personal6

18

August 31, 3000

Federated Suns

Crusis March

Cholis

Brinestorm Spaceport

Grady sat in the cockpit of a Warhammer on the edge of the still destroyed spaceport, but most of the tarmac was intact. Intact enough for dropships to land, but the service facilities were no longer there, and dropships needing fuel had to make a quick stop by the Estate to get that fuel given that the tanks at Brinestorm had all been detonated by, probably, deliberate mech fire during the mercenary attack.

Right now, though, there was a single dropship descending with enough fuel already onboard that it didn't need to top off, and Grady had it lightly targeted in his mental crosshairs, even while not directly pointing his mech's arms at it. Five days ago another jumpship had come into the system and, after seeing the pocket warship waiting for it, had reluctantly identified itself as belonging to House Davion and demanded access to the planet to pick up the Duke and his family.

Grady knew Carroll Davion had left about two months ago, so it was impossible for her to have gotten back to New Avalon in time for them to hear her report and send this jumpship back out. Even if it had been nearby and got a message passed through it by Comstar, it was unlikely that Carroll had made it back to the capitol yet riding the civilian routes. It had certainly taken himmore than two months to get here from New Avalon, and Stephan had said she didn't want to risk trying to speak to anyone about events here until she got back home, meaning she couldn't call for a special ride when that message had to go through Comstar relays.

So whatever the Davions were up to, it had been decided before Carroll had talked to them. Stephan had agreed to allow them to land while being escorted all the way in to the planet, but he had four Companies of Grady's mechs standing by just in case this was a double cross, for an Overlord could carry 36 mechs of its own and was well armed by military dropship standards.

So the Mech Commander waited. He waited through the landing. Waited as an army of vehicular transports rolled off and he dispatched some of his mechs to escort them to the palace. Then he waited even more while they packed, then eventually came back, loaded into the dropship again, then lifted off without incident.

At least, not until the Comstar facility started exploding to the north.

Grady immediately spun his mech around, seeing multiple explosions throwing flame and debris into the air beneath a Comstar dropship that had taken off at the same time as the Davion one. It was high enough now not to get hit, but it was clear the demolition charges were set to blow as soon as it departed.

"Damn them," he said, guessing several of the nearby buildings were getting torched as well, regardless of who might be in them. Maybe the outer wall would block some of it, but he guessed at least debris was raining down on the northern edge of the city. He wouldn't know until he got there to have a look for himself.

Coordinating with Vander and Stephan, his Companies split up and headed north while two remained to guard the spaceport that now, apparently, belonged to House Morten. No official transfer was given, Stephan told him, they were just evacuating the Duke and saying nothing else about it.

Meaning they were abandoning the planet, and apparently Comstar with them…but not before they destroyed their precious HPG station and who knew what other advanced technology they had in there.

When Grady finally got to the area around the Comstar compound his jaw dropped. The outer wall was completely gone. Whatever they had used had been beyond military grade explosives. It was completely leveled…as were two city blocks nearby, with the third showing heavy damage.

Hundreds of people had just died needlessly in Brinestorm. A nice kick in the pants on the way out by Comstar with House Davion looking on without a word of explanation or apology.

Grady was back in the Estate a few days later when the Davion ship jumped out, essentially conceding the planet to them…which did not make one damn bit of sense to Grady after all the fuss Duke Alliz had made about them staying off his precious Federated Suns turf.

Stephan was just as shocked. He had not seen this coming in the least, expecting instead another invasion as reports slowly made their way back via courier ships owned by him or others, of some 7 different attacks on his worlds beyond Cholis…and yes, Cholis was now his, in its entirety, something he'd never truly expected to happen.

All the Morten Protectorate worlds had held, but there were lost mechs and a considerable amount of industrial damage on the worlds where the hired mercenaries were apparently targeting facilities only in quick hit and run missions. So far no world had been hit twice, but if they were attacking the likes of Alar and Polvice, it had to be in a long term agenda to hurt House Morten. They'd made an attempt to decapitate the House on Cholis and failed, but these other attacks had been happening concurrently, not in the aftermath, and he guessed their plan was to destroy their realm, even if by doing it with a thousand cuts rather than one masterstroke.

And if Stephan was right, it meant the attacks would keep coming nonstop on at least his smaller worlds. The pullout of Cholis had him scratching his head as to what their strategy was. They were willing to attack with both Comstar and the Duke here the first time, would they really pull them out ahead of a second attack? Something else was going on, and Stephan didn't know what it was until another two months passed by, with another 4 harassing attacks being reported and a second on Chitti, which did not have any pocket warships guarding it.

Jumpship traffic to Cholis had slowed, but the independent traders were still passing through enroute to the Protectorate. With them came another Merchant-class ship that seemed innocuous, but attached to it was a House Jerrast Overlord that asked to come down to the planet in the Morten Estate.

Stephan was mildly surprised to see them arrive, and granted them permission to land with an even larger contingent of mechs present, plus defense turrets covering the Morten landing pads, but out of the ship walked a single individual only that was quickly brought to the Conference room and seated at a table facing the 6 Lords of House Morten that were currently on planet with Rannel and Kevin both missing on other assignments. That left Stephan, Sarah, Vander, Vichni, Paul and Bindi waiting in their seats as the member of House Jerrast took a long, deep breath after sitting down before finally speaking.

"Thank you for allowing me to talk to you. I had not know about the evacuation of the Duke, per se, or the Comstar withdraw before arriving. I would imagine you are all quite on edge here."

"Quite," Sarah echoed.

"Well, let me say that House Jerrast has been in a frenzy the past few months. We've been reorganizing via couriers and I've been tapped as your unofficial liaison officer. My name is Tanner Jerrast, and I'm the second cousin of Harm," he said, referencing the name of their House Leader. "Let me start off by saying that, unlike everyone else, we are not breaking off contact with House Morten. We've got enough clout to not be pushed around in such matters so long as we tread delicately, and we're not going to abandon our investments with you."

"Is that what's happening?" Stephan asked. "Without Comstar messaging I haven't exactly had any breaches of contracts coming through."

"Forgive me, let me start at the beginning," he said, folding his hands on the table before him. "There has been no order from the First Prince. No official regulations changes or laws added. Nothing has happened which forbids us from dealing with you. But as of now, the Federated Suns is ignoring your realm and your House. They are pretending it does not exist, and erasing you from the history books and map. Cholis is no longer listed as part of the Federated Suns and never was. Likewise, all your business contacts are being severed immediately for fear of punishment for anyone who doesn't follow along with the propaganda."

Sarah's jaw dropped, and Vichni just stared at Vander for a moment. Bindi looked on with concern, but not really seeing how bad that was concerning it didn't really affect her agricultural division much. Stephan, however, just leaned back in his chair, taking it in stride.

"Are you aware of who attacked us?"

"A mercenary unit called the Lion's Teeth, or so we heard through unofficial channels. No word of the attack is permitted in polite society, for this world does not exist."

"We have also been getting hit on other worlds by different mercenaries."

Tanner considered that for a moment. "Any successful?"

"We've held all worlds, but some of them were coming after civilian infrastructure and partially succeeded in that regard before we could drive them off."

"Then I would say my House's relationship with yours is contingent on you holding your worlds. If you can, then we wish to expand our business involvement."

Sarah frowned. "Why, if I might ask?"

"Things are not right in the Federated Suns, at the moment. And because no one is officially doing anything, we can legally interact with you all we like. We play by the rules, but that doesn't mean we play the way House Davion wants us to. If they want to stop us trading and investing with you, they have to admit you exist first. So as long as we don't make public our connections, they can't do anything about it openly, and they wouldn't dare do anything privately."

"Why not privately?" Vander asked.

"We have a defacto deal with House Davion that keeps them in power in exchange for them staying out of our business. If they break it, they will imperil their own rule, for we can be Kingmakers if we wish to be. So they keep us on their side and happy. They can't cross us, and they won't even mention this incident as long as we don't flash it around in the public eye."

"So why help us?" Bindi asked.

"Your realm has the potential to make us a lot of money, as well as to diversify away from the Federated Suns should economic pressures internally hamper our ability to do lucrative business."

"Tax squeezing," Paul guessed.

"As long as your tax structure remains fixed, as you promised, we can maintain a significant financial power that they have no ability to weaken through regulation. Frankly, the inner workings of House Davion are a mess right now. Ian was not ready to take over for his father, and a lot of opportunistic factions are pushing for a lot of stuff to happen that they never would have had a chance doing under Andrew. What's occurring with your House is different though. It may not be coming from Ian, but it's powerful. More powerful than anything I've seen before in domestic politics. It's more like an edict from the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. Nobody will dare oppose it for fear of their lives."

"It's Comstar's doing," Stephan said flatly. "They're hiring the mercenaries."

Tanner frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"What do you have that they wish to purge this badly? And why would the Davions be complicit in this?"

"We uncovered a plot in the Periphery with a pirate who spilled the beans on many of Comstar's dirty deeds. They're highly active in all the Great Houses. Now we're seeing just how many strings they have within House Davion. I was waiting for Ian to send his military out here to squash us, but now I'm not so sure that is going to happen."

"It won't," Tanner said firmly. "That would require a huge mobilization. They are very adamant about making people forget you are even out here."

"So we die in the dark then?"

"Perhaps so. How many more of these mercenary attacks can you stand up to?"

"They took their best shot and missed here," Vander answered. "There aren't many units out there larger than the Lion's Teeth were. They lost nearly two Regiments here. If we have to deal with harassing attacks on our weak spots, the attrition will be worrisome, but they're not taking any planets from us without the Federated Suns military doing it for them."

"You have the resources for that kind of unlimited campaign?"

"We do," Stephan said flatly. "Personally, I'm surprised they didn't group more mercenaries together to hit us harder. But now they no longer have a Comstar facility here to spy on us with. They destroyed the equipment when they left with House Davion and the Duke."

"The tabloids say you died fighting in your Centurion, buying enough time for the Duke's family to evacuate the world and that your army was destroyed to the last mech in the effort."

Stephan smiled, but without any trace of humor in it. "As you can see, we're very much alive, and I did not fight in a mech. House Davion came afterwards and took the Duke and his family away, along with a Comstar dropship evacuating their personnel."

"Interesting," Tanner said, putting a finger to his lips as he thought. "They really want this kept quiet. You must have something huge on them. I can't believe they could even convince the Davions to pluck an entire system off their map, though they're claiming its worthless now without any population. Still, this is an act of desperation. What are you planning to do to them?"

"Nothing," Stephan said simply. "It's what we could do that they're scared of."

"And it's not something you can blackmail them with?"

"No. They can't risk it surviving."

"Then that's why they're not making a propaganda war against your Protectorate and urging the Federated Suns to intervene. A reason would have to be given, and there would be time for you to unleash whatever it is you've got. They're clamping down so hard on information about you that anyone without personal knowledge of your House won't even know you exist within a decade…except those who do business out here. Is that to your advantage?"

"Very much so," Stephan agreed. "And far better an outcome than I had feared. I trust it's one you can make use of as well?"

Tanner smiled. "The Davions are not good in economics. They probably don't even recognize the potential they've created for both of us. If you'll permit it, I'll be staying here as the House ambassador and all Morten Protectorate business ventures will be mine to oversee. That way there won't be any major connection between the two pieces of our organization, and the money flow can be accomplished in hard currency to avoid tracing."

"I imagine," Paul added, "that your House's daily expenditures are large enough to hide your investment capital out here?"

"Indeed. And the Davion auditors have the brains of a street rat anyway."

Stephan exchanged glances with Sarah. "Not in our experience on Neubenn. They were quite efficient in sniffing out taxes owed."

"That was a Duchy, and a potential rival to their power. We don't collect taxes, only pay them, and we know what's visible and not visible to them. You could buy a planet or two with what's not visible."

"I thought you followed the rules?" Vichni asked.

"The stuff that's not visible isn't covered by the rules, because the people who wrote the rules are not economically savvy. We've been navigating them for generations, which is how we've been able to prosper when so many others go bankrupt under the clumsy iron fist of the Davions' economic management. But that aside, we will have to alter our agreements with you somewhat," he said apologetically. "We cannot, without public scrutiny, recruit a large enough work force out of the Federated Suns to bring here. We'll have to recruit and train from your local populations, which will severely slow the implementation of new industry."

"Understandable," Paul allowed.

"However, we are proposing an immediately 2 billion Pound investment in your Morten Academy if you will be willing to create programs specifically tailored to our job requirements. It will be far cheaper than us setting up our own training schools, and much faster. Especially given that our mutual mech factory may be necessary to assist in your realm's security going forward."

"No sales to Federated Suns worlds now?" Sarah guessed.

"None directly, I'm afraid. But there are plenty of brokers that can be used. And we can't be cited for selling unlicensed mechs from a realm that doesn't exist, now can we?" Tanner said with a smile.

"Which means you no longer have to buy the licenses," Sarah said with an equally satisfied smirk.

"Silver linings everywhere, if you look for them."

"You may have trouble with Comstar," Stephan warned.

Tanner waved off the notion. "Business out here has to be run by jumpship couriers anyway. Any reports or merchandise I send back will be by the same method. What doesn't pass through their network is pretty much invisible to them. Such as the five offers I've brought with me from, shall we say, nameless investors wanting to relocate assets out of the Federated Suns using us as a broker."

"Explain that," Paul demanded.

"We have associates in many places who can smell profit as well as us, and many of them watch what we do carefully. They've been watching your realm ever since we began interacting with it. And now that it is suddenly taken off the public maps…that got their attention louder than any public notice. They began inquiring through us what was going on. Once I report back that your realm is open for business, and there is a total blackout on such business happening, they will want to use that blackout for their own purposes. Whether they realize it or not, the Davions just created a gigantic tax haven for savvy businesses to operate within…and I seem to be the go-between, if you'll allow it?"

"What's your cut?" Sarah asked.

"Only one percent. We make better trading partners we when don't get greedy."

"You're still running a risk," Stephan pointed out, though he was sensing growing opportunity as well.

"Risk is the wallpaper of the Inner Sphere. No matter where you go, you can never take your eyes off it. We know what we're doing, and we're the only House with the power to make this happen. Anyone else would be strangled into submission. I trust this makes for a mutually beneficial relationship between our Houses?"

"If we can hold our worlds," Stephan added.

"We're willing to invest further on the gamble that you can and that First Prince Ian won't change his mind and come out here after you directly, though he can always send mercenaries as well."

"Mercenaries we can handle," Vander said firmly.

"Then let's start discussing where we can best infuse a large amount of capital in a very short amount of time…"

Commodore Itomo had wanted to die in battle, but when he had woken up in the medical facilities in the Morten Estate he knew that he would not. His right arm was gone and the rest of his body hurt badly from the decompression he'd suffered, but with each day that passed progress was made.

It had taken him a month and a half before he could find the strength to walk again. At least he had lost an arm and not a leg. The arm would have been useful for paperwork sitting at a desk, but as long as he had both legs he could move around normally and still issue orders by voice, so in most regards the loss of his arm did little to hinder his performance.

And he had lost it in a victorious battle. In the end that was what allowed him to look down at his three-inch stump below the shoulder with pride now rather than horror. He…and a lot of other brave men…had kept the Morten Estate and all those within it from harm. House Morten itself would have been essentially destroyed had he failed. So after many mentally painful trips of logic around and around inside his head, he had finally accepted the loss and allowed himself to see the wound as a memento of by far the most notorious victory of his naval career…and one of the larger space battles occurring in the Inner Sphere over the past century.

Itomo had longed to be in such a battle…an honorable one that would determine the outcome of some great event. He'd almost given up hope on such things happening, for naval officers rarely saw combat anywhere unless a Great House was launching an invasion against another Great House's primary worlds and they needed to remove the impediments to landing their Regiments.

But to fight a warship designed to bombard a planet without even using mechs…that was a true naval threat, and one his fleet had stopped, though the cost had been much higher for others than for himself. Many were dead. Others were still in the hospital on much longer roads to recovery, if they would ever reach that end…but his doctors had never let their positivity slip, even when he thought his own would be impossible. They'd been proven correct when he had walked out under his own power and resumed his duties the following day.

The second attack on Cholis had come 7 months after the first, and by that time Itomo had not rebuilt much of the fleet. Sarah Morten had managed to get him one new pocket warship to replace the four that had been destroyed, and Rannel's techs had managed to repair one that had been heavily damaged. That left him with 5 this time rather than 8, and a total dropship count of 17 including the unaugmented ones that had been shifted here from elsewhere, either due to normal traffic transfers or on purpose.

When the four jumpships of Killmonger Incorporated arrived at the Zenith jump point he had the Blue Mushroomand Neon Mushroomwaiting for them…but they couldn't engage, because this group of mercenaries had also brought a Reaper with them, which was naval slang for an assault dropship designed more for space combat than surface operations. It didn't have a gravity disc in it for extended missions in space. It was meant to escort dropships and to go after others, with acceleration almost as good as Itomo's own pocket warships.

They were predators, and with one amongst the twelve Union-class dropships, they couldn't fight that and hope to win more than a meager victory. They needed the other three at the Nadir jump point, so the Captains followed protocol and accelerated back towards the planet faster than the Unions could travel and Itomo recalled the other three pocket warships, picking a point well above the atmosphere to make their intercept.

The Reaper and Unions didn't slow to engage, and instead tried to run the blockade. Two of the pocket warships made stops, while the other three tangled with the Reaper long enough for the others to slip past and land. The Reaper followed them down, battered heavily, but still operational. It landed alongside one group of dropships while the others split up into two more groups.

One group landed to the east of Brinestorm, almost in the exact same place as the Lion's Teeth. The second landed north of the Estate in a small valley clearing. The third to the south of the Estate as one of the two intercepted dropships impacted at full speed to the east above where the Comstar compound had been, refusing to be captured and trying for atmosphere without the necessary engine thrust. It landed with the power of a small nuke, but was far enough away from the city not to damage it, but many rural buildings got wrecked by the resulting shockwave as a massive wind gust knocked down trees for several miles in radius around the crash site.

The other dropship managed to save itself from the same fate by crawling into a low orbit on diminished engine power and surrendering. It took another 5 weeks before the mercenaries on the planet did the same, conducting some hit and run attempts on the Estate and city that resulted in a lot of forest chases that they were ill-equipped for. They did manage to down two of the Ardent Falcons as they sniped them from the air, but thankfully both pilots survived.

And once again, the mercenary Colonel confided in Stephan that they had not expected such resistance. They'd been told there was only one pocket warship here, and that their Reaper would be more than enough to hold it off. Once they came in and their hired jumpships left immediately thereafter to avoid becoming targets themselves, the Killmongers were committed and had no way to back out in the face of two…then five pocket warships.

They'd also been told the planet only had two Battalions of defenders, so once again Comstar had tricked a group of mercenaries into making a foolish assault in the hopes of damaging the planet further. That attack had cost the Mortens two aerospace fighters, six mechs, and significant damage to his warships and a dozen or more mechs. All in all it was minor, but added to what they'd lost before it wasn't insignificant.

The attacks elsewhere were having more effect, particularly in systems where there were no pocket warships to thin down the mercenary numbers before they made landfall. It was a numbers game now. How many mechs, aerospace fighters, Vtols, and dropships would they lose compared to how many new ones were coming online, and the same went for pilots and crews. The Morten Academy was pumping out more and more recruits in all categories, but field experience was something you had to earn the hard way, which was why Itomo had pressed Stephan and Vander hard to let him use Francis Neeva.

Neither had wanted to, but given the loss of Itomo's arm they eventually caved to his wishes on the caveat that Neeva not be given any command role, so the Commodore had made him an advisor on his personal staff that was growing faster than their dropship fleet.

He now had 8 people working on current and future plans, refit work with the techs, experimental projects with the research and development people, coordinating with Morten Arms Consortium on which weapons they wanted available and which ones they did not. Itomo had been told to begin constructing a navy not just equal to, but superior to those of the Inner Sphere…which was a very tall order. Right now though, at least his command staff now fit the part.

Vander had wanted to promote him to Vice Admiral, but Itomo flat out refused, citing they didn't have the ships necessary to warrant that rank, no matter what his skills. So Commodore he remained until he decided they had grown enough to accept it…and unfortunately that day was going to be years off, for their dropship construction factory was still small and had to produce some civilian models for sale just to try and cover costs.

Their only shipyard for naval vessels that could not land on a planet was at Polvice, and thankfully it had been ignored in the to date three assaults there. Right now it was barely a frame with some cranes attached, but more was being added to it by hand from construction crews in space suits based off of dropships in orbit of the planet, but the cranes were now being damn helpful and speeding up the process by more than a factor of ten. That would continue to increase as more pieces of the shipyard began to help build itself, but the goal was not to produce warships with it. Rather, to start producing mining tugs and other non-military craft that were meant to operate in space only.

Polvice would need a lot of those in orbit to start building space stations. Many planets didn't bother, but the plans for Polvice were along the lines of what they'd had on Neubenn…only without the high population. The ice caps squeezing the planet would never go away, so the thin band of habitable land around the equator would never hold 3 billion people unless they were jam-packed in there, and House Morten was not going to allow new construction to become that dense.

Still, they were going to do a lot of construction beyond the planet itself, and that was going to require craft that could fly within the system, and it was far more economical for those to be designed to operate in space only and not have to be aerodynamically designed to land on planets.

But once they got the initial shipyard up and running, they could at least repair damaged dropships there. And those that were too badly hit to even land either had to be patched up by hand until they were fit to set down, or they'd be parked in orbit and abandoned as space junk. So they needed at least one facility to do such repairs, for they had two such 'satellites' around Cholis right now that they didn't want to totally give up hope of repairing and three more partial dropships that they wanted to strip down and recycle the useful materials.

They also needed a repair station for that, otherwise they'd have to use crews in space suits and do it the very, very slow way. And they had no time for such things now as the Morten tech army worked to get additional armor and weapons on every civilian dropship they thought they could spare from cargo hauling duty to help bolster the naval defenses here and around other worlds. Even if they weren't proper pocket warships, an extra layer of hull armor would allow them to survive an otherwise 'even' fight against a dropship that was the same class as them.

"Yoshi," a voice said behind the Commodore as he sat at a conference table within the naval wing of the Morten Estate…which had just been finished some three weeks ago in what they were calling 'Alpha Valley' now that they had no restrictions on building beyond their original borders. Technically all the land in the Duchy was now theirs…which meant almost the total landmass of the planet given there was only one small area that had been colonized aside from some remote mining and forestry stations elsewhere.

"Francis," the Commodore replied politely as his Strategic Analyst took a seat to his right with a stack of touchpads laid on the table. He had to have at least 8 of them, while Itomo was only using one to review the recent testing data on the refit engines on the Black Diamond Egg.

They both waited for the rest of the command staff to arrive, then when all 8 of his men were there the door was closed and they began updating the Commodore on various projects. They got through about 20 minutes of that before he raised a hand, silencing them all with that simple gesture, and looked down at the table thoughtfully.

"Perhaps we are approaching this wrongly."

Frowns were exchanged across the table, but it was Commander Garrison who spoke first.

"What specifically are you referring to?"

"All of it," the Commodore said, sweeping his one arm across the table and his entire staff. "We're trying to build a navy from the ground up to orbit while simultaneously defending the Morten Protectorate systems."

"Do we have another option?"

"If we know we're going to get continuously hit, perhaps we do."

Eyes were crossing everyone at the table, but no one, including Neeva, knew where he was going with this.

"Twice we have been hit here with naval assets, not just regular dropships. Instead of waiting for them to come to us, why not seek out these mercenaries and attempt to hire their naval assets only while we build our own."

"The First Lord will never allow that," Neeva said, speaking from experience. "He will never trust mercenaries."

"You led the enemy fleet here," Itomo clarified. "I'm talking about mercenaries that have not hit us yet. I believe he has several mechwarriors that gave up their mercenary ways to join our forces. You speak like he's unwilling to touch them at all."

"He won't go for it."

"Do we not currently have a school for mechwarriors that is training at least some mercenaries?"

"You're asking him to trust that the mercenaries won't turn on him inside his own systems."

"Ignore, for the moment, whether he and Vander would agree to it. If they did, how could it be of use?"

"Aerospace fighters," Lieutenant Commander Jorginson said immediately. "We don't have nearly enough as it is, and we've got none at the jump points. They can run down dropships a lot easier than our pocket warships can. Right now mercenaries know they can get at least some dropships to ground if they scramble past us. Aerospace fighters would diminish that greatly."

"He won't go for getting them killed," Commander Garrison said flatly.

"The fear factor alone would cause some of them to surrender," Jorginson argued. "And a lot of these smaller units are using hired dropships. Their Captains don't want them shot up, so if a few aerospace fighters are waiting for them, they may just turn around and leave."

"While your point is valid," Itomo offered, "I was thinking of more than fighters."

"Well," Garrison said with a shrug of his shoulders, "there are a lot of assault dropships out there that we could hire to set up on the surface, somewhere away from here and the city where they'd have gravity. Then they'd run up to orbit to intercept incoming dropships on the way here. Those Captains like doing that sort of work, because they hate cargo hauling."

"Make that item #1," Itomo said, glancing to his personal aide Ensign Beau Cardona. While Morten mechwarriors had been given no ranks, nor their aerospace pilots, Itomo had insisted on using them for the naval forces and Vander had agreed given their wide-ranging crew assignments. A mechwarrior was a mechwarrior, after all, but a dropship crew was not simply interchangeable between various stations. An engine tech and a helmsman could not switch off like you were switching a mechwarrior between Companies. Therefore there had to be a hierarchy, though Kevin Morten had insisted that the ranks be tied to training, and that each successive rank hold a wider range of skills than those below them and not have promotion simply tied to length of service.

Recruits coming out of the Morten Academy were given the Ensign rank, then those that were trained to handle at least three stations, including command of a ship, were made Lieutenants. Lieutenant Commander and Commander followed, with Captain requiring an individual to be able to do every task on the ship at least moderately well, from piloting the ship, to repairing electronic equipment and loading cargo. Current Captains and crews, however, were spared this out of necessity until they sought a promotion.

Itomo held the Commodore rank because he had skills in multi-ship command, while ranks beyond that would be worked out later. Right now the structure they had created was solid, in his opinion, but still raw given that a lot of his people were brought over from other existing navies who did not do things in exactly the same way. In fact, all but Ensign Cardona in this room had experience in one of the Great House's navies.

"Number two would be a warship," Neeva said painfully. "It would cost a lot to rent, but…"

"No," Itomo said flatly. "The fear factor would be maximized, I admit, but a single warship can only be in one place at one time. It cannot stop a group of dropships that split up to get to a planet."

"But it can target those dropships once they land," Neeva differed. "Even if they get their mechs out, they'll be destroyed on the ground."

"True, but if they are aware of this they can do a hot drop a hundred meters over the surface with jump capable mechs or configure a release system for higher up. They'd never have to land. Furthermore, I know for a fact that there will not be a warship allowed in a position to bombard any Morten planet unless it is a Morten warship. We need to focus on pocket warships until we can build something ourselves that is larger. And remember, we have multiple planets to defend, so the cost of building one warship, when compared to the cost of ten pocket warships, must go to the ten until we provide adequate coverage across all worlds in the realm under our protection. Cholis is where the Morten family is, but it is not the whole of the Protectorate."

"What about the gravity disc from the Lion's Den?" Lieutenant Disher floated.

"What of it?" Neeva asked.

"It's mostly intact."

"Your point?" he reiterated.

"It gives us a head start on building a jump point defense station."

"Perhaps years into the future," Itomo said. "How many more attacks will there be in the interim?"

Disher seemed deflated. "You're right. We don't have the infrastructure we need. I just don't like seeing the pocket warships out there with nowhere to run to if they get in trouble. Nor can we launch any rescue operations if they have to jettison lifeboats. We need stations and a whole lot of other stuff to create a proper support network. I just thought we could skip ahead a little by repairing that gravity disc."

"We need time to build," Itomo agreed. "Is there a better way to buy us that time than hiring naval mercenaries? And if we do, that's less out there for Comstar to hire against us."

"It would be cheaper than building new dropships," Lieutenant Argen quipped.

"Initially," Neeva qualified. "Eventually it gets cheaper to build them ourselves. And most of us already know which units to contact. It's not that long of a list unless we are including assault dropships."

"Item #2," Itomo added, "is locating Reapers or pocket warships for hire.

"What about jumpships with aerospace fighter squadrons based off of them?" Garrison suggested. "They'll have a gravity deck to support them for long stays."

"Make that item #3, contingent on those fighters being used against unaugmented dropships only. Item #4 is any units that we can hire to potentially capture incoming jumpships. The larger units are utilizing batteries to make a second jump out before we can get them, but not all the smaller ones are. Even a single jumpship capture would be worth the expense of the mercenaries."

"They might just keep it for themselves," Beau noted.

"Possibly," he admitted. "I want those four points explored in detail before I make my proposal to the First Lord…"

Carroll Davion had made it to the dropship her father had arranged to take her off world. It was heading for Markesan, and Captain Jenno gave her contact information for a man on Kestrel who could arrange for her a new identity. His dropship wasn't going there, but she could board another on Markesan and work her way there eventually. In the meantime, Jeeno gave her a pre-made false identity that would get her that far.

But when Carroll landed on Markesan she didn't book passage on the next flight out to Kestrel. Instead she took a hotel room and just sat for a week trying to figure out what to do…all the time reading every tabloid story she could find on House Morten. There were no official new sources about them at all, and the tabloids kept running the same approximate story.

Stephan Morten had died in his mech helping Duke Alliz escape the planet, and everyone else had died there to raiders. He was being hailed as a hero, but Carroll knew it was being put out so those with questions about his House's fate had something to be satisfied with and would move their attention elsewhere. The lack of any official account was twofold. It denied anything happened there, and people who were looking would probably take the tabloid news as partially true, assuming the whole affair had been hushed up to avoid embarrassment on the part of the new First Prince who had, in fact, just lost an entire planet to raiders.

But a part of Carroll also wondered if there was an ounce of truth in it. Something else could have hit them after she left. If Comstar was truly that committed to eliminating whatever threat House Morten posed to them, then why wouldn't they follow it up with another assault? Had Stephen really died in the next one and this was the cover story. Was the entire Morten family on Cholis dead with the rest spread out across their other worlds next on the chopping block?

She had no way to know for sure, and with the trade route being canceled she had no way of getting back there either, especially since all 'legitimate' jumpship travel wouldn't be going to a point on the map that no longer existed. So what was she going to do?

She sat and though, long and hard, but the crying had long since passed. Her family had betrayed her, even though her parents had done what they could to keep her alive. But her House was supposed to be her family, and whether it was their decision or they were merely going along with whatever Comstar wanted it didn't matter.

They'd betrayed her…and for what? She'd just been faithfully doing her duty. And more than that, they'd betrayed the Mortens. She didn't know if the mercenaries had been hired by her House or not at this point, but if they were involved in the coverup they had to know something about it…which meant they were condoning it and breaking the treaty that Stephan and Andrew had signed in secrecy.

But the secrecy part didn't matter. A treaty was a treaty, and her House was honor-bound to follow it, as was the Federated Suns. Cancelling the trade route alone violated that treaty, not to mention pretending that it and the Mortens never existed at all.

Stephan had warned her this might happen, but she hadn't believed him. She had always assumed if she'd be loyal to the family, like her or not, they'd have her back because she was a Davion. That notion had exploded in her mind on the trip out to Markesan, and it left her with one thought that kept bouncing back to the foreground in her mind through the persistent haze of despair.

If that was the way the Davions truly were, then she no longer wanted the name, lineage, or any connection with them. And it seemed they wanted it that was as well, including her parents. Her father had said as much, though whether it was for his well being or hers, or both, she didn't know and no longer cared. When she'd left their home…her childhood home…it had been goodbye for the last time, not of her choice, but theirs and of House Davion.

And now it was time for Carroll to make that choice for herself. She'd overlooked Davion bad behavior all her life, hoping it was just a few bad apples souring the family history, but now the blindfold had been violently torn off and she could see the truth.

They were villains. Villains with a pleasant smile and a list of good deeds to hide the knife they kept concealed and ready to slit your throat with when the cameras turned away. She'd been born into an evil family, told they were actually the good guys, and while everyone else apparently had realized the truth early on and abandoned that lie, she had clung to it and refused to see them for what they really were. At least, refused to fully see them for what they were, because she wasone of the good guys, and that was probably why the lie took such a strong hold on her as opposed to others.

Others that knew they were rotten to the core and didn't care. And they could probably sense the same in those around them. Maybe, after all this time, that explained why her own family didn't care much for her. She didn't stink of corruption. Maybe Andrew hadn't either…or maybe he had just used her as a tool to deal with another noble family that could smell corruption a kilometer away because they had none in themselves.

Actually, now that she thought about it, that was probably exactly why he had done it. Dispossessing House Morten was corrupt, and there was no way she could believe…now…that Andrew wasn't. It was his decision, then he'd wisely placed her as a go-between to help calm down those who were raw from the betrayal and expecting more of it. Andrew knew she'd deal fairly with them. And she'd been useful to him. To House Davion. Now, she wasn't. She was in the way, so their true colors were showing through.

"No more," she said to herself, sitting on the end of the tall hotel bed and dangling her bare feet just above the floor as she stared at her toes…and for some reason they held more truth in them than she'd been able to gather up during the previous three and a half decades of her life. "Davion no more. I reject them, their House, their realm, their bloodline, and their methods," she said, feeling an ache in her chest as she said so, breaking the last internal loyalty she had to them. One that should never have been broken…and after that she was truly free.

Free and potentially hunted. But maybe if she stayed small no one would come after her. If she poked her head up they would. The look in her father's eyes had told her that much all too clearly.

Make that ex-father. She was dead to them now, so they might as well be dead to her as well.

The next day she went to scout out various pawn shops, eventually coming back to the one that looked the most legit with the cheapest bit of jewelry her ex-mother had given her…which was still immensely valuable, but the pawn shop didn't seem to care about its origins. They offered her half of what it would have cost in a high end store and she accepted without a word. Just a nod, then she was given a small cardboard box with the Pounds in it. Something that people wouldn't immediately think had money inside when they saw it. After that she checked outgoing flights and two days later got on one headed for Kathil.

From there she went to New Syrtis and the easy travel ended. She had to wait months before finding passage to Midale, then she had to wait another 8 months before finally finding a jumpship that was going into the Taurian Concordat. With all the intervening stops of the regular trade routes she'd been riding rather than the faster direct ones, it had been a year and 6 months since her life had been wrecked and she had to flee New Avalon when she set down on Taurus, the capitol of the Concordat, and lost herself in the foot traffic. She ended up at another hotel using the name Susan Henderson…the sixth fake name in the list of identities that she'd concocted on the way out here. Unbeknown to her ex-father, she knew how to handle bureaucracy and forging documents was rather easy when one couldn't check up with other planets except in extreme circumstances using Comstar.

So if they looked legit, that's all that was required to get through 99% of security measures that were not locally verifiable…and passengers from other star systems fit into that category, few as they were compared to the natives that never left their worlds for lack of resources or cause.

Susan Henderson was how she had to conduct herself now, for the Taurian documents she'd received upon entry weren't of the same make as her Federated Suns ones, and she wasn't confident of her ability to forge new ones. But they accepted her information at face value, and now she had a colonist's ID that she could use on any of their worlds for official business…though most of their worlds were so low tech it was virtually worthless outside the Hyades Cluster where their most valuable planets were located.

Carroll found herself sitting on another bed, staring at her ever wise toes again and planning her next move. She knew there was at least limited trade going on between the Taurians and the Mortens. She just had to find it and purchase a ride, with her jewelry stash having been diminished only slightly. Her ex-mother had expensive taste, and it would last Carroll a long time if she kept her lifestyle simple. The thought of her running out of money and having to take some menial job just to make enough money to buy food with scared her so much she made sure she was being frugal enough to live off the jewelry for at least a decade.

It had better not take that long to get back to the Morten Protectorate. But the question was, once she got there, would there be anything left for her to find?

And if there wasn't…what would she do then?

Her toes had no answer for that one, and she hoped they wouldn't be called upon to give one later. The Mortens were the only friends she had…the only real ones, and all her previous ones wouldn't even acknowledge she existed now. And if they did, they'd probably be 'contacted' by an enforcer one way or another to fix the problem.

Now that she was away from the Federated Suns she intended never to set foot there again except for Cholis. And even there she'd have to stay on the Morten Estate or risk an agent assassinating her in the city…assuming they cared that much. Everyone on Cholis already knew the truth, and she wondered how they planned to keep them all silent? Was the Comstar facility still claiming 'technical difficulties' after nearly two years?

Again, her toes had no answer for her, but they kept urgently reminding her to get closer and closer to the Morten Protectorate and figure out each piece along the way rather than sitting here and waiting for the whole grand plan of the universe to be revealed to her.

Apparently toes weren't designed to work that way. And after a year of talking to them more than any Human, she wondered how far from sanity she was straying…