“Welcome to the Federated Suns!” Captain Oleg Tsarkov offered smugly from his command throne on the ancient Merchant ship Potempkin.
I was just lashing down my feet with the velcro straps to keep from floating off the deck as we stood before the command throne to discuss where to go next with the surviving officers of the 1st Ariana Fusiliers, mostly of my 3rd Mech Battalion, but a few of the 74th Defense Brigade armoured and the coldly silent rail thin form of Xi Beng, captain of the Overlord dropship Winter Moonrise.
I blinked from my moment of surprise, then decided to ask a stupid ground pounder question, as I was a stupid ground pounder. Decisions about where to deploy the 1st Ariana Fusiliers had come from CCAF central command with input from our regimental commander, Tormano Liao, presumably guided by older and wiser heads like the other two battalion commanders who were professional soldiers and not simply well connected nobles. In time I would have been brought into those discussions as an aide to Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang, but she died before I got senior enough even to be a fly on the wall in those discussions.
“Alright Captain Tsarkov, I am the idiot groundpounder in the room, why have you flown us into Davion space when Davion just killed most of our friends and not a few of our relatives?” I asked, plotting the position of the bridge officers, and thanking the gods and ancestors that I used a Sunbeam laser pistol rather than a projectile weapon as I was not used to fighting recoil in zero gravity. If I was being betrayed I was going to burn some navy ass-wipes a new hole before I fell.
It was the sepulchral tones of Captain Xi Beng who broke the tension.
“No, it makes sense. Davion will be hitting worlds all along the front. There were too many conventional troops and not enough mecha. The other mech regiments must be hitting somewhere else. If we jumped into our own space, we have no idea which worlds we would run into their fleets in orbit and be up against their combat space patrol before we even got our jump sail deployed. I presume we haven’t got our beacon lit?” Xi Beng asked, referring to the standard IFF beacon that broadcast the jump ships identification.
Captain Tsarkov smiled beatifically and gestured broadly. “I was assuming that any fine collection of CCAF mechwarriors would have at least one of our benevolent moral guardians of the Maskirovka who, rumour has it, have any number of useful tools for beacon modifications that may be, in Com Star’s eyes, frightfully illegal and quite technically impossible.”
It was a widely held belief that the transponder of a Jummpship was impossible to fake, a truth trumpeted loudly by all the houses of the Inner Sphere and by Com Star, the self appointed guardian of lost Star League technology and keeper of the Hyper Pulse Generators that allowed faster than light communication between the stars. I always wondered about anything that all the great houses said so loudly. House Liao’s Death Commando seemed to appear anywhere they needed to be, deep in Capellan Space or deep in enemy space, without any record of their jumpships making transit from Sian to their destination. Sure magical jump technology that could carry you hundreds of light years rather than the thirty light years our KF drive could do was theoretically possible. In the Academy I once put in a test problem that it was more likely they used false beacons when they left Sian and only turned on their own transponder when the Death Commando dropships were already burning into orbit and the strike was on. That one got me a long counselling session with the Maskirova’s counterintelligence team to make sure I was not a Com Star ROM infiltrator.
Sao-wei (Lieutennant) Tina Chin laughed coldly. “If we were in Liao space, such speculation could land you in a metal chair stripped naked and with electrodes placed in very tender places connected to capacitors with enough juice to cold-start a dropships reactor.”
“Of course, since we have all been declared traitors by his excellency, my fearless and beloved leader can only execute me once, trust me, I am Maskirovka and we have tested this, it may be that I can spend a little time alone at your Nav/Com station without any prying eyes to see and see if your Jump Ship has ever met a transponder it didn’t want to try on.” Tina said airily.
I caught her meaning. “Tina, you mean you can fake any beacon in the Jump Ship’s memory?”
“Sure boss. Com Star has to know they are lying, we always assumed they peddled that line because it takes a lot of knowledge that is almost lost. We know they use it, we have spotted the same ship transiting our space under three different beacons. We don’t tell the CCAF or warrior houses about it because it represents a huge domestic threat. Can’t have the Princesses sneaking in kill teams to Highspire or St Ives you know?” Tina answered lightly, referring to the home-worlds of Romano Liao and her sister Candace Liao, rivals for the position of heir now that Tormano was lost.
I thought quickly. “Do you remember the unit that hit us, the 9th Illician Rangers? They are a mercenary unit under contract with House Davion, but we cut them up pretty good. They would have a legal pretext to transit either home for repairs, or to a world with a decent trade or industrial base to sell or refit their battlefield salvage. Better, as a merc outfit, they aren’t under AFFS direct control outside of combat.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Captain Tsarkov laughed. “Hanse Davion plays too cute. He may have married a Lyran, but he has none of their sense. He likes to play “Company Store” too much, raising the price of repair and munition parts, playing with availability to force the mercenaries to accept longer term contracts and place themselves deeper under AFFS control in return for access to the Armed Forces of the Federated Sun’s own supply chain. Those mercs with their own jumpships like the Light Horsemen and the Illician Lancers can’t get caught that way, and don’t take kindly to the Fox trying.”
Captain Xi Beng nodded. “If Hanse Davion is trying to marry Melissa Steiner with the hope of joining the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, he has to be pushing all along the Terran Corridor. He won’t let Com Stars hold on earth limit his ability to move troops and goods between both halfs of the realm. His Operation Galahad exercises were all about moving troops from all over the Federated Suns down to our border along the Terran Corridor. Even his pockets aren’t that deep. They had to come from somewhere.”
I turned to Captain Tsarkov, “So we parallel the border on the Federated Suns side, headed rimward, away from the Terran Corridor where both the Federated Suns and our own Confederation are trying to kill us.”
The growling voice of Lt Tyrone Jackson sounded a mixture of confused and angry as the black armoured officer snarled. “So what, we leave the Commonwealth and turn pirate? We go merc like the Illician Lancers who we just fought, they used to be a Capellan unit too, now they suck Davion dick and shoot at their own people for a few C-bills"
I tapped the crest on my jumpsuit, the 1st Ariana Fusiliers.
“The Confederation abandoned us, we didn’t abandon the Confederation. The Lorix Order calls upon us to take up the battle with the foe who strikes at the Capellan people. Nothing in the order says we have to do it from Capellan space. If home won’t let us stand on Capellan soil, then there is one other realm that has a war without end and a good track record with mercenaries.” I said, a plan already forming in my head.
This time my XO looked up from her work at the Nav/Com station where she was foxing our beacon.
“You can’t mean joining The Draconis Combine? Takashi Kurita hates mercenaries almost as much as he hates Davion and the Federated Suns. He screws his mercenaries hard, and the only one better at playing the company store against its merc than Davion is Kurita!” Tina objected, clearly shocked.
I forget, she wasn’t with me when I did my tour along the Periphery border. Rimward of the Federated Suns was the Taurian Concordat, a proud periphery realm that told the Star League to pound sand when it came calling, and who bled the famous SLDF white before they surrendered. House Davion and the Federated Suns lead the call for their conquest and sent the bulk of the troops. Our own Capellan Confederation lost whole divisions of Battlemechs nuked a few worlds uninhabitable, and ended up taking a total of three marginal worlds for ourselves. The dust hadn’t settled from the fall of the Star League before they declared their independence again. Their war with Davion resumed the same day as their declaration of independence, and raged still.
I moved to the Captains command throne and punched a few commands on it to pull up and highlight a region of space on the opposite edge of the Federated Suns from Terra.
“Behold the Taurian Corcordat, the only state that rejects both the Capellan Confederation and the Federated Suns, but reserves its only actual hatred for the Fedderats. Of all the nations of the periphery, it has the best technology, industry and education. They may have a really good military for a periphery state, but they lack both the battlemechs and the experience in large scale combat that we have, they are hungry for merc with modern gear and experience in large scale battle. Even better, they don’t trust Com Star and limit the robes access so nobodies intelligence service really has much penetration, and what they have is super slow to respond.” I declared with more confidence than I really felt.
Tyrone Jackson nodded, his body physically relaxed, the tension of his frustration having taken a toll on the armoured officer who never expected to ever leave his home world, let alone flee it’s conquest. Our jump ship Captain looked concerned.
“It’s a noble plan lad, but Jump Ships aren’t free. They take money to maintain and we need to replace the helium because a beast like this leaks just a bit, she’s older than the First Succession War and not good for more than about six jumps before we need to think about topping up. We can’t exactly use the CCAF funds at a recharge station, can we?” Captain Tsarkov objected.
It was my XO who laughed from the Nav/Com station.
“We are now the 9th Illician Rangers, Illician Lancers jumpship Endeavor. It would be absolutely terrible if those dirty money fighting bastards were to turn pirate and raid their way across the Federated Suns because they got spanked hard by the Capellans on what was supposed to be a milk run. I imagine it would put a lot of heat on the rest of the Illician Lancers, and maybe increase the friction between the Federated Suns and its mercenaries.” Tina suggested, her training in the Maskirovka showing.
I nodded. “I like it. We hit back against the Federated Suns, we get the money to pay our troops, we get the supplies to fix our mecha and maybe see about picking up some ground armour for our dispossessed tankers. I mean if we are supposedly friendly mercs, they might let us land in one of their military reservations and see what isn’t nailed down. When we get to Taurian space, we will have a real mercenary battalion to offer.”
Maybe it was a pipe dream. Maybe we would be crushed on the first world we would try to raid, but we were trapped in a corner where we had to gamble big to win. Every safe option ended in a prisoner of war camp with our mecha handed over to Davion, or shot dead by our own forces.
Our war was not over. If we would not be allowed to fight along side our beloved Confederation, we would take our mecha, our tanks, and our honour to another frontier, and take up the battle their.
Algol will be remembered. We will be Vindicated.