GblaRCS Chpt 21

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 21 -==
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"I'm honestly in two minds as to whether it's really clever or really stupid to call it 'Project Hittile', and if they get it to work before I'm dead of old age I'll be surprised, but for what it's worth I do like the tagline on the proposal, 'Taking the miss out of missile'."Brigadier-General Craig Nellis - 2840 CE
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===(FLASHBACK) Meeting the Sibko===
Camelot Command – Dark Nebula (Lyran Commonwealth) – 2826
Frederick of Sibling Company Gamma had not known what to expect when they arrived at Camelot Command. Despite the fact his sibko had transferred over from Yukon to Zughoffer Weir for the journey from the Theta Carinae Cluster to the Dark Nebula, for some reason when they arrived at their destination a dropship had carried them back, reuniting them with Star Captain Francis just before Yukon came into dock.
Looking out through large windows made of thick armoured glass Frederick and the rest of his sibko watched transfixed as the massive airlock opened to allow Yukon to enter the massive internal bay of the station on thrusters. Although not nearly large enough to allow a battleship like the Zug to dock inside, a Riga II destroyer could do so easily, and it made for an awesome experience as the warship did so, huge spotlights inside the bay playing over the ship.
Flown with precision Yukon reached her final destination and stopped, mechanical clamps coming out to grab hold of her as the thrusters cut out. Once secure an airlock tunnel from the station snaked out and made a seal with one of the external locks on the destroyer so everyone aboard could disembark.
Apparently most of the vessels of the Switchback Fleet that could fit inside the station had either already been serviced here, or else at somewhere called Columbus before they even got this far, so Yukon had been bumped up the maintenance schedule for attention. The ship had come a long way, most of it completely alone and unsupported, so the engineers and technicians wanted to strip her down and make sure she was still in good shape as soon as possible.
That explained why they wanted Yukon to come in and dock of course, but it still didn't explain why they transferred the kits back to her before she did.
The answer to that came when the crew of Yukon and her passengers, Sibling Company Gamma, filed through the airlock and were directed on through a corridor and then onto an elevator large enough to carry a lance of assault mechs up to the higher levels where there the rotating station provided gravity.
The massive elevator door slid open inside a massive chamber on one of the decks where gravity was around half-a-gee.
The cavernous space was large enough to hold thousands of people, which was good because it actually was filled with thousands of people.
"Holy crap!" Frederick heard Star Captain Francis mutter under his breath as the crowd erupted in cheering and applause.
Momentarily stunned the crew of the Yukon didn't initially know what to do but they were beckoned to leave the elevator, space having been left by the crowd enabling them to do so.
A woman Francis didn't recognize approached, as she did so the Star Captain took note of her SLDF rank insignia that indicated she was a Colonel.
The colonel held out her hands and the cheering and applause ended immediately.
"Star Captain Francis?" the woman checked.
"Yes, Ma'am." Francis confirmed.
"Star Colonel Trish Ebon, saKhan of the Wolverines" she introduced herself.
"Attention on deck!" Francis ordered sharply, the crew of the Yukon and the children with them instantly snapping to attention as Francis saluted.
Trish Ebon returned the salute then smiled. "I bet Franklin did not do this, but you deserve it for getting your ship and crew out of clan space and especially for saving the kits" she told him before pulling a very surprised and then extremely embarrassed Star Captain Francis into a hug as the crowd began to cheer and applaud once again.
When this hug was described later as a 'bear hug' Trish Ebon objected to the phrasing. Wolverines don't get on well with bears, or Ghost Bears in particular.
"I think they're happy to see us, quiaff?" Frederick whispered to the other kits of sibko Gamma who were all bunched up together.
"Aff" Jennifer whispered back. The crew of the Zughoffer Weir had reacted in a similar fashion to seeing them but it just wasn't all at such a scale.
"No shit, Sherlock." David responded instead, he had hung around the engine room of Yukon quite a lot and the language in common usage down there was almost as bad as that of the marines.
"Let us get you all to the canteen for some fresh food and after that we will give you a tour of the place" Trish Ebon yelled at them over the noise of the crowd. "None of you will have to pay for your own drinks at the bar for a while" she added, grinning.
Half an hour later, Sibling Company Gamma were sat together around a large round table in the mess-hall. The fact that they could all fit around a single table was indicative of just how much of an exaggeration calling them a 'company' really was, because even calling them a 'Sibling Platoon' instead would have been overstating things as there weren't even enough of them to fill out two squads.
Having been born in 2816, or perhaps it might be described as decanted instead, as some of the first batches of children to emerge from the Iron Wombs, the kits of sibko Gamma were badly outnumbered by later sibling companies, particularly those from 2819 onwards when the technology was improved. They were prototypes in effect, not even early production models like the first batch from 2819 were, and it was a sad truth that quite a few of their potential 'brothers and sisters' never made it to full term in the wombs.
Everything about them was an experiment in effect, not just how they came to be, but also how they were raised because of what they were intended to become, or more actually made for a specific purpose.
In ancient Sparta boys were taken from the mothers at age seven to begin training as soldiers, by the time they were that age the kits of Sibling Company Gamma were already several years into the process and instead of playing with construction kits and toy battlemechs they were stripping down Mauser 960 Laser Rifles and getting used to wearing baby's first neurohelmet.
Needless to say they were all considered very, very weird by those raised in a more normal environment whose 'parents' weren't a gene-sequencer and a cannister full of slimy goop.
They were still enough like normal children that Trish Ebon had noticed they seemed to be getting overwhelmed by all the attention and she had ordered for them to be left alone to adjust to their new circumstances.
Having each collected a tray of food before choosing an empty table for themselves, Star Captain Francis sat nearby with other officers from Yukon, they chatted among themselves while eating some kind of thick unfamiliar vegetable stew called 'shiro' that was served on a large flatbread called 'Injera'. According to the catering staff who had served them the food was imported from a planet called Nakfa, one of the worlds in a different region of the Dark Nebula to Camelot called the Erit Cluster, and while it wasn't exactly what they were used to eating it was actually pretty tasty.
"What is in this again?" Frederick asked curiously, spooning up some of the stew.
"They told me it is chickpeas, onion and garlic." Jennifer replied, having asked. "Tomorrow we get something called qulwa that has meat in it."
"Anything that is not a ration pack is fine by me." David said with conviction, digging in.
"Ration packs are very healthy and meet all dietary needs" Jennifer pointed out.
"They just forgot to add flavor" Frederick observed, 'and texture."
"And flavor" David added.
"I already said flavor" Frederick responded, rolling his eyes.
"It needed repeating for emphasis."
"Why is the table round, not rectangular like normal?" one of the other kits, Henry, asked.
"I guess because of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" Frederick theorized. "His castle was called Camelot so Camelot Command gets round tables" he said, recalling the bedtime stories they had been read while they were little about the days of yore when valiant knights in armor did battle against each other in honorable single combat.
"That was my assumption too, and someone deleted the database here so we can't check if we're right" a woman interjected.
The kits looked around and found an older woman, maybe ilKhan Kerensky's age, stood there. She was wearing an SLDF duty uniform which hardly made her stand out, but her rank insignia certainly did.
"Attention on deck!" Jennifer ordered, the kits of Sibling Company Gamma dropping their spoons onto their trays and getting off their chairs, snapping to attention.
Jenna Romanov couldn't help but smile at the sight of a bunch of ten-year-olds, all of them wearing the smallest jumpsuits anyone could find for them, sleeves and trouser legs rolled up to make them fit as best they could, reacting like trained soldiers.
"At ease," Romanov told them. "I thought I should introduce myself to the newest additions to my command" she said. "Major-General Jenna Romanov, 295th Battlemech Division, Acting Commander Eleventh Army."
"We know who you are, Ma'am" Jennifer responded for the group. "Khan Hallis explained the situation to us aboard the Zughoffer Weir." she said. "The Sibcadets of Sibling Company Gamma stands ready to serve the Star League Defence Force in any capacity you require" the girl announced formally.
Having been raised on stories of the SLDF fighting Amaris, not just mythologized tales of times of old when knights were bold, Sarah and the other kits had adjusted quickly to the notion that the person in charge now was not actually a member of the clan. After all, Jenna Romanov had led her division into battle against the usurper alongside James McEvedy and his 331st, it was the Eleventh Army they both belonged to that took Apollo, the capital world of the Rim Worlds Republic, and they both went on to rid Terra of the foul stench of Amaris.
"At the moment I just require you to finish your meal, so all of you please sit back down" Romanov told them, amused by just how serious they all were.
Jennifer and the others complied and reached for their spoons again to resume eating.
"Are we going to go back and fight the clans soon General, quiaff?" Frederick asked. "I have both mechwarrior and aerospace fighter pilot genes, so I do not mind which you want to put me in" he added.
Romanov chuckled. "Probably best if you're big enough to reach the controls first before we think about sending you to take on Nicholas Kerensky, don't you think?" she asked rhetorically, hoping she didn't sound patronizing.
Frederick thought about that and had to admit the woman made a valid point. "Aff" he conceded reluctantly.
"You have got to be General Hallis's son." Romanov decided, taking a good look at him.
"Yes, but also no." Frederick replied. "I mean I am not really his son. I am more like his clone, but again not really." he said, failing to clear up the matter. "The majority of my genes came from Khan Hallis, not that he was a Khan then, or even a saKhan yet."
"My genefather was Dwight Robertson" David spoke up. "He was saKhan before Franklin Hallis."
"And my genemother was Sarah McEvedy" Jennifer told the general. "She was Khan before Franklin Hallis."
"He got promoted fast because back-stabbing clanner ****** kept murdering us." Frederick growled. "They talk about honor but then they bring King Crab assault mechs to what should have been a fair fight, or they nuke your city, lying that you did it to yourself, and then frame you for nuking another city knowing that it was an accident and one of their nukes that did it."
"Bastards" David concurred. He still vividly remembered how he felt when Star Captain Francis took him to one side and told him of Dwight Robertson's death just before he told the others. It wasn't just that the Widowmakers had brought assaults to fight the heavies that saKhan Robertson and Khan McEvedy were using, that was simply cowardly, but they had also broken the rules of engagement by both attacking the Robertson's Black Knight together to knock him out of the fight before then ganging up on McEvedy. It was supposed to be a pair of one-on-one duels, formal ritual combat practiced according to the ilKhan's rules, and even Khan McEvedy who thought applying those rules to an actual battle was pretty stupid still followed them for Trials.
"They will get what is coming to them." Jennifer declared. "Did you know that ilKhan Kerensky had every member of our warrior caste who surrendered summarily executed and every one of our civilian castes who did not escape chemically sterilized?" she asked rhetorically. As the last Clan Wolverine ship to escape, Yukon had still been deep inside clan territory when that order was sent out, which was why it had come as a blessed relief that the star-captain from the Ghost Bears they ran into on Liny while they were gathering supplies had been merciful enough to let them go. According to his orders he should have slaughtered them, but apparently even the ilKhan's commandments mattered less to him than having the deaths of children on his conscience did.
"So I've heard." Romanov replied, more than mildly disturbed by just how serious and intense the little girl was.
"Then you know why we are going to go back" Jennifer said coldly. "They sowed the wind and they are going to reap the whirlwind" she added, deliberately invoking what her gene-mother had told the other Khans was going to happen.
The other children nodded solemnly before one of them suddenly smiled at she had a bright idea. "We should design a new mech called the Whirlwind, quiaff?" she suggested.
"Neg. There is already a class of destroyer called that" Frederick pointed out. "Badger is a Whirlwind."
"So? There is a type of tank called a Fury and a type of dropship that is called a Fury too, but nobody gets them confused." the girl, Katrina, countered. "It is not like anyone is going to think you are talking about the warship when you say that there is a lance of Whirlwinds on the way to reinforce the line, quiaff?"
"Aff, I suppose." Frederick reluctantly conceded the point.
"Maybe you could all brainstorm what you think a Whirlwind mech should be like." Romanov suggested, thinking it might be a good activity to keep them busy.
"And then give the ideas to the Scientist and Technician castes you mean?" David reasoned. That was what the 'Great Father' Aleksandr Kerensky had done with the Atlas after all, came up with the design specifications and let the experts actually work out how to make a machine to meet them.
"There are no castes anymore. Khan Hallis told us that Khan McEvedy abolished them." Jennifer reminded him. "We are just supposed to call them scientists and technicians now."
"She changed other things too." Henry spoke up, frowning. "I do not know if I am happy that we are allowed to call ourselves by our blood-names without earning it."
"Perhaps we should ask permission from our gene-parents first at least, quiaff?" Henry suggested.
"Aff," Frederick agreed. "but that is easier for some of us than for others." he noted, looking to Jennifer and David.
"I will ask Khan Hallis if I can call myself Jennifer McEvedy" Jennifer decided.
David nodded. "And I will ask him if I can call myself David Robertson" he concurred.
"If he says no you could always call yourself David Robertsonson instead" Frederick joked, David finding it somewhere less amusing judging by the glare he directed at him.
Henry laughed however. "And if they ever use Dave's DNA to make a new Trueborn they could call him Davidson Robertsonson."
"I do not think we are supposed to say 'Trueborn' either because it makes us sound like we think we are better than other people" Jennifer noted. "Khan Hallis suggested we call ourselves 'Ironborn' instead, because of the Iron Wombs, but it was not an order."
"But we are better than other people are we not, quiaff?" Katrina responded. "We were genetically engineered to be."
"I think the problem is that 'True' implies some kind of moral, not physical superiority" Jennifer supposed, looking to General Romanov for confirmation.
"That's partially correct" Romanov told her carefully. "It's also that when people think they're better than other people then they can use that as a justification to mistreat them" she explained as best she could, trying not to overcomplicate it all given the age of the children. "It also divides a society because the people being looked down upon will be discontent and unhappy."
"Like the laborer caste in Clan Smoke Jaguar." Katrina realized. "Star Captain Francis said that the reason we did not need to use warriors to force our laborers to work like the Jaguars did was because their laborers hated their warriors, and ours did not."
"The other clans were stupid not to let people move between castes" Jennifer declared. "It only wasted talent and made the other castes feel less like members of the clan" she said. "Khan McEvedy was too smart for that."
"Yes, she was." Frederick agreed. "It is a pity that they gave you her looks but not her brains, quiaff?"
"NEG!" Jennifer responded angrily. "They gave me all her DNA that related to intelligence" she stated with utter certainty. "Take that back or face me in a Circle of Equals!" she challenged him angrily, glaring at the boy.
Frederick grinned. "I apologize, though my greater regret is that I did not save that jibe for when we spar because your anger would have surely caused you to act rashly and lose the bout" he said.
"The suggestion that you would win the bout regardless of how rash I was is by far the funniest thing you have said all week" Jennifer replied, smirking for a moment before sticking out her tongue at him.
The juxtaposition of their strangely formal speech patterns, they seemed to eschew normal contraction even more than the adult Wolverines, with the little girl sticking out her tongue at the little boy nearly caused Romanov to burst out laughing but she held it back. "I should go talk to Captain Francis and the Yukon crew" she told the children. "Nice to have met you all" she added.
"General Romanov" Jennifer responded, acknowledging her authority with a slight bow.
"Remember to try some of the fruit" Romanov remembered to tell them, pointing over to where another table seemed to be piled high with various types. "It's good for you, plenty of vitamins" she told them. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" she added something her mother always said.
"They are full of sugar though" Jennifer responded. "An apple a day keeps the dentist in pay" she countered the old saying impishly, looking pleased with herself.
"The lychees are worth brushing your teeth for, trust me" Romanov told the girl, smiling.
"Of course, we trust you, General" Jennifer replied seriously, the other kits of sibko Gamma nodding their agreement. "Although… what is a lychee?" she asked.
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===(FLASHBACK) Talk of plans beyond Camelot===
Elsewhere in Camelot Command, Franklin Hallis was looking at the bowl of fruit sat on his desk dubiously. At least nobody else had take over his quarters during his long absence from Camelot Command but he strongly suspected that Trish had been using his office because nothing was in the same place it had been before he set off to search for Yukon.
Trish herself was sat on the other side of the desk waiting to give him an update on what had been going on in his absence.
"Did you 'borrow' my stationary, saKhan Ebon?" Hallis asked suspiciously. "I am certain that there used to be more pens in that pen holder" he told her.
"I have no idea what you are talking about, Khan Hallis." Trish replied sweetly.
Hallis narrowed his eyes at her and muttered something under his breath. "What is with the fruit basket?" he queried.
"I thought it might make for a nice homecoming present." Trish told him. "We had a big shipment in from Paran a couple of days ago."
"Paran? Were the rumors of an Avatar being there true?" Hallis asked.
"Affirmative" Trish confirmed. "It belongs, or maybe belonged to the Star League Expeditionary Brigade, one of their fleet of survey and exploration ships" she told him. "Most of the crew are the descendants of the original crew now, although there are apparently still a few old hands aboard keeping the thing running as best they can. Their jumpdrive slagged itself after jumping into Paran back in 2819, probably from going too long without being serviced, so they've been stuck there ever since."
"We made contact with them?" Hallis queried.
"Only incognito," Trish replied. "The Tramp we sent out told them they were investigating the rumour of them being there because they found an old cache of Star League Navy supplies they could not sell to anyone else. There's not really much of market for naval autocannon ammunition and the like if you don't want to deal directly with a Great House so I guess that sounded plausible."
"We traded them naval ordinance for alien fruit, query affirmative?" Hallis responded, raising his eyebrows.
"Aff, although we traded them some ammunition for a lot of fruit, and a dropship hold full of frozen fish as well" Trish replied. "And it's not alien fruit, they only grow Terran transplants on Paran."
"Except the bananas, I've never seen fruit like this in my life." Hallis replied, taking another look at it.
"Those are lychees, those are starfruit, those are dragon fruit and those are mangosteens" Trish pointed to each in turn. "Paran is covered with tropical islands. We've got lots of coconuts and pineapples too, but they're not really fruit-bowl appropriate" she said. "There is breadfruit as well, but that's more of a staple you can use instead of rice or potatoes… or bread."
Hallis took another look at the basket of fruit, at least if they were of Terran origin they were probably not going to trigger the kinds of weird allergic reactions that alien foodstuffs sometimes did. "Did our people find out anything else?"
"They were smart enough to say that they found a load of old spare parts in the cache too and wondered if the crew of the Pioneer, that is the name of the Avatar by the way, were interested in anything on the list we made up to show them. That hopefully gave us some inkling of the state of the ship, it's far from a wreck but other than spares for weapon systems they were very interested in spares for manoeuvring thrusters and the station-keeping drive so those might need replacing. We also learned that there is some tension between them and the locals. Not exactly surprising given that Paran was part of the Rim Worlds Republic, having a warship belonging to the other side turning up on their doorstep was bound to ruffle some feathers."
Hallis nodded. "Do we know how screwed their K-F core is?"
"None of our people got to take a look first-hand, but they got the impression that back in the old days it would have been written off and completely replaced." Trish replied. "As in, cut the ship in half, yank the whole damn drive out, put in a new one and weld the ship back together" she said. "The last time that ship was in drydock when Simon Cameron was still First Lord, and I would bet that the Expeditionary Brigade really put some miles on her even before the Star League collapsed."
"That is unfortunate." Hallis responded, sighing. "Getting hold of a Expeditionary Brigade ship might have come in really handy if we end up having to leave the Inner Sphere completely, and if it's true they're on bad terms with the natives it should not have been too hard to get them to tag along. We need to start thinking ahead, it's not like we can stay here forever."
Trish nodded. "We might have a lead on somewhere to go." she told him. "It is not technically in the Inner Sphere but it's only one jump out."
"Yeah?"
"Captain Mitchell from the Badger suggested we check out a colony that the Terran Hegemony placed just outside Marik space" Trish said. "The system is called Niops."
"Never heard of it."
"Seems like nobody has except Mitchell" Trish replied with a shrug. "He only knew where it was because way, way back when he was a navigation officer on a transport jumpship attached to XXXIV Corps and he used to unofficially run supplies to and from there."
"Unofficially?"
"From what he told us, the CO of XXXIV Corps, I think her name was Von Corvden or something, could not get all the logistical support she needed for her troops so she turned to unorthodox methods to get hold of them instead" Trish explained. "Some things were easier to get than others, she did a deal with the Illyrians for certain raw materials for example, but high-tech equipment, especially Hegemony high-tech equipment was trickier so she made arrangements with Niops."
"They're an industrial colony?" Hallis queried.
"No, they're a scientific research colony, astronomy and astrophysics, but they were established to be entirely self-sufficient with the ability to fix or replace any piece of equipment that went wrong" Trish told him. "According to Mitchell, they could make anything you provided the blueprints for." she continued. "That's not hyperbole either, I mean anything" she said. "One of the things they turned out for Von Corvden was a replacement mobile HPG, and they made spares for her Royal mechs and aerospace fighters too."
"Those are restricted technologies" Hallis pointed out, doubtfully.
"Right, restricted to the Terran Hegemony only" Trish confirmed. "The thing is, because Niops was a Terran Hegemony colony Von Corvden figured she could get away with it without getting put up against a wall and shot" she continued. "Mitchell knows that SLDF High Command were told, but he thinks they turned a blind eye because technically XXXIV Corps wasn't breaking any laws and it stopped them bugging Terra for more supplies."
"Plausible I suppose." Hallis decided after thinking about it. "So why are we interested in the place?"
"Because not only has nobody in the entire fleet except Mitchell even heard of it, when we dug through every piece of news reporting we could get our hands on regarding the Great Succession War it is not mentioned once either" Trish replied. "There is an actually possibility that they were just so damn obscure and off the beaten track that Niops is the only Terran Hegemony colony that is still completely intact."
"If they were entirely self-sufficient they could have kept their heads down right through all the fighting you mean, query affirmative?"
"Aff" Trish responded, nodding. "Turned off their HPG and hoped like hell not to get noticed by anyone more dangerous than pirates" she said. "Pirates they could deal with easily enough, the SLDF provided them with a bunch of cast-off equipment to arm a local defence force."
"Worth checking out the place at least" Hallis decided.
"Romanov thought so too, she sent Mitchell off in a jumpship to go take a look not long after you set out to find Yukon but do not expect to see back anytime soon" Trish told him. "Niops is about thirty jumps from here, so even in an L-F Tramp it's quite the trip there and back."
"Thirty jumps? That's most of the way to the Magistracy!"
Trish grinned. "For anybody but us that would be a long journey, but compared to how far we travelled since we left Strana Mechty behind it is practically next door" she joked.
"Just as long as Mitchell doesn't die of old age before he gets back" Hallis remarked drily. "Any other news?"
"We have had some success in locating caches of SLDF equipment in and around the Lyran Commonwealth." Trish replied, nodding. "The ship we sent out to the old Finmark and Timbuktu provinces of the Rim Worlds Republic really raised the bar on that."
"Go on." Hallis requested.
"Well for a start they found a derelict Congress Class Frigate near Finmark, the James Sever" trish told him. "Not much worth salvaging on her but they had the bright idea to nudge it into a rapidly decaying orbit. All we have to do is paint new markings on the Rickenbacker, reset her IFF to squawk she is the SLS James Sever and we have another warship we don't have to hide away."
"That could be damn useful." Hallis responded, thinking about it. They already had the Cape Bon and Protecteur that they could risk being spotted without bringing the Clans running, but a Congress class frigate had a larger cargo hold, and unlike the destroyers could also haul a couple of dropships with her. "It's not like we can send Yukon or Saratoga out without Old Nick blowing a gasket." he noted. "With or without fake accents." he added, grinning.
"Fake accents?" Trish asked, confused.
"Oh, you are in for a real treat when you get to listen to their communications with ComStar." Hallis told her, laughing. "I won't spoil it, but Captain Meriño on Saratoga earned himself a commendation for comedy above and beyond the call of duty" he continued. "Also, we need to find him a sombrero."
Trish looked at him suspiciously for a moment, wondering if he was yanking her chain somehow, before dismissing it from her mind. "Okay, getting back to what I was saying, after they found the wreck of the James Sever they checked out the two supply depots we had records for, starting with the one near Vortalcoy."
"Any luck?"
"They found two companies worth of SLDF mechs there" Trish told him. "Not just junk either, pristine condition and nearly half of them were heavies or assaults, including a King Crab."
Hallis nodded, smiling. "That's a damn fine haul. Good thing we found them before some ****** pirate did out there" he said seriously. Much of the former Rim Worlds Republic had fallen to piracy and general lawlessness, due in no small part to the Lyrans annexing many of its most productive worlds and then actively making sure the others were prevented from recovering from the Amaris War. "What about the other depot?"
"The one at Rosetta? Not quite so good in terms of mechs, only a single company and the largest machines were a lance of Rifleman heavies" Trish replied. "Are you going to eat anything from that fruit basket?" she asked, changing subject. "Rude not to considering I put it together for you as a welcome home gift."
Hallis groaned, if he didn't at least eat something from there she would nag him about it. After weighing his options he chose the banana, mostly because he knew what it was.
Trish waited until he peeled the banana and took a bite before speaking again. "We also found a data core, nothing on it that we did not already know except for some missile research data concerning FTL LRM's."
Hallis chewed and swallowed. "Never did think much of Follow-The-Leader guided warheads" he told her. "When they work they're great, first missile hits and all the rest impact in the same place one after the other, but when they go wrong they all follow an LRM that missed so you do not hit with any of them."
"That is what the research is about. They were trying to fix that flaw" Trish told him.
"Did they?" Hallis asked hopefully. An FTL LRM system that always worked as intended would be a nightmare in a long-range firefight.
"No" Trish replied flatly.
"Crap" Hallis swore glumly, taking another large bite from his banana.
"Although we did also find four and a half thousand crates of Starfire Mark 2500 guided SRMs" Trish told him casually, having timed saying it for when he had a mouthful of fruit.
Franklin Hallis nearly spat out the chunk of banana but instead just managed to swallow it instead, in one piece, unchewed, triggering a minor coughing fit. "Headhunters?" he eventually managed to gasp out.
"Headhunters" Trish confirmed. "Thousands of them. We assume that they and the data core were transferred from a missile research facility somewhere in the Hegemony to keep them out of the hands of Amaris, and they eventually ended up at the depot on Rosetta."
Hallis stared at her, mind still catching up. "Do you have any idea what those things can do?" he asked rhetorically.
"Hopefully exactly what it says they do on the booklet of instructions inside the crates" Trish replied, grinning. "Do not get your hopes up too high though, we took one apart and there is no chance we can reverse-engineer them to make more because the electronics inside are more advanced than our technicians have ever dreamed of" she cautioned, "but if we save them for a rainy day we have one hell of an ace up our sleeves."
"Mixed metaphor aside I would have to agree" Hallis concurred, mind abuzz with the ramifications of the find. The 'Headhunter' guidance system was not merely cutting-edge military technology, it was bleeding edge at least on a par with the AI systems that ran the Terran Hegemony's SDS network, if not beyond it.
Anecdotally the problem with the things was always that they were quite ludicrously expensive, to the point that even the Royal Divisions with their vast equipment budgets were many years away from getting hold of any when the Star League fell apart.
An Artemis IV guided SRM or LRM cost twice as much as a standard missile, which was bad enough, but a Headhunter SRM or LRM was expected to be at least five times as expensive as their Artemis IV brethren, and that would be after they were put into full production reducing the price per unit.
There was a good reason why all the old test footage of the Starfire Mark 2500 being fired against old mech targets showed them being launched singly, not as a volley. To say the pre-production missiles were literally worth their weight in germanium would be a massive underestimate of the reality.
The Starfire Mark 2500 was akin to the guided weapons of the twenty-first century, the time before ECM systems requiring wattages only a portable nuclear powerplant could provide rendered fire-and-forget weaponry, and many electronic targeting systems, obsolete. They earned the 'Headhunter' nickname because they were best employed for exactly that purpose, target them on the cockpit of an enemy battlemech and watch with glee as they hurtled across the battlefield and smashed straight into it with the intent of turning the man or woman inside into mush.
In furtherance of helping it achieve that noble goal the Starfire also carried a fancy new type of tandem-charge warhead, one that was extremely bad news for the ablative armors that battlemechs utilised because of the prevalence of direct-energy-weapons on modern battlefields.
"I guess after we've tested a few we will put the rest in a vault with a sigh on the door saying 'Open only in the event of Clanners' right Khan Hallis, query affirmative?" Trish suggested, grinning.
"Affirmative. Well, we sure-as-shit won't need them to guarantee a whupping for anyone else, saKhan Ebon." Hallis replied as a matter of certainty. The Great Houses of the Inner Sphere couldn't even make NARC beacons anymore, to them an M2500 would be like some kind of dark sorcery practiced by evil wizards.
Trish reached for a lychee. "It is a pity they could not get their solution to the problem with the Follow-The-Leader missiles to work." she said. "I will have to tip my hat to whoever had the bright idea though."
"What was it?" Hallis queried.
"Fire a modified Headhunter LRM first and get the much cheaper FTL LRM missiles to follow that" Trish told him, nibbling at the small fruit.
Hallis blinked. "Oh, we are definitely going to be taking another look at that project if we ever get the chance to throw money and resources at R&D." he stated firmly.
"Thought you might like it." Trish replied, reaching for another lychee.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Thanks to escaping the Clan Homeworlds aboard Yukon (the last Wolverine vessel to make it) the kits of Sibling Company Gamma are still a great deal more 'clanner' than the rest of the Wolverines at this point (they always will be to some extend given their history but it is particularly noticable in 2826 when they reunite with everyone else. They're only ten years old, having been born, or decanted, in 2816 so very much still children, but they're hardly normal kids. The Clans were still making it up as the went along this early so the crèche and sibko arrangements are not what they were later.Paran VI was a breadbasket world for the Rim Worlds Republic, a little hotter than Terra and known for its islands. Tropical fruit seemed like something they might be growing in abundance, as well as having a large scale fisteries industry. The crew of the Star League Expeditionary Brigade ship Pioneer who ended up stuck on Paran when their jumpdrive failed there in 2819 were not well liked by the locals when they first arrrived. Relations improved immensely however in 2830 when the people of the Paran system learned how useful it was to have an Avatar Class Heavy Cruiser backing them up when a load of pirates jumped in and found themselves a tiny bit ougunned (the jumpdrive on Pioneer might not work but her weaponry still did).When she found herself placed in charge of XXXIV Corps in 2764 Major-General Lijsbeth van Coevorden solved her supply issues creatively, including trading with Niops the closest advanced Terran Hegemony colony to where her Corps her based on the periphery edge of the Free Worlds League. SLDF High Command turned a blind eye to these unofficial, and unauthorised, schemes for whatever reason.The two companies of mechs they found in an old Star league depot near Vortalcoy are the ones that Hopper Morrison would have found in canon in 3032. The other depot, SLD-601 on Rosetta would have been found by Hansen's Roughriders in 3028 but mostly because of unfortunate timing they never managed to secure the small number of mechs found there, the datacore present, or the thousands of Starfire Mark 2500 Headhunter missiles left in the depot. My assumption for why the SLDF didn't quickly mulch the RWR Army with Headhunter missiles during the Amaris War was that they were so advanced (and expensive) that they barely had any (the ones of Rosetta might have been the large majority existing and were intended for scale-scale testing when the coup started).Another late Star League missile type was the Follow-The-Leader (or FTL) that worked either really well, or really badly, depending on whether the 'leader' was going the right way. I couldn't help but think that a more reliable 'leader' in the form of a Headhunter would make the things live up to their potential.
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