ICHaFBI 9

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=I, Corvus; How a Fool became Imperator of the O'Reillys - Chapter IX -=
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----<Character & Faction Directory of I, Corvus>----
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===Awakening to disquieting news===
Hospital Complex, University of Niops
Niops Station, Planetary Capital
Niops VII, Niops Association
26th April, 3031
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Corvus woke a week later. They would later tell him he’d woken a dozen times throughout the week, but this was the first time he was lucid. There were cords coming out of his arms and chest, wired to what felt like a thousand machines. Sato sat at his bedside, holding his hand.
 
“M-Ms. Sato…?”
 
She let go of his hand and leaned in towards him. “What’s your full name?
 
“Corvus O’Reilly-Logan.”
 
“Where are you?”
 
“Niops VII, a hospital, I think?”
 
“Yes. Who was Edward Gibbons?”
 
“H-he wrote The H-History of the Decl-cline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And it’s Gibbon, without the ‘s’.”
 
She smiled down at him. “Good. I’d better get the doctor.”
 
“W-what happened to m-m-me?”
 
“I think the doctor had best explain.” she told him.
 
She returned a few minutes later with a doctor. The man looked troubled.
 
“You can treat this as a safe space, Corvus. There are two Ordo Vigilis agents outside the door and they have ensured that Dr. Lo here will be taking his hippocratic oath very seriously.”
 
The doctor nodded to Sato, sighed and checked his chart. Corvus had down the same with his notes at his first lecture to buy time. Finally, the doctor spoke. “Corvus, you’ve had a severe heart attack. You’re very lucky to be alive. The riverside is usually midday on a workday. It was the paparazzi, of all people, who brought you in.”
 
“Thank the Gods for a free press. P-perhaps the new Imperator would consider such a thing, given the apparent benefits that c-c-come with a c-cadre of stalkers.”
 
“Heh, well, it seems you're in good spirits. You’ll make a full recovery, with rest and rehabilitation. Or as full a recovery as one can. Even with our technology, you’ll never be completely 100% again, but if you follow my orders, you’ll be very close.”
 
“I’m good at following orders. Tell me, it was poison, wasn’t it?”
 
The doctor couldn’t hide his surprise. “Yes, it was, how did you know?”
 
Sato smiled, “I told you he was trying to tell us.”
 
“Maybe I am the fool they say, I should have refused the ice cream.”
 
“Hmm, no, you didn’t ingest poison, it was injected. Through the pinprick on your back.”
 
“Oh…”
 
“Ms. Sato suspected the scratch marks on your back were trying to warn us where to look. We looked at the
 
“N-no, I, I was just itchy, ferociously s-so.”
 
“Ah, that would do it. Compound RVS-9067, what the poison is called, it can have that effect. Maybe, 1 in 10, 1 in 20 victims feel awful itching. Otherwise, the poison is undetectable within two hours. Without your scratching, I wouldn’t have made the connection.
 
Sato leaned over the bed again, “Corvus, the compound was designed in the Association. It is completely unknown outside of it. What’s more, only a small number of researchers, doctors, and government officials know about it, let alone have access. Imagine the strings that had to be pulled to try this on you.”
 
“I’ve put you all through so much trouble…”
 
“No! Don’t you get it? Some sneaky prick in the tabloids managed to sneak up on a Niops secret agent and caught them poisoning you on film! This is the biggest scandal they’ve had in decades! This has done more to discredit the cause of Niopian independence than a hundred lectures could have!”
 
Corvos groaned and closed his eyes. “I hope my cousin is happy.”
 
“He’d damn well better be.”
 
“If you’re feeling up for it Corvus, I have some things I’d like to talk to you about.” Dr. Lo cut in. Corvus nodded to him. “Firstly, your leg. We ran some x-rays and it’s clear that it was fractured when you were young and never healed correctly.”
 
“Y-yes. My parents were gone for business for a long time and Imperator G-gaius had…unfortunate thoughts about how boys should b-b-be raised.”
 
“With your permission, we can mend it, fix your limp entirely. It will have to wait until you’re recovered, and it will be painful and require some recovery itself, as it seems the fracture was very bad, and well it’s healed worse.”
 
Corvus thought a while then nodded. “Yes. I would very much like to be able to run with my niece while she’s still young enough to frolic in the gardens.”
 
Dr. Lo nodded and typed something into the tablet with Corvus’ chart. He then paused a moment before speaking again. “There is another issue.”
 
“M-my stutter, you mean?”
 
“No, that seems to be something else entirely, a speech therapist could help, maybe, but that’s I’m not qualified to diagnose that, and Ms. Sato wanted this circle to be small. I did however, consult with a neurologist about your tics. Given that you were never properly treated for your leg injury, can I assume you were never given a proper diagnosis?”
 
Corvus looked away from Sato and Lo. “No. The Hegemony, y-you have to understand, it’s not a pl-pl-place for weakness.”
 
“You’re disabled either way. To not treat you makes everything far worse. That doesn’t make any sense, even the poorest citizen here is treated for their disorders, mental, and physical.”
 
“Y-your world is not our world. For a father to admit his child is flawed? That his seed was c-c-corrupted? No, it had to be the child’s fault, and if it was, it could be beaten out of him. My...my father wasn’t b-b-bad as others. But the Imperator was, and his word was law.”
 
The doctor shook his head. “It’s too late for treatment, but it’s not too late to understand-”
 
“W-wait, why is it t-t-too late for t-treatment?”
 
“Your condition is called Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s neurological and is often comorbid with a wide range of other disorders. I would like to test you for them to be sure as tics can be caused by other issues. But my preliminary diagnosis is Tourettes. Even today we don’t completely understand how it works, though we do known it has a combination of genetic and environmental trigger. As for why it’s too late, all the drugs that work on Tourette’s are off-label uses of medicines that impact blood pressure. Given the current condition of your heart. I’m not willing to prescribe you anything like that at all. When you’re up to it, I’ll explain everything in detail.”
 
Corvus scowled at the wall. “It was that easy? You didn’t even need to meet me and yet you could find the answer? Thank you, Doctor, Ms. Sato. I would like to be alone for a while, I think I need some rest.
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===Invitation to a Park===
The Imperial Palace
Nova Roma, Gaul Continent
Alphard IV, Latium District
Marian Hegemony
4th June, 3031
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Sertorius marveled at Sean’s command center. It had a beautiful view, with open archways all along the eastern wall leading to a balcony that let in the sun and a wonderful breeze. He much preferred it to the full-sized one beneath the palace. “Did Marius really have all of this set up for his son? I was a grown ass man, a proven commander, and he never even let me submit him reports typed up in my own villa. But he builds a fourteen year old kid his own miniature war room?”
 
“Not to mention the staff. I had to sit there and tell him in excruciating detail why all of his ideas were awful.” Prefect Marcus responded.
 
“He was that bad?”
 
“Well, I mean, any kid would be. He wasn’t even old enough to start learning how to be a MechWarrior, let alone a general. But if you could trust the other tutors, the big expensive Spheroid ones, then yeah, he was that bad. One of the worst they’d ever seen. Lazy twit, made us do all the work. I wasn’t even supposed to be a fuckin’ tutor, I was supposed to be his damned guard. But he wouldn’t leave me alone, threatened to have my job.”
 
“Think my brother would have been dumb enough to listen?”, asked Sertorius.
 
Marcus scowled, “Capricious fuck came to the same decision on his own, so yeah, probably.”
 
Sertorius shook her head. “It’s crazy to think of a man who kills or exiles half of his kin as a family man.”
 
“He went soft. He should’ve killed you. Definitely should have killed me.”
 
Sertorius let that comment hang in the air for a while. He looked back down at the holo screen and pretended to ponder. Marcus had demanded a Consulship after the coup. The other had gone to Siobhan’s father, a patronage appointment for an ancient man living on the far side of the Hegemony who lacked the vitality and interest to interfere with his colleagues’ plans.
 
Marcus had become almost co-ruler with Sertorius. Sertorius worried about it all the time, but the Praetorians were the only pillar propping up his administration, so what could he do?
 
“Back to the task at hand, I suppose. I expect you’ve had a chance to read the butcher’s bill from Son Hoa.”
 
“I did. What of it?”
 
“There’s that pattern I’ve been trying to show you. How many worlds did we annex last year? Sixteen by military force. This year, ten. And yet we’ve lost twice as many legionnaires fighting for ten worlds as we did fighting for sixteen. What’s more, our frontiers are fortifying and mustering more soldiers. We’ve lost half of our professional aerospace force. I’m going to order the legions to stand down, dig in on the frontier, and rest.”
 
“With Rex out there, on the border, uniting the border worlds? Hell, if we’re really unlucky some fuckwit in the Circinus Federation is finally going to win that civil war and end up uniting some or all of it. Let alone we have the Lothians on the run, and all the dissidents in that sector are holed up on one world. The Hegemony’s enemies gain more than we do by a ceasefire. We have to keep pushing.”
 
“The Legions are fragile already. Look at Legio I and III. Shadows of what they were. We push too far, lose too much, and then all of those barbarian armies you just mentioned start pouring through the gates. Besides, we have replacements and more already mustering on Alphard.”
 
Marcus stared at Sertorius for a while. He grabbed a report of the table and leafed through it, glancing up with the same hard look every once in a while. Sertorius stared back at him. He was building to something. Every week it seemed, he was getting braver, more insolent.
 
Finally, Marcus spoke. “You know why we picked you?” Sertorius just stared at him. “We could’ve chosen anyone. Didn’t have to be one of you, hell you were the only one in your family any of us would consider. The Morituri would have revolted on its own, eventually, without an O’Reilly. But you were already there, longest serving in your battalion. Real hard man, not to be fucked with. Heard you smashed a guy’s face in with a cafeteria tray the year before I got sentenced. Where the fuck is that man now? I hear you saying this cowardly shit about how we need to be cautious. Say what you want about Marius, he was a coward personally, but he had balls when it came to the Legions.”
 
“You want to send men who’ve been fighting almost non-stop for two years into the grinder and let them get chewed up? I’ll forgive you because you were only one of us for the Timbiqui campaign. You weren’t with us on Illyria, or Lahti, or Huntington. The Morituri chose me because I was the only one who gave a shit about their lives. So keep talking, and if you want to see that same man, let’s head down to the officer's mess, find some trays, and see who the bigger man is. Choose wisely, Consul, they couldn’t reconstruct his face before his funeral.”
 
Old instincts kicked in. His eyed had already darted around the room and identified a half-dozen possible weapons to beat Marcus with if it came to that. He hoped it wouldn’t.
 
It didn’t. Marcus laughed, threw down his papers, and walked to the balcony.
 
Sertorius couldn’t relax as easily. He pretended to, and joined Marcus at the balcony.
 
Marcus pulled a cigarette and lit it. “You want to slow the pace? Fine, they’re your legions. If this were this time last year, I’d even say we could do it on all fronts. But we have to stop Vercingetorovski. If we don’t crush that prick, then it sends a signal to every independent world that we can be slowed and stopped. We can’t have that, or we’ll never be able to gain momentum. We lose that momentum forever, and we’re dead.”
 
Compromise at least. Although given Marcus’ ambitious plan for fighting Rex, it wasn’t much of one. He’d have to play the long game again, plant the seeds, as he always had. “Corvus used to tell me about empires like ours, like Rome itself even, and how they were so reliant on expansion that as soon as they couldn’t manage it anymore, they started to decline. I don’t want that to be our legacy, Marcus.”
 
“And you listen to that shitstain?” asked Marcus.
 
“He may be….well, Corvus. But he’s spent the last forty years reading history, so give him that at least.”
 
“He’s wrong. We’re the biggest state in the sphere! Nothing’s going to stop us if we don’t give them the chance to.”
 
“We haven’t faced a real enemy yet. Let’s say we eat the whole of Lyran space. What then? The other nations of the Sphere won’t stop. We end up as one of the six new great houses? How’d that work out for them? Not a one of them could get the edge over the others, they wasted their lives and treasure beating them heads into each other’s walls until they all collapsed. I don’t want to lead my family to the same doom as the Kuritas or the Steiners.”
 
“Nah, you want to find your own, special doom. You’re looking a hundred years down the road and you aren’t seeing five years down the road. The O’Reillys are your legacy, Imperator, not mine. I care if I survive, not some distant great-grand kid I’ll never have.” Marcus commented
 
Sertorius had never heard Marcus talk about anything from his personal life before. “Never?”
 
“Nah, not my thing. I mean, I fuckin’ tried when I was young. Accident with a fusion core in my 20s ended any chance of success.”, Marcus told him.
 
“You have sisters, right? What about their kids?”
 
“Hah! One, and good fucking luck getting that one to settle down. Besides, Gloria’s kids won’t have the Gibson name, even if they’re bastards she’ll name ‘em something weird.” Marcus told him.
 
Sertorius grabbed a smoke from Marcus’ pack and the two smoked together, looking out over the capital in silence.
 
Was it always going to be like this? Worrying with every disagreement over whether Marcus would get rid of him the same was they’d done Marius? How do you stop a man like that?
 
He knew the answer, he’d known it for months. Corvus’ stories didn’t just tell of failures, they told of success, and his stories said the best way to secure a general’s loyalty was to bring them closer.
 
“What if they had the O’Reilly name?”
 
“The fuck?”
 
“I mean, we’re a good team here, Marcus. I couldn’t have done any of this without you, and you might not care about a name, but the people do. You want to reign in Gloria, and strange as he is, I love my cousin. With Sean and Livia out of the picture, their children would be heirs to the Hegemony.”
 
“Christ, I thought you were weak, but you’re a crueler fucker than I thought.” He took a long drag of the cigarette, then tossed it off the balcony. “Sure, whatever, let’s do it.”
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===Wonders of the Niopian Workshops===
Niops Project Workshop III
Niops V, Niops Association
14th July, 3031
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The cities of Niops VII were a shining beacon to the Periphery. The farms of Niops VI seemed like an idyllic paradise. Niops V, with it’s lichens, molds, and hordes of flesh-eating insects was a hellhole unlike any Corvus had ever visited. He’d heard stories about the inequality on Niops, but it hadn’t felt real. The poor had seemed at least content with their lot. Or even if they weren’t, at least they seemed safe...ish.
 
Every second person he passed seemed to be coughing up a lung, and every fourth seemed to have had a limb mangled in some way. Worse, the people seemed utterly defeated.
 
He glided over the wasteland in his floating chair, rebreather tied firmly around his mouth. He looked up at his escorts, but they ignored the unspoken question. He hoped they were just too dim to catch on.
 
He’d only been on Niops V long enough for the shuttle to take him from the spaceport to Chapterhouse, but it was enough to make him hate it. Things would need to change here, now that the annexation had been signed. Niops would be allowed under Imperial law to keep their local laws and traditions, but surely there were limits? He hoped he was brave enough to raise the issue with the Imperator when he returned.
 
His escorts led him to a facility that towered over the shantytown around it. The door was an airlock and after a quick decontamination, he took off his mask and breathed deeply of the clean air. Only one man was there to meet him for the tour, for which he was thankful. Corvus had been expecting a scientist, but he pegged the woman in front of him as a career bureaucrat. She was the sort of woman you imagined when you thought of Human Resources: middle-aged, bobbed hair, wide but not quite fat, and wearing one of the rare business suits he’d seen since landing on Niops, although to cut of the suit looked like it was designed at the same time as the facility.
 
“Welcome to Niops Project Workshop III, Mr. O’Reilly-Logan.” She said, beaming the sort of reflexive smile that looked welcoming until you thought about it. She extended her hand.
 
Corvus leaned forward and shook it. “You'll have to forgive me for not standing. And please, just call me Corvus.”
 
“Of course, Corvus. It’s an incredible honour to have a member of the Imperial house here, and one so distinguished too!”
 
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Engineering is far out of my expertise I’m afraid, but I have always been fascinated by the mechanical world. Though, I do have to ask, what happened to Project Workshops I and II?”
 
She laughed, “Oh, don’t you worry about them. Just budget cutbacks, you know? Now that the Hegemony is on board, I’m sure they’ll be up and running in no time.” She was bubbly with her answer, but it still came out mechanically to Corvus, obviously another well rehearsed line. The lichens couldn’t hide the burnt out ruins they’d passed over on the way here. It appeared that Hegemony funding wasn’t able to buy honesty. Yet.
 
“Please come this way. We have some wonderful technologies we’ve been working on that I am sooo excited to show you! Nothing like it in the Inner Sphere!”
 
She led him through endless pristine white hallways, with signage pointing to a hundred different project areas. They passed by countless people in labcoats, most of them talking and laughing as they passed. He wondered how many of the signs and scientists were decoys to impress him.
 
But the destination was genuinely impressive. She led him into a viewing area that must have been a kilometer long that looked out onto an open area, surrounded by thick shielding. A row of war machines stood idle through the viewing windows.
 
“Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Li. Doctor?”
 
The smiling doctor stuck out his hand. Corvus shook it. “A pleasure to meet you. I am the director of Warological studies here. I can’t properly express my excitement at finally having the chance to show our inventions off. Usually, the only outsiders we get a chance to demonstrate too are pirates, and their reviews are never as unbiased as I would like them to be. I think you’re particularly like our first design.” He pressed a button on the wall. “Alright Lee, show them what you’ve got.”
 
A flying drone took off at the far end of the field and began to fly in a random pattern. The closest 'mech powered on and began to track it. It was a smaller 'mech, Corvus thought, though he was far from an expert. He’d never seen one like it before, as it appeared to be wrapped entirely around a single large gun. It fired a single shot and atomized its target.
 
The doctor grinned smugly at the 'mech. “We’ve managed to miniaturize the Gauss Rifle, enabling much smaller 'mechs to be able to carry them. A revolution in light 'mech warfare-”
 
“Ah….Th-that is impressive, D-Dr. Li. I...uh...do believe our scientists have acquired similar m-m-models from our allies just last year.”
 
The Doctor’s face tightened a moment. He began to tap his pen on his clipboard, sighed gently, and looked like he was about to speak before the guide stepped in. “Oh now, we know the Hegemony was advanced! It will be such a pleasure to work with the team who came up with such a similar design! Of course, we saved the more impressive inventions for later in the tour, didn’t we Dr. Lee?”
 
“Yeah...of course...nothing special here, just a generation’s worth of work. Come along then, let’s see what’s behind door number two…”
 
They led him further down the hall, to a large tracked vehicle with dozens of missile tubes. This time two targets emerged from the ground, both of them looked to be old, shoddy things pieced together from scraps. One was at the far end of the range, the other very close.
 
“Missiles are staples of the modern battlefield, excellent at the proper range, but useless outside of that. The Multiple Missile Launch System circumvents those issues by firing both long and short-range missiles with the flick of a switch. Capable of firing almost as many missiles as a dedicated SRM launcher of the same weight, but capable of engaging at long range. I can’t overstate the flexibility this gives to combat systems.”
 
The vehicle took turns firing a volley at each target, shredding them with waves of missiles at their ideal ranges.
“N-n-now this, Dr. Li, is an impressive development.”
 
The Doctor had managed to recover his confidence. “We really did leave the best for last, come this way.”
 
He led them on to an enormous 'mech that seemed to have pairs of guns where each of its arms should be.. A similarly sized piece of walking scrap rose from the ground, The mech let loose with a horrifying rain of fire that reduced it to bits in seconds.
“The Rotary Autocannon comes in two sizes, here you see the smaller RAC/2. I shall leave you to imagine how impressive the larger RAC/5 is. It has a rate of fire six times that of a normal autocannon of its size. Franklin’s Rifleman here is a special hand-crafted to carry four of them. It’s designed to make quick work of any aerospace or convention aircraft, but it does incredible work against ground-based opponents as well.”
 Five distant figures rose from the ground. Two of them were filled with holes before the lift had finished moving them. The Rifleman swept through them and within seconds, they were all smoking rubble.
 
“May the Gods have mercy on the enemy of the Hegemony.”, he remarked
 
The doctor’s smug grin has returned. “We don’t put our faith in other’s gods here, Corvus. We build our own.”
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ICHaFBI 9