Interlude 8
The Great Mech Robber - Preparations
Coromodir
11th June, 3025
???
The descent through the atmosphere of Coromodir was cold, the dropship descending like a bullet, the Captain working hard to preserve their stealth envelope while making it look like a simple meteor fall. There was a great deal of risk in an operation like this and Colonel Ravi Mohammed had been selected for the duty with a great deal of care. A problem solver with a number of experimental vehicles as well as Tornado battle armor at his disposal, and he was expected to utilise them, refitted with Null-Sig, which he understood was not to be standard fit, this operation was nonetheless a secret as well as a field test.
The sheer newness of the technology expected to be its own cover as nobody could hope to tie it to Comstar. And yet, they were only part of his war fit for this mission, the Fortress Dropship was a specialist model for his work. The engines fired as Ravi moved into the command centre.
"Colonel, what is the plan?"
He moved over to the table and studied it, it was incomplete and old, from before the little civil war. But it was enough to work from until he managed to secure greater data integrity.
"The first is to learn what happened here, we're acting on inadequate intelligence and I don't like being rushed. I want a pair of Swiftwinds to make a sweep, I want mapping updated, anything out of place identified, figure out what happened to our station here on Coromodir if possible." He turned to the next officer present. "Laine, once the initial intel pass is complete, I want you to take some of the ROM-Rho operatives and infiltrate the population, begin building me a picture of the routine down there. Regular scheduled mech patrols and their paths, supply runs to critical infrastructure, the locals feelings on the government, all the usual."
He turned to one of the Fortress' crew that had been assigned an operations chief. "Break out the drones and get me some top-down surveillance footage to complement the foot operations, and break out the camouflage netting for this ship, our Magellan has gone dark, and I don't want any overflying to spot us through pure chance."
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Over the next three days Ravi began to build up a picture in his mind of operations on Coromodir, security was tight, and yet barely visible. The Lady trying to avoid any comparisons to her late uncle. As such, mech patrols were critically scarce, and when they were conducted, they were light. The Lady Kamea seeming to be relying on lighter armoured vehicle patrols instead.
And yet, the closer one got to the palace, the more prevalent the security became and Ravi grew more concerned as his spies picked up not only signs that she had at least a Company of Assault mechs, but that her mechbays seem to be brimming with Star League era mechs.
Matters weren't helped by the whispering on the streets, the people of the Aurigan Reach treated her as a hero, a saviour and even then, they seemed to regard the 'Warden' in even higher esteem, several times his people observed children playing with toy 'Knights' in the streets. And yet, for all that, there was also a definite undercurrent of resentment from a minority of the people, not oppressed, but clearly ostracized by their peers for perceived actions under the directorate. Houses defaced with the words 'traitor' and 'collaborator' were common for such folk and there were clear signs that they were meeting now and again. Amateurish handoffs and whisperings.
One pair even re-enacted a bad spy movie, 'reading' in the park and 'accidentally' picking up the wrong bags.
Ravi almost dismissed the abysmally bad malcontents until his people managed to notice the fringes of a far more sophisticated group operating using those bad spies as a distraction, or even a cover. Extremely low frequency codebursts were detected by ROM equipment, encrypted far beyond what should be possible on a periphery world like this.
"Have the codebreakers cracked the encryption yet?"
"There are several types Colonel, one is skilled and seems to belong to a group calling itself the Inquest. I suspect they're a secret police using Star League era encryption with a modified key, there are three others, two belong to the Magistracy of Canopus, and Taurian Concordat. Low level observation jobs. They're just watching their neighbor, I suspect Kamea probably has her own people in both doing the same thing... but the last, I think its Capellan, when we've cracked it we'll know more, but I suspect they're fomenting dissent."
"Predictable. What have we learned about our old communication station?" He'd had people trying to learn about it since their arrival, and yet the site was remarkably well watched.
The ROM analyst picked through his notes. "There really isn't a lot of intelligence, and prying seemed to only encourage people to be quiet, from most it's conflicting information, the loyal people willing to speak swear it was a Directorate Nuke," Ravi didn't interrupt, they'd disproven that hours after arriving, the entire blast and crater was wrong, "But those with directorate sympathies? Most of them didn't see anything either, but while the nuclear missile launchers were hit by missiles, they swear some of their people observed some sort of PPC shot from space hit in the city."
"Orbital strikes... that would cause problems if it ever got out, and if we were to..."
The ROM Analyst shook his head. "Colonel, with the Directorate firing nukes up at Lady Kamea's fleet, nobody is going to question or even look at a retaliatory orbital bombardment. And you've seen the databursts from New Avalon, the Precentor there is practically wetting himself with terror. The Raven Guard have five Warships that have never been seen before, and some of the weapons on them mass more than an invader based on what we can see."
Ravi grunted. The man was right.
"Do we have enough intelligence to establish fixed patrol patterns yet?"
"No sir. And we're still trying to insert someone into the palace."
Ravi nodded, "Understood. Continue observations and drone overflights. We need to know everything before we commit. And see if we can't get some better surveillance, we need to know where that strange mech of hers is. And inform Laine to start plying her trade at the mech jockey bars, maybe they'll know where to find the techs that work on it