CHS2-2

==Chapter 2 - Book 2 – Chappy's Howling Siegers==
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Base HQ
New Munich (Capital City), Continent Adelaide 
Planet Giausar, Lyran Commonwealth
March 12th, 2786
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Matthew was looking over the reports from the last engagements with the enemy, the 6th Hesperus Guards "the invaders". The planet defenses have been locked in battles across the planet for a several months before Matthew and his unit showed up. Which was fine since both sides were exhausted by now, most of the battles were just mere skirmishes. Matthew looked at the deployment table Charlie lance was up 300 miles north to defend a town, his command lance and Alpha Lance was going to leave later in the day to stop a Hesperus Guards breakthrough of the Forward Base located in the west. Matthew jumped a little when the door slammed open.
“Matthew, what is the meaning of this?” Captain Pople said.
Matthew looked at the small group that came with her, two of the three closest advisors and friends, and his wife which oversaw all civilian workers for the unit.
“What do you mean…Captain” Matthew said as he looked at everyone with his eyes resting on his wife.
“These orders for contracts, why are you trying to force contracts for specific planets eventually moving us all the way over to the other side of the known universe. Most of us are from Terra, I thought we were going to stay around that region of space.” His wife said.
Matthew shook his head up and down, “MMmmmm yeah, I know, that was the idea until this came. I have changed my mind and have now changed the direction that the Siegers will be going. This is a military matter, so I ask that everyone leaves except for the captain. All the civilians need to know is that this is for the best interest for the unit.” Matthew then moved around his desk and asked for everyone to leave except for Pople, locked the door, and flipped a switch in his hand which made the room secure. He then held up the data port with his father’s message.
“Look” Matthew started to say, “this is very top secret and not to be talked about outside this room. When Dalton gets back with Charlie Lance, I will back brief him. The situation has change, we were all part of the SLDF. I know we all still feel the pull to have the SLDF here and calm all these little wars that have started. I also know it has been hard on us playing the mercenary role, which is the role we are to play for maybe the rest of our lives. But there may be a chance to build this unit into something special, and eventually have a permanent base off of all star maps, protecting our families.” Matthew raised his hand when it looked like Pople was going to talk back. 
“Meaning, the last planet that I have not released yet on that list, has a secure base with a few thousand workers and a few more civilians, industrial platform, mech factories, and the planet is food and energy self-sustaining as of 8 months ago when my father made this message. These people pledge loyalty to my father and said that they will wait for me to pledge loyalty to me. Now it is going to take maybe years before we get there, so I have sent an envoy to them to notify them that we are coming. This DataPort has the message my father sent me come over here and see what Father left us. Right now, only you, Bruce and soon Dalton will know exactly what we are going to do.”
 
Pople watched the video and had a hard time believing it, “Your father is the man that killed most of my friends during friendly fire in the Amazon is just giving you all this equipment?”
Matthew looked at his best friend and said, “I know I can hardly believe it myself, now if you will excuse me, I need to get my lance ready to head out.”
The group stared at Captain Pople as she left the office obviously still not happy because no answers were given. 
Matthew took hold of his wife and moved her into the office. Shutting the door and turned around, Diana could tell he was very mad by the look in his eyes and the color change in them. 
“What the hell was that, Diana?” 
“What was that an attempt of, an intervention, an attempt at bringing me down. I am the commander why are they and you questioning my decisions?”
“No” Diana said “It was nothing like that, how could you think that? They were just concern with the secrecy. You have been withdrawn the last few days and this memo has got people talking.”
Matthew looked at a report laying on top of his desk, the report was a secret communique from an ex-girlfriend that still worked in the military arm of COMSTAR and decided not to share.
“I have reasons to be secret. We are a merc unit out here alone without any government or big donor backing. I am the commander and if I have secrets, it is best I keep them for the good of the unit.”
He looked at his wife and kissed her on the forehead “I got to get going talk to you after the battle.”
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FOB Stonewall 
Helliots City, Continent Adelaide 
Planet Giausar, Lyran Commoonwealth
March 24th, 2786
Captain Pople was looking at the drone images, nothing in all the quadrants but the battle was fate. 
All communication outside of the city had been jammed so the enemy was coming. With the jamming Captain Pople had no idea when her commander was coming with his command lance, they left HQ about 4 hours after she did so it should be soon unless the enemy sprung a trap. A few minutes later her drone picked up the enemy south/southwest from the city which was opposite of the base that was set up in the north part of the city.
“Listen up, Alpha Lance, we have enemy inbound south/southwest our back up has not shown yet. Our allies are on the other side of town. Its time to get to work keep them out of the town.”
The enemy burst through the tree line and Captain Pople realized her mistake instantly, she underestimated how many units they had, while in the trees the drone only recognized half of the enemy. Her four mechs against twelve heavy tanks and six light mechs meant that her unit was out matched.
Eight minutes later three enemy tanks were broken and on fire with the crews inside, another tank’s left side was gone but the crew escape. Captain Pople was crippled with a missing left leg and sergeant Moa was missing both legs with his mech’s head down in the dirt, but he was ok. The other two mechs had some damage but were still operational. That is when Major Chapman and his lance popped out of the town on the south side going at full speed and firing at the enemy. She noted that none of the allies had shown up to help.
Major Chapman and his lance were running at full speed trying to link up with Alpha Lance ever since the jamming started. When they exited the main part of the city and saw the battle, he ordered his team to fire even if they were not in range in hopes to relieve some pressure on Captain Pople and her people.
Running at full speed was making it hard to hit the enemy so Major Chapman ordered the unit to slow, pick a target and kill them. Matthew took out two more enemy tanks when two AC20 hit his left side straight on virtually taking all his armor off his left arm, leg, and torso including taking some armor of his head. Sparks flew out of a console, smoke started to fill the cockpit. The smoke was getting two thick to see or breath, damage report showed some engine damage and heat sinks destroyed so he powered down and left the cockpit. A few minutes later the last enemy mech was crippled beyond fighting capability.
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Base HQ
New Munich (Capital City), Continent Adelaide 
Planet Giausar, Lyran Commonwealth
March 25th, 2786
Major Chapman looked at the damage report, almost all his unit was moderately damage. He needed about two weeks of repair to be able to field a company, right now he had a lance and even then, some would have damage. The only good news he saw was the deployment report, there was absolutely no sign of the enemy anywhere, looks like they are bunkered down some where doing repairs too, which was fine with Matthew. 
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Base HQ - Conference room
June 3th, 2786
All the command staff was there sitting around the conference room table, they just spent the last four hours re-organizing the unit. In the eighteen months the unit had grown from barely a company strong to almost a Battalion strength with support units. Major Chapman looked around the room, there was one last action that he needed to accomplish.
“There is just one more item to take care of, Dalton, Ethan, Haleigh get up here to the front now.” Matthew waited until his three closest friends and MechWarriors came up to the front of the table.
“With the creation of three companies, and being that we are just Mercenaries. There is no precedent for this, so I am just going to do it. I hereby promote all three of you to Major effective immediately.” 
Matthew continued, “With this I will be giving myself the rank of Lt. Colonel only so that the outside world will see a military structure, we all know that within this conference room we are all equals and will be treated as such. Even though as the leader of this organization there will be times that I will call for secrecy, and not all details will be release to the unit or even to y’all but know that there will always be a reason for that secrecy mainly because we will always be in a host nation, and there are ears everywhere.” 
With that he gave the three soldiers their new rank saluted them, shook their hands, and started clapping. He then started to wonder where his most trusted agent was at this moment…
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Recharge Station - Space Lounge
Yance I (Agador)
Terran Hegemony
6th June, 2786
Grace Hartikainen was sitting in a booth on the far side of the club nursing a rum and the local soft drink. She was thinking of how she came to this place, and why she was here. Recently promoted to Lieutenant as a 'mech tech for the Howling Siegers. She was proud of the uniform, but now she was in civilian clothes looking like a woman waiting for trouble. Still as she waited, her mind drifted to the first time she met Matthew Chapman.
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17 years ago
A young blonde hair female was starting to cry a little bit while the chief was yelling at her.
“Look trooper I don’t care who you are what you were or how you got into the best unit in the SLDF you do not deviate from known procedures, DO YOU UNDERSTAND!!!” “But Chief, I just”“No, trooper, no there is no but.”
Just then a young confident MechWarrior came out of the lift and was coming straight for them, instantly everyone knew who the Lance Commander of Beta Lance, 2nd Company, 3rd Battalion, 151st Division was, Lieutenant Matthew Chapman callsign Chappy.
“What seems to the problem, Chief?”
“This little no-it-all seems to have some high ideas about how to tinker with your mech, Sir.”
“Ah,” Matthew said shook his head and said, “Chief, this Private was actually handpicked by me, she was at the top of her class, won several awards for inventions that baffle her professors. I pulled a lot of strings to get her here and even though I appreciated you training her in all things military I don’t want her creativity stifle.” Matthew looked at Grace and then said, “If you have an idea how to improve something, I want you to make a report and send it to me and the chief and then,” Matthew looked at the Chief, “I will want a report on her improvement based on your years of experience, I will then make a decision on what course of action to implement. Now since this is the first day why don’t you verbally tell me the procedure you want to do tell me the upside, downside, and any other issues this upgrade might do.”
From that time forward even if he said no to a project she wanted to do, he had won her, she would follow him to hell, and in fact where he went, she did to, for 17 years she has been the only one to touch his 'mech besides him, until now that is, 300 light years away in a lounge waiting. Matthew had been in contact with the people his father had placed throughout the universe and they in return had been in contact with the main base that her commander wanted as his own. She got to the lounge three hours early to scout the place out and to blend with the crowd, about an hour before the meeting an alarm wailed throughout the station.
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Recharge Station, Command Section
Yance I (Agador), Terran Hegemony
June 6th, 2786
“Sir, unidentified ship just jumped in system and is moving this way!!!”
Another tech turned toward the commander. “Sir they are hailing us.”
“Patch it through” the commander said
A woman clearly military appeared on the monitor, “This is ‘The Beast of Terra’ Lieutenant Commander Phung at your service. We are not here to attack, nor will we be here that long. 
We have a passenger that we need to pick up and then we will be on our way. Please prepare for my command shuttle to dock.” With that the screen went blank.
“What the hell! How dare she, comm patch us through to the Hegemony command circuit.”
The comm tech looked at the commander, “They are jamming us, and a shuttle just left their bay. Scanning ‘The Beast of Terra’…it’s a Samarkand Class Aerospace Carrier this ship can carry up to 72 fighters along with 12 assault craft, there are no dropships attached to it though. She is a Warship looks like SLDF model where they got that or who owns it, is a mystery, sir.”
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30 minutes later
The alarms had stopped 29 minutes ago with an all clear/false alarm call. Grace was starting to get bored with only 5 minutes left until the schedule meeting time she was starting to think that she was being stood up. Then it happens, a tall, gorgeous women in a well-defined and well tailor uniform of unknown material and insignia showed up at the front of the club with two bodyguards in her wake. Grace stood up and locked eyes with the woman, with that the woman made a bee line to her and thrust out her hand, “Lieutenant Commander Phung, at your service if you follow me, we will go onboard our ship and discuss the assets.”
Grace looked a little confused, “assets, wait, going to your ship, what ship, I thought we were going to talk here, explain please.”
“The ship is not really mine, I command it and if it pleases. Major Chapman, I will continue to command it under his direction. I really don’t want to talk here we need to be in a more secure area to much is at stake.”
Grace boarded the shuttle, settle in and then felt the left off and leaving the artificial gravity of the station. When the shuttle took a left turn, she saw the ship, she could not believe it, the 151st was bed down on a similar ship a few years ago during the civil war. As they got closer, she noticed the name of the ship and tears started to fill her eyes, this was the ship they were on during the war.
“Beast of Terra, this is shuttle 1121 Commander Phung here requesting authorization for landing.” The commander heard sniffling and turned her head back to Grace, “Yes, it is the exact same ship and not a re-name, Admiral Chapman knew this would mean something to his son, so he left it for him.”
Grace looked at the commander like she just grew a second head, “Wouldn’t the Admiral get into trouble with General Kerensky having a missing ship?”.
The Commander just shook her head, “A lot of things from all commands went missing during the Exodus, lots of equipment was left behind, and people like us and also people like the Siegers were left behind too.” “As you can see, we don’t have any DropShips. Even though we have 72 fighters all, but a squadron is mothball. We have a lot of merchandise back home on the Devils Breath just not enough people to operate them.”
“Devils Breath?” Grace ask, “Is that the secret planet that the Major told me about?”
“Yes” the commander then turned back around to start the landing procedures.
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Book 2 - 02