personal6

15

June 14, 2994

Federated Suns

Cholis

Morten Estate

Rannel Morten was sitting in one of her now three labs built in their embassy holdings. The first was a tech lab, the second a med lab, and the third a chem lab, which she was sitting in now across the ridge from the mansion and connected to it via a paved road that climbed to the peak of Home Valley and descended down into Prime where the lab had been built.

In it they were working on a number of projects, fiddling with this and that to make it better, or trying to build something from blueprints obtained elsewhere. Sometimes they even tried to backwards engineer tech they obtained, and when it came down to materials analysis that went to the chem lab. She was working on different armor alloys at the moment, running through a virtual program on her computer screen trying to pick and paste molecules and atoms together into new configurations…all the while trying to figure out how she'd actually fabricate any of it.

It was an old habit she'd picked up when something was bothering her, and the news of the attack on Drymo was just such a thing. They'd taken enormous precautions to defend all their new systems, and it almost hadn't been enough. A major disaster had just been averted, and it had cost the lives of 6 mechwarriors, two of whom she'd known.

The plodding footsteps coming through the door told her it wasn't one of her staff, and the Lord of Technology looked up to find the Lord of Military Operations walking towards here.

"You heard?" Vander asked.

"Yes," she said solemnly, spinning slightly in her chair to face him, but otherwise remained seated. "How close was it?"

"Could have gone their way if they'd planned better," he admitted. "But we think that was every mech the Red Baron had in his possession. He went all in to try and teach us a lesson and missed by an inch…though he didn't live through the first half of the battle."

Vander pulled out a datachip and put it on her desk.

"What's this?"

"Battle footage I've selectively edited. Your NARC beacon worked. Without it, we would have lost."

"It made that much difference?"

He nodded. "Using it in conjunction with the turrets in a large battle such as we had was the perfect situation. They were able to launch missiles up and over our own mechs and they came down without any friendly fire. They took out the Red Baron's Atlas early in the fight. It took two NARC beacons to the head of the mech to do it. Like I said, the missiles destroy the beacons, but the second time was enough to punch through into the cockpit."

"They landed one on the head?" Rannel asked. "Twice?"

"An Atlas is so damn slow it's easy to aim at, and the recon mechs were the right choice. They tagged it from the side and from behind. Then got its attention to turn around. I apologize for doubting its effectiveness."

"You're not the only one," she said, referencing herself.

"I know you've been trying to make a contribution here with limited staff and nothing really to work on except the lostech database, but by taking down that Atlas alone it turned the battle, and it also helped take down two other heavy mechs."

"Did the towers run out of missiles?"

"They did," he said, referencing another conversation they'd had. "And while this was more like a perfect storm, I want you to keep refining it for base defense situations. Hopefully the battle footage will help."

"But still not mech to mech?"

He shook his head. "It's still too damn big to hit smaller mechs with, and if they turn away the signal gets blocked. It's a bad weapon system that the turrets make viable if you can get a recon mech in close, and this battle was so large and confusing they were able to slip through. Three mechs survived to the end, and the recon mechs were two of them."

"If it worked," she hedged, "why hasn't anyone else used it for base defense? I didn't have to invent any new tech to get the blueprints finished. We just don't have the tech to make it as small as the Star League had it. Anyone can build it bigger like we did. Why has everyone forgotten about it?"

"Even if you had produced one at the original size, it's not a very useful weapon in most engagements. It's a tactical maneuver you'd be lucky to utilize one out of every ten battles in mech to mech combat. As for base defense, you gotta have the missile launchers to swarm them. They're expensive, and when the missiles destroy the NARC anyway…" he said, realizing he was criticizing again. "I'm surprised how well it worked. And if something isn't in vogue in the Inner Sphere, you're not going to see scrappy tech crews trying to patch one together when the mechwarriors won't want it. They want something that can do damage."

"And their Generals?" Rannel pressed.

Vander shrugged. "I would not have tried this if you hadn't kept pushing it. I guess they're as blind as I am. You've found a diamond in the rough and brought it back to life. Any large mechs trying to assault a force like ours will now have to consider themselves a big fat target. Almost better to use a larger force of smaller mechs. It's something I'm going to have to consider more going forward, but this time it worked and saved a lot of people's lives. Feel free to say 'I told you so.'"

"I didn't think it would be that effective," she said, waving off his prompt. "I never considered a mechwarrior being able to aim it well enough to stick it on the cockpit. Did it cover the view? No, you said it was a side hit."

"It adhered well, but a more nimble mech could have reached up and rubbed it off. I don't think the bastards that got tagged had any idea what it was."

Rannel blew out a breath. "Which means it gets less effective as word gets around."

"We're not spreading the word yet. We've got a Lords meeting tonight at 6, but I wanted you to get a chance to see this first. It's still a bad weapon because it's not reliable, but as far as a prototype goes, it works. So now you can try and refine it. Mission accomplished."

"Thank you. I'll let my team know, if that's alright?"

"Just don't let them share those images with the locals yet."

She looked at Vander, knowing him too well to dismiss that expression. "Are we going to hit them back?"

"That's what we're going to discuss. If the Red Baron is dead and his forces are down to five light mechs, there's a power vacuum that's going to be filled regardless of what we're going to do. If we move fast before any other bandit king or warlord knows it's there, well, we have an opportunity."

"I see. Do you need any more made?"

"Not for an assault, no. And until we get more missiles to Drymo, it's a moot point anyway. Just keep working on it from time to time. Its pocket value has already been proved."

She nodded and he left, with her pushing aside thoughts of what she was working on and inserted the data chip, eyes glued to the mech carnage as seen from multiple camera angles, none of them great, but Vander had already made editing marks to highlight certain things.

And like he said, it had worked…far better than she hoped. It was the lowest hanging fruit in the lostech database they'd gotten from the Federated Suns, and while she couldn't replicate the original blueprints, this oversized version was possible with existing tech. Part of her thought it would be stupid to try, because the Federated Suns and others must have worked it out already and found it pointless. But the battle proved that the oversized launcher and oversized beacon could still function.

Rannel dove into it, wanting every bit analyzed before the Lords meeting so she'd have something to offer in the way of a tech assessment as to what worked well or what could be better.

Still, the sight of that Atlas going down to the NARC beacons and missile barrage chilled her. In the workshop they were just big kid toys, but out there they were doing massive amounts of damage. And in this case, that damage had protected others and took that monster mech out of the fight before it could kill their own.

And those Phoenix Hawk pilots were gutsy as hell for getting in so close. She had to find a way to increase the range of the launcher, even if by only a few more meters…

A month and a half had passed since word of the Red Barron attack had hit Cholis, and now Sarah stood on a third story deck of the mansion as she watched the last pair of dropships blasting off from the spaceport farther down Home Valley. Paul, Vander, and Stephan were onboard one of them, while the rest of their invasion force was already enroute to the four jumpships waiting there.

Sarah was staying here and continuing to procure mechs, aerospace fighters, dropships, and perhaps more jumpships as needed. Cholis didn't have a market for any of those, not even spare parts, so she was having to utilize the Comstar net and work through brokers. She had two in New Avalon, another in New Syrtis. Unfortunately, big purchases like she needed weren't just available in a store somewhere. People who owned stuff would put it up for sale in certain markets, and you'd have to wait to find someone with something you wanted…which meant she was always checking with her brokers to find updates, and when something new came across that they thought she'd be interested in, but hadn't specifically requested, she'd get a message telling her about it.

She really wanted a warship, but ever since coming out here she hadn't found one listed for more than a hot second. Two had come up and were snatched up by other parties before she could even put in a bid…and those weren't even in the Federated Suns. The next best option was to buy dropships that had been converted into mini warships…such as the Stars' Herald had two of to protect itself with…but even those were rarely up for sale, and getting a custom job done was usually two or three times the regular cost if you could find someone qualified to do it.

Getting Aerospace fighters had been a hastle as well, for they were nowhere near as plentiful as mechs in a society that largely dismissed anything other than the walking war machines as the true determination of power in the Inner Sphere. Vander had schooled her otherwise, and it was a standing priority for House Morten to build up as much naval and air power as possible. After all, if you could shoot down or capture enemy dropships heading to one of your planets before they got there, then the mechs didn't even need to fight.

Drymo hadn't had any air, aerospace, or naval defenses, and look at the mess that had turned into. Thankfully she'd found a few good contacts in the industry and had been able to purchase 14 Sparrowhawks that were brand new off the assembly line, not even field tested yet. And she'd only been able to do that because there were unscrupulous individuals that had already bought them from the factories on existing contracts that were willing to sell a few here and there at 3 times the purchase cost and pocket the extra money.

Sarah didn't care about the corruption in those militias and Federated Suns forces…she technically didn't even know where they were coming from, for a good broker always kept such things confidential…but he'd vouched for the equipment and he hadn't failed her yet, so they'd got crated up aerospace fighters that needed full servicing and breaking in, but that was actually less difficult than reworking used craft into Morten standards.

Another broker had managed to pick up a pair of Stukas in rough shape, but the aeroframe was still solid, so even though Sarah had to pay a fortune for replacement engines and other parts, they'd managed to pull together two of the heavy, 100 ton attack craft that were much slower, but far more armed and armored than the 30 ton Sparrowhawk.

The rest of what she'd managed to get were a collection of Centurions…not the mechs, but the aerospace fighters by the same name…that were very old and had been rebuilt many times by other parties. They were flight worthy, though, and Rannel's army of techs had eaten up all the new spare parts Sarah could collect from dozens of different vendors across the Federated Commonwealth, but House Morten now had two full squadrons of aerospace fighters considered to be in active service, and half of them were going with the invasion force onboard two of the regular Overlords she had also managed to acquire, which had docking bays already built to handle the aircraft.

If they were going to operate on planet, though, they'd have to find a runway, because aerospace fighters were not Vtols, and even if you had slingshots installed to launch them into the air while grounded, there was no way for them to land back inside. Still, better to have them with the invasion force to screen for their 8 dropships, two of which were rebuilt Mule-class behemoths that Sarah had managed to acquire, while the techs were still working on repurposing another 6.

Those she had not gotten through the normal channels. Rather a new broker had come to her from the Periphery offering some things not available in the Inner Sphere. And while the Mules made a Union-class dropship look small in comparison, they were more or less outdated and not as widely used in the Inner Sphere anymore as they'd once been.

But on the Periphery, apparently you could find a whole lot of strange stuff if you knew the right people, and she'd begun making contacts with some of them that smelled fresh C-bills from a noble house that was said to buying.

It was amazing how fast word of mouth spread out here despite the lack of interstellar communications. Comstar didn't have HPG relays out there, so you had to get word around the old-fashioned way…and apparently that wasn't as inefficient as she'd once thought.

Hopefully, though, word would not spread that House Morten was coming until after they had already got to Gregoria. Vander hadn't wanted to send a scouting mission there and ruin the surprise, so the only information they had on the planet was from the people they'd captured and a little gossip from traders who had passed through there before and were now poking their nose around Cholis. Stephan had paid some of them quite well for a few basic maps and tidbits of information, but as far as the Federated Suns was concerned the planet didn't exist, and the same went for most of the Periphery that had escaped their attention.

It was said the planet had between 10 and 20 million people on it…which would make it about 10 times the size of Cholis. The Red Baron had taken it some years ago from another warlord, and who knew what the history was before that. It was not supposed to be like Turnix, and was said to be stable enough to hold a mech factory, but Sarah still didn't like them going in there blind.

If the Red Baron's mech forces had been eliminated, then there shouldn't be much heavy fighting, but if the population didn't care for the change, well, there was a lot of other ways to kill people outside of full scale battle when you only had a few thousand on a planet full of millions. Taking control of it was going to be dicey, which is why they were sending their A-team in, and they'd probably be there for a couple of years minimum.

Sarah would get requisition requests and other messages sent back to her via jumpship courier, so she didn't need to be there…even though she wanted to be. House Morten had never been split between planets before, and this was one of the downsides of it. Leonard Morten, the previous Lord of Logistics who had stepped down from the head spot 12 years ago so she could take it and he could have more free time on his hands was also going with them to fill her role there, and she had no doubt that he wouldn't need her help. He still knew this job better than she did in some ways, and would take on special projects to free her up for the wider 'maintenance' duties.

In that way, active members of House Morten never truly retired. They just scaled back, and that let younger ones step up and get experience earlier than they would have otherwise…but it also meant the brain trust was not always the Lords themselves, but also their predecessors, and that brain trust was being tapped into heavily, for there were also 3 other former Lords going with them along with a slew of the new Barons they'd been minting.

Stephan wouldn't be alone there by a long shot, but the mansion was going to feel diminished without having them here to bump into from day to day.

But with any luck, this new planet wouldn't become a money pit for them, and would just be something they could slide into command of and start reworking, with a tax structure already in place. For if it wasn't, House Morten wasn't going to be able to carry it the way they'd been carrying Turnix and Polvice. Drymo was soldily in the green now, producing enough money via exports to cover the cost of the workforce…though it'd be a long time before they recouped their full investment there. A very long time, but the attack hadn't put them behind production schedule for more than a day, maybe two. None of the infrastructure had been hit, and that was a credit to their mechwarriors who had toed the line and took the damage themselves.

And the turrets, she had to remind herself. She had to get replacement weapons for the one that got destroyed, and she'd continue to have to buy everything they needed until House Morten got some weapon production factories up and running.

Which was why she was really interested in that mech factory. She just hoped it was still intact by the time Stephan got there…and after whatever he had to do that was necessary to secure the planet.