talked herself practically hoarse, and I wasn’t far behind her.

“Alright, that wasn’t the discussion I expected to be having when you arrived, but I can’t say it wasn’t productive,” Katrina said lightly before her gaze turned more serious and her voice grew formal.

“General Steiner and I have conferred and, assuming your intentions haven’t changed, we agree. Once you’ve been sworn in the LCAF will accept Weber’s Warriors as the First Catachan Harquebusiers, and Harquebusier Regiments will be the official designation of units ascribing to the doctrine you’ve outlined.”

I bowed formally in return.

“I’m honored by the trust,” I replied.

“You’ll have time to refine doctrine and structure,” General Steiner said from beside her older sister, “it’ll be at least a decade before we can form more units like yours.”

It appeared, for the moment at least, that she was done playing Bad Cop.

“Back to the original itinerary for this debrief, then,” Katrina cut in before we could head back down the Harquebusiers rabbit hole. “Julia, what’s your opinion of the TDR-6S after seeing its performance in live combat?”

Julia stepped forward and placed a ROM on the conference table.

“Ma’am, I have a full report, but if I might summarize?” she requested. Katrina nodded and Nondi appeared to be hiding an actual smile. “Then permission to speak freely?”

“Granted, Julia.”

“He’s a sweet ride, and Olivetti and the CAC got damn near everything right on the first try,” Julia said with a broad grin. “Much as I loved my first Gungnir, the positives far outweigh the negatives, and it puts my old Zeus to shame.

“The only problem it has is an issue with the Gyro adjustment to handle an arm-mounted autocannon as opposed to the Sunglow laser array that means you need to lean into the LB-10X when it fires, but Olivetti Weaponry is aware of the issue and they’re working on a fix. They say they should have a software update that will compensate for the recoil fully before the end of the year.”

“And it doesn’t significantly impair accuracy for the autocannon or mobility?” General Steiner asked.

“Aunt Nondi, I scored two kills outright against the Rasalhague Regulars with headshots and gave the Coup de Grace on two more with cluster rounds. You can safely say that accuracy is unimpaired and the firepower increase is significant. As for mobility, once you get used to the motion, the recoil actually makes it easier to torso twist and put the right side of the ‘Mech out of the line of fire.”

“Hard to argue with the results,” Katrina said, “and if I’m not mistaken, that means you finally made Ace as well. Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Aunt Katrina,” Julia said with a grin before continuing with her report. “That isn’t the most significant finding, though. There’s one more significant item that we discovered by accident that made a very significant difference on the battlefield at Sevren. I requested that my ‘Mech be transferred here, if I may have leave to demonstrate it?”

One of Katrina’s sculpted eyebrows climbed up her forehead.

“Oh? How very mysterious,” she said as she pushed herself up out of the chair with a small smile. She walked over to a phone on the wall and picked it up. Someone must have been waiting on the other end.

“Has Hauptmann Steiner’s Thunderbolt been transferred on-site?” she inquired quickly. Seeming to get a positive answer, she listened for a moment and then confirmed, “Testing chamber three? Thank you, Staff Sergeant.”

Two elevator rides and a short walk later, Julia peeled off to climb inside Gungnir while the rest of us rode another elevator up to an armored box attached to the ceiling of a cavernous room. Even my Banshee could have stood inside it with room to spare.

Nondi and Katrina both took notice of the slabs of Bar-10 armor at the end of the room in the target area and the autocannon hooked up to a test rig. While we waited for Julia to finish prepping her ‘Mech, I got started with the explanation for what they were about to see.

“The gun on the test bench there is a spare Mk. II Vindicator from my stores, and it’s present to serve as a benchmark, because you wouldn’t believe what you’re about to see without proof. We certainly didn’t.”

“Very mysterious,” Nondi replied with an old-fashioned look, but before the conversation could proceed any further, Julia walked Gungnir into the test chamber. The techs working the gun bench double checked the LB-10X one last time, and vacated the area.

Once they were under cover, the 95mm cannon fired three times in quick succession, scarring the armor panels set in place as a target. Then Julia leaned into her own Vindicator and opened fire.

The contrast was easily visible even from the armor box. Though the armor plate was identical and so were the weapons and ammunition, Julia’s salvo had punched a hole through the armor slab while the bench test had ‘merely’ blown a deep crater in it.

It was clear that the Archon and her sister had both noticed it as well.

“What the hell?” Nondi demanded as she stared at the display.

If that wasn’t my cue …

“It’s a case of a set of systems functioning as more than the sum of their parts,” I explained, and immediately had the attention of the younger Steiner sibling.

“Alone, the Mark II down there causes as much damage as a normal Ack ten, but when paired with the superior SLDF-era Augur Array targeting and tracking system built into a -6S and an Advanced SLDF Neurohelmet, it actually does a consistent twenty percent more damage than a standard Class Ten autocannon. Call it a Class Twelve weapon. It-”

Katrina, still looking down at the display, interrupted me.

“Its grouping is tighter so the shell impacts are more destructive,” she said before turning to join the conversation fully. “It can manage that consistently over its range?”

I gestured back down at the demonstration.

“Those three impact locations could all fit under a nine-inch pie plate,” I told her. “In the process of figuring out exactly why every headshot scored with a Vindicator at the Battle of Juniper Springs was a lethal one, we reconstructed the hit locations Julia scored on a Lancelot’s head. Even from beyond six kilometers, the grouping remained consistent.”

Nondi whistled, but Katrina’s posture stiffened as she looked over the BattleRom footage downloaded from Julia’s ‘Mech.

“You mean to say that your Vindicator can consistently destroy both intact head armor and structural elements on a Battlemech?”

“We were six for six at Juniper Springs. It’s what made us look into why we were getting the odd results. But it only works if you’ve got all three pieces of equipment. Remove the neurohelmet from the equation and the recoil compensation isn’t fine enough. Remove the Augur Array and the target tracking isn’t precise enough. Presumably the same with the gun itself, since one of its selling points is the fact it’s accurate out to PPC range.

“Even if the Combine were to salvage one of the new Thuds with all three systems intact, they wouldn’t be able to maintain the capability because they’d start losing Mechwarriors after a few hours. They can’t reset the neurohelmet, and the problems with it only get worse the more people you have wear the damn thing. After about the third person that put it on, the Mechwarrior wouldn’t last an hour. With all the contaminated neural pattern data, they’d be more a danger to their allies than the enemy.”

“Oh, that definitely wasn’t a complaint,” Katrina said. “Though it does make me almost regret giving Julia the one I bought personally.”

“Well, you can’t have him back, Aunt Katrina,” the aforementioned woman said from the door of the room, a wide grin on her face and her neurohelmet in her hands. “Though thanks again for him!”

“Besides, you haven’t seen what Olivetti will be able to do do with a Warhammer yet,” I supplied.

“I suppose I’ll reserve judgement, then,” Katrina agreed.


A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.

A Matter of Proper Reward for Services Rendered III

(A Welcome to the Jungle canon sidestory)

Inbound from Nadir Point, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 8th, 3016

Julia Steiner pressed the button by the hatch to request entrance as she stood there in her crisp and pressed uniform.

At the call of ‘Enter’ She stepped inside with the grace of the veteran Mechwarrior that she was. Across from her, Colonel Weber looked up from his desk.

“Hauptmann Steiner, is something wrong?” He asked, noticing in passing that she looked very sharp today.

She gave a small smile. “Not until we make landfall, but I got word back from my loyal minions on Tharkad so I can give you an OPFOR briefing.”

He blinked and gave her a dubious look. “What?”

The smile faded and she closed the hatch behind her and locked it. “Sorry, bad joke, Alistair. It’s got more truth in it than I want to admit, though. I didn’t just go to the Nagelring to learn how to steal your kills on Sevren but also to develop my networking and political skills. We should all be on the same side, but politics has killed more good men and women than Battlemechs ever will.” Her voice acquired a bitter undertone.

She sat in one of the chairs bolted to the floor of the dropship and sighed. “I don’t like to play the game, but I don’t have a choice right now. Have you looked me up in the College of Arms yet?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t think I even own a copy,” he responded.

She grimaced and her shoulders slumped.

“Right, time to drop my cards on the table. General Iris Steiner, Duchess of Furillo and Margrave of Kavanaugh Theater is my mother. She’s the Archon’s second cousin through Archon Giovanni’s younger brother Daniel. That puts me roughly eleventh in line for the throne by blood and somewhat closer by politics since Great-Uncle Alessandro’s sidelined and disgraced while Great-Uncle Hermann has repeatedly flatly refused the throne according to the last I heard on the subject. Mother is very close to Aunt Katrina personally and politically, which is why I can call her that to her face; I was seven before I learned that she is actually my second cousin once removed.”

Weber started to move, hesitated, then reached over and patted her on the shoulder.

“I figured that you were close but not that close.”

“It’s a responsibility that I have to shoulder.” Julia admitted with a thankful smile for his kindness. “Regardless, you should know that Aunt Katrina’s planning on presenting you at Court once we arrive, judging by the clues I have picked up. Unless you received a formal invitation to the Triad that I don’t know about yet, it may be planned as a surprise for the nobility. Which is a problem since you’ll be tossed in the deep end of the politics there once she makes you Duke of Catachan. You have more than earned it and then some, but with great power…”

“...comes great responsibilities.” Alistair finished for her. “It was part of what we discussed on Sudeten, but I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Smart of you to be hesitant, but needs must when the devil drives.” Julia said bluntly and bleakly. “I compiled a list of names and faces you will likely run across since a ‘friend’ from the Nagelring sent me the current known attendance list at Court. I annotated it with some personal notes of mine covering things like safe topics to talk about and topics to avoid.” She pulled out a datastick. “I strongly recommend that you read it religiously. At a minimum, there’s several that I red-flagged, remember their names and faces, and if I’m not with you when one of them heads your way grab me immediately, I don’t care if I’m powdering my nose. You’ll need me to run interference with them.”

He took the datastick. “That bad?”

She sighed. “Yes. That bad. Aunt Katrina personally assigned me to you for more reasons than the obvious need for the best available mercenary liaison officer to Weber’s Warriors, Alistair.”

She looked into his eyes and spoke seriously. “First off, she ordered me to serve as your social and political bodyguard and minder. There are some particularly venomous serpents in the snake pit of court, both on Tharkad and Tamar, and you aren’t trained for this battlefield. Second, if I can be blunt, I’m the primary Steiner Entrant in the Alistair Marital Sweepstakes, since once she makes you a duke for services rendered to the Commonwealth you will immediately be top-five on the Commonwealth’s eligible bachelor list for the unmarried ladies looking to social climb. Just be thankful that Uncle Frederick is also going to be on-planet when we are so he can draw some of the attention from the girls looking to snag a husband by whatever means necessary to advance their family fortunes. He’s a good person to have a beer and talk ‘Mechs with if it comes to that, though, and I’ll happily introduce you to Freddie if you need a guy to bitch to about being hunted by debutantes.”

Alistair bit his lip. “I had a few suspicions...” he tentatively began.

Julia nodded with a small grin, “It wasn’t the most subtle ploy for Aunt Katrina, Mother, and me to do and you were intended to notice me. That said, I do need to say something very important to you on this point. Please don’t respond immediately; just listen and think it over until after we leave Tharkad at a minimum before giving me any answer.”

She took a deep breath, sobered and leaned forward, looking into his eyes and speaking sincerely from the heart. “Alistair, I like you a lot as a person and I think that you would make an excellent husband if it ever comes to that for us, but I want you to know that more importantly than that to me, I see you as a better friend and comrade-in-arms. The Commonwealth and the nobility need more good and honest men like you among us. I don’t want to see you hurt by dynastic politics, but you will have to deal with them now that you will be nobility like me.”

She took a very deep breath and spoke firmly. “If it turns out that I’m not your type or tastes when it comes to your choice of a wife whenever you make that decision about your life, I’ll still be your friend regardless. In that case, when you figure out what you do want in a wife; let me know and I’ll do my best to help you avoid the pitfalls to find Miss Right for you to make you happy. Just keep in mind as a noble, marrying and raising children to carry on the dynasty is a non-negotiable part of the job we both have, especially when just getting established like you will be after we meet Aunt Katrina and Aunt Nondi.”

She finished and gave him a small smile. “I know that you don’t have the best insight into women, so I have to lay the situation between us out for you bluntly. I will say that if you do decide on me, my answer will be yes. That is primarily because of your character, decency, and personality rather than Catachan or the datacore, althouse those are also positives in my assessment of your merits as a husband for me.”

She gave him a look that he associated with a teacher to a student. “However, I want you to think about your decision first and weigh all the pros and cons carefully before telling me it. I like you too much as a person and friend to want to see you hurt even by accident by rushing into the wrong decision that will change your life. So as your friend, I request that no matter the temptation of the women in Court -- and they will be tempting you make no mistake! -- that you wait until after you leave to make a decision on any of them and think it over first. Don’t get railroaded into a hasty decision and make a mistake, in other words. Besides, some of the bitches that will be prowling around deserve to be told ‘not now’ to their faces for a change in my opinion.” Julia finished with a certain amount of heat in her voice.

Alistair gave her a moment to make sure he wasn’t interrupting.

“I appreciate the candor, and the generosity both, since I can safely say that I have even less insight into women than I thought I had. As for the rest … I’ll definitely need time to think before I can give you an answer that’s fair to either of us,” he said, then frowned.

“I can comprehend people chasing heirs and heiresses of important corporations, but when I try to insert myself into that equation as a variable, my brain returns a checksum error.”

Julia chuckled and spoke teasingly. “Error 404, Alistair.exe not found? Women are outside my OS parameters, please send the Techs to bugfix me?”

“Something like that,” Alistair agreed with a half smile. “I blame my father. Instead of teaching me the important things in life, he made me come home after school each day and work on Battlemechs.”

She laughed. “Lucky! I got to learn all about my namesake from my father, the historian, for my father-daughter bonding time.” She winked and quoted the first sentence of Caesar’s Gallic Wars from memory. “Gallia est omnis divisia in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. The history he taught me has relevant lessons in my life, yes, but I never want to see a Latin declension again as long as I live. That said, if you ever need a crash course on the important things in life, my tutoring fees come cheap for a friend. Although that offer assumes that the LCAF issues both of us free time for ourselves. Which I’m convinced is a myth.”

They shared a laugh about the truth of that old, OLD military joke.

Outside Trandenberg, Franz, Tharkad, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 15th, 3016

As she sat back and read through the outraged memoranda flowing out of certain quarters of Asgard, Katrina couldn’t help but smile. It had been every bit as satisfying to turn Weber’s Captain Richthofen loose on the Aerospace Corp’s bureaucracy as she’d expected.

Though she hadn’t gotten what she’d hoped for or expected out of the Sevren campaign, it wasn’t Colonel Weintraub’s fault for how things had turned out. She could hardly blame him for making use of the mercenary company he was working with. He’d made the decision, after seeing how well their Aerospace assets performed, to place the Warriors at the point of the spear. The destruction of two Combine Mech battalions and two conventional regiments for little more than minimal infantry losses and some expended consumables was a highly desirable result.

It simply wasn’t the test of her reforms that she’d intended.

Without a major battle, the 8th Donegal hadn’t been able to prove that they could fight the Sword of Light and win.

Of course, when one door closed, another, inevitably, seemed to open.

Thus far, she had been focusing her reforms on the Infantry, Armor, and Battlemech arms of the LCAF. Partially, that was because she’d served with those branches and knew, personally, the changes that needed to be made to increase their effectiveness. The other part was that she’d needed to expend her political capitol where it was sure to grant her a tangible return on her investment.

The flip side, however, was that the Aerospace Corps desperately needed shaken up, and she simply didn’t have the experience and contacts to know how to go about it.

Enter Captain Richthofen.

The man was driven, intelligent, and abrasive. He might as well have been a gift from God.

His first meeting inside Asgard had been a round-table committee to discuss the contents of the report he’d co-authored about the flaws of the Aerospace Corp’s preferred Stingray refit.

Utterly unintimidated by the amount of gold braid in the room, he’d made the first general to question him look like an ignorant Lieutenant and shouted down two more that tried to come to his first victim’s defense. In the process, he’d made a list of enemies longer than his arm, highlighted three incompetent officers who needed to be shuffled to less important assignments, and made anything she did look downright reasonable by comparison.

She’d been receiving a steady stream of outraged communiques in her inbox ever since, and every officer that sent one was going on her List. Better yet, she got to send out a copy of the same form letter to everyone who complained. The man’s Wing had scored more than twenty kills against the Combine, outnumbered, without taking a single loss. Could they dispute his credentials?

Those that tried were going on another list, and the new and improved Inspector General’s office had already started discovering interesting things about a few of them.

Beyond the joys of rooting out more corrupt and incompetent officers from her armed forces, though, Katrina had learned more from reading Julia’s reports on the Centurion and Stingray than she’d ever managed from books or experts.

Either her cousin had a knack for simplifying the jargon, or Katrina’s people were being deliberately obtuse about Aerospace nomenclature. Either way, it provided her a valuable insight, and when she recalled something that Colonel Weber had said when they met last year, a potential opportunity.

It was why she was in a hover limousine today instead of her office. Bauer Industries’ Rapier line had been out of production longer than she’d been alive, but the Rapier still had a good reputation among Lyran and Lyran-aligned mercenary forces. Considering the only other Lyran-produced design specialized in anti-dropship operations, the Lucifer, had precisely the opposite reputation…

It’s worth investigating, at any rate, she reminded herself as her vehicle pulled to a stop a few meters from a disused administration building. The high, peaked roof had shed the recent snowfall, but drifts were halfway up the first floor windows and the parking lot was in a state of disrepair that meant decades of neglect.

Even so, a Bauer representative was waiting for her as her security detail checked in with the team already on-site.

When they finally gave her the all-clear, she stepped out of the hover limo and into the relatively balmy weather. Though Bauer Enterprises Rapier line was actually located farther north than the Triad, the warm, equatorial currents of the Glatte Sea meant that it was substantially more temperate than her capital. Despite being in the depths of winter, it was only a couple degrees below freezing, and the wind off the ocean would see the snow melt in only a day or two.

“Your Highness,” the man said with a bow, “I’m Jason Fragasse. We at Bauer are gratified to have your interest.”

Katrina fended off a grimace.

“No need to be so formal, Mr. Fragasse. Just ‘Archon’ is fine. And I’ve been doing some research. The Rapier was once the pride of the Commonwealth’s Aerospace Corps. Since we’re finally starting to dig ourselves out of the hole the First and Second Succession Wars left us in, TharHes is interested in seeing if it could be again.”

The businessman noticeably relaxed as she spoke, seemingly relieved to be on familiar ground.

“I would certainly be happy to show you the site,” he said. “I’m not certain if I’ll be able to answer any technical questions adequately, though. While Bauer’s military division was once among our most important production segments, I’m afraid it’s very much a sideline these days.”

With that, he led the way towards the multi-acre assembly building.

“I understand that you continue to produce some 340 rated Fusion engines for use in Battlemasters as well as a handful of weapon systems,” she asked as they closed in on the entrance.

“Yes,” the businessman agreed. “The AeroFord 340 is similar enough to the VOX 340 that only minor adjustments are required to make use of it. Between that and the PPCs, autocannon, and missile launchers, it’s been enough to pay the taxes and maintenance bills and provide a modest profit.”

Very modest, if she judged correctly. For all that the administrative building looked overgrown, the production building and the line itself appeared to have been kept up according to regulations. That wasn’t an inexpensive proposition.

There was actually a Rapier, it’s long, thin tail distinctive enough to be recognizable despite its incomplete state, sitting near the start of the line where assembly had ceased. Before she could ask about it, Mister Fragasse began to explain the history.

“This was originally the RPR-100b assembly line which was sold exclusively to the SLDF. Bauer was one of the few corporations both owned by non-Terran interests and located outside the Hegemony that was permitted to produce such advanced craft,” he explained.

“When the supply of advanced systems dried up, we were able to alter the line to accept lower-tech components and switched to producing the RPR-100, which we had long sold to the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the assembly machinery itself was produced in the Hegemony, and eventually it began to fail.

“That was when we first had to step down production and consolidate our two lines into a single functional line, which was eventually downgraded to produce the RPR-102. That worked well enough for approximately forty years, however, in 2931, one of the laser welders malfunctioned during assembly. It destroyed the Rapier it was working on, killed four workers, and maimed half a dozen more before it could be shut down.

“After that, the line was deemed no longer safe to operate. As you can see, the last Rapier frame still sits where workers abandoned it when the building was evacuated during the accident.”

“You weren’t able to switch to manual welders and continue production?” She asked, since that seemed the simplest solution to her.

Fragasse shook his head.

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first incident, just the most serious as the automatic machinery began to fail. The line had gotten a poor reputation among the workforce. We tried to find a compromise at the time, but the workers threatened a strike if their demands for a safe working environment weren’t met, and we simply couldn’t meet them.”

Katrina nodded, but much of her attention was on the infrastructure in front of her. It did look to be of Hegemony manufacture, but that wasn’t necessarily the death knell it would have been a century ago.

All the Successor States, but the Commonwealth in particular, had begun to rebound from the worst of the damage of the Succession Wars. Equipment that would have been impossible to recreate at the time might still be out of reach, but less advanced replacements could certainly be manufactured to do the job.

And if they were less efficient and required additional manpower? Well, the unemployment rate on Tharkad was fairly low, but it could be lower.

More importantly…

“I’m curious, do you still have the blueprints for the Royal Rapier?” she inquired.

“We do, Archon, though they’re little more than a curiosity,” he confirmed.

“And the Bauer Scope, the invention that brought you into Military production in the first place?”

“We could still manufacture them in limited amounts. The electronics are difficult to produce with current technology, but not impossible,” he explained. “Only without the more advanced Star League era neurohelmets, the bandwidth isn’t high enough for them to function.

“We tried to solve the problem early on in the Succession Wars, but it just ended up causing computers to lock up or crash.”

“A shame,” Katrina temporized, thinking quickly. With Weber able to produce high-quality neurohelmets again, any platform with significant missile armament would benefit substantially from the Bauer Scope, which tapped into Neurohelmet data and utilized the pilot’s perceptions to help guide the missiles to their target.

And TharHes manufactured the Crusader.

Katrina kept her peace as Mister Fragasse led her through the other buildings on the site. If anything, the airframe fabrication building was in better shape than the assembly building and armor and electronics manufacturing could be brought back online with relative ease.

All in all, it has strong investment potential, she decided as she shook Mister Fragasse’s hand and departed.


Outskirts of Weibetal, Bremen, Tharkad, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 16th, 3016

“The Rapier? The only reason to have it out of production for this long would be if there were serious problems with the line. Besides, all my engineers have experience with Battlemechs, not Aerospace fighters!” Landgrave Michael Wellby was less than impressed by her suggestion.

“We already successfully expanded into making Battlemechs rather than simply producing components. Why not continue to diversify?” she asked. Before he could answer, she continued.

“Besides, you haven’t heard the best parts yet: they still have all the blueprints and data for all the different variants, including the Royal Rapier, and they can still produce the Bauer Scope. Imagine what that would do for our Crusaders?”

“... that’s the improved missile guidance system, correct?” he inquired. At her nod, he continued, “Alright, that does change things, and if our people are correct about being able to get Endosteel and Freezers into production in seven years or so …” he trailed off and began slowly nodding.

“We could get a basic variant of the Rapier, say the -102, into production in less than two years to defray the initial costs. Then, once we’ve cracked freezers and FerroAluminum, we could actually produce an improved version of the -100, incorporating advanced armor to increase protection.”

The Landgrave frowned.

“Doesn’t it already have respectable armor? Why not use the advanced armor to save weight for better weapons or more ammunition?”

“Weber’s new Centurion refit commits a full third of its weight to armor. Ten tons of FerroAluminum, and it served them very well over Sevren. The Rapier only mounts twelve, and it’s more than twice the Centurion’s size. If anything, we should be figuring out how to load it down with even more,” she asserted. Seeing the Landgrave’s expression, she continued.

“I know, as a Mechwarrior, that sounds like an insane amount, but we need to change our paradigm for Aerospace Fighters. Traditionally, the Rapier was considered a Heavy Dogfighter, but it’s much better suited for anti-dropship combat than the Lucifer is, and it isn’t a damn coffin for its pilots.

“If Weber’s Warriors hadn’t been part of the force mix at Sevren, we’d have lost our entire Aerospace wing, and several Dropships as well. We’d have had to retreat without even making landfall. I know Battlemechs are more prestigious, but they don’t matter if they all end up as space junk instead of making it to the ground!”

It was only long habit that kept her from displaying her anger and disgust openly at the shortsightedness of her predecessors.

“Very well, I’ll start to make the arrangements, though I’ll need to offer them substantially over market value in order to avert concerns about insider trading,” Wellby said. Katrina couldn’t keep her eyes from shooting back to him. Though he pretended not to notice, he still explained.

“I’m in this business to make money, but I’m still a patriot. If you’re so certain that this is what’s best for the Commonwealth, I’ll figure out how to make a profit from doing it.”

“Thank you, Michael.”

“Hmm, if you want to thank me, get out of my office, so I can start making calls. You do realize that the budget I spent thousands of Kroner on for the year is out the window, correct? Awful woman! You scourge upon men!”

It took Katrina nearly thirty seconds to get her giggles under control before she could leave the outer office.


A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.

Tharkad City, Bremen, Tharkad, Tharkad System,
Protectorate of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
February 18th, 3016

I stared at myself in the mirror and swore. It had been years and a body ago that I’d last tried to tie a Double Windsor knot, and these fingers didn’t seem to have the muscle memory my previous body had built up for the process. I’d long since stopped thinking about the actual steps to tying the knot, and couldn’t even begin to remember what I was doing wrong.

I blew out a breath and tried to calm down. Getting pissed off at an inanimate strip of cloth was even more useless than getting angry at my own faulty memory. Besides, after the last week, I didn’t need the stress.

That first day at the Triad had been the easy part. For all that future doctrine was important, it was just that: future, a decade away at the least. There was plenty of time to make adjustments before that doctrine needed to be implemented on any sort of larger scale.

The Phoenix and the new Thunderbolt-6S were already entering service, and my techs were the first ones that Asgard had gotten their paws on who actually possessed experience working on the platforms, so they were spending much of their time passing on that experience even as Julia and Levy’s Phoenix pilots were demonstrating their tricks to handpicked Mechwarriors from the Third Royals.

And, of course, there was Captain Richthofen who’d done exactly what I expected and read three generals their pedigrees as soon as he was out of my sight. If Katrina hadn’t finally admitted that was what she was looking for when I kept finding excuses for why Richthofen wasn’t available to give a briefing, I’d have been spending a fortune on heartburn medication. As it was, I’d been handling the meetings about our ASFs, the Archon not wanting to overuse Richthofen in case the Aerospace Corps started to develop a tolerance through repeated exposure.

That was, in fact, where I’d been originally scheduled to be right now. Then two days ago, I’d gotten the formal summons to Court.

I’d intended to show up in uniform, but Julia had taken one look at the Warriors’ Dress Uniform and flatly vetoed it.

That was why I now owned a hideously expensive wool suit coat and vest, a silk dress shirt that was nearly as expensive, and dress pants that were, in deference to Tharkad’s weather, also wool and thicker than I was accustomed to.

And a silk tie I wanted to light on fire.

There hadn’t been time to get the outfit custom made for me, but Julia had pulled some strings with ‘a tailor she knew’ so the off-the-shelf one had been modified so extensively that it might as well have been custom.

Speaking as someone who’d only ever bought cheap suits in my last life, it was surprisingly comfortable. Julia knew her clothes shopping, fortunately.

But standing in front of the mirror in my Tharkad City hotel suite, I was much more focused on the damn tie that had once again shaped itself into an off-center mess rather than the perfectly triangular shape I was aiming for.

I was reaching up to pull the damn thing off my neck to try again when a knock sounded from the door of my suite.

Rather than take the time to pull it off, I merely tugged it loose before heading for the entrance. I opened the door, wondering what fresh disaster I was going to have to deal with, then froze.

Up to this point, all I had seen Julia wear was variations of standard LCAF uniform and the usual sort of Mechwarrior casual wear.

Julia cleaned up really, really well. And she was wearing a Little Black Dress with a nearly form-fitting top, long-sleeved in deference to the weather that flared at the waist and trailed down nearly to the floor. The only color was white fur with black tail-tips at the collar and the cuffs, and I was staring like an idiot-

“Is that real fur?” My stupid mouth blurted out, and it was a struggle not to bite my tongue in revenge.

“Odessan Ermine,” Julia agreed with a happy grin that said she’d noticed me staring, but wasn’t offended, “do you like it? I was gifted stock shares in the fur farm that raises them for my seventh birthday, along with my first fur coat from them, so I’m rather partial.”

Taking a longer look, I realized that the black tail tips had been worked into some sort of abstract pattern. I was about to reply when the brighter lights of the room hit her jewelry, and what I’d thought was ‘only’ an extravagant necklace and earrings …

What do you call something more than extravagant? It looked like Julia had stolen the Crown Jewels. Both earrings had a single large sapphire cut into a Steiner Fist surrounded by ten diamonds the size of the barrel of a pen. They had to be uncomfortable as hell to wear. Her necklace was made with nine enormous sapphires -- each at least an inch across with the central stone again cut into a Steiner Fist -- all of them surrounded by more diamonds, interspersed with diamonds, and on a chain that looked to be platinum.

I realized that I was looking at an outfit that probably cost as much as a Commando.

“Yes?” I finally responded, though my tone wasn’t the level statement that I’d been aiming for.

If anything, Julia’s smile grew a touch. At least until she noticed my tie.

“Here, let me get that for you,” she said while she stepped forward. She confidently unraveled the mess I’d made of the length of silk before smoothly going through the motions for a Double Windsor. “My father can never get his right either,” she commented while she tightened the tie and made sure it was straight.

Then she reached into her purse and produced a tie tack that matched her jewelry. It probably quadrupled the cost of my outfit and looked terribly gaudy to my untrained eyes.

“There,” she stated. “You clean up quite well.”

I was pretty sure that was my line. Actually …

“You look wonderful. Sure you want to be seen with me?” I inquired.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily, but we do need to go,” she said. I looked at the clock and winced. The time had gotten away from me a bit. We weren’t going to be late, but I preferred to get anywhere I was going early.

I tucked one of those Russian fur hats with the flaps under my arm as I followed Julia out the door. Thankfully, the hotel had a private underground parking area for VIPs, so I wasn’t going to need it until we arrived at the Triad, but then I was definitely going to need it. Winter on Tharkad was like living in Siberia, and the sun was already sitting on the horizon. It would be down by the time we arrived, even in the hover limo.

“You ready?” she asked with a grin as we settled in for the chauffeured drive.

“If I say no, will it change anything?” I asked with quirked lips.

“Nope,” she replied cheerfully, then sobered. “Just remember the list and especially the Red List, and if you get in over your head, hit the panic button. And if I think you’re getting in over your head, I’ll head over to support you even if you don’t hit the panic button.”

“Yes, Mooooom,” I shot back in a high-pitched, childlike voice.

Julia giggled in spite of herself, then pressed her lips together to kill a smile.

“And absolutely don’t do that, Alastair.”

I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out at her in rebuttal.


The limousine dropped us off at the plaza just in front of the Royal Court and the wind hit me in the chest like a kick from a Battlemech. I blew out a breath of air that immediately froze and drifted in the air like cigarette smoke. If I’d been wearing a moustache like I had during the winter back in the 21st Century, the hairs would have immediately developed a frozen coating.

It was the sort of cold that meant exposed flesh developed frostbite in minutes rather than hours of exposure. I pulled the flaps on my Russian hat down and extended a hand to help Julia up. Even wearing a long fur coat, her legs had to be freezing, but she didn’t deign to notice the weather past putting her ermine hat on. Oddly, one of the marble flagstones that we walked past was crushed and shattered and surrounded by official-looking barricades. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened there.

Even though we were clearly recognized, the small army of greeters and guards intercepted us and inspected our invitations with care before parting to allow us passage. I was just grateful to get inside.

Of course, as soon as we were inside, the heavy coats became almost oppressive thanks to the fusion-powered central heating. I was glad to hand my coat and hat off to one of the horde of waiting servants, even though I felt awkward to be waited on by them. I managed to bite back a reflexive ‘thank you,’ earning a small smile from Julia while she handed over her coat and hat. Having a retainer stare back at me like I was a weirdo for speaking to him had been awkward enough the first time in my hotel. And this was the big leagues.

I disliked treating other people like they were mobile furniture, but ‘when in Rome.’

… And that reminded me that one of the things I would need to do before I left Tharkad was find a household staff for the mansion I was going to have to move into. So much shit to do!

Even distracted, I still remembered to offer Julia my arm like a gentleman. After a long moment inspecting herself in one of the mirrored alcoves, she took it and we were off.

There wasn’t a line, but since we were arriving after the event had started, that wasn’t precisely a surprise.

A pair of bureaucrats, their fancier suits marking them out as distinct from the servants even if the way their noses were stuck in the air hadn’t, approached us as we neared the large gilded doors of the Archon’s throne room.

They clearly knew who Julia was and made a few quick notes before asking me a couple of questions. Then we stood around in another case of ‘hurry up and wait.’

Eventually, the note was then passed to someone in an even more impressive suit. What was the position called? A herald? I was still trying to remember when the man began his introduction.

“I present Landgrafin von Wilda Julia Steiner, Hauptmann of the Mercenary Troop Liaison Office, recently returned from the newly reclaimed world of Sevren.”

I was impressed that he got all that out in one breath and with sufficient volume to be heard clearly throughout the massive room that we were entering. I never thought I’d be in a building that made the cathedrals I’d toured back in the 21st feel like one room shacks, but Tharkad’s Royal Court managed it. A pair of Griffins in dark blue and bright gold Royal Guards parade ground paint flanked a throne on an elevated dais.

The floor, where it wasn’t covered in people and carpets, was polished marble as were the walls. Massive historical tapestries and military banners softened the stark white with blue and cloth-of-gold, displaying the insignias of regiments of renown within the Commonwealth. Currently in pride of place to either side of the Griffins were the shamrock on rose-red background of the Donegal Guard and the brandished black mace on red of the Tamar Jägers.

I was so distracted by looking around while trying not to gawk that I nearly missed my own introduction.

“The Landgrafin is accompanied by Alistair Weber, Colonel of Weber’s Warriors.”

And with that we were moving again, this time up the central carpet of blue and gold. This wasn’t the thin runner that businesses would put out, but a thick mass of fabric with elaborate patterns woven into it. It put me in mind of a Persian rug, except it was twenty feet wide and ran the full length of the room up to the first step of the dais.

It probably cost as much as one of the Griffins.

I was distracted from my contemplation as the Archon began to speak.

“Already tonight,” she began, her voice resonant despite sitting, which made any sort of speaking harder. And it was an impressive seat. The throne was made of marble and looked more like an outgrowth of the floor than a standard construction with its seat a cushion of blue fabric, “We have celebrated Our Mechwarriors in the Eighth Donegal Guard and Archduke Kelswa’s House troops, the Tamar Jägers.

“However, it was not Federal forces and House troops alone that cemented Our victory and restored Sevren to Our Commonwealth,” she continued as Julia and I slowly closed the distance.

“Colonel Weber’s aerospace pilots fought alongside Our own in the ASF engagement that crippled more than three Wings of Combine fighters and ensured a safe landing for Our dropships. His Light ‘Mech company assisted by the Jägers hovercraft blinded the Ninth Rasalhague Regulars’ eyes, destroying a battalion of hovertanks without permitting them to report. Then his Medium and Heavy companies, supported by his Command Lance chased down and annihilated the Third Battalion of the Ninth Rasalhague Regulars as well as the remaining two battalions of combat vehicles supporting them.”

Katrina paused for a moment to allow the audience to applaud. It was a testament to the size of the room that we weren’t already in front of the dais.

When the applause trailed off, she took up the thread.

“Once the city of Landing was secure and it was time to advance on New Cartris, the planetary capitol, Colonel Weber’s Warriors again took the lead. And when it was determined that the Seventh Sword of Light had seized the critical pass through the Neo Caucuses ahead of them, they devised a stratagem to turn the Combine’s advantage against them. With three sequential ambushes, the Warriors utterly annihilated the First Battalion of the Seventh Sword of Light.”

That line drew further applause, and allowing it to fade almost brought Julia and I to the front of the massive throne room.

“The Teak Dragon, dismayed by their losses, was unwilling to consider further action on Sevren. Rather than risk open combat with Our forces, they chose instead to retreat.”

That statement really brought out the cheers. The Swords of Light were the best of the Combine’s forces. Seeing them sent packing so decisively was a rare event. Perhaps not since Archon Eric Steiner and the 3rd Royal Guards had surrounded and destroyed two battalions of the Sixth Sword of Light on Freedom a century ago had they been so badly defeated by Lyran forces, and that action had cost the Archon his life.

The applause was so effusive that Julia and I finally arrived at the dais before it concluded.

Everything up to this point had been what the audience had expected. They were probably anticipating that I’d receive a commendation and that they could get on with their evening. There was, thus, a susurrus of surprise when Katrina continued.

“That, however, is not what first drew Our attention to Colonel Weber. In addition to his skill and valor at arms, he is also the primary shareholder and Chief Executive Officer of the Catachan Arms Corporation which he founded after his rediscovery of the planet, and the Battlemechs cached there.

“Rather than be content with his find, he sought out experts who determined that the planet, previously exposed to a bioweapon by forces loyal to Stefan Amaris, was now safe to occupy once more.

“Colonel Weber charted the remaining infrastructure and reestablished humanity on the world of Catachan, importing skilled miners and loggers. His company harvested the native flora known as Argent Maple,” this brought about a louder murmur from the crowd, “and mined resources until he was able to restore the factories he found there to production. The Catachan Arms Corporation now supplies Fusion Engines, gyros, weapons, and other critical components to the Warhammer and Thunderbolt lines on Sudeten, increasing the strength and prosperity of Our realm.”

The members of the audience were now clearly speaking among themselves, but such were the acoustics and Katrina’s presence that when she spoke again, she was clearly audible.

“It is only right, then, that Alistair Weber should be named to govern the World he has returned to the Commonwealth.”

And nevermind that it had never been a Lyran planet before. If nothing else, it would make LIC’s job easier when people started looking in all the wrong places for us.

“Alastair Weber,” the Archon said, standing from her throne and advancing, “Step forward.”

As I had been instructed, I stepped up the first four steps, stopping just below the top and taking a knee. Thankfully, the steps were reasonably wide and the runner on them was thick enough that I could barely feel the stone beneath.

The Lyran Commonwealth was Old School. I extended my hands, palms pressed together and Katrina clasped them between her own.

“Alistair Weber Junior, Son of Alistair Weber, born on Icar on January First, 2992, what are your oaths?” she asked.

My mouth was dry.

“I swear to give loyalty to House Steiner and the Lyran Commonwealth. I swear obedience to its laws, good stewardship of my lands and people, and faithfulness in their defense,” I managed to get out without stumbling.

Brilliant light glinted from the Archon’s Chain of Office, each link shaped like a golden Lyre, and bejeweled in the alternating colors of one of the Provinces. Rubies for Donegal, Emeralds for Skye, and orange Topaz for Tamar. Beautiful as the rest of the piece was, it was secondary to the massive blue-white blaze of a diamond the size of a child’s hand cut as a Steiner Fist that was the centerpiece of the masterwork.

“Then, as Archon, I swear to you protection for loyalty, justice for obedience, wise rulership for good stewardship, but punishment for faithlessness,” she stated. After only a moment’s pause she continued, “Rise Alistair Weber, First Duke of Catachan, Head of House Weber.”

I turned to face the audience as I’d been directed to do and was greeted by polite applause and no few interested looks. Suddenly, I was worthy of their consideration. Again, I could see them expecting the formalities to be over and preparing to see if they could draw me into one political circle or another. The gazes were those of some form of predator, hungry and sure they’d picked out an easy meal.

These were not people that I could afford to show weakness to, so I took a surreptitious deep breath as I waited for the Archon to continue. It was a damn good thing I wasn’t prone to stage fright, because with the Star League in the dustbin of history, this was tied for the biggest stage of all.

“Just as the Tamar Jägers and the Eighth Donegal Guard have proved their worth and skills on Severen, so too have Weber's Warriors.” Katrina said to more polite applause. “However, with a landhold to garrison and factories to secure, the appeal of a mercenary existence has begun to fade. As such, Duke Weber has informed me of his intention to incorporate the unit formerly known as Weber’s Warriors as a Household unit. Please join me in welcoming the First Catachan Harquebusiers, to the LCAF,” Katrina turned to her right, pointed, and her minions unrolled the banner with the 1st CH insignia.

Julia had done much of the work on the design, which featured a pair of archaic matchlock carbines in black crossed on a field of silver with the fanged, sharp-edged skull of a Catachan Antlion superimposed on them. On the forehead of the skull were two runes: a Peorth above and a Teiwaz below.

It was an excellent artistic touch, and could be read a couple ways. Teiwaz was simple; it meant victory, a warrior’s rune. Peorth, though, was more complex: the hearth rune, it could mean luck, divination, or ancient law.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

The Inner Sphere had suffered enough for vainglory and the pride of intemperate men. ‘Supremacy of the Old Code,’ indeed.

As the applause faded, I turned and bowed respectfully.

“Archon Steiner.”

“Duke Weber,” Katrina responded with a polite nod of her head.

I retreated down the steps, no different than when I stride up them a few minutes prior. Yet, at the same time, everything was different.


With the formal part of the audience complete, I was more or less immediately surrounded by well-wishers and hangers-on.

Within thirty seconds I’d already forgotten the name of the first man to step up and shake my hand. His daughter had been pretty enough, but the ploy had been entirely transparent. These weren’t the people I should be most concerned about; that type would have seen me walking in with Julia on my arm and known that there was no point in trying to get their bid in quickly.

Clearly the Steiner’s had used their home-court advantage and gotten to me first. The sharks would sit back and strategize and wait for me to be distracted by the minnows.

Or that’s what Julia had claimed when we discussed our plan of attack, anyway. So far her prediction was proving to be accurate. And the minnows surrounding me were giving it the old college try. Most were in flashy clothes that actually made Julia’s ensemble look somewhat conervative. One matron was in literal cloth-of-gold. Certainly, nobody I recognized from the Red List was in the crowd around me, listening to me retell the story of the Battle of Juniper Springs for the third time.

“... of course, the reason my Scout Company hadn’t been in the fight with us was because I’d sent them looping around to cut off any stragglers and prevent the enemy from gaining any useful intelligence from the battle. After they took out the remaining Lance leader, the survivors were willing to surrender,” I finished, mouth starting to get quite dry.

“Very insightful,” one of my hangers-on commented and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

I’d kept some information from making its way to the Sword of Light, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to check up on what the Assault ‘Mechs in Landing were getting up to.

That’s probably what had clued the DCMS in about what was waiting for them. If I were them, I wouldn’t have wanted to charge into that sort of firepower either.

I allowed the flattery to wash over me and made some small talk. I could just tell some of the newer members of the circle were getting ready to ask after one of the other battles when a couple of the taller people in front of me started looking past me.

I turned to find the crowd parting around me like krill fleeing a whale. And for good reason, the dark skinned man in the dark red suit wasn’t large, but his reputation made up for it.

“That was good work you did on Sevren, young man,” Greyson Brewer, principal owner and CEO of Defiance Industries told me while looking up from under a bushy unibrow. “Even the Boys of Summer couldn’t have done better.”

It took me a minute to remember that the Boys of Summer were the 17th Skye Rangers, who’d been involved in fending off the invasion of Skye alongside the 8th Donegal several decades ago. Of course, the Rangers had been up against the 5th Sword of Light. They had, in fact, forced the Gold Dragon to quit the field, the only Lyran force that could make that claim.

They were also Duke Brewer’s old unit.

“Well, we weren’t up against the sort of opposition they fought off, but I’ll certainly take the compliment, sir.”

Brewer chuckled.

“No need for that, but I wouldn’t say no to a few moments of your time,” the Duk-

My fellow Duke said.

“We’re rather far away for regular shipping,” I temporized, “but consider me at your disposal.”

Duke Brewer nodded and turned his attention to the crowd.

“Sorry to take him away from you for a bit, but I need to be off shortly,” he said pleasantly but firmly and when he led me off no one tried to follow.

“So, did Julia ask you to rescue me?” I inquired as I drew even with the shorter man.

Brewer chuckled.

“Actually, she asked me to hold off a half hour ago when I first started over to speak with you. Didn’t want anyone to interrupt when you were doing so well, but I really do need to get going.”

We passed out of the Throne Room and down a hallway for perhaps a hundred yards before Duke Brewer stopped in front of a guarded door and, after the man and woman doing the guarding looked us over and opened the door, stepped into a private salon.

“LIC sweeps these regularly and most of that lot couldn’t get in here besides, so you can speak freely,” he informed me, then continued with a broad grin.

“That said, congratulations! Katrina’s given Defiance a copy of your core, and even before that, I’ve been spending as much time with the original as I could get. Last year, I had started some of my people exploring how to improve the Banshee, but the schematics I saw …” he trailed off.

“They’re something else,” I agreed. “The engine’s more vulnerable where it sticks out into the side torsos, but it’s fast and it hits like an Awesome at range and a Black Knight in close and even has more armor on the torso and limbs.”

“Aye, and combat tested now. Would you be willing to license the design once I get things set up on my end? Even at Defiance, we can’t get production spooled up in less than six or seven years, and we’ll almost certainly need to put the orbital production for the advanced components in a less tempting system, maybe your young lady’s homeworld’s, since we’ve already got a presence there and it’s deeper inside the Commonwealth.”

I frowned for a moment in consideration, not even intending to try to argue about Julia. Sure, we had the required engine production available on Catachan, but we were already stressing our manpower and expertise making Medium Battlemechs. Much as I was interested in making Banshees, they’d be a huge resource sink to set up.

Licensing the design to someone who already had the industrial capacity, on the other hand …

“I can agree to that in principle. We can negotiate a price per unit closer to when you’re ready to begin production,” I said and reflexively took Brewer’s hand when he thrust it at me.

“Good! Very good! It’ll be satisfying to finally be able to turn the Banshee into a worthwhile Assault ‘Mech,” the businessman said before he frowned and changed subjects.

“Don’t suppose you have any hints about Ultra Autocannon in anything that you found?”

That threw me a bit.

“No, sorry. LB series, but not UAC,” I replied.

“Damn. I’ve got a mothballed Sentinel line I’d like to get some use out of, but they’re just awful. Won’t sell something that I wouldn’t be willing to pilot myself, and the Sentinel is just terrible.”

“Well if you’ve got a design team at loose ends, you might as well throw them at the problem. That way if they fuck up, they aren’t ruining the output of a line you need for something,” I suggested.

“Great minds,” Brewer commented. “I sent the order via one time pad in yesterday’s transmission batch.”

“Again, I’ll take the compliment,” I shot back then hesitated briefly before deciding to throw caution to the wind.

“If you’re still having a problem with hammering out UAC-5s in a few years, we might have a different option.”

That got Brewer’s attention. He inclined an eyebrow as if to say ‘don’t keep me in suspense.’

Getting the green light for access to LCAF resources and classified material also meant a chance to hire researchers with skills that would have made it impossible for us to simply vanish them off to the Periphery.

The same firm that had scored us a contract with Professor Rodrígez had managed to sign on several experts, including ones with experience with large ballistic weapons. The Star League had proven that transitioning to a smoothbore with fin stabilized discarding sabot ammunition improved the accuracy and damage of the Class Ten autocannon. It was only good sense to see about improving the other classes.

And Trellshire Heavy Industries on Twycross made the Rifleman. If we could come up with a refit that turned that underarmored, desperately undersinked design into something worth fielding for something other than its radar …

“The basic principles that make the LB-10X a success should be transferable. Hypothetically, would Defiance be interested in licensing an LB-5X, should such a thing become available?”

“If it can do anything like what those Vindicators of yours have proven to be capable of. Especially that extra twenty percent damage. Being able to hit harder than a 5cm laser and range out to six and a half or seven kilometers would be a substantial improvement for several designs we produce,” Brewer allowed. “Can you …”

“Not yet, but knowing that something is possible is half the battle in research and development. The rest is just engineering and fiddly bits. With the Vindicators to work backwards from, it’s a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.”

The Duke grunted in seeming agreement.

“In that case, Defiance would be very interested in a license. Actually, two. One for Hesperus and one for Furillo.”

This time it was I who extended my hand and he that took it.

“It’s been very interesting speaking with you, young man. Keep going as you’ve begun, and you’ll have my support,” he said, then grimaced as he caught sight of the time. “And now I really do need to be going.”

“Good evening then, and a safe trip,” I said.

“Have fun dealing with the sack of cats back there,” he replied. And probably the richest man in the richest of the Successor States was gone. I’d just talked Turkey with Bill Gates and not made a fool of myself.

I reached up and rubbed my face with both hands and blew out a deep breath. Then, noticing a pitcher of ice water on a sideboard, I poured myself a glass and drank.

Thus fortified, I stepped out of the room and moved to jump back into the snake pit. I was, however, smart enough to avoid re-entering the Throne Room. Getting directions from one of the guards, I made my way down a different corridor and into an entirely different form of ostentatious room.

The room reminded me of something out of Windsor Castle with elaborate decorations on the ceiling and massive original paintings of past Archons on the walls. It was also full of knots of people circulating, discussing, and holding court over their own subgroups while servants wandered about with trays of refreshments.

One of those subgroups was very clearly military people discussing military matters, considering all the LCAF uniforms. It seemed like a safe enough place to get my toes wet, even if the man in the center of the group was wearing the gaudiest ‘dress uniform’ I’d ever seen.


A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.