GblaRCS Chpt 9

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 9 -==
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"It didn't occur to me until after we left Camelot Command why all the tables in the big mess-hall there were round. I mean the barracks rooms were all named after Arthur's Knights but I still never clicked the round tables. Why people think I'm smart and perceptive I'll never know."Major Marcelo Gao - 2835CE
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===Flashback - Not Enough to get by===
Camelot Command – Dark Nebula (Lyran Commonwealth) – 2825
Fortunately the stations atmospheric recirculation system was still operational, so the scout team sent over first didn't have to fix the thing before Jenna Romanov and her entourage shuttled over from the Zughoffer Weir. The view on the way in had been worth giving up a comfortable chair in the shuttle's passenger compartment for the tiny jumpseat in the cockpit behind the pilot, the old SLDF facility completely dwarfing the McKenna now floating in space beside it.
The so-called 'Dark Nebula' had once been located within territory claimed by the Rim Worlds Republic, but later found itself inside Lyran space after the Republic-Commonwealth War. Despite suspicions and rumors of there being a secret Star League naval base located somewhere in the region, one that had helped the SLDF considerably against Amaris, it had never been found thanks to the entire area being absolute hell for sensors.
It wasn't just the vast cloud of ionized dust and gas itself, dozens of light-years across, multiple pulsars also threw out levels of electromagnetic radiation that were off the scale. Forget detecting emergence waves from incoming JumpShip unless you were practically on top of them and for that matter the notion of tracking someone down by looking for stray radio transmissions was an exercise in futility.
If you didn't know exactly where to look it was extremely likely you would readily locate the non-descript planetoid within an asteroid field that contained Camelot Command, even if you knew which diminutive Red Dwarf within the nebula it orbited, which you would almost certainly not. The system itself was unremarkable, with no habitable planets within the star's goldilocks zone, which was exactly why the SLDF chose it.
It wasn't exactly necessary for her to go see the station for herself but Romanov wanted to demonstrate that she was a commanding officer that did that sort of thing. The overwhelming majority of people in the fleet were Hallis's people, the so-called Wolverines, and they took the notion of 'lead from the front' very seriously, very much expecting it from the people they followed as a matter of course. If she wanted their acceptance, and it was still early days for that, then being a command-safely-from-the-rear general officer wasn't a good look.
Once a roughly cylindrical asteroid, Star League engineers had finished shaping it to the desired external dimensions before getting to work hollowing part of the thing out, stuffing an entire base in there with several floors and then setting it spinning on its long axis to create artificial gravity on the inside.
The outermost floor from the central core nearest the surface felt like just over half a gee, with the effective gravity on each level below that getting progressively lower until you reached the core. Externally the huge JumpShip-scale double airlock that led to the internal shipyard was positioned right in the center of one end of the cylinder, where the artificial gravity was entirely negligible and the rotation when you came into dock easiest to deal with.
For reasons unknown to Romanov, as the airlock opened to let her shuttle inside the pilot was whistling the Blue Danube. If she had asked him about it he would have told her he didn't know either, it was just something that was kinda traditional to do.
Robotic docking equipment reached out and took hold of the shuttle once the pilot steered it close enough to the appropriate internal bay, flashing lights having guided him to the correct spot whereupon he cut the engines and thrusters and relinquished control. There must have been a dozen bays for small craft like the shuttle, almost as many for dropships and of course the cavernous one large enough to dock a Black Lion class battlecruiser like the fleet's own Michigan.
The smaller hanger that held the station's complement of Voidseeker drone fighters was to be found at the other end of the cylinder with its own launch tubes. It was a good thing that Camelot Command's computer had accepted the recognition codes that Cape Bon had broadcast in response to its automatic radio challenge because it turned out there was an entire regiment's worth of the damn things in there. They were still fully armed and fueled and had been patiently waiting for decades for the opportunity to pounce on unwelcome visitors.
Voidseekers gave veterans of the Amaris War who had fought against them the creeps, though not as much as the larger M-3 drones and in particular the M-5 Caspar warships did. The SDS systems subverted against the Star League by the Usurper had proved a considerably more dangerous opponent than the Rim World Republic Navy itself ever did, and without them the SLDF would have retaken the Terran Hegemony in a fraction the time with far fewer losses.
Disembarking the shuttle Romanov was greeted by Major Marcelo Gao of the 331st who had commanded a reconnaissance unit for the Wolverines during Operation Klondike. Rated as 'good at recon work, scouting and generally poking around' by Franklin Hallis, he had been placed as second-in-command of the boarding party after the captain of the Cape Bon who had been here before, albeit decades ago as the XO of a corvette. "Welcome aboard Camelot Command, Ma'am." Gao greeted Romanov with a salute which she returned. "Captain Moore is stuck in the station command post trying to get more of the systems running. You requested a summary report as to the condition of the station on arrival?"
"I did. Go for it, Major." Romanov replied.
"Well for a start we have power… and air." Gao noted.
"That would explain the lights being on and the lack of asphyxiation, but if you're trying to be funny Major then don't." Romanov warned him seriously.
"No, Ma'am. Sorry, Ma'am" Gao apologised for his attempt at levity. "The warehouses are almost empty, the Exodus Fleet must have cleared the place out. There's still some ammunition and spare parts to be had though, a bunch of replacement Ferro-Carbide and Lamellor Ferro-Carbide armor plating for warships and a few tons of ration packs" he told her. "Station defenses are partially operational, a few of the laser turrets would have certainly engaged us along with the Voidseekers if we didn't have the recognition codes, and we can either get the rest running or strip them for salvage."
"Naval weaponry?"
"A mix of anti-shipping and anti-fighter defenses, all automated." Gao replied. "The ammunition bunkers for the various missile launchers on the surface are empty unfortunately, part of the Exodus Fleet likely topped up their own stocks from them."
"Hydroponics?"
"It's FUBAR. Water corroded the pipes and they look like they've been leaking for at least five or ten years" Gao told her. "Half the contents of the stations main water tank is currently a swimming pool in the storage room below hydroponics and given enough time it'll eventually flood the level below that too."
Romanov frowned. "Repairable?"
"Engineers think so. We can patch the leaks and get rid of the water by venting it into space if we have to" Gao replied. "We're just lucky we got here before the water got into some of the equipment that requires something more than welding gear and duct tape to fix."
"What about the shipyard?" Romanov asked. 'Operational?"
"Not fully, but I was told it just needs a little TLC, not a whole new set of replacement parts." Gao told her. "Three to four weeks if we throw enough labor and technical expertise at the problem" he continued. "The battlemech repair workshop will need more work, Tech said it wasn't properly mothballed when they shut it down so a lot of it will need stripping down and putting back together. No time estimate on how long that will take yet."
"Manufacturing?"
"Better condition than the Battlemech workshop, not as good as the shipyard." Gao replied. "They got the computer that runs the automated factory working though and there is bad news on that front. It does not have the design schematics for the Potemkin so we cannot tell the thing to churn out the parts we need for Ulithi even when we get the production lines going."
"It doesn't? Why not?" Romanov asked reasonably.
"Someone decided when it was installed that because nothing larger than a Black Lion class battlecruiser can fit in the dock it would never be working on something like that" Gao explained. "It can't make parts for Zug or Bismark either. This was the base for the 12th Fleet, two navy Pursuit Squadrons and one Reconnaissance Squadron, so mostly smaller stuff like destroyers and corvettes. It wasn't a homeport for a Line squadron with battleships and a Potemkin is even longer than a McKenna."
Romanov rolled her eyes. "So what you're saying is it never occurred to some bureaucrat that just because nothing bigger than a cruiser could dock here that didn't mean they might never have to produce spare parts for one in an emergency." she theorized. "Wonderful." she added sardonically.
"I guess back when the Star League was at its height, they just assumed a Newgrange yardship would be sent out to do the job." Gao reasoned.
"You could be right there." Romanov concurred. The SLDF had operated a couple of hundred of the colossal jump-capable mobile shipyards. If you were a battleship needing repairs you couldn't handle yourself you could simply get on the HPG and call the closest one to come and patch you up.
The large majority of the Newgrange yardships which survived the Amaris War followed Kerensky on his Exodus, but unfortunately only a few of those subsequently made it through the Pentagon Civil War and later Operation Klondike as well so they were closely guarded resources as a result. The Wolverine's couldn't just 'borrow' one for their secession like had had Bismark or Thunderer. The Successor States might still have a handful of Newgranges in service, but it was unlikely they would be willing to loan one out, Romanov thought to herself wryly.
"Most of the dropship repair bays are still operational, they were properly mothballed and shouldn't need much more than few kicks and some Teflon spray before we can use them." Gao continued his report. "One piece of good luck. The maintenance facility for the Voidseekers at the other end of the station is still fully up and running and can also handle other types of aerospace fighters if we want to bring them in for maintenance. The designers knew that those would be coming here, possibly needing repair, so they didn't limit the facility to only handle the drones."
Romanov nodded. "Captain Moore's preliminary report stated that you found the skeletal remains of some of the station personnel?"
"Yes Ma'am, near the command post. Computer records are mostly scrubbed but we believe they stayed behind to finish destroying paper and digital records, expecting another jumpship to pick them up so they could join the Exodus." Gao responded. "No such Jumpship ever arrived and at some point, maybe years later, they realized they were going to be stuck here forever with no prospect of rescue and…"
"They decided on a suicide pact" Romanov finished for him.
"Looks like it. They still had water, food and air but no hope" Gao confirmed.
"I want their remains treated with the utmost respect. They will receive a proper burial with full military honours as soon as practicable" Romanov ordered.
"Yes Ma'am, of course, Ma'am" Gao replied.
"So, is there anything else noteworthy before you lead me to the command post?" Romanov checked.
Gao smiled. "The anti-mech trenches are a sight to see. They really wanted to make sure that just because the corridors are big enough to let them through, hostiles getting past a certain point during a boarding action would be a pain-in-the-ass. Personnel quarters on the top floor where the effective gravity is strongest are gigantic, we can transfer a lot of the civilians over here, and there's a canteen with a kitchen attached that looks like it was made to feed a small town. Robot ovens you could practically fit a whole Corridani Grazer in, or a small Ashio Mammoth."
"I don't suppose there's any meat left in the freezers is there?" Romanov asked hopefully.
"Sorry, Ma'am, took a look myself. If there was any left in there by the Exodus Fleet the poor bastards they left behind ate it all" Gao told her. "I've got to wonder if finishing it off the last of it, facing nothing but ration packs and vegetables from hydroponics the rest of their lives, was the final blow to their morale. Also, there's nothing left in the bar."
Romanov chose to believe that he knew about the bar because it was on the way to somewhere important and let that pass without comment. "Lead on, Major." she instructed as he set off towards their destination.
Caught up in micromanaging the fleet, the man clearly still mentally adjusting to the fact that in barely two years he had gone from a mere Star Colonel to saKhan then Khan and found delegation uncomfortable sometimes, it was another six hours before Franklin Hallis made his own way over to Camelot Command. By that time Romanov had already summoned a couple of hundred additional engineers and technicians, the first batches of which to arrive were already scurrying around the facility in preparation for bringing the station back into service, and she had moved onto addressing longer-term issues.
Turning down the offer of a ten-cent tour of the station on arrival, choosing instead to head straight for the command post, Hallis arrived there to find that the technicians had already gotten the holo-projector in the centre of the amphitheatre-like room working. Not merely the place where Camelot Command was run from, but also a Fleet Headquarters, there were multiple consoles and workstations that ringed the room, facing inwards so everyone could see whatever was being projected which was currently a 3-D map of the inhabited systems within a few jumps of the Dark Nebula. 
Jenna Romanov was listening as Captain Cole made an impromptu presentation, indicating stars as he did so with a laser-pointer.
"On best bet for finding spare parts for our larger warships is probably salvaging them from the sites of major naval engagements during the Amaris War." Cole suggested. "Unfortunately most of these took place in the Terran Hegemony but there were a few in the territory of the Rim Worlds Republic and the Lyran Commonwealth" he noted, now pointing to a specific system. "Devin is only four jumps from here and was a major slugfest." 
"I remember hearing about that one" Romanov recalled. "One of our battleships got knocked out of orbit, hit the ground like an asteroid strike."
Cole nodded. "Texas Class, one and a half million tons worth of her." he confirmed. "We're not likely to get anything useful out of the wreckage, and I'll bet the locals are already picking her clean, but other ships that were lost on both sides will be in higher orbit around the planet and likely others near the jump-points."
"I don't suppose we're lucky enough for there to be a Potemkin left drifting there?" Romanov asked hopefully.
"Not at Devin, but we lost sixty or so of them fighting Amaris so the chances are fair we'll eventually find one somewhere if we look in the right places" Cole replied. "I know for a fact two Potemkins were lost in the fighting at Nusakan, I was there praying that the Caspars didn't choose my ship to attack next, but that's sixteen jumps away."
Hallis coughed to announce his presence, attracting their attention away from the hologram.
"Welcome to Camelot Command." Romanov greeted him. "Camelot's not in as good a condition as we hoped, but it's much better than we feared" she told him. "If we're done for now you can get on with what you were doing Captain' she told Cole.
"Thank you General" Cole replied. "If you need me I'll be over at the Voidseeker bays, I want to see some up close when they're not trying to kill me like they were at Nusakan" he said, smiling. "General Hallis" he acknowledged the man with a nod.
"Captain" Hallis responded with a nod of his own before the naval officer headed off.
"I'd tell you pull up a chair, Franklin." Romanov addressed her second-in-command, "but they're all fixed to the deck" she said, leaning back against a console. 
"I read the summary report you had sent over to me, Jenna." Hallis responded, taking up a parade-rest stance. If she was going to be informal using first names then so was he, although as the ranking officer she naturally had to do so first. "It's a good thing we fixed up Bismark as best we could at Columbus Station while we were there, she can't fit in the shipyard here" he observed. That was one problem with taking ships from the Boneyard to assist with Operation Switchback, the big Texas Class battleship had taken a battering during the Amaris War and her keel was damaged enough that she had been mothballed rather than absorbed into a clan touman. She could still jump without problem, but in combat she just couldn't absorb as much punishment as she could back in her glory days. On the subject of glory days her bridge still contained a brass plaque noting that the old girl had actually won the 2708 SLDF Martial Olympiad, though for some reason her name was misspelled 'Bismarck' on it.
"Pity you couldn't bring Columbus with you" Romanov joked.
"It was even less portable than this place" Hallis replied, smiling. "We hauled off everything we could easily take apart and had the cargo space for."
"Which has turned out useful" Romanov told him. "One of the engineers I talked to thinks that we can jury-rig some of the tech you stripped from Columbus to get Camelot up and running faster. They're not always identical systems but it should be mostly compatible."
"Pity there isn't a habitable planet here like there was there." Hallis observed. "Would have made keeping everyone fed easier" he remarked. "Our scouts reported back saying that the four inhabited systems within the Erit Cluster managed to get through the wars without getting blasted so we can trade for food with them, but we might not want to make ourselves too obvious by going there too frequently." he advised. "It's a lot further away, but if the story about an Avatar Class Heavy Cruiser at Paran is true that might work out for us. Paran was a breadbasket system for the Rim Worlds Republic so they might have a food surplus…"
"And be somewhere that might be interested in trading food for Naval Autocannon ammunition, or maybe spare parts, which some 'lucky explorer' found in an old Star League cache" Romanov finished the thought for him.
"My thoughts exactly." Hallis confirmed. "They're a currency we would have trouble spending anywhere else, and Paran is six jumps away so we wouldn't necessarily risk drawing unwanted attention in our direction. We can send one of the L-F Tramps if you want to get a ship there quickly."
Romanov frowned. "I thought you wanted all the L-F ships to go find your misplaced warship once everyone's jumpdrives are re-charged?"
"Only the warships" Hallis told her. "It could be a trap laid by Kerensky, have one of their own Riga IIs making waves pretending to be the Yukon to lure us in. I doubt it somehow, he'll want to avoid stirring up the Inner Sphere even more than we do, but if we run into angry clanners the pop-guns on a Tramp aren't going to be much help. The L-F Tramps are more use here, you can use them to scout out the region… and maybe trade some spare ammo for food up at Paran."
"You know if the Yukon isn't where you hope it is you'll have a hell of a job finding her" Romanov warned.
"Can't argue with that but the reports indicate that the 'Canada Tribe' is hitting Combine systems in what used to be the Principality of Rasalhague before the Dracs conquered them. That's close enough to the Theta Carinae Cluster for Yukon to be using that as a bolt-hole between raids and they know they're pretty safe in there. That's why we gave all Clan Wolverine warships sealed orders that if they got separated from the main Switchback Fleet they should head there as a rally point. We just ended up taking a route after Epsilon Pegasus that went nowhere near it, and we had no idea Yukon made it out of Clan territory and was on the Exodus Road behind us. Last we heard from her she was conducting hit-and-run ops to keep Old Nick's boys and girls off-balance and distracted."
"Good choice of ship for that" Romanov opined. A Riga II wasn't the most heavily armed warship, but they were fast, with decent thrust and an L-F battery. They were also built tough, with twice the armor tonnage of some other destroyers, and for raiding they could carry six squadron's worth of aerospace fighters in their internal flight-bays plus haul two assault dropships along. "You think they would keep that close to the start of the Exodus Road even if they're worried about the clans searching for them?"
"Finding something in Theta Carinae makes finding something in the Dark Nebula look like child's play." Hallis told her. "It's an Embedded Cluster, a star nursery, surrounded by an ionized molecular cloud that will eventually be a whole new set of baby stars. In any case the rally point is in interstellar space between a trio of protostars, so even if someone checked every nadir and zenith point in Theta Carinae they still wouldn't find Yukon."
"You know the clans could have captured her and seized the sealed orders" Romanov noted.
"Possibly but I'd expect her crew to destroy them before capture, also they were written in code with only the Captain and XO knowing the cypher." Hallis told her. "The crew would have committed suicide rather than risk the clans finding the rest of us. All of them have friends and loved ones in the fleet."
Romanov blinked. "How detailed and comprehensive was this damn escape plan of yours?" she asked rhetorically.
"We put a bit of work into it." Hallis replied, smiling at his understatement. "There's a section dealing with adequate provision of women's sanitary products for the journey."
"If I didn't know your old boss was female too that would have confirmed it." Romanov told him. "If it's not the clans then your crew on the Yukon aren't exactly being too subtle in trying to attract your attention."
"The unencrypted signals between dropships and aerospace fighters designating target locations as 'Whitehorse, Mount Logan and Kluane' you mean? Or using First Nations Tribes from the area as callsigns? I'd have to agree" Hallis responded, chuckling. "Worked though."
Romanov laughed herself. "It's so blatant the clans might think it's a trap laid for them" she suggested, not entirely in jest. "If most of them think it was you that started flinging nukes around, not their side, they might be wary of jumping in and getting a face-full of fusion devices."
"Not like Kerensky can tell them the truth" Hallis concurred. "I wouldn't use them though, that would just prove to them we are the monsters they say we are."
Romanov narrowed her eyes. "Don't you dare put keeping the moral high-ground ahead of practical considerations, or protecting your people" she told him sternly. "If it's an ambush, and the only way to escape is to you blast your way out with Alamos and Santa Anas, then nuke 'em till they glow, that's a direct order. They let the nuclear genie out of the lamp, even if most of them don't know it, the consequences are on them."
"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that order, Ma'am." Hallis told her honestly.
Romanov looked him in the eyes. "If it eases your conscience, if there's a Widowmaker ship present blow that one to hell first to try and get the others to realize you're not ****** around. That might give them pause for thought at least" she advised.
Hallis pursed his lips. "A Widowmaker ship?" he pondered the scenario. "That might be easier to stomach" he decided after a little consideration.
"Think of it as a really effective and well-deserved warning shot" Romanov told him. "The computer records here are mostly wiped with the locations of SLDF facilities and anything classified as Top Secret or above erased and I'm told we can't restore the data."
"That's a pity. It would have made gathering supplies easier" Hallis replied.
"Admiral Bremman has an idea we could go through the maps and navigation records of all the ships in the fleet to see where they don't match up." Romanov told him. "We've got boats that originally came from several different fleets, not to mention a few transport JumpShip that probably traveled all over the Inner Sphere delivering cargo, so the chances that we don't already have the locations of some out-of-the-way classified depots and supply caches are probably slim" she suggested. "For that matter, if we put out a fleet-wide communique asking if anyone old enough to have served against Amaris was ever stationed at, or visited, some Secret Squirrel kind of places we might get some lucky finds out of it too. The Lyran Commonwealth and the old Rim Worlds Republic was the old stomping ground for both our divisions so we're definitely in the right place to start with. There's a couple of places not much more than half-a-dozen jumps from here that I know of personally which we never told the Steiners about."
"Anywhere you can get a battleship serviced?" Hallis joked.
Romanov shook her head. "No such luck. Our best bet for spares is salvaging old battlegrounds and bringing them home." 
"Home? Is that what this place is already?" Hallis queried, smiling gently.
"Temporarily at least." Romanov replied. "At least the gravity deck is bigger here than what you've gotten used to right?" she asked rhetorically.
"We've got people that have spent so much time cooped up on dropships with only an hour or two on a grav deck every day that this place might give them agoraphobia" Hallis replied, semi-seriously. "Pity this place doesn't spin up to one gee but I guess that was to make it easier for the shipyard."
Romanov shrugged. "Beats the hell out of floating though, things stay put for a start" she said. "Just have to remember to put more weight on the bar when you're in the gym."
"I was always more of a track guy." Hallis told her. "I'm leaving Trish Ebon behind with you, she can play the saKhan card if you're having trouble with the civilians."
"Just bring back the McKenna, I'm just getting used to my new ride" Romanov responded. "I've been meaning to ask. Why did you use Michigan as your flagship when you had the Zug?
"General Custer at the battle of Gettysburg 1863." Hallis explained, Romanov looking suitably confused by his answer. "He was commanding the Michigan Cavalry Brigade and yelled out 'Ride you Wolverines!' as he led the charge."
"Ah. So is 'Ride you Wolverines!' your battlecry then?" Romanov queried.
"No. We just yell 'Wolverines'… and, at least according to what Dwight Robinson told me once, it's because of a really old movie Sarah's dad liked?" Hallis told her. "Have you seen 'Red Dawn'?" he asked, grinning.
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*;Notes from the Author : Camelot Command in the Dark Nebula was abandoned by the SLDF during Kerensky Senior's Exodus. I'm going to assume that the handful of personnel left behind were supposed to be collected but it seems they were not (it's mentioned in the Rhonda's Irregulars that they found skeletal remains there when the mercenary company located Camelot Command in 3050). The Dark Nebula is not uninhabited, the Erit Cluster contains a few populated systems, but it's nightmareish to navigate or search.The hollowed-out asteroid that houses Camelot Command is noted to be spinning to create internal gravity in Rhonda's Irregulars (which is the souce for much of what we know of the place including its condition). Since they would have had a choice of asteroids I'm assuming they would have chosen one that was a rough cylinder to make things easier (artificial gravity highest on the highest deck nearest the surface, none at the central axis). It would be much, much easier to dock a starship in the centre of the ends of the cylinder because of rotation and a lack of 'down'. It's sort of like an O'Neill Cylinder with multiple internal floors.It was estimated in 3050 it would take two years to make the station functional again (Snord's Irregulars eventually began construction of a Black Lion) but it's in much better condition in 2825 when found here.About the only place better to hide than the Dark Nebula is the Theta Carinae Cluster just outside Draconis Combine territory not far from the start of the Exodus Road. It's a stellar nursery, an Embedded Stellar Cluster where dust and gas forms into new stars. As such it's a mess of ionized particles and no where you would want to go. Not a bad choice for a rally point for Operation Switchback (or a bolt-hole) but unfortunately the main fleet had no idea Yukon had gotten away from the Clan Homeworlds and was following on behind.Operating from Camelot Command they're going to visit every old SLDF facility they know of, along with the systems they know of where naval battles took place. Volders is one of the former, Devin one of the latter.The Battletech Universe is sometimes described as the future of the 1980s (when it began to take shape). Of course the Wolverine's reference Red Dawn!
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Chapter 9