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Chapter 24 - The Wind at my Back, Stars at my feet[]
Diamond Shark listening post, somewhere in the Clan Homeworlds...
The merchant clan didn't cut off all ties completely when they were thrown out, because knowing what the club that doesn't want you around is doing is a good idea, and they had the specs for these little HPG equipped automated satellites, and a damned good reason to keep an eye on what their former colleagues were up to.
It's what you do, when you aren't interested in finding out after the fact that they're not content with letting you run away after all.
(after all, the Clans massacred the Novacats in the name of abjurement...)
Despite everything else, not being hunted down later and murdered is better for business, than being hunted down and murdered.
The Diamond Sharks also have an 'in' with the Inner Sphere, and with the Clans that have moved to it. This provides a second path of information.
Interpreting information when making investments is a good idea. Noting the movement of the Kowloonese Lyrans into the deep periphery isn't hard when you're getting a copy of the same intel sheets the tiny Republic of the Sphere gets, or when you can pick up rumors from the Jade Falcons and the Wolves.
Imagine, then, the confluence of those two paths of information, plus a third because Lynn McKenna wasn't a moron when she saved the rest of Clan Snow Raven.
Diplomacy among the Inner Sphere Clans has become something of a necessity, because things got quite crazy last decade in the Homeworlds, and nobody really expects the fanatics left behind to keep their end up and stay out.
It's a few weeks behind, but in an analysis room manned by Watch Officers from Clan Diamond shark, Clan Wolf, Clan Ghost Bear, and Clan Snow Raven, a picture is assembled.
it begins with a training ship in the Kowloon system, one carrying the daughter of Elizabeth Ngo, a half-breed child whose father was a trueborn Jade Falcon.
That little ship makes a misjump, and breaks a few records on roughly where it arrives, because it's in the same region as the Homeworlds.
This is confirmed by imagery being broadcast to the stay-behinds in their fleets, as they prepare to hunt down this unfortunate, tiny ship...and why?
Because this unfortunate, tiny vessel that should never have been able to travel so very far has destroyed two battleships in a colony system and interrupted...something. The murder of the remnants of Clan Blood Spirit.
Only one of the Inner Sphere Clans even cares a little about the isolationist xenophobes, but one is enough to make a case for at least telling the Lyrans (and Jade Falcons) about what the intel is showing.
A deal can be made, and a market opened to Clan Diamond Shark, because the Diamond Sharks still have assets close enough to the Homeworlds to influence the outcome.
Nueva Castile...
The ancient prototype FTL machine came on, and Star Colonel Vitorrio Elam was awakened by the machine's noise.
The data buffer was primitive and he'd had a tech connect it to an interface with a better computer, mostly as a curio with some minor usefulness-the artifact had been found on the wreck of an SLDF exploration vessel from before the collapse of the Star League.
He walked over, and watched as someone's report began flowing in.
Page after page, with grainy images and direct language.
"It works!!" he announced, setting aside the necrosia, and then..."someone is using it..." as he read the report, anger sparked in his heart, and a sense of unfairness.
The conquest of the Imperio hadn't gone without some effort, and the Clan had lost so much in the betrayal by the other Clans..."The Khans will know what to do."