I've never really been happy about this chapter, but every time I tried to rewrite the problem bits it came out worse or so massively disjointed as to be unreadable. In the end, this is the version I'm going to keep.
It's also one of the larger chapters simply because I couldn't find a spot to cut the 6k in half and make two 4k+ chapters out of it. Enjoy!
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On board Intruder-class Dropship Honesty
Approaching Nadir Jumppoint
Alpheratz System, Outworlds Alliance
6th February 3011
It had been a busy month for everyone with the Valiant Defenders – I'd thrown the naming of the group out to a vote because I couldn't think of anything that I really liked myself and then wound up losing the vote for my preferred option on the shortlist of names horribly – doing all the prep work for our "recruitment tour" on top of our routine training and other tasks. I'd pushed myself pretty hard for the majority of it, relying on my officers and administrators to do all the paperwork and come up with the final plans while I focused on getting through a compressed version of basic training.
That included the real plans, by the way. Once Jessica had recruited the last pilot and tech crew for the birds she'd taken the High Haven and Whole Lotta Metal out to the jumpships. She'd worked directly with Ephraim and Celene to create the path that we'd need to take to get out of Outworlds space quickly, sending back a cryptic completion message ten days later. That was twelve days ago and we were now just approaching the jumpships to head to our first stop, Quatre Belle.
It was a godsend that we'd finished the modifications to the On The Trail – our Mule converted to deploy tanks and carry our support staff - so quickly. It allowed us to easily take the extra support personnel without putting them in rooms that we'd have to kick them out of later, and by the time we did need to kick them out we could just move them over to the Seeker we'd be picking up along the way. We were still short on technical teams though – we had enough to cover the active force now, but probably only a couple of companies of either tanks or mechs otherwise. And we would actually be able to deploy all the vehicles in a hurry if we needed to - and had finished recruiting the crews, of course.
We'd be taking advantage of our navigation maps of the Outworlds systems to use in-system jump-points to cut down our journey times to planets – something I was hoping we'd be able to keep doing later on, the sooner we were on Galatea finishing recruiting and finding work the better. Most of the points we had mapped out would put us within a two day burn of the planet we would be visiting, so a two to four day visit to see if anyone was interesting in going off-world as a soldier would see us returning back to the jumpships in time to finish the recharge and jump out again – we'd skip the recharge stations at the jump points in the Outworlds deliberately to help sell the idea we were taking our time somewhat.
I didn't know the exact plan regarding us getting out of here yet, but the preliminary plan Jessica had shown me before leaving had us arriving in Sevon after Mitchella - which itself was after Quatre Belle – and then heading for an empty system before jumping into the nearest Suns world. I was looking forward to meeting the jumpship captains and hearing what plan they'd worked out for us.
Sevon would also be the system that we told everyone what was happening and that we were leaving immediately rather than after the tour. The pirate point we had for there was less than a day's travel time to the surface so unless an AAA group was actually in orbit we should be able to just drop off any objectors and get out immediately, fast-charging the engine if we had to.
So yeah. I'd spent the last month doing my basic training, trying to establish as strong a base as possible in that short time – especially since I was about to put myself through about nine to ten months of hell. According to Preceptor McHayes (I wasn't allowed to call him by his actual name until I finished the training) I'd done well enough and the equipment on the Honesty would help me finish the technical training. I'd pretty much be on my own for fitness during the trip, although he'd at least sat down and gone through a zero/low-g training regime with me that I'd used as we headed out. Now we were about to dock with the Them's The Breaks, the recovered Leviathan jumpship, with the majority of the dropships heading to link up with it. Only the Best Policy would be jumping with the Wherever I May Roam – at least of my dropships, I think someone had mentioned we had a couple of hangers on to bring along.
I'd have to finish exploring the dropships at some point during our journey. And take the time to head over and meet Logan and Celene in person. In fact, I should probably get them to hold off on the jump itself to do that first.
We were slightly ahead of most of the other dropships so I passed the message along that I was heading over on a visit then grabbed the crew on one of the Observatoryshuttles - the pair of custom small craft my father had had built years ago – and took off. Logan had docked his dropship only a few hours ago having finished the practice Close Aerospace Patrol exercise he and First Squadron had been running and so both the captains were located together and not a huge flight time away.
A harder burn than the dropships were doing cut some time off arriving on the Roam, giving me a bit more time to chat with both of them and meet the rest of Jessica's squadron. I asked the pilots if they'd wanted any of the shiny new birds rather than their old rides and got no's all round – they liked what they were familiar with. But hey, if I wanted to upgrade their birds a bit, throw some freezers or extended range weapons their way they wouldn't say no. Maybe an Artemis-FCS for the Shilone's?
I laughed a bit, saying no promises – maybe if we found more. They were joking with each other as they floated out of the briefing room I'd been led to for this, left with Celene and Logan. I raised an eyebrow at them as the door shut and the locked light flicked on above the doorframe. "Got something for me?"
"I spoke with Ephraim when you radioed you were coming here, we decided we may as well brief you now on the plan rather than just have him go through with it." Celene, who was floating at the table, leant forward to hit a button, bringing up a flickering holographic map. Now, this was the shit I wanted to see! I mean, it was flickering and was a kind of blue-white that contrasted weirdly to the room lighting – a problem fixed when Logan swam over to the lights and turned them off – but being on a space ship looking at a holographic star map? The only place better to be doing this would be Star Wars, I reckoned.
"We've only plotted out our route as far as Barlow's End on this map, largely down to the fact that's as far as our system here is able to display. From here at Alpheratz, we jump to Quatre Belle -" a star shined yellow briefly, before fading back to the same blue-white as the rest "- then jumping to Mitchella then Sevon –" two more stars flashed yellow in quick succession "- as per both sets of plans. Upon arriving at Sevon we'll do our normal trip, waiting until just before we are ready to jump again before letting the news loose. We'll look at moving any objectors down to Sevon once we know how many there are – tentatively we're looking at sending Honesty down with them in one of the marine bays, with those marines temporarily spread out on the rest of the ships. That should be enough space, as well as enough time to get them down to the planet and have the dropship return in time for us to actually jump. From there we're hitting an empty system, one we'll be able to get a quick charge at, that's all it's got going for it. After that we arrive in Kennard, our first stop in the Federated Suns – we'll have to stop there and send off some messages regarding our intentions and route as well as some other business. Depending on if we can get permission or want to spare the time in the first place we've included the option to keep recruiting at each stop. A dead system first then two inhabited systems before another dead system on our way to Colia, by most of our preplanned routes. McGeehee should work out as our last optional stop, then we hit Barlow's End where there is a decent mercenary recruiting hall – our first chance to do so on this route."
She paused here, hitting a few more buttons after that and bringing up a different map. "We should be able to skip Fairfield for recruiting, but Hoff is another system with a well-rated recruiting hall. Quick stop just to charge at Franklin, then Robinson – might want to look there as well but who knows. Another dead system then we go to Layover and pick up our Seeker, unless we send a HPG message ahead to get them to send it somewhere to meet us - for now, we figure we may as well swing by and pick it up. Then we go to three inhabited systems before hitting another dead system. Jump to Ozawa then one last dead system for this trip before arriving at Northwind. Then we hit Caph, which I think you told Jessica you wanted to visit? From there we have three more jumps - New Earth and Zollifoken before we finally arrive at Galatea." The map had changed over again after Cartago had lit up, finally showing Terra and the convergence of all five powers rather than the long Suns/Combine border.
"What's our estimated travel duration?" I'd kept my response during the briefing to nods and agreeing noises, but really this was the only question I had. I really couldn't say anything about it all and was honestly feeling a kind of existential dread over the whole journey. It was going to suck. So bad.
Logan had long since floated his way back to the table and spoke up for the pair of them. "We're thinking around about nine to ten months, give or take a couple of weeks either way. Since we'll be staying with the jumpships the whole time it's a little slower than taking a chain, but we'll all arrive together at least. Low end estimate is eight months, if everything goes well."
"That's correct. Ephraim and I got that number on the understanding of spending about ten days in each system. Obviously some will be faster and others will take longer, hence the ten plus at the high end." Celene pulled up a document with the formula they'd apparently used and which honestly I couldn't make heads or tails of. It had the listing of each type of star and the amount of time it would take to charge the jump-core as well as the travel time from jump point to planet, the potential time spent on each world and finally the return trip to the jumpships. It was pretty basic right up until it wasn't – and my bad maths skills weren't helped by the three dimensional representation of something normally two.
"Right, sounds good to me. I'm assuming there will be a copy for me back over on the Honesty?" They both nodded. "Okay then, I'll check it over a few times there and if I ever see anything I'd like done different I'll let Ephraim know. Either of you have something for me?"
The answer was no, so I said my goodbyes returned to back to the small craft bay and headed back over to the Breaks. By the time I arrived there all the dropships had arrived and docked, including the hangers on, with jump preparations being instigated. I had a quick introduction with Ephraim before I headed to the Sick Bay – the medical staff wanted me to make the first few jumps with them so they could get a better line on how badly my TDS would flare up. Something I had no issue with, lying in my quarters waiting for someone to come find me would have sucked. The dropships finished securing for the jump and we went.
And by all the gods and all the peoples of the universe did it suck. The medicine, it did nothing. I was bed-bound from nausea and disorientation for three of the eight days we were in Quatre Belle, the majority of the rest of it I spent either doing some book learning or hobbling my way around the grav-decks trying to get some exercise in – I almost twisted my ankle coming off a treadmill in a particularly spectacular pratfall, hence hobbling.
While I was doing that a couple of the dropships headed for the planet – the On The Trail and High Haven – to check to see if anyone had responded to the ads we'd sent via HPG to the planet. Jessica reported to me upon her return that no-one had proved both qualified and interested, not even any temporary crews, though if we'd been looking to pick up raw crews we likely could have taken a few people since some of the younger militia were apparently interested but we'd made our decision.
I did go on a tour of a few of the remaining dropships, since I'd never visited them while they were on the ground. I'll tell you, walking into a mechbay in an Overlord was incredible – twelve multi-story multi-ton war machines secured in their cradles, with the barest illumination to save on power, was an almost eerie experience in how quietly awesome it was. We had one of our spare tech-crews assigned to the three bays as a whole, running basic maintenance and familiarisation drills, so I sat in one of the cockpit of the Battlemaster that had been tagged as the command mech and played with the command console to help them out.
Mitchella was the same. Eight days, three of which I spent in a haze, Jessica taking a couple of the dropships down to the planet – this time she found a couple of tech crews waiting for us, as well as a small group of temps who'd work for us to pay off their passage to the Commonwealth – and me exploring a few more of the dropships. Before our next jump I got all the senior staff together for one last briefing – including Celene and Logan, who shuttled over from the Roam.
We were on the Honesty in its' briefing room, technically the most secure room in the fleet. I'd managed to spend some time speaking with each of them and their personnel (well, not Logan and Celene or their crews) so I was feeling more comfortable with each of them now. They'd all filed in and gotten settled so it was time to kick off the meeting.
"Well, so far, so good. Quatre Belle was a bust and Mitchella only a minor success, but so far that seems to match up with our original expectations. Anyone have anything to report?" A couple of routine things were brought up, but we quickly got through everything. A few people seemed curious or annoyed by being dragged into a meeting for such minutia, which was understandable. I would have been annoyed too if that was all I was expecting from the meeting.
"Alright, one more item to get through and then we'll send Celene and Logan back home and continue on to Sevon. For the couple of you wondering why this wasn't simply handled with a couple of memos," a pause to sweep eye contact with everyone even as I got a chuckle, "the main reason we called this meeting is we received information prior to our departure from Alpheratz – information that affects us all greatly."
Once more I ran through the basics of the upcoming seizure by the government and our plan to avoid it. Again I got a number of angry mutters and glares with the whole "potential informants" part of the spiel on why I'd insisted it be kept quiet.
"Hey, it's pretty much an accepted part of doing business once you start talking big enough numbers. My father wouldn't have been angry if you were reporting to OIA, unless it was going to damage the business's standings in some way, like deliberately misreporting his intentions. He would have had you arrested for corporate espionage if you were reporting to his business rivals, of course, or airlocked if you were reporting to pirates. He wasn't a complete soft touch." That pulled a couple of people up short. "Look, the main portion of this speech of mine is to say it's okay to be a patriot, but we are about to get screwed out of everything and the only way out is to keep going after our next jump, but instead of continuing on our advertised journey we're going to head for the Suns border and Galatea straight away, rather than in a few months' time. If you have any objections to that, I'd like to know. If you are taking money to pass information along, I just ask you don't until we actually complete our jumps out of the Outworlds and reach the Suns side of the border. I know I'm asking a lot, but you'll be just as affected as I personally will be by this – you'll have to sign up with the AMC to keep your bird, or your ship, or your gear. And I'm pretty sure none of you actually want that as well. Just know that rather than being a long term absence from home, if we all go this is likely to end up as voluntary exile – they might never let us back." I finished my speech and stepped back, lowering myself into the 'chair' behind me and waited.
It was time to let them discuss it amongst themselves, with Jessica, Lucas, Ephraim, Celene, Albi and Logan leading the charge since it was largely the military contingent here. Etsuko and Evangelos had taken Doctor Strubah and Holden aside, with Xaso seeming to listen to both groups as much as he could. No one seemed against it in principle, which did have me feeling a least a little good about the situation. Loyal minions indeed.
In the end they all agreed it was time to leave. A few of them admitted that OIA agents (and they stressed they confirmed they were actually OIA) had approached them, either recently or in the past, about supplying inside information about the company, but they'd keep this quiet – especially since they hadn't been warned they were in danger of losing their personal equipment unless they re-upped with the military. Yep, supremely grateful for the loyalty my father had inspired and chosen to hire for.
"Why now though? Why not say this after we arrive in Sevon?" Xaso finally actually spoke up. He'd been the quietest of the lot, choosing to listen to everyone talking though he had confirmed he was with us.
"You all know what I'm like just after a jump. I got you all in on this now so that when Jessica makes the announcement after we arrive, along with Celene on the Roam, that you all can reassure the rest of the crews that this is my idea too, not some crazy stunt to take it all away from me by envious underlings. That this is serious and it is happening. She'll make the announcement, we'll give people a chance to leave considering the chance of permeant banishment, a dropship will head down to Sevon to drop them off and then boost straight back to the ship. Hopefully there won't be a patrol group in the system so by the time they get word to anyone to come and stop us we'll have charged up and be on our way – total time in system a bit less than nine days. I'm having Jessica do it immediately so we don't have to wait until I stop puking to make the announcement, save ourselves at least a little bit of time." That got me nods and a couple of soft jeers from the spacers at my weak… stomach? I don't know exactly what it was the TDS affected.
A reminder to keep quiet until the announcement and then I ended the meeting with everyone disbursing to their various ship berths or shuttles. A few hours later we jumped to Sevon.
We were in luck. Second Wing was on rotation out this way and according to what Jessica told me when she returned they'd left a couple of days ago for Lushann where they'd be patrolling for a month or so. The announcement itself went off without a hitch and surprisingly no one at all decided to take us up on the offer of being dropped off. A combination of loyalty and they were going nearly all the way to the other side of human space, why would they give up now? Jessica still went down to the surface and surprisingly we picked up a whole bunch of Taurian tank-crews from a small merc group who had somehow wound up there and hadn't been able to arrange a ride back home to the Concordat after their unit had been rendered combat-ineffective during a contract on a world just over the border in the Combine. They seemed to find it funny they'd be driving former SLDF tanks from now on and were happy to keep on heading into the Sphere to fight rather than returning home.
The only other thing of note was our rebasing of the aerospace squadrons. First had been on Best Policy the whole time, which wasn't really working considering Jessica had largely remained with Second and Third on High Haven (with Fourth on Whole Lotta Metal) and hence they were a pilot short technically. Since I figured we'd be heading into more dangerous waters, so to speak, I asked her if she'd planned on shuffling them around at any point and that now was probably a good time to implement that plan. Fourth would remain where they were – the six Tomahawk lights – while Third (all six Rapier heavies) would move to Best Policy, forming a heavy strike force with the Leopard-CV. That would mean our mediums were all together, one happy family on High Haven. Pilots and tech crews packed up and moved smoothly, with only minor bitching about having to move in the first place – especially First's tech teams, they'd be on the Best Policy for years by that stage, in a nice little comfortable rut.
Personally I spent most of my time with the marines when I wasn't sick, joining them for their training exercises and workouts. McHayes had a couple of the junior Defenders – the enlisted ranks for the security company had always kept the AMC ranking structure with some extras thrown in, though Father had always thought the officer one was stupid and refused to use it – run me through basic breaching exercises half a dozen times, from both sides. That was fun, especially the simulated pressure loss, I almost had my shoulder dislocated because they deliberately let me set myself up wrong and banged it into a bulkhead. Bleed in training, not in combat and all those clichés I guessed. It still hurt when we made our next jump.
The jumpship captains had picked an uninhabited system with a nice bright B-class star – somewhere we could minimise charging time as much as possible. Jessica had the pilots do some manoeuvres around the jumpships while the rest of us killed time for the week we'd be here. The usual long trip stuff. God, KF jumping was a slow method of FTL.
I only had two more dropships to go and do a personal tour of, so I decide to get them out of the way when I got mobile again. The Hard Trail mainly carried all our spares, including the majority of the lostech stuff we'd kept to replace any losses we suffered. Some of it was still earmarked for sale later on if we were having money issues rather than parts issues but hopefully it wouldn't come to that. It was a fairly standard Mule class dropship, found all over the Sphere and one of the primary cargo carrier types, so nothing over all exciting beyond the value of the cargo within.
The last dropship was the as yet unnamed cargo aerodyne – no one had been able to identify if it belonged to a specific type yet, but a couple of keen crewmen were doing deep searches in the ship registry books. The records on board seemed to indicate it was an Outworlds-flagged vessel, so it might potentially be design that had had a short production run then gone extinct during the Star League. It had been found carrying a cargo of assorted trade goods from different worlds, so the consensus we'd worked out was that it was a simple trader that got unlucky. The armaments seemed to back it up, paired 5cm lasers in each firing arc, pretty much enough to see off a pirate fighter. Maybe. If it was in a convoy, at least.
Most of the original cargo had either been sold off or destroyed – some of the food stuff had technically stood the test of time, but no one was willing to trust the centuries old stuff – but there were a few interesting bits and pieces my father and the others had held onto. Kjetil was showing me around since the rest of his crew was over on the Breaks, getting in some gravity time. We were floating down a passage way discussing the potential names that were still in the ring for the dropships name - since no one could agree enough for a clear winner, considering opinion was divided on if the ship was able to be repaired if something needed to be so we didn't know if we'd just be abandoning it somewhere if said damage or breakage happened.
I had misjudged my glide down the corridor, having put a slight drifting spin on it – for lack of a better description. I'd been bouncing from wall to wall, grabbing at the various handholds as I went when a sharp tingle shot down my spine. It shocked me so I let go of the handhold I'd just grabbed and latched onto the one right next to it, pulling hard as I did so. The bulkhead swung open slightly even as I smacked into it.
"Ow. What the hell?" I let go and grabbed my face where I'd rammed it into the metal, muffling the exclamation. The newly revealed door went most of the way back to closed but remained slightly ajar, just in time for Kjetil to do this weird twisting move to kill his momentum and begin making his way back to where I was. I took a few moments to massage non-pain feeling back into my face and make sure I wasn't bleeding, then I pushed myself gently away from the newly revealed entranceway.
"What happened?" Kjetil asked me as he drew up beside me, grabbing a handhold to come to a halt. I waved my hand vaguely at the projection I'd latched onto and the exposed doorway.
"Felt like someone walked over my grave for a second so I flinched and grabbed that handhold and the whole wall came out. Looks like a sealed door of some kind – smuggling compartment you reckon?" We looked at each other for a second then we both reached for the cracked door, childishly excited to see what was behind it.
Our prize – a whole bunch of blank consoles ringed the room, eight workstations in all. None of them were currently powered on, so I was at a loss. Kjetif had what I could only assume was a similar look of puzzlement to mine on his face. I kicked off and floated my way to one of them and tried to power it up while he kept moving around the room, trying to see if there was anything else to find. It took me a few minutes to secure myself in the seat and then hit the power button, but then jackpot!
The computer purred on with no issues – which I still thought was ridiculous, how many centuries had this been sitting in space for? Ragnarok-proofing for the win and all those silly memes through the Battletech community. Sorry, distracted there for a second. It had taken a little bit longer than I would have expected to boot up, but then my heart stopped for a second.
A Cameron Star emblem popped up.
It disappeared for a second, replaced by another loading screen and then reappeared, this time with a login prompt in front of it. What the hell was the SLDF emblem doing appearing on a computer in a hidden room on a private commercial dropship? The hell had I found?
Even as I was quietly freaking out and Kjetil was in the background checking out the different locations, a niggle in the back of my mind was trying to nudge its way forward. I stared at the login for a few moments longer and then it dawned on me, not quite the answer to life, the universe and everything – but what the dropship was. It was a Pueblo, an SLDF spy dropship class used when deploying an expensive warship, the Bug-Eye, wasn't suitable. They'd cruise the spaceways of their intended targets and carry out trade, all the while accruing intelligence through their advanced sensor and communications systems and if they were caught they carried enough armour and concealed weapons to fight their way out. The only reason I jumped to it was they were aerodyne shaoe rather than spheroid, which I had always thought was weird when the most ubiquitous cargo dropships of all time were the spheroid Mule-, Jumbo- or Danais-classes
Then the freak out was back. Pueblo's carried mobile HPGs. Maybe even a Black Box Fax, those K-series transmitters.
"Stop now, Kjetil, get back from the consoles." I snapped at him over my shoulder. He looked back at me over his shoulder in shock before slowly raising his hands in the air. "We've got a situation on our hands here and I don't want to set off a booby-trap. "
Very slowly, he swam his way over to me, looking over my shoulder at the Cameron Star on the screen. "Ah. Okay then, I see what you mean. I think. Wasn't this a civilian ship?" He sounded as confused as I originally was. I shook my head.
"We were obviously meant to think it was a civilian ship. What I think we have here is a Q-ship, a spy-vessel. And if it's the type I think it is than it was SLDF Intelligence, maybe HCID – more likely SLDF though in my opinion. I think I got lucky booting this terminal up first, because I'm pretty sure several of the others will be hard-locked to their former operators, paranoid bunch that either of those two entities were, and would have likely resulted in a pretty messy explosion."
"Definitely lucky. Although, that would explain some of the voids and power drains we've not been able to track down." I looked back at him sharply. He hadn't brought that up with any of the rest of us. He obviously caught that this little tidbit hadn't pleased me and hurried to explain. "We figured they were smuggling compartments and the power to help run ECM to hide them. The crew has been using trying to find entrances as a relaxation exercise."
Spacers. Of course they'd decided to try and break into the smuggling compartments on their own. That way they could use them themselves, also keep the pre-existing contents as "bonuses". "Well, they'll have to stop now. From memory, at least a few of the spaces will be weapons bays, the rest will be the surveillance and espionage equipment. Most of it would be run from here of course, but it would be scattered to avoid detection."
"What are you going to do with it all?" Kjetil asked, pushing himself away from the back of my chair. It was a fair question, what would I do with it? Well, unlock the weapons bays so they could be used. I'd have to talk to everyone about what I believed the rest of the equipment could be and what that could potentially mean. Shift some marines over for security, a squad or two should do – we did have those extra passenger compartments here, stick them in the steerage ones (which in hindsight were probably the ones the SLDF marines that would have been stationed on board used). Would have arrange to try and crack the security protocols to gain access to all of it too, without setting off any traps. That would likely be volunteers only – and while the dropship was nowhere near the rest of the ships in case of catastrophic kaboom.
"We'll have to work out a plan for what to do exactly, but I can't imagine using it for anything much different. It's a lot heavy armed then we thought, maybe long term convert it to a special ops ship, throw some infantry or vehicle bays in one of the cargo holds, change one of the small craft hangers to carry fighters. For now, we get the weapon bays unlocked and leave the rest alone if we can't figure out a guaranteed method of how to circumvent the security on it. Though that will probably happened with minimal people on board and well away from the rest of us in case of an oopsie." I felt a ghost of a grin come across my face as I got myself out of the chair. "For now, I'll stay in the room while you get a crewman here to keep the door open – but they don't touch anything. Quick radio conference pre-jump, just to let everyone else know, then we'll spend some time working out the plan and finding the people we'll need to get in."
Kjetil waved in agreement and made his way out of the room. In the meantime I floated above the chair and stared at the blinking cursor. You try to plan and the gods laugh, wasn't that the old saying? This was going to modify some of my plans somewhat…