Warship Blue Aerie,

Nadir Jump Point, Einstein,

Deep Periphery,

2^nd March 3068

 

The crew of the Inner Sphere jumpships had made a mistake about the warship class of the new arrivals. The two Jade Falcon Warships were actually the Black Lion Class battlecruisers Blue Aerie and White Aerie. An understandable mistake, considering that the identification programs of the jumpships were already 5 centuries old and plagued with countless system failures over their lifespan.

The demise of the Inner Sphere’s warships to the ravages of the Succession Wars had caused the warship identification programs to be relegated to the status of a non-essential system. Even with the resurgence of technology and resumed production of warships in the Inner Sphere, many vessels had yet to overhaul their ship identification systems.

To the commander of the Blue Aerie, Star Commodore Valten Folkner, however, such an error by the ship crew would have seen the poor offender brought to the Star Commodore for a neural whip lashing. An extremely efficient and talented officer, even by Jade Falcon standards, he had progressed to the command of a warship after rising through the aerospace ranks.

Thin, frail-looking, and possessed of large eyes and an out-of proportion head like all clan aerospace pilots, he nevertheless had a surprising body strength that had even won him a stalemate with an Elemental in a Circle of Equals during a memorable contest.

He had a reputation among the crew for being ill-tempered, and quick with punishments for the slightest infringement. The crew made sure that they perform to his exacting standards, especially when he was angry.

Right now, Star Commodore Valten Folkner was very angry.

“These filthy freebirths cannot be here! This is an outrage! Helmsman, bring us closer to those jumpships! I want a firing solution as soon as possible on the jumpships with furled sails. They cannot be allowed to escape this system! Disable them or destroy them!” He roared at his bridge crew.

“Star Commodore, we are receiving a transmission from one of the jumpships. They claim to be peaceful Inner Sphere merchants and request to speak with you.” The communications officer reported.

Valten snorted, “Do they take me for a fool? I know they are trying to get more time for their jump. An admirable effort, but one wasted on me. Ignore the hail, and tear them apart like the stravag dogs they are!”

Galaxy Commander Lizabet Danforth of Rho Galaxy was much calmer than her irate colleague. “Any sign of hostile enemies?” she asked the tech manning the holotank.

“Neg, Galaxy Commander. The jumpships are not showing any hostile intentions. They do not have any dropships with them. The dropships are probably all insystem. Four of the jumpships have their jumpsails furled and seem ready to jump. We have detected energy readings from them matching the profile of a ship going through a pre-jump check. The Star Commodore must be worried about their escape.”

Lizabet mused over the information she had so far. Inner Sphere jumpships so far away from their homes. The houses and the Star League would not have sent such a large force without warship protection into the Periphery, so they must be from somewhere or someone else. Well, this certainly confirms Khan Pryde’s assertion of this system’s importance. Why else would these ships be here, with their dropships in system? This should be interesting.

The Jade Falcon fleet, carrying the entire Rho Galaxy, had made their way from the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone on the orders of Khan Marthe Pryde to this particular system on the edge of nowhere. Lizabet recalled her suspicion on being sent on a wild-goose chase when Khan Pryde informed her of a Star League major research base being situated in this system and her intention to send the entire Rho Galaxy to scour the world for artifacts and research data.

The information for the base was discovered by a tech during a routine check of their data systems on Ironhold. The data was originally from a Brian cache information dump that had been claimed by the Falcons after the campaign to recover the Pentagon worlds. It seemed the information contained extremely sensitive information and was hidden deeply within the layers of data and would reveal itself only after a certain period of time, in this case almost 300 years after the fall of the first Star League.

The tech who discovered the information immediately informed his superiors, who then informed their own superiors and so on until the news reached the warriors of the clan. The scientists investigating the data were quickly convinced of its veracity and its Star League origins.

Containing incomplete technical data and advanced mathematical methods never seen before, even by the clan scientists, Khan Pryde was determined that her clan benefit from this unexpected windfall by uncovering the rest of the research data.

Rho Galaxy was sent as an insurance, in the event of hostile forces present on the world. Likewise, the warships were sent as protection. Lizabet was convinced, however, that this was the Falcon Command’s way of demonstrating its silent disapproval of her and would be watching for any mistakes that could be construed as a reason to remove her from command.

Her encouragement of independent-minded thinking and non-standard tactics among the Galaxy had offended many senior officers within the extremely conservative and rigid Jade Falcons. She attributed their disdain to sheer jealousy, for her troops had often performed beyond their abilities and defeated supposedly superior units by use of innovative tactics.

Lizabet had no desire to rise to the Khanship, however, and only wished to continue leading her warriors in battle. Khan Pryde had nonetheless expressed her dislike for Lizabet, and this journey had seemed like a no-win situation. Succeed, and she will probably be ‘persuaded’ to retire from active duty with glory, for having brought the clan a technological advantage over the other clans. Fail, and be relegated to the ranks of the solahma. No-win indeed.

The Falcons had emerged from the jump surprised to find other vessels at the jumppoint. Though a bit shocked, Star Commodore Valten Folkner had been quick to order the fleets’ two warships after the jumpships to prevent any possible escape from the system.

Right now, the situation was looking grim for the spheroids. Of their ten jumpships, six were in no position to even consider escape. They could not cut their sails and jump out of the system in time, not with the warships closing quickly. The other four jumpships, one Merchant, two Invaders, and one Star Lord, were desperately trying to complete their jump preparations before they came within the warships’ naval weapons range.

It was an agonizing minute for both sides, as the Falcons tried to get close enough for their weapons to fire, and the Inner Sphere jumpship crews tried to initiate the drive program for the jump.

“Star Commodore! The Star Lord is within our weapons range!”

Valten slammed one fist onto his command crouch. “Order all front gunners to fire at will! I want that Star Lord before it jumps!”

Upon his orders, the front gunners of the Black Lion immediately fired their Shark and Barracuda missile systems. The longest ranging weapons of the warship, each system could launch a massive missile of 30 tons or more capable of tearing the largest armoured dropship to shreds. A lightly armoured jumpship would stand little chance against such weapons. The missiles burst from their launch tubes in a silent flash of light, propelled by long tongues of flame as they made their way to the hapless jumpships. Ever once in a while, a missile would adjust its course slightly, controlled by the warships’ gunners.

A tech called out, “Missiles making final course corrections! Impact in 5 seconds. 4, 3, 2, 1, what in the name of Kerensky...”

A brilliant flare flashed in the view screen, an expanding globe of light first encompassing the deadly missiles, and then shrinking back to a pinpoint of light, which winked out soon after, leaving no trace of the weapons that were to be its doom.

Valten shouted to his crew, “They have jumped! Forget about them! Get the other ships!”

But no sooner had he uttered the command when the other three jumpships suddenly exploded into bright flashes of light as well, tearing holes in the fabric of space-time, leaving only empty space behind for the Falcons. The jumpships had succeeded in escaping the Falcon warships.

Valten was livid with barely suppressed rage. “By the Founder, we could have had them. Just a few more seconds and they would be nothing but dust amongst the stars,” he said to Lizabet, as he stalked from his command chair to the holotank where Lizabet was strapped into a observation chair. The bridge was not located on the gravdeck, and since humanity had not discovered artificial gravity yet, they just had to make do with floating around in space.

“What about the other ships?” she asked.

“I will claim them as isorla. We are now sending marines aboard their ships. They should meet with little resistance. Their captains will still be commanding their own ships, but will ultimately take their orders from me. You will be leaving in the dropships soon, quiaff?”

“Neg,” she replied, surprising Valten. “I want to find out about what and where the dropships with the jumpships are before I decide on our next course of action. We will need to interrogate the jumpship crews, though I believe it will not take much for our Elementals to pry the necessary information out of them.”

“With the jumpships probably on their way back to the Inner Sphere, the corrupt Houses will know of our operation soon. We have no time to waste. Your Galaxy must set off for the Star League research base now, and strip it bare before the Houses know of this, if they have not sent a fleet here already.”

“Your concerns are well-founded, yet I feel we must find out more about the occupants of the Inner Sphere dropships before we make a move.”

“Then I suggest that the White Aerie will remain at the jumppoint to cover the jumpships, as well as interrogate the Inner Sphere crews, while the Blue Aerie escorts your Galaxy in system. The results of the interrogation can be sent to you quickly. This way, we will not waste precious time and find out more about any hostile forces on planet.”

“Bargained well and done. Your plan has merit, and I have a feeling we might need the might of your warship before long. “ Lizabet agreed. “I shall now prepare for our system transit aboard the Sword of Buhallin.”

With that, Lizabet Danforth floated out of the bridge of the Blue Aerie, leaving Valten Folkner to wonder what dangers and opportunities could be waiting for them at their destination.

 

Captain Helene Rice took a deep breath. They had just skirted along the edge of disaster and had barely escaped intact. She remembered the bitter taste of bile in her mouth when the missile attack was reported. They had jumped literally at the last second. Another second and they would have been dead. In fact, the sour tang of fear was still there, rolling around in her mouth. She tried to put the fear aside. There was still a job to do.

“All stations, report.” Her voice trembled a bit, but she did take pride in the fact that she did not break down.

“All systems functional!”

“No bogeys detected. Coast is clear at the jump point.” The entire bridge crew visibly relaxed at that piece of news.

The comms officer reported, “Captains of the Fisher, Kinsella and Tayo reporting in. The captain of the Tayo says his drive coils took a bit of damage in that last jump. That ain’t repairable in the field, so he says he’s staying put regardless of what happens next.”

Damn, but we should consider ourselves lucky that we’re alive at all. “Tell Captain Wu that his message is received and understood. Quentin, get the engineering section to start charging from the power plants.”

In system at a pirate point, there were often space objects capable of punching holes in the jump sails. Their present location also made it apparent that any deployment of the sails was foolish. To charge their jump drives, they would have to resort to using the jumpship’s fusion reactor to supply the energy. While this method of charging was normally employed by skilled crews to cut down on charge time, doing it too quickly also carried the risk of damage to the drive systems. Ships employing their fusion reactors to charge their drives do so at a rate comparable to using jump sail, so as to avoid unnecessary damage to their jump systems.

The pirate point was situated just inside a system asteroid belt between the orbits of the second and third planets. The second planet was the habitable world with Star League bases. By Helene’s reckoning, the dropships of the fleet should have landed already.

They will not like the news I am going to send them, she thought. But then, who will like the news of a bunch of clanners coming on them like an avalanche? Certainly not a rabble of mercenaries looking for lostech on what they thought was a world without any hostiles.

Hopefully, the scanners of the clan ships would not detect the electromagnetic pulse generated by the jumpships’ arrival. The jumpships were certainly far enough from the nadir jumppoint that the pulse would be extremely weak by the time it reached their position. Helene certainly felt that they deserved a dose of good luck after the disaster they just had.

She turned to her executive officer, Giroud. “I’m going to break the news to Forsen. Keep an eye on things for me. You have the bridge.”

Gritting her teeth, she floated up to the communications console. “Crozy, I am going to record a message for Forsen. Someone has to tell him the bad news. Compress the message into a tight-beam zip squeal package and send it at the planet. They should receive it easily.”

“Forsen’s going to freak when he hears about what happened. How did the Falcons get here?” Crozy remarked as he toggled the buttons for a message recording.

“Well, they are probably after the same thing as the rest of us. But who would have thought they will arrive at the same time as us? Something is very fishy about this entire affair. I just hope we’ll get out of this in one piece. The mercs have their work cut out for them.”

“They can always run...”

Helene shook her head. “How? We have only four jumpships now, three if you consider the Tayo to be crippled. That is not enough for everybody. No, I think the mercs will want to stand and fight the Falcons. After all, there’s a lot of mercs. They can always run after some of them have died and there should be enough space then for the survivors.”

Crozy grimaced, “That’s a morbid thought, Captain. Anyway, ready for your message.” As he said that he gave up his seat for Helene to make the recording, using a handhold near the console to stay near his station to prevent himself from floating away.

Seating herself down, Helene Rice of the Sevoto started to record her message for Forsen Mandela. “Forsen, this is Helene. We’re now at the pirate point. I have some very bad news for you...”