Chapter 21
'Happy' New Years
*Various*
1st January, 3025
Two months of hell, wrath and glory. The sliding scale of imminent apocalypse had leaned hard upon the fence of hit and run. Awaiting reinforcements had turned our contracts into a repetition of running battles and hit and fades. The inability to put down roots and give a good licking was ever more frustrating as it became entirely self-evident that we were wholly the reason for the Taurian Regiments presence and the Highlanders were just as quick to the take. An issue compounded by the fact out prior deception had not been able to work in our favour again. Separating our forces had rendered two Armigers into little more than scrap to be accounted for, and they never over-committed their forces again.
We came all too close to losing the Hysteria when on its next deployment the only force they sent was a pair of Leopards while our main deployment felt the bulk of their force in pursuit forcing us to abort the assault alltogether in favour of withdrawing our forces intact and alive. "This is becoming quite ridiculous." Kamea said as she visited us, "The inability to deploy you is proving to be almost unreasonably costly." She said sitting down, "And yet, I dare not choose otherwise. This strategy has kept them playing cat and mouse instead of committing and forcing me to try and deploy you to stop them. It has been the only thing that has prevented the Taurians throwing an entire Regiment into the game."
Darius nodded, looking exhausted. "Indeed Lady Kamea, Ostergaard has a haterection for us over his son, and the Highlanders were hired to deal with us specifically. But sooner or later they have to decide that pursuing us simply isn't working."
Trotter downed a rotgut from the engineering spaces. "True, they're bound to realise soon that their dropships simply cannot keep up with our own, the artificial gravity plating has simply given us too great a margin for them to close. We can accelerate for days at high gees. They can't do it for more than a few minutes."
Kamea nodded. "And when that happens they'll give up trying to catch us, and do something that will give us no choice but to come to them."
I leaned back as I ate the burger I was enjoying far too much. "And that's when the real atrocities nobody will ever officially here about will begin. The icebox writ large." Miranda looked up from the book she was reading.
"That'll get ugly fast. They've got enough boots that Santiago isn't going to ask them to step off."
Dekker ate quietly. "See that's the real problem ain't it boss. Right now we have both of them creepin our asses. And bluntly, we don't get enough time dirtside to do shit about it. But, can they sustain that really?"
"What do you mean?" I asked turning to face him.
"Way I see it is, Ostergaard wants your nuts in a vice and Lady Kamea's head on a spike for 'what we did'. But whoever the snobjockey is in the Confederation that wants us dead. They hired a whole Battalion of Highlanders to either drag you back in chains, or kill you. Right now they're not crossing swords because they're playing the chase game." Dekker sat up and stuffed some chips into his gob, "What happens when they think they've got us dead to rights and have to split claims?"
"Then they'll probably give the Warden to the Highlanders while Ostergaard demands their help claiming my head as fair payment." Kamea mused.
"No, Dekker is right. You might be on his shitlist for 'giving the order' but it's my men he thinks did it. I doubt he'd even stop at just our heads. I'd wager he wants to destroy the Raven Guard alltogether." I munched some more on the burger, it was a damned fine one. "But he's got to know he's in a bit of a vice too, they have no doubt realised that there is two ships missing at all times from our actions, the Divine Right and Heavy Bargain. They don't know I sent them back to the Federated Suns for now. But they've also realised that they can't engage us in a fleet fight. Our Fury Interceptors have made them cautious, and the Achilles has turned them off risking main assaults."
"So what do you suggest Kane?"
I frowned. Unsure. "I'm not sure yet, the reinforcements that Markham has hired should be here in the next week or so, but I think we simply sit tight for now and wait. When they hit something and try to force our hand, I know you'd hate it, but I suggest we ignore it and hit an even bigger target. I have two in mind. Your flunky Alexander, you said it yourself, supposedly his family has intelligence proving the complicity of the Espinosas in the gas attacks, and in the death of Ostergaards son. This is beyond critical, we need to retrieve it and your flunky."
"And the other?"
Here was going to be a true test, the information in the Argo was still being decoded. Which left me a limited window since I was only permitting it to be decoded in dead space with the Legacy. "I want to Conquer Artru for myself." Kamea looked at me in surprise. "It has no real worth except for its mining facilities, it's at an obscure corner of the Aurigan Reach and more importantly, it is a highly defensible place. I've heard the ghost stories about the Locuras or whatever they're called. How machines sometimes simply stop working and everyone dies."
Her eyes went calculating. "You want to bring them to battle there, somewhere you can control the outcome." She hissed a bit in surprised, "Somewhere that there is no local HPG station, no Comstar presence. Somewhere you can bring the Legacy in!"
I nodded. I hadn't considered bringing in the Legacy. But she didn't need to know my real interest was in the Star League Castle Nautilus.
"You want me to sacrifice a planet officially and legally, to you, in order to bait this trap." I didn't bother telling her that I had designs on far far more than that, but I left her with the question and answered it.
"If we 'attack' a minor world for you, they might see it as us just trying to draw them back out of their own honey trap. If we 'conquer' a world, for ourselves under our own title as an official 'reward' from the Sword of Restoration, as perhaps our retainer fee to depose the Espinosas and restore the Aurigan Coalition regardless of how long it takes? They couldn't possibly resist." I said sighing at my regretfully empty hands, the burger as gone as my innocence.
"The Taurians would see it as a free planet to take back. The Northwind Highlanders would take it as an opportunity to fulfil their contract without starting a war with Espinosa because of collateral damage." She frowned, "But if the people thought I was bargaining with their freedoms for power,..."
"So don't publicly be seen to do so. As you know, I held the title of Duke amongst my people. You could recognise my royal bloodlines, as their far flung connection to house Cameron. Grant me a minor title under your own nobility and name the world my landhold to do with as I see fit within the reach of Aurigan law."
She blinked in surprise. "House Cameron?" She said skeptically.
"A noble run world, far beyond the periphery, with an absolutely beyond top secret skunkworks and research outpost that even Kerensky didn't know about, who but one of their own family could be entrusted with such a task, the name Giordino came from my great Aunts founding house. Her husband was a minor Cameron bastard." I was terrified that I couldn't even tell whether I was speaking lies or truth or some vile fabrication. And yet, Trotter nodded along, no sign of deception.
"Amaris himself never knew about Lathe, I don't believe the Cameron himself knew about it. And when Amaris staged his coup, we never heard anything else. Thus was cousin lost to history, assumed assassinated with the remainder." He confirmed.
"But.. but that would make you the lost heir to the Star League, to Te.."
"No, absolutely not." I said standing up, I couldn't let that train of thought even remotely begin to implant itself in her head. Or worse, my own. If there was anything that'd put Comstar on a fanatical mission to see me dead that right there was the clincher, they may not have supported Amaris, but they would sure as shit stinks move to any threat, imaginary or otherwise, to their power base on Terra. "I'm happy for you to know of the connection, even to acknowledge it to a degree. But to ever imply that would be political if not literal suicide. I'd be more content to simply be known by a granted title. I do not need the title 'Heir of the Star League' under any circumstances."
Kamea nodded, the vehemence and suddenness of my denial unfortunately triggering her senses of loyalty implanted by the Throne Mechanicum,. "Oh, of course, that makes sense, i'm sorry.... I n.. Of course, I can make it happen, if you want Artru, and it will save me further hiring costs," Her sense of humour came back as her normal personality came back to the fore, "In any case, it's a new year. To victory!" She said changing the subject.
TO VICTORY
The shout rang throughout the room. But I didn't miss the element of doubt in her eyes. Unable to engage decisively, victory was far from certain.
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Wolfs Year.
Jaime Wolf moved in his quarters with curiosity as he examined the material with some concern, having severed ties with the Clans after Ward's instructions to prepare the Inner Sphere for the Clan invasion. Curiosity was now proving to be a terrible problem. Information that the Clans would desire was only turning up after he'd already purged the navigational information from the Jumpships.
The intel was passed on by friends in the Davions, information about a regiment of new eighty-five ton mechs that had four PPCs and were heat neutral even at full combat load. The increasing distribution of gravity plating on Jumpships and Dropships across the Inner Sphere. Heat Sinks far beyond anything even the Clans had in capability.
And of the names that accompanied these developments.
Markham, Giordino, Raven Guard.
And finally, after months of work, he'd gained access to Battlerom footage from Mandalas and several other places that the Raven Guard, once Markhams Marauders, had engaged in war. And the footage was unsettling. Comparing hours of it with the intelligence on the Armigers the Davions were building built up a picture that he wasn't entirely sure anyone else had seen.
The gravity plating had been a simple technology distributed to build up funds, as were the next technology releases. But how many had realised that the Armiger they had shown and sold was a modified version of that used by the Raven Guard themselves? Weapons stripped for Inner Sphere built equivalents. The Heat Sinks were an easy money grab.
But had anyone else put together the footage of their engagements to see what they had not shared? Powerful heat ray weapons, rapid firing or rotary cannons, actual chain-weapons capable of mech combat, powered fists that destroyed what they touched.
Energy shields.
Even their powerplant technology had to be significantly more advanced to do what it did. Advanced implants that presumably went a step beyond neurohelmets and closer to enhanced imaging systems, maybe beyond. But how had nobody noticed the differences in tech base. If they had once matched Inner Sphere technology, they'd diverged at some point as, based on all the intel he had, there wasn't a single shared technology. They didn't use Medium or Large Lasers, none of them had SRM or LRM systems. There wasn't a PPC to be found....
But the method of war?
That was the most unusual aspect. After the departure of Markham due to injury, the Raven Guard, now reformed under 'Warden' ceased to display anything like normal Spherist organisation. Lances seemed gone in favour of massed deployments. Co-ordination was less obvious in favour of massive overkill. A factor that seemed to grow more noticeable as they stopped deploying standard mechs in the field at all.
"Do you see how they fight?" He asked his wife as she sat next to him studying it with him.
"Do you love?" She asked cocking her head.
"What do you mean?"
"I've watched you beat stompy death into people for many a year now, watched countless Battleroms and mechs always have this artificiality about them, they never quite fight like a person would. Or they seem too mechanical in some aspects. Nobody could look at a mech fight and mistake it for organic." She said studying the footage, and bringing up some of his own battles to give examples.
"Now look at those machines, the weird ones. They sound like machines, the look like machines... but they move organically, like a person, they're not following a radar, they're aware of their surroundings, a mech doesn't avoid a PPC blast by twisting their hips out of the way, mechs can't do that, they're not precise enough, they're the fulcrum around which the whole mech moves," Jaime saw it as she described it, "They move like people would, when struck they recoil from the blow like it pained them."
It was a picture that was painted all too well.
They were not mechs. Not as he knew them, not as anyone else in the Inner Sphere knew them. Even the Davion Armigers didn't move like the Raven Guard's did.
"Stravag." He snarled. "I need to meet these people