GblaRCS Chpt 38

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 38 -==
<<Next Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
"To quote a distant relation of mine, 'Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die'."'General Leigh MacArthur - 2764CE
----
===Trouble with Generals and their Granddaughters===
Illyria III, Illyrian Palatinate – 2839
Dave Robertson leaned back against the stack of ammunition crates which had just been unloaded from the Mule cargo Dropship that had accompanied the SLDF Overlord beside it here and idly wondered if the cute blonde local girl who had been driving the forklift was single. The contingent of the Niops military dispatched to Illyria was there to help train the Ilyrian militia in the use of the Manticore tank in preparation for a number of those being delivered from the Magistracy, but until they were needed for that that the kits of what was once sibko Gamma were stood idle and were currently very bored. The tread-heads had more to do of course, they had unloaded their tanks as soon as they arrived while the mechs were left aboard the ship until they were needed.
At least it was warm, and sunny enough that most of the Niops people were wearing sunglasses to deal with the glare from the system's G4V star, but that only raised a few questions in Robertson's mind that he wondered if his two companions could answer.
"You know what I don't understand..." Dave began to speak.
 
"Pretty much everything as far as I can determine" Frederick Hallis interjected before Robertson could continue. Hallis himself had opened one of the crates and was inspecting the contents. According to the markings on the crate they were training SRMs that lacked warheads, but it was always a good idea to check if that was really what was in them. He wasn't entirely sure if the local militia people could tell the difference between training munitions and live rounds and if they might be shot at him later he wanted some reassurance.
 
"What I don't understand" Robertson continued, ignoring the snark, "is how a planet with a breathable atmosphere, a pretty decent climate, and which was colonized nearly five hundred years ago can still have less than a quarter of a million people living on it" Robertson asked rhetorically. "When they said we'd be setting down at a militia training ground few klicks north of the planetary capital I was expecting a city not a town. It's not even a big town" he complained, having seen it from the air as the two Niops Dropships came into land earlier that morning.
"Ah, yeah I see what the problem is." Henry Callaghan spoke up. "They hide that kind of information in books." he told his friend while looking over towards the collection of wooden huts and a number of hangers yonder that constituted the military base, such as it was. The Illyrian militia wasn't exactly well-funded, leading them to also being poorly trained and equipped, and one thing that brought that fact neatly into focus were the Merkava VIII tanks they still used that dated from the early days of the Age of War and hadn't been updated since, one of which could be seen parked next to an Apostle SPG which was even older.
 
"You're right." Frederick concurred with Henry. "Now you see Dave, a 'book' is like a comic, only with less pictures and more words" he explained in as serious a tone as he could muster.
 
"Fuck you both very much" Robertson responded, glaring at them. "Seriously, I mean it's not exactly Terra, or Stafford, but this place is way nicer than any planet in Niops, hell a lot more people live on goddamn Alphard than here and that's mostly desert. Are most of the people here sterile or something?"
 
Henry sighed. "No, they have kids, they just tend to leave when they're old enough because their prospects are shit" he explained. "You know how the Palatinate is an oligarchy founded by a bunch of merchant families back in the 24th Century? Well, those same families still run the place, and if you're not born into one of them there's not much chance of getting very far in life. Unless you're happy working as a miner for crappy wages until the day you die you hitch a ride on the next JumpShip going somewhere else and never look back."
 
"It's not an actual dictatorship or anything so they don't try to force people to stay, and the ruling families aren't tyrannical and oppressive enough for the majority to rise up and overthrow them, so they just ended up stuck in the current social stasis" Frederick added. "If the Free Worlds League hadn't thrown in the towel at the end of last year that might have all changed because most people that emigrated from Illyria usually went there, and the League was starting to look a lot less attractive a place to move to as their economy collapsed but I guess now the status quo is going to return" he surmised.
 
"Not necessarily, I can see people from here migrating to one of our colonies in future" Henry disagreed. "We've already got guest workers from Palatinate worlds taking five-year contracts on Alphard, some of them might decide to stay."
 
"Certainly possible" Frederick had to admit. "The only working stiffs who earn a decent wage here are the ones that work in the Dropship yard down on the southern continent, the Star League built it for them when it was still trying to win hearts and minds in the periphery, not just keep them in line with threats of sending in the fleet if they misbehaved. If I'm remembering right they only make the Danais class here though, the Terran Hegemony didn't want them having too much useful infrastructure all the way out here" he added with a wry smile. The Danais class Dropship wasn't a bad design per se, it was just a little basic technologically and a lot smaller that something like a Mule, the mainstay of cargo transportation in the Inner Sphere.
 
"Okay, since you two seem to know everything there is to know about this place what is there to do in terms of having some fun?" Dave asked the most important question as far as he was concerned.
 
"Not much for us, given that we're not allowed to drink, unlike the tank crews who I know are planning on going into town this evening to try out the bars, but if we're stuck here for months which is on the cards, and ComStar get around to restoring the HPG net all the way out to Illyria soon, they'll likely re-start the Annual Mechwarior Games they usually host here that got shelved during the Interdiction because they couldn't advertise or send out invites" Henry replied. "It's like the poor man's Solaris Games, decent prizes for the victors and the locals make bank from spectators who come here to watch and gamble" he explained. "It's a damn shame we can't roll up in the Bull Shark prototype and stomp everyone.
 
"Why not? It's not like the clanners every saw the thing in action." Dave asked, reasonably he thought.
 
"Anyone looking at a Bull Shark next to a picture of a Pulverizer or even a Mercury II is going to notice immediately how Clan Wolverine the styling is and the winner of the assault class division is going to get their picture splashed all over the Inner Sphere." Henry replied, as ever the voice of reason. "If we weren't worried about that shit we'd stick Billy the Kid in the thing, send him off to Solaris and bet ten billion on the funny looking mech driven by the guy with the big mouth."
 
"Yeah, it would be our biggest earner since we found the germanium stockpile on Alphard." Frederick agreed. "Talking of gambling and the Interdiction being lifted, bet you both fifty bucks that Illyria gets back on the network before we do." he wagered. "The longer they leave it until they get the Hednesford HPG station running the more pressure the phone company thinks we're under" he said. Although it had been a few months now since Captain-General Gerald Marik sent his little brother Garth to Terra to negotiate an end to the ComStar War much of the Free Worlds League was yet to have a working HPG station again. Much of that was likely due to how seriously some of them had been sabotaged to stop the FWL using them, but SLDF Intelligence suspected that Primus Raymond Karpov was slow-walking repairs to punish the Marik's for not bending the knee low enough during peace negotiations. From what Niops could tell young Garth Marik had done a great job on his people's behalf, getting ComStar to restore the Hyperpulse Generator network without having to kowtow in a humiliating fashion and not having to agree to pay excessive financial damages into the bargain. In this he was likely helped somewhat by the slight rally in the military fortunes of the League due to all the extra PPC's arriving from Niops, Niops itself hoping that the Marik's would remember that.
 
"No bet, ComStar are dicks and they think they can get what they want from us by being dicks" Dave replied flatly, Henry nodding his agreement. "Hey, the girls are back" he noticed, pointing to where Jennifer and Katrina were heading back their way after going to meet with Major MacArthur who was in charge of the training mission, with the captain commanding the tanks as his second in command. Although the SLDF Overlord had transported two companies of mechs and only a single company of tanks to Illyria each Manticore having four crew meant that the tankers made up the bulk of SLDF army personnel. "Why did you ask Kat to go with Jennifer instead of you anyway Fred?" he asked curiously, you usually jump at the chance to play wingman.
 
Frederick sighed. "I don't think the Major likes me." he explained.
 
"What makes you think so?" Henry asked.
 
"Because Alice told me he doesn't like me." Frederick replied matter-of-factly.
 
"Ah, I guess he's still not come around to the idea that his precious granddaughter is dating some soulless, gene-spliced freak of science" Henry surmised.
 
"Why would that bother him?" Dave asked, feigning mystification. "She's a redhead so it's not like she's got a soul either." he pointed out, confident he was far enough away from Fred to avoid a punch if one was thrown his way in response.
 
Realizing that Dave was out of arm's reach Frederick let that one slide. "It's not the genetic engineering, it's being a Hallis." he explained. "Supposedly way back when Leigh MacArthur, Alice's great-grandmother, commanded the 295th my grandfather, who still commanded the 331st back then, made some joke at a party about the 295th losing their royal status and asked if they'd checked the back of the sofa."
 
"You're kidding?" Henry asked incredulously.
 
"Nope, I guess they'd had all had a few drinks, so it sounded funnier at the time and a whole bunch of generals laughed their asses off, which really pissed off Leigh MacArthur because she was pushing hard for the 295th to get their royal title back and thought it was a personal attack or something, not just a stupid joke." Frederick told him. "She was the reason the 295th started a policy of only recruiting from Terran Hegemony worlds, something General Romanov continued" he added. In order to even be considered for 'Royal' status as an SLDF unit it was a requirement that the unit's personnel were from the Hegemony itself, not just a Star League member state. House Cameron only wanted the best gear going to the troops they considered most loyal to themselves.
 
In many ways the Royal SLDF units like the 331st were just the pre Star-League Terran Hegemony Armed Forces wearing different badges on their uniforms.
 
"So, she told her son that Frederick Hallis was an asshole and then decades later his granddaughter gets involved with another Frederick Hallis, the grandson of the original" Dave concluded. "That's hilarious!" he declared, laughing.
 
"It really is a small galaxy," Henry observed. "What are the chances?"
 
"I'd prefer not to know." Frederick replied honestly. "It's got to be improbable enough to make me believe in fate, or that there's some deity messing with me personally."
 
"It wasn't a deity that put you and Alice together, it was Jennifer." Henry noted just as the girl herself arrived at the scene.
 
"Are you denying my divinity again Henry, didn't I warn you about that before?" Jennifer McEvedy asked deadpan. "Do I have to send a lightning bolt your way? Or PPC fire which is pretty much the same thing" she joked. "What are we talking about?"
 
"Major MacArthur doesn't like Fred." Dave explained.
 
"Because he's fucking his granddaughter?" Katrina assumed. "Don't look at me like that, Fred. You are." she responded to the look he sent her way. "When we got back from the Folly the second time I think you two must have spent your entire three weeks leave in the sack."
 
"I'm not saying it's not true, I just didn't like the phrasing." Frederick told her. "It's not like Henry wasn't doing the same when he got back from there too."
 
Henry shook his head. "Nope. I mean I would have but Philomena couldn't get the time off college." he responded sadly. "On the plus side I never have to worry about her family not liking me because I'm genetically engineered, not with her dad being a genetic engineer."
 
"Maybe he thinks you're not spliced-up enough though." Jennifer suggested wryly. "So was Kat right about that being the reason the Major doesn't like you?" she asked Frederick.
 
"That's probably got a lot to do with it, but the whole story is funnier if you ask me" Henry replied instead. "So, what plans does the Major have for us?" he asked her.
 
"Lights and mediums are playing OpFor tomorrow as expected, I get to sit that out." Jennifer replied. "Once the tread-heads have finished teaching the locals how to operate a Manticore well enough to turn the turret, aim the gun and not drive off a cliff the Major wants you lot to play pirate. Run around a little exchanging directed-energy weapon fire with the tanks to show them what it's like."
 
"Dialed down guns I hope." Frederick checked, tongue-in-cheek.
 
"Maybe not the ones being shot at you, what with Major MacArthur being in charge." Dave suggested, grinning.
 
Frederick thought about that. "Anyone wanna swap mechs?" he asked hopefully.
 
"No, he knows you're the one assigned the Phoenix Hawk so I sure as hell don't want to be in it" Henry replied.
 
"Normally I'd swap a Locust for just about anything but not today. Sorry, Fred." Dave added for himself.
Katrina shook her head. "You'll take my Griffin from my cold dead hands. The PPC is love, the PPC is life." she declared reverently.
 
"Spoken like a true Wolverine" Jennifer observed appreciatively. "As for the Orion they assigned me for this operation, if you think I'm giving up the first heavy they ever put in my hands then you're crazy Fred. Even though I honestly doubt the Major wants you dead" she told him. "Slightly maimed maybe but not dead, too much paperwork" she added after a little more thought.
 
"Did you get to talk to any of the locals?" Henry asked Katrina.
 
"Nah, not really. They're mostly too busy trying to learn as much as they can from our tankers to socialist much." Katrina replied. "Major MacArthur is hoping that we can get the militia up-to-speed quickly so we can all pack up and go home. When their own tanks finally arrive from the Magistracy they'll be looking for a training cadre of instructors and mechanics to stay here for a year or so as longer-term advisors but that's not our problem. I'm just glad we're only here for the crash course, Manticore tank operations 101 and basic anti-mech tactics if you've got a tank with a good gun and decent armor to put up against them."
 
"The Illyrian tank crews have got to be pretty stoked about switching up from a Merkava with an AC/5 to a Manticore with a ]]PPC]] right?" Dave asked. "I sure as hell would be."
 
"They are." Jennifer confirmed before suddenly laughing. "One of the locals asked why we don't just hand over a few of our own tanks to the Palatinate right now, replacing them with ones from Majesty Metals and Manufacturing when they're available."
 
"I'm guessing that the Major didn't tell them it's because our ones might look normal, and have the same controls as a regular Manticore, but they're actually upgraded" Henry responded, grinning.
 
"Yeah, we definitely don't want to get involved in a conversation that includes the question 'Improved PPC? What's an Improved PPC' do we?" Katrina asked rhetorically, grimacing at the thought. "I'm just glad someone had the sense to put the original SRM launchers back in temporarily, so we don't have anyone asking why our missiles are making hits so much further away than any of theirs ever have."
 
"It's just lucky that someone had the sense not to sell off all the old surplus just in case" Henry added. "Although since we've been mostly offloading it to the Palatinate anyway it's still ended up at the same destination."
 
"Yeah, I saw a local carrying a shoulder-launched SRM tube just now that still had 'Niops Association Militia' stamped on the side of it" Katrina told them. "I asked him about the thing and he said they traded a Dropship-load of copper ingots for a bunch of them a couple of years back. I'll bet the NAM grunt that used to hump it around was only too happy to swap it for an Improved SRM" she rightly supposed. Infantry always wanted to stay as far away from the mech or tank they were shooting at as they could. Less chance of being seen before they can pull the trigger and duck back into their foxhole.
 
Infantry could take on Battlemechs and win, but typically they always took heavy losses doing so unless supported by their own mechs, or some decent tanks which is where the Manticore would come into play.
 
Given that the vast majority of threats the Illyrian Militia would ever likely have to face in their new tanks when they arrived would be pirate raiders in aging machines, the mechs sent along to act as an opposing force, or OpFor, to the tankers that Katrina and the other were driving consisted almost entirely of designs which were both common and at least a couple of centuries old. A Manticore with its fairly heavy armor, PPC main gun and pair of missile launchers was enough of a handful that your average pirate band with merely a few mediocre light and medium mechs wouldn't want to tangle with one. You wouldn't want to take out a Manticore tank against a trained Successor State regular in a Marauder heavy, but your average pirate mechwarrior in an old Locust or Wasp would hightail it straight out of there as soon as one turned up.
 
The locals needed to know how to deal with something nastier as well just in case, hence Jennifer being assigned an Orion, and Major MacArthur himself had brought along his personal Highlander assault, but the vast majority of the two companies of mechs loaded aboard the Overlord were vintage mediums and lights.
Which of course turned out to less than ideal in hindsight when fate intervened. They were supposed to be there to train some militia though of course, not fight an actual battle, so you couldn't fairly pin the blame for that on the people who decided which machines to break out of storage for this mission.
 
"When's chow time?" Dave asked. "It's like Scandinavian food here like in the Rasalhague worlds?" he asked. "Smorgasbord and whatever?"
 
"I think so" Henry replied uncertainly. "Hey, do you remember those supplies we looted from that Dropship at Svelvik? We ended up flushing all those tins of fermented herring out the airlock because every time we opened one every compartment on Saratoga ended up smelling like rotting fish."
 
"It's called 'Surströmming' and we didn't loot it, we requisitioned it" Jennifer corrected him. Star Captain Francis had been very insistent on that point when Yukon and the so-called 'Canada Tribe' had been raiding the Draconis Combine for supplies back before they made contact with the Switchback Fleet.
 
"I might not have remembered the name but I remember it really put me off the sushi we got off that Drac transport we ran into a few weeks later" Henry recalled. "Although it was funny when Fred ate that wasabi ball by accident."
 
"Accident my ass, Kat told me she'd already eaten one and it was really tasty." Fred complained.
 
"No, I said I'd eaten some of it, some, with something else, not the whole damn thing on its own" Katrina defended herself. "But I agree with Henry, it was funny watching you gag, you had exactly the same expression as when they exposed us to that tear-gas to see how we'd stand up to it."
 
"Less crying from the tear gas though." Dave added, grinning.
 
Frederick Hallis was about to call his trothkin a bunch of assholes when an SLDF corporal came sprinting towards them from the Overlord after practically bounding down the loading ramp. "Major MacArthur was just on the radio" the corporal yelled at them. "He says you all need to stand to and get ready for action."
 
"I was just with him and he said he didn't need us until tomorrow" Jennifer replied, frowning.
 
"It's not for training" the corporal responded, expression grave. "The locals just detected a pair of JumpShips arriving at the closest Lagrange point" the corporal explained. "The Palatinate is assuming they're pirates and so is Major MacArthur. As per standing orders all SLDF forces are to prepare for combat immediately."
 
"Pirates? Holy shit!" Frederick Hallis exclaimed. "I thought they didn't hit Illyria itself too often, less militia to deal with on the other Palatinate colonies?"
 
"I've got no idea, just passing on the orders. I need to get back to the ship, help make sure the aerospace fighters are going to be ready for launch if needed" the corporal replied before turning on his heels and heading back towards the Overlord as fast as he could.
 
"Crap. Our mechs are all pre-loaded with training rounds." Jennifer realized. "We need to help the maintenance guys swap them out for live ammo" she said, chasing on after the corporal with the others immediately following on behind.
 
"How much live ammunition have we got aboard anyway?" Katrina asked Henry as they ran, knowing that he kept track of things like that. It had been joked before that someone must have accidentally added some DNA from a logistics officer into the mix when they made him, most Mechwarriors didn't care much about such things until they were promoted to a rank where it was their job to care.
 
"Enough SRM's and LRM's for one or two battles, maybe the same for autocannon rounds" Henry replied. "After that it'll be lasers and PPC's only unless the locals have enough compatible ammo in the right calibers to spare" he continued. "We weren't here to fight a war after all" he remarked as they arrived at the Dropship and headed up the ramp towards the mech bays which were already a hive of activity as the technicians and mechanics prepared the two companies of Battlemechs aboard for combat operations not training.
----
===A Confused Major===
All Frederick could think about was what the chances were of pirates deciding to raid Illyria just then, and wondered if it could really just be a coincidence?
 
It wasn't actually a coincidence as such, but the chain-of-events that had led to the raiders arriving that day wasn't actually due to the SLDF being there at the same time, but rather to the reason the SLDF was there, that being the shipment of tanks from the Magistracy expected to arrive later that year, not that Frederick or any of the others knew that at the time.
 
If you wanted to obtain good plunder you needed good intel, a good habit of effective pirates being to maintain a network of informers, and as rumors of the Palatinate being expected to receive a large shipment of arms spread it seemed like a good idea to hit them before that happened. The timing also being influenced by the prospect of seizing an unusually rewarding quantity and quality of loot if they made their move now, before the Free Worlds League was back on its feet.
 
As for where exactly in the system they jumped in, although it was always safer to utilize the standard Jump Points, these being positions above or below the star at a distance far enough out that the gravity was weak enough not to mess with the hyperspace bubble generated by a K-F drive, there were downsides to that if your intentions were less than honorable.
 
Since accidentally jumping into a gravity well would likely kill you, most people much preferred a days-long Dropship ride from the zenith or nadir points to the planet they were heading to, rather than risk life and limb at a so-called 'pirate point'. Pirates themselves of course found it safer overall to take that risk however, because it gave the locals far less time to prepare their defenses. Uninvited guests with hostile intentions tended to believe they were more likely to get killed by fully-mobilized and entrenched militia than they were by some navigation officer screwing up his jump calculations.
 
Illyria III had a decent sized moon, Gentius, which meant it also had a decent sized L4 Lagrange point you could choose to jump into instead of the standard Jump Point, at least if you had faith in both your math and your map of the system anyway.
 
It would still be hours before the Dropships they launched made planet-fall, but if they had chosen to use the standard Jump Point instead it would have taken nearly eight days, and nobody in their right mind wanted to give an opponent that much prep-time. Even part-time militia with obsolete weaponry could put up a decent fight if they were dug in like a Kiamban Tick, and nobody in their right mind wanted a hard fight if they could have an easy one instead.
 
As the SLDF personnel went about the business of re-arming their machines for war, not training, many of them were thinking that it was a shame Illyria lacked the plethora of optical telescopes to be found back home in Niops because it would have been nice to know exactly what they might be facing, and perhaps who these interlopers actually were.
 
Any orbital telescope would have quickly ascertained that the two Jumpships consisted of a pair of Invader class vessels, and a decent one with good resolution would have revealed that despite having six docking collars between them they were only hauling four Dropships that day, a Union, a pair of the smaller Leopard class plus an old Jumbo cargo hauler.
 
Something that the telescope could not have told them was who these people actually were as neither of the Jumpships and none of the Dropships they arrived with carried any external markings, not even the ones you would typically find on pirate vessels, stylized jolly-rogers and the like.
 
They were in fact pirates, although conversely on a different day they might have been part of a mercenary regiment that was officially registered with ComStar's Mercenary Review Board while on yet another they might even be even the armed forces of the Circinus Federation, a proper nation-state with an elected government and everything.
 
They were the Black Warriors, mechwarriors who wore a lot of different hats, both metaphorically and literally because as well as being Pirates/Mercenaries/Soldiers they eschewed any kind of consistent uniform policy, each of them dressing how they wished although within reason as their officers still expected them to look at least vaguely military and not a complete clown-show.
 
Unlike most other periphery nations the Circinus Federation, situated not far from the Illyrian Palatinate, had found an effective way to pay for the upkeep of a military that was surprisingly well-trained and equipped relative to the size of their population. Send it off to steal from other people so that it was entirely self-financing and as a bonus gained plenty of combat experience.
 
The armed forces of Circinus, the aforementioned Black Warriors, did very well out of the arrangement. They had a safe and secure homeworld to operate from, and where they could raise a family, they could always count on bonus payments from successful raids to top up their otherwise meagre pay and the frequent combat operations kept them sharp and combat-effective.
 
The President of Circinus also did very well out of it. Money and resources flowed in from elsewhere to keep the economy ticking over nicely, making their world wealthier than the average agrarian planet and thus ensuring they remained popular with the voters, while they also didn't have to worry about other pirates preying upon their citizens either as none of them would goddamn dare. The Black Warriors were savvy enough not to shit where they eat and they didn't let anyone else do so either.
 
The taxpayers and ordinary citizens of Circinus did very well out of it too. Well enough that they didn't ask their political and military leaders any awkward questions as to where all the money came from to pay for things like new roads and irrigation canals being built, and why, unlike other periphery worlds, their planet never seemed to get raided by assholes cosplaying 17th Century Buccaneers.
 
Everybody else unfortunate enough to live within a few jumps of Circinus did very badly out of it of course, but it wasn't like they got a vote or a claim of a share of the ill-gotten gains, so their opinion on the matter didn't carry much weight with the Commanding Officer of the Black Warriors, the President or Circinus or the willfully ignorant citizenry of Circinus.
 
By tradition the Black Warriors were always led by a member of the Cirion family, although that day it was the daughter of the current commander rather than Colonel Cirion himself who was in charge. Major Angelica Cirion needed to demonstrate she was worthy of taking over once her father was either killed in action or retired and if everything went according to plan this operation would go a long way towards firmly cementing her place in the line of succession.
 
For most of the last two years the Black Warriors had been raiding the Free Worlds League, both taking advantage of the chaos in their ranks caused by the ComStar Interdiction and also taking revenge for the way the Marik's had treated the founder of the Black Warriors, Angelica's grandfather Zachariah Cirion.
 
The grudge the Black Warriors held against the Free Worlds League verged on an outright vendetta or blood feud. According to their version of events Zachariah Cirion and his mercenary regiment had been badly mistreated, insulted and abused while they were in the service of the League not long before the Amaris Coup, leading to the Black Warriors breaking their contract and heading out to the periphery to look for a new home.
 
That was not to say that the Black Warriors didn't attack other people as well. If a Lyran controlled world was a particularly juicy target they would happily raid House Steiner as well, despite Steiner and Marik being enemies, but that was just paying the bills whereas raiding a Marik planet always brought a smile to the faces of the Cirion family and their followers.
 
If the intel was right the pay-day from hitting Illyria was well worth giving up the opportunity to raid one more Marik system before it had its HPG restored, and Angelica Cirion had faith in her sources.
 
In normal times each of the Danais class Dropships which were produced at a low rate on Illyria were exported almost as soon as they were completed, typically sold onto customers in the Free Worlds League or occasionally a periphery-based merchant trader. With the Interdiction however, and the economy of the FWL having effectively ground to a halt, there were currently two brand-new Danais class Cargo Dropships sat on a pad waiting for a buyer and a third currently being assembled.
 
Those two completed Dropships were worth over seventy million C-Bills each, and stripping the third for parts and stuffing them into the Jumbo she had brought along for the purpose would only increase the profitability of the operation.
 
The plant where the Danais was produced on Illyria and the town around it was defended of course, the factory workers having formed their own militia for the purpose, but most of the military strength of the Palatinate in the system was to be found at the capital on a completely different continent. More importantly, all that brand new military hardware that the Illyrians were buying from the Magistracy of Canopus hadn't arrived yet so the timing just couldn't be better.
 
Angelica Cirion didn't want a fight if she could avoid it, with luck a simple show of strength would cause the locals to lay down their arms, or perhaps just step aside and let her take the Dropships if she promised not to attack the civilians in the town, and that was why she had brought along more firepower than should have been strictly necessary.
 
Her Union class Dropship, the Bunga Bunga, carried a full company of mechs, and each of the Leopards another lance apiece. Between the three military Dropships she had six aerospace fighters, plus the Leopards themselves as air-power and she also had an infantry platoon loaded aboard the Jumbo plus crews for the Dropships she expected to seize.
 
As the Dropships reached atmosphere they detected fighters coming up to meet them and Cirion scrambled her own to deal with them. As expected the Illyrian's couldn't even boast proper aerospace fighters to defend themselves with, according to sensors the conventional aircraft trying to take on her pilots were merely Angel light-strike-fighters, along with a couple of the larger Defender, both machines that were utterly outclassed by the ones her people had.
 
You had to give the Illyrian pilots points for even trying, they definitely had some guts, but after her Ironsides and Sparrowhawk aerospace fighters knocked down three of them for no losses the rest had the sense to hightail it out of there.
 
The factory complex where the Danais was built was situated on the southern continent, and with their aerospace fighters providing overhead cover the unmarked Dropships belonging to the Black Warriors set down far enough away that they could unload their machines before the locals could try to assault them. Less professional troops sometimes made the mistake of landing right next to the opposition and getting hammered before they could deploy, putting too much trust in the ability of the weapons mounted on the Dropship to secure a hostile LZ, but Angelica Cirion was no amateur.
 
Once all her mechs were unloaded and formed up she would lead them in an advance on the town and the factory it was built beside. Only then, once her fighting strength was on display, would she get on the radio and tell the locals to surrender in order to prevent bloodshed.
 
A few militia with shoulder-launched SRM's, some APC's and a few aging Merkeva and LT-4 Hovertanks weren't a match for her five lances of battlemechs and unless they were idiots they knew it.
 
The Black Warriors in the mechs were already starting to think about how each of them would spend their share of the prize money once the Dropships were seized and later sold when their comrades in the aerospace fighters above them started yelling that a freaking Overlord had just popped up over the horizon, one escorted by a squadron of aerospace fighters, and it was heading their way ploughing through the atmosphere in a ballistic arc like a gigantic projectile.
 
"What the hell?" a suitably surprised Major Angelica Cirion asked the universe at large before her comms system notified her that someone was broadcasting a lot of wattage on one of the standard military radio frequencies.
 
Cirion switched over to the frequency concerned, becoming only more vexed and confused as a result as singing blasted from the speakers in her cockpit.
----
// o/~ "Oh we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
And we'll rally from the sphere, we'll gather from the rim,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
 
The Star League forever, hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with Amaris, up with the star
While we rally round the flag, boys, we rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom" o/~ \\
"What in the actual fuck?" Cirion exclaimed, rephrasing her earlier statement to one more suitable for the current circumstances.
----
==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : There must be a reason why a perfectly habitable world like Illyria III, capital world of the Illyrian Palatinate, which which was first colonized way back in the 24th Century, has such a small population. People just choosing to leave because the prospects for anyone not born into one of the wealthy ruling families are bad is just my fanon explanation. Although most of their income seems to come from exporting refined metals and metal ores Illyria does make money off its annual Mechwarriors games (which I'm assuming were postponed during the Interdiction) and the soucebooks do mention shipbuilding happening on the southern continent.The Star League liked to restrict economic development in the periphery, but did allow worlds there to produce the Danais class dropship which is why I'm having that the type of vessel made on Illyria. It's not a huge high-tech operation but the Danais isn't a huge high-tech ship either.Major MacArthur of the 295th is the son of General Leigh MacArthur (who commanded the division before Jenna Romanov) and the grandfather of Alice MacArthur. A veteran of the Amaris War, being Terran born he looks good for his age. Leigh MacArthiur would have commanded the 295th around about the time General Frederick Hallis father of Franklin Hallis) commanded the 331st.The Black Warriors of the Circinus Federation are sometimes pirates, sometimes mercenaries and sometimes the armed forces of Circinus. Regardless of what hat they might be wearing at the time they are very well trained and equipped (by periphery standards), they don't like the Free Worlds League and there's usually someone from House Cirion in charge. In canon Angelica Cirion was a colonel in 2853 but this is a few years earlier than that so she's still just a major. As a periphery militia the Illyrian armed forces are not so well equipped. They still use old Merkava tanks and Apostle SPG artillery and their pilots fly Angel and Defender conventional fighters bought from the Free Worlds League.Oh, and the Black Warriors having a Union class dropship called 'Bunga Bunga' comes from the novella Dying Dignity, I didn't make that up!
----
<<Next Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
Chapter 38