The Flame Lives On[]
“General, the last jumpship just arrived in system.” A navigation officer called out on the bridge of the Refuge.
“Solid copy, Lieutenant.” General Lee responded as he continued checking multiple monitors to ensure the flotilla was in a secure position and that any dropships that took damage on the escape route were intact.
Hidden in the field of dead jumpships near Terra, a number of jumpships were running on low power to be used to escape, should the Republic be unable to hold Terra. The dead jumpships had given their KF drives to power the Fortress Wall. It was a magnificent device creating the wall, General Lee had only visited the site once. While he was awed by it, the Blakist swords that adorned the facility gave him chills. Because it was of the most highly classified level, the Exarchs did not bother to redesign the cosmetics of the facility.
Now that the final dropship had arrived, they could begin moving to where the flotilla could bypass the Fortress Wall as it was still active. Taking formation the flotilla began the first leg of their journey to a “lost” system for additional time to prepare for the longer journeys.
“General Lee.” Came a voice over the workstation comms.
“Send it for General Lee.”
“Exarch Levin will be having a meeting with the Command Staff and Paladins in 30 minutes, General, over.”
“I will be present, over.”
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Printing off documents he thought would be relevant, the General grabbed the papers and pushed himself up off the chair. He moved across the bridge, returning salutes from staff on deck, and departed. Moving through the corridor, various hatches were open with a range of officers, Knights, and staff.
Some were consoling each other, some were in a rage about the clanner scum, and others were speculating on the next steps. Who were they now? Where do they go? The closest ally was the Federated Suns and with the Dawn Guards there, would they try to be absorbed?
Questions about the future ran through Jeremy’s mind as well. His siblings were still on Fortymile so he had no real attachment to Terra beyond that being the Republic’s old capital. His Victor, or what was left of his grandmother Belle Lee’s, Victor was in the mechbay. The final savage fighting as the Wolves tried to prevent their escape, after Devlin Stone surrendered the Republic, seemed to show they were to be exterminated.
He arrived at the Command room to find a dozen people outside the room, hatch wide open. Inside, the Exarch’s chair at the head of the table was still empty, Jeremy’s chair beside it.
“Officer on deck!” a voice shouted, all bodies going rigidly to attention.
“At ease!” General Lee called out, moving toward his seat. He placed his papers and notebook down on the table. The room remained quiet as all eyes were on him, everyone at parade rest. “Exarch Levin has a plan, this is not the end for us. We may have been run out of our nation’s homeworld but, this is not the end. Keep your resolve. Meeting begins in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Voices rang out around the room. He recognized a couple of Knights and he could see most of the Paladins that survived in the room as well, even Knight Kitsune Kurita was present.
Minutes ticked by as General Lee discussed various topics with those nearest him as he stood behind his seat. “Exarch on deck!” Everyone, including the General snapped to attention. What had surprised the General about this meeting is how recently Jonah Levin had been injured. As the Knight Command Lance ushered him aboard and they fought off pursuers, his Atlas III’s Rotary Autocannon ammo had been hit, there wasn’t much ammo left thankfully but, the neurohelmet shock is severe. A number of shards from Levin’s Ferroglass cockpit had hit him as well from an impact that nearly killed him.
While this was the original ending for the Battle of Terra, I am not going to retcon it with this story. However, Phantom will return.
Exarch Levin moved around the table, trying to hide his limp. Once he arrived to his chair, “At ease.” He announced and sat down, followed by the rest of the staff that had been assigned seats.
“This is a dark day ladies and gentlemen. Our Republic of the Sphere was formed by the one man that saved the Inner Sphere from the tyrannical rule of the Word of Blake. A wretched, murderous cult that slaughtered millions and more of every House and Clan, that our founder, Devlin Stone, saved them from. And for years, the selfish factions of the Inner Sphere have turned against him, against us.” He paused, looking around the room. He could see anger, sadness, resolve, and many more expressions on faces and in eyes.
“Devlin Stone was forced to surrender the Republic in the hope that the citizens would not continue to be massacred by Malvina Hazen or have their towns razed by Alaric Ward. I, like many of you wish to return to Terra and slaughter every last clanner. However, we do not have the vessels, armament, or personnel. Our last intel from Terra is that the Wolves and Falcons will battle each other for Terra.”
“So what comes next? We cannot retake our old home, their warships will wipe out our fleet. Our home is not one planet, the Republic does not die because we no longer hold Terra. We are still strong, we are still together. Our families are aboard these ships. We will find a new home.” He paused for a moment to see visual responses on faces. Those that were expressing sorrow showed a grimace of anger or held their eyes closed for a moment taking in the loss of Terra. Others that held their resolve nodded with hope. Regardless of their thoughts on his words, they were professional warriors and maintained their composure. They all knew there was no real chance to take Terra back without a massive loss of life on their part guaranteed.
“Exploration Expeditions have been taking place the last couple years.” Exarch Levin said as he pressed a button and a holographic image of the Inner Sphere came to life in the center of the room above the table. It gave off a blue glow. Blue emblems showed the various nations and solid lines showed the borders. All of the borders looked like someone dropped a bag of rice and traced the outline of it. Some nations had cut into others, others appeared to be collapsing.
Outside of the Inner Sphere there were small cubes that were numbered with text boxes hovering near them. They were in small clusters and spread out all around the Inner Sphere, except for the region between the Inner Sphere and the location of the Homeworld Clans.
“Our Expeditions have been to prepare for this eventuality. These cubes surrounding the Inner Sphere are a combination of lost worlds and newly discovered ones. Some of these worlds never having been touched by humans and some with colonies that haven’t interacted with the Inner Sphere in over one hundred years.”
“Our closest ally is the Federated Suns so we are plotting a course through their nation to settle in the Deep Periphery worlds we discovered.”
Some grumbling at that last statement came from a number of personnel around the room, they all knew by now that Julian Davion was supposed to help when Devlin Stone sent word. “Silence!” Levin shouted, giving everyone pause. “Harrison Davion was an honorable man and Julian has been as well from each encounter I had with him. Julian and the Davion Guards even helped shut down the Senate Rebellion. We have run the calculations, even if Julian got the message when Devlin Stone sent it, by the time troops would be mustered and sent, they wouldn’t have even arrived yet and would be massacred when they arrived.”
Jonah was sure that not even this information would change some of the more disgruntled minds looking to blame someone for the Republic’s fall. At the core though, everyone felt they could have done more, that one more action could have saved the Republic. Even he dwelt on what he could have done differently - a new strategy with the surprise attacks could have worked. What if they had sent both headhunting teams and the Old Guard after Malvina? If they could have wiped out the Jade Falcon command and take Falcon bondsmen to fight the Wolves… they will never know.
Jonah Levin waved his hands in the air to change the hologram hovering above the table. It zoomed in to show the flotilla’s current position and two lines coming away from it. “Right now we have two objectives: safely get to our new home and recover those we can who may have been outside the Fortress. I will be taking a large portion of our survivors from Stone’s Brigade and the Paladins. We will move anti-spinward, rimward, and finally spinward around Terra and into Federated Suns space to recover who we can, then rendezvous. For example, we already have a location of Paladin Ariana Zou to pick up. Having already been a bondsman and still fighting for the Republic, we need to get her back.
“The main flotilla will have our surviving civilians, Stone’s Defenders, Stone’s Fury, Hastati Sentinels, Triarii Protectors, Fidelis, and Republic Armed Forces. General Lee will be in command of the Flotilla and Paladin Sinclair will be his second in command and in charge of the Knights guarding the fleet.” Jonah paused once more as everyone took in the strategy he had set forth. For weeks before liftoff, lances and companies had been dropped off at the rally point from nearly all the Republic units. He met General Lee’s eyes and both gave a nod to each other.
“Refuge will lead the main flotilla, designated Homefleet. All personnel and armament that will be departing will begin transferring over within the hour to assigned vessels. In both fleets, units will be reorganized, prepare your commands for this. Decisions will be made in the next 12 hours. Once everything has been reorganized we will begin accepting transfer requests to review. Many, even those in this room may not like it but this is of necessity and for survival. We are now Nomad Republic.”
“Brief your men, dismissed.” Jonah Levin stated.
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Once the meeting had concluded, the entire fleet was alive with shuttles moving mechs and men from one vessel to another. Some were saying long farewells and some beating the war drums. Both fleets courses were marked to stop at specific worlds and see if survivors remained or if caches were still in place. This journey was going to be a long one for both fleets. It would be roughly two years before the Homefleet of Nomad Republic reached Abbeville; even longer until the War Party fleet rendezvoused.
Home Fleet watched on as War Party began vanishing into space as the KF drives tore holes in space itself. Once gone, Home Fleet began their jumps. General Lee watched from the bridge, ready to keep the flame of the Republic alive.
For additional context and background for Nomad Republic see: Nomad Republic Background
