Chapter 7: Getting the Lay of the Land
The next morning proved to be a headache.
The conference room aboard the Wolf's Dragoons' flagship was a pressure cooker of tension, the air thick with the weight of unspoken fears and simmering anger. Jaime Wolf stood at the head of the table, his expression a mask of stoic calm, but the storm brewing behind his eyes was unmistakable. Around him, the Dragoons' senior officers sat in various states of agitation, their voices rising and falling in a cacophony of speculation, accusation, and disbelief.
The revelation of the MAD-CAT had hit them like a sledgehammer, and now the room was a battlefield of competing theories and frayed tempers.
Jaime listened, his hands clasped behind his back, as the arguments swirled around him. It was almost surreal, how familiar it all felt. The same questions, the same accusations, the same wild theories—it was as if he were reliving the aftermath of their first mission, when the Capellans had unveiled their stealth mech. The parallels were uncanny, and Jaime couldn't help but feel a bitter sense of déjà vu.
"How in Kerensky's name did this happen?" Major Evelyn Pritchard demanded, slamming her fist on the table. "First the Capellans with their invisible mech, and now this? A MAD-CAT? This isn't just a coincidence. Someone's feeding them our tech, and I want to know who!"
"Could it be the Not-Named Clan?" someone else suggested, their voice tinged with a mix of fear and anger. "They've always been hushed rumours that they still live. Maybe they've decided to sell us out to the Inner Sphere."
Jaime's jaw tightened at the mention of the Not-Named Clan. It was an easy scapegoat, a convenient bogeyman to blame for the Dragoons' troubles. But he knew better. The Not-Named Clan had been purged a long time ago, their very existence erased from Clan history.
To suggest they were behind this was nothing more than paranoia.
"Enough," Jaime said, his voice cutting through the noise like a whip. The room fell silent, all eyes turning to him. "Speculation isn't going to get us anywhere. We need facts, not fairy tales."
Natasha Kerensky, seated to his right, leaned forward, her sharp eyes scanning the room. "The fact is, Shephard Industries has access to Clan-level technology. Whether they stole it, reverse-engineered it, or bought it from someone else, it doesn't matter. What matters is that they're using it, and they're using it to make a profit. We need to find out how they got it and shut them down before this gets out of hand."
Joshua Wolf, seated to Jaime's left, nodded in agreement. "Natasha's right. We can't afford to sit back and let this slide. If the Inner Sphere starts producing Clan-grade mechs, it's going to blow our cover wide open. We need to act, and we need to act now."
Jaime sighed, rubbing his temples as the beginnings of a migraine pulsed behind his eyes. He had hoped to avoid this. The infighting, the paranoia, the endless cycle of blame and recrimination. But the Dragoons were on edge, and with good reason. The stakes were too high to ignore.
"Alright," he said finally, his voice firm. "Here's what we're going to do. Major Pritchard, I want you and Wolfnet to dig into Shephard Industries. Find out everything you can about their operations, their suppliers, their buyers. If they're getting their hands on Clan tech, I want to know how. Priority would finding what manner of security both local and spherewide SI employs, because that can and will dictate how we approach them or how much of a challenge they are."
Pritchard nodded, her expression grim. "Understood, Colonel."
"Joshua, Natasha," Jaime continued, turning to his brother and the Black Widow, "you're with me. We're going to that auction. If we can get our hands on one of those MAD-CATs, we might be able to trace the tech back to its source. And if anyone tries to get in our way…"
He didn't need to finish the sentence. The look in his eyes said it all.
By the end of the day, his people had puleld through one of their objectives.
Jaime Wolf leaned back in his chair, the worn leather creaking softly in the dimly lit confines of his office. The intelligence packet lay open on his desk, the words staring back at him with a clarity that was both welcome and deeply unsettling.
A name like that wasn't chosen idly. The mythological reference alone spoke volumes—three-headed, vicious, guarding something valuable. And from what Wolfnet had gathered, that was exactly what this mercenary company had been doing for Shephard Industries for some time now.
"They didn't even try to hide it," Captain Joseph Burke murmured, his fingers tracing the edges of the report. He was one of Wolfnet's senior field analysts, a veteran of more intelligence operations than most people had years in service. "We didn't need to run a dead drop or crack an encryption cipher. Someone at the local Mercenary Review Board just told us, after we paid, of course."
Wolf exhaled sharply through his nose, something halfway between amusement and annoyance. "And no alarms went off in anyone's head over that?"
Burke gave a shrug, one shoulder rising slightly higher than the other, a result of an old combat injury. "Maybe they figured it wasn't a secret worth keeping. Or maybe it's just plain Spheroid arrogance."
The Dragoons' commander let his gaze drift to the data slate once more. Shephard Industries was proving to be full of surprises. Lostech designs, battlefield deployments of stealth-capable BattleMechs, and now a mercenary outfit that, by all accounts, operated almost exclusively at their behest.
"Cerberus," Wolf said again, more to himself than to Burke. "Who's running them?"
Burke flipped through his notes. "Colonel Elias Voss. Former AFFS special operations. Records say he walked away from the Crucis Lancers about eight years ago and founded Cerberus with a handful of like-minded veterans. They were small at first—security details, high-risk retrieval jobs. But once Shephard Industries picked them up as their primary muscle, they started scaling up fast. Expanded their roster, added heavier hardware, and now they've got a reputation for handling corporate security at a level most House militaries would envy."
Wolf frowned, rubbing his chin. "What kind of hardware?"
"Mix of stock and modified designs, but the interesting part is their access to Shephard's R&D toys. We've seen their people running Raptor-class mechs, and word is they've got a couple of other 'prototype' machines in testing. No confirmation yet, but given the way they've been fighting, I'd say they've got some tech that doesn't fit standard Inner Sphere profiles."
Wolf's expression darkened. "And we still don't know where Shephard is pulling all of this from."
Burke nodded grimly. "No verifiable supply chain. No salvage markets feeding them. They're not buying from the black market in bulk. Either they're sitting on an industrial base no one knew about, or they've got friends in places no one's admitting to."
Wolf tapped his fingers against the table in a slow, thoughtful rhythm. "This auction in Andro. If Shephard is bringing Cerberus in, they expect trouble. Or they expect someone to come looking at their wares a little too closely."
"Which, given our interest, means we're exactly the kind of people they're watching for," Burke pointed out.
Wolf nodded, a thin smile tugging at his lips. "So we play this carefully."
He picked up the data slate again, scanning through the details. "I want an updated dossier on Elias Voss. Find out who he's dealt with, what his price is, and whether there's a way to get inside that perimeter without setting off every alarm they have."
Burke's smirk was faint, but there. "That's already in motion. I've got people tapping old service contacts, seeing if anyone in Cerberus has a loose tongue. If Voss is as professional as his record suggests, he won't be an easy mark, but there's always someone willing to talk."
Wolf nodded, satisfied for the moment. He glanced at the star chart projected on the far wall, the world of Andro marked with a subtle, pulsing icon.
Two weeks.
Shephard Industries had drawn too much attention to ignore, and now, they had Cerberus standing at the gates, watching for interlopers.
How convenient that they had viable information on hand. Jaime then sat up suddenly as his eyes dilated in relaization. He turned to Joseph, who cottoned on his boss' unease. "Joseph... the local MRB just gave the information without any quibbling?"
Burke thinned his lips as he realised where Jaime's train of thought was going. "Neg. Come to think of it, they never tried to redirect the query or cite any 'privacy' concerns or 'confidentiality' violations. In fact, they were professional and efficient about the whole thing. Eager, I would say."
Jaime sucked in his breath. "So, someone had interests, or more likely concerns regarding Shephard Industries, and have gone out of their way to grease the dissemination of information. I do not like this. It seems we are to be the stalking horse in this situation. Find out if any inqiries by other outfits were given the same treatment in regards to this. We need to send in some sniffers on the local offices too."
The auction had not yet begun and there were already unearthing discrepancies.
Jaime hoped that this would not turn into a right clusterfuck.
To be continued...