Unnamed Planet, Unnamed System
Former Apollo Province, Unclaimed Territory
February 15th, 3010
They'd put the Assault 'Mechs up front. Sixteen of them, all in a line. Weber's Warriors' entire pre-Uniontown 'Mech strength in machines that could individually match my entire Lance's weight, and more than that in combat capability. And that was just the first row. With the power off, and the local star at its current angle, I couldn't tell how long each column of mechs was, but the formation had to be almost as deep as it was wide.
A Regiment. At least a Regiment.
There was noise coming over the radio, but I couldn't hear it over the buzzing in my ears. The mechs in the center of the formation were a quartet of Banshees, but no variant I'd ever heard of. The right arm had apertures for what looked like three 5cm lasers set back from the fist on the lateral aspect of the arm along with what might be a flamer for anti-infantry work on the medial aspect of the forearm. That side of the torso had the PPC I was expecting, but it didn't look like a Magna Hellstar. The face laser was missing, but appeared to have been replaced by a pair of 5cm lasers in the center torso. The left side was clearly modified too; the Class Five autocannon that was usually mounted there had been replaced by a larger-bore weapon. Clearly a Class Ten, but not a model that I was familiar with. The biggest surprise was on the left arm, however, it carried a second PPC as well as what appeared to be another 5cm laser. That sort of weapons loadout was just not possible. Even if they'd taken the armor down to paper, they couldn't have done it, except that whoever had made these clearly had. The only possible way was if-
Melody, perhaps in exasperation, practically shouldered past her sister's frozen 'Mech before likewise going immobile. That finally broke me out of it, and I gave my head a shake.
Abruptly I could hear Rowdy living up to his name, cheering so loudly that I reflexively tried to mute him, and missed. My hands were trembling.
I worked my jaw for a moment and took a deep breath, then I hit the Company-wide channel. "This is Captain Weber. Mister Brown, I think we owe you a bonus. That address you found was just what we were looking for. Please direct the remainder of our Mechwarriors and all available techs to it as soon as practical. Over."
I let the chatter back wash over me for a long moment as I stared at those Banshees.
Royals. Had to be SLDF Royal Command quality gear in there, even if I'd never heard of a Royal Banshee. If all the rest of them were of similar quality?
I shook off thoughts of avarice, and returned to doing my actual job: organization. 'Mechs wouldn't do us any good sitting in a warehouse.
XXXXX
Much as I wanted to go play with the shiny toys, I had the second strongest mech among our functional machines. I stayed on guard duty.
I didn't have a lot of experience with Mechwarrior games or novels, but from what I knew of BT memes about the time someone stumbled on a cache like this, they tended to have shit rain down on them from a great height. Geraldine was available to take care of the situation on the ground. I kept my ass parked in front of the open warehouse doors while the rest of the lance, after a little practice to account for the change in the machines' weight, took advantage of the mobility their jump jets offered them to keep eyes on the perimeter.
As was usual and customary for Star League era construction, even simple warehouses were overbuilt to the extent that they barely seemed to notice 35 tons of Firestarter bouncing around on their roofs. Keeping enough discipline to focus outward instead of looking in Striker Alpha's rear cameras wasn't easy, but I absolutely needed to let Comet deal with the ground stuff on her own.
The radio message, when it came, was very much a surprise, "Weber Actual, this is Comet. I think we're gonna have to start calling you 'Bloodhound;' you sure sniffed out on hell of a prize here. Final count is one-sixty, that is one-six-zero Battlemechs." She gave that a moment to sink in, and my jaw dropped. That wasn't just a Regiment, that was four full Battalions with enough left over for a reinforced command company. Then my brain had to scramble to catch up as she continued, "Breakdown is sixteen Assaults, forty-four Heavies, fifty-two Mediums, and forty-eight Lights, though it looks like about forty are untouched Primitive 'Mechs, over."
"Confirmed receipt. One hundred sixty Battlemechs. Sixteen, forty-four, fifty-two, and forty-eight by weight bracket. Forty Primitive configurations. So which one do you want, Comet?" I asked lightly, still absorbing the information.
"There's a handful of Heavy 'Mechs kitted out for fire support. Got my eye on one of those, if you must know," she said shortly. "There's more in here though, Captain. The whole back of the warehouse is full of pallets. Looks like spares, and they're all still in their boxes, same as those JumpShip parts on the station. And there's an armory with LRMs, SRMs, Autocannon rounds. Hell, there's a whole company of Heavies armed with artillery pieces, and we've got ammo for those too. There's way too much here to just load up and go."
"Yep," I agreed, "which is why I asked if you had a particular 'Mech you wanted. There's room to walk even a Heavy out between the columns, and we're gonna have to transport some of this stuff into the Commonwealth to sell it just to be able to get the transport we need to move the rest of it. And that's assuming the factories are a dud.
"There's been some damage, and the twins and Rowdy have have reported some really old signs of weapons fire in a couple of places, but I haven't seen anything yet that makes me think we should write them off," I explained. "So have the techs start figuring out how to get one of those 'Mechs you liked the look of running, then get Slim and Jimmy up here to pick out something they can fight in, and get them mounted up again. Gonna need people to play Home Guard for our new landhold while I figure out how to get enough support to make it a going concern without tipping our hand too badly."
The radio was quiet for a couple heartbeats, "Alright, Sir, I can do that."
We were just settling in to plan out what we were going to do with the Mechwarrior hopefuls and old timers we were carting around we were interrupted by one of the ground security people.
XXXXX
In among the hustle and bustle of cataloguing the 'Mechs and making sure the armory wasn't going to explode, the simple corner office of the warehouse had been initially neglected.
When my ground security personnel finally got around to clearing it, they'd made what might be the single biggest discovery so far.
Getting power back on to the warehouse had been pretty easy. It seemed that municipal power had failed at some point before everything had fallen apart, so the people who'd been using it had disconnected the main lines and plugged the building into an old primitive FE. Probably one of the ones removed from the 'Mechs out on the warehouse floor.
All it took to get things running again was an inspection of the 'generator,' pouring water into the old FE, and starting it back up again.
By then, I'd walked my Commando into the warehouse, shut it down, and made my way into the office.
I hadn't been expecting the skeletons.
The sheer incongruence of them when we hadn't seen even a hint of remains elsewhere weirded me out for a moment, but I shook it off.
"Over here, Sir," one of the security crew called out. I turned and-
I know my eyes went wide. I'm just glad my jaw didn't fall open. That would have been undignified. Sitting on one of the desks, secured in a holder that looked kludged together was a somewhat battered Data Core. I drew in a breath through my teeth. "Tell me it works," I demanded.
"We're still waiting for the system to boot up. It looks like they threw this together at the last minute. Probably after they realized that they weren't going to make it," Geraldine interjected. My eyes drifted over to the pair of skeletons on the deteriorating sofa before movement from one of the terminal screens drew my eyes back.The boot up sequence ended, and immediately a text file opened across every active terminal screen.
By virtue of rank, I was one of those that got a seat in front of a screen. By virtue of being able to skim a document at 800 words per minute I was probably the first to reach the most critical part. Certainly the only one with enough of a background in Microbiology to recognize what it meant when I read it.
To the SLDF:
If you're reading this, then you've already seen the Battlemechs. Take them with our compliments. If you can use them to destroy Amaris' ambitions at least our deaths here will mean something.
The Data Core has everything we thought you might need to keep them in working order on it. Most of them are non-standard variants by now; hopefully the increased combat effectiveness will help balance out any problems with supply chains. I'm afraid we were more concerned with what might happen if Amaris's people got reinforcements here before you arrived. Don't suppose that will be a concern now.
Though I'm certain you will be aware by now, the bioweapon Amaris' Governor used against us was a weaponized form of Anthrax that-
I froze, and shifted my eyes back. Anthrax. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck.
I stood so quickly that I knocked my chair over and dashed out of the office. There were calls from behind me, but I wasn't paying attention. My personal com was too short-ranged to be able to get a message to the Implacable through all the metal and concrete we were surrounded with.
Hell, did everyone from the Spaceport end up here with us? Or did some of them go back to the dropship? I wasn't sure, but if there was even a chance that the spores Anthrax produced were still viable …
Damn, damn, damn. A hell of a thing to not remember. How long do Anthrax spores stay viable? I knew it was at least twenty years, but I had no idea what the upper limit might be.
I hit Striker Alpha's ladder at a dead run, which made climbing it while it swayed a pain in the ass above and beyond the fact that this damn planet's gravity made me feel like I was wearing a backpack a quarter my own weight everywhere I went. And I was currently begrudging every moment. Once I was seated, I may have broken every previous record for starting up a Commando. I ignored the usual commentary and hit the radio.
"Implacable Actual, come in," I called. That created a long pause on the line as Communications had to pass the secure line to Captain Chapman. It had to have been less than a minute, but it felt like an hour. At least it gave me time to catch my breath.
"This is Implacable Actual, Captain," came Haley's concerned voice.
She might have had more to say, but I didn't give her the chance. "Seal and quarantine the Dropship. Bioweapon was Anthrax and it sporulates. See if anyone in medical knows how long Anthrax spores can last before they're non-viable," I ordered, then almost as an afterthought added, "And kick say … two weeks of rations out an airlock for us. That ought to be excessive, but …" I trailed off. I was overcompensating now with an excess of caution because I hadn't been cautious enough to start with. Still, a bioweapon might have a long latent period to make sure it got spread around as much as possible before it started killing people.
I heard Haley barking out orders in the background for a moment before her attention came back to me. "What happened?" she demanded.
"We found a data core. It sounds like there was a rebellion against Amaris here when they heard the SLDF was coming. When it was clear they'd lost, the Amaris loyalists decided that if he couldn't have the planet, nobody was going to have it. Don't have any details yet, but the base used to create the weapon was Bacillus Anthracis, which would account for losing the SLIC team the way the journal describes.
"The Data Core supposedly has blueprints for the 'Mechs as well as repair manuals or something. Didn't have time to take a look at it. We'll figure out how to move it, just in case we … well, just in case. It should be worth enough by itself to someone like Brewer or the Archon to see everyone in the company rich enough to retire."
Was there anything else that needed saying? I couldn't think of anything, but that might be the adrenaline crash.
"Understood, Captain. We're sealed up. No one who departed today has made it back aboard yet, so if there still is cause for concern, we ought to be in the clear. None of our medical staff knew anything about spore viability off the top of their heads, but they have reference material. As soon as I know anything, you'll know it."
With a nod she couldn't see and a statement of, "Understood, Weber out," I cut the connection.
XXXXX
Unnamed Planet, Unnamed System
Former Apollo Province, Unclaimed Territory
February 20th, 3010
We'd gotten lucky. That's all there was to it. Digging through the Data Core, the techs had found, late yesterday, information on the Bioweapon tucked away just in case. No significant latent period.
With all the dust we'd kicked up driving around and walking about in 'Mechs, if there were any live spores remaining, someone would have gotten sick by now.
I'd also gotten lucky in how the company reacted to the short quarantine, construing my half-panicked response as decisive action instead, especially when it turned out that everything was a false alarm.
That, however, did not mean that everywhere was safe. Underground or in a sealed area like one of the Dropships might have proved to be a better environment for the spores, and none of the references the medical staff had available gave specifics about Anthrax spores.
So simple luck had saved the day.
I'd been treating everything since waking up on Icar as a game. Something not quite real. That needed to come to a screeching halt. I'd needed to do better.
Think I've at least made a start on that.
With the temptation to fret over things no one could control following everyone around like a cloud, I'd instead kept everyone as busy as I could manage. Once again I glanced over the full list of 'Mechs we'd recovered.
Banshees: 8 (4 unmodified)
Mackies: 8 (4 unmodified)
Heliopolis: 12
Crossbows: 5
Thunderbolts: 18 (10 unmodified)
Ostwars: 9 (6 unmodified)
Galahads(50 tonners): 10 (4 unmodified)
Phoenixes: 21
Kyudo: 14 (12 unmodified)
Icarus II: 3
Sarissas: 4
Commandos: 35
Wasps: 13
The techs had also discovered how the madmen who'd designed the refit for the Banshee had managed to turn it into a worthwhile Assault 'Mech. They'd used a much larger, but less massive Extra-Light 380 Fusion Engine.
Between that weight savings, switching over to Freezers, and mounting lighter Ferro-Fibrous armor, they'd actually managed to maintain the speed and increase the 'Mech's armor while mounting an arsenal worthy of an Assault Mech. Two ERPPCs and God's shotgun for long-range, and a half-dozen 5cm lasers for shorter-ranged work, plus the flamer to see off infantry.
Its single weakness, if you could call it that, was that it 'only' had seventeen freezers. Still, all you had to do was drop a PPC out of the circuit once you came into range for the lasers. And with two tons of ammo capacity in its magazine(complete will cellular storage for the rounds), you had the ability to hammer breaches in an enemy's armor with slugs before swapping to cluster ammunition to gut the section with the hole.
Mace had pronounced the redesign 'elegant.' According to him, there was 'not room inside the chassis for so much as one more bolt,' so efficiently had the long-dead Engineers who'd done the work used the space.
By contrast, his opinion of the Mackie refit was less flattering. Notes from the Data Core indicated that the primary motivation for it had been to counter the presence of the RWR's Rampage 'Mechs among the garrison.
As a result, the refit had descended into a game of 'Anything you can do, I can do better.' Seventeen tons of Ferro-Fibrous armor protected the design which carried an LB-10X and a flamer in the left arm with three tons of ammunition, an LRM-20, and another three tons of reloads for that in the left torso along with CASE to keep an ammo explosion from entirely gutting the 'Mech. The stumpy right arm bore an ERPPC and a trio of 5cm lasers while that side torso bore another pair of medium lasers, a flamer, and the two freezers that wouldn't fit in the engine. A third pair of 5cm lasers in the center torso and a 3cm laser in the head rounded out the design's armament.
It wasn't a bad design for a Brawler/Juggernaut, by any means, but it was very clearly a generalist and lacked the heat sinks to use many of its weapons in close quarters unless the ERPPC was dropped from the firing circuit. In that case it was actually a touch oversinked until it made it into range of its anti-personnel armaments. On the other hand, Inferno SRMs with their payloads of shit that made napalm feel inadequate had been in play back then. Maybe some of the reserve sinking capacity had been to defang that threat?
Just the thought of what we could do with a company of those made the modern Mechwarrior in me giggle. Central lance of two Mackies and two Banshees, flanked on each side by a Lance composed of three Mackies and one Banshee. Banshees operating as Snipers to soften up targets, making holes for the Mackies' LRMs to exploit …
I banished the adolescent fantasy of stomping a Sword of Light regiment into the ground. Assault 'Mechs were rare and precious, not the sort of thing to be used in any old engagement, if for no other reason than that they were slow, and mobility was life in battle.
That directed my thoughts to the opposite extreme of the cache's rewards. The light 'Mech element was composed of unfamiliar variants of familiar machines. The Commandos, it seemed, had been converted from the ancient -1A models like those that had fought in the first large-scale BattleMech engagement on Nox against the Combine.
The refit had pulled the original 8cm laser for an extended range version that, with careful maneuvering, could stay out of range of a PPC. Normally, that wouldn't be worth much since the band of safety was so narrow, but the COM-1R had a 225 XLFE installed that could push the nimble little 25 tonner up over a hundred and fifty km/h at a run, or a comparatively sedate 97.2km/h at a cruise. A pair of 5cm lasers rounded out their weapons loadout.
The speedy little bastards had pretty clearly been outfitted as scout hunters, making them Skirmishers, rather than a Commando's usual role as a Striker. I still liked them. This wasn't a video game, and I'd already discovered that the fog of war was rather more pressing in real life than on a computer screen. Putting out an enemy's eyes was an entirely worthwhile investment all by itself, but the range on the -1R's ERLL was enough to let it play a role harassing even far larger enemies.
Then there was th-
A knock on the wall broke me from my thoughts. "Ah, Captain? You said you wanted to be notified when Comet was ready to try out her new 'Mech?" The announcement, despite being worded like a statement, was spoken like a question.
"Indeed, I did. Thank you," I responded and stood up from the desk I'd been working at. A few steps brought me in sight of the 'Mech Geraldine had picked out. I'd had to look it up in the Core before I even knew what to call it, the design was so old.
Even if it had been one of the last Crossbows to roll of the Arcturan Arms assembly line, that would have made the machine more than 450 years old. According to the Data Core, it was, in fact, much older, dating from the period when Arcturus had been the capital of the Commonwealth.
At 60-tons, the original Primitive Crossbow had been a speedy mech, though rather under-armored for its size and desperately under-sinked.
The refit had corrected nearly all of the machine's flaws. It still maintained its respectable top speed of 86km/h, but the XLFE it mounted instead of the standard 300FE freed up enough weight to upgrade the pair of LRM-10s to LRM-15s and pack in an extra freezer. It was still under-sinked, with the ERPPC and both LRM launchers straining the cooling system beyond its limits, but it could actually fire its full complement of long-range weapons without cooking itself. At least, so long as the Mechwarrior dropped a missile launcher from the circuit to cool occasionally, which was a vast improvement.
The engineers had also swapped the missiles in the right arm for the right torso PPC to help solve an issue with the long ammunition feed from the magazine in the left torso. Four tons of LRMs stored in CASE provided a respectable 16 reloads per launcher, and a 5cm laser in each arm helped protect the 'Mech once an enemy made it under the machine's missile envelope. They'd even managed to increase the armor weight by two tons and switch the standard plate out for Ferro-Fibrous protection, meaning the design could take more punishment than most Heavy Mechs, despite weighing in at the lowest edge of the bracket.
So basically, it was a Dervish with fifty percent more missile throw weight, deeper magazines, two and a half tons more armor, and no jump jets. Oh, and it traded the SRMs for an ERPPC.
Geraldine was in love.
The thought drew a grin from me as the mobile 'Mech Bay the Techs had found and reactivated drew away from the Crossbow. Though the man-hours required were about double what the core suggested an experienced team could do it in. Still, two days of work wasn't bad when the Techs had been employing their assistants mostly to sit beside them, newly-printed manuals in their laps.
Finally, everyone was judged to be at a safe distance, and an easy route out of the warehouse was cleared so Geraldine could take her shiny new toy for a walk.
For a long moment, everything was quiet, and I was worried that someone had fucked up something with the XLFE, but then the ancient machine came to life.
"You had me worried there for a second there, Comet," I remarked into my com. "So how is it?"
"Had to triple-check the connections for this fancy neurohelmet. The damn thing is so easy to use, I was sure I had something connected wrong," her voice came back without a hint of distortion or static.
"How's it feel?" I inquired. Rumor had it that SLDF neurohelmets had been sensitive enough to let even some people who would otherwise have been unable to pilot a 'Mech or ASF make the cut. If that was the case …
"Weird, but good. Proprioception is a hell of a lot better than I'm used to. Pretty sure piloting will be a bunch easier once I'm acclimated to it," she replied and carefully began maneuvering.
If she was having any difficulty adjusting to either the new neurohelmet or the heavy gravity, I couldn't tell. A turn brought her around a Thunderbolt, past a Banshee, and out into the sunlight.
"Hell, I'm not sure if it's the electronics or the neurohelmet or both, but the damn thing automatically adjusted the displays to compensate for the change in lighting. I'm feeling spoiled."
That giddy tone was back in her voice again. I think this may have been the first time she was genuinely happy since the Battle of Uniontown. Hell, even before that.
"It's a shame you aren't enjoying yourself," I teased.
The snort I expected came through loud and clear.
"Diagnostics still green on the weapons?" I asked after a moment, regretting that we didn't have a firing range to test them out on properly.
"They are," Comet responded as she started to put the 'Mech through its paces.
I nodded, though she was probably wouldn't have seen it even if she wasn't distracted, "Then I'll get out of your hair. Have fun."
Comet didn't respond, but then I hadn't been expecting her to. She was seriously like a kid in a candy store.
I shot a look at my wristwatch, seriously regretting the lack of smartphones. I needed to see a man about a shuttle.