Fort Truscott
Sheridan
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
14 February 3049
The conference tables in the command centre of Fort Truscott were two half-circles of wood cut from one of the more spectactular trees of the
planet's forests, which a botanist might have catagorised as somewhere between a redwood and an oak - on steroids. There was enough of a gap between the
two tables that someone could walk between them, and a holo-projector built into the ceiling could be used for display purposes. At the moment it was
displaying the Kerensky Cluster and the Pentagon Worlds, slowly spinning so that everyone sat at the tables - the two Khans, all five Adjutants, the Adder
Keeper, the Loremaster and eight of the ten Galaxy Commanders.
"I think we are all familiar with what is happening now," Virgilia Truscott told them. "However, and I do not apologise for
this, not all of you are aware of the background. For those of you whom this applies to, what you are about to learn is highly classified. It has never been
fully briefed to Clan Council, although many of them are aware of at least some part of it. The reason for this will - I hope - be clear." She very
carefully did not mention that Roderick N'Buta and Galaxy Commander Duke Togo, unlike every other officer in the room, were wearing siderarms, discreetly
hidden by the table. The Khans of Clan Star Adder had not made an actual record of the number of their subordinates that they had had to kill to keep their
secrets, but there were some suspiciously private trials of greivance if you studied the historical record carefully.
"If it explains why you decided to insult the ilKhan in front of the entire Grand Council, then it must be quite the story,"
Tabitha Paik, the youngest of the Galaxy Commanders, said bleakly. "I would truly prefer that we do not become the second Not-Named Clan,
quiaff?"
"Aff," Virgilia nodded. "The story begins shortly after the Dragoon Compromise when Khan Gerik N'Buta authorised his
saKhan to make plans and preparations for the invasion of the Inner Sphere, which they both expected to take place considerably sooner than it actually has.
Kershaw Lahiri had severe concerns about the viability of a military operation carried out more than a thousand light years from the nearest secure base, so in
3004 he ordered a small expedition to survey worlds nearer the Inner Sphere to use as a forward base."
The Kerensky cluster vanished, replaced by the blue and green orb of a life-bearing planet. "What the expedition found was Sinclair, an
eminiently colonisable world only about two hundred light years from the edge of what was once the Rim Worlds Republic and is now, it seems, part of this
Federated-Commonwealth that the Scavenger Lords of the Inner Sphere have pieced together."
"You broke a Grand Council directive!" Tabitha hissed. "Have you lost your mind?"
Roderick slammed one palm down on the wood of the table. It sounded so like a pistol shot that for a moment Virgilia thought that he or Duke
had decided to silence Tabitha permanently. "Firstly, Tabitha Paik," he said sharply, "This was a decision made before anyone in this room
except for myself was born. Secondly, the Grand Council decided to delay return to the Inner Sphere. Sinclair is located in the Periphery, which by definition
means that it is outside the Inner Sphere."
The younger woman glared at him defiantly but sat back into her chair. "I suppose."
"Thirdly," spat Roderick, "This is a war council of the Clan. Stop acting like a spoiled sibkid. You are better than
that."
Tabitha's back straightened. "My apologies," she said. Not to Roderick, but to the Khan.
Virgilia nodded. It wasn't exactly formal surkai, but it would suffice. "Sinclair, quite frankly, was so ideal that the survey team
stopped right there. Without going into details that only a scientist would care about, it is actually slightly more habitable than Sheridan is. Over the next
decade three large convoys of colonists and supplies were slipped away to it and the population is currently a little short of a million members of the
civilian castes, and several thousand warriors - quite a number of them from Sibkos founded there. One of the functions of Sinclair was as a repository for
Clan Star Adder - there is a very formidable genetic stockpile and information cache located there such that if the rest of the Clan were to drop dead suddenly
- or more to the point, be annihilated or absorbed, the Clan would live on."
"I did not know that," Jared Le Fabre said in surprise. As Defense Adjutant he had been aware of some aspects of what Virgilia was
telling them, but evidently not as complete a version as he had thought.
"Jared, you did not need to know that," Virgilia told him. "In fact, I probably should not tell you. But I can hardly keep
sending you out of the room everytime I touch on something sensitive." She tapped at a control on the keypad resting in front of her on the desk and the
hologram blinked into a map of the Inner Sphere, the Kerensky Cluster and the largely unexplored regions between them. "Obviously, the question that
remains is what do we do now. The other clans are committing themselves to a plan of invasion that, put mildly, is suicidal."
There was a moment of silence and then Tabitha smiled crookedly. "We are going to invade," she said simply.
Virgilia nodded. "Correct. The ilKhan believes that four clans can conquer the entire Inner Sphere. I am not sure if that is true, but
since he is bound and determined to try, we will be adding our strength to the invasion - our full strength, not the watered down armies that the other Clans
will send. And if one more clan can turn the tide then we will do so."
"Our full strength!?" asked Jared. "Khan Virgilia, if we do that then we will lose everything enclave we possess short of
Strana Mechty."
"Forgive me the hyperbole, Jared. We will take all our offensive forces, but you will retain sufficent warriors to hold onto at least a
core of our enclaves: Sheridan primarily, although the Dagda enclaves would be valuable. Most of the others are primary resource sites: useful but replaceable.
There is a reason that we have a large strategic reserve of raw materials that we do not let anyone know about, is that not so Holly?"
Holly Reisch, the Logistics Adjutant, simply smiled in confirmation and went back to reviewing the figures in the documents that she had
brought with her.
Roderick took up the explanation. "There are several plans for the invasion, but the one that seems to have the most promise, judging by
the intelligence from the ship that the Smoke Jaguars captured, is this plan: Pegasus Seven." Seven jagged lines appeared on the map, driving from the
Periphery into the Lyran half of the hourglass shape of the Federated Commonwealth.
"Seven seperate invasions?" Tabitha asked. "We only have five frontline galaxies."
"We will be reorganising the Galaxies, and their component Clusters," Roderick told her calmly.
"You will be doing what!?" Farhad N'Buta asked explosively.
"You heard me, Farhad," said Roderick, matching gaze with the younger N'Buta. "There are going to be seven Galaxies, each
with their own invasion zone, and each Galaxy will have six Clusters, somewhat smaller than the current standard. There will also be quite a large number of
garrison clusters that will be subordinated to a Galaxy, to secure the worlds that you conquer. This is not subject to debate, unless someone would like to
challenge me on the matter." There was a slight enphasis on the word challenge and Farhad visibly considered taking up the gauntlet that saKhan threw
down, before lowering his gaze.
Roderick nodded and then tapped a control on his own keypad. The map was replaced by an abstract display of brightly coloured daggerstars
that to a trained eye displayed the organisation of a Cluster of warriors. Grouped into four groups were the ground trinaries, each with three bloodred
daggerstars representing Stars of BattleMechs. In each trinary one of the red daggerstars had a green daggerstar attacked, indicating that it was not a Star
but a Nova, with a Star of Elementals paired to the BattleMechs. The fifth trinary was symbolised by three blue-white daggerstars - aerospace
fighters.
"This is a fairly typical cluster in our touman," Roderick confirmed to the officers. "Obviously, there are exceptions.
However, every Cluster in the invasion will be reorganised to look like this:" Below the previous diagram another popped into existence. It took a moment
to determine the differences: every Trinary had dropped one of its component Stars, and two of the Battlemech trinaries had replaced their infantry with orange
daggerstars.
"What the freebirth are those orange things supposed to be?" Tabitha asked irritably. It wasn't a colour that most of them had
ever seen used for this sort of diagram, although there were several other standard colours representing troop types not generally found in frontline
units.
"That... is a secret," Virgilia said. "Although not one that the other Clans are totally unaware of. Back when Gerik
N'Buta was first planning this, he made several challenges to make sure we would have access to all of the most advanced technologies available to the
Clans. One of the projects we managed to absorb was something that the Smoke Jaguar scientist caste were running without the full knowledge of their Clan
Council."
Farhad whistled. The Smoke Jaguars were noted for their treatment of the civilian castes, and not in any good way. That sort of initiative
was something that could have triggered an internal bloodbath if it came to light. "What were they up to?"
Virgilia swept away the diagram of two Clusters and replaced it with a hologram of what looked somewhat like a spindly BattleMech. To one
side, a scale revealed it to stand not quite six metres tall, a little more than waist high on a real Mech however. "The scientists call this a
'ProtoMech'," she told them. "We prefer to call them Asps, however."
"What can they do?" asked Tabitha. "Other than get stood on by real 'Mechs?"
"They can handle recon and screening roles just as well as a light Mech can," Duke told her. "It frees up our
resources."
Roderick nodded. "They are as fast as a Grendel or a Mist Lynx, can take one hit from even a Gauss Rifle and keep fighting and they pack
a single medium laser, which lets them take on the Inner Sphere's smaller Mechs on at even odds. Organisationly, we are deploying them like battle armour -
so every Cluster will have fifty of them."
"You have more than two thousand of these things?" Jared asked in astonishment.
"More than that. We will need to replace casualties after all," Virgilia said.
"How many factories do you have on this Sinclair?" Tabitha said, brow furrowed. "That is a lot of production."
"Enough," Duke Togo told her. "We hope."
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Sheridan
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
14 February 3049
The conference tables in the command centre of Fort Truscott were two half-circles of wood cut from one of the more spectactular trees of the
planet's forests, which a botanist might have catagorised as somewhere between a redwood and an oak - on steroids. There was enough of a gap between the
two tables that someone could walk between them, and a holo-projector built into the ceiling could be used for display purposes. At the moment it was
displaying the Kerensky Cluster and the Pentagon Worlds, slowly spinning so that everyone sat at the tables - the two Khans, all five Adjutants, the Adder
Keeper, the Loremaster and eight of the ten Galaxy Commanders.
"I think we are all familiar with what is happening now," Virgilia Truscott told them. "However, and I do not apologise for
this, not all of you are aware of the background. For those of you whom this applies to, what you are about to learn is highly classified. It has never been
fully briefed to Clan Council, although many of them are aware of at least some part of it. The reason for this will - I hope - be clear." She very
carefully did not mention that Roderick N'Buta and Galaxy Commander Duke Togo, unlike every other officer in the room, were wearing siderarms, discreetly
hidden by the table. The Khans of Clan Star Adder had not made an actual record of the number of their subordinates that they had had to kill to keep their
secrets, but there were some suspiciously private trials of greivance if you studied the historical record carefully.
"If it explains why you decided to insult the ilKhan in front of the entire Grand Council, then it must be quite the story,"
Tabitha Paik, the youngest of the Galaxy Commanders, said bleakly. "I would truly prefer that we do not become the second Not-Named Clan,
quiaff?"
"Aff," Virgilia nodded. "The story begins shortly after the Dragoon Compromise when Khan Gerik N'Buta authorised his
saKhan to make plans and preparations for the invasion of the Inner Sphere, which they both expected to take place considerably sooner than it actually has.
Kershaw Lahiri had severe concerns about the viability of a military operation carried out more than a thousand light years from the nearest secure base, so in
3004 he ordered a small expedition to survey worlds nearer the Inner Sphere to use as a forward base."
The Kerensky cluster vanished, replaced by the blue and green orb of a life-bearing planet. "What the expedition found was Sinclair, an
eminiently colonisable world only about two hundred light years from the edge of what was once the Rim Worlds Republic and is now, it seems, part of this
Federated-Commonwealth that the Scavenger Lords of the Inner Sphere have pieced together."
"You broke a Grand Council directive!" Tabitha hissed. "Have you lost your mind?"
Roderick slammed one palm down on the wood of the table. It sounded so like a pistol shot that for a moment Virgilia thought that he or Duke
had decided to silence Tabitha permanently. "Firstly, Tabitha Paik," he said sharply, "This was a decision made before anyone in this room
except for myself was born. Secondly, the Grand Council decided to delay return to the Inner Sphere. Sinclair is located in the Periphery, which by definition
means that it is outside the Inner Sphere."
The younger woman glared at him defiantly but sat back into her chair. "I suppose."
"Thirdly," spat Roderick, "This is a war council of the Clan. Stop acting like a spoiled sibkid. You are better than
that."
Tabitha's back straightened. "My apologies," she said. Not to Roderick, but to the Khan.
Virgilia nodded. It wasn't exactly formal surkai, but it would suffice. "Sinclair, quite frankly, was so ideal that the survey team
stopped right there. Without going into details that only a scientist would care about, it is actually slightly more habitable than Sheridan is. Over the next
decade three large convoys of colonists and supplies were slipped away to it and the population is currently a little short of a million members of the
civilian castes, and several thousand warriors - quite a number of them from Sibkos founded there. One of the functions of Sinclair was as a repository for
Clan Star Adder - there is a very formidable genetic stockpile and information cache located there such that if the rest of the Clan were to drop dead suddenly
- or more to the point, be annihilated or absorbed, the Clan would live on."
"I did not know that," Jared Le Fabre said in surprise. As Defense Adjutant he had been aware of some aspects of what Virgilia was
telling them, but evidently not as complete a version as he had thought.
"Jared, you did not need to know that," Virgilia told him. "In fact, I probably should not tell you. But I can hardly keep
sending you out of the room everytime I touch on something sensitive." She tapped at a control on the keypad resting in front of her on the desk and the
hologram blinked into a map of the Inner Sphere, the Kerensky Cluster and the largely unexplored regions between them. "Obviously, the question that
remains is what do we do now. The other clans are committing themselves to a plan of invasion that, put mildly, is suicidal."
There was a moment of silence and then Tabitha smiled crookedly. "We are going to invade," she said simply.
Virgilia nodded. "Correct. The ilKhan believes that four clans can conquer the entire Inner Sphere. I am not sure if that is true, but
since he is bound and determined to try, we will be adding our strength to the invasion - our full strength, not the watered down armies that the other Clans
will send. And if one more clan can turn the tide then we will do so."
"Our full strength!?" asked Jared. "Khan Virgilia, if we do that then we will lose everything enclave we possess short of
Strana Mechty."
"Forgive me the hyperbole, Jared. We will take all our offensive forces, but you will retain sufficent warriors to hold onto at least a
core of our enclaves: Sheridan primarily, although the Dagda enclaves would be valuable. Most of the others are primary resource sites: useful but replaceable.
There is a reason that we have a large strategic reserve of raw materials that we do not let anyone know about, is that not so Holly?"
Holly Reisch, the Logistics Adjutant, simply smiled in confirmation and went back to reviewing the figures in the documents that she had
brought with her.
Roderick took up the explanation. "There are several plans for the invasion, but the one that seems to have the most promise, judging by
the intelligence from the ship that the Smoke Jaguars captured, is this plan: Pegasus Seven." Seven jagged lines appeared on the map, driving from the
Periphery into the Lyran half of the hourglass shape of the Federated Commonwealth.
"Seven seperate invasions?" Tabitha asked. "We only have five frontline galaxies."
"We will be reorganising the Galaxies, and their component Clusters," Roderick told her calmly.
"You will be doing what!?" Farhad N'Buta asked explosively.
"You heard me, Farhad," said Roderick, matching gaze with the younger N'Buta. "There are going to be seven Galaxies, each
with their own invasion zone, and each Galaxy will have six Clusters, somewhat smaller than the current standard. There will also be quite a large number of
garrison clusters that will be subordinated to a Galaxy, to secure the worlds that you conquer. This is not subject to debate, unless someone would like to
challenge me on the matter." There was a slight enphasis on the word challenge and Farhad visibly considered taking up the gauntlet that saKhan threw
down, before lowering his gaze.
Roderick nodded and then tapped a control on his own keypad. The map was replaced by an abstract display of brightly coloured daggerstars
that to a trained eye displayed the organisation of a Cluster of warriors. Grouped into four groups were the ground trinaries, each with three bloodred
daggerstars representing Stars of BattleMechs. In each trinary one of the red daggerstars had a green daggerstar attacked, indicating that it was not a Star
but a Nova, with a Star of Elementals paired to the BattleMechs. The fifth trinary was symbolised by three blue-white daggerstars - aerospace
fighters.
"This is a fairly typical cluster in our touman," Roderick confirmed to the officers. "Obviously, there are exceptions.
However, every Cluster in the invasion will be reorganised to look like this:" Below the previous diagram another popped into existence. It took a moment
to determine the differences: every Trinary had dropped one of its component Stars, and two of the Battlemech trinaries had replaced their infantry with orange
daggerstars.
"What the freebirth are those orange things supposed to be?" Tabitha asked irritably. It wasn't a colour that most of them had
ever seen used for this sort of diagram, although there were several other standard colours representing troop types not generally found in frontline
units.
"That... is a secret," Virgilia said. "Although not one that the other Clans are totally unaware of. Back when Gerik
N'Buta was first planning this, he made several challenges to make sure we would have access to all of the most advanced technologies available to the
Clans. One of the projects we managed to absorb was something that the Smoke Jaguar scientist caste were running without the full knowledge of their Clan
Council."
Farhad whistled. The Smoke Jaguars were noted for their treatment of the civilian castes, and not in any good way. That sort of initiative
was something that could have triggered an internal bloodbath if it came to light. "What were they up to?"
Virgilia swept away the diagram of two Clusters and replaced it with a hologram of what looked somewhat like a spindly BattleMech. To one
side, a scale revealed it to stand not quite six metres tall, a little more than waist high on a real Mech however. "The scientists call this a
'ProtoMech'," she told them. "We prefer to call them Asps, however."
"What can they do?" asked Tabitha. "Other than get stood on by real 'Mechs?"
"They can handle recon and screening roles just as well as a light Mech can," Duke told her. "It frees up our
resources."
Roderick nodded. "They are as fast as a Grendel or a Mist Lynx, can take one hit from even a Gauss Rifle and keep fighting and they pack
a single medium laser, which lets them take on the Inner Sphere's smaller Mechs on at even odds. Organisationly, we are deploying them like battle armour -
so every Cluster will have fifty of them."
"You have more than two thousand of these things?" Jared asked in astonishment.
"More than that. We will need to replace casualties after all," Virgilia said.
"How many factories do you have on this Sinclair?" Tabitha said, brow furrowed. "That is a lot of production."
"Enough," Duke Togo told her. "We hope."
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.