Chapter 22
-VB-
Brevet General Nathan Armstrong was not a man whose stature intimidated people right off the bat. He wasn't a criss-cross mess of scars, wasn't tall enough to loom over everyone, didn't have muscles that would cause discomfort.
No, General Armstrong simply looked like just another veteran, just another mechwarrior, and just another Davion.
Until you looked at his eyes.
It was the eyes of a good leader. Cold and calculating yet worried and kind. Firm yet pliable. Comfortably quiet yet ready to get loud.
"Good morning, general," I greeted him from across the table. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
"A pleasure to meet you as well, chancellor," he greeted me with a nod before he glanced around.
The two of us faced each other across a table set in the middle of a road under a tent.
Yes, a tent. It was both a power move as well as a security guarantee for both side. From my side, I was more or less stating that I did not think him or his people to be a threat by setting up this parley in an open space where their trained snipers can hit me.
But the difference between a can and a could was the consequences. If they even so much as scratched me, then they would all die. No Eridani Light Horse would survive, and I didn't doubt for a second that Candace would raze their homeworld to the ground for breaking peace in parley. No one would, of course, also ever trust the Eridani Light Horse ever again.
I knew that they weren't interested in that. They were currently very interested in leaving Sian with as many of their assets and people as possible. They had more to lose than I did.
If my life ended the Eridani Light Horse, then I could brag in the afterlife that I managed to extinguish another light of the Star League or something inane like that.
"Would you care for pleasantries and a meal or shall we get right down to it?" I asked.
"I would like to go back home as soon as possible," he replied with a sigh.
It was a show of weakness… but it could be a sign of submission as well.
"Very well. I won't demand that you leave all your dropships and mechs behind. I'm not interested in doing that to someone who offered surrender unlike the Davion dogs my people have been constantly fighting in this war."
He nodded slowly. "I see. So what do you want?"
"Half of your dropships. All mechs that have been downed or lost their mechwarriors will be left here. You will sign a MRB-enforced contract that prevents you from acting against the Capellan Confederation and its immediate interests. This contract will last ten years."
He stared at me.
"Half of our dropships would be too significant of a blow for me to accept."
"You can leave all of your too heavily damage dropships behind. That should be half. Oh, and I want your flag dropship as well," I added. "I don't care if you take out everything from those dropships but I at least want those empty dropships for me to use."
"And you think that I can accept such an offer?" he asked me with a raised eyebrow.
"You can leave behind all of your Leopards for all I care as long as one of the dropships you leave behind is the Overlord, general," I replied. "I'm trying to be lenient here."
"Daylight robbery is lenience?"
"After what you tried, yes. You realize that I can and will just tell my people to run you all over if this negotiation doesn't go through, right?" It was a moot point and both of us knew it. He was just giving me a bit of resistance so that he could say he didn't bend over backwards right away. Or he really did believe that he couldn't get away with giving away half of the dropships. "Had you struck another world on the border, then this offer would be an overkill. But you struck at the heart of an entire interstellar nation. I must set a precedent that the next mercenary company that thinks they can try something like what you did knows that the cost of their failure can mean the difference between life and death. Whatever pay they get will not be worth losing half of their assets."
He stared at me from across the table before letting out a sigh of relief. "And for my allies in the 6th and 10th?"
"Same deal but I want all of their heavier dropships. They don't get a choice on that."
"And prisoners of war?"
"Free exchange. Everyone can go back. It's not like many were captured in the first place. Your people were under the misconception that my people would do unspeakable things to the prisoners."
General Armstrong winced. "There is some history behind that, you are aware?"
"Oh, that I am. But I think I've shown enough self-restraint in this war. Certainly, I could have nuked you in orbit and no one would have said too much about it. You think the Davions will care that I detonated a nuke over my own world? All they will see a is a propaganda material."
Not that I wanted to nuke him. I already dressed down the colonel who suggested it back at the command chamber.
And speaking of Davions…
Armstrong's nostrils flared at the mention of his employer.
"Yes… The Davions will be happy if you were to nuke yourselves."
"And, I have to ask, what did you think was going to happen if you came here with less than a whole division? You brought one and a half brigade with no supporting regiments."
"... the intel provided to us stated that you only had two mech regiments at most."
I snorted.
Yeah.
"And you believed it."
"I didn't fully trust the intel, so I theorized that you had at least double the stated intel," he replied. "Apparently, even that wasn't enough."
"Nothing short of a division, general, and even then, that would be risk at best," I replied with a shrug. "So do you agree? Half of your dropships including your flagship, all disabled mechs, and a ten year contract for the Eridani Light Horse. Oh, and get me in contact with General Frederick so he can sign for his troops."
"... I accept on behalf of the Eridani Light Horse."
"Good. Someone bring me the contract and an eyewitness from the MRB." Then I turned to him. "Want something to drink?"
"Coffee, if you have some."
"Ah! Let me regale you about the coffee grown here on Sian. Did you know that my ancestors had five separate strains of arabica coffee engineered for each of Sian's continents?"
-VB-
'It took time to set up anything worthwhile,' Liu Han hummed as he squeezed while thinking about how the chancellor had set this up with Michael Hasek-Davion. If it hadn't been for the duke's help, then this infiltration would have never happened.
There was a pop and the body of the administrator dropped to the floor, never to wake up. Liu didn't waste any time and quickly moved on, grabbing the passwords and keycard the administrator had on her. With it, he moved towards the dockyard controls and began to work.
He pulled out his radio to the set frequency and made the call.
"Control work."
"{Roger.}"
His mission here was four-fold.
One, release all of the clamps on all of the jumpships and dropships currently being worked on here in the Kathil Shipyards.
Two, cause enough damage to the shipyard to delay repairs.
Three, plant the computer virus he had on him, which would compile data for future operations.
And four, exfiltrate with as many dropships and jumpships as he and his cohort could manage.
Now… he'd done objective three.
He pulled out a disc and put it on the disk driver. His heart pounded as the damn machine withdrew the disk so slowly that it hurt to watch… but after five seconds, he heard the whirl of the disk driver running.
The computer in front of him pinged as request for permission came up, and he did using the administrator keycard.
Across the Kathil Shipyard, Maskirovka agents sprung into action. Gunshots rang out. Sometimes corridors were closed off. But all of their actions led to one place: the repair docks.
Agents within the docks quickly dispatched the security guards and soldiers and let their comrades into the docks. They then swarmed each operational dropships and jumpships and commandeered them. Almost all of the dropships were seized and half of the jumpships as well; unlike the dropships that were hardy, jumpships were fragile and thus the agents didn't bother to go after ones that needed extensive repair or were too heavily guarded by its own crews.
Then they took off.
Before Kathil III's militia and garrison could respond to the situation, those ships jumped from the zenith station and nadir stations.
---
Kathil Shipyard Theft, as it would be called, was the biggest event within the Federated Suns itself. The loss of eighteen dropships and eight jumpships, which was enough capacity to move a brigade, crashed the stock market when the news came in.
Confidence in the Davion war effort struck rock bottom, and dissent from even within Davion's own loyalist ranks rose up to levels audible to the First Prince.
And then the news from Sian of the Eridani Light Horse's defeat spread like wildfire.
Failure to capture Styk. Failure to capture Tikonov. Failure to raid Sian. Failure to secure vital shipyards. Failure to secure worlds next to St. Ives Commonality.
Failures after failures poured in, overshadowing the news of their bigger conquests.
And then the news filtered back to the soldiers on the frontlines.
Davion's morale on Tikonov and Styk struck rock bottom, and the generals in charge eventually called for a retreat…
But with so many dropships and jumpships lost to the Capellans, ships were late to come.
In the case of Styk, they arrived far too late, jumping in weeks after the entirety of Davion's forces had already capitulated.
-VB-
Within his office, Michael Hasek-Davion smiled.
He read the news on his noteputer with satisfied surprise as he imagined the public's support of the war breaking down. It was one thing to keep the war far away from their homes, but it was another to see a devastating drop in trade because of the war.
People began to question the First Prince.
"The chancellor is happy with your cooperation," the Maskirovka liaison spoke up, and Michael put the noteputer down.
"And his promise?"
The man pulled out a … piece of paper.
"This paper has everything we know about the caches in your space, though some of them are within Lyran space," the liaison replied as he stepped forward and slid the folded paper across the desk.
Michael took the paper and opened it up.
A Colossus dropship on Epsilon Eridani… SLDF cache on Outreach… a cache underneath Bristol's nuked factory?
"This is everything?"
"Yes. We estimate that the combined value of all of the listed sites will be somewhere in the tens of billions of C-Bills." A pause. "Will you require further communication with the chancellor?"
"... No. Tell him that I was happy to have cooperated with him."
"Of course, Duke Hasek-Davion. Until next time."
And then the man just walked out as if he owned the place but Michael let it go.
He was too busy picking up the phone to call his trusted men. He had caches to loot and Davions to snub.
-VB-
A/N: and the chancellor's contact with Duke Hasek-Davion finally bore fruit in the Kathil Shipyard Theft. Not enough damage to galvanize the Federated Suns but still enough damage to make them reel back in shock and pain.
Between the dropships gained from ELH, 6th, and 10th on Sian and the dropships and jumpships stolen from Kathil Shipyards, the Capellan Confederation just gained transportation for almost two brigades (~8 regiments), which is a fifth of CCAF's total. This lift capacity isn't just adding to the Capellan Confederation but directly subtracting from the Federated Suns.