InaG Chpt 5

==It's not a Gundam - Chapter 5 - Crossing the Rubicon ==
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===Returning from the Fight===
Junker City
Junker, Periphery (Rimward, Anti-Spinward)
February 3025
Junker was less a city and more a lived-in industrial park. As a people they had been oddly industrious compared to their neighbors. Garbage came in, something actually useful came out.
 
Even totaled wrecks could be brought here and the Junkers would make something good out of it.
 
Mayor Cid sipped from a mug that had once been an AC/2 shell as the lion's share of the militia returned. And it was definitely a triumphant return. A whole jumpship with fully occupied collars and bays filled with the ill-gotten gains of a Marian Cohort.
 
Junkers cheered, some already rushing the exhausted militiamen with hugs and kisses, and offered beer and cigars. Morale had never been better. Even so he gestured to his men to help tend to the many freed slaves held by the fake Romans. Many were half-starved or had old bruises. The healthier ones, to Cid's distaste, had scars of a more physical and ... intimate nature.
 
If he was younger, he would have climbed into his old Frankenmech and made sure some pirates hanged. But as a man who was getting on in the years he would need to rely upon someone younger and fitter to go out and bust some skulls for him.
 
"Exarch." He said to the man as he stepped off his Aerodyne.
 
"Mr. Mayor. It's done. The Marians won't be back so soon."
 
"They will try again." he reasoned, "Eventually. They always will. But we won't take things lying down. And I assume you have plans of your own."
 
"I do." He said, looking to a line of Marians in chains, wearing the same collars that they once used to enslave others, "inside."
 
Cid waved to his men to continue their work as he and Exarch entered the Ptolemaios.
 
The conference room was clean with multiple displays on the wall and a central holographic display. Nothing was old or hinted at being refurbished, it teased him to start tearing out ship parts but he knew the man who should have been First Lord would disapprove.
 
Cid's attention turned to the other men in the room. Biggs and Wedge, but also one of the former slaves, standing proud and tall despite his ordeal.
 
"Who are you?"
 
"Mashmyre, Mr Mayor!" He exclaimed, "The first recruit of the reborn Star League Defense Force!"
 
"I thought I was..." Biggs grumbled.
 
"That is jumping the gun." Exarch downplayed, "Both of you. Now Mr. Mayor I need to return the former slaves to their homes and that means I'll need to get help doing so."
 
"Comstar," Cid answered.
 
"Comstar." He admitted.
 
"You said you didn't trust them."
 
"An institution like that has plenty of rot."
 
Cid snorted, "What isn't? But I see your point."
 
Comstar was neutral. But it was an open secret that some Adepts favored their country, some saw it as just a job, some hungered for money and power, and what could be more powerful than a religion that had a stranglehold on both the Galaxy's economy and FTL Communication?
 
"I don't want anyone else to get involved."
 
Too late. Cid thought to himself.
 
Both of his right and left-hand men looked ready to jump at the call. And that Mash fellow was already on board.
 
Would the Eridani Light Horse... the Mayor asked himself, Would the Northwind Highlanders... answer his call also?
 
He lived long enough to get with the times. Hell, he owed Exarch for turning a colony that scratched a living off rocks into something better than his father had left him.
 
"I have contacts." he explained, "Merchants I've worked with, mercenaries they and I hired before, other local systems who don't take too kindly to slavers and pirates. And ... I can't stop my people from joining you. Exarch, I speak for Junker: We're in."
 
He held his hand out and Exarch took out.
 
"Your trust will not be misplaced with me." the masked man vowed, "In the meantime I have something else the AGE Builder decided to spit out."
 
"Maybe a fabricator that actually works half the time?" Cid mused.
 
"Remember that flight pack for the Tieren?"
 
"That was practically a cargo plane's parts welded onto your super heavy." The Mayor spoke, "I assume you got something better? Another Aries?"
If the Tieren made Lyrans look inadequate the Aries was practically a lust object for Aerojock's and the speed freak variety of Mechwarrior.
 
Exarch's response was to play with a display and now floating in front of them was a backpack-like setup with two large duct-fan rotors.
The Shrike is a 12 Ton in-atmosphere flight unit that can lift a 53.5 Ton Battlemech with the mobility and rough speed of a standard combat VTOL. Rather than relying on the pilot to maintain stability they automatically detect and adjust themselves based on positioning data. They ran on the power of their original 'mechs which used ultra-compact batteries like the Tieren. But with a Fusion Engine..."
 
"Near-indefinite," Cid realized, "no fuss piloting. Turning almost any Battlemech into a LAM. I'm glad you aren't our enemy."
 
They would already be dead if they did.
 
Their talks continued while in his mind Cid was imagining the changes to be made, he never pushed Exarch for his secrets, now that trickle was a fountain spout. When it was finally done he looked across his home for decades, imagining an E-Carbon plant on one hill and a Haro factory on another. He pinched the ridge of his nose. There was work to be done.
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===Getting that second chance===
Junker Jump Point, Aboard the Ptolemaios
Junker, Periphery (Rimward, Anti-Spinward)
February 3025
In the end I accepted Mashmyre into my employ. Me being here and him raving about 'second chances' convinced me to be on the lookout for more curveballs thrown at us.
 
In the meantime, I was readying for the coming war.
 
Volunteers from the Junker Militia, some from the slaves healthy and willing to fight, and even a few vetted former Slave-Soldiers who want to give back to the Marians for 'recruiting' them.
 
The first Gundam-verse upgrades being churned out by Junkers were going directly into refitting our existing Battlemechs. A fully refitted company for a fully refitted Union dropship. The Leopards would stay on Junkers to defend the world alongside all the manned Balls. The ones assigned to me were Haros; even reinforced as they were they were coffins in longer-duration fights.
 
The Invader and Union went ahead of us, dropping off the freed civilians and to make contact with Cid's allies.
 
As the Ptolemaios was charging up I was in the cargo hold once again, watching robotic arms pick up parts from the AGE Builder to weld onto the Tieren.
The fight would be on the ground and the Aries was for the moment being lent to Mashmyre. Between the two the Tieren was more a Battlemech in form and function. While he fussed over it with Mack regarding customization I was on the task to make it more mobile with a new variant: The Tieren High Mobility Type-B. It was just a Tieren with two hover units for legs. To describe it it would be like giving a fully-armored knight roller skates. If it didn't have automated balancing I could imagine it would have ended up as just another boondoggle in the Inner Sphere.
 
Myomers now ran along its arms, giving it the strength to crush the heads of Battlemechs, a low-rate Fusion Engine, and Dual Heat Sinks to recharge the battery and make this the first Hybrid Mobile Suit to grace the Inner Sphere, and mixing BT Armor with the E-Carbon to make it better of both worlds in terms of protection.
 
Then there were the weapons...
 
"LORD EXARCH!"
 
This time I only flinched just a little.
 
"We are ready to jump," Mashmyre explained.
 
"Understood." I nodded, "We need to get everything strapped in before we begin."
 
"..."
 
"Mr. Cello?"
 
"I ... remember..." Cello grimaced, "I was a tool hopelessly in love with a Haman that never existed."
 
From what I knew Mashmyre was a good man on the wrong side of a war and he was turned into a weapon, turned into a monster by the experiments of his master.
 
"I won't hold it against you."
 
"You aren't ... but ... Exarch ... I owe you for this. And your secret! I will not tell anyone! You have my word as The Knight of the Rose!"
 
My hand was on his shoulder, "Glad to hear it. But let's get to your seats first. We can't exactly free a nation when we're smears on the ground."
 
"U-understood!" he saluted, "Sieg, Exarch!"
 
I needed to find a better slogan before it spread like wildfire.
 
Together we walked onto the bridge, Mack, Bigs, and Wedge, were already strapped in with a lone Haro docked in a port on the arm of the Captain's seat.
 
"Is it charged, Wedge?" I asked.
 
"99.99%" he answered, "Ready when you are."
 
For once I was going to say something I always wanted to say in captain's chair: "Engage."
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===Crowded Jump Point in Middle of Nowhere===
Coalition Assembly Point, Aboard the Ptolemaios
Unnamed System, Periphery (Rimward, Anti-Spinward)
February 3025
"...Are we in the right place?"
 
"We are. The Junkers have a lot of friends. And the Marians made a lot of enemies."
 
In a nameless system in a backwater of space, I could see Jumpships. Plural. And plenty more Dropships as well.
 
Enough for an army.
 
Enough to fight a war.
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Chapter 5