More an an FYI, I'll be posting the majority of what I've written so far every day or two.. I do most of my writing at work in between tasks (I end up with a lot of downtime to fill) so depending on how busy I am I'll be doing the final read throughs as I go. I'll save some of it for a buffer, but yeah. Figured I should at least say it.
And here we get a bit thats different from most of the other CYOA SIs. Hopefully it works out a bit. Thanks to people in the SV Battletech Ideas Thread (at least I'm pretty sure it was the SV one, not the SB one for this), especially Mal-3, for the idea and some of the inspiration for the extra work I put into it.
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Office of Hustain Security and Transport Company
Farmindas
Alpheratz, Outworlds Alliance
2nd January 3011
I got back to the university to finish collecting my things fairly quickly and made my way to the Farmindas office of my father's… well, his old business I suppose it was now. The name on the front of the building was for the private security and transport company, but it did hold the planetary and local offices for all his varied business interests. I'd been here several times in the last few years and it was here that I was supposed to be interning this summer, so I did have some basic familiarity with it and how to get there.
It was almost the end of the business day by the time I got there and the staff on hand (a skeleton staff considering it was still technically a public holiday) just quickly ran me through what details they had to hand before heading home. The account details and the codes to access them, mostly, simple enough to learn and memorise and was over and done with soon enough. There was an attached apartment block for off-world and visiting workers or guests, with a room set aside for me prior to my father's passing. I probably could have taken his room here if I was really interested, but I was fairly certain it hadn't been packed up yet and would have felt a little disrespectful to just barge in there and take it over. After his things had been removed, sure, but until then I'd be happy to keep the room I would have been given as a "simple intern".
Before they said goodbye and goodnight one of the workers informed me that a meeting had been called for tomorrow here in the offices, all the senior support and military staff who were available as well as the dropship captains who were on planet were going to be there to meet and talk to me as well as find out what was happening going forward. They gave me a bit of paper with the time and the room that it was going to be held in upstairs before leaving themselves for the day.
Exhausted from a day of heavy mental strain I dragged myself and my suitcase through the building and into the apartment block. I located my room easily enough and found all the stuff I'd originally forwarded had been placed in there, the majority of my belongings were still in storage but at least I had some familiar things around me for the evening. The whole place was more a cross between serviced apartments and an outright private hotel than actual private residences, so I had the option of having some food sent to my room for dinner rather than cook for myself which I gratefully took advantage of – it was apparently a lamb curry with rice tonight. I sorted through the paperwork I'd gathered during the day while I waited for it to arrive and wound up staring at the chip containing my father's last message to me. It took the whole time I was eating to gather up the courage and energy to actually listen to it tonight.
Something had been bugging me the whole time as I looked at it as well, just a niggling little thing, when it clicked as I went and inserted it into the entertainment system. It looked like a Fallout holotape. Weird.
The system turned on as I inserted the chip and the screen flashed on a few seconds later. Hitting a couple of prompts with the remote control brought the message up – an actual video recording, rather than an audio one. Don't know why I'd been expecting a voice only recording – I think that was my other self still fixating on the whole "future of the 80's" thing rather than what I was slowly adapting to as an actual living universe.
He looked tired. That was the first thought that went through my mind as I saw him. I was guessing he was in space from the way he was vaguely floating above his couch rather than on it, but his feet were attached to the deck with what looked like Velcro-covered booties so he wasn't actually moving around. I almost missed the first words out of his mouth because that struck me as immensely amusing for a few seconds there, even as I realised how practical it was and remembered using similar during my own trip from my homeworld to here. Another other-self moment.
"Hey kid. If you are watching this I'm dead. Not the most original of opening lines, but hey - you work with what you get. I'm recording this on board the Leviathan I found out here, still a couple of jumps out from Alpheratz. Now, some might call me paranoid for saying this but I figure I only have a few more weeks to live before an accident is going to claim me and there are things I need to pass down to you, things you need to know about our family history."
I locked up for a second there. What the hell now?
He took a few deep breaths and continued. "I knew when we found this ship and what was attached to it that I was going to be on borrowed time soon enough and that you, my son, are destined for something great. Or terrible. Honestly, the family records seem to be a bit on the fence as to whether or not it winds up being. Alright. Here goes."
Another couple of apparently calming breaths followed and he settled himself down into the couch more fully. "As far back as we've ever been able to trace, our family has had a touch of the mystical to them. Things like a sixth sense, vague forebodings, greater than usual empathy – a few claimed they could read minds or were telekinetic, but even the rest of the family considered them to be crackpots. Nothing much would have ever come of it if something hadn't happened to one of our ancestors just a bit over eight centuries ago. He lost his father in a tragic accident just a few days short of his twentieth birthday only to awake the day of his birthday having lived an entirely different life. It apparently took him quite some time to go through and organise what had happened in that life but according to the family legends he began swearing and cursing and generally throwing objects all around the room. "
He leaned forward, pressing his elbows into his knees. "He'd lived and presumably died a full life in an alternate Earth, one that diverged from our own sometime in the mid to late twentieth century. And what was worse was he recognized several things happening in his current lifetime as being the ancient history of a favourite game of his. If I'm right and it's going to happen to you too, you'll know the name Jordan Weisman and recognize some of those very same things."
What.
No, seriously. What the…
Wow, I'm in too much shock to even swear properly. Father had seemed to realise that something like that was going to occur because he'd gone silent on the recording. The silence continued for a few minutes as I kept trying to understand what was happening. So I wasn't the first?
"If you've received this tape after your birthday you should recognize that name. If you didn't recognize the name, you might recognize the name Battletech. There were apparently other identifiers recorded but it's been a long time since then and we've lost and regained and lost again huge chunks of the records that have been kept. If it's after your birthday and you don't recognize any of that then I am sorry because I must sound like an utter madman ranting about this but it's only going to get much, much worse from here, my son."
He then spent the next two hours telling the tale of the family from that time on. The first insert had tried to halt the Outer Reaches Rebellion, or at least stop the Liberal Party government from unilaterally issuing the Demarcation Declaration – that being all worlds more than thirty light years away were now independent of the Terran Alliance, whether they wanted it or not. He'd turned his father's tragic death into a leaping point into politics and entered into government only to fail in the end, resigning in disgust. He'd spent the last of his life writing down everything he could remember about Battletech. Even if most of it wouldn't have been relevant for centuries at least his descendants would know and could plan somewhat for their futures. Luckily for him he'd been an avid fan of the game in all its forms and had extensively studied even the early lore, predicting several events that convinced his own family that he wasn't insane. On the off-chance that something like this happened again he'd even written down certain phrases that could be used to identify that it was actually really happening, to be shared with the rest of the family on their twenty-fifth birthday to prevent them being lost.
That itself had proved to be pretty prophetic. Nearly a century after the first, the second arrival occurred. His father died – again - a few days before his twentieth birthday, killed in the fighting that kicked off the Terran Alliance Civil War and he woke up on his birthday having joined the Alliance Global Militia only to promptly curse out McKenna and then spend the rest of his career trying to get into position to stop Michael Cameron from inheriting the Director-Generalship, also adding more to the records after his uncle – the then-holder of the records - confirmed he'd also lived in that same universe. He'd ultimately failed as well, ending up being driven into exile with the rest of the family due to his actions. He took his own family into territory which would eventually become part of the Rim Worlds Republic while other branches scattered in various directions – except in the direction of what would become territory within the Draconis Combine oddly enough. Neither of the two had been huge fans of that particular faction apparently, writing scathing indictments of Space!Imperial Japan that saw their descendants steer clear.
There had been two more after that. The third had been born in the Lyran Commonwealth and she wound up aiding in the theft of the technologies and designs necessary to build Battlemechs after the Mackie had been introduced in the twenty fifth century, including helping the spread of the information to the other powers as well. It was at this point that various disasters hit and several of the family branches died out resulting in the loss of huge amounts of information, including nearly all the records pertaining to the lead up to our current time period. The majority of the confirmation codes were lost at this time or simply folded into the written records that remained. They'd stumbled along for the next few centuries until the fourth had reached his twentieth birthday.
Oh and what a birthday. A combination of celebrating his own birth and mourning the death of his father who had died saving the life of his nation's leader, a heavily pregnant Cynthia Amaris – mother of Stefan – left him with a massive hangover as well as the memories of a completely different life, one which knew what a monster that yet to be borne babe would be. Only the fact that he was in the Rim Worlds Republic and not somewhere safer stopped him from exploding in rage and destroying several room's worth of furniture for no apparent reason, according to his family memoir. Upon finding out that one of his ancestors had tried to stop the rise of the Cameron's overtly and failed he set out on a much more subtle plan to change events around, from trying to stop the assassination of Simon Cameron in that "mining" accident or inconvenience Stefan's plans to cozy up to Richard after that failed, all the while presenting himself as a loyal Rim Worlder. After several plots and plans failed early on he confided in his four children the full extent of what was coming up and ways to potentially help out. Two of his sons went into the military while the other son and daughter entered the civil service, rising through their separate ranks. In the end nothing had worked out, and the fourth insert had died of natural causes before the New Vandenberg Uprisings began.
The two sons in the military ended up at different ends of similar projects – the eldest wound up as a military advisor sent to the Outworlds Alliance with the equipment sent by Amaris to help prop up the future uprising and it was from him that we were descended. The second military son had been placed as security for one of the hidden production worlds, though we didn't have the information of where and when. The civil servant son went into the Hegemony apparently, before all contact was lost, with the daughter remaining in the Republic and being lost to our records.
When he'd arrived in the Outworlds my ancestor had decided he quite liked these people and promptly ignored the recall order to return back to the Republic, remaining behind and fighting with them against the Star League Defence Force until the fighting stopped abruptly once Stefan Amaris declared the Amaris Empire. He moved to Coraines and remained there until the day he died, marrying into a local family and keeping the records of what his father and his predecessors had written safe. Something had always prevented the family from exploiting most of the information for their benefit, a nebulous feeling that if they tried something they'd suffer for it, so they'd settled for using whatever information they had locally and sitting out the Succession Wars as comfortably as they could.
"I was pretty much shunned by most of the family shortly after I was told about our family legacy and given a chance to read through everything. I aggressively used whatever information I could get to increase my personal wealth – I think some of the local Comstar adepts thought I was actually predicting the future with my investment choices. The family didn't like that – they'd all gotten so used to basically ignoring it, waiting for the next person to wake up that they almost thought of what I was doing as sacrilege. But I had a feeling that if I only used certain bits and pieces of the writings and recordings that I would be safe. And when you were born even though I was so set on being a bachelor and not having any kids, I began to wonder if you would be that next one."
My father's voice was getting a little ragged by this stage, since he'd apparently recorded this all in one session. He had a lot to say and wanted to get it all out in one go, rambling side-tracks included
"All I have left to say is I hope you are the next one. We're getting close to several exciting times according to the writings and hopefully you'll be the one to make changes like our ancestors wanted to but never quite managed. Even if you haven't, even if you are still just my son, I've left you a full copy of everything, separate from the one maintained by the rest of the family back home. You'll find it in my quarters on board the Honesty. Use it and the things I've found. Make this universe a better place." The recording came to an end and the screen blanked. I remained slumped on the couch, trying to find some point to start dealing with the data dump I'd just received.
Well, that explained why none of the extended family I had back home had actually interacted with me a bit more. As well as me being a bastard child. There were some very judgemental folk on that rock.
Not important. I had my hastily written notebooks of my own recollections of Battletech lore stashed in my suitcase. I'd have to get the copy of the recordings out of my father's quarters and spend some time comparing the two, to see how my memory matched up to reality. I also needed to work on my plans, leaving plenty of space to make adjustments if I'd misremembered or just plain forgotten something.
Seriously though. The majority of the past inserts had failed? Failed to stop the seeds of the Hegemony arising in the first place, failed to stop the Cameron's from becoming the leaders, succeeding in helping everyone have big stompy robots – that was a plus from a Rule of Cool perspective – but then failed to stop Amaris from ruining everything and the Great Houses driving Kerensky into Exodus-mode. What the hell was I going to fail at? Stopping the Clan Invasion cold? The dissolution of the Federated Commonwealth? Not get the Helm core spread everywhere, arresting the slide of lostech?
I'd apparently studied that, by the way – the whole issue of lostech from an in-universe and Periphery viewpoint. First the Alliance and then the Hegemony had been insane with their control over their technologies – DRM out the wazoo! – and everyone else had followed their cue, both governments and private corporations. You could find the theory behind building a Hyperpulse Generator or a compact-KF drive core in pretty much any university even in this era, even in the Periphery (not just Niops) but several of the engineering steps just didn't exist outside of Comstar and Terra anymore. It was insane, the amount of information hoarding that had gone on at several points throughout history, so when that very limited portion of people who knew exactly how to do it step by step were wiped out by nuclear fire, orbital bombardment, chemical/biological attack or outright assassination the knowledge disappeared and you were left with black-boxed components that worked on their own running the factory/terraforming plant/whatever until they finally failed or were destroyed themselves. And it didn't help that everybody was out for themselves and to deny their enemies those techniques so researchers in a lot of fields were prime targets for everyone not of their nation, not just Comstar pulling Holy Shroud's.
Alright, that aside over with, time to start planning. What were my end goals?
Wealth. Security. Safety. For myself, my family, my employees. I definitely wasn't letting the Outworlds government get their hands on my things, all those nice shiny war machines. They'd likely end up pissing them away against pirates or overstretch themselves somehow and lose them all. I mean, no guarantees I wouldn't do the same, but they were mine and the people running them were mine. I owed it to them and my father to use them properly, especially if I wouldn't get market value from the government.
I had a bit over sixty days to get clear of the Outworlds Alliance. That meant I had just over a month to recruit what personnel I could from here, namely filling out the pilot roster and associated technicians since my father had drawn upon his companies for recruiting ship crews and security. I had to come up with a plan to get out of Alliance space without tipping my hand to anyone that I was aware that we were in danger of losing everything – didn't want to be one jump from the border and get a visit from one of the Alliance Aerospace Arm wings to pretty please hand over the equipment. Pretty sure my pilots wouldn't be willing to fight ex-comrades in arms at such short notice.
After that, Galatea - The Mercenary Star. I'd be able to recruit whatever mechwarriors, vehicle crews, infantry and technicians I hadn't managed to get on the trip to there, which would probably take a good six months or more and would likely pass by several systems with mercenary recruitment centres. I'd have to talk to my jumpship captains about that. From there I'd look at taking some contracts to earn money, hopefully some fairly simple ones so I could also work up my troops into usable formations.
I'd have to figure out where I fit in as well. Couldn't pilot a mech or a fighter, but did I want to go infantry or tank crew? Or did I want to take a position in the rear and lead from either the dropships or the artillery unit? Last option would be to be the administrator, not being involved in combat at all. Just the owner who signed the paychecks while the others did all the fighting.
Yeah, that last one didn't appeal to me.
Well, I'd need to spend as much time getting in shape as possible, so I should look into getting some people experienced in basic training of recruits even here. Surely my father had had some type of in house training, even if just for basic refreshers or specialisation courses. See if any of those people were willing to leave the Outworlds and join us until at least the time we started recruiting the jump infantry. Basic training would end up helping me out with whatever path I chose in the end, as well as starting me off on learning the military side of things.
Considering where we were in terms of the timeline, as well as how long it would take to get to Galatea in the first place, I'd probably look at taking a Free Worlds League contract. We were what, about three to four years from Anton's Rebellion starting, so if me and the unit were working there already we'd likely be able to get an easy contract and significant experience there. Plus, I always liked the idea of seeing if saving Joshua would change the later behaviours of Jamie Wolf and Natasha Kerensky – a side bonus of saving him would be that I'd invariably be capturing Anton Marik in whatever action was required to save Wolf and the other dependants (including Jaime's wife and kids), so I'd come out smelling like roses. And with that boost in fame and prestige I could than hopefully talk them into rewarding me with another contract, this one with a permanent or semi-permanent landhold – on Helm.
I'd need to obviously establish myself as a lostech prospector, of being someone who dreamed of finding the big score somewhere and studied obscure points of history to find any hidden caches. That way asking for Helm – with its infamous missing SLDF supply base – could be explained somewhat as being a side hobby to keep troops occupied while not out defending against Lyran aggression. Luckily I had spent some time as a youngster here absolutely fascinated by the SLDF, both the good and the bad of it.
Dead worlds. I would need to make sure we went through systems with worlds that had died off during the Succession Wars, either from direct attacks or just from losing important bits of terraforming tech. My personal quest, morbid curiosity, I'd need to find some way to spin it that I was fascinated or sickened by the whole thing and devoted to reversing it if I could ever find a way.
If I managed to pull it off I'd be in a position to quietly loot the cache to the ground, hopefully without attracting any attention. And I'd need to find a way to distribute the memory core – not in the crap format the Gray Death Legion managed to extract, one that was easy to read and search through. If that was possible, who knew if it was. The Fox would have established the New Avalon Institute of Science by then, so that would be a prime port of call. But I'd definitely want to spread a lot of the technology and information around, even to the Capellans and the Dracs. Primarily the civilian technologies to those two, even if whatever militarily applicable technologies I'd feed the Free Worlds would likely leak to them through the Kapteyn Accords even if the Mariks tried to weasel out of sharing them – unless I managed to butterfly them away.
A lot of ifs in that very shaky plan. A last resort would be as my Marik contract ran out swing by Helm on my way back to Galatea and at least steal the core, even if that meant leaving the rest of the cache to be destroyed. As amazing as it would be to have whatever was in it, it would be better to have it all be destroyed than what happened with the events of The Price of Glory.
I'd want to hit New Dallas up after that, if not immediately then at least at some point in the near future afterwards. The Hegemony Central Intelligence Directorate memory core, hidden under the militia boneyard near Caddo City, had continued to receive updated intel on all military technologies right up until the Amaris war. Which theoretically meant it had access to whatever designs and technologies existed both within the Hegemony and the rest of human space that they were able to gain access to. At least according to what I understood of how the HCID had operated and especially if it was linked to the Hegemony Research and Development Department databases. If I really hit the jackpot there I might be able to find the production-grade specs for Nighthawk power armour! I'd also hit up the boneyard for any surviving mechs and vehicles though I probably wouldn't find anything worthwhile – the defenders had probably burnt through the majority of the good stuff fighting during both the Amaris War and the First Succession War, before the planet was rendered uninhabitable, leaving Reunification War or earlier era equipment only.
Ideally I'd spend about the time up to the start of the Fourth Succession War primarily doing anti-pirate or other garrison duties. Hopefully I'd be able to play up Omniss sensibilities to avoid getting raiding contracts and focus on defensive ones and avoid taking too much damage to both people and equipment to keep myself afloat. If I had to I'd switch between working for the League and the Commonwealth out on their Periphery borders, rather than just remaining with the Mariks. As we got closer to the start of the war though, I'd look into taking a contract with the Suns, aiming at being in position to help the Wolves with whatever happened post-Misery, if it even went down anywhere near the same. Or as garrison on worlds I knew were due to be taken by the Combine as they counter attacked, especially Marduk – saving Marduk should get me a good deal on Wolverine medium mechs from Norse Battlemech Works.
After that I had no idea. Get the Dragoons to actually do their damn job and prepare the Sphere for the Invasion was a possibility. Work on the flaws in Hanse and Melissa's children somehow, maybe. I wasn't so sure about getting involved in the War of 3039 unless I thought I could come up with a way to stumble upon "intel" that the Kurita's had run the cupboard dry before Hanse called the halt. Keep spreading my finds if I managed to actually safely extract them. I honestly did not want to fight in the Clan Invasion itself though. Too imbalanced, I'd wind up wasting the lives of my troops. Unless we managed to significantly increase the technology level Sphere-wide, of course – that would even the playing field somewhat.
It would have been over two decades since I'd originally fled the Outworlds by then. Maybe see about getting myself and my original personnel back there without getting arrested? I'd be interested in bring the Alliance back up to its original size pre-Succession Wars, or just going out there and smashing Antallos or the Tortuga Dominions. And I would definitely have been funnelling whatever discoveries I could back there as well. Maybe I should set something up with the lawyers so I could be investing monies earnt from fighting into improving conditions on worlds here in the meantime? Even if I just quietly bought or salvaged extra fighting equipment and shipped it home on the sly, to build up a stockpile as an apology for running or to form a militia to protect whatever civilian enterprises I went into, any little bit would help – we were the poorest of the major Periphery powers after all.
Well, tomorrow I would at least be able to go over the very first steps with my new employees after we'd gone through all the introductions. Plans would be made, back up plans and follow up plans too. So much planning to do, plans within plans within plans