TEFAC Chpt 6

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Chapter 6 - Time Enough For A Cat -

- Three Stratagems of War -

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Aftermath of Liberation

Clandestine Bar
Dropship Borozoi
Weldry, Aurigan Coalition June 24th, 3024

"They all surrendered, and the militia are joining the Liberation Army," Kamea muttered, holding a mug of beer with at least four or five slugs of liquor in it of some local variety. "What the hell."

"Welcome to leading a populist revolt against overcentralization of the government?" I said lightly, making a sneaky little 'cut her off' gesture at the bartender. He nodded, before passing me an anomalous drink. One sniff revealed it to be a nice, tall glass of soda water with cherry juice and a bit of lime- totally non-alcoholic. "People are going to trust you to do a good job. That means signing up with you."

"I know, I just didn't- well, this is unexpected. Very unexpected."

I'd spent the last two days frantically digging around Kamea's command structures, or more accurately lack thereof. Her chief of staff was Alexander Madeira, the most overworked bastard I'd ever had the professional displeasure of meeting. Not to mark it against the man himself- generally a quite pleasant fellow- but rather in the institutional weakness he presented. He, personally, handled far too much. If Arano saw it, Madeira saw it and stamped it; which meant conversely, if he didn't want her to see it then it didn't get seen.

"If nothing else, it means we need more droppers," I said idly. "Do you know how much room is available on the Argo?"

"Yeah; not much. They've got repair teams going on it as often as Dr. Murad and Wyrm can keep them running, but that thing's the size of a WarShip and has issues out the ass, so…"

"Alright then," I muttered, pulling out a notepad to start writing.

"Are you taking notes?" Arano asked, a note of humor in her voice.

"Don't tell Emma this," I said faux-conspiratorially, "but I'm not as much of a hardass on contract negotiations if she's not in the room. I want you to win this little war, so I'm willing to slide you some help for cheap."

Arano rolled her eyes drunkenly. "You say that like I'm helpless."

"Not two hours ago, Madeira asked me if you could bum cargo space for your lance off me," I said straightfaced. "I think you need some help."

"I might need a little help," Arano muttered.

"So first we gotta figure out what the problems are. Problem one, more droppers. Problem two, more staff officers."

"More officers?"

"Madeira is good. He's also one guy, and you're gonna want a military attache for, quite literally, every planet you end up taking over. They get to raise new battalions, buy new gear, and find innovative ways to help you by sending supplies to the front. Then you want a supply officer and an HR officer to make sure you don't run out of bullets and dudes respectively. At about this point, you need a general fleet officer to keep your droppers and jumpers in coordination, as well as a general army officer to make sure you know how the redshirts downstairs are feeling."

"That's a lot of officers."

"You're running a whole-ass army. You need a lot of officers," I opined. "Since you're starting out with this whole thing, though? Have Madeira find you an attache for this planet, make Emma your chief of the army, and then pick where to hit next."

"Ah, that's easy. Panzyr. Definitely Panzyr."

"Because?"

"The place is a salvage yard bar none. Most of our 'mechs come from there- just dig them up, blast the crap out of 'em, and re-core the result and your're in. Getting onto the planet's a bit of a bear, but they always welcome merchants and a Leopard can probably fly through as long as they're careful about it."

"Well then, get Maderia to get me a briefing, and we'll look at what we'll need to do to take the place."

"It'd just take some dodgy transponders. We can whip that up in like… a week?"

"Then let's do it," I said, smiling gently as I finished my drink. "If you'll excuse me, I've got to put in my order form to catch the next jumper to Herotitus."

I wasn't joking about that, either. We'd gained two mechs and lost nine Battle Armors, so getting that fixed was a priority. Fortunately, our little Orphanage and One Stop Recruit Shop on Luxen was doing a booming business (mostly from the families impacted in the spy war over our LPPC factory) so getting more warm bodies wasn't a massive imposition. The suits, though, that would be a headache; as well as pilots. We weren't refitting our mechs for use with the DNI, but apparently Dear Old Mum had gotten her fingers into our orphanage- there were already a dozen kids drilled and tapped with upgrades, so if we wanted to rebuild some units into DNI mechs then pilots would be available.

Yeah, Mom was a bit of a monster sometimes, and I was requesting those kids get sent on general principle. Ideally we could have them learn all the non-mech control things first, then fit them out some metal. That was the dream. The reality, though, was far more annoying. Since Weldry didn't have an HPG station, we'd need to manually fly back to Herotitus, phone home the orders, and then wait for shit to show up.

That was, until Markham showed up in my quarters with a wry smile and a bottle of tequila. "Hey, Nyan," she said, hand tapping idly on the doorway. "Got a question for ya."

"What is it, Wyrm?"

"You mentioned getting Capellan ASFs. What kind of ASFs, exactly, are you looking at, and what's our in-out run cost?"

"I'll admit, most of the run cost has been being handled by Lucifer and Captain Mitchel, so I don't have the numbers off the top of my head. Why are you asking?"

"Well, we were un-shitting the Argo, since it's kind of got a few hundred years of damage to restore, and we dug up some Small Craft bays. Drop shuttles and the like. Was wondering, professionally, if you'd like to help me get some birds for those bays."

"Do you have cash in hand?"

"I have the honor of the Magistracy and Aurigian peoples, and more importantly a sweet-ass dropship I'm willing to put up for collateral."

"Okay," I said, "but that's not cash in hand and I'm kind of fucking broke at the moment."

Wyrm deflated like a balloon. "Oh."

"That said, as a show of faith would you mind if I ran my two Stukas off the Argo?" I said, stroking my chin. "It'll get your aerotech crews practiced, and more importantly means we can loft more bombs from orbit."

"And if Argo gets called off to do independent operations?" Wyrm asked, looking at me. "Half the reason I'm here is because Kamea trusts me."

"Then I re-base the Stukas to my ASF carrier, and its c'est la vie to that. Odds are on a fair number of missions they'll rather be ground-based anyway: fire support is our greatest asset."

"That works, and yeah- your air lance saved me a lot of grief. Ain't nothing like walking past the smoldering remains of SRM Carriers that wanted to get frisky popping out from behind buildings."

"Then I think we're done here."

---

Next Stage of the Campaign

Fort Victory
Weldry
July 9th, 3024

Shipping times, I grumbled to myself, were ludicrous. A massive, massive game of "pass the buck" was ongoing as my new equipment came soaring in, while Arano just got to wave her magic personality stick around and have new troopers fall from the sky like manna from heaven- or more accurately, militia from the barracks. Fortunately, after the debacle that was attacking the Icebox, sufficient local trucks had been procured to move the troops to the jump-off points existed, as well as a bare-bones field hospital section that would be bolstered by my own MASH trucks.

Field supply could generously be referred to as "a problem", but campaign planning for the next portion of this debacle wasn't: everyone who wasn't getting packed into the tins full of squishy foot-based death was instead getting packed into a hastily-built infantry bay on my Mule I was charging premiums for. There'd be three battalions of infantry, my mixed battalion, and a smattering of captured armor for the next assault.

With that, we were off, and I was already regretting everything as I quickly learned how much I did not like sharing my dropper with a bunch of Weldry country bumpkins. Their language was crude and unrefined, their officers boorish, and worst of all not a man among them had brought adequate personal health supplies, instead bringing ten thousand varieties of insect repellent that would give them cancer in a matter of years and likely everyone else to use that section of the bays for the life of the dropship. I could feel the resale value draining out of my ship.

Still, in the time it took to get from point A to point B, we solidified a lot of things. Arano's command staff got its first few adjuncts, mostly, but the added secretarial help was a massive boon to Madeira and I'd take what I could get at the moment. More importantly, it was also time for the Argo to get to work preparing to conduct a special operations mission.

The ground-side status on Panzyr was a mess. Instead of doing the sensible thing, the former Marquis Decimir had flipped his coat clean over on the Directorate, and the Decimir Regulars were fighting tooth and nail with Espinosa troops all over the planet for no discernible reason- and the Espinosa troops, with superior weight of metal and armor, were winning.

Enter us. The plan was threefold: first, sneak our transports in through the debris field under false flags of the Canopians, and then unload guns blazing into the starport. While field engineers frantically fortified the position to receive the better part of an organized regimental assault by the Espinosas (doable in my eyes because we would be working in a highly urban area against an enemy we outweighed notably) then the second fold would trigger: the Argo and Markham's Marauders would shut down the backup Flight Control Center in charge of keeping droppers coming through the planetary debris field. Fold three would then be to secure the HPG station, which would finally allow me to get in touch with people to supply additional ASFs, BA, and other mechanical needs we had. If nothing else; more dropships.

Everything related to getting us groundside went exactly according to plan- which, in retrospect, should have been a warning that it was all about to go tits up very, very fast.

---

Liberation of Panzyr: Phase One

Spaceport - Panzyr
Aurigan Coalition
July 25th, 3024

"How the fuck are we doing this," Mersies asked me as we walked out of the Mule, my Catapult and her Centurion walking side by side. "By any rights, spaceport security should have challenged us by now."

Mule Cargo DropShip, landed

"The place was guarded by mercs," I replied, scanning my systems as our CV put a pair of conventional birds in the air for top cover. "Arano, what's the infantry thinking right now?"

"We made contact with the mercenaries guarding this place, and it turns out that we made a critical assumption that is, well, wrong," Arano said with a grimace. "There is no impending counter-attack, and as a matter of fact the entirety of the defending regiment is clustered around the barracks area of the First and Second Decimis Regulars. If we don't haul ass, it'll be a slaughter!"

I sighed. "And the mercs?"

"Bought them off. Irukandji Company is their name, and they're in arrears six month's pay from the Directorate. I paid it off and they get to keep what they kill until the Directorate is gone."

"Good plan," I said, without an ounce of sarcasm, because it actually was a fairly good plan. "What's their average weight?"

"Thirty five tons. Lots of Panthers, actually, sending you comms now."

As I got the comms codes and my brain and mech automatically sorted them to where they needed to be, I blinked. "Panther… 8-Z? What the hell?"

"It's a shittier Panther, we have a ton of 'em around here," Arano shrugged. "Emma, you've seen 'em before, right?"

Radio silence.

"Emma?" Kamea asked. Checking my BluFor tracker, I saw Emma's mech right next to Arano. No- make that Lucifer's mech.

"Come in, Lucifer, how copy," I asked, giving her the hint to maybe respond.

"Copy, four-by-four. Sorry, Kamea, didn't hear you. The infantry are asking for joyrides."

Read: use my fucking callsign.

"Anyway, new plan," I groused. "Average max speed on our formation is sixty-eight KPH or so. Arano, what's the distance until we hit their backline?"

"They're about forty klicks out."

"Good," I said, grinning. "That means we have time to get the CV down. Everyone else, get ready for road march."

It took a little time to shake my people out for road march, and then we started moving. This time, Arano and Lucifer would be providing backup to the infantry, while the Irukandji fell in with us. Sure enough, their mechs were… old. Just really old and shitty. Still, they weren't bad pilots, and when we got to what I'd mentally designated as the jump-off point, their captain flicked on the comms.

"Major Gallowglass, orders?" she asked, her voice a clear contralto.

"Skirmishing tactics at the moment," I said, watching my APC teams. "Do any of you have infernos loaded?"

"Nah, they tend to throw pilots who punch out who use that into the first batch of inferno gel they can," the captain said.

"Well then, stick to nailing tanks then."

"Wilco. On your mark, or-"

"Just get to it for now, and call out if you see something big," I chuckled. "You're in light mechs, I'm in a heavy. If you think you can't take it, don't get killed here."

That earned a snort from the captain. "You're a damn sight better than the Directorate, that's for sure. They wanted us to fight to the last."

"So they didn't need to pay you, yes," I replied. "Go forth and skirmish, Panthers."

"Hah! You can call me Medusa, then."

"Then I'm Major Nyan, now git!"

Panther Light 'Mech

With that, the Panthers were off. Unlike before, these were mostly infantry brigades, with the armor all focused up somewhere else. That left me with nothing to do as a Mechwarrior, which was honestly pretty good since I had my hands full as an officer. Arano's infantry were either jumping at the bit (the new ones) or more than a little cautious about diving headfirst into battle again (the ones from before the Icebox) and my armor compliment was having some mild difficulties getting everyone moving the correct direction. This was not helped by the fact the fucking Directorate bastards would not hold still, and kept falling back!

"Nyan, they're stringing us out," Mersies warned. "I'm starting to think its a trap."

"It's not a trap, or our ASF would have bombed the piss out of them by now," I replied, frantically drawing in new marching orders on my tablet. "They're falling back to somewhere, but we don't have the assets to figure out where-"

"Major, this is Lieutenant Flatfoot," a voice broke into the command line, clearly holding down panic. "Grid square Golf-32, we've got a massive concentration of enemy armor and mechs! Two, three Behemoths, some Riflemen, and I think I saw-"

The line cut off, but before it did I heard a particularly painfully familiar whisper whip-crack. Autocannon shells, they screamed as they flew past someone, but a gauss rifle shot? That was the whispering doom.

"All hands, form up into battle positions and brace!" I snapped. "We've got incoming from Golf-32!"

"That's the direction of the HPG compound, for the love of God watch your shots!" Mersies yelled

Stylus forgotten, I sent a blast of radio telepathy to Mersies. Be safe, I thought, as I spun to the direction of the inbound. Then the spotting data came in. Two Behemoths, a Riflemen, a Blackjack, a- the fuck? A Mercury? Nobody used Mercurys except the-

-the Word of Blake. Oh no. Oh no no no no. I'd rather it were Clanners. Not the phone company. I'd forgotten Comstar was still around, oh fucking hell we were screwed! Struggling to get my breath under control, I just got a working lock on one of the Behemoths, and dumped both racks on it in a high parabolic flight.

Rifleman Heavy 'Mech

"Royal Guard Lance, fucking step on it!" I snapped, watching the patter of LRM fire do precisely fuck and all to the hundred-tonner coming in. Forcing a breath into my lungs, I changed targets to the fat Rifleman, dumping my missiles at it in a much more controlled spam. I needed line of sight to get my LPPC and Artemis systems into play, damn it all, and the fight was-

-well, we were collapsing like a cheap rug. Two tanks with double AC/20 were enough of a fear, and then there was the Rifleman and Mercury with them, and where was that Gauss Rifle floating around at? Cussing, I just looked around for a high point, finally jetting up to a low hill in a central park.

The lines were folding back, but as I got eyes on them, it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Infantry and Battle Armor were dismounting and hiding in the buildings, most of the Panthers from the Irukandji had gotten out clean, and our armor was dueling their armor from outside best range on their monstrously big autocannons. They'd caught us in the flank all right, but they hadn't caught us out in march columns. We could recover from this.

Then I felt my mech tip over dangerously as a Gauss round slammed into the leg and a patter of LRM fire hit me. Cussing, I just zeroed down the bearing, grinning as I started developing a lock. LRM fire and a Gauss Rifle? That was a Royal Highlander. I could handle a Royal Highlander. Slamming my jumpjets to full open, I got off the hill in a damn hurry, firing mid-air to make the best use of my Artemis lock before getting under the building line again.

"Fucking Highlander," I snapped, looking at my lancemates. "Howler, Mercies, hit their flank like a fucking brick. Sokoloy, on me- we go a-reaving."

"Hah!" the burly Tikhonovite laughed, his Lao Hu coming up after me with a lope. "You still trust me for big game hunting?"

"Of course," I replied. "Just like we would an Annihilator, yes?"

"Naturally."

Coming up to a cross-street we knew the Highlander had to be able to see down, we both breathed, mentally synching up for the countdown. Three, two, one: let's jam.

Highlander Assault 'Mech

Coming up from behind the building like a demented pop-tart, I dumped missiles and LPPC quickly into the Highlander, who seemed almost confused for us to be where we were. Turning, his Gauss Rifle missed by a mile even if his LRM battery didn't. Still, I had his attention, and then I was jumping again like a jackrabbit. He was massively target-fixating on me, which earned a laugh. Don't do that, or else you'd learn what this idiot was about to.

See, a Highlander? They were slow. Sure, jump good, but in a flat out road race they couldn't dance for shit. A Lao Hu could walk as fast as a Highlander could dead sprint, and Sokoloy was sprinting for the range to put his own LB-X/20 to work. As another Gauss slug flew behind me, Sokoloy was getting in as close as he dared- which was pretty damn close. About the time the Highlander started waking up to the fact he was gonna be face-first with an eight inch gun barrel loaded with 'fuck you', I stopped bounding and put an alpha strike into his ass.

Two medium lasers, thirty LRMs, and a blast from my LPPC didn't put his ass on the floor- just staggered him. Then Sokoloy put his class-twenty gun to work. Blinking the concussive burst out of my eyes, I grinned like a timber wolf as the Highlander went down like a ton of bricks. Jetting off the building I was on since it wasn't feeling very sturdy, I walked down the roadway, putting more lasers into this little overfed Wobbie shit as Sokoloy loaded shotshell. Switching over to open comms, I grinned at the Assault mech we were preparing to kill.

"Any last words, you little shit?" I asked dramatically.

The response? Pilot ejection.

"Boys, not to interrupt the manly bonding session, but we're gonna need some backup," Howler called, the faint crackle of interference from her PPC fire over the radio subtly audible. "The infantry have in fact figured out how to rally and I'm getting intermittent bugmech signatures in the back field- looks like this got the Directorate moving!"

"Any good fallback locations we can put to?" I asked, giving the enemy Rifleman more loving LRMs in exchange for having to dodge an LB-X shot and eat a Large Pulse Laser hit.

"Not really," Howler growled. "The infantry are holding, but they're getting worn out fast."

"We need air support, then," I grumbled. "Give me a minute."

Dodging around another pair of autocannon shots, I queued up the air comms channel. "Come in, Air lance. Y'all busy up there?"

"Little bit," Captain Mitchel's voice came in, tense. "Turns out they had air cover this time."

"How many?"

"We've got eight light attackers up here, and they're just good enough to make us dump hardpoints," Mitchel said, grunting softly as he started pulling g's. "How badly do you need air support?"

"Pretty bad."

"I'll have CF Flight 2 do some strafing on them once we clean up this damn furball-"

Blackjack Medium 'Mech

"Don't do something risky," I said, taking the time to slap the Blackjack in the enemy lines a good one that finally put it on its ass. "We're not in a good spot, but we can hold."

"Wilco- scratch one!"

With that, I put my full focus back into the fight. The Blackjack was down and was reading reactor shutdown, for some reason, so that was probably a surrender. The Rifleman was getting beat to shit, and watching our Po's Gauss slugs kick it in the teeth repeatedly meant it wasn't much of a threat. The issue was those Devastators-

"Sorry, we're late!" Gazer yelled, before perforating the side of a Devastator hard enough to blow out its ammo rack. That's when I started laughing- the Royal Guard had finally gotten here! God, this battle was a clusterfuck- flank-on-counterflank-on-flank action going down, walking the battle line even further away from me as I tried to keep playing the LRM game. With half their mechs shot out, the Comstar- or what I presumed to be Comstar- mechs and vehicles were falling back in bad order, and the infantry they'd been supporting started to die in droves as my battle armor finally got a chance to breathe, re-orient, and claw the everliving fuck out of them.

Hell, even the massing bugmechs in the distance didn't get into the fray- they knew a lost cause when they saw one.

---

Liberation of Panzyr: Phase Three

Wilds - Panzyr
Aurigan Coalition
August 4th, 3024

"So, Kamea, I gotta ask," Lucifer chattered, the absolute boredom of this road march starting to get to her, "are all the planets you have just godforsaken iceballs?"

"Coromidir has two excellently warm planets," Arano said, stiff, "and Heliat and Itrom are both nearly tropical."

"Can we go to one of them next?"

"I'll think about it."

Checking my scanners, I growled. We'd won the air battle, barely, with two kills before the enemy conventional fighters bailed out to go home. We'd had to do the same, though, and while the Directorate forces had turned their air assets around first we'd had plenty of organic flak assets to make attacking the column directly impossible. So now there were a pair of light attackers flitting around the edge of my vision, just… being annoying.

"Captain Medusa," I called out in the general comms. "This is Major Nyan. Can we get recon assets a bit further forwards?"

"Recon's about as far forward as I'm comfortable putting it," she replied. "What do you need?"

"We're getting close to where recon imagery from the orbital Leopards put the remains of the Directorate forces," I replied. "They're refusing surrender, and I think they're gonna try and hole up in the ruins of this old factory on Map 32, square Juliet-9.

As Medusa got the map I had mentioned, I heard a distinct hemming and hawing. "That'd be the place, yeah. Are those other mercs you mentioned, the Marauders- are they planned to show?"

"They're still raiding orbital traffic control stations," I replied, growling. "It's been nearly two weeks, there's an HPG station here… the Directorate should be getting on this. Something is up, and I don't like it."

"Okay, then what about that weird half-company we faced? Hell, you captured an assault mech out of it! What was with that shit then?"

"That was a-" Comstar level II asset group "-bunch of mercenaries probably paid to protect something like you were. They're dead and we're not, alright?"

"It's still fishy. That's way better metal than my people are prepared to run into, and I've already lost a few officers and mechs to it."

"And we're paying restitution and repairing and upgrading those mechs. I'm sorry for your losses, but we're mercenaries," and left unspoken was the 'it happens.'

"I know, I know," Medusa said, sighing. "Right- Irukandji, clear comms. We're close enough we might run into picket troops. Inferno mechs, you're on point."

"All forces, clear comms," I said, shaking out from my place in the road march. "Form up into assault columns- I'm getting that itchy feeling."

As the column shook itself out, a honey-warm voice came in over the radio. "Major, this is Hellsinger flight standing ready for CAS."

"Wilco, we're moving in."

It didn't take long to find the abandoned factory- and sure enough, they were in fact parked up all around the damn thing in more improvised trench lines. This hadn't saved them on Weldry-

-but as a class five autocannon round flew past my cockpit, I had to stop and blink. Field guns? They had field guns? Another round clipped my knee, and I had to resist the urge to blindly return fire.

"All units, advance to assault!" I snapped, walking backwards and starting to fire on the Battlemechs I saw pouring out of a pair of narrow revetments. Stingers, Locusts, a few Wasps- nothing of consequence. A pair of Commandos, though, those got special attention, as well as the Assassins and Clints that tried to make a break for it. They even had an Ostwar and a Quickdraw try to lead the charge.

Lao Hu Heavy 'Mech

Into the guns of a Catapult, a Lao Hu, a Vindicator, and a Centurion. Thirty-two mechs versus four. It should have been a slaughter.

Then, behind us, the Canopian Royal Guard rolled up, PPCs and autocannons blazing. A Banshee alone was enough to make some of their mechs stumble; and the Stalker behind it was more threatening still. The Crusader and Shadow Hawk after that were just dressing on top, as the Charge of the Light Battalion broke like water. Pilots were ejecting, mechs were dying to core hits, and one Wasp faceplanted and held its hands up in surrender.

Wasp Light 'Mech

The two heavies must have been leadership, as their resolve was ironclad. However cute that might be, though, faith and courage didn't stop LRM salvos from sandblasting a mech to pieces, or a class-twenty autocannon shell from ripping legs out of sockets entire. Gazer, the captain of the Royal Guard lance, even got the dignity of punching one's head clean off- even if the mech was mostly dead from its obviously jammed gyro.

When the Battlemechs went down, though, our battle armor and infantry went swarming in again- and just like before, it was still a murderous slaughter. This time, though, it was murderous slaughter aided and abetted by a half-dozen Panthers with Inferno missiles, wiping platoons of men off the map in blazing gouts of flame. In panic, the infantry fled into the industrial complex. Being a gentlemen, I asked for surrender.

No response.

An hour later, as we salvaged the fallen mechs, I asked again.

No response.

At sundown, I asked for the third and last time. They had to be freezing in there- there wasn't enough thermal signatures in there to actually be a chance in hell of them surviving. Then again, they hadn't surrendered, so I wasn't left with many good options. Finally, I had to shrug and admit I didn't want to deal with this.

"This is Major Gallowglass to airwing," I finally said, once everyone had cleared the perimeter of the factory. "Load incendiary munitions."

"Are you sure?" Mitchel asked, his voice confused.

"They haven't surrendered yet," I replied, taking the time to shake out my leg as I stared at the factory complex. "In light of that, I've decided to make sure we leave a clean slate for the Lady Arano's military administration of this planet."

"Seems very… Capellan… of you, sir."

"Welcome to war in the Periphery, Mitchel. If you're lucky, nobody brought any marshmallows."

---

Picking up the Pieces

Panzyr, Aurigan Coalition
August 8th, 3024

There was, I decided, a special place in hell for every government of Panzyr. This starport was a barely-functional mess, and the Argo had literally been shipping down mech scale shovels so we could get all the shit that was infesting it off the runways and landing pads. Fortunately, aside from being scared witless of our very existence, the HPG compound and the local Comstar people weren't causing any shit, and it was very easy for us to get in touch with Canopus to figure out the status of our orders and general diplomatic news.

On the ground, meanwhile, everyone with shoulder tabs was up to their eyeballs in paperwork. The administration of this planet had been a shitshow since Marquis Decimis was required to do things on Coromidir in order to both prove his loyalty as well as to be kept from instantly throwing a coup. He was still off-world as a matter of complicating fact, and we needed him back if at all possible- but stuck as he was in the enemy stronghold, getting him out was practically impossible.

My main job was the distribution of salvage, though, and the handling of pay. Keeping on the Irukandji Company was decided to be the first step- and to this end, we paid them for cash in arrears for their service with the Directorate, on top of a modest payout for their battle contributions. More importantly, though, they were awarded two Wasps and a Locust from the salvaged mechs in addition to four Stingers they'd killed in the urban fighting, as well as having all their mechs repaired aboard the Argo. Yang, the Argo's chief mechanic, wasn't terribly happy at this- but considering that he could use his aerotechs as mechtechs for this work to get 'em cross-trained it wasn't the worst that could happen.

LRM Carrier

What armor salvage we'd gathered (several Pikes, Vedettes, and LRM carriers) went towards rebuilding local units, since once again we couldn't bring the damn things with us.

Meanwhile, for the rest of the mechs? Kamea finally had the better part of a company, with two captured Clints, an Assassin, and six Majesty Metals-built Locusts. I had three Wasps, and the Royal Highlander we'd bagged. Meanwhile, every other piece of mech scrap plus two Stingers went straight to Wyrm as her payment- and when we weren't looking, she was having Sumire in her Leopard come down to take as much junk as she could back up to the Argo.

Wait. I had that Royal Highlander now. Oh hell- I'd have to get even more pilots then, and I'd definitely need to get that DNI'd, meaning I'd have to teach someone to drive an Assault mech from stations zero, and one full of valuable LosTech too. Oh hell. And I thought teaching Lucifer how to handle her machine had been hard, no, this was going to be a nightmare!

---

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