GblaRCS Chpt 56

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 56 -==
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"Remember, officially we went around the Lyran Commonwealth to get to Von Strang's World, not through it. The Steiners aren't stupid enough to actually believe we took the scenic route but diplomatic niceties are important and they won't kick up a fuss if we don't rub it in their faces. They don't like Nico Von Strang any more than than anyone else does, probably less, so they likely aren't going to bitch about the precise circumstances that led to his ousting from power unless they have to for the sake of their reputation and officially upholding their sovereignty."Brigadier-General Henry 'Hal' Franklin - 2843CE
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===Reflection of Mercenaries in service of Niops===
Hegel System, Lyran Commonwealth – 2843
If there had been anyone there paying attention to such things the arrival of a pair of Star Lord class JumpShips in the Hegel system would have raised some eyebrows in itself, but the vessel that made up the final member of the trio would have really set alarm bells ringing.
As it was, with the system effectively dead, stricken from the star-maps for a quarter-century now, the only people at all intrigued by the presence of the Royalty class armed Jumpship floating there beside them was the crew of the Blackhearts own JumpShip the Fairbairn-Sykes, who were still trying to get used to the idea of running with the thing even after traveling with her all the way from Niops territory. The Royalty was a reminder of what many might think of as a dark time in history, although arguably the Amaris Empire was practically a Golden Age compared to what followed afterwards.
Even though it wasn't actually a warship as such, the Royalty was still very heavily armed for a 'civilian' JumpShip, sometimes seen as an example of a so-called 'Jolly Roger' vessel ideal for commerce raiding, privateering or outright piracy. That was certainly what the Rim Worlds Republic had built them for originally, something to disrupt enemy shipping and transport routes, not a vessel to place in the battle line.
Given she also carried two squadrons of aerospace fighters along with her internally, as well as a respectable number of guns, the JumpShip NAS Dragoons's Loss, as Niops had renamed their prize, did make for a very nice escort on their way to Von Strang's World. Hopefully she would also provide them with a way to not only get some boots on the ground but to do so in a way that would have them potentially welcomed with open arms.
Colonel Mitch Johnson of the Blackhearts had not been entirely surprised to find out that Niops had been a teeny bit economical with the truth when they had informed the press on Terra that the Royalty they had captured from the Blood Rain back in 2829 was still not been fully repaired and restored to service. Nonetheless he figured that what with Von Strang's World being so damn far away from Niops it shouldn't matter. It wasn't like Nico, Von Strang was going to automatically assume that the 295th had hauled their asses right across the Inner Sphere just to give him a whupping when a vessel hailing from the former Rim Worlds Republic Navy showed up on his doorstep. Even if he was paranoid as hell his reaction was more likely to be one of joy when another group of RWR holdouts appeared in his midst professing to want to reestablish links between them. Frankly the only ship that would have screamed 'Amaris Empire' more than a Royalty was a Stefan Amaris class battleship, and it wasn't like Niops had one of those it could use as a Trojan Horse.
"If only Dad could see us now." a broadly grinning Mitch Johnson observed from his chair on the bridge of the Fairbairn-Sykes, thinking about all the stories his father had told him while growing up about fighting Amaris. Having left all their dependents and a quarter of their fighting strength back in the Niops Hegemony, the government there having ceded the Blackhearts some territory on Stafford not far from the capital city, the bulk of the regiment was currently loaded aboard a pair each of Overlord and Intruder class dropships, which along with an old Jumbo cargo hauler and a single Fortress class for fire-support filled the JumpShip's docking collars.
The NAS Jonathan Cameron, the other Star Lord JumpShip in the small flotilla which was just visible to the naked eye in the far distance, was itself carrying three Overlord battalion transports, one of the better armed Lee class plus a pair of brand-new CargoKing freighters. One of the military dropships over there actually belonged to Bolton's Rangers not Niops itself, and as well as their own people they were carrying a single lance of mechs from Tyson's Troublemakers who had jumped at the chance of tagging along.
Aware that his four mechs were really just a token gesture compared to what Niops and the other larger mercenary regiments were bringing to the party Major Samuel Tyson did at least make sure that all four were heavily-armed and armoured assault battlemechs, as befitted the former Twenty-Third Heavy Assault Regiment, and he had his three best mechwarriors with him.
If the rest of them were going off to go hammer some Amaris scum there was no way in hell that Sam Tyson was being left behind, even if his depleted unit didn't have many soldiers to spare from their garrison duty on Galileo. Johnson remembered grinning when Tyson had earnestly declared back at the Niops recharge station, while they all discussed the operation, that his mother would surely rise from the grave and beat the absolute crap out of him if he wasn't there with a few Troublemakers when that ****** statue of Stefan Amaris that the Von Strang's had erected in their capital city was torn down.
If anything Colonel Daniel Bolton and his Rangers had been even more enthusiastic about the mission than Tyson, and would have happily sent more than a single battalion along if not for Niops wanting them to keep the majority of forces back in the Hegemony to garrison Comstock and Francas. As General Romanov had explained, she wanted the majority of the deployed forces to be from the Niops Association itself, additionally noting that the only reason she could free up the manpower needed for such a lengthy deployment in the first place was because with Bolton's Rangers holding the fort on a couple of the new Hegemony's more important colonies it freed up some of her troops from garrison duty.
More pragmatic than either Tyson or Bolton, some might say cynical and worn down by life, Mitch Johnson of the Blackhearts was himself more motivated by the handsome paycheque being offered, and the opportunity to get his hands on some fancy lostech, than he was he chance to beat up on Amaris loyalists. Having mostly worked out in the periphery rather on the front lines of the Inner Sphere the Blackhearts hadn't been quite as badly mauled during the last few decades as some unfortunate mercenary regiments, but resupply and recruitment had still been an ongoing struggle over the years.
When he took over command of the regiment from his father back in 2821. The Blackhearts had been down to barely a fifth of their official strength, this after years of attrition and getting themselves involved in some very nasty and bloody counter-insurgency work. Fortunately it was always easier to recruit and then extensively train new soldiers to replace your infantry losses than it was to replace Battlemechs, and the Blackhearts had never been a 'line' unit that primarily relied upon lots of heavy metal looking the enemy right in the eye across a battlefield. The Blackhearts were really more of a 'behind the lines' unit, one that much preferred quietly stabbing the enemy in the back because their origins were as a special-forces command and, in any case, fair fights were for suckers.
The unfortunate downside to operating in the periphery as a former SLDF unit had been that many of the people living out there openly hated the Star League's guts. Even after literally decades of residence in the Taurian Concordat, the Blackhearts had been largely basing themselves on Sterope ever since Aleksandr Kerensky departed the Inner Sphere, many locals there still regarded them as foreign oppressors and were very vocal about it. After a while the accusations of being somehow in league with the infamous General Amos Forlough, despite the man being dead for two hundred years, got really old, and it had been after yet another barfight between the Blackhearts and the Pleiades Hussars, a Taurian regiment also stationed on Sterope, that Mitch Johnson decided to seek an alternate employer.
It wasn't that the Blackhearts had ever actually lost any of the brawls with the Pleiades Hussars you understand, it just stopped being fun after a while.
Understandably having no interest in getting killed in one of the senseless, bloody campaigns being waged constantly by the Successor States, this being an era where one of the mercenary regiments in your employ being slaughtered to the last man had a big upside as you wouldn't have to pay them, working for Niops just looked like a much more attractive prospect so Mitch Johnson had dispatched an HPG their way to feel them out on the matter.
Naturally nobody had mentioned Von Strang's World until after the Blackhearts reached Niops, external bulkheads might not have ears in the vacuum of space but if you thought ComStar wasn't reading your mail then you were an idiot. Compared to being potentially thrown at Hesperus, Oriente or Irian by a different employer however it was still very much the case that giving Nico Von Strang and his rag-tag forces a spanking wasn't really so bad when you thought about it, even if the journey to get there was going to be an absolute bitch.
It had been a hell of a trip in itself so far just getting to the Hegel System from Niops, some seventeen jumps in fact, and despite that they were still only halfway to their final destination Colonel Johnson realized gloomily. He only hoped that the mysterious ship that was supposed to meet them here to resupply the flotilla was actually going to turn up, Niops having claimed to have sent it on ahead while being notably fuzzy on the details.
Most systems which had fallen off the maps during the First Succession War were either near the frontlines or on the outer fringes of the Successor State they were a part, of but in Hegel's case it was located practically slap-bang in the middle of the Lyran Commonwealth, barely more than one jump away from the capital system of Tharkad itself.
It hadn't been an inability to maintain vital water-purification systems needed for agriculture that had spelled doom for Hegel and its people, nor had it been the orbital bombardments that had depopulated so many other worlds at about the same time, the reason why the system was no longer worth including on the maps was the terrible plague that broke out there in the early 2810's and which hit Hegel harder than the Black Death had done Fourteenth Century Europe.
In better times Hefel might have expected relief to come in the form of shipments of medicines and aid from elsewhere in the Commonwealth, but with the bloodiest conflict in human history raging, and every available transport JumpShip House Steiner could get its hands on allocated to the war effort, Hegel was effectively left to its own devices.
Feeling abandoned and being one of the few noble rulers that genuinely gave a crap about the people they ruled, Richard Perkins, the Landgrave of Hegel, had snapped leading to him trying to assassinate Lyran Archon Richard Steiner in the throne room on Tharkad, doing so right under the noses of the Royal Guard.
Given that the Lyran throne was flanked on both sides by a fifty-five ton Griffin medium Battlemech, the machines just as imposing a sight in the chamber as you would expect, this was certainly a ballsy move by Perkins and he had likely expected to get stomped the instant Richard Steiner hit the floor with a hole blown through him.
In the event Richard Steiner had not been assassinated that day, and neither was Richard Perkins blasted or stepped on by a Griffin. What actually happened was that an extremely quick-thinking and alert mechwarrior in one of the machines spotted Perkins about to fire and he slammed his mech's massive hand down between the would-be assassin and the Archon to shield the latter from the laser pistol in Perkins's hand.
Other Royal Guards, these ones not in mechs, immediately tackled the Landgrave of Hegel before he could fire again and Richard Steiner was quickly bustled out of the throne room to safety.
Hauptman David Bateman, the perceptive Griffin pilot with the good reaction times, never had to buy his own drinks at the bar for the rest of his life, and the perennial question was finally answered as to whether the undoubtedly very bored guys stuck in in the cockpit of the mechs in the throne room for hours on end were actually awake in there or not.
According to the official story Perkins had later revealed under interrogation that he had been pushed towards his course of action by agents of the Free Worlds League, the now former Landgrave of Hegel giving up their names to the authorities.
The conspiracy nuts regarded that as utter nonsense of course, the sort of thing that only gullible sheeple would accept as the truth. After all, the attempt on the Archon's life had very nearly succeeded and would have done if the mechwarrior had been less sharp, or the room more crowded preventing them seeing Perkins weapon before it was fired. Honestly, did that really sound like something masterminded by intelligence operatives from the Free Worlds League to anyone, since when was SAFE that effective?
Famed Lyran movie director, and combat veteran of the First Succession War, Olivia Rock certainly didn't buy the official story. Her award-winning fictionalized account of the events as shown in the movie 'RS' contended that it was actually all just the work of a lone-wolf gunman, with Perkins acting entirely alone.
Regardless of the truth of it, after Richard Perkins was sentenced to death by the courts for attempted regicide Archon Richard Steiner had personally commuted the man's sentence to life imprisonment, recognizing that his would-be assassin had only been driven to such anger and resentment because the people he saw as his responsibility were suffering horribly and he was looking for someone, anyone, to blame. What the Lyran Commonwealth did not do however was divert the massive amount of resources away from the war-effort that would have been needed to actually save Hegel, which was of course why the system had eventually fallen off the maps.
It was a sad story really, one of so many sad stories that could be told about the First Succession War, although it did mean that Hegel was a now convenient place for a stopover situated right in the center of the Lyran Commonwealth that nobody ever visited anymore, Colonel Mitch Johnson thought to himself as he pondered the history of where he had ended up that day.
"We're not sure how long we're going to be here, hopefully not much longer than it takes to recharge the jumpdrive, but I want to make certain that everyone is doing their required hour of daily exercise on the grav deck and I'll be checking that they do" Johnson announced to his officers and bridge crew. "And I don't want to damn well hear any more whining about only getting a couple of minutes in the shower afterwards. It's not like we're hauling a damn comet with us" he added. Water recycling worked for long-distance space travel, if not flawlessly, but it didn't mean you could be profligate with your supplies.
There were pharmaceuticals you could take that reduced the bone and muscle loss which resulted from long periods of living in a zero-gee environment, but if you planned to do anything more than sit on your ass at the other end of the trip you needed to exercise daily.
Exercise bikes and weight training machines helped a lot, every dropship had a few of them aboard for its passengers and crew to use, but there was no real substitute for gravity itself which was why personnel traveling aboard the dropships took turns on the gravity deck of the JumpShip carrying them. A Star Lord was large enough to have a reasonably sized rotating grav deck giving it a decent amount of floor space, some of which was devoted to a gym as well as the long corridor right around the circumference of the deck making decent running track, if you were okay with the whole 'Inverted Hamster Wheel' thing anyway.
Some people found running around a grav deck make them feel a little odd at first, even queasy sometimes because the nature of artificial gravity generated by centrifugal force meant the effective gravity at your head and feet weren't the same which was more noticeable when moving, but after a while most people got used to it, much as sailors of an earlier age got their 'sea legs' after a few days or weeks aboard.
That big damn grav deck on the Olympus station at Niops had been a treat after the Blackhearts initial journey from where they had been living in the Taurian Concordat to there, although not as much as the few weeks they spent on Stafford before embarking on the even longer trip to Von Strang's World. Stafford was a really nice planet, lush and green with a great climate, and the locals had appeared friendly and welcoming enough to Johnson, even though he had heard they were putting restrictions on further immigration from the Inner Sphere.
That had been kind of interesting information to learn in itself. Although the Niops Association had a definite 'First among equals' vibe going on, and they had obviously named the new Hegemony after themselves as a result, the member worlds like Stafford enjoyed a great deal of domestic autonomy and if the elected government of Stafford had not agreed to let the Blackhearts settle there then they would have had to be ceded land somewhere else, maybe Copernicus.
The Stafford government had likely considered having a mercenary regiment with the reputation of the Blackhearts based just outside their capital was a good thing, given it would help to keep pirates and other ne'er-do-wells away. Accepting refugees from the Succession Wars however, ones that would likely want land of their own, might not necessarily fit in with the existing society and could possibly resist integration, was a different matter.
Given that they lived on a garden world, an agricultural breadbasket, one that was nicer than ninety-five percent of colonies in the Inner Sphere, it was easy to see why the people of Stafford feared being swamped by people seeking paradise.
Not that Copernicus, Baccalieu or wherever were supposed to be unpleasant, harsh places to live by any means, they just weren't 'like Terra but even better' as Stafford could justifiably claim to be.
Bolton's Rangers meanwhile had been ceded land on Islington, another breadbasket world affiliated to the Hegemony, although their contract actually required them to defend Comstock and Francas so most of their fighting strength was now deployed there instead. Islington was apparently unique among NA Hegemony worlds in that it had an established nobility, the ruling family being House Humphreys of Islington, a cadet branch of the famous House Humpreys who ruled as Duke of Andurien in the Free Worlds League.
Given that Star League Law, nor the Terran Hegemony legal system Niops inherited, actually prohibited a member world having a functioning aristocracy, the current Baron Humphreys of Islington remained the official, de jure head-of-state there. As per the Niops Association's insistence upon democratic rule however they were really more of a figurehead to an elected parliament these days, making Islington effectively a constitutional monarchy with the role of Governor of Islington within the Hegemony structure subsumed into the position of Baron of Islington.
When it came right down to it the only difference between the paperwork Mitch Johnson had received ceding land on Stafford to the Blackhearts, and the document Daniel Bolton was given granting his Rangers territory on Islington, was that the latter was a great deal more ornate and affixed with a wax seal.
Samuel Tyson of Tyson's Troublemakers might have kicked up a fuss about his own mercenary regiment not being given valuable land on a breadbasket world too if it wasn't for the fact he had been quietly buying up shares in a mining company on Galileo, one he knew had just discovered a rich new deposit of Fire Opals. It wasn't technically insider trading, but he thought it best to stay under the radar anyway.
All three mercenary regiments had signed up to the new Niops 'Company Store' policy, even Bolton's Rangers despite having been badly burned before by the similar system the Draconis Combine operated. Although understandably reluctant to repeat a prior mistake in signing an agreement that might bite him on the ass later again Mitch Johnson had been swayed by having access to lostech like Beagle Active Probes, Ferro-Fibrous Armor and LB-10X autocannon dangled under his nose.
For Mitch Johnson of the Blackhearts it had been a little easier to get him to sign up, mostly consisting of him jokingly asking if they could fix a Null Signature System or a Chameleon Light Polarization Shield and being told sure, as long as he could give them one to take apart anyway.
They also asked if the Blackhearts had any Mark XXI Nighthawk power armor in a state of disrepair by any chance, being weirdly confident they could fix those things too, though vociferously denying they had any of their own already. The Niops representatives explained that as well as robots they used a number of lostech Tunnel Rat powered mining suits in their unsurprisingly high-tech mining operations which was why they didn't think the Nighthawk was completely beyond them mechanically. They did admit that the compact ECM fitted to the Mark XXI was an unknown quantity however, so whether they could fix one of those would depend on what they found when they took one apart.
Jenna Romanov had probably been senior enough in the SLDF to be better informed that most people as regards the sort of thing the Blackhearts and other Special Forces got up to and the fancy gear they possessed, but this still raised a few more suspicions more in Colonel Johnson's mind as to what exactly the Niops Association might be keeping under their hat. Although the 77th Special Operations Group itself had never had any dealings with them back in the Star League era Johnson could not help but wonder if any other Black Ops types might have utilized the place as a convenient base situated out in the periphery back in the day, one that was loyal to the Terran Hegemony and unusually blessed with cutting-edge manufacturing capabilities.
That would in itself explain why SLDF High Command on Terra had never kicked up a fuss about XXXIV Corps supposedly trading with Niops for supplies at some point, something that the Association had mentioned publicly when they emerged from hiding. Maybe those SLDF ties were a lot deeper, and not as unauthorized and unofficial, as they made out.
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===Rendezvous in the dark===
It certainly didn't help matters as regards Mitch Johnson's regard for the forthrightness of the Niops Association when the identity of the ship which jumped in for the rendezvous at Hegel a couple of days after they arrived was revealed.
Okay, so it was technically a cargo transport that jumped in to join them, but that description left out some very salient details.
"You didn't tell us we were meeting a ****** warship" Mitch Johnson signaled Brigadier-General Henry 'Call me Hal' Franklin, the ranking officer from Niops and overall commander of the operation over on the NAS Jonathan Cameron when the ship broadcasting its identity as the NAS São Gabriel appeared in their midst.
"You're mistaken, Colonel Johnson' Franklin had signaled back. "We would never operate a warship in Lyran Commonwealth territory without asking permission, the São Gabriel is merely a cargo carrier" he said, Johnson readily able to visualize the other officers tongue-in-cheek expression as he said it.
"It's a Carrack class military cargo carrier, Sir." Johnson replied flatly. Those things packed naval grade weaponry that could crack anything short of an actual line warship like an egg and for that matter the Free Worlds League had converted their own examples into strike carriers able to bring a full wing of aerospace fighters to bear which further blurred the line.
"Well, I'm not claiming that it's an unarmed cargo carrier. It's a dangerous galaxy after all." Brigadier Franklin replied, now sounding very much like he was holding back laughter on the other end of the line.
Mitch Johnson rolled his eyes. "I swear, if these people had a fleet of freaking battleships squirreled away somewhere I wouldn't be completely surprised" he muttered to himself just loud enough for the bridge crew of the Fairbairn-Sykes to hear, the navigation officer and a couple of the others chuckling at the hyperbole. "I thought we were supposed to be the ones with all the murky little secrets operating in the shadows" he continued to complain, this time the ship's captain joining in the mirth as he started laughing.
"We're receiving another signal, this one from the São Gabriel requesting permission to approach" the Comms officer reported. "She's hauling an Aqueduct with full water tanks and a Mammoth with a couple of hundred tonnes of fresh rations aboard with our name on them. She says that with Brigadier Franklin's complements she'll top off our water tanks and replenish our stores first before moving onto the Jonathan Cameron and then the Our Gain."
This time Johnson smiled, mostly because that meant everyone could take longer showers for a while, including himself, but also as he still found the nickname Niops used for the JumpShip pretty funny. The NAS Dragoon's Loss being routinely referred to as 'Our Gain' just struck him as amusing every time he heard it being used aloud in official comms traffic, it was just so damn appropriate for a prize vessel. "Fresh rations?" he queried.
"Well, they say it's frozen food, meat and vegetables, but that's better than dry rations." the comms officer explained. "We're also being asked by São Gabriel to send over a list of replacement parts we need, they've just come from stripping an old SLDF cache and they recovered a mix of spares for different dropships and mechs."
Okay so that suddenly made a lot of sense, Johnson realized. The reason why Niops had an 'armed cargo vessel' operating out here alone so far from home was probably because they had the thing flying around salvaging anything useful Kerensky left behind. They likely started out by hoovering up anything in Free Worlds territory and then expanded their search pattern outward, looking for anything valuable that hadn't been run across yet by anyone else.
That kind of operation was, after all, how they claimed to have laid their hands on that frigate they used as a flagship right? Maybe that's how they got hold of the Carrack too now he came to think about it, the naval assets assigned to the 295th included a couple of destroyers as escorts already and a Carrack typically operated independently as a rule. The SLDF had wanted transports that could look after themselves in dangerous territory, a role the Carrack performed admirably, the problem was they were so damn expensive they never had enough of them a shortcoming that eventually led to the Tramp class JumpShip being adopted too later. The Tramp was no match for a Carrack in a fight, but like the Royalty it still outgunned most anything that wasn't an actual purpose-built warship which made it good enough.
There were rumors that Niops operated at least a couple of Tramp class vessels too, supposedly with L-F batteries fitted, and that was certainly plausible enough. They might not have even had to salvage the things, better equipped SLDF divisions would often have such ships attached to them so they could rapidly deploy a battalion or two ahead of the main force, using them as either a scouting force or the spearhead of an advance. Although not technically a Royal formation the 295th were still a Terran Hegemony unit and those received the fancy toys non-Terran SLDF divisions often didn't because the Star League was, at its core, a way for Terra to once again place itself firmly on top and therefore restore it to its rightful position as the one calling the shots and pulling the strings.
Having lived in the Taurian Concordat all his life, Mitch Johnson's views on the Terran Hegemony were a little different than those his Hegemony-born father had held. The Taurian's tended to think of the Terran Hegemony as just being the Terran Alliance with the rough edges polished off and much better PR people, but even the Taurian's grudgingly admitted these days, at least behind closed doors, that the Inner Sphere had become an utter shit-show without them. Not that the Terran's didn't deserve their fall from grace, you understand, they were almost as a bad if not worse than FedRats from the Taurian perspective, it was just hard to argue with the simple math that the power vacuum left behind when the Terran Hegemony collapsed had resulted in a death-toll of unimaginable scale and only a sociopath wouldn't be at least somewhat bothered by that.
The Taurian leadership certainly pointed at the Inner Sphere a lot these days as justification for why they should have as little to do with them as possible, although their moves to try and bolster periphery solidarity had come badly unstuck when they fought a border war with the Magistracy of Canopus back in 2813, mostly because everyone pinned the blame for it on the infamously gruff Taurians not the famously laid-back Magistracy. The other major periphery nation, the Outworlds Alliance with their pacifistic leanings, was certainly unimpressed, and it put back Taurian-Outworlds relations for years with even Semyon Calderon resignation as Protector of the Realm not helping much.
Fortunately the Blackheart's involvement in the Taurian-Canopian War had been minimal, mostly because it was over before they got there which Johnson was grateful for. He didn't much like the idea of being squarely aligned with the 'bad guys' in a conflict and his employer Semyon Calderon had been acting like a total dick. That wasn't just Johnson's opinion either, Semyon was basically forced to resign as head-of-state not long afterwards because of just how pissed-off a large section of the Taurian population really was about his little misadventure. Most Taurians had no beef with Canopus, the Magistracy was just another periphery state that had been repeatedly shafted by Spheroids, just like the Concordat, so why the hell was the Protector picking a fight with them instead of looking for ways to get back the worlds lost to Davion?
Despite the hideously long journey involved to get there, at least beating up on Nico Von Strang and his goons put the Blackhearts firmly on the side of right in Johnson's opinion because Von Strang's World was a nest of vipers. Even his mostly Taurian-born personnel, who weren't the starry-eyed Star League loyalists their parents and grandparents had been, weren't any of them anti-Terran enough to think that Stefan Amaris and his second-favourite psychopathic regimental commander Gunthar Von Strang had been good people. The Blackhearts had raised a glass to the 295th when they heard they had brought Bernard Critchly, the rabid attack dog of Stefan Amaris' favorite psychopathic regiment commander Antilos Legos, to justice.
Nobody living in the periphery had liked the Blood Rain either of course, those murderous ****** had made most regular pirate bands look positively sweet and fluffy by comparison and learning that the Blood Rain's mysterious disappearance was down to the Niops Association almost made up for the fact that Niops was a loyalist Star League colony in Taurian eyes, almost.
A grudging acceptance that, for once, the SLDF had done right wasn't about to make people in the Concordat forget about those killed during the New Vandenberg Uprising, or the myriad war crimes committed by Amos Forlough and his troops centuries before.
Four days later, Brigadier-General Franklin summoned the senior officers over to a meeting to take place on the Dragoon's Loss, the shuttlecraft ferrying Johnson over with his craft arriving after the one Franklin, Bolton and Tyson took there from the Jonathan Cameron but ahead of the shuttle from the São Gabriel. As his small craft approached the Royalty class Jumpship, Johnson took note of the fact that maintenance crews in EVA suits were buzzing around the Triumph and the old Dictator dropships it was carrying, scrubbing off the Niops and SLDF insignias. It certainly wouldn't be a good idea for the ship to arrive at Von Strang's World advertising it's true owners, so that was smart enough, but so far at least the Mule and the Titan the JumpShip carried on its third and fourth docking collars remained in SLDF colours.
After his shuttlecraft docked with the JumpShip, Johnson was directed towards where the meeting was taking place, escorted there by an older naval crewman in Star League Navy fatigues that had clearly spent a great deal of time in freefall over the years, judging by their agility and physical build.
"I guess you people didn't like the original décor." Johnson remarked, noting that everything inside had been repainted in SLDF approved colors.
"Getting rid of the foul stench of Amaris the former owners left behind was the first priority." the crewman replied. "Which is kinda why we're out here now when you think about it" they added, smiling.
"I guess you've been in the service a few years?" Johnson asked.
"Son, I've been in the navy long enough that I was in orbit over Terra when we got the news Gunthar Von Strang had been taken out, that's why I wouldn't take no for an answer when I volunteered for this mission" the old crewman replied. "Wouldn't feel right retiring with a ****** Von Strang still out there somewhere." he declared with considerable fleeing. "One Amaris groupie in the galaxy is one too many."
Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised at just how old some of the Niops people were, they were Terran Hegemony born after all, but it did help offer some perspective as to why General Romanov and her people were so hell-bent on undertaking this operation. The Amaris War wasn't just history to them, dealing with Von Strang's heir was unfinished personal business.
Passing along a corridor Johnson reached a junction and nearly crashed into someone he thought he recognised going the other way but actually hadn't met before. "Brigadier Franklin?" he queried, looking at the young man in confusion.
"It's Lieutenant Franklin." the young man corrected him, grinning. "You wouldn't be the first person that mistook me for my father, though it's usually from further away."
"You are the absolute spitting image of him" Johnson stated in mild wonderment. He had spent a number of hours with the man, more than long enough to know his features pretty well.
"Not quite, if you see us side-by-side I'm taller, I've got my mother's eyes not his and he's a lot greyer these days" the young man replied, smiling. "The eyes never stopped him making jokes about me being a cloned lab experiment when I was a kid though."
Johnson laughed. "At least he could always be one-hundred percent certain you were his."
"Yeah, no cuckoo in the nest that's for sure" the naval crewman agreed. "Always did wonder about my younger brother's boy, just not dumb and ugly enough to be really his." he joked. "We should get moving Colonel' he advised Johnson.
"Very true." Johnson replied, no military worthy of the name appreciated tardiness. "Nice to have met you lieutenant."
"You too, Sir" Frederick Hallis replied, "Now if you'll excuse me I need to run around the corner, change rank insignia, put in some colored contact lenses and dye my hair grey before you see me again in a few minutes" he deadpanned.
"Yeah, that's what I thought" Johnson played along. "You Niops people are crafty and inscrutable to a fault."
"You should see the tricks we can pull with smoke and orbital mirrors" the crewman told him. "That Carrack out there, it's just an optical illusion." he told Johnson solemnly.
If the São Gabriel hadn't recently pumped several hundred tons of fresh water onto the Fairbairn-Sykes Mitch Johnson might well have believed him.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : It is a very, very long way from Niops to Von Strang's World so an interlude on the way seemed appropriate. Fortunately the Hegel system in the Lyran Commonwealth can be found at around the half-way point in the journey, and has quite an interesting history (the depth of canon in Battletech really is impressive once you start poking into it). Archon Richard Steiner being saved from being assassinated by Richard Perkins of Hegel by the actions of Hauptman David Bateman of the Royal Guard and his Griffin is canon, the stuff about director Olivia Rock and the movie RS is a joke in case you weren't sure!The mercenary regiment the Blackhearts, formerly the 77th Special Operations Group of the SLDF were based out of Sterope in the Taurian Concordat for decades after the Star league fell, more than long enough for them to have absorbed plenty of Taurian culture as well as recruits. The Taurian's don't like the Terran Hegemony, or the Star League, or their neighbors in the Federated Suns, or Spheroids generally, but that doesn't mean they're going to be actually celebrating the deaths of tens of billions of civilians in the Inner Sphere during the early Succession Wars. They want to be left alone, that doesn't mean they want everyone else dead.The Star Lord belonging to Colonel Johnson and the Blackhearts mercenary regiment being called the Fairbairn-Sykes is fanon to this story, but it fits them pretty well don't you think? The Carrack class ship São Gabriel is the former Dobrev, the Royalty class 'Dragoon's Loss' is the one captured from the Blood Rain.
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Chapter 56