ASO Chpt 10

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==Chapter 10 - Formation - Aurigan Sentinels (BattleTech CYOA)==
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===Final Touches to the new Mercenary "Company"===
Cordia City, Coromodir
Aurigan Reach, Aurigan Coalition
30th December, 3020
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The intensity of the year didn’t let up for the last few months of it. Putting together multiple military regiments from not quite scratch turned out to be as involved and draining as I feared it would be. Especially since I was selling LosTech and acquiring a noble title at the same time.
 
Thank God that I was able to put my newfound nobility on the backburner. My new landholding used to belong to House Arano so I was able to just keep the existing system for running it in place for now. I might have to take an active hand at some undetermined point in the future, but for now I would be able to play the absent landholder and just collect the more than a hundred thousand C-Bills that my taxes were granting me.
 
And let me tell you, that amount of money left me with mixed feelings for various reasons. For starters, I feel bad about collecting that much money whilst doing nothing to deserve it. On the one hand, that is how the neo-feudal system works and technically speaking, I am up to my eyes dealing with the stuff that earnt me the landholding. But on the other hand there was the matter of just how much I was collecting from my landholding.
 
It was a massive amount of money compared to my previous circumstances. I had gone from being lucky to make less than a thousand C-Bills a month to just effortlessly bringing over a hundred thousand. That should be massive for someone like me except I had suddenly found myself trying to pay for multiple military regiments and a literal freaking WarShip. Especially since I lacked an existing logistical network to supply it and was putting together the necessary behind the scenes support from square one.
 
So a hundred thousand C-Bills a month really didn’t seem like that much when the Aurigan Sentinels were costing double-digit millions in the same timeframe. Hopefully that number will lower in time as the fresh unit settles into a status quo as most of the costs come from having to fill a massive amount of demand that has effectively sprung out of thin air. While the mercenary life means that the unexpected can always happen, the expenses should settle down into something more reasonable.
 
At least the manpower issue has been resolved. As predicted, we had more than enough bodies to fill the ranks and the primary issue in that department was finding people with proper training and expertise. Using the personnel from Dad’s expedition as a foundation to build upon had left me with a mostly experienced core.
 
In terms of ship crews, I had two extremes thanks to having plenty of veteran JumpShip crews while barely having any experienced DropShip crews. Dropper crews don’t grow on trees and with more than half a dozen DropShips to crew, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel by the end of it. On paper, I have full crews for all of my ships as the new year is about to roll around the corner, but the truth is that some of the DropShips are a little too green with some members of their crews being little more than glorified apprentices.
 
A few more months of on the job training should deal with that, but until then I would have to be careful with how I used my DropShips. And then we have the Tomb-Maker aka the White Elephant. Somedays it feels like half of my expenses go towards keeping that WarShip running and if I didn’t have High Lord Arano and Lord Espinosa actively helping me. I doubt I would have a chance of crewing it. Even now, the McKenna-class Battleship just spends its days in orbit over Coromodir with a green crew and full hangar bays that draw from a mixture of my Aurigan Sentinels and the units of the ACM in-system.
 
For all that the Tomb-Maker is mine on paper, right now it is more the property of the Aurigan Coalition in truth. 
 
In terms of aerospace pilots, I wasn’t able to tap much potential. Being an ASF pilot has always been as intensive and hard as being a MechWarrior if not more so without the glamour and glory of being a MechWarrior, thus making the pool of trained personnel scarce. On top of that, the TDF has recently begun its reforms to its aerospace arm under Thomas Calderon, forcing me to compete with the Taurians for the hirable ASF pilots in the region.
 
I managed to find enough bodies for all of my ASFs, but the experience pool isn’t pretty. A full half of my pilot roster are green-rated and of the rest, I can count those who stand out on one hand with the pair of elite pilots that Dad hired and a trio of veterans that I was able to find. Two of them were Feddies that the Bulls refused to even consider touching while the third was a Canopian lady who has a past with the Concordat. I promptly shoved all of those experienced pilots into a single squadron and gave them my Royal Stukas to fly.
 
The MechWarrior situation is both better and worse. On the one hand, I have slightly more elite and veteran ‘Mech pilots than I do fighter pilots, but on the other hand, more than two thirds of my MechWarriors are rated as green. Thanks to drawing upon the Aurigan nobility for political ties and local loyalty, I have plenty of trained, but inexperienced warriors. I refused to take anyone who couldn’t pass competency tests, but at the same time, I am drawing upon spare second sons and daughters as anyone with actual experience is already serving in the ACM.
 
Things aren’t much better when it comes to the infantry and tankers. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find any veteran tank crews interested in working for me. I had enough trained professionals to fill out just over a company’s worth, but beyond that, I was picking up hopefuls off the street and giving them some basic in-house training. The infantry situation was probably the area where my recruitment efforts had fared the best.
 
I had Rosabella’s Vixens as a small, but effective commando formation and I had shuffled the veteran marines off to lead a company of marines to protect the Tomb-Maker and the JumpShips. It was very much a mix of veterans and fresh recruits, but hopefully time and experience will raise the latter towards the level of the former. On the ground, the situation is better with one squad of regulars for every squad of new recruits out of bootcamp.
 
The overall circumstances aren’t ideal with most of the unit being green, but hopefully numbers and heavy tonnage will compensate for skill until my Aurigan Sentinels can get some proper experience on the battlefield. I doubt I’ll be facing any true peers in either the Reach or the Frontier for the foreseeable future.
At least the officer situation is going well. Moana has the Myrmidon’s complement under her command, which consists of my command company of ‘Mechs and a squadron of Sparrowhawks Light Aerospace Fighters. Rosabella has an independent command consisting of her old unit that answers directly to me while Soyna and Vance have each been given their own combined arms battalion to command.
Between my own efforts and House Arano’s contacts, I’ve been able to find enough experienced officers to fill out all of the senior leadership positions. I even snagged one Raju “Mastiff” Montgomery to run one of my regiments though that one was due to the generosity of High Lord Arano rather than any actual work on my part. As for other people of interest, I managed to snag Michael Markham of Markham’s Marauders. I wasn’t able to justify giving him a regimental command, but I did fold him and the rest of the Markham’s Marauders into one of my combined arms battalions and give Markham command of it.
 
While I recognized a bunch of names and faces from their ranks thanks to my otherworldly knowledge, the one that really stuck out to me was Yang Virtanen. A ‘Mech Tech after my own heart, it didn't take long before I decided to promote him to Chief 'Mech Tech of the entire Aurigan Sentinels and not just due to name recognition. The real life man is every bit the genius that his game self is, something he proved when I worked with him to upgrade my Atlas, Solus Prime, with LosTech.
 
A gauss rifle with two tons of ammo to replace the assault autocannon and its two tons of ammo for some additional long-ranged firepower with the head heat sink being removed to free up the tonnage. Then we removed the right torso heat sink and downgraded the LRM/20 to an LRM/15 to make weight savings for an upgraded targeting-tracking system to assist the gauss rifle and a Guardian ECM for extra defencibility. Thankfully reality cleaved closer to the HBS game over the tabletop so we were able to stick the Guardian ECM in the torso in addition to the pair of medium lasers that were already there.
 
I wanted to stick some jump jets in there to get the mobility of a Highlander, but that would mean a mixture of dropping the SRMs, downgrading the LRMs again, removing the advanced TTS computer or, worst of all, reducing the armor. In the end, I wasn’t willing to make any of those compromises and settled for just filling up the last half-ton of free space with some extra LRMs, leaving the total number of them in the Solus Prime at three hundred.
 
In the end, I ‘just’ had to settle for an Atlas with a gauss rifle and ECM.
 
All in all, I can’t complain. The Aurigan Sentinels are definitely a green unit, but that’s what you get when you throw together a trio of regiments out of thin air. Time will take off the rough edges and hopefully things will be a different matter in a year or two. And I really hope that they will be different in a good way because it is in a year that High Lord Arano and his wife die in an accident and Lord Espinosa launches his coup.
 
Nope, not going to think about that. Things are different because I’ve made them different. Lord Espinosa isn’t going to launch his coup, not when there is a battleship in orbit around Coromodir and the Aurigan Coalition just received formal recognition from every known major power in the last few months.
Kamea’s parents might still die though. I’ll mention getting JumpShips checked out to her or try to push for it myself. I don’t know what good it will do, but we do have the memory core and JumpShips are the lifeblood of the interstellar trade that is vital to the Coalition. It might work and I don’t see what it costs me to try.
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==Author's Chapter Commentary==
; A Word from the Author: So after writing this update and half of the next one, I realized that I could have written this as less of a direct summary and more Elizabeth conversing with someone else and explaining things to them. Alas, I decided not to go back and revise this update as I deem it good enough and would rather work on progressing the story. I will be having the next chapter as a conversation between Elizabeth and Kamea rather than just a direct summary like this update.Anyway, Elizabeth has been fortunate enough to find enough bodies to fill out her ranks, but their experience is lacking. I can’t recall exactly how the skill level compares to the Rimward Sentinels of my previous story, but the Aurigan Sentinels of this story are going to be significantly greener. Something I hope to make plot relevant even if it is something that will be resolved in time.Just as this update has covered the military side of things, the next update will be covering the financial and industrial side of things.
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