Chapter 6:
Zenith Point, New Kyoto, Catbox, T+ 12 weeks.
The slow route had been the right call, Morgenson thinks to himself as they come back into being in the New Kyoto system. IFF on and blaring their affiliation. The Dropships kick away and head for the planet while he settles in to finish the last of his debrief which will be beamed to the colossus for handover to the Colonel.
They had had a hiccup in the jumpdrive that had caused them to take a week to affect repairs. Thankfully it was merely a conduit that had a burnt out connector, and not the drive itself, but he still had his shipboard engineers take the full week to check things over.
All the tests had come back with no other issues, and she was actually running smoother than ever, almost like the Catbox wanted to really stress her systems on occasion. Most sailors were superstitious and most believed their ships alive. John Morgenson had always held that your ship will tell you what she wants, and apparently the Catbox wanted to be moving more often.
He had put a recommendation in for having the Jumpships more active, with his report, though from the scuttlebut, the Colonel had more long voyages and Prospecting in the works so maybe he could get priority for that.
New Kyoto, 20 December 3004, Black Cat PMC Main Base.
I sat back in my chair, watching as the three new dropships were cooled and their cargoes offloaded. We had been so much more successful then I thought that I was actually suffering from it.
See most contracts have stipulations that Salvage while under contract is split certain ways. Me being the planning sort, had ensured that our contract stipulated battlefield salvage in defense of the planet. This was mainly as I knew that we would be sending most operations off world.
Now the LCAF liaison was creating a stink about attacking a Foreign nation while under contract and using Nukes on the planet. Now obviously I had the reports, no nukes present in the facility, and we did not even leave the base's fusion reactor behind, which is why my base now had a slightly worn, 500 Core reactor powering it to supplement the grid connection.
So the whole nukes released spiel was not flying, and their want of me to disclose how I found the site materials is also not something I have to give. Though the stone walling is causing all kinds of hell with the Liaison. Not that I care much, we are in a fixed contract that is entirely in our favour for the moment, and honestly, I have no need to continue working for the LCAF. When I pointed out that the FedSuns would love to have us onboard and that I currently did not have enough lift for all of my stuff anyway so I may as well sell to them, the Liaison was very rapidly replaced, and apologies came from te Daimiyos office about Social generals and the way they did things.
I figured that honestly I was going to need to find a Jumpship soonish or I was going to run into issues with lift when I had a team go grab the Argo. That meant that I should probably sell one of the titans, I had no need for two, and honestly doubling the number of ASF I had was more of a pain then a blessing.
Figuring I may as well throw a bone to our gracious hosts, I offered it to the Daimiyo along with the wing of Rapiers that she had aboard. I gave two offers, either a trade, for a Scout-class Jumpship, a Merchant-class, or the value of $600,000,000 C-bills. He was also more than welcome to kick it up the chain.
Now most would think why would anyone trade a Jumpship for a Dropship, and normally you would be right, they are not really equivalent trades, Especially not one with two or more collars, but that is what I wanted, see I could buy a jumpship if I really needed to, even if I was at the bottom of a list and it took a decade. See what I was actually aiming for was the Scout, or the money, as they both offered me something that I thought would be highly lucrative. A chance at more Jumpships.
The Daimiyo obviously got back to me rather quickly and we got to haggling, a merchant was far too much, he could not afford to give one up and if he tried, the Archon and fellow lords would come down on him. He could potentially loan me one for a fixed period of time, but we both knew that was never going to work.
Then we started discussing the Scout class, and while he had one, it was a personal Jumpship that had remained with His family for a long time. Here we went back and forth for a couple of weeks, Him wineing and dining me, and me playing coy and always trying to get back to that merchant.
Eventually we both had to settle and it was for cash. Or in this case, slightly less than I was asking for, at only $550,000,000 C-bills, but it was in payment directly to Ito Galactic shipyards, for the next Merchant to come off their line. See the Daimiyo had already been in line and the next was supposed to be theirs, but they essentially sold their slot to me. Meaning I would have a new Merchant-class by the end of our contract. Now was this a fair trade, maybe, but the Daimiyo was happy to now have a monitor for the system, as well as a wing of very decent heavy ASF.
I was happy to have more lift coming though I think that I might have a chance at more in the near future as I am still aware of several events that I think will still take place before our contract is up.
The other thing I did was offload the Talons and Wolverines, I had no use for them and honestly, I could do without the twelve of them. Which made the company a bunch of money and freed up more bays for more mechs that I hoped to get from several other places.
The two assaults in the Stalkers and Royal Crockets would help round out our lack of true heavy weight metal, while the Warhammers would make fantastic additions to the heavy lances of Marauders.
The rest of the haul I was keeping and I already had the techs doing full rebuilds on everything. I did not want a single thing to be failing or worn out when my troops finally began training on everything.
The other thing I looked into was whether or not I could trade out the old engines in all the vehicles for something uniform. Having to lug around fuel or ICE engines was inefficient and annoyed me. Unfortunately that was a project for the future when I had more workshop space and more liquid capital.
The vehicles were amazing additions, the Pollux ADA would help supplement our AA cover, and the Ballistas would slot straight into formation. The two heavy tanks that we had picked up would be adding a good bit of punch to our formations, the Alacorns especially. The Bulldogs would help round out the medium formation we already had with the Goblins bringing me to an over strength medium company. Which was good as we were lacking on Medium weight armour before hand, mainly being light and Artillery.
The Allacorns and Manticores were going to now be the brunt of my armour core, and form the anvil to the hammer of my Mechs. I would have appreciated more VTOLs, but they are quite squishy in comparison to other vehicles and I can only assume that most of them were ruined in the fighting withdrawal of the 83rd.
That said we did get two other bonus items that were snapped up by all of my pilots, SLDF issue cooling suits, and Neurohelmets. Both very rare items and both exceedingly good for morale and safety in the cockpit. There was enough for all of our crews that needed them to have them while leaving spares for the metal that we still had to fill out. Granted all except the command staff only got a single cooling suit, and the neurohelmets were now theirs to keep so we did not have any spares past that point.
Other than that, we had enough spare materials for one more rebuild of all the metal we had pulled out of the depot, as well as a bunch of left over DHS. All that gave me reason to celebrate as it meant that we could ensure everyone ran cool and heavy on armor when the techs finally got around to converting everything.
I could probably spend a night looking it over and have design documents written up but I want my guys and gals to show me what they have and prove that they can earn their paychecks. That said I had now earned several more tickets. Two bronze, two silver, a gold and a platinum. They were all for items this time round bar one bronze and one silver which were for random rolls, but honestly at this stage I felt that I would soon start no longer earning tickets unless I did truly spectacular things, like personally retrieve the entire helm cache, or personally destroy ComStars navy. Hell we will probably soon be at the point where I have to win an entire battle alone by killing a hundred mechs.
It is not that bad, but with the diminishing returns that start to occur through repetitive activities that become too easy I may very soon have those problems if I keep making out like a bandit like this. Feeling like I may as well I tear all the item tickets. The results are honestly underwhelming in all cases bar one.
The first two, bronze and silver, get me:
[Music Player]
|Common Item|
Not just an ordinary music player, this player is indestructible and has excellent sound quality, with built-in speakers and headphones. It is capable of playing any song the holder has heard of before and records it inside its archive.
[Malorian Overture]
|Uncommon Item|
Cyberpunk 2077 - A heavy-duty, powerful double-action revolver produced by Malorian Arms. This gun is incredibly powerful, even being able to punch a hole in half-borgs with each bullet. You also get 30 bullets every day for it.
Both basically are fun things that are useful for relaxation and defense but the Overture is a revolver, which I could make better, and the music player is only useful for downtime. Though the feature to have any music I have ever heard is definitely useful.
The Platinum ticket actually disappoints me, getting me something that is near to the lowest roll it can achieve.
[T-51b Power Armor]
|Uncommon Item|
Fallout - A set of power armour developed before the Great War and mass-produced for soldiers to wear. This power armour is strong enough to shrug off low-calibre bullets and allow the average man to lift a car overhead. The power armour is powered by a fusion core that gets replaced by a new one every 24 hours.
The real winner was the gold, rolling probably as high as it could and getting me a way to explain the droids, when I eventually got around to "Finding" them on the Argo.
[Droid Factory]
|Elite Item|
Star Wars - An autonomous factory that produces Star Wars droids under your command as long as you can provide it with appropriate materials.
That is a game changer, and honestly I am tempted to immediately go out and fetch the Argo, simply to integrate the factory into it. Such things however will have to wait as we have work to do here on planet, namely recruiting and training. It also brings up a question I have, what droids can it make? Is it restricted to the smaller types that are bipedal, or can it also make the larger droids such as Droid-tanks or even larger Droid Ships?
The additional help that they would be however for setting up production lines is immense, have it churn out engineer, architect and labour droids and I could have them set up factories in dead systems that have large amounts of resources and then convert that into war materials, or assets for sale. That is a potential avenue. The Catbox did say they wanted to do more traveling, well I guess that they can be on Merchant duty, running circuits up to two jumps out from us, while the Alley Cats head out to do system surveys. I know for a fact that there are a large number of systems that were ignored as not having any planets in the Goldilocks zones nearby, but that should not be a problem for putting a Droid factory in place if the resources are right.
I will have to come back to this later, for now, recruitment and training. We need another twenty mech pilots, eighteen ASF pilots, and we need to fill out forty-seven more tank crews, not to mention filling out the additional twelve foot platoons that we can now carry. I also needed to look into getting some more Mechs to fill the remaining gantrys, as well as additional Logistical vehicles.
I mull over the logistics needs. Currently we are running garrison duty, but I will want to eventually switch to offensive operations potentially, which means raids, and that means we need to look into recovery vehicles. I could look into getting my hands on more BRVs to fill up slots, as well as more engineering vehicles and at least one Hazardous environments vehicle. With that I should probably look into J-23 Ordnance transports as well to go with the towed artillery park.
I sit in my office and mull over my plans for most of the day, writing out lists and ideas before finally calling it good enough and going over paperwork for a few hours. One of the downsides to being in charge, there is a near endless amount of paperwork. That said, as I have almost all of it sent to me digitally, I can do it wirelessly through my mind most of the time. Which makes things far easier and far faster, hence me being done in only three hours.
That means that I am left with around four hours a day to train and another two to tinker with things. Things in this case being integrating the shielding tech of Solaris VII's arenas into the fusion engines that we use, and doing so in a way that it is only a swap in kit and not individual engine rebuilds.
So far it has taken me the last two years to get the needed materials to work on it, even though I had the theory and idea worked out almost completely back on Galatea. Now that the custom parts I had made have finally come in, I can start working on making the kit, and proving it works, after which I can work on getting more materials to make the rest of the kits for the company. Being able to save a full 45% of the weight from our engines without changing form factor to much will be massive, allowing for more armour and or more heatsinks, hell if this works right I could make the heatsink loop feed right back into the reactor meaning that we would have a full 75% better heatsinking just off the standard sinks, which will cool most of our mechs to neutral and for some of them mean we can shave weight by dropping sinks, thus allowing for larger engines or dropping on more armour.
The sheer versatility that the upgrade will add is insane. I just hope I can get it to work and be a near universal kit. I mean if some minor things need to be added or taken away it will not be much of a problem but if we have to do individual kits for each engine size and make it would be a straight wash.
Whistling a tune I head into my private workshop that I had set aside and that is only accessible to myself and my Senior Spook Officers. I chose the spooks cause they understand OpSec and they also know that unless I tell them otherwise what happens in that workshop is never to be shared. On pain of very severe consequences, that after the recent find, they very much believe I can pull off.
Well, tonight we shall see if I can meld all of my fields of tinkering, related enough to fusion engines at least, together to produce a miracle of science that is repeatable by non-cosmic force elevated individuals. I pull out the music player, hit the nightcore and Gothic Cyberpunk rock playlist and turn up the volume. It was going to be a long night.
I had finished up for the night and just left my workshop, the plan was coming together and I figured that if things kept up I might just be able to get this particular engine finished along with the cooling loop fix, so that I could install it into my MON-66bGX. Yes I piloted a light mech, I was a monster with it, and the speed, Null-sig and Chameleon, and the supercharger all mean that I was a ghost on the field and the fact it had hands that were actually hands and usable meant that cockpits were eminently squishable. I had in fact been given a finishing move nickname of finger of death, from the number of times I had done that in the sims.
If I could get this system working it would save me almost four tons, just on the engine mass. If I could get the same 8.5 ton weight out of a larger engine then I not only have the potential for more speed, but also a cooler heat loop due to the innate nature of engine sinks. A 250 rated engine should give me another twenty or so KPH if not a little more, while still saving me around one and a half tons, and also having the two doubles that were in the chassis built in. saving me a further two tons. That combined with the increase in cooling capabilities, means that I can drop the SRM 6 and change the loadout to three medium pulse lasers in each hand and still run heat neutral while I am not using the Chameleon and Null-sig.
While I fantasize about potential builds I am rapidly approached by a trooper who looks particularly harried. "Ma'am, urgent communique for you, verigraphed delivery, you are needed to sign for it." He says as he comes to attention in front of me.
"At ease, where is the messenger, normally you have to go into the ComStar offices when this sort of thing arrives." I reply passing by the soldier. He immediately falls in behind me and follows along.
"Currently waiting in the lounge outside your office Ma'am, this was not delivered via ComStar, private courier, Ma'am, express delivery to your hands only. Apparently the messenger has not let the message leave their side in the time he has had it. Hopped jumpships and dropships all the way here from out in the Periphery." The soldier replies, supplying scuttlebutt without me asking.
"Very well, I will head there now, return to your duties and well done." I respond, picking up the pace a little. It should not take long, the HQ building is near enough to my workshop, on purpose, that it is a five minute walk before I am passing through the door to the lounge outside my office.
There sitting on a couch is an individual specifically dressed to draw as little attention as possible. The young man, for that is what he was, could barely have been nineteen, and was tragically out of his depth if he was trying to be incognito on this base. More so as I could see the man he would grow into already shining through his somewhat rough patchwork beard.
"Join me in my office so we can get this message nonsense squared away please." I say as I breeze past him and into the office located behind the couch. Startled out of whatever place his mind had been in Morgan Kell, rushes to stand and rapidly follows me into my office.
"Close the door and take a seat Lt Kell, I am sure that the message is only one part of your arrival here." I say as I step to my drinks cabinet and grab myself a glass, "Drink? I assume you might need one all things considered." I offer as I grab a second and look over my shoulder at the flummoxed young man. "The Door Leutenant." I say again, snapping him back and making him hurriedly close the door.
"Ah scotch if you have any Colonel." he responds, his usual calm shaken both by my deadpan demeanour and flat tone of voice. The aura of Menace probably has him on his toes as well but, I have found that repeat exposure has a tendency to inoculate people to the effects, so my officers and the troops I regularly interact with no longer act as if they are in the den of a wild animal.
Morgan Kell on the other hand, is to his knowledge, on the run from Loki and LIC hitsquads, and so everything about me is obviously making him highly nervous, including the fact that I called him by rank and name. "Scotch coming right up, I unfortunately don't have anything from Scotland itself, but I assume a Donegal reserve will do fine. Now take a seat and pass me the message we can get to your questions once I am done." I respond, pouring us both drinks as I move to take a seat and place his on a coaster set on that side of the desk for just that reason.
I have been told that I look hilarious to almost everyone but more so to those who have gotten over the instinctive aura of fear I have. I look like someone's young daughter sitting at their desk trying to seem important. It is apparently quite comical until the reality of the situation kicks in and people realise that the deadpan cute face is that of a career mercenary and thus has probably killed more than their fair share of people, then it just adds to the disquiet I inspire in others.
I take the offered verigraphed message pad, pressing my thumb to the activator and letting it run its verification. Once it does the pad boots to life and a brief starting message from my team appears, the gist of their message is that they are going to stick to Katrina Steiner until she has taken the throne from her Uncle, after which payment for services rendered will be made and they will return to me. Expected honestly, what is not is that they did disclose that they were already part of an outfit and that they would thus need to be on retainer, which is what the rest of this message is. Signed and Sealed contract and orders for the use of the team by Katrina Steiner. But it had to be delivered and thus they sent Morgan here to do so and ask some follow up questions.
I sigh and place the pad back down after digitally signing acceptance of the contract. Looking up from the pad I notice that Morgan has been examining me, obviously trying to figure me out, and not really getting anywhere.
"Well Lt Kell, it seems the future Archon has shanghaied my black ops team into helping her out and keeping her safe, and you are to play twenty questions with me before returning to her and her fiance with the confirmation." I say staring right back at him. Everything about me still unsettles him, "Now, normally I would immediately send recall orders that would drag them back to me, but as it stands they are in place to allow you all to do some good so I might as well help." I say as I scratch down a note on a piece of paper which I fold and place in an envelope, before sealing it with wax and using one of several seals on my desk.
"Hand that to the lead of my team. His orders from me, as well as information that he may share with the Archon Designate at his will. If he chooses not to, do not press. I would much prefer that we do not get on each other's bad sides." I started sliding the envelope across the table. "Now you have questions, I might have answers, whether I will give you them is another story entirely. So ask."
He takes the verigraphed pad, and the envelope and slips them both back into his inner coat pocket. Lifts his glass, takes a sip, settling nerves and wetting his throat. Before looking back to me and starting his questions. "How did you know to have the team there?" he asks, the easiest and hardest question.
"I didn't. I knew that the Archon designate would be on a world within jump range of the Circinus federation, and knowing her character assumed that she would not have any guards. It seems I was correct, though the fact that Loki and LIC were involved strikes me as both odd and unnerving. My team was there to work as a backstop for them, not against them." I reply, both true and false but unprovable either way.
"Where did you get the kit that your men are using, I have never seen anything like it, outside of rumours of DEST and trivids?" he asks the next easiest to answer question which again is still hard.
"Made in house, artisanal equipment that I literally cannot make in enough quantities or my entire force would be using them. Partial reverse engineering of the Chameleon and Null-sig systems in some of our mechs and partially from a DEST sneaksuit that I happened to find parts of. The weapons are in house productions because I don't like a single firearm on the market currently." I responded. Again deadpan face and flat tone giving him nothing to work with and still unnerving him.
"What are your plans, trying to get close to Katrina, we don't like social climbers or social generals." He more states than asks, but I get the gist of his question.
"Nothing except to keep the Commonwealth's best hope for a future alive. Nondi and Fredrick are both good generals and warriors, they are shit politicians and would be doing what the Davions do and running off to the battlefield to bloody often for anyone's good. Donna is an excellent Mechwarrior and fantastic teacher but again not leadership material and definitely not fit to rule a star nation. No unfortunately if the Commonwealth wants to get stronger, and push back the DCMS then it has to be Katrina. Though she does need to learn to talk to her cousins. Lords know how much trouble that will save everyone once she steps back into the light." I reply, catching him off guard with my opinions.
"As to social climbing, I literally could care less. I could have earned a planet by gifting the Colossus and two titans I stole out from under the Cappies to Alessandro, but they would have been wasted and I have no need of one right this second. I have a number of military designs just in small arms and body armour that would make me rich enough that I could wave goodbye to all this, purchase a planet and settle down to playing at building it up and never have to worry about funds to pay and maintain my company here. I have just finished a prototype that will make me richer than the Steiners if I ever sell it and that is to say nothing of the amount of information I have managed to find based on logs, journals, and reports that I have spent fortunes on. I could probably give the Commonwealth a regiment or two worth of mechs and the same again in armour, at least one potential set of technical documentation, and a potential hidden cache of other SLDF stuff with gods alone knows what inside. This was me working for a better future Lt Kell, not trying to climb social ladders." By the end a little acid has slipped into my voice and he is actively leaning back in his chair.
"Next question young Kell, and make it good please." I don't so much as ask, as order instead.
"Katrina wanted to know why you suggested the right gear for hazardous environments when even though she had no idea what we would all be doing, she also said thank you by the way." He asks, belatedly passing on the thanks for my message.
"Because she is as adventurous as she is duty bound. This year away was probably the last time she will get to play at being anything other than the Archon and as such I placed even odds of you lot heading for some planetary digging. I know that I do it, but I am also viscerally aware of the dangers, considering they claimed the life of my father through onboard nuclear detonation." I reply, the flat tone is just once again working against me. I really need to roll something to counteract this.
"Well good guess I think, we were headed down to a planet that was supposed to be safe, but your team insisted on secondary scans before we did, those turned up a rare isotope that is not normally scanned for that releases low dosage radiation just enough to build up over time. It was dustborn and blowing all over the place, Mech filters and basic masks would not have cut it. Thankfully we had the right gear thanks to you." He replies, slightly less off put and apparently relieved to be on happier ground.
"Hopefully you all take the second part of that message seriously and do the continual hospital visits for cancer checks. That shit is insidious and can literally come out of nowhere and leave you on a time limit." I state back, remembering all the stories I had heard in my previous life about cancer. So many people went from perfectly fine one day to on a months, weeks or days long countdown to the end, with no chance to fix it. Hopefully prevention and precaution would stop it happening with these people.
"Well that is a lovely picture. I guess moving onto the last question I have for you, Arthur asked simply How? I don't know in what regards but that was the only thing he had to ask of you." He looks at me as if to divine what that could mean or be about.
"That one gets no answer, maybe when he discusses the reasons with his wife I will discuss my methods with him. Now onto more entertaining topics. I hear that you are quite the hotshot in a mech, how about a round of sims in the morning to knock the rust off and see where we both stand?" I ask a raised eyebrow and slight smirk the only sign of how I expect this to go.
"Depends how good the sims are, Honestly I have yet to find better than the old SLDF rigs back at the Nagelring, everything else just seems to be missing something." he responds, clearly more relaxed now that we were in familiar territory.
"Better than SLDF Royal rigs considering that is what they started as and I made them better, and that is coming from the rest of my pilots, who have used both the stock Royal rigs, the standard rigs, and the SLDF standard rigs. So I take it you would be interested? We can even let you pilot some of our stables in the sims, quite a few royals and SLDF regulars there to choose from." I say waving a hand at the accusation that my custom modded simrigs would be worse than the once at the Nagelring.
"Sure, but I will have to see what you have available, No telling what other goodies are buried in the mechs on those machines. I always was partial to the Archer, but if there is something else I might give them a try." he replies.
"Very well, that should settle business for now then, I expect to see you at the sim rigs at 0900, so try not to remain awake for too long." I reply before pressing the buzzer on my desk to summon in the trooper on secretary duty for the evening.
"Yes Ma'am." he asks as he steps in and salutes.
"See to it that our guest here is given a bunk in the officers barracks and that he has what he needs to meet me in the sims by 0900, assign him a guide if needed I am sure he will try to get into all sorts of places that he knows he shouldn't but that is his nature not his job, at least I hope the one who sent you knows to send someone more suitable if they want a spy?" I order, directing the last with a raised eyebrow to Morgan.
"No troubles from me Colonel, I will happily take the guide, and thank you for the hospitality. I shall see you in the morning." he replies standing and reaching out a hand. I reciprocate and shake his hand firmly before seeing them both out.
I sit back at my desk and sip at my mead. Pondering about my conversation and about the ripple effects that my choices might have. Truly the future is now in flux and the timeline is in the wind, who knows what it will become.