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==Chapter 26 - Best Served Cold==
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Cameron-Class Battlecruiser Sarah McEvedy
Geosynchronous Orbit, Cabanatuan
Clan Wolverine Staging Area
January 12th, 3074
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Since Lilly had begun her assaults on Clan Smoke Jaguar back in 3050, the Castle Brian on Cabanatuan, codenamed Tiki, had changed dramatically.  Resources, materiel, and personnel from Homeworld and its surrounding systems had flowed to Cabanatuan, long-dormant sections of the Castle had been refurbished, reactivated, and brought online.  New Clan Wolverine built OmniMechs -- mostly conversions of the Inner Sphere designs they'd been using -- and equipment sealed in OmniPods rolled out of the Castle's factory.
For twenty-two years, Tiki Castle had been transformed from a forward staging and resupply post to a fully-fledged and heavily invested holding of Clan Wolverine.  Now that Lilly had decided to abandon the Inner Sphere once more, that holding needed to be painstakingly disassembled and shipped back to Homeworld, one slow JumpShip circuit at a time.  It was a time-consuming process.  The JumpShip traffic needed to be carefully timed and plotted so as not to rouse suspicion or provide data points leading to Cabanatuan, or even worse, to Homeworld itself.  Anything that might provide intelligence on the Clan had to be packed and transported or carefully and thoroughly destroyed.  As for the Castle, it had to be carefully and methodically put back in standby mode, to await the day the Wolverines might have need of it again.
Clan Wolverine’s Beta Galaxy had been effectively permanently stationed there, and while the Clan had operated in the Inner Sphere had been critical to its defense.  Now they too would need to be packed up and relocated along with their families, following the very last shipments back to Wolverine space.  It would also be a slow process.  Three hundred years ago, Operation Switchback had been an inspired but desperate attempt to save the Wolverines, now the time and resources were available to carefully, quietly, and as a result very, very slowly fade back into the mists of unknown space.
As critical as Beta Galaxy was to the system's security, they were not as critical as the system’s secrecy.  Cabanatuan had long been forgotten by the rest of the Inner Sphere, providing security, resources, and proximity for Clan Wolverine to once more make their presence known.
Thus, the sensor officer’s announcement was met with no small amount of consternation.
“Vessel appearing, zenith jump point!”
“Do we have anything scheduled?” Lilly McEvedy Walter asked, though she was certain she already knew the answer.
“Negative, no arrivals scheduled for today.”
“Get me an ID.  Star Admiral, set Condition One.”
“Working.”  Tense moments passed.  “It’s the DCS Satsuma, Yamato-class battleship.”
“They’re hailing us." the communications officer added.
“Accept.”
The transmission came through over the bridge speakers. “This is Sho-sho Ifukube, commanding DCS Satsuma.  We come with no hostile intent.  I wish to speak with the highest available authority of Clan Wolverine.”
Lilly approached the audio pickup.  “This is Khan Lilly McEvedy Walter of Clan Wolverine.  You have my attention, Sho-sho Ifukube.”
“Stand by for real-time HPG transmission.”, Draconis Combine officer announced
Lilly raised an eyebrow.  So far as she was aware, the Clans were the only ones who maintained the network and knowledge to make real-time, two-way HPG communication possible.  Either the DCS was full of surprises, or ComStar was assisting them (and had some surprises of their own up their robes, which was more or less a given).
Or the Word of Blake replaced ComStar in this particular equation.
A round, smiling Japanese face soon appeared.  "Ah, hello." the man said in a deep, cheerful voice.  "I understand I have the honor of speaking with Khan Lilly McEvedy Walter of Clan Wolverine.  I am Chandrasekhar Kurita, pleased to meet you."
"Likewise." Lilly replied cautiously.  She knew of the Combine's richest businessman and most capable freelance spymaster, of course.  "How did you find us?"
Chandrasekhar clucked his tongue.  "I narrowed down your forward base to a handful of potential systems back in 3053.  I simply kept it to myself, since you clearly had good reasons to not want to be found."
"I see." Lilly replied.  "Then why seek us out now?"
"I have something to show you, something I think you can help me with."  Chandrasekhar's image was replaced by that of a McKenna-class battleship in Word of Blake colors.  "This is the WBS Blake's Sword.  According to the records I could find, they found an old, damaged, disabled McKenna WarShip in the Deep Periphery, rimward of theOutworlds Alliance, in 3061.  They towed it back, repaired it, and rechristened it Blake's Sword.  What I cannot figure out is what such a vessel was doing out there."  The image of the Blake's Sword stowed in Sarah McEvedy's computers, Chandrasekhar's face reappeared, wearing a sly smile.  "I hoped perhaps you might be able to shed some light on that."
Oh, Lilly certainly could at that.  While nearly 300 McKennas had been constructed before the fall of the Star League, only 18 remained operational after the intense fighting of the Amaris Civil War, and all of those had left on the Exodus.  Which had gone coreward, not spinward-rimward.  Only one group with a McKenna had been active near the area Chandrasekhar described, and they had been forced to finally abandon it in that area when the aging, battered old girl could go no further.
"It's Zughoffer Weir." she told the aging Kurita
"Oh?" Chandrasekhar put on a show of being surprised.  "You do know this ship, then?"
Lilly nodded.  "She carried us on the Exodus, our flight from Annihilation, stood at Barbados, regrouped with the survivors, and carried us toward what became Homeworld."  Lilly's smile turned faintly sinister.  "She brought the Minnesota Tribe to sack your worlds, then helped them vanish."
Chandra laughed as though at a good joke.  "Ah, I suspected as much."
"And now the Blakists have her."
"If it is any consolation, Clan Ghost Bear rendered the ship unsalvageable inoperable over Tukayyid." Chandra said
''
"It is not." Lilly replied coldly.
Chandra smiled indulgently.  "Well, if you wish to redress this dishonor, I think I can help.  I know a man, goes by the name Devlin Stone.  He is building a coalition to strike back at the Blakists and eliminate them from the Inner Sphere.  I'm doing much the same, mostly involving assorted mercenaries.  The might, will, and skill of Clan Wolverine would only be a boon to either of our efforts."
So that's what you're after.  Truth be told, Lilly had been doubting her decision to fall back to Homeworld.  Should the Word of Blake emerge victorious, sooner or later they would seek out and find the Wolverines.  If war was inevitable, it was preferable to fight on worlds that were not yours.  If these coalitions were serious, they might just drive back the Blakists in defeat.  And given the lengths and expense Chandrasekhar had gone to motivate Lilly to bring her Wolverines in, they seemed quite serious.
"Who does this Stone have backing him so far?" Lilly asked.
"Clan Nova Cat, Clan Wolf-In-Exile, the Lyran Commonwealth, ComStar, and the Draconis Combine.", he told her
Lilly smirked.  "And you think us showing up won't drive the Cats and Wolves to leave?"
Chandrasekhar's face grew gravely serious.  "I think these are desperate times, Khan McEvedy, and we are all well past the point of realizing they require desperate measures."
"I would not argue that.  I simply do not trust the other Clans not to argue it, either."
"Arguing does seem a popular Clan pastime, especially when it can be done with bullets.  But I have faith that, if you approach Stone and offer to join, he will ensure the other Clans accept you as allies.  For the duration of the Blakist threat, at least."
Lilly scoffed.  "How can he possibly?"
"He has this way about him.  Trust me.  Speak with him, you'll see what I mean.", he told her.
Now Lilly was very curious.  Which, she suspected, was exactly what Chandrasekhar had intended.  "Alright.  How can I reach him?"
Chandra supplied a route to get a message to Stone without Blakist interception.  "Oh, one more thing, if I may." he asked.  "I have noted one of your DropShips, present for nearly all your actions against the Clans, goes by the name Arcadian Mercy.  What is the meaning behind that name?"
Lilly smiled, discerning the hidden intent behind the question.  "Having some Ghost Bear troubles, query affirmative?"
Chandrasekhar smiled, the smile a man makes when his chess opponent makes a brilliantly unexpected move.  "After a fashion.  They have gone quite berserk on Blakist forces, which is good, though they have no problems punching through non-Blakists to get to them, which is somewhat less so."
Lilly pursed her lips.  When she had gone before the Grand Council twenty-two years ago, she had told them the whole, entire, and complete truth about the Wolverine Annihilation, leaving nothing out.
Except she had.  She had left in those parts of the story that made the Wolverines look bad, but she had not elaborated on the precise numbers of Wolverine survivors, or the particulars of how they had escaped.  Mostly, she had felt those details were not relevant to the story.  Part of it had been an admittedly irrational fear that, if the Clans learned how the Wolverines had survived, they might learn how to correct that mistake.  Some of it stemmed from the pleasure she felt at increasing the Wolverine's mystique, and thus the fear they triggered in the Clans.
But she had not discharged her duty to the full, complete, and honest truth.  Now, she was being granted a second chance to do so, and one that might benefit the whole Inner Sphere.
So, Lilly cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and told the story.  Of how a Wolverine sibko and their instructor, fleeing the Annihilation, had set down on a moon of the Ghost Bear world of Arcadia to repair and supply their ship.  How a Ghost Bear warrior had challenged them, only to decide that killing children in cold blood was not warrior’s work.
"We named the ship Arcadian Mercy to always remember that even in the darkest time. Despite his best efforts, Nicholas Kerensky had not driven conscience, decency, and humanity from his Clans completely." Lilly finished.
"A moving story, Khan McEvedy.  Thank you."
''
"And does it help you, Kurita-san?", she asked
"I believe it does.  Thank you for your time, Khan McEvedy."
"Kurita-san, about our location?", she inquired
"I see no reason to share that information at present.  I trust you have no intention of supplying one."
''
"We have no interest in hostilities with the Combine, no.", she told Chandra
"Good.  The crew of Satsuma does not know precisely where they are, not even her captain.  Only the navigator, and I have utmost faith in his discretion."
"Thank you."
"Thank you.  Farewell, Khan McEvedy.", he said as he signed off
The transmission ended, and minutes later, Satsuma discharged its LF battery, jumping away.
"What are your thoughts, my Khan?" Star Admiral Benedict Rodriguez Fjor asked.
Lilly remained silent for some time, and while everyone was anxious to hear her decision, they did not intrude upon her thoughts.
"Continue the evacuation as scheduled.  I will contact this Devlin Stone, and if I do not like what he has to say, we will go through with leaving the Inner Sphere.  Again."
"And if you do like what he has to say?" Benedict asked.
Lilly smiled.  "Then the Clan will be very upset with me when I ask them to redo what they have spent the last four years undoing."
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==Author's Notes==
Sorry for the wait.  Researching the Jihad to make sense of it is nigh-on impossible.  I kept hoping somebody would put out a YouTube video or something explaining it. . . a Tex Talks BattleTech about it would be ideal, but I doubt that'll happen. . . so this chapter languished for far too long as I tried to make sure my Wolverines could be fit in around what actually happened.  Which means understanding what actually happened.  Which is more of a moving target than a Dasher with active MASC.
For the record, when I earlier mentioned that the Wolverines might sit out the Jihad, it was partly due to my own difficulties making heads or tails of anything that happened during it.  But then I did try to start making sense of it, and something about the Word of Blake continually attacking Hachiman Electronics, and one of these attacks happening around the same time as Clan Snow Raven's "limited Annihilation" on the Combine, seemed an excellent way to draw the Wolverines into the conflict.  But then I had to figure out what to do with them.  Getting them in on the coalition forces was obvious, then I needed to figure out how.  Someone on Spacebattles.com, where I cross-posted this, mentioned the Blake's Sword/Zughoffer Weir, and it supposedly being evidence that Word of Blake was actually Clan Wolverine to get the Ghost Bears to focus and join the coalition, so I decided to use that as motivation to get the actual Wolverine's on board.  But then I needed to figure out something for the Bears.
The best I'd been able to come up with something along the lines of Stone saying "Aw, come on, we've got the Wolverines on board.  Don't tell me the Wolverines are more honorable than the Ghost Bears?"  Then inspiration struck.  There is, indeed, a passage in Betrayal of Ideals detailing a Wolverine sibko being spared by a Ghost Bear warrior on a moon of Arcadia because shooting holes in children wearing spacesuits on an airless moon is more than he can stomach.  So I named a Wolverine DropShip "Arcadian Mercy."  Now, bringing that story back to the Ghost Bears -- who famously have a Remembrance passage talking about the Wolverines will never escape them again -- should remind the Bears of the, shall we say, better angels of their nature, and get them on board.
I know roughly where I want the rest of the Jihad-era stuff to go, and I think I know what I'll do with the Wolverines come the founding of the Republic of the Sphere, but I'll need to look into that a bit to again make sure everything fits.
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