personal6

16

September 7, 2994

Periphery

Gregoria System

Zenith Jump Point

Stephan floated on the bridge of one of the Mule-class dropships that had been hastily reconfigured into a mobile command post as the Beta Strider it was attached to popped into the enemy-held system third in line. Another 15 minutes later the Alpha Striderwould follow, with the Gamma Strider and Epsilon Strider already here and headed in towards the star as they let gravity tug them that way until they reached the point they wanted to camp out at.

But the Morten Protectorate jumpships were not alone.

"Contact," the sensor officer on the Mule, which was named the Violet Pumpkin, called out as soon as the other jumpship showed up on his screens in addition to the two friendlies. "750,000 kilometers. Looks like a Liberty-class jumpship. No IFF beacon detected."

Stephan and Vander exchanged glances.

"Sails?" the Lord of Military Operations asked.

"Sails are deployed," the sensor officer confirmed.

Stephan turned to the dropship Captain, but he was busy talking on a headset. The First Lord waited until he finished, raising an eyebrow when the Captain turned around.

"Captain Mendi says they've already made contact with the ship and it was in the possession of the Red Baron, but there's been a civil war going on here between his lieutenants and they're just waiting to see who the victor will be."

"Mech fighting?" Vander interjected.

"He doesn't know, but three different men are claiming the Red Baron's mantle on the surface and trying to get his ship to accept their authority. He's been laying low not wanting to get involved."

"Has he begun to retract sails?" Stephan asked, knowing that was necessary before they could jump to another system.

"Negative," Mendi said with a shake of his head. "He's playing nice now that he knows who we are and what the Red Baron did to Drymo. I'm told he wants to speak with the senior officer about the possibility of signing on with us as a cargo hauler."

"Get the Falcons into space," Stephan said as he floated his way over to another terminal. "And get this Captain on the line."

Polly Vren launched from the bay of the Sapphire Egg and directly into space, with no atmospheric or gravity tug on her ship to adjust to. Her Centurion-class aerospace fighter was painted a deep red with silver and gray highlights, with the Morten Protectorate symbol painted on both of the short wings sticking out of the sides of the cockpit that preceded the main wings further back. Those had the ends tipped in gray, making it look like they were half as long as they actually were. A little visual camouflage that might help in a battle if someone was coming at her from above or below on a planet, but in the dark of space even the gray looked bright enough to stick out.

She flew one of four Centurions in the squadron, the others were Sparrowhawks, but only half were onboard the same dropship. The other six were on another Overlord and likewise deploying, with their squadron leader Dan Trevor getting them all into formation after making a few swings around the allied Merchant-class jumpships before heading towards the much larger Liberty.

It was a very old jumpship design, and you'd be hard pressed to see one operating in the better regions of the Inner Sphere. The last to be produced had come off the lines in the 2550s, with much better jumpships built to replace them…but it still had 4 docking points for dropships compared to the Merchants' two, and at present there were dropships attached to only half of them, both of which were Mule-class.

Her squadron…the Ardent Falcons…accelerated easily in the vacuum of space and were halfway to their target after only 8 minutes, with Polly snuggly fit into her pilot's seat with both chest and leg straps to hold her in place as she coasted in zero g before they'd get to the 'flip over' point where they'd have to start decelerating, else they'd fly right past the target jumpship, then Dan's voice came over their otherwise silent squadron comm line.

"Straight from Lord Vander's lips to my ears…" he said dramatically. "We're taking the jumpship, and they don't like it. Neutralize any weaponsfire you get from the dropships."

"Shit," she said without transmitting, using a touch screen to pull up information on the Mules. And just as she expected, they each had a lot more firepower than she did…assuming these hadn't been modified.

"Are we just going to run at them and see if they fire at us?" Prit Scurry asked.

"We're doing a flyby, but not so close that we're easy targets. We need to scan those dropships and the jumpship to see if they've added anything cute. We'll wait until our dropships catch up if we have to do any major slugging."

"I thought we were supposed to neutralize weapons fire?" Polly asked.

"Yes, but how we do it is the key. If they detach to fight us, it's worse. If they stay in place, the jumpship blocks a lot of their own weapons. They can't fire everything forward like we can, Polly. So if we start taking fire, we figure out which battery it is and align on a squadron run at that individual one to take it out. If the other guns don't fire back, we don't pluck their weapons off. That's what 'neutralizing incoming fire' means."

"Yes, sir," she said, still new at this. She'd flown commercial shuttles for 7 years before finding her way out to Cholis to enter their Academy. She'd graduated to flight readiness on the Centurion 8 months ago and had been flying practice drills with the squadron ever since, but this was her first actual mission.

Instead of asking more questions she checked her rear radar, seeing the two overlords in the fleet starting to follow along with two more Unions.

Four dropships versus two, plus her squadron. Hopefully the jumpship crew would realize this was a fight they couldn't win, and unless they pulled that sail in…a lengthy and delicate procedure…they couldn't jump out before they got there even if their capacitors were full, and it was a safe bet they only had a partial charge, though that could still be enough to get them to the closest of nearby stars if they had enough to make the initial jump breach.

When they got to the deceleration burn Polly flipped her aerospace fighter over and slowed down, her back to the enemy, which still felt ridiculous compared to how the aerospace fighter operated in air, but physics were physics and she didn't have an engine sticking out her nose to do the slowing for her, just a medium laser mount that would do next to nothing when fired to slow her momentum, though technically even light had a tiny amount of mass.

She had two more, one on each wing, and while medium range on an aerospace fighter was considerably longer than on a mech, she still didn't want to get close to those enemy dropships. Their squadron leader had other plans though, and he took the first position in a wide 'V' formation as they buzzed the dropship at considerable speed that would make it hard to target them on anything except a straight shot, which he had them all moving up and down slightly to further complicate enemy line of sight.

The Ardent Falcons passed over the Liberty in a slow blur, not hearing anything in the vacuum of space except the vibration from their own engines.

"They didn't take the bait," Dan said, with the squadron following him through a U-turn as they flipped upward as one and reversed course, but technically they were still gaining distance on the jumpship until their thrust counteracted their drift.

Space combat physics again…

"Hopefully that means they got the message. We're going back by once more, then we're going to escort the dropships in. Keep your eyes peeled in case they were just waiting to see what we did and want to take a shot at us on the second pass."

So it wasn't over yet, and Polly kept a too firm grip on the joystick until they made their second pass in the same manner of speed and altitude…and still no one fired on them.

She let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, then Dan's voice broke into the silence again.

"Lord Vander says they've worked out a deal and they've agreed to surrender. Unless they renege, our part here is done. We keep our distance and stand by until our crews have control of the ship, then it's back to our birdie bunks. You'd be amazed what kind of negotiating power an aerospace squadron has."

Polly snorted a laugh. As far as her first mission was going, it was uneventful…but it sure didn't feel like it. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she knew it had to be the adrenaline from the fear of maybe getting shot at, but it sure felt real enough. She'd have to do better next time before someone actually fired at her…

Six days later all eight of the House Morten dropships were a day out of Gregoria, having left behind their own crew to run the jumpship and confining the prisoners to the two captured Mules to either be let go later in another system or on Gregoria after the fighting was over…all with a sizeable sum of money in their pocketbooks to make the transition to the next stage of their life easier.

It was a bribe, pure and simple, but House Morten had long ago learned how to bribe properly. You made it a mutually advantageous exchange, their services for your money. You didn't go back on a deal, or eliminate any loose ends, or ask anyone to do anything immoral…though sometimes you did ask them to do unethical things, like violating their duty, but if they were willing to do that, then it was their personal choice to do so.

The captured jumpship crew was in a bad position, and had Stephan's people been other raiders they might have just killed or enslaved everyone onboard. So when everything washed out and the crew found a way that they could not only survive, but get a little bit wealthy in the process…well, greased palms worked wonders in many cases so long as the people expected you to hold up your end of the bargain or they had no choice but to take it, and this was probably the latter since House Morten was an unknown out here.

As for the money, it seemed there were no less than 5 different currencies in play on Gregoria, with the most elusive being C-bills that everyone wanted. So when he'd offered to pay them in that currency, it seemed to seal the deal. And as soon as the replacement crew for the jumpship got established and made sure it wasn't going to fly itself apart…which by the look of it, it might…they were heading back to Cholis for a refit while one of the Mules would stay here and one would go back.

Stephan hoped to have at least one spaceport on the planet secure before then.

Communications with Gregoria had been a mess on the way there, with time lagged messages making it even harder, but it seemed that the three contenders for the Red Baron's legacy were camped out in the three major cities, each with their own faction, and none of them would even speak to the First Lord directly, but they were happy to have an underling or two lecture them on how they had no right to be here, they had to stand down and surrender their ships immediately…yadda, yadda, yadda and more pointless driven. House Morten had the superior military force in the system, and as they pulled up more surveillance of the planet as they approached, they didn't see anything to contradict that.

There were no space stations, no dropships in orbit, no aerospace fighters in play. What was camped out on the surface was another matter, but they'd already been using their telescopic lenses to try and spot the spaceports, and so far it looked like the pads were mostly empty…though the primary city had 16 pads and a tarmac that looked like it could hold another 8 dropships without dedicated support facilities.

That was too big for the economy that was expected here, even with the mech factory in the major city, which they called Nilhorn. Once they took it the renaming would begin, and Vander was suggesting they go straight for the reported Red Dragon palace in Nilhorn after they took the spaceport, and make it clear who was in charge now.

Stephan kept sending messages and getting lackeys to respond, or no response at all, until the head of the mech factory signaled them wanting to talk.

"I am First Lord Stephan Morten of House Morten and the Morten Protectorate, which this planet is shortly going to become a part of."

"I am Head Administrator of Locarh Fabrication, Lord Morten, and I would ask that whatever hostilities that are about to take place, please spare our factories. We prefer to be an intact prize to be won rather than combatants."

"Who owns your corporation?"

"The Red Baron currently does."

"The Red Baron is dead. He died assaulting one of my planets."

"So we have been told, but the Red Baron is not a single man. It is a title, and the next Red Baron will take the dead man's place, though there is some confusion over the chain of succession, because his designated heir also died in that failed attack."

"I assume the Red Baron did not create your factory?"

"We have many factories here, and no, it was originally found by the Klemmings noble family. The Crobnak Raiders seized this planet some time later and executed the family members, taking possession of it from them. Later on the first Red Baron defeated the Raiders and claimed the planet for himself. Ever since they have been in possession and we obey them. If they managed to defeat you and retain the planet, we will continue to serve them. However, if you defeat them, well, I'd like to establish a relationship prior to the fighting starting," he said with a lag slight enough to be annoying.

"A wise move. You said factories in the plural. What do you have in addition to the mech factory?"

"We also produce a wide range of parts for many mechs, as well as build land vehicles and aircraft. We…" he continued as a pistol appeared behind him on the camera and suddenly the man's head exploded, blood coating the lens for a moment until a hand wiped it off and the executioner took the place of his victim.

"There will be no deals made. This planet and everything on it belongs to the Red Baron. You will land your dropships at the spaceport, then your people will walk out of them, unarmed, and surrender to the local authorities. Your jumpships are to…" he cut off as the screen blanked, and Stephan broke his anger-induced screen lock to see Vander's finger pressing the cancel button on the transmission.

"I think we've seen enough."

Stephan glared at the empty screen for almost a minute, thinking through his rage while Vander waited for him to say something.

"Why did he make the call with one of their people nearby?"

"He probably didn't realize it."

"But that bastard had to be in their facility. Which probably means they've got plants throughout the civilian infrastructure. At least at the higher levels."

"Which means we'll have some digging to do after we cut off the head of the snake."

"We don't know what we're getting into," Stephan warned.

"We know they can't stop two plus Battalions of mechs."

"But we don't have the manpower to pacify the populace if they're hostile, or being held hostage by a police state. I expected the Red Baron's operation to be small and holding the planet under fear of what they could do. I agree we need to go straight at their strongest point and make it clear they can't stop us…but I want intel first," he said, bringing up a map of the planet that was being verified in chunks as they approached…though those chunks were not very detailed still being a day away from hitting atmosphere.

Stephan scanned the other cities beyond the major three, then pointed to the northernmost one that still counted as a city in his perspective. It had a guessed 500,000 to 700,000 in population, and was not one of the locations the would-be next Red Barons were set up in. It also did not have a spaceport, according to the traders they'd gotten some of this information from, but it did have an airstrip for on-planet commerce.

"Here. We take the airfield and give our Falcons someplace to land, and see what kind of a response we get from the Red Baron's people. We set up shop, get the lay of the land, then launch against the main spaceport when we're ready."

"I still prefer them not knowing what's coming. They'll be able to size us up if we disembark the mechs."

"We can keep some on the dropships unless they're needed. I really want our Falcons up and doing surveillance, and we need to talk to the locals and see if we can find some without an executioner looking over their backs."

"We don't have the troops to really settle in. This has to be a decapitation strike."

"I agree, but we need intel first. Not to protect the mechs, but to figure out what we need to seize and in what order. We also don't want them torching everything so we can't claim it."

"I did get that impression as well," Vander said, referencing the head shot. "You think we're biting off more than we can chew?"

"No. We just need to know how best to chew it…unless the population is fanatical to the point they're practically Dracos. If that's the case we need to know before we put people out into positions where they could get assassinated around every street corner."

"That's why I want everything run out of this dropship and not one of their captured buildings," Vander insisted. "A larger population doesn't always mean a more civilized one."

"And yet the head of the largest corporation just wanted to get the ball rolling for when we take over," Stephan said, still trying to work through in his mind what he'd just witnessed without becoming jaded.

"They will probably have a survivor mentality, keeping their heads down and switching sides to whoever wins. Except the zealots, and if the head of the mech factory wasn't a zealot, I wouldn't assume the populace is going to have very many of them."

"A few thousand scattered around can cause a lot of damage in the right places."

"Nothing we can do about that right now. We have the heavy hammer, and we need to use it against the stuff they can't move or hide. The spaceports and the palace."

"Jedsen first," Stephan said, referencing the northern city that was currently covered in a blanket of snow according to the most recent live images. Snow or glacier, he couldn't tell at this point, but either way it was going to be cold…

They'd slowed their approach and made several orbits of the world picking up more detailed images of the entire planet before finally landing, not bothering to call the airfield operator for fear of another potential helper being executed, but began broadcasting multiple messages, first from orbit, and then more directed ones at Jedsen and the airfield itself, ordering all aircraft to stay on the ground else they'd be considered hostile…as well as ordering aircraft already in the air to either land or divert to other cities.

Stephan made a small speech to the planet, not knowing how many people would actually hear it, explaining what had happened on Drymo, the death of the Red Baron, and the announcement that House Morten was here to…as he put it…claim pirate's rights, which meant that everything the Red Baron had now belonged to the man who killed him. He then went on to explain the Morten Protectorate and how this planet would become part of it and under his protection against other warlords and raiders…as well as providing an economic and travel link back to the Inner Sphere.

He didn't know if that would be a bonus or a problem, because some of the people they'd come into contact with in their business dealings in the Periphery had reported a dislike of the Inner Sphere…but the businessmen would understand the value of it, and he hoped to make it clear that it wasn't going to be business as usual. That when he replaced the Red Baron, the planet would become much more lucrative and prosperous.

And given that he was part of a noble family, that had a great deal more weight than coming from a glorified pirate like the Red Baron…whoever he actually was. More like a costume someone wore to claim control of a band of raiders.

The snow-covered airfield had three runways, one long and two medium poking off a central hangar complex. The runways themselves were clear, obviously having been plowed, but the snow cover appeared to be quite thick, and when the 8 dropships began landing on the 3rd runway near the hub and blocking it, they saw that the snow was actually more than 3 meters deep everywhere.

This wasn't just some snowfall. The city had to have been carved out of the landscape…or else the winters here were very aggressive when it came to precipitation.

The Violet Pumpkin that was operating as his command center was set down in the middle of the line of dropships, making the runway look extremely thin as its bulk was some 158 meters wide and the landing gear barely fit on the runway. Both the Unions and the Overlords they had with them were nowhere near as fat, but they still looked too big for where they were sitting, and it must have been an impressive and intimidating sight from the control tower that was shorter than all of them.

A heavy Lance of mechs came out of the Emerald Egg and began walking patrol around the buildings at the airfield, bypassing a few commercial planes that were sitting on a nearby taxi way. As the mechs presumably got everyone's attention, three hovercraft came out of the Orange Pearland raced to the base of the control tower complex, which was actually two buildings with the tower standing beside and melded into the infrastructure.

Colonel Miles Zephram, one of the few infantry militiamen that had come out from Neubenn, had been in command of a training group on Cholis when the attack on Drymo had occurred. He'd been expected to start the creation of the House Morten Tactical Operations Army and have years to grow it, but life seldom gave you predictable timetables, and Vander had asked him to bring along as many of his recruits as he thought were combat ready, a few of whom had served in other militaries in the Inner Sphere, but most were just green kids wanting to become soldiers and had left their homes on dozens of Inner Sphere worlds for the chance to join the excitement of House Morten on Cholis.

Vander watched them approach uncontested and then spill out of their vehicles, breaching a door as he monitored their radio chatter on an earpiece that the rest of the command center crew wasn't privy to.

"Resistance," he noted for Stephan's sake. "Small arms…they're down. Tower control reached…no more hostiles. Tower secured, but the rest of the complex still has to be cleared…

Colonel Zephram stood in the center of the control tower next to the four prisoners they'd taken as one of his men bound their hands in flimsy cuffs from a pouch on his pelt that could hold dozens of the devices. These four hadn't fought back and were probably non-combatants, but you could never be sure. Two other men had met them on the stairwell up, and the clear shield that he held in his left hand had several cracks in it from their slug thrower pistols.

Small caliber, not much penetration, but if it had hit his combat armor it would have broken through or nearly. The Colonel was encased head to toe in Neubenn militia armor that he'd smuggled with him to Cholis, as had several other people. It was custom crafted to fit his body exactly, and couldn't be given to others to wear anyway, so it had been destined to become junk under House Derren and the 'cost cutting' efforts had left everything so chaotic with the mass firings that nobody had even bothered to notice when he carted it and several other small items off as he left the base.

The armor had been specially created by a factory on Neubenn at House Morten's request…meaning the majority of his troops didn't have it. It was very good against laser pistols and rifles, and it would take two shots in the same spot to get through. Slug throwers had much more effect, and a single hit would break the affected area like dropping a glass mug on the ferrocrete, but he'd seen it slow down the bullets enough that they would only indent into a person, causing damage but not nearly as much as most of the kinetic force was absorbed in the pieces that would flake off and leave jagged edges behind.

It was by no means perfect protection, but against laser wielding foes it could make you feel invincible in short firefights. The shield he carried was a breaching shield, designed to absorb a lot more than his personal armor could, but it was heavy…too heavy to be carried around for very long, but when moving into tight confines that weight was a blessing as he had gone in first and absorbed the shots on the shield.

His men also had several of the breaching shields, known as 'blankets' because they covered you from neck to toe and were a little less than a meter wide, allowing you to get most of your body behind them. But their personal armor left a lot to be desired, though the fact they had any was due to Lord Rannel's frantic efforts prior to leaving to piece together protection from vests, helmets, and any other locally available purchases while molding the other pieces in their chem lab one at a time. As a result, his men had virtually head to toe protection except for a few spots around the armpits and crotch, though there was a 'skirt' over top that looked dumb and made some extra noise, but would protect the exposed areas from anything other than a shot straight up from the floor below them.

The material was not as good as the Colonel's, which was another reason why he had gone in first, but there was no military presence in the tower. Just a couple of thugs with guns who now lay broken and bound on the other side of the room…for the Colonel had simply charged into them and beaten them into submission with his armored fists, knocking away their weapons and subduing them in a show of considerable skill.

He also didn't want the first lesson his greenies to learn was you always shot whoever was shooting at you. That could make them even more trigger happy than they already were.

"Jorgins, Nan, and Denning…stay here and hold this position. Do not let any of them up for any reason. I'll send someone to collect them shortly."

"Sir!" two of them shouted at the same time, the adrenaline pumping through their veins making their volume far louder than needed to be.

"Secure those pistols," he said, pointing to the pair he'd left on top of a table, then he led the rest of his 36 men off through the remainder of the complex, taking a few more prisoners but finding everything else deserted and seeing several bodies fleeing across the access road from the airfield towards the city, boxed between snow walls. There had to be at least a dozen of them.

"Facility secure," he reported to Vander. "Two hostile prisoners, 11 complacent. Requesting pickup and relocation immediately."

"On its way," the Lord said immediately. "Any problems?"

"No. They didn't intend to fight here. But the two thugs might be your enforcers. The rest of the people fled back towards the city on foot. Do you want them picked up?"

"Let them go. I need you to hold what we've got and clear all the hangars and aircraft."

"Understood. Zephram out," he said as he jogged back towards their initial entry doors carrying the heavy Blanket with him. "Next building," he announced. "Same formation."