Blood on the Horizon (Battletech SI)

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 1: A Spacious Place
Sometimes, you know that you are asleep even though you can hear and understand everything that is going on around you. You know what someone is saying, you even are able to process and understand, but you are asleep and until you wake up you are unable to do anything. I understood this on an entirely new level as I woke up to the sound of nothing but the echo of metal on metal.

Finally able to convince my aching and sore body to rouse from its lethargy. I groaned and looked around. Where in the world was I. I didn't recognize anything and strangely I was floating, floating in some sort of room with a strange looking laptop and wrapped in a hammock that appeared to be anchored to a metal wall. There was a door that looked similar to the pressure doors on an aircraft carrier or some other sort of ship but it had a couple of extra locking mechanisms that I didn't recognize. I still didn't know why I was floating, but I knew that I had to figure out where I was. Unfortunately, the first thing I knew about figuring things out was to sit down. And I was not able to do that at this moment.

Taking my time, I slowly wiggled myself free from the strange hammock and let myself drift towards the weird computer that was floating and bouncing around the room. Taking care to not move to quickly in the seemingly zero gravity environment I found myself in. Grabbing the laptop I opened it. "What the heck?" I muttered to myself as I gazed upon a strange user interface that lacked any sort of mouse. "Thank God for QWERTY." I said as I began to fiddle with this strange looking computer.

"Where is the power symbol?" I asked myself as I began to push any of the unfamiliar keys. The keyboard layout was mostly the same as the ones I had seen over my lifetime with the exception of a few keys that had Symbols I didn't recognize. "Ahh, there it is." I said as I found it on the left side of the computer built into the lower left hand corner of the screen.

While the unfamiliar style compute began to boot up I took stock of myself. Running my left arm up and down my torso and legs checking for any injuries. The last thing I remembered was being at work with my sidearm and all of the gear I normally have with me. "Legs good, no injuries there." I muttered my check out loud. "Hmm, Med bag and extra magazines are there." I thought to myself. "No handgun though? That's odd, who takes a weapon but leave the extra magazines?" I felt my torso. "The holster is there but no weapon?"

A loud slap resounded as I facepalmed while watching my Canik float out of the hammock. Hurriedly, not wanting to be unarmed in a strange place, I grabbed my sidearm and holstered it. "Crap!" I said as I flipped around before stopping against a wall. "Slow down Mark." I said to myself as I braced myself in the corner. I finished my inventory and realized that I had everything I normally have with my while at work barring my backpack and laptop.

Upon thinking about my laptop, I realized that I had ignored the one that was floating in the middle of the room for long enough that it had booted up and was seemingly waiting on some sort of BIOS screen.

"IT experience don't fail me now." I sad as I crossed my fingers and began to work a little bit of computer magic to get the 80s looking machine to boot into whatever native operating system it had. After a couple of seconds, an IBM logo appeared in the middle along with a loading screen. Then there was a starting prompt that appeared. Thankfully there were no passwords to enter seeing as I had nothing to guess at anyway aside from the standard "Password" that some idiots used. Upon startup, the computer opened a program that showed the current battery life and the programs that had been active before shutdown. Slowly acclimating myself to the different options and figuring out the different commands and prompts I slowly delved into the knowledge on this strange device.



"Frack!" I exclaimed when I discovered what was on what I now knew to be a Noteputer. I had seemingly discovered both what universe I had landed myself in somehow and a ballpark estimate of when I was. At least relatively speaking. The date on the Noteputer said that it was January 1st 3000 and listed several things that ensured that I knew I was truly and totally screwed.

"Okay, nothing on this matters if I don't know where I am and if I don't manage to do anything in the first place." I said to myself as I closed the Noteputer. Looking at the hammock and the Noteputer in my hand I pulled out my pocketknife and fashioned a sort of carry satchel/ backpack to put the treasure trove I had just found in. I then pushed off of the corner in order to get myself close to the only doorway in the room.

Reaching the door, I opened the pressure seal with baited breath, hoping that the other side was pressurized so that I wouldn't die 15 minutes into my new found adventure. Thankfully, it opened into a corridor that was pressurized. Drawing my Canik, I eased myself in the Zero G out in to the corridor and nearly opened fire with my weapon when I saw what looked like a person in a modernized spacesuit around 15 feet away. After holding it at gunpoint for a moment, I maneuvered myself to inspect it. Having no clue if there was anyone in the suit or not. When had finally reached it I spun it around to face me and gagged and nearly threw up when I saw what appeared to be a mostly decomposed corpse. The faceplate was missing from the helmet and some dogtags were hanging out in front of the corpses face.

Grabbing the dog tags, I ripped them off and took a good look at them. "SLDF Robert Kingsley Lieutenant Junior Grade" I read out loud as I put the dog tags into my pocket. Surveying the rest of the corridor, I saw that there were arrows on the floor that gave directions to the various shipboard areas. Seeing the direction that the bridge was, I made my way towards it.

After an hour of navigating my way around the ship I had found myself on, I reached the bridge. It was several ladders up and was almost at the very top of the ship. Luckily, all but one of the pressure doors between the room I had woken up in and the bridge were open. The bridge was just as deserted as the rest of the ship, and also like the rest of it was only lit by emergency lighting aside from the weapon mounted light I had aside from the one workstation that was lit. Closing the door to the bridge behind me, I made my way over to the workstation and with my recently gained experience with this style of OS I began to learn what my current situation was.

"Captains Log, March 16th 2785, SLDF Captain James Cromwell. We made what repairs we could to the Manassas' K-F drive. We are planning on Jumping and trying to rendezvous with the rest of the SLDF as we head towards deep space. We have logged the planned course and hope to meet Kerensky at some point in the near future. On a side note, I find the nature of some of our upgrades to be unsettling. I understand the need for better longevity on what could be a journey years in the making, but having our weapons systems automated enough to be controlled from the bridge? Why, I saw thousands killed by these so called "perfect" systems! At least with a gunnery crew there is no danger of the computer going insane! But nontheless, I do see the need for some of these upgrades. And I made sure that there is a shut off for those systems while we were in dry dock. " I read the last log that was displayed out loud.

After reading the rest of the log including the detailed repairs to the K-F drive I made my way to the rest of What I now knew to be the Warship Manassas' bridge stations in order to figure out what the situation was as far as Oxygen and power were concerned. It turned out that while there seemed to be plenty of rations, the ship was on emergency power and there were only three of the four Confederate dropships still attached to the collars.

Well, while I wasn't an engineer and I wasn't good with numbers I knew that if I didn't fix both of those problems than I wasn't going to be long for this world.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 2 I Hated Having to Work on My Car… Much Less this.

It felt like I had been reading for weeks. Even though I mentally knew that it had only been a couple of days I still felt drained. The air scrubbers still worked enough that I had a couple of weeks of oxygen but I knew that if I didn't get the Manassas power plant back online and fix the K-F drive that I would be dead before long. Luckily, the Manassas had a full library of engineering and science books that were both on the theory and engineering of both the K-F drive and the Fusion plant. The chief Engineer and his staff had also kept ludicrously detailed notes on all of the quirks and repairs that they had made over the 6 months after the first misjump.

And that all led to this, this moment in the engine room where I had refueled the Fusion reactor and was about to do or die. I was by no means an expert, but I had hopefully learned enough to not die in this process. After holding my breath and exhaling after a ten count I flipped the switch to restart or explode the beast that I was dealing with. I blinked away stars for a couple of minutes after all of the lights switched on and the dull red of the emergency lights switched off. Tears flowed from my eyes as I realized I had staved off death for a little while longer.


Grabbing the pen and pad that I had filched from someone's locker I checked my notes against all of the readings on the terminal and made sure that I wasn't going to explode anytime soon. After I triple checked everything I made my way to the galley for a celebratory meal. While eating the MRE that I had found, I began to read over the inventory that the Noteputer that I had found had detailed on it. It seems that I awoke in the Quartermaster's main quarters and that he had kept very detailed logistical notes on everything that was both on the Manassas and the four Confederate dropships that were attached to the Warship. Of particular interest to me was the fact that apparently there were several field manufacturing cores kept on the Manassas. While they didn't detail any of the hard basics like a full field library had, they did have the details of how to manufacture double heat sinks and other assorted things that would be considered Lostech in this day and age. And while there was no first principles on any of those memory cores, there were a lot of science and engineering textbooks that were kept on hand by the engineering staff. This is what had allowed me to refurbish the Fusion reactor, and would hopefully help me to finish fixing the K-F drive like they had started to do.


After I had finished eating the most tasteless thing I had ever experienced, I floated over to the nearest crew quarters I could find and strapped myself into a hammock to sleep for the first time in over 24 hours.




After waking up from my long needed nap, I made my way to the bridge where I had moved all of the learning material that I had collected to. When I reached the Engineering chiefs chair, I strapped myself in and began to read and take notes. I had already been doing this for about 2 weeks before I had felt comfortable reactivating the Fusion drive and now I was about to do a deep dive into Science that I had never even wanted to understand.

Now, the basic principles of a K-F drive are actually quite similar to a SlipSpace drive from the Halo Universe on the surface, but the underlying physics are so beyond different that I had no knowledge base to work off of. And I was hoping that not having any knowledge of this science would allow me to finish the repairs that the Manassas' crew had begun and look at things with a fresh viewpoint.




A month and a half later…

"Dammit! Why is it always the left arm?" A voice echoed throughout the Warship's empty corridors as I swore angrily at having banged my arm into something while arms deep in the K-F drive. While working on the K-F drive I had programmed the Warship's autopilot to take me in a circular pattern at 1G so that I wouldn't continue to lose muscle mass in space. With that in mind, I had also frequented the ships gym in between studying and working on the mess that was the K-F drive. While I barely understood some of the math, the mechanical part while frustrating was surprisingly easy as long as you didn't hurt yourself on something accidentally.

"Alright Mark, time for a break." I said as I drank some water and headed out of the Engine room towards the training rooms. "Let's just set the sims to easy and blow some stuff up before we get down to the books again. How does that sound?"

Once I reached the training room I flipped on the lights and made my way to the sound system that was set up and hit play. At this point having spent so long in the Ship I no longer cared what the music was as long as I could hear another human's voice.

Thankfully, The weight room was located right next to the simulator and training room so I could get a solid workout in before hitting the sims. Now, before my arrival, I had been starting to put on weight in a way that I didn't like and now that I had nothing enjoyable to eat and nothing to do but eat, sleep, study, train, and attempt to fix the K-F Drive I had instead turned into a much better looking version of myself physically.



Three weeks later…

"Alright Mark, I think we have finished what was laid out in the Engineers notes." I said as I finished one last turn of the bolt holding the access panel on. "Let's finish up here and see if we can try and jump somewhere close to known space shall we."

After I got to the bridge I made my way to the Navigation workstation and put in a course for the Nadir point at the current 1G of speed it would take one more week before I could plot a jump out of here. I would be keeping my fingers crossed and praying that everything went according to plan.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 3: Fourth Floor... Tools, Guns, Keys to the telephone network.


1 week later…

"Well, there's only one dropship left." I said to myself as I wrote down the last of the items that I had physically inspected and crossed referenced with the listed manifest and quartermaster's noteputer. There seemed to be more spare parts then had been originally listed in this drop ship. The final Confederate didn't have a listed inventory. The previous two had been filled with lanes of 'Mechs, aerospaace fighters, and enough spare parts to fight an entire campaign. There were even a couple of interesting ones that I didn't think existed anymore. So I had a mixed weight company of 'Mechs as of my last count. I also had four Aerospace fighters in this Dropship to add to the total amount of hardware I had found.

One of the odd things I had discovered while exploring was that the Manassas had been outfitted with a lot of top tier equipment for long distance travel. This included some manufacturing capacity. I could create and use automated systems to both repair and refit any of the hardware that I had in the dropships.


I sagged a little bit as I waited for the last Confederate dropship to finish opening it's transfer doors. I was exhausted. Non stop work for several months on end would do that to you. In order to get the K-F drive operational I had disconnected the experimental module and made repairs to the actual drive. I had left the experimental one disconnected though because I figured that it may have been the reason for the original Misjump. When I reached the cargo area of the last dropship, I began to go over the manifest that was located on the main terminal.

"I'm so dead." I said when I navigated my way through to all of the tech on board. There was a small 12 ton Mobile HPG on board to go with the one on the Warship. "Comstar was already going to kill me for the Warship alone. But this… I'm going to be the most wanted man in all of the Inner sphere if this gets out."

Before entering the correct command codes to delete the Mobile HPG from the cargo manifest I powered on my Iphone and entered in a series of notes as well as the correct numbers for where the parts and HPG were. I also memorized those numbers because I knew that this would change the balance of power for the entirety of the Sphere if I did this properly.


"Well, it seems like I have a decision to make." I said to myself as I entered the bridge. Which one did I go to? Did I take my newly found wealth with me to the Davions? Did I turn everything over to the Lyran's in the hope that I would be made a noble. I shot to my feet and headed for the Noteputer I had left over by the engineering console. "What was the year again?" I asked myself as I navigated to the calendar application that was on it. "March 30, 3000. If I make moves over to the periphery, I can meet Katrina and see about befriending the power trio." Moving over to the Navigation console, I plotted a course that would take me through stars used by the SLDF Navy and outside of the usual routes that one would go through in Combine space.

The journey to the Periphery would take a period of a year and a half. And I knew that I would be alone for a long time. With that in mind, I began to collect a series of reading material that included the military doctrine in use by the SLDF at the time of the Exodus and a lot of science and material engineering. I would be spending a lot of time on self improvement and seeing as I was alone I might as well enjoy geeking out over the giant stompy robots.

5 minutes before first jump…

"I hope I don't have TDS." I said out loud as I strapped myself into the navigation chair. "I really hope this works." I began to prep the Warship for the Jump. "Jumping to the next system on my mark." I commanded out loud. I might as well get my fun in. Especially if this doesn't work. "Three, two, one, Mark." I pushed the button and crossed my fingers while praying. There was a small flash. Was that eyeballs? Myself in a Warhammer dueling another Warhammer with a spider painted on it. Then everything stopped. "It worked!" I shouted as I cheered on. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all. And I had begun my journey.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter: Four Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

"That's the last one." I said to myself as I removed the dog tags of Captain Cromwell's body. Adding his to the rest of the tags I had collected. The captain's body was the one I had been saving for last. Gently picking it up, I carried it to the cargo bay where the rest of his crew members had been relocated to. All of the bodies were basically just bone at this point, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to treat the dead with respect. After I reached the cargo bay, I placed his body in the body bag I had placed for him and draped a SLDF flag over his body as I had the rest of them.


I looked over the hundreds of bodies I had collected and clenched the dog tags in my hand. I stood there silently for several reverent moments. Then I made my way to the exit and switched off the lights. I had looked into the crew manifest to see where the individual crew members had come from and made a note of it. I vowed to myself that I would see to it that the dead would have a proper burial.

After the somber moment, I made my way to the Bridge. I was working on trying to slave all of the controls for the CIC to one console. I would have to multitask like never before but I was only one man trying to control a Warship that was intended for over one hundred and eighty people to man at a time. I had been working on it off and on since the first successful jump and now that I was a couple of months in to my year long journey I was trying to refine everything that I knew. When I wasn't working on the programming language of the SLDF or working out; I was in the simulators. I knew that I needed to be able to pilot a 'Mech or one of the ASF's in the bays.


After being on the ship for half a year now, it was second nature to navigate wherever I was headed. Currently, this was to the engine room to do routine maintenance on the Fusion and K-F drives. While I was still not an expert on either system, I could do what was necessary for the Manassas to remain functional. I had even gotten to test fire some of the energy weapons, that had been fun though I didn't want to use anything that used ammunition that I wasn't sure I could replenish.


After working non stop for months, it was time for a break. I had been on my journey for long enough that I was ready to have a break and sit down to watch something. Thankfully, there was a very nice entertainment system on board pre-loaded with a lot of Tri-Vid shows and movies. I may have spent a couple of days vegging out on the nice leather seats and watching trashy rom-coms and other assorted media. The ship also had a firing range which I had made religious use of in order to maintain accuracy with my handgun and the other firearms that I had taken to try out from the armory.


The armory was a gun nut's wet dream. Lines of Carbines, Assault rifles, and anything else you might need for a boarding party or landing an infantry squad to support the rest of the force that you dropped onto a planet. And the real dream that was in there was in a hidden back panel. I only knew about it because I had found the Intelligence officer and used his codes to access everything that he had access to. This included the two BlackWatch officers that had been placed among the crew. These two officers had access to the armory because there was one Nighthawk suit in there along with spare parts for it.

Of course, the inner Spartan in me made me want to try it on immediately, but the common sense and paranoia that I had developed made me check it for any booby traps before I locked myself into the tin can. Part of my reading assignment before climbing into the suit of Power armor was to read the manual on it from front to back. I spent weeks memorizing all of the command prompts and everything that could possibly go wrong while I was in there.

"Nighthawk piloting test one." I said facing the camera I had found. I then climbed in and sealed it around me. "Let's start with a simple walk." I said before closing the face plate on it. I proceeded to take one step forward. "Alright!" I chuckled a little bit. "That's one small step… Ahh dammit turn the jump jets off! Turn them off!" I screamed as I pinwheeled around the armory, ramming into everything before finally coming to a stop when it ran out of fuel.


"Nighthawk piloting test two." I said from within the suit a couple of days later. "I read over the problem and I think I figured out what I did wrong. Let's start this over again with a single step." I took a step like I had in the first test, and when the jump jets didn't trigger I breathed a sigh of relief. "Proceeding with a slow walk forward." I said and upon taking my second step I promptly face-planted. "Houston… I've fallen and can't get up" I groaned.



"Nighthawk Piloting test twenty-five. I seem to finally have the hang of this and am now able to move at a slow jog before screwing myself over in some way." I said as I did a small wave to the camera. "In a few weeks I should be able to move onto using weapons and trying moving and shooting."



"Nighthawk piloting testing complete." I said to the camera as I took off the suit. "I've accomplished everything I wanted to in the suit for now and I now have some newfound appreciation for what the Master Chief went through every time he locked himself into Mjolnir." I placed the suit back on the rack it came from and flicked it off as I walked away. "Ease of use… My ass." I muttered while walking away quoting how the manual made the suit seem easy to use.


Maybe it was my newness to neurohelmets but I had a lot of trouble with both the sims and the Nighthawk in the beginning with them interpreting the signals the right way. Thankfully, now that I had had a lot of time to practice that had gone away for the most part. With only a few months left of the first leg of my trip I had a lot of prep work to do if I wanted the plan to work right.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Five: Hostis Humani Generis

After a long journey, I was finally close to the end. There were quite a few SLDF outposts and hidden bases that were put in place and listed in the navigation data-banks of the Manassas. While I planned on hitting some of those for Lostech and other assorted ideas with Katrina Steiner if I could manage to catch her at some point for now I was leaving them be. Instead, I was about to set quite a few rumors of my own.

Now, there had always been strange rumors in and around the periphery, some of them had singing Texas battleships and there were always rumors of Amaris supporters doing strange things. My plan was to jump into a known source of Pirate activity and raze it to the ground while taking as many of the Jumpships hostage in the process. Tortuga was about to be wiped off of the inner sphere map.

My long year of travel and work had paid off. I had been planning for this moment for about three months of jumps now. The plan was to hit the Zenith point and destroy or force to surrender every Jumpship that was there. After I hit their ability to leave the system I was going to make my way down and use Ortillery and my long range communications systems to give them a series of ultimatums.

With everything prepped, I took a minute to breath. This was the moment in which I made my first mark on the Inner Sphere and seized my own future with both hands. Reaching down, I flipped the switch I had programmed to switch off all non essential systems. I had also suited up in the Nighthawk suit and made sure that it was set to move to it's own internal oxygen supply if the bridge was breached. I was taking no chances. "Nothing ventured, Nothing gained." I said as I pushed the button that would initiate my jump.



" Boss you've got to wake the frack up!" A voice shouted from outside of the opulently decorated room. "There's a Warship in the system and it's just taken out all of the Jumpships at the Zenith point" Lord Kalvin Bar-Dyness jolted out of bed wearing nothing but a dressing robe and hurried out of his chambers. Dumping the two whores he had been sleeping with on the ground.

"What the hell did you say?!" Kalvin roared at the lieutenant who had woken him up. "Sir, there's a Warship making it's way to Tortuga Prime now." It's taken out the Jumpships at the jump point and stayed in position for over twenty four hours. Then it started on it's way towards us taking out the other pirate bands dropships along the way. It'll be in orbit in three days."


"All of the other bands know that it's coming?" Kalvin asked as he slowly began to cam down.

"Yes sir, but we have no means of really stopping it." The older balding lieutenant replied. "Our aerospace fighters are all in need of repair due to the last raids. And a good portion of our birds were on Dropships headed towards the Jumpships to go raid. Those Dropships and birds were destroyed on it's way into the system."

"Dammit!" Kalvin roared, his anger once again rising to the peak. "Do we have any assets left that can Take something that heavy out?"

Well, if we manage to get some of our bigger dropships into the skies we might stand a chance. But we also will cripple our lifting capacity if this goes wrong. We would be trapped here on world until someone else shows up." The Lieutenant replied.

"If we don't at least try we are probably going to lose it anyway." Kalvin said as he sighed and went back into his chambers to get dressed.





72 hours later…

"Boss, we're receiving a transmission from the one overlord Dropship that was on hand." A female tech called out from he spot in the hastily cobbled together command center.

"Put it through." Kalvin said as he stood behind the people monitoring everything.

"This Captain Martinez of the Red Skulls pirate band. We are moving to engage the Warship with the rest of the Dropships." The captain of the Overlord said over the comms with a slight delay. "We're gonna drag this bastard down to hell with us!" He started with what was supposed to be an inspiring speech before the comm channel cut out.

"Boss, the Overlord is gone." The same tech that had relayed the transmission earlier now relayed the increasingly bad news to the rest of the CIC. Then she her tanned skin paled significantly "Warship is on a course that puts it directly over the palace complex. It'll be in orbital bombardment range in half an hour."

Everyone in the command center began to panic at this point. All of the senior council members were there and so were most of the pirate lieutenants. No one had a backup plan. Then the people there started to realize that their Lord Dyness had disappeared. After speaking up to put the transmissions through, he had made his exit. Already knowing how this would end he had planned to be long gone in his 'Mech while he had the chance.


After speeding through powering his Thunderbolt up, he through on his cooling vest and pushed his Thunderbolt up just above it's recommended speed in order to be out of the palace in time. He had scarcely made it fifteen Kilometers before he heard an echo and a loud crack as several Naval Autocannon rounds destroyed his seat of power. Thankfully, he still had his 'Mech and many of his rivals were now dead.

"Chaos is a ladder after all." Kalvin muttered to himself as began to pilot his ‘Mech away from the ruins of the palace complex at a sedate pace. “I’ll just have to climb to the top of it.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

I'm liking this so far, quite an interesting premise and execution.

 

[MarkWarrior]

I’ve already got 100k words on Spacebattles. I’m transferring it over to here as well.

 

[LordSunhawk]

I’ve already got 100k words on Spacebattles. I’m transferring it over to here as well.

Excellent, looking forward to the read

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Six: Let the Flames Begin (Oh Glory)

I took them by surprise when I jumped into the Tortuga system. Most of the Jumpships that were present were in the middle of charging their K-F drives and no one expected a Warship to come in and start firing. After all, there hadn't been a Warship used in combat in Centuries. While the weapons systems were automated, everything else had to still be done by a hand. So while I manned the navigation console by myself, I let the automated systems do the heavy lifting as far as taking anything out that was present when I jumped in.

Shock and awe worked a lot better than I had expected. None of the Dropships that were attached to the docking collars of some the Jumpships had time to detach or launch any Aerospace assets and were destroyed with the Jumpships.

After I thought that I had destroyed all of the opposition at the Jump point, I scanned and noticed that one of the Jumpships, a Merchant seemed to have only suffered superficial damage. In fact, it was powering up and before the ship could re target it had jumped away. "Well, there goes that plan." I swore angrily under my breath at the one Jumpship that got away. After triple checking the scans, I stopped and began to go over the ship with a fine toothed comb. I didn't want any boarders or anything possible damage to render me combat incapable before I began the rest of my sweep of the system.


Twelve hours… It had taken me twelve long hours of going over every system to make sure that none of the potential safeties had been broken on the automated systems and that there were no boarders. I was exhausted. So after eating more of the MRE's that were surprisingly still within their expiration date (Even if they tasted awful and made you shit what felt like literal bricks) I shut everything off and went up to the bridge for a little bit of sleep before making my way through the rest of the system.

After sleeping for six or so hours, I woke up from my nap and went to do a manual reload of the ships guns. It turns out, that while the automated systems could fire and track relatively well (As long as the opponent had an IFF beacon active) it couldn't reload the internal magazines from the stores automatically. Which, while a stupid design flaw, ensured that the crew still had plenty of work to during a battle. So, I began running too and fro reloading internal magazines and using mechanized trolleys to shift tons of Naval Autocannon rounds and missiles to the internal magazines. This process took another six hours seeing as while I had used firearms many a time before, reloading an internal magazine was not as simple as it was shown in the tank movies.

"Why are there so many parts?" I asked myself as I loaded the last Naval Autocannon round into the internal magazine. "They had way too much time on their hands." I shrugged after dusting my hands off. "Then again, the SLDF R&D budget was really ridiculous. Not to mention the standard thought process of. Build hidden outpost. Fill hidden outpost with 'Mechs and vehicles. Forget about hidden outpost." I had to keep up a string of conversation with myself or I was going to go insane after spending so much time alone.

Finally finished with all of the preparations and double checking my work to make sure that everything was loaded properly. (I'd hate to have something explode from being loaded in facing the wrong way.) I went back to the bridge and strapped myself in for the rest of the flight down to the main world of Tortuga III.

While I was strapped in, I began tracking all of the Dropships that had been headed towards the jump point when I had decimated the Jumpships there. The traffic that there was, had begun the process of flipping their Dropships around and were trying to counteract their momentum before I could catch up to them. Once I had a good trajectory and course plotted I began my journey into the system. Based on current rate of speed and acceleration, I was going to catch most of the Dropships before they had finished changing their momentum so as to head back towards the planet. If they managed to burn much faster than they were, they would black out to G forces long before I got there and that would be just as fatal to them as any of my Shipboard armament were. Well, I had quite a while before I would be anywhere near the pirates and so I started reading one of the stellar navigation logs that had been kept by the ships navigator. While dry reading, it contained a lot of the math used in calculating the proper jump points and had information as far as thrust vectors and maximum "Safe" speeds before the reactor red-lined and began to cause issues.

The ships crew had kept extremely detailed logs of everything they did and documented anything that they thought was necessary. And included a lot of the things that they didn't think were necessary but they cared about anyway. In fact, from what I understood of the SLDF the crew seemed to go contrary compared to all of the hidden bases and other things that had been hidden by the SLDF over the years. And having detailed notes were one of the things that had allowed me the chance and ability to fix both the K-F drive and be able to do the things that I had so far.

"Alright Mark, enough woolgathering." I said to myself as I authorized the targeting of the Dropships I was catching up to. There were a small number of aerospace assets with this group, and they had launched and begun to maneuver to attack in what they thought were blind spots as I got close. Fortunately for me, none of the fighters were armed with Nukes and they seemed to be ill trained. Or just not prepared for the missiles that the Manassas carried that were designed to deal with these kinds of scenarios. Only two of the Aerospace jockeys managed to evade the White Shark missiles and were still evading them as I shot past them while hitting the Dropships with a barrage of fire that caused secondary detonation as I flew past at one and a half G's. The two fighters left were barely able to catch the Manasses and fell prey to the rear NL45's.

Seeing as that was the last of the threats on my sensors apart from what might be on Planet, I slowed the drive down to stop accelerating and used some of the station keeping thrusters to slow my Warship down to a more traditional pace. That left me with a few days of transit time in which to make sure everything was reloaded for the final space combat of the system.

Now that I had actually done the reloading process and was familiar with it, it only took me a measly four hours instead of the six that it had taken previously. Leaving me with still way too much time on my hands. "Man… Why'd I have to get dropped off here? Why not Somewhere that space travel is faster?" I complained as I reached for the books to start studying again. The learning in this era never ceased after all.

After a year of nothing but studying the ship and working on things like maintaining both the Fusion reactor and the K-F drive I had developed a new appreciation for Math that I hadn't possess before being stranded here alone. What I had learned on this ship would totally blow away the physics researchers of the twenty-first century. I mean, not just the physics, and don't get me started on material science. The casing of the laptop was tougher than the sidearm I had showed up with, even if I did hate the limited OS that was on it and longed for a basic Microsoft or Apple system.


The stack of books that I had set aside to read on my journey dwindled as I got closer to the planet. And I may have actually cheered a bit when I started being able to intercept Comm signals. Even if they were enemies of humanity, just hearing human voices again that weren't from an Tri-Vid or song nearly made me cry. That still didn't save them when they launched the remainder of the Dropships in system at me but it was nice to here a voice again. After dealing with the Overlord that was the biggest threat to me at the moment, I pushed the ship to a geosynchronous orbit over the area that seemed to be the CIC of the planet. It was a Palace complex according to my sensors and virtually all of the communications traffic funneled in and out of it. Seeing as there was no HPG on planet at this time, I knew that if I wanted the pirates to crumble for a while that I would have to begin bombardment from orbit.

Saying a prayer underneath my breath for whatever innocents may end up in the crossfire, I made my way to one of the gunnery stations on my own. None of the automated systems could target a planet. It was written into their safeguards and so I had to do this all on my own. Reaching one of the forward NAC/35's I began to rain hellfire from above down onto the palace complex using sensors to detect when the entire place turned to rubble. I kept firing until the internal magazine of this station had run dry, And then I watched until the dust settled. After I was finished, I made my way back to the bridge and began my trip back out of the system.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Seven: Making Plans for the Future

"Man, the SLDF really had way too much time on their hands." I muttered to myself as I signaled to the automatic docking systems of this hidden SLN depot to begin the docking procedures." According to the data stored in the navigation systems the Star League had left dark navy listening posts and hidden repair depots all over the Periphery to help maintain control after the Reunification wars. The main problem was, that no single ship had all of the locations. I had a list of half a dozen different depots that I was going to see if there were any supplies left in.


This particular repair station was partially a hollowed out asteroid and it also had a Potemkin that had what appeared to be thruster damage. It also had only twelve of the potential twenty-five hard points filled with Dropships and the majority of those those looked damaged as well.

The real prize was the Invader Jumpship that was further in. While according to scans, it looked a little bit damaged if the K-F drive were intact it would be the basis for a way to get around the periphery without setting off tons of alarm bells for the various intelligence agencies that were around. I could use it and if I any of the Unions attached to the Potemkin were both space and atmosphere worthy I could start a Mercenary company and begin the process of meeting some trustworthy people that could function as a crew.

I would have to leave most of the Lostech equipment behind though. While one Lostech 'Mech would raise questions, it wouldn't be extraordinary. A whole company filled with Lostech 'Mechs and armaments would mean a target on my back. From Comstar and any other House Lords that would want the things that I had access to.

After the docking procedures were completed, I made my way to the airlock while triple checking the pressure seals on my Nighthawk were intact and that there were no issues as far as air recycling went. I would have to pressurize the repair depot in order to start any repairs or modifications that would be needed to maintain a cover as a periphery mercenary for the period of several years I would have.

When I reached the airlock I waited through the depressurization process and when the outer doors opened, I used the Nighthawks Jump jets to boost my speed in the low gravity, while being careful not to accidentally blast myself out into space. "Yeehaw!" I shouted and cheered as I flew around for a little bit. And then as if in slow motion, let myself fall down onto the docking bay floor in what is colloquially termed a "superhero" landing. "Nailed it!" I laughed to myself as I began to explore the area around me.

There were no signs of fighting, no scoring from laser weapons or anything else so I had to assume that this place was abandoned either during the Amaris Civil War or when Kerensky was gathering people up for the Exodus. And, I had to get the bay doors closed so that I didn't have to work under hard time limits. After around thirty minutes of searching for a console or something that would have some semblance of power to it I found a laminated book attached to the wall via a long piece of wire.

The book had all of the emergency procedures written down on it and even had precise instructions on how to activated the emergency generators in the event of an attack or anything else that might be termed as an emergency. Turns out the generators were built into the interior walls and that you had to remove a small panel in order to turn them on. Apparently if the console's interior battery still worked I could have activated them there but none of the consoles had any sort of power after centuries of non use.

"Beep, beep, beep." Echoed through the helmet as the warning I had set into the systems let me know that I needed to return to the Manassas in order to replenish my oxygen supplies. Heading over to that area, I cycled back through the airlock and allowed my reserves to replenish.

Knowing that I had time before the Nighthawk's interior reserves were replenished, I made my way to the Manassas Fighter/Small craft bay and grabbed several containers of oxygen reserves and stored them into a SLDF rucksack. I wanted to extend the amount of time I could work out there as much as possible. I also stopped by the cargo bay and grabbed a roll of Duck Tape. Using the duck tape and the rucksack I taped the extra oxygen containers down into places where they wouldn't interfere with my range of motion and I could easily reach the hoses to tie them into my existing system as I needed to.

By the time I had cycled out of the airlock into the depot I had tied all of the extra oxygen containers into the Nighthawks own oxygen supply. And I was grateful that I had as it too several hours to get the generators online. After the generators had purred to life the consoles began to power on one by one with the console that controlled the bay doors being the last to power on. And while it seemed to take forever to boot up, once the OS had completed it's boot up cycle, I followed the prompts and watched as the giant bay doors closed.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter 8: Age of Discovery


Personal Journal June 7th, 3001. After I got the reactor up and running on the supply depot I ran a rough check on the Potemkin and Invader that were also docked here. The Potemkin classed Warship Age of Discovery is really messed up. From what I can piece together from various logs it was directly hit by a nuke in the Ameris civil war and was limped back to here in the hopes of making repairs at some point. When they arrived here, there was another Warship that had been freshly repaired and they just transferred over all of the personnel while leaving this Warship behind. It was right before the invasion of Terra and they needed all hands on deck so they just adjusted chain of command and left. As for the dropships attached to the Age of Discovery, they were mostly emptied out. Eleven of the twelve unions were left behind because they didn't have the space for them on the other ship. They did transfer almost all of the cargo though and only left behind things like stores of armor. There is one union that still has cargo and material, and it's just filled with things like extra uniforms, a little bit of Ferro Fibrous, and a full company of bugmechs that were left behind.


"Ahh." I sighed as I set the cup of coffee that I was drinking down along with the pen I had been using. It turns out that recording your thoughts and what you had done for the day helps prevent you from going insane after long periods of time alone. I had just spent the week combing over the Age of Discovery and was taking a day to have a break before getting to the Invader. Luckily, the hydroponics bays were intact on this station even if they were a little overgrown so I had access to fresh food for the first time in a while. Also, this Depot had coffee that didn't taste like it came out of a Maxwell coffee can and so I was drinking good coffee and writing down everything that I had done over the past year and a half. And on top of that, all of the water reclamation worked really well so I had had an incredibly long and hot shower for the first time in almost a year.


One of the things about this universe that you always read about and appreciated on paper was just how Ragnarok proofed everything was. And the SLDF and the civil engineers really outdid themselves in every way in that regard. But it also made it harder to maintain if you had no clue how things worked at first. This had led to months and months of study as I had worked my way through the Inner Sphere. I had an innate desire to know how things worked and my favorite thing to do back on Earth in the twenty-first century had been self study on things I felt interesting. So I had put everything that I had learned in self study and research into developing more skills at remembering the things that I read.

I had never had an photographic memory, and I certainly had never possessed an Eidetic memory. But my memory had always been good at retaining information that was written down. While I couldn't remember everything perfectly, I could remember most if not all of what I read. My information retention was good. This is what had enabled me to get the systems back up and running on the Manassas. And the notes that I had taken on that process had helped me to get this depots generators up and running. I had also gone through the manifest that was listed in the Depot and had found several Voidseeker AI cores that were in the cargo area shutdown. There was a listed Caspar in the bay as well, but when I had gone to check the bay, I found that it had been disassembled and the parts placed into storage until they could be repurposed.

The depot had enough repair equipment and refined raw materials that it could repair part but not all of the Age of Discovery. If I went through the Manassas stores and moved all of the refined material into the Depot I might be able to fully repair the Age of Discovery there was also some material in the Potemkin but it would be minuscule compared to the amount I would need to repair the entire thing. But I would have no guarantees. There were a couple of other depots listed in the Manassas navigation computer and if I could possibly find more on the Age of Discover I could potentially find more useful Lostech and potentially enough refined material to repair the Potemkin. But, it would take me several days to work through the computer systems and I was going to go through the Invader and it's dropships first.


Making my way to the quarters I had claimed for my own, I grabbed the Blackwatch officers ID tag and the copy of the codes he had on him before making my way to enter the Invader to do a check on what would hopefully be my ticket to civilization.



Authors note: So, seeing as people were wondering why I chose the Manassas instead of another Warship and what had happened in order for me to end up with it in the state it was in when I appeared. Now, I assume everyone here knows the story of what had happened to the Manassas in the original story of how it vanished. Well, in this fic instead of getting frozen in time until 3058, there was a malfunction when they jumped the second time and all of the crew ended up dying while they were suspended in Hyperspace until I appeared. The accident that led to me coming to Battletech also ended up killing the crew. I'm kinda taking a bit of liberty with Hyperspace in order to make this work. Also, I used the Manassas because I was reading up on Warships and the plot bunny hit me when I read the Manassas entry. I know that a lot of people are more educated in Battletech than me. And I'm open to some criticism as well as advice. I won't use everything that I'm given because I've already got a plan in mind. I've incorporated and will be using more things that people have posted in multiple chapters already. The Tortuga Prime thing I'm literally going to hand-wave and go Word of God on it and say that the SLDF discovered the location as the Amaris Civil war was going on and that they just had more pressing problems than dealing with pirates.

Also, Sunday is my day off from writing. I'm a little ahead of my word count anyway.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Nine: Ah, man, I just had this thing washed.

Personal Journal June 15th, 3001. The Invader was interesting. It was owned and maintained by the SLIC (Star League Intelligence Corps) but it was registered to the Federated suns under the ship name King Henry V. In the actual Jumpship was a list of places and planets that it had often been to on it's trade route. The Blackwatch Lieutenants codes had given me access to the systems and had let me start the process of getting the Invader back up and running. The Invader had been moved here to repair a couple of Seals that had burst because someone forgot their routine maintenance according to the logs. They had finished the repairs just as the Age of Discovery limped in and had joined in with the crew that was going to take Terra back in the Amaris Civil war.

"Man, I've got to figure out where to find this coffee blend when I get to civilization again." I said as I enjoyed another freshly brewed cup of coffee while writing down the adventures of the past couple of days. "If nothing else, I'm adding it to my personal stores to take with me wherever I go because this stuff is good." I took another sip as I stood up from the table in the mess hall of the repair depot.

It was time to check out the dropships attached to the King Henry, there were three aerodyne's that were attached and it was time to figure out what class of Dropship that they were and more importantly, the kind of cargo that they had been carrying when they were left here. Making my way through the various hallways, I donned a hardsuit and got ready for another day of long work at a computer and cataloging just like I had done many times over the past year and a half.


"Alright, lets get you refueled and then see what we have here." I said to myself as I began the refueling process on the first of the aerodyne's. When I was done, I started the reactor back up and began to head to the cockpit. Thankfully, aerodyne's were one of the things available in the simulators back on the Manassas so when I was finished here, I would train in the simulators in between sessions of trying to automate the King Henry V.

Once in the cockpit, I began to go over the ships computers and access systems that will give me the ships names and potentially what the purpose for this dropship was. It turns out, that this was a Buccaneer class Dropship named The Vagabond. It looked to be owned by the SLIC as well and was apparently used as part of the cover story for the King Henry V. I would check the cargo bay once I had gotten the other two Dropships up and running. After I went through and triple checked to make sure that there were no damages, I made my way to the next dropship.

The next Dropship was another Buccaneer called the Troy. Which I found a little ironic given that it was part of an intelligence scheme by the SLIC. Aside from the odd name, this Buccaneer had minor damage to one of the cargo bay doors that would need to be fixed if I wanted to be able to offload cargo from that part of the ship.

The last aerodyne was interesting. While getting the reactor up and running wasn't any more difficult that any other. (I had tons of practice at getting Fusion Generators fueled up and running lately after all.) I was stonewalled in the cockpit. I couldn't get access to any of the ships systems and even using the Blackwatch Lieutenant's codes had gotten me nowhere.

After hours and hours of trying to get access to the ships main computer I decided that it was time for a break. If none of the things I knew about computers worked for now, I would have to go and figure out how to get into the computers the old fashioned way.

Leaving the last aerodyne, I made my way back to the mess hall in order to get some sort of sustenance and another cup of coffee. I would need it in order to finish figuring out how to get into the last Dropship. The mess hall had an attached kitchen and while most of the meat products weren't good anymore, there was fresh vegetables and fruits that I had gotten from the Hydroponics area an placed into the refrigerated storage there. Grabbing a couple of bananas and making a kind of fruit salad with what I had on hand. I went and stood by the coffee pot to wait for it to brew. When the coffee was done, I poured it into my now empty thermos and sat down to enjoy my meal. After almost a year of MRE's, eating something that was fresh was like taking a long hot shower after getting soaked in icy rain. It was delicious and allowed me to wash away my worries with the food and my coffee.

My meal finished, I closed up my thermos and brought it with me in order to do some breaking into computer systems the old fashioned way. By going through all of the crew quarters and the trash and seeing if I could find anything there that might give me access to systems. Despite it being over a thousand years, I knew that people are mostly the same. After working IT for years, I knew that people always leave usernames and passwords written down somewhere. Even if they were information security specialists. People always make mistakes somewhere. And so, I donned some gloves and went onto the last of the Aerodynes in order to go through the trash.


Authors note: I'll add a map in a little bit, I'm gonna need some time to figure out the general location of where I am at in reference to the Inner Sphere map. That being said, General area of between Pirates haven and the Davion/Taurian border. The Manassas has a Lithium Fusion battery and this allowed me to move a little faster in that direction than might otherwise be thought.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Ten: Second Verse Same as the First

Well, after six hours of going over the last Aerodyne I found what I was looking for. I had also discovered an HPG in one of the side areas along with what looked like a dedicated computer center. The codes and ID needed to access the ship were located in the Captains quarters and after I had access to his personal log I discovered why.

The captain of the SLIC Pueblo class dropship The Messenger was a minor noble named Phillip Williams, who while capable enough, was not very good with electronics or computers and often had to get his devices looked at due to him going to "questionable" sources for his personal entertainment. This had led to him hiding the fact he couldn't memorize his passwords by taping a laminated card with his credentials on it to the bottom of his bed frame to look at every day before having to access said systems.


"Never attribute to Malice what can be instead be done by ignorance or stupidity." I muttered as I access The Messenger's systems. And began to finish setting everything up. Now that I had access I could begin to go over ships logs and the star systems and potential secrets that had been kept in the logs and computer systems. Some of those would probably be kept in known locations just because of the fact that this ship had primarily plied the Davion/Marik trade routes via Terra. The Captain, while idiotic insofar as computers were concerned was actually quite good at maintaining the image of a minor Noble who doubled as a merchant. His notes detailed every trade and account that the King Henry V had kept on every world they visited. Williams was also the one in charge of the whole intelligence operation.

Williams had account numbers, savings funds, companies, everything that they had invested in as part of their cover had also been used to fund the ship and continue the operation. And he was apparently really good at making investments. They had more than tripled the funds given to them in the first two years of operations and if the savings accounts and other things had interest accumulated I would be a very wealthy man when I made it to Davion or Marik space.

I had also taken breaks and gone through the cargo manifests of the Buccaneer class dropships and found that they had been transporting a massive load of IndustrialMechs. And on top of that, all of the Industrial mechs were Fusion powered and would be worth their weight in Gold when I made it to the Sphere. If I went to the Taurian Concordat, I would be able to sell these for a fantastic deal and probably recruit a crew. Or alternatively, I could make my way to the Federated Suns and try and access those accounts as well as sell off the Mechs. It would take some thought though.


Now that I had inventoried and gotten my cover story up and running, I moved to get things prepared and ready to move into the Inner Sphere and try and build a Mercenary company. If I did it right, I could remove some of the IndustrialMechs and replace them with a lance or two of the Mechs onboard the Confederates. I could then sell the two Buccaneer class ships and buy a Leopard or something to start with and after building trust, bring a crew back to the locations that I now had stored in my Iphone under a six digit code for safekeeping.


Personal Log June 30th 3001. Man, Kerensky wasn't playing around when he ordered all of the blueprints on the Caspar and SDS systems destroyed. There were no logs at all on the Manassas aside from what was done to automate for longevity purposes. Luckily, the Depot and Age of Discovery were abandoned before that was put into practice and while the Potemkin only had partial records, the Repair depot had extremely detailed reports and documents on the computer systems. They were dryer than British comedy ever dreamed it could be, but the team that had been taking apart the lone Caspar was actually experimenting with it to see if they could get around or get rid of the insane AI problem entirely by setting it up so that you could operate it with one person. Their notes actually showed that they had gotten past the point of testing before they had to leave and head to Terra. Then, they had left detailed notes of what went wrong and potential fixes. I had been hard at work after looking through those notes getting the Manassas fully automated (This included the internal magazines) and the King Henry V to the point of being able to be taken out and jumped to the Inner Sphere by myself. It had Taken me two weeks of setting up computers, and programming and in the end looked like something out of the Matrix but I had a Jumpship, Three dropships loaded with cargo, (I transferred almost all of the uniforms over to one of the less full cargo bays. I left some out for personal use and some in the repair bay as well for any Mechwarriors I recruited.) And a lance of 'Mechs loaded into The Messenger. I even practiced my cover story over the past few weeks and had made things look like they had happened the way that I said it had. I kept parts of the Caspar and moved them into the King Henry V's storage bay so that it would look like a salvage run that partially failed due to greed.

"Well, if this doesn't work I won't know about it." I said as I climbed into the navigation chair on the King Henry V. I maneuvered out of the depot and set a course for the Zenith point, and once I had reached it; I opened the Solar Sail in order to begin charging the K-F drive.

Authors note: Thanks to Vianca for input and additional ideas. I appreciate the help. I don't always use them, but I do like having people point out some options. Now, I'm probably going to head over to Davion Space in order to get those accounts settled and to try and get set up on the beginnings of a crew that I can trust. Then I might hang around the Periphery doing small time contracts until Katrina shows up. Or I might hit the Argo. I'm honestly not that impressed by the Argo but I understand that there's an appeal to the Lostech that it possesses. I'm also going to put a map up in a couple of days charting the general course of the Manassas and where this storage depot is generally speaking. It's literally just a set of coordinates in most House navigation charts. I think the SLDF operated a bunch of off the books stuff around the periphery and the main Houses as well. The problem is, there's no set list of Lostech Caches. There's the few that everyone knows about, but the SLDF had a problem with Hoarding so who knows what is all out there.

 

[MarkWarrior]

I don’t know how to add an informational or side story thread mark section on here.

Nvm

 

[MarkWarrior]

“Originally an Aegis-class heavy cruiser that was modified into a one-of-a-kind vessel, the Manassasis recognized as a distinct ship class unto its own[1]even though only one single such ship ever existed.”

“Although the hull was described as "old",[5] the Manassas had been upgraded with top-of-the-line facilities with the latest technologies (as of 2784), including the recreation areas and the jump drive; it is noted to be designed for long, isolated flights.”

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Eleven: All in a Days/Months/Years Work

"This is the King Henry V we suffered a misjump and are in need of help making some repairs. Let us know when a slot opens up." Echoed through the Communications relay of the Recharge station Janus. "This is the Recharge station Janus, we read King Henry V and have you on our scopes. We're gonna run a quick check on your credentials and put you in the cue for recharging and we'll work on getting a line on those repairs." The Officer at communications Ensign Robert Hall replied before turning to his supervisor Lieutenant Erica Lamb. "Ma'am, We have old records that indicate that the last time that anyone saw or heard from the King Henry V was before the Succession Wars."

"Alright Ensign, I'll push it up the chain, they may be pirates who stole the Jumpships years ago and just now managed to get it back into running shape." Lieutenant Lamb responded. "That being said, we do still have to make sure that everything is authentic and if it is, we have no reason to deny them access for now, but we can stall until we get the all clear. Better safe than sorry if it is a pirate raid."

"Understood Ma'am, I'll run everything through and make em wait a bit until I get some confirmation from the higher ups." Ensign Hall responded. "Have a good night LT."

Twenty-Four hours later….

"This is the Jumpship King Henry V. Is there any chance that a spot has opened up?" I asked while sitting in the navigation chair. I had set everything for station keeping and gone and taken a nap and gotten some food while waiting for a response from the Janus. I was willing to wait, but I really needed to have some contact with another human being before I went truly insane. I was in the middle of stuffing my face with a bunch of MRE candy that I had saved out of the ones I had eaten over the past year and half when I finally got a response.

"King Henry V you are cleared to proceed to docking bay 4 we are sending over a course and handshake signal for your autopilot to follow. Do not I repeat do not deviate from the course we send you."

Choking down the handful of Skittles that I had been munching on, I responded and opened up my comms in order to receive the autopilot signal and begin the docking procedures. "Janus we copy and are accepting the Handshake signal now. Laying in course to begin docking now." I drank a swig of water to wash down the mass of Sugar that was stuck in my throat and got ready to meet and greet with the locals.

Lieutenant Erika Lamb hated being the supervisor on shift at times. While everything had come back clean on the King Henry V there remained some suspicion and so they made sure that there was a security team armed and on standby. When the airlock opened to reveal one guy in an ancient space suit, they all breathed a little bit easier. Erika stepped up to greet him and noticed that his eyes got really wide when he first took in the fact that he had a welcoming party of one. Stepping up to introduce herself and holding out her hand, she was taken by surprise and almost yelled for security when the man hugged her and swung her around for a second whispering to himself. "You're real."

Once I had recovered from my embarrassing loss of self control I set the woman who was there to greet me down and blushed furiously while apologizing in a flurry of words I'm surprised she understood. After my flood had subsided for me to take a break she inserted herself into the conversation and introduced herself.
"I'm Lieutenant Erika Lamb, one of the supervisors of this station." She said after smoothing her uniform out and composing herself for a second. "You must be one of the crewman of the King Henry V I suppose." She stated while he caught his breath.

"I..."I paused for a second to compose myself. "I suppose you could call me that." I said as I stammer for a second while attempting to reign my emotions at seeing another human being back in. "I had bartered passage on the King Henry V in exchange for learning some of the engineering. Then we Misjumped right into a hidden SDS depot or something. The crews on the Dropships got greedy and went onboard in order to salvage something because it looked damaged. Then the rest of the crew on the Jumpship went with them because they wanted help. I got left behind because I wasn't part of the crew and they didn't want me to get any of the salvage." I paused for breath for a minute after spilling a whole bunch of BS partly to make it seem like I was still recovering from the events, and partly to finish getting my story set in my mind. "I think they accidentally screwed with the IFF or the system or something because the depot vented atmosphere and everyone that was there died. The King Henry V took some damage when everything was vented, and It took me weeks just to get everything patched enough to limp back to the Sphere."

One of the things about an effective lie, is that not only are the easiest lies to tell intermixed with truth, if you deliver a lie that should make you emotional at a time when you are high on emotions it helps sell the message. The fact that I was actually overcome with emotion just from interacting with another Human being again helped sell my story to both Lieutenant Lamb and the rest of the recharge station. And the way that I reacted when they told me that it was 3001 instead of the 2770s was part of the reason that everything worked out in my favor in the Pierce system.

Personal Journal November 15th 3001. I managed to pay the recharge stations crew with some of the SLDF uniforms that I "found in the depot". They accepted that as collateral of other payments until I settled accounts and managed to find a crew. Lieutenant Lamb's contract is actually up in December and has been receptive of offers to poach her from her current job when it is up. Using the Comms systems built into the King Henry V and the Janus, I made contact with the Local HPG (Which was a pain due to delayed transmissions let me tell you.) And apparently the Ministry of Communications had left records of financial transactions and other things that Comstar was able to pull up. It took several weeks to compile all of the funds, but I was left with just over a billion in accumulated assets (Thanks t the SLIC captain. With about one hundred million in liquid assets that could be transferred to a local Pierce branch as soon as I could make Landfall. My plan in this case was to see if I could land and lease out most of the IndustrialMechs while selling off the SLDF uniforms and recruiting both crew and some Mechwarriors while planetside. There will always be people who want a second chance at life and if I could find those people, I would have the core of a team. I offered the crew and owners of the Janus extra cash if they would allow the King Henry to remain docked while I tried to find crew to fill out the rosters on the Dropships and Jumpship. They agreed on the condition that they were added to any potential trade routes that the King Henry might ply.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Twelve: Red Skies at Night

"Permission to board?" Lieutenant Lamb asked me while holding a ready bag slung over her shoulder. Waiting just outside of the Dropships loading bay.

"Welcome aboard The Messenger Lieutenant, I'll get you stowed away after I finish loading up the rest of the uniforms in here." I replied while getting the equipment stowed away. After I had moved the uniforms crates and strapped them down, I moved over to Lieutenant Lamb and directed her to her quarters until we were planet side. "This will be the cabin you stay in for the next five days." I said as I opened the door to one of the crew bunk's I had cleared out. "Use the intercom to let me know when you're ready and I can show you the rest of the ship."

"Thanks, I worked a double so that I would have a larger paycheck come Christmas and I need some rest." Lieutenant Lamb responded while dropping her ready bag next to the bed she claimed as her own. "I'll definitely take you up on the tour later." She yawned mid sentence and waved me away.

"Alright then, sleep well Lieutenant." I responded by shutting the door and making my way up to the cockpit. The cool thing about using the Pueblo, is that there were security features in certain places. The SLIC had set it up so that you could monitor anyone who stayed in the "Passenger" areas and made sure that all of the SIGINT equipment could be hidden behind several false walls. And the doors and hallways were monitored and could give soft alarms as to when a door was opened.

There were multiple reasons that I had decided on taking the Messenger down to Pierce instead of one of the Buccaneers. The ability to control perception was a good thing. Another thing that influenced my decision on taking the Messenger was the ability to use SLIC back door channels into the HPG to monitor any Comstar ROM communiques.

Once we had disconnected from the Janus, I set a course for the planet and began the four to five day burn. After I had laid in the course, I got up and made a cup of coffee and set an alarm to let me know to go wake up Lieutenant Lamb in about four hours or so for lunch. I made my way down into the cargo bay where I had moved the SDS drone parts that I had salvaged to use as part of my cover story. I had a meeting lined up with the local Comstar officials when I reached planetside anyway. This would allow me to solidify my story even more if everything went as planned.


Precentor Reginald Winfrey, known to most as Precentor Pierce, was extremely excited. The staff at this Class B station had never seen the normally grounded individual so giddy. You see, Precentor Winfrey had risen to his rank via the Omega branch, with a specialization in advanced physics. Long had time travel been theorized and now there was proof before his very eyes. When he had learned of what happened to the King Henry V he was actually excited to interview the lone individual and try and prove some of his thesis and potentially push the limits of the understanding of physics. And today, he finally got to meet the individual in question.

"Precentor, the captain of the King Henry V is here to see you." Winfrey's secretary spoke over his phone. "Yes, yes, send him right on in." The balding scientist responded while standing up from his chair. "Yes my man, do come in, I'm Precentor Reginald Winfrey, the head of this Comstar station and you are?" Winfrey began to shake the mans hand scarcely allowing him to get a word in.

After introductions were finished, he began a barrage of questions that he had assembled about the Misjump which the Time Traveler! Answered in as much detail as he could give. "Yes, yes, I can see that it's less time travel and more of a timed stasis of some sort. Almost like a time capsule but in Hyperspace." Then Winfrey got lost in his own thoughts and turned to write on the whiteboard behind him he kept for calculations.

"Precentor," The title barely registered to me trying to communicate with him. After attempting several more times to speak with the man feverishly writing on the white board behind his desk, I slowly stepped towards the door and greeted his secretary. "Does he get like this all the time?" I asked while gesturing at the man lost to math.

"Every so often," The secretary shrugged. "He's very good at delegating and choosing the right people for their jobs so we just leave him be whenever he gets like this."

"Ahh," I nodded in response; "I see. I did work some things out with y'all beforehand. You said you wanted to purchase the SDS salvage from me for study?" I asked while trying to get a feel for the younger man in front of me.

"Ummm yeah, Precentor Winfrey actually had the Legal division write up a standard purchasing contract to look over when you got here but I guess he got lost in the numbers." The young man pulled out a small stack of papers for me to look over and sign if I found everything to be aboveboard. I had actually taken the time before I visited the HPG station to look at salvage contracts and everything. Comstar wanting all of the pieces of the drone systems I "Claimed" to have made sense in regard to their "Mission" as it were. And the fact that I made it seem like I was extremely eager to be rid of the thing that had contributed to my friends supposed deaths helped sell everything.

While I received a decent amount for the salvage, the real meat and potatoes were the contracts that I negotiated with local firms for my IndustrialMechs. I had three Aerodyne dropships filled with Jabberwocky's and all of the refit kits that had been sold as aftermarket kits. I arranged a lease deal with a local mining and salvage firm to lease most of them; and they helped put me in contact with their parent company on New Syrtis to lease or sell the rest of the "Mech's including the four extinct or nearly extinct Daedalus GTX2A industrialMechs that had been a part of the Dropships cargo. The local Militia, seeing as they needed some extra cargo capacity offered to lease or outright purchase one of the Buccaneer dropships from me. I worked out a three year contract with extensions and that each side could file for assuming the other party didn't need the dropship for anything.

I had intended to spend Christmas alone mourning the fact that none of my family was with me, but Lieutenant Lamb, who I had become fast friends with during the long wait on the Janus actually came to my hotel room and dragged me out to have fun and partake of some of the festivities. And by January first 3002, I had assembled most of a crew, filed the paperwork to begin a Mercenary company, and finalized registering the four 'Mechs I had brought with me.



Personal Journal December 15th, 3001
I have approached Ms. Lamb about being hired on with my company and she has accepted on the condition that she finish out her current contract. Seeing as she has been extremely helpful in pointing me towards several locations that would assist me in finding both crew and Mechwarriors for my up and coming mercenary company I agreed. And I struck gold last week insofar as hiring is concerned. There are two dispossesed Mechwarriors who were also medically discharged from the AFFS. I offered to pay for the medical treatments to get them back into fighting shape and to let them get back in the saddle with contracts that stated that they could keep the 'Mech's they piloted if they managed to bring in salvage equivalent to it in weight. The two of them were nearly in tears when they accepted and joined the rest of the people I had recruited. Many of them followed the same thread as these two with being down on their luck with debts, or just not being able to find jobs in the civilian market. Despite Davion and Federated Suns push towards the soldier being a profession of choice, the skills learned in the AFFS didn't always transfer over and still made it hard to find jobs. The drophsip crews were pretty easy to find, there were plenty of laid off hands and other assorted people who were scrambling for jobs. (I managed to completely lock down the SIGINT systems on the Messenger so that they couldn'tbe accessed before I allowed them onboard though) I even lucked out and picked up a handful of Retired NCO's and a couple of people who wanted in to the Mercenary game no matter where they were placed. After January first, we would burn for the King Henry V and jump towards New Syrtis to get the rest of these IndustrialMechs out of the cargo bays and to purchase a Leopard or some other military Aerodyne.


Authors note: I'm going to be taking a break for this weekend. My wife and I are going to be going on a date tomorrow and Easter is a big deal for my family. So, I may get another chapter up today, but no promises.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Thirteen: Loading…

"What in the hell did you do to this bridge?!" Kaylee Rye, the jumpship captain I had recruited asked me. "If you had done any of this even the slightest bit differently you would have been dead before you ever jumped out of your first system." She sighed while shaking her head at me and gesturing at some of the power conduits I had to reroute in order to get everything functional.

"This! You see this!" Miss Rye plucked a fuse out of the Navigation computer. "This is nearly fried, I'll have to replace it before we can do anything." Then looking at the ship started petting the navigation computer. "It's okay King Henry V we'll have you back up and in good shape in no time." Then looked at me. "But, in all seriousness; it'll take a couple of weeks to fix what you had to do to get here. I understand that it was life or death and so I'll just mess with you until you live down what you did to this thing."

I had been cringing through Kaylee's entire spiel. I knew that what I had done barely worked, but I had to do it anyway in order to get to where I needed to in order to start getting settled in the Inner Sphere. Kaylee had been poached from another Jumpship that had jumped into the system while I was present. Her and enough assorted other people to fill out a skeleton crew for the King Henry V She had been the chief engineer on her previous Jumpship but hadn't had any room for upward mobility, Her ambition was to captain a Jumpship and to one day be the owner and operator of her own Jumpship.

Luckily, I only had to finish signing a few contracts and some paperwork for the leasing of the Troy and about half of the Jabberwocky's that I had in stock. Five year contracts with extension clauses that would net me about twenty to forty million pounds per year until the end of the contract. The Troy alone was netting me a large part of the profit and was going to be replaced if it ended up destroyed while in use by the local militia. I had made sure that was going to be ironclad in the contract so that I wouldn't lose a third of my lift capacity if something happened to the local militia while I was gone.
January 1st, 3002 Pierce, Capellan March Federated Suns

It was time to leave Pierce. I had done everything I needed to do here and then some, as of today, the Mercenary Company Marksman consisted of one Lance of Mechwarriors, two platoons of infantry, three dropships (we had a leopard waiting in New Syrtis for us) and one Jumpship. I had also begun negotiations with the Concordat for a year long anti-piracy contract via HPG.

The crew of the Messenger worked pretty decently for a crew that had only been put together in the past couple of weeks. We lifted off, and in conjunction with the Vagabond began the trip to the Jump point. Once we reached it, it would take us about a month to get to New Syrtis.

After the time to remain strapped in was finished and we had a consistent burn towards the Jump point, I unstrapped myself and made my rounds through the ship. When I made it to the cargo bay, I saw the crew struggling with a crate and a strap that had come loose during our burn off of Pierce. I went over and helped them wrestle the crate down and then had them teach me the better way to strap things down. "You see, the knot needs to go this way after you ratchet it down because you never know if the ratchet will hold during exit or reentry." The Cargo bay lead told me as he demonstrated how to ensure a tightly strapped down crate or 'Mech.

"Thanks, I'll be sure to drop by every now and then to make sure you don't need anything." I replied shaking the lead's hand and then heading towards the mess hall. In the mess hall, you had all of the ex military people I had hired watching a poker game at the main table. It was a strange variation of five card draw.

"Mind if I play a few rounds?" I said making my presence known. "I'll need to be shown the ropes, but I'll add a couple hundred Pounds to the pot regardless of whether I win or not."

"Only if you don't mind losing." Jonathon "Jack" Sheppard replied. "I've been winning all day." Jack was one of the medically discharged Mechwarriors who I was going to be helping out with medical treatments.

"Winning?" Asked one of the NCO's named Malcom Samuels. "You wish, I've been handing your ass to you all day. And when we reach solid ground again us ground pounders will teach you a thing or two."

"Easy fella's settle down." I said as I took a seat. "Deal me in and lets get started."


Personal Journal February 15th, 3002
Well, we'll be on New Syrtis for another month or two as our two injured Mechwarriors finish getting their ailments fixed and they get put through the Sims and everything else again. The Leopard dropship Bittersweet that we picked up was used and needed some minor repairs but after we finish with those in another week or so we'll be in good shape. Myself and the hand picked officers here sat down and agreed on a ranking and rating structure that we think will go really well insofar as getting combined arms forces going when we finally have tanks and the like. Lieutenant's Sheppard and Peterson will be the XO of the 'Mech Lance and the Ground forces respectively. While we wait for Jack Sheppard and Alice Jenkins to heal we're going to be putting everyone else through a small boot camp and academy in order to get the beginnings of cross training. The ultimate goal is for every PBI to be able to pilot a 'Mech if we capture or salvage one in a fight. We also want to be able to have a Mechwarrior fill a hole in a platoon, fireteam, or squad if his 'Mech is in the shop. We don't have enough boots as of yet to get total cross training. But we will have the bare minimum that I think is necessary. While we head to the Concordat in a couple of months we'll begin boarding and Black Navy Boarding actions until we get to begin our anti-piracy contract.

Authors note: Sort've a filler chapter to bridge the gap and explain what happens. Especially considering the next one jumps right into some action. Also, some people have brought up trustworthiness of the new hires and trust me I know exactly what they're talking about. The overall plan is to pay them extremely well and bond them to me/ the Marksman company by doing things like covering their medical bills and treatment in order for them to fight again etc. Things like that are important and will matter a great deal to an individual and their family. I've stuck around for jobs I hated because I was loyal to a person in the company who helped me out when I was in a bind or something like that. So, loyalty is fostered in two ways at Marksman. LIfe or death situations where we're fighting for our lives, and by being well paid. That is all. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Fourteen: "War, War Never Changes…"

"Sheppard! I need you and the rest of the lance to flank the tanks now!" I ordered over my comms as I sniped at the Cicada charging me with one of my PPC's. "Those LRM boats are going to shred me if they can share targeting data with the two 'Mechs over here." I nailed the second 'Mech a Blackjack with a PPC close to the cockpit and made it back off for a minute.

"Understood sir." Lieutenant Sheppard responded, "We're closing in on them now ETA two mikes."

Lieutenant Sheppard piloted the Mongoose and was in charge of the rest of the lance while I was running distraction. Being in a Warhammer and the heaviest 'Mech on this planet made me the target that the two pirates here were trying to hit and so I was running distraction while my infantry tried to make for and capture the union that the pirates had landed in.

Crouching to avoid a couple of AC/2 shots that were aimed at me, I turned and laid into the Cicada that had finally gotten into close range with my SRM's and lasers. Shredding the legs to pieces, I watched as the pilot of the Cicada ejected rather than stay and fight. Which left me with the Blackjack still sniping at me. Armor pocketed from tangling with this half lance all day, I moved up to my max running speed to try and close the distance with the Medium 'Mech.

"Rifle actual, This is Sniper actual come in come in." I heard over my comms while Running after the Blackjack that was attempting to get away.

"This is Rifle lead go ahead Sniper." I responded while alternating PPC fire at the stupid Blackjack.

"We have seized enemy Assets and have POW's and salvage. Please advise." I stopped moving to duck behind a hill to avoid the Blackjack's sniping and popped back up just in time to nail the cockpit with both of my PPC's. "Sniper actual, you have command, I'll trust your decision." I responded as I moved forward to make sure that the Blackjack was down for the count.

"This is Captain Mark of the Marksman Mercenary company to all pirates," I broadcast on all frequencies. "Lay down your arms and surrender, we have seized your dropship and taken out your armor and 'Mech assets. You will be treated according to the Ares Conventions. Refuse and we will give no mercy."


Unfortunately, the pirates refused to surrender and the LRM boats that I had wanted to take as salvage ended up being blown to smithereens by the remaining three 'Mechs of my lance. "Sheppard, Peterson Sitrep?" I commed over as I marked the downed Cicada and Blackjack 'Mechs on my computer for salvage to come and collect. "This is Peterson, we seized the enemy dropship and all of the equipment on board. We captured most of the crew and have taken minimal casualties." Lieutenant Peterson responded. "This is Sheppard, all armored forces have surrendered or been destroyed, we are escorting the armor that surrendered to Lieutenant Peterson's forces now."

"Roger that, I've marked down the Blackjack and Cicada's for salvage operations." I broadcast in reply. "On my way to the Rendevous point now."

Shifting my Warhammer back up to a jog, I made my way to the captured dropship.

"It's simple Cornet, I'll trade you the Union and the 'Mechs for a Leopard CV and a squadron of Aerospace fighters to go with it." I said to the Liaison we had been assigned by the Concordat.

The Cornet argued with me for a bit until I pulled up the contract that I had with the Concordat. The contract stated that we had full salvage rights on anything that we fought. As long as no Concordat forces were a part of any action, we were able to lay claim to anything that we had fought on the battlefield.

"Let me talk to my CO and I'll see what I can do." The Cornet finally sighed and went to go make a phone call. I would like to keep the Union, but for now I needed Aerospace assets and I needed them ASAP.

"Alright, my CO is on the way and will handle negotiations with you directly." The Cornet responded as he packed up his briefcase. "Regardless of our difference, thanks for dealing with that scum." He shook my hand firmly. "You did really good work out there."


While waiting on the Colonel that was in charge of the Armored/Infantry I pulled up the intel that we had pulled from the dropships computers. We had a rough location of the pirates, some sort of unnamed moon in an out of the way system. These pirates had hit Burton for the electronics because they had intelligence that the regular 'Mech forces would be rotating out for training purposes.

Then, a young officer walked in. I stood to shake his hand. "I'm Colonel Thomas Calderon, and I hear you're a stickler in regards to negotiations." He said as an introduction and smiled to indicate that he was joking a little bit. "Now what's this I hear about you wanting to trade the Union for something?" he asked while taking a seat across the table from me."


Personal Journal July 5th 3002:
I managed to talk Colonel Calderon into a good trade for the Union and the 'Mechs. And we discovered that the Marksman actually worked really well together. Turns out my cross training idea had worked, and now I had air assets to throw into the mix and would be hunting down the pirate band that sent this Union after Burton's electronics stores. My techs had pulled the location of an as of yet unnamed moon out of the Union and the name and IFF of the Tramp Jumpship that the pirates had been using. If we managed to catch them by surprise I had small craft and Marines ready for boarding operations. The New contract that I had negotiated meant that we would have to take a Taurian Liaison with us and we would have to waive any bounties in exchange for keeping all of the Salvage. While my officers were confused about this at first, they would soon understand why I preferred more Salvage over a bigger paycheck. Also, because we didn't have any Aerospace pilots yet, I had to run a quick search. There had recently been a Mercenary Aerospace Squadron that hadn't been able to afford their upkeep and had disbanded. After calling their CO I managed to hire him and his old Squadron on short term contracts just for this hunting trip.

 

[MarkWarrior]

Chapter Fifteen: A Shift in Perspective

"Alright, we have our orders, the Captain is going to run distraction with the rest of Rifle Lance while we make our way stealthily to the Union that they dropped with and if all goes well, will seize it and any and all assets that may be on board. Any question?" Peterson asked his platoon.

"Yeah LT, how does the Captain expect us to take a Dropship with just a platoon of Infantry." Corporal Dunham asked.

"Well Corporal, the Captain trusts me to decide if we can actually take the ship or not. We just have to get in position and if we can't take it we radio in and let Rifle Lance come in and pin down the dropship in the hopes that it surrenders." Lieutenant Peterson responded.

"You heard the man Ladies, now move like you got a purpose!" Staff Sergeant Packer screamed at the platoon to board the Armored trucks that they had purchased for this reason.

Lieutenant Sheppard was grateful to be in the cockpit of a 'Mech again. It had been a couple of years since he had been able to pilot one and the fact that he was in a Mongoose in pristine condition made him feel a bit giddy. Corporal Lamb was in the Crab and Private McKay was in the Griffin. The Captain had drawn out the two medium 'Mechs the pirates had dropped with while leaving the armored assets for them to deal with.

The Pirate union had put out a trio of LRM boats a Manticore, a pair of Harassers, and a lance of Condors according to his sensors. "Mckay and Lamb, focus fire on the Manticore while I deal with any of the small fry that try and flank us." He told them over laser comms while making sure his primary arm switch was on.

"This is Lamb, drawing fire from the heavy, Mckay, see if you can snipe at it while I get in close." Corporal Erika Lamb said as she dodged PPC fire while maneuvering into range of her Large Lasers.

"Careful, those PPC's will punch a hole in your 'Mech if you're not careful." Mckay warned as she locked on with her LRM's and threw some man made Lightning along with her missiles at the Heavy tank.

"Roger that," Lamb responded as she fired both large lasers at the maximum range available. "It's taking damage, I'm working my way in to Medium Laser range."

While the two Mediums focused on taking out the larger threat to them, Sheppard killed a Harraser with his brace of Medium lasers and turned to flurry his small laser at a Condor while his mediums recharged. Pouring his Mediums back into the point where he landed his small Laser, he dropped the Condor, watching it spin out as he dodged SRM fire from the remaining Harraser. He just had to keep the rest of these vehicles busy until his lancemates were done with the Manticore. "I need that Heavy down ASAP," He commanded while nearly throwing his Gyro out of balance with a rapid turn at 120 KPH. Skidding to a stop, he turned and finished the remaining Harasser before accelerating rapidly on one of the Condors.

"Manticore is down Sheppard, on our way." Lamb responded as the Manticore stopped firing and moving. Turning her Crab, she moved to assist Sheppard.

"Sheppard! I need you and the rest of the lance to flank the tanks now!" The Captain ordered over encrypted comms. "Those LRM boats are going to shred me if they can share targeting data with the two 'Mechs over here."

With the two mediums with him they made short work of the remaining Condors and moved to flank the LRM boats. "Understood Sir, we're closing in on them now, ETA two mikes." Sheppard responded as he slowed down to the average speed of his lancemates. After a couple of minutes, they were in the maximum range of the Griffins engagement zone. "Mckay, if you have a shot; take it." Sheppard Commanded while moving up to over 100KPH. "I'm moving inside of their minimum range."

Both Lamb and Mckay's 'Mechs had more range than Sheppard's Mongoose, that just meant that they were able to take out the LRM carriers before they could tear into the Captain. "Target destroyed." Both Mckay and Lamb said in unison as they mission killed two separate LRM boats. "Moving to engage the other two."

"They're oblivious," Staff Sergeant Packer said to LT Peterson while they observed the valley that the Union had landed in with a set of binoculars. "I know that pirates aren't typically this stupid. But we may as well take advantage while we can."

Lieutenant Peterson nodded and gestured to the platoon to move through the valley as quietly as possible. Carefully using the trees as concealment from the mark I eyeball, they made their way through the lax perimeter that had been set by the pirates. When they got within around five hundred meters or so they affixed suppressors to their weapons and took out the snipers and sentries. As soon as they fired, they began a dead sprint into the opened cargo bay of the Union.

"Close the docking bay." Peterson called while holding a cargo worker at gunpoint. "Yes sir." One of the platoon members moved to the controls. "Fireteam's one and two, clear the rest of the dropship and take the bridge. Move quickly." Paterson commanded. "Packer, take Fireteam three and make sure that the pirate infantry outside can't get in through any of the common entryways."

"Roger that LT." Packer replied. "Jenkins, Mendez, Move your asses, we've got pirates to kill." Fireteam Three moved to another bay and cleared out all resistance in their path while Lieutenant Paterson made his way to the bridge.

When he reached the bridge, Peterson saw that Fireteam one had the bridge crew under gunpoint and zip tied in the corner. "Rifle actual, this is Sniper actual come in." Peterson used his encryption key to access the Comms they were using via the Unions Communications array. "This is Rifle Lead go ahead Sniper." The Captain replied.

"We have seize enemy assets and have POW's and salvage. Please advise." Peterson comm'd the Captain. "Sniper Actual," The Captain responded. "You have command, I'll trust your decision."

After the broadcast was finished, Peterson turned and looked at the Bridge. "Rook! Get in here and access these systems!" Peterson called their main tech to the bridge. "I want everything that they had to be stored on a separate drive so we don't lose any data."

"Roger that LT." PFC Nathan Rook replied. "Accessing system now and retrieving logs. I'll get what I can and give it to command."


Blaze looked at his Squadron. "We have a contract and some Birds," He held up his hand to head off Chopper. "It's only a temporary contract and we don't have the funds to salvage our birds after paying off the debts that we owed." Blaze sighed. "I'm thinking after we complete this contract and see if we can get hired on permanently. It'll let us stay together and if I'm reading his character right he'll pay us pretty damn well."

"Well, the pay will always be better than the Outworlds Alliance paid us." Chopper replied with his typical sarcasm.

"What birds does he have?" Edge asked, her concern showing. "If he only has Lucifers, we're not accepting."

"Agreed." Swordsman said while nodding at Archer who was thumbing through the contract. "How does the temporary contract look?"

"Well, it looks like your standard contract with a couple of additions." Archer replied. "It's got a pay markup because of the short notice so it'll pay a little better than we first expected, and it also lists the birds they've got. Looks like two Thunderbird TRB-D36's two Lightning LTN-G15's and two Chipewa CHP-W5's. So a decent Squadron along with us needing to provide the crew for the Leopard CV that they've got."

"So, we in agreement to take the short term contract for now with the hopes of making it a long term contract?" Blaze asked his officers. With the assent of his command staff, he went to go make a few phone calls.


Authors note: I just realized that I forgot to update my Rate/Rank structure with the Aerospace wing. I'll fix and replace the current rate/rank structure with that when I get it typed up. Until then, See if you can figure out where I pulled the Aerospace pilots from. Also, just figured out how to insert horizontal lines! I'll be going back and editing to show perspective shifts later today! Also, let me know if y’all want me to get rid of the different POV’s. I like them but if y’all don’t want the perspective shifts then just tell me and I’ll play it straight.