An Entry with a Bang: Non-canon Stories

[Tyrchon]

Location: Unknown
Date: Unknown

Looking across the battlefield from the back seat of his Mech Burgess Hale was not a happy man at the moment. The source of his current ire was a familiar Battlemaster piloted by the former 'rookie' of his old pirate lance, Ken Jankowicz.

"Jankowicz!" the XO of the GDI Foreign Legion thundered into his throat-mike. "What the Hell did you just do?! That downed Mechwarrior was trying to surrender!"

Across the com channel the lighter voice of the the younger Mechpilot replied, "I know. I was trying to take him prisoner."

Feeling his temper nearly at boiling Hal yelled, "You just Vaporized him!"

Silence filled the com channel for a moment before Jankowicz spoke, "I was testing a new function on my weapons, Sir. I thought I had them set for 'Stun'."

Patience finally broken, Hale screamed so loud that his front-seater was glad that he had his helmet on and had dialed down the volume of his com-receiver, "How the HELL do you set a PPC to 'Stun'?!"

Letting silence reign on the channel for a moment the younger Foreign Legion Mechpilot finally answered, "Apparently not very well. I guess we'll have to tell Zumross and the engineers back 'home' that they need to go back to the drawing board with this one."

Pinching the bridge of his nose Hale desperately tried to fight the headache that was beginning to pierce his skull. He desperately hoped that it wasn't a warning sign of an impending brain-aneurysm brought on by stress.

"I found out last night that your Momma does something well," Brox suddenly texted across the com channel, the words appearing on the heads-up display.

"I take it back! Please let it be a brain-aneurysm! At least that will give me some rest from these two!" Hale suddenly yelled out loud at seeing the text.

Down in the front seat of the Mech used by the XO of the GDI Foreign Legion, Lieutenant David Hecht let out a tired sigh. It was just another day at the office.

[vIsitor]

Heh. Very fun piece, even if it is non-canon.

And, hey, we've finally got a name for Hale's copilot!

[Tyrchon]

Originally Posted by vIsitor

Heh. Very fun piece, even if it is non-canon.

And, hey, we've finally got a name for Hale's copilot!

Ironically enough the name came to me comletely by accident as I was finishing the piece. I was writing that sentence when my friend David called to see if I had seen the latest hockey game played by our local NHL team. I took the last name Hecht from my favorite hockey player on that team because his question immediately made me think of it. Thus, Lieutenant David Hecht was born.

[Barricade]

Actually, I could see this being done as an in-canon training exercise either a real-life 'livefire' (if dumbed down/powered down shots) one or a simulation. And the 'officer surrendering' is made of ballistics gell and is really a human sized target on a stick getting moved around by a R/C tracked vehicle. Only the PPC 'stun' shot didn't work out as planned.

[Warringer]

Why do I suddenly have the image of the Myth Busters tryin to use heavy weaponry in a try to prove the 'Befriending Myth'?

[Barricade]

Originally Posted by Warringer

Why do I suddenly have the image of the Myth Busters tryin to use heavy weaponry in a try to prove the 'Befriending Myth'?

Because you've been here long enough to have the SBer insanity start kicking in?

Better start doing your SAN checks Warringer.

[evilauthor]

As promised, the aborted attempt to set this fic on "Real Life" Earth.

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Washington DC
United States of America
Earth
16 May 2005, 11:45pm EST

If there was one thing George W. Bush had learned after five years of being the so-called “Most powerful man on the planet”, it was that being awoken in the middle of the night to meet with a grim faced Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was never good.

The start of his Presidency had been so bright. George and his people had entered office with all the plans to put America on top again and the conviction that God was on his side. 9/11 as tragic as it had been looked like a blessing in disguise, uniting the country behind him such that no force on Earth could stop him.

And then somehow, bit by little bit, it had all slipped away. Everywhere he turned, George found a new disaster waiting for him, undercutting his prestige and authority. These days, it seemed all he could do to run damage control on the latest political disaster.

Like now.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Mister President,” General Peter Pace, said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said. “But…”

“Wait, let me guess,” George interrupted. “It’s Iraq again, isn’t it? What happened? It’s not another Abu Ghraib is it?”

“No, it’s not Iraq,” Pace began. “It’s…”

“Afghanistan, right?” George guessed again. “I knew the place was too quiet! It was just waiting to bite us in the ass!”

“It’s not Afghanistan either…”

“North Korea? Iran?” George went on. “Please tell me they did something we can act on.”

“Mister President, please,” Pace said, looking pained.

“Oh, all right,” George said, strangely relieved now that the most likely disasters were out of the way. “What’s your news.”

“Approximately an hour ago, NORAD detected…” Pace began.

“Oh, God, don’t tell me the Russians have started World War III,” Bush said, Cold War fears that had been surrounded with most of his life coming back with a vengeance.

“NORAD detected,” Pace plowed on, ignoring the interruption, “an unidentified object sitting in a…” he glanced at his note pad in his hand, “in something called ‘the Lagrange point’ between Earth and the Moon. The object is roughly cylindrical, approximately five hundred meters long, and obviously artificial. Since its appearance, a smaller spherical object some eighty meters in diameter detached from it and started heading towards us and is expected to enter orbit in about three hours.”

George stared at General Pace for several long moments as he processed this briefing. He opened his mouth to speak several times, but closed it without uttering a sound. Finally, he found something he could say.

“No, really,” George finally said. “It’s Iraq, isn’t it?”

“Mister President…”

And the sad thing is that I actually looked up who would be Joint Chiefs Chairman at the time.

[Tyrchon]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

As promised, the aborted attempt to set this fic on "Real Life" Earth.

And the sad thing is that I actually looked up who would be Joint Chiefs Chairman at the time.

That was great and the best things is that in real life I could see such a reaction not only coming from former President Bush but pretty much any current major world leader.

[Prince Charon]

I'd still prefer we'd stayed with that. If Psycko had only thought ahead...

[evilauthor]

The following has some examples of future Earth tech. It's very much first draft and set in the future during this timeline's version of the Clan Invasion.

Earth System
Grantville Sector
Coalition of Sovereign Nations
Day Month 20XX/30XX

Date is currently undetermined, but presumably late 3040s or early 3050s.

Fleet Admiral Chou Kurita of the GDI, was about to leave his office for the day when the phone on his desk rang. Wondering what business couldn’t wait for tomorrow, Kurita picked up the receiver.

“This is Admiral Kurita. Speak.”

“Sir, this is Colonel Devries at Skywatch. Five minutes ago, remote platforms have reported multiple Warship grade KF signatures at a nonstandard Jump Point on the ecliptic plane approximately twenty-five degrees forward of Jupiter’s current location.”

“Understood,” Kurita replied, a lump forming in his stomach. No CSN or civilian ship would jump to such a location as there were better locations to jump to if one wanted to minimize transit time to… anywhere in the system at all, including Jupiter. That meant whoever had jumped in was likely to be hostile.

And given current events in the Inner Sphere, that made the identity of the intruders almost certainly to be…

Sets the scene. Chou Kurita is now a Fleet Admiral (whatever that means in the future GDI) and there are allusions to the Clan Invasion.

[center]* * *[center]

Natalie Breen, Khan of Clan Steel Viper, looked at the preposterous data with a mixture of disbelief, awe, and sheer greed. She had long discounted the rumors about this “CSN” and “Third Earth”. A twenty-first century Terra had been transported through time and space to the modern day? Same said “primitive Terra” going from a single backwater world to a major Inner Sphere power in a few short decades? It was ludicrous, a fable even Freebirths shouldn’t be so naïve as to believe!

And yet the forces of this “CSN” and their “GDI” have had skirmishes with the other Clans. Reports of strange weapons and stranger battle tactics had reached Natalie’s ears. She had discounted those too, for they were obviously excuses to explain away losses the other Clans had suffered

Allusions to Clan Invasion.

It the OTL, Natalie Breen was Kahn until Tukayyid.

So when the ilKhan had called in the Steel Vipers to help support the invasion, Natalie had decided to go straight to the source of the matter. And it looked like her gamble was about to be rewarded, for there was Terra, ripe for the taking! And the Clan who took Terra would become the ilClan, and forever gain primacy over all the other Clans forever more!

Well, probably not. No doubt the other Clan Kahns would argue that this wasn’t the real Terra, just a cheap copy created by some strange natural phenom…

“Your pardon, my Khan,” Galaxy Commander Joseph Mercer said, interrupting Natalie’s private visions of honor and glory. His specialty was aerospace operations, a specialty the Steel Vipers considered distinctly secondary. “But sensor stations have picked up ships moving at two gees on an intercept course with us.”

“Ships? What ships?” Natalie demanded.

“Unknown at the moment,” the Galaxy Commander replied. “Drive signature count and analysis indicates three ships massing approximately nine along with an additional two dozen vessels of approximately fifteen hundred tons each.”

“Dropships,” Natalie concluded disdainfully. “Certainly no match for the Warships of Clan Steel Viper.”

My proposed fleet mix. Dropship "fighters" backed up by their carriers and/or monitors.

[center]* * *[center]

“A Cameron, two Aegis, and a Volga transport, as well as the usual collection of Dropships,” Chou Kurita said aloud in bemusement as he read the force estimates from Skywatch. “Is that all?”

[center]* * *[center]

Picked by me specifically to not have better than 2/3 movement. Ie, they're all slower than the GDI ships.

“Of course not, my Khan,” Joseph agreed. “I have already started the bidding process for dealing with this rabble.”

“Very good…” Natalie began.

“Galaxy Commander, my Khan,” a lowly tech said, interrupting her.

“WHAT?” Natalie snapped at the freebirth.

“We are being hailed by the approaching fleet,” the tech said quickly.

“Fine, let us hear what these freebirths have to say,” Natalie said dismissively.

“Unidentified Warships, this is Fleet Admiral Kurita of the Global Defense Initiative,” came from the speakers. “You are currently violating Coalition Space with your presence, Identify yourself immediately or be destroyed.”

“Well, they certainly can talk like a warrior,” Natalie commented, unimpressed. Weren’t the Kuritas supposed to be the rulers of the Draconis Combine? Obviously, this was more evidence of faulty intelligence. She turned to the tech. “Open a channel so I can reply.”

“At once, my Khan!”

“Fleet Admiral Chou Kurita,” Natalie began when the tech signaled that the channel was open. “I am Khan Natalie Breen and I claim your planet in the name of the Steel Viper Clan. What forces do you bid in your defense?”

“Khan Breen,” Kurita replied. “You have all the etiquette of an ill-mannered child raised in the wild by wolves… and I mean the animal, not the Clan.”

“HOW DARE YOU?!” Natalie shouted, outraged.

”Had you the courtesy to call ahead,” Kurita continued on, indifferent to the Khan’s ire. “You would have been informed that our bid would have been every military asset in this system and every surrounding system in the Grantville sector. Not that we actually need that much force to handle you. But if you insist on acting like pirates, we will treat you as such.”[/i]

“I have Warships, freebirth,” Natalie spat back. “What could you possibly have? A few paltry Dropships?”

”Given your honorless approach, I am not obligated to tell you,” Kurita told her confidently. “However, I will grant you three option. One, if you attack, you die. Simple as that. Two, you may turn around and leave and we will not prevent that. And three, you may surrender, an option you may take at any time, including after the firing has started.”

“I have never…” Natalie began, her blood boiling.

“And likely never will again,” the freebirth interrupted. “The choice is yours, Khan Breen.”

With that, the connection was cut, leaving Natalie with nothing to vent her rage on. Well, nothing off the ship…

[center]* * *[center]

“You’re certain of this?” Chou asked.

“Yes, sir. The Steel Viper fleet is heading straight for the Jupiter-Sun pirate point. Maybe they’re leaving?”

“No,” Chou decided. “If they had intended to leave, it would have been faster to change course after we called them and cut back across the sun’s jump boundary. No, they’re going to use the pirate point to jump in closer to Earth.”

“But why, sir? It makes no sense!”

“Ever read the pre-Contact BT novels?” Chou asked. “In one of the novels, a Clan Wolf warship employed exactly this tactic. Although the exact reasoning why was never stated, it’s been theorized that it was to pull the local defense off the target planet as they tried to intercept the invader.”

I don't actually remember which novel this was. It was one of the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy though.

And I always wondered why the hell a Clan Warship would pull an in-system jump after accelerating away from where they jumped in, and HOW they did it when all the pirate points ought to be on the ecliptic plane.

“But that wouldn’t work here!”

“Yes, it wouldn’t,” Chou agreed. “But apparently the Steel Vipers don’t know that. Time to Sixth Fleet’s intercept?”

“About fifteen minutes, sir.”

“Hmm,” Chou said thoughtfully. “Message to Sixth Fleet: recommend that they go with fire plan Charlie Standard.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a few seconds’ silence, then, “Reply from Sixth Fleet CO. ‘I know my job, sir’.”

Chou’s mouth quirked in a smile.

[center]* * *[center]

“This is odd,” Galaxy Commander Joseph murmured as he studied the holographic tactical display.

“What is it?” Natalie demanded waspishly. The display made little sense to her as she was first and foremost a mechwarrior. What need did she have to know the ins and outs of space warfare? Only now it was taking far too long to begin battle with enemies that they could already see and it irked her to have to defer to the Galaxy Commander on the matter of tactics in space.

“The small GDI…”

“Freebirth!” Natalie snarled.

“The small freebirth Dropships,” Joseph continued without missing a beat, or even looking at his Kahn, “are taking up a course parallel to ours at approximately two thousand kilometers. That is almost a thousand kilometers outside maximum effective naval weapons range. Although I suppose I could toss some capital missiles at them, but they would have to be asleep in order for us to hit them.”

BT space warfare 101. Yes, their weapons really are that short ranged in space.

“And the large ships?” Natalie asked, feeling better.

“They are also taking up a parallel course,” Joseph answered. “But their distance is ninety thousand kilometers. They’re too far away to support the small Dropships and the distance means that it would take hours for them to arrive once the battle starts.”

“Ha! The cowards are obviously too scared to fight,” Natalie laughed. “Still, we cannot let their insults pass. Are the small Dropships within our reach?”

“Yes, my Khan,” Joseph said absently. “Our omnifighters of the winning bid can reach them easily and return. There is still something bothering me about this approach they are taking…”

“No matter, tell our fighters to launch,” Natalie ordered the nearest communications tech.

“Yes, my Kahn!”

“Why are the small Dropships spread out like that?” Joseph continued to mumble. “That gap in their formation makes it look like they are trying to avoid blocking line of sight between us and their large ships. But the only reason for that is if the large ships intend to fire on us which is imp…”

In the holodisplay, new icons appeared as the Titan class Dropships began launching the first of many fighters. But they did not have the chance to finish. Moments after the first fighters cleared their carriers, the Titans’ icons flashed red indicating damage then black to indicate destruction.

“STRAVAG!” a bridge tech shouted. “Dropships destroyed by what the analysis computer is calling naval grade pulse lasers!”

Actually, a Brightstar style phased array laser, but the Clanners don't know that. The pulse effect is gained by firing sets of component emitters in sequence instead of all at once.

And the initial targets were picked with malice aforethought: basically all of the Steel Vipers' fighter carriers, the one ship type that carried anything that might even have been vaguely dangerous to the GDI ships.

“Missile launch!’ another tech announced, his voice no less strident. “I make it as twenty four inbound capital missiles! ETA ninety seconds… mark!”

In the holo, an angry swarm of red dots leaped from the smaller dropships and raced towards the Steel Viper fleet. The deck rocked under their feet and the holo computer helpfully drew lines between the Steel Viper icons and the GDI icons an impossible ninety thousand kilometers away.

I just realized that this wording here is ambiguous. The missiles are being fired from the Dropships 2000 km away. The lines being drawn to the 90k km away ships are more laser blasts.

“Taking naval pulse laser fire from further GDI fleet!” the first tech announced unnecessarily.

“All weapon stations are to go to point defense mode immediately!” Joseph ordered, eyes never leaving the display. “Prepare to rollover on my command!”

“I thought you said they were out of range!” Natalie said accusingly as the deck rocked again.

“They are certainly out of our range, my Kahn,” Joseph said grimly. “But it seems we are not out of…” He broke off when the holo suddenly changed. “That is not FAIR!” he shouted in frustration.

[center]* * *[center]

The GDI capital missiles streaked in, every passing second increasing their velocity as their overpowered fusion drives drove them forward. At one thousand kilometers, the naval weapons opened up… and hit nothing. It was a pure desperation maneuver anyway; such large, clumsy weapons were unable to hit maneuvering fighters, never mind missiles with hundreds of times the acceleration curve. And these missiles kept coming with thrusters on full burn, dodging the Steel Vipers’ fire with ease when they should have already run out of onboard fuel.

At five hundred kilometers, the smaller, anti-fighter weapons came into play – not that the Clan Warships had many of those – but they could hit the incoming missiles. Unfortunately for the Vipers, at the same five hundred kilometer limit, each of the GDI capital missiles spawned missiles of their own.

These submunitions were based on the standard “long range” missile that had been used throughout the Inner Sphere for centuries. Aside from a slightly smarter seeker, they were little different from others of the type. Individually, they were small and laughably weak. But they were also employed in swarms.

Each GDI missile fired off forty LRMs. Normally, LRMs wouldn’t have been able to reach across even this distance accurately, but they were being fired from platforms that were already moving at a very substantial clip at their targets. In theory, the combined point defense of the Steel Viper fleet could have fended off a mere twenty four capital missiles.

No way in hell could they stop an additional nine hundred and sixty.

Still, the Steel Viper flagship’s armor could shrug off that many LRMs even if a good percentage hadn’t gone chasing after the few fighters that had been launched. Or it would have had the GDI’s long ranged laser fire not been steadily burning layer upon layer of armor away as the missile raced it. Besides which, the LRMs really weren’t intended to cause damage; they were meant to screen the capital missiles from point defense fire.

And this demonstrates how Earth's capitol missiles ought to work. Each one carries a load or two of LRMs or other kind of missile screen the main missile's approach. Not only does it confuse and saturate any kind of classic BT point defense, but that load of of LRM "decoys" are dangerous in their own right.

Of course, the missile tactics are better illustrated in the first story I posted in this thread.

[center]* * *[center]

“Why isn’t Sixth Fleet using nukes?”

“Because at this time, there’s no need to use nukes,” Chou answered. “Nukes don’t leave behind survivors to question, salvage to examine, or computers to pull files from. Besides, it’s always good to have a few toys in reserve.”

[center]* * *[center]

Translation: "We don't need to."

Plus also unstated in the fic, the first wave of missiles was a probe to feel out the Clanner's defenses.

Galaxy Commander Joseph Mercer clenched his teeth as the damage reports came in. The armor on that flank had been nearly stripped bare, so much so that air was leaking in multiple locations. Worse, almost every sensor, weapon bay, small craft bay and virtually any other shipboard function that required access to the outside on that side of the ship had been damaged in some way. Capital missiles had always been programmed to go after exposed equipment, but their accuracy had always been iffy at best, often expending themselves uselessly on armor. Each and every one of the GDI’s missiles on the other hand had apparently found something juicy to hit.

And every one of those missiles had been targeted on the flagship. The other three Warships and the Dropships were completely untouched.

The battleship shuddered again as another series of naval laser pulses played across the hull. More damage lights – some of them internal – popped up. “Roll ship,” Joseph ordered. The helmsman obeyed with alacrity, presenting the Cameron’s undamaged side to the enemy… for however long that lasted.

“Galaxy Commander, this is unacceptable!” his Kahn spat. “Close with these freebirths and destroy them!”

“Not possible, my Kahn,” Joseph replied reluctantly. “They have already demonstrated that they can accelerate at a full two gravities. The best acceleration our Warships can pull is one point five gravities, and only for short periods. We cannot bring them into range of our weapons unless they let us. And even if they do let us, it will take far too long to reach them, more than enough time for them to cut us to ribbons.”

Irony of ironies. In the OTL Invasion (and maybe here), the Clans always had the range and firepower advantage. Now they're on the other side of the equation and it's a near OCP for them.

“You make sound like you are defeated, Galaxy Commander,” Kahn Natalie said dangerously. “That is unbecoming of a Steel Viper.”

“My Kahn, we are defeated,” Joseph told her. “The only question now is if whether we try to run and save what warriors we have left or if we die to an enemy we cannot even reach.” Surrender never even crossed his mind.

“Run? Steel Vipers do not run in fear from their enemies!” Natalie snapped. “Besides, you said that they are faster than we are.”

“The pirate point,” Joseph answered. “We use the pirate point we are already heading towards to jump out of the system instead of jumping in deeper. At this point, it would be faster than chasing after ships we cannot catch.”

“Running will bring great shame to the Clan,” Natalie pointed out.

“We can either run and live in shame, or die and have the Clan suffer a near mortal blow,” Joseph pointed out. This fleet was carrying the bulk of Steel Viper’s elite warriors. Losing them all would be catastrophic to whatever was left of the Clan. “So what will it be, my Kahn?”

Natalie opened her mouth to reply, closed it without saying a word, opened it again to speak. “We…” she began with great reluctance.

“Warship KF signatures detected at destination pirate point!” a tech announced suddenly, cutting the Kahn off. “Detecting deployment of more of those attack Dropships.”

“Missile launch!” another tech announced. “First Dropship group just launched seventy plus capital missiles!”

72 missiles actually. That's 24 Dropships firing off 3 missiles each. 3 doesn't look like a big number, does it?

“Well, Galaxy Commander,” Natalie said, entirely too calmly. “It would seem that we are staying.”

[center]* * *[center]

<insert some scene showing that Chou Kurita was on Earth the entire time and watching the battle live via black box network>

Wasn't sure how to write this scene.

There were a few things that weren't included that I'll probably add: More GDI scenes. Warship jamming and how GDI was seeing through it. Exact descriptions of how the "Naval Pulse Laser" was working, and so on. Probably do more name dropping too.

[Keiran Halcyon]

At Rabe's suggestion I'm archiving the Casaba Howitzer test segment in this Thread should anything unforeseen happen to my pc rig and/or HDDs portable or otherwise. It is to be posted when the Story Timeline reaches the date indicated in the location tag.

With the regards to the segment, I also fixed the erroneous use of the GDI Navy to crew Oppenheimer...she's a Dropship that enters and exits atmosphere, according to GDI service branch definitions, she should be crewed by the GDI ASForce.

951 Gaspra Asteroid
2.1 AU from Sol Primary
20th November 2009

For countless eons since the final formation of the solar system, 951 Gaspra had been coasting in space on its orbital velocity of nineteen kilometres per second. It was a silicate type asteroid that bore the honour of being the first to be closely photographed when it was approached by the Galileo spacecraft on its way to Jupiter. As such, quite a lot was known to the inhabitants of Earth about this particular eighteen by ten by nine kilometre rock. It had the usual small craters, quite a few large flat areas and there was a very subtle colour variation on the surface which contained olivine and pyroxene. Gaspra's surface lacked unambiguous craters of a size comparable to its radius. A probable reason was that the collision that produced the Flora family of asteroids and Gaspra was relatively recent on an astronomical timescale; as a result Gaspra had not yet had the opportunity to acquire many large craters. In addition, analysis of the cratering rates suggested the age of the surface was only about 20 million years.

Right now though, there was another spacecraft holding station just within a thousand kilometres of Gaspra. The difference between this one and the previous one that had flown by roughly nineteen years ago was roughly over five centuries of technological advancement.

Dr Evangeline Kemp felt the stomach-churning zero gee in her current quarters aboard the GDI Manatee class Dropship which had been named Oppenheimer by its small highly vetted crew. She cringed and went through a quick mental exercise - when she felt confident she wouldn't throw up the freeze dried food she had just eaten all over her laptop - she stared with a bit of sadness at the high-resolution image of Gaspra it displayed. After today it would forever be changed, marred with the scars of experimental weapon systems.

The DARPA scientists on board had been working feverishly ever since their arrival over two days ago turning every scientific instrument and imagining device they had on the asteroid to preserve its unmarred state, at least within the various databanks on Earth. A few hours ago in a last act of preservation they had also done an EVA to collect samples. Now Gaspra was about to be turned into Earth’s first extra-terrestrial nuclear test site and shooting gallery.

A chime from her cabin door sounded. The voice of Oppenheimer’s XO, Major Nicholson was distorted through the tiny speaker in the door control pad. “Dr Kemp, we’re ready, the last of the sensor platforms has been positioned.”

Eva grumbled, getting out of her zero g bed and awkwardly floated toward the door after pushing off. She keyed the pad. “I’ll be there asap. Thanks.” She tied up her loose auburn mane of hair and grabbed a jacket to put over her olive dyed NASA-style jumpsuit and stave off the perpetual cold that being in this tin can meant. Sure it was a perfectly live-able nineteen degrees Celsius but not from the perspective of a Texan.

Leaving her quarters her hand clutched the guide rails tightly as she floated along. Despite having passed a six-month abbreviated NASA training course on getting accustomed to the minutia of space travel, zero g training had been virtual torture. As she was seemingly cursed with the most sensitive stomach to ever grace the halls of NASA; her instructors had eventually told her to not even bother with food on days scheduled for zg. She had not let it stop her at all and persevered; being out in space was a dream come true, before the truly insane yet wondrous ISOT event that had transposed fifty light years of their own space into the BT Universe, she had to content herself to only looking forward to perhaps a Mars Landing by the late 2020s, and perhaps she herself would go into Earth orbit and perhaps the Moon eventually when the infant space tourism industry grew up a little more.

Now, everything had changed.

Entering the Bridge of the Oppenheimer, she saw that the DARPA team were all clustered around the area devoted to monitoring the streaming sensor data, whilst the GDI Aerospace Force crew were all seated at their respective stations in the circular ‘CIC’ or Command Information Centre, as it was officially called.

Lt. Colonel Sean Johnstone, the ‘Captain’ of Oppenheimer gave her a polite smile from the central chair. “Dr Kemp.”

“Colonel.” She greeted as she moved along via the consoles handrails, finally arriving at her own station and hooking her feet into the straps on the floor to keep her tumbling about from as simple an action as pushing buttons or typing on a keyboard. She did a quick remote status check on the devices they were here to test and brought up a Radar and Lidar derived tactical diagram of the Dropship relative to the asteroid.

‘Hmm, good the Casabas are exactly where they should be, as is our other little experiment. The sensor platforms as well.’ She mentally thanked God that Oppenheimer had gotten an overhaul of its IT systems to Earth-spec. Many in DARPA wondered how the Spheroids could stand working with the garbage that masqueraded as an Operating System on their ships. It was just one of those things that happened to societies governed by feudal lords that had idiotically blown up each others centres of learning and massacred scientists to try and one up the other over three centuries of war. Now, with no IT specialists to speak of, they had just become used to the same crappy computers and OS’s.

Colonel Johnstone swivelled his chair in a slow revolution, meeting everyone’s eyes as he talked, his gaze was dead serious and his Australian accent deepened. “All right everyone, we’re about to do the test run. We know in theory what’s going to happen, but this will be the first time we detonate these things in deep space under testing conditions. We’re a nice safe distance away but if we have so much as a hint of something wrong which could possibly endanger us, I’m calling this off. That being said lets see if we can’t make us a nice weapon to literally blast our future enemies into oblivion. Dr Kemp?”

Eva met the six other faces of the DARPA team and received nods in return. “We’re ready here in all respects, Colonel.”

“Good. You may proceed.”

She took a deep steadying breath as the Oppenheimer’s Com Officer gave her station priority access. Using the ‘rollerball’ mouse interface integrated into her panel, she selected the first Casaba Howitzer - placed a mere one kilometre from the surface of Gaspra.

“Casaba Alpha is responding to commands, and reporting good orientation to its target area. Detonation in three…two…one…”

Casaba Alpha was a specially shaped nuclear charge, with a nominal yield of seven kilotons. Whereas a standard nuclear weapon would emit its energy in an expanding sphere, the Casaba channelled that energy for the briefest of moments by surrounding the nuke with a shell of x-ray opaque material, uranium in this case, and a hole in the top.

For a few picoseconds, extremely powerful x-rays blasted in the direction of Gaspra, only to be intercepted within the Casaba by a plate of beryllium oxide. The beryllium instantly transformed the nuclear x-rays into a fury of intense heat. This heat blasted itself into another plate of Potassium. Another picosecond later this Potassium was vaporized…and resulted in a nicely aimed narrow jet of sun hot plasma spearing towards Gaspra…it crossed the kilometer near instantly and tunnelled into the surface of the asteroid, vaporizing the silicates, carbons and other elements instantly and only adding more plasma to the mix. The Casaba ceased to exist at this point as the expanding radiation of a tiny artificial star flashed briefly before turning into a small mini-nova that expanded out in a rough sphere.

The crew of Oppenheimer had turned off the critical sensors to avoid the flash blinding effect, but now turned them on to gather as much data in the aftermath as possible. The visual effect of the Casaba nuke had already passed, the cameras left purposefully on were beyond repair now, but they had streamed the a few good frames of images for post-blast analysis.

“Did we get a good hit?” Colonel Johnstone queried hopefully.

Eva squinted at the images coming in now, focusing the feed from the nearest sensor platform. She turned to crew and grinned, “Gaspra has a nice deep new crater.” The crew let loose with a round of spontaneous whistling and clapping, to vent their nervousness that the first obstacle had been overcome.

A few minutes later Casaba Beta was detonated. This one at a range of ten kilometres. The cameras and sensors had much more data now, as the destructive jet of plasma had been visible for slightly longer before boring into Gaspra’s surface.

Casaba Charlie at a range of fifty kilometres however, was a flop. It only blew up as a normal nuke and sent no potassium plasma blast anywhere.

“Damn x-ray casing must have been too thin on that one,” muttered Eva; Casaba Charlie had been an experiment on the minimum required thickness of the uranium x-ray shell, in an effort to determine the most economical method of construction for the Casaba.

Delta detonated successfully and sent its plasma blast over a void of a hundred kilometers, still burrowing a deep, two meter wide crater into Gaspra.

Echo, emplaced at a hundred kilometres was a failure.

Foxtrot at two hundred k also just wasted its energy in a spherical detonation.

Casaba Golf though, was successful, and that was critical…two hundred and seventy kilometers was the longest accurate range of a Clan Heavy Large Laser, and if the Casaba could send its deadly spear of plasma from ranges beyond then no smaller Laser based Point Defense system could hope to intercept it before it detonated. Only perhaps the Barracuda Missile System, designed for ASF intercept could reach out beyond that to nine hundred kilometres and no current Inner Sphere nation had that system any more.

Golf’s plasma blast crossed the three hundred kilometres in the blink of an eye and slammed into Gaspra’s surface.

Eva shook her head in frustration as she received the visual of the impact area. “The plasma blast is becoming wider as we detonate further away. I’m reading an eight meter wide crater and its depth penetration is degrading.”

“So the focusing of the blast needs to be improved the further out we go,” one of the DARPA engineers mused. “Casaba Hotel should help with that.”

Colonel Johnstone turned in his chair. “Dr Kemp?”

“The jet angle also grows narrower as the thickness of the potassium plate is reduced, but conversely it means less plasma quantity,” Eva explained. “To offset this we use an element with an even lower atomic number, it would further increase the speed of the plasma jet and narrow its delivery angle for longer ranges…going lower than Potassium means a Lithium plate – Casaba Hotel is such a weapon.”

Thirty seconds later the Lithium Casaba Howitzer was detonated at a range of five hundred kilometres. Lithium was the least dense solid element known, only having an atomic number of three. Lithium-6 was valued as a source material for tritium production and as a neutron absorber in nuclear fusion; hence the expensive Lithium Fusion batteries that some military Jumpships carried that enable a second consecutive use of an FTL KF Drive. But here the insulated Lithium plate inside Casaba Hotel was instantly transformed into narrow stream of plasma barely half a meter wide that blasted into Gaspra and…

Eva stared at her monitor in near stupefaction. “Holy shit!” The other engineers were likewise stunned and gaping at their monitors.

Colonel Johnstone was not amused. “What? What’s going on? Do we need to get out of here?! C’mon…Dr Kemp, speak to me!”

“Relax Commander…we’re fine, it’s just that we never expected…that plasma blast was frightfully fast, so much so that the damage we just did to Gaspra included a significant kinetic energy transfer.”

“How significant?”

Eva turned to one of her co-workers who was frantically busy with the calculations from the data to get an exact figure. The engineer looked up from his screen, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Point eight nine three of C.”

“That’s roughly two hundred sixty thousand kilometres per second.” The GDI crew blinked as they tried to get their head around that. “We never expected to achieve such velocities with Casaba, perhaps it’s because we’re only two atomic numbers from Hydrogen, a stable isotope of which is called Deuterium…”

“Which is used in a Fusion Reactor,” the Colonel nodded, realization entering his eyes.

“Yes, and consequently the Fusion Torch Engine which has an exhaust velocity at near ninety nine percent of Light speed. We’ll have to wait to do more analysis of the data, but I believe we achieved a Lithium Fusion reaction with that last Casaba. Essentially blasting Gaspra with reactor grade fusion plasma. We’ll see what Casaba India gives us.”

Four hundred kilometres away from Oppenheimer another seven kiloton detonation heralded another Lithium Casaba exploding; which failed to send its blast of plasma.

Eva slammed her hand down on the console. “Shit!”

Casaba Juliet however, shot its jet of lithium plasma downrange with success. It was the last and the engineers salivated over the data, already talking excitedly how they could possibly increase reliability with this practical information. They were not done though. A mere kilometre away from Oppenheimer floated a disembodied Star League V84 drive system salvaged from Antallos a year ago. It had been in a crashed Leopard that had been excavated from the sands, and while it seemed nice and intact at cursory examination, testing on Earth revealed that its internals did not pass muster and it would likely fail after a few days of continuous operation.

She shook her head as she established a remote link with the computer attached to the V84. “I really wish we could’ve used an Earth FusionT engine to try this.”

“We might be cranking them out like Henry Ford did with the Model T back in the day, but we need every engine we can possibly make out there in the Cluster,” the DARPA engineer commented gravely.

The Colonel noticed what she was doing on his own tactical display. “What exactly are we testing here, with that hunk of junk you asked us to haul out there?”

“We’re going to see if we can turn a Dropship engine into a true one hit shipkiller.”

The ‘shipkiller’ had just enough reaction mass within it for this one purpose. It lit off with all its safeties removed, and since it didn’t have to push a dropship weighing thousands of tons, it managed an acceleration of 230Gs. It kept a full burn going leaving a glowing plasma trail behind it.

“Target is nine hundred and eighty kilometres distant, Shipkiller velocity at 5.4kms.”

The scientists and crew eyes were glued to their screens…every second the Shipkiller gained another two point two kilometers per second in speed. It pushed and pushed, getting faster and faster. It began to eat up the distance extremely fast and the GDI crew was surprised when the whole contraption stopped its engines at the halfway mark, only to perform a reorientation and aim its exhaust nozzle towards Gaspra.

“Initiating nozzle confinement.”

The Shipkiller under direction of the attached guidance computer, altered the geometry of its magnetic nozzle, so that the drive plume no longer flared out to provide thrust…but instead channel the plasma in a directed beam. It waited until terminal guidance sensed it was only fifty kilometres from the asteroid and restarted its engine burn…way, way beyond the red-line.

A point four meter diameter fusion plasma beam fired at .99C hit Gaspra with titanic force…spraying rock and silicate everywhere and actually cored straight through. The V84 finally gave up the ghost after only two seconds of this, and exploded in a maelstrom of radiation, nucleic debris and a mix of gamma and x-rays – but it didn’t matter, it might as well have been an eternity if an enemy ship would’ve been on the receiving end of that beam.

“Shipkiller indeed,” Colonel Johnstone breathed in awe.

[Knobby]

[Heinlein lunar burial moved to canon story thread.]

[Warringer]

Good idea, my friend...

-------------------------------------------------------

Tycho Crater
The Moon, Sol System
March 22nd 2008

Tycho Crater had laid undisturbed every since its its creation by the violent nature of space, as a small asteroid impacted into the lunar surface. But small was only a matter if perception as an asteroid of similar size had wiped out the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago.

Yet since the year 1965 Tycho had a silent sentinel in the form of the three legged spider of Surveyor 7, its dead camera pointed into the center of the crater, its solar panel cracked into pieces by the impact of a tiny asteroid and its antenna array hanging from its hinge from another tiny asteroid impact.

The silence of vacuum remained, even as a half spherical shape approached over the edge of the crater, stopping to hover above the lunar surface, a kilometer distant of Surveyor 7. It remained hovering there as a bright illuminated square opened up in its side, a web like object pushing itself out of the square.

Stopping twenty meters from the square, a smaller shape moved along the object, a monolith made of polished black stone hanging from a thread as it was lowered towards the lunar surface.

Silently and only throwing up little clouds of regolith dust, the monolith sat down and the thread retracted back upwards and the web lice object disappeared. The larger shape kept hovering above the monolith for a few minutes before gracefully moving upwards, disappearing into the deep blackness of space.

Now it was only Surveyor 7's camera eye that was pointed at the black monolith and the small golden plaque set into the face of the one times four times nine feet monolith.

I once said,
'One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.'
I never imagined that I could be so right.

In Memoriam

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS
16 December 1917
19 March 2008

[EdBecerra]

Just a little non-canon bit - or is it? I found it amusing, and who knows? It might drive both Remus and the ComStar gits nuts...

---------------------------------------------------

It had been a long hot day at the last salvage site, and there was nothing Remus wanted so much as a beer. He headed for a tavern that the GDI folks occasionally frequented. The beer didn't cost any more, and one never knew when one might overhear a bit of valuable gossip.

~*~

Hours later, Remus was rubbing his forehead and wondering how he'd word his next report. If that wasn't bad enough, he'd noted a ComStar employee in the tavern who'd clearly noticed the same trio of Motherloaders that he had. Whatever he reported was also headed by to ComStar as well.

What a lovely day this had become.

He sighed, and set pen to paper once again, working on the encryption. Normally, it wasn't that much trouble, but this? How the hell was he supposed to encrypt a blasted song?

But whatever it was the trio of Motherloaders had been singing when they'd broken out in song -- nonsense or not, it had to be reported. It might be nothing. Or it could be the key to understanding everything.

And possibly a warning to the Clans of a greater danger yet to come.

But Great Father... why did it have to be karaoke?

He sighed and tried to forge onward. Just a few more words and he'd be finished. Then he could finally get some sleep.

Searching for a distant star
Heading off to Iscandar
Leaving all we love behind
Who knows what danger we'll find?

We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
If we don't in just one year
Mother Earth will disappear.

Remus set the pen down, and hid the papers in the usual spot. He'd send the message tomorrow.

---------------------------------------------------



Ed.

[hyzmarca]

Friday Feburary 12, 2010
The White House
Washington DC, USA, Earth


Jack Ryan was having a wonderful dream. Cathy was there. So was Jack Jr and Sally and Kattie an dKyle. He couldnlt remember what it was about, but that didn't matter. Just the fact that his family was there made it wonderful.

He was awoken by the buzzing of his intercom. A man whose name he did not know, his 27th interim Chief of Staff, was in the decontamination chamber that separated the Oval Office from the outside world. The light in the chamber was red. That meant that he would soon have a 28th interim Chief of Staff.

"Mr. President", the nervous man said, "the missile shield was ineffective. The Comstar ships reached orbit without suffering a single casualty and they have begun firing on Europe. Intelligence projects 100% casualties on that continent. "

The chief of staff was sweating and shaking far too much for mere nervousness, obvious signs of stage two. Jack imagined that he would soon eat a bullet like his last five Chiefs of staff had. It was much more pleasant than waiting for stage three.

"Also the Joint Chiefs are concerned about your battleplans. Some of them think that you may have gone insane."

"Tell the Join Chiefs to execute their orders." Jack wasn't in the mood to mince words, not after all that had happened. Not after all that he had lost. "They don't have to know my reasoning, they just have to do what they're told. "

It was a gamble, dedicating his entire ground-to-space infrastructure to defending a single small webserver hosting a particular message board. If he had told anyone of his real plan, they probably would have dismissed him as insane.

"You can go now", Jack said tersely.

When the dying man left Jack went to his computer. He typed in a url. He put n his username and password. He clicked on several links.

Code:

http://forums.spacebattles.com
Username:PresidentJackRyan
Password:********
->Creative Writing
->->Battletech Roundrobin
->->->BT/Clancyverse Round Robin Story Thread.
->->->->Post Reply

And Jack Ryan wrote. He wrote quickly. He wrote a repetitive piece filled with boring technical details and annoying typographical errors. He wrote about how two years prior a covert bioweapon attack by ComStar had failed miserably because the disease was designed to attack engineered genes that no one on his world had. He wrote about how ComStar's pathetic ECM was no match for modern guidence systems. He wrote about how the Brightstar laser on the moon burned warships out of the sky before they were within a single AU of Earth. He wrote about how the surviving ComGuard captains surrendered and begged for their lives. Most importantly, he wrote about his his family and friends came into his office with a giant cake to celebrate the victory.

And then he clicked the button marked "Submit Reply."

In an instant, the bulletproof Plexiglas chamber separating his office from the contaminated and dying planet around him faded into nonexistence. His wife, his children, and his closest friends all came through the door. Even Marko Ramius was there and he was pushing a cart that held a giant cake.

[walkir]

Moving it here because it fits: A joke snippet.

Originally Posted by walkir

Dickens was sitting on his customs desk and looked up, when a row of priest in cassocks entered. Something looked... wrong to him.
He snapped to attention and his supervisor came in to control his behavior again.

When the first of the men showed him his ID card, he nearly choked. "Pater Jesùs Maria Gonzalez, S.J. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."
"Welcome to Antallos, Pater." and murmuring to himself. "I expected a LOT of strange visitors. I met Lois Lane and a Harry Potter Character, after all. But even I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisiti..."

"DICKENS!!!"

[walkir]

Parked here until Story-2010.

180° from CEarth, outward Saturn’s orbit
June 1, 2010

The ship stopped.

It was basically nothing but a transit drive able to deliver half a gravity with several shipping containers full of computers and communication equipment as well as a massive Torus. The Eagle Four, just as its three brethren, was a mixed design between Star League cores and Earth technology, which had been deployed by dropship in a trans-saturnian orbit. Four of these craft were deployed in 90° spacing with another set of probes for the 45° marks and Zenith and Nadir positions still being assembled.
The dropship transporting it waited a few kilometers away, an EVA crew being prepared for last-minute repairs should the last dozen checks in the cargo bays have missed a problem.
They previously had deployed a network of communication satellites that would ensure constant communication with Earth regardless of the relative distance and position on the telescopes’ 27 year orbit and Earth.

A few minutes after the drive stopped, a set of communication lasers targeted the first of those satellites that repeated and routed the signal the roughly 11 AU route towards Earth – which was located on the other side of the Sun.

The same had already happened days early at 90° rimward and coreward position, each halfway between Eagle Four and Earth. Eagle One was located in the last 90° spot – in a similar position as Four, but on the same side of the Sun as Earth.

Shackleton GDI base, Shackleton crater, lunar South Pole, Grantville Cluster
About one and a half hours later

The base was placed at the “peak of eternal light” where sunlight had been nearly constant for millions of years. Next to the fusion reactors, giant batteries of thermocouples were waiting to charge the Brightstar arrays they used for Defense.
But this was not the only reason for the first lunar GDI base, as it was also used to relay communication lasers from the big telescopes located at the lunar backside to communication satellites that would route them towards Earth and the LaGrange infrastructure that had assigned orbits allowing the lasers a unrestricted LOS to pirate point.

A CSN space command officer looked up from his screen. “Telemetry incoming from Eagle Four. Everything is green. Eagle Formation One complete.”

“Eagle Formation One, this is Sky Eye. Mission is go.”

Eagle four’s position
About one and a half hours later

Powerful doors opened in the Torus and antennae masts were deployed, splitting up dozens of times and forming what looked like a massive solar sail. In fact, it was one of four trans-saturnian ship-mounted radio telescopes that granted a 360° view of the sky among the plane of the ecliptic. Each of them had an effective size in the high tens of kilometers.

At the same time, a protective cover on the central body slid open, revealing a more “standard” telescope working in the part of the EM spectrum humans called “light”.

Shackleton GDI base, Shackleton crater, lunar South Pole, Grantville Cluster
Twelve hours later

“All instruments are calibrated perfectly, first pictures incoming.”

A giant holotank and many screens lit up and were filled with stars immediately. The scientists and Engineers were silent for a second, speechless at the quality of those pictures. Then they cheered for minutes until the mission commander managed to get hold of himself.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a truly historic moment. The first time in history someone in the ‘Grantville cluster’ has built and deployed a multi-kilometer radio telescope. And” he smiled “the first time in centuries human beings actually are doing big scale astronomic research!”

[evilauthor]

Parking this here until we agree to actually do a time skip.

Book II: Prologue

Sevren, Tamar Pact
Lyran Commonwealth
5 December 3024

Ardan Sortek pushed his Victor into a run, annoyed at the sluggishness of the mech’s response caused by the extra armor it was literally wearing. Before being shipped out here to assist the Federated Suns’ Lyran allies in repulsing a Combine assault on their worlds, the scientists and engineers of the New Avalon Institute of Science had developed armor packs that could be fitted onto a mech’s exterior. Such “cargo armor” as it was called had nowhere as near total coverage as regular armor and had to be fitted individually to different mechs, but properly fitted armor substantially increased a mech’s toughness without impairing combat performance… theoretically.

In practice, Ardan found, the additional mass made his Victor perform differently in a thousand tiny ways. They were nothing Ardan couldn’t handle, but it was annoying all the same. And this was but one of the many innovations that Ardan knew that the NAIS had developed or was developing in recent years. The cargo armor itself was inspired by Earth’s use of “cargo weapons”, disposable, externally mounted weapons systems that gave their machines a devastating opening volley. The NAIS was still trying to duplicate the system, but Ardan understood that properly mating the targeting systems of weapons not integral to a mech was giving them fits.

Earth… Ardan still had trouble believing even with hard proof presented to him, that an early Twenty-First century Terra had been displaced in time to the present day. Even more unreasonable were their “Sourcebooks”, a series of fictional works set in a future Inner Sphere. Although Earth had declined to export the works for “diplomatic” reasons, the Federated Suns knowledge of their contents would have been vague, based on overheard rumor and conjecture, had not one of Quintus Allard’s MIIO agents somehow managed to smuggle out a few volumes, mostly in her personal luggage. One of those had featured Ardan himself as the starring character

The book featuring Ardan himself had been been a bit disconcerting. The plot was utterly fantastic, the descriptions of mech combat both startling accurate emotionally while laughably inaccurate technically, and Ardan wasn’t even sure he recognized the character bearing his own name. But then, the character had been through a horrible experience that had never happened to him, and Ardan wasn’t sure how he’d react if he had allowed an innocent to die because of his own neglect…

Ardan banished such idle thoughts from his mind as he and his people crested a rise. There across a farm field between a lake and a stone manor house surrounded a small orchard were the Kuritans. Leading the charge, Ardan raised the autocannon housed in his Victor’s arm and… hesitated.

PPC blasts, missile volleys, and autocannon shells flew back and forth as the Davions closed in on the Kuritan enemies, but Ardan paid them no mind. Lake, check. Farm fields, check. Manor house with orchard, check. Ardan focused on that last and hit the zoom. Small child just outside the manor house, check.

It was exactly the same scene as described in the novel.

Galvanized into action, Ardan sprinted forward, focusing on getting to that child to the exclusion of all else, even firing back at his enemies. An enemy Quickdraw moved to block him. Ardan stepped aside and clotheslined it with his mech’s left arm without even slowing down, barely even noticing the jarring impact.

And when he was there, over the child, Ardan stopped to stand protectively over him, making sure that one foot and leg was between the child and everyone else. Then he cut loose with everything his Victor had. The autocannon on its maximum setting spewed out an unending stream of shells shredding enemy armor to get at internal components. His lasers and missiles added to the holocaust smashing anything the Autocannon failed to reach. Kuritan mechs went down to the onslaught. Here, a Shadowhawk’s exploded due to a lucky shot. There, a Dragon went down as its leg was severed at the hip.

But it wasn’t all one sided. Ardan’s chosen, stationary position and close range had turned him into the perfect target, causing the Kuritans to focus their fire on him. His Victor was hammered by firepower that by all rights should have turned it into scrap. But fire that should have blasted the armor off the Victor’s internal structure was instead absorbed and dissipated by the rapidly dwindling cargo armor. Oh, not all the fire hit the cargo armor, but enough of it did. And more importantly, Ardan absolutely refused to be moved.

Some time during this, the left arm and its attendant lasers were blown off. Then the right armor suffered an internal hit that disabled the Autocannon. Ardan staggered as a shot nicked his gyro, but still he stood and the Victor’s foot never wavered from its position. Another shot nicked the fusion engine, flooding his cockpit with heat as the advanced double strength heat sinks were overwhelmed. A damaged Grasshopper charged him, ready to finish Ardan off and strugging off the SRMs he sent its way.

The Grasshopper was suddenly smashed aside by twin bolts of artificial lightning. A Davion Warhammer stepped into view, it and the rest of Ardan’s force blasting away at the surviving and now retreating Kuritans.

And then there was nothing more to shoot at.

“Ardan! Ardan! Are you okay?” the Warhammer’s pilot called frantically.

“I’m fine, Sep,” Ardan replied glancing as his damage display. It was a morass of red and yellow and black with not a hint of green to be seen.

“What the hell were you thinking?” the outraged mechwarrior demanded. “Running ahead like that was stupid!”

“I…” Ardan began, but then cut off himself off as he heard a crying wail. His heart froze up.

Looking down, beside his foot in its protective shadow was the child. The toddler was wailing at the top of his lungs, covered in dust and dirt, and… looked perfectly fine. There were no injuries at all that Ardan could see. Certainly the child’s intestines were not strewn across open ground as the book had said would happen.

“It was worth it, Sep,” Ardan finally said, relaxing. Relief filled him. “It was worth it.

Earth Orbit, Granville Cluster
Coalition of Sovereign Nations
18 May 3025

Module JS-0001-S was a giant pipe floating serenely in space, illuminated by the Sun on one side and reflected light of Earth on the other. Even at not quite four hundred meters long and under a quarter of that wide, it didn’t look like much. The ends were capped with a pyramidal array with docking collars where corners would have been and center was ringed with booms mounting various detection and communications equipment. But for all that, it looked as if someone had designed a space station and then forgotten to put in a spinning gravity deck or two.

But JS-0001-S wasn’t a space station. It was a Jumpship. Or rather, it was part of a Jumpship, the part that contained the KF Drive, arguably the most advanced piece of technology ever invented by humanity. The KF Drive was what made interstellar travel possible within human lifetimes, allowing for nearly instantaneous jumps of up to 30 lightyears at a time. All the module was missing in order to accomplish this feat were crew, crew quarters, and a fusion drive to power the whole thing.

Which was where one Captain Chou Kurita of the Global Defense Fleet - using the word “Navy” being discouraged for political and cultural reasons despite the preponderous use of naval ranks and terminology - came in. His own vessel, the GDS Robert Goddard, was on slow approach to the Jump Module for docking. The Goddard carried the other half of what a Jumpship needed, a fusion engine powerful enough to power the KF Drive and the computers used to properly control where it jumped to.

“Status?” Chou queried as he lay in his acceleration couch. The high tech couch was a necessity if the crew were to remain functional during high Gee maneuvers The Goddard’s fusion engine was designed to be able to push itself and the Jump Module together up to a half a Gee of acceleration. That wasn’t so bad, but if the Goddard was detached from the massive Jump Module when cranking its engine to full power, the ship would accelerate to nearly eight full gravities with all the potential for injuries that implied.

“On the mark, sir,” Lieutenant Tarsus Gomez, the helmsman, reported from his own acceleration couch. “Relative speed is at three meters per second. Dock in five minutes… mark. May I respectively suggest, sir, that final braking thrust be applied at twenty meters?”

“You may,” Chou replied. Gomez was a veteran of many a docking maneuver, more so than Chou who had been tapped for everything from XO of a planet side garrison to diplomatic missions to his ‘distant descendents’ in the Draconis Combine. But Chou was ultimately a naval commander at heart; it felt good to be in command of ship again. “Make it so.”

With not much to do at the moment – docking maneuvers having been fairly standardized even in the handful of years that Earth people had been doing it – Chou double checked his helmsman’s approach calculations like a good commanding officer and found nothing wrong with them. That still left him a few minutes idle time, so he checked his tactical display.

Obviously, there was no immediate danger of the Goddard being attacked. Still there was a lot of space traffic moving around Earth although it was low enough that congestion wasn’t an issue… yet. Earth had been building fusion transit drives for less years than there were fingers on Chou’s hand. But in that time, the number fusion powered ships had grown explosively as people and businesses rushed to exploit the abundance of resources in the rest of the system.

And not all of those ships were civilian. Quite a few were military models belonging to the GDI and in some cases, individual nations. Ostensibly, they were for defense against an attack by some BT power, but in practice, they were being used more and more to police the civilian space presence.

Then there were the out-system colonies…

“Starting deceleration burn… mark,” Gomez announced.

Chou banished the idle ruminations from his mind as he felt the gentle tug of the Goddard’s maneuvering thrusters. Whatever the rest of the Fleet was doing, Chou had his own duties to attend to.

First Circuit
Hilton Head, Terra
15 July 3025

“…and given this new information,” Myndo Waterly, Precentor Dieron, was saying stridently, “it is imperative that we act now to silence this Periphery upstart. It’s already obvious than no conventional raid with mechs is going to work. We must reactivate the Fleet Reserve and scorch this blasphemous ‘Earth’ clean!”

This caused a stir among the other members of the First Circuit. Of course it did, Myndo thought scornfully. They were all sheep, mired in their comfortable offices and blind to the changes being wrought across the Inner Sphere. And worst of all was…

“Precentor Dieron… Myndo,” Primus Julian Tiepolo said delicately, as if talking to someone of questionable sanity. The patronizing attitude grated on Waterly, but she held her peace. “Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme at this time?”

“Extreme? Extreme? Primus, have you looked at ROM’s report?” Waterly scoffed, waving her own copy of said report. “This CSN claims as their homeworld an exact copy of Terra, a heresy if I ever saw one. They’re selling advanced technology to the rest of the Inner Sphere.”

“Trinkets,” Precentor Tharkad protested.

“Tip of the iceberg!” Waterly shot back. “And even what they’re not selling is inspiring innovation, something which our Order has strived to suppress for centuries. The Davions are experimenting with advanced armor and autocannons. The Steiners have started fielding fusion powered tanks with a cut down artillery piece for a main gun. The Combine, are looking into alternate PPC designs inspired by CSN fiction of all things.

“And that’s the most damning thing of all,” Waterly continued. “Their so-called fiction reveals our secrets! We cannot allow that to stand.”

“Precentor Dieron,” Tiepolo said in exasperation, “you are reading far too much into such a vague report.”

“Excuse me, Primus, but if I may?” spoke the newest member of the First Circuit hesitantly. Patricia Copperfield had ascended to Precentor Atreus her predecessor had died to a complete freak accident. Waterly didn’t know Copperfield very well and wondered if her ascension to the First Circuit was based more on Tiepolo attempting to stack the vote against Waterly rather than any actual qualifications on Copperfield’s part.

“Of course, Precentor Atreus,” Tiepolo said, nodding to Copperfield.

“Perhaps Precentor Dieron in her enthusiasm and zeal to protect our Order read more into the report than what was there,” Copperfield began. “But what she may be forgetting the actual report is based entirely on many disparate rumors and overheard conversations pieced together into a coherent picture that may or may not be correct. I would like to point out that we don’t actually know the content of these ‘Sourcebooks’, only what people who have been to Earth have had to say about them. And one thing that is very clear in these reports is that these ‘Sourcebooks’ are regarded as fiction.”

“Fiction that reveals our secrets,” Waterly pointed out.

“Fiction that comes inconveniently close to our secrets,” Copperfield argued, “but is still fiction nonetheless. It’s very obvious that these ‘Earth’ people regard the ‘Sourcebooks’ as fiction and thus disregard their contents as actually factual for which we may be grateful. In fact, were anyone to stumble across our secrets and try to publish them, we merely have to point at the CSN fiction and any said leak will be instantly discredited for trying to publish ‘fiction’ as ‘fact’.”

“And what of this blasphemous claim that they’re a Twenty-first century Terra some how time traveled to the present day?” Waterly asked irritably.

“What of it?” Copperfield replied with a shrug. “Even a cursory examination of our records show many a strange belief can be found in the Inner Sphere and beyond. We don’t level worlds just because they have bizarre beliefs. What we do is go in and educate them, teach them the proper order of things.” A dreamy look crossed Copperfield’s face. “But if it were true, just imagine the possibilities! A second Holy Terra that’s like an unformed infant, ready to create a new Star League needing only just the proper guidance from our Order. It’s Blake’s vision come true!”

Waterly stared at Copperfield in disbelief. What kind of empty headed, starry-eyed idiots was Tiepolo letting into the First Circuit these days?

“While your optimism is grand, we must deal with reality, Precentor Atreus,” Waterly told her. “And the reality is that your so called ‘Second Holy Terra’ has already been poisoned against us. The report definitely concludes that Comstar has been painted as the villain in the CSN’s eyes.”

“The Combine has been painted as villains as well,” Copperfield pointed out, “and yet the actual Combine has managed to achieve cordial relations with the CSN. So too has our Order been attempting to ingratiate ourselves with the CSN,” she turned to Tiepolo, “or have I been misreading the reports?”

“You have read them correctly,” Tiepolo commented.

“It’s doomed to failure,” Waterly predicted sourly. “We should wipe them out now while we can.”

“Precentor Dieron,” Copperfield said slowly, “you argue so stridently that I can’t help but wonder if you have a personal grudge against them.”

“What are you talking about Precentor Atreus?” Waterly demanded.

“Because if I remember correctly…” Copperfield began flipping through her copy of the ROM report. “Ah, here we go. Yes. According to the report, not only was Comstar painted as the villain, its destruction in the fiction occurred in no small part due to the actions of an incompetent Primus named Myndo Waterly.”

“W-what? I would never… That… that has nothing to do with this!” Waterly sputtered in protest, perhaps a bit too forcefully.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course you would never do anything to harm our Order,” Copperfield said doubtfully. She turned to the rest of the First Circuit. “But I submit that the fact that she’s mentioned by name in such an unflattering light may be coloring Precentor Dieron’s whole attitude towards the CSN. Surely we must be above such things?”

Waterly just seethed internally as the other Precentors – even her own supposed allies! – openly agreed with the upstart. Damn her!

“Now, now, Precentor Atreus, let us not resort to personal attacks,” Tiepolo remonstrated mildly. ”Precentor Dieron did have some good points. It seems obvious that we have a leak, otherwise these Sourcebooks could not be so close to the truth. ROM is currently working on identifying the culprit, but they believe they have identified the alias this traitor is using in the CSN and have put out an alert to all ROM stations to be on the lookout for one Michael Stackpole…”

ANTCOM
Port Krin, Antallos
Coalition of Sovereign Nations
20 July 2010/3025

“People, we have a problem,” General Howard Langley said to his hastily assembled staff and flag officers. Langley was in charge of all military operations Antallos Command, commonly called ‘ANTCOM’ for short. Unlike his predecessor, Davis, Langley lacked experience fighting BT forces head on. But then again, so had Davis before the Battle of Port Krin. “Ramirez, it looks like your whole deployment has been scrubbed.”

“Operation Care Package has been canceled?” Colonel Albertine Ramirez, the Spanish CO of GDI’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, asked with concern. Operation Care Package was a catch all term for a series of business investments, charity works, and outright gifts from the CSN government to the Outworlds Alliance in return for a nominal alliance and supplies of technologies the CSN still couldn’t produce yet. Of course, with thousands of civilians and billions of dollars worth of equipment being tossed around, Care Package needed some hefty security to fend off pirates and thieves, and that security was supposed to have been provided by Fourth Brigade. If Care Package had been canceled, that likely meant that relations with the Alliance had taken a turn for the worse.

“Actually, no, Operation Care Package is still a go,” Langley answered unhappily. “It’s just your part of it that’s been canceled.” He held up a hand to forestall protest. “From what Ambassador Smith tells me, while the Outworlds Alliance agreed to have a military force attached to Care Package for security purposes, no one’s actually mentioned to each other exactly what the force size this security detachment was supposed to be. It seems that until today, they were thinking something smaller than a full sized Brigade. That’s when their representative put his foot down. To them, a full Brigade looks less like a security force and more like a hostile invasion.”

“Exactly what force level do they have in mind, sir?” Colonel Ernest Brockheimer of Second Brigade asked. “We’ve got three brigades on this planet to defend it, four if Fourth isn’t leaving with Care Package, and that number makes me uncomfortable when I look at what the Successor States have at their disposal in our immediate area. And the Alliance wants us to reduce the protection to… what was it again, sir?”

“One company,” Langley answered unhappily. “Or at least one company or company level equivalent.”

That set off a storm of protests from the assembled officers.

“QUIET!” Langley roared. Everyone settled down. “Look, I don’t like it anymore than you do, but that’s what we’re stuck with. Now, I’ve sent a message back to Earth reporting on the situation, but Care Package is due to leave tomorrow, well before GDI Command can even read my report much less send a response. So that’s what we’re stuck with, and what I need from you gentlemen are ideas on what we should actually send.”

“I don’t know, sir,” Ramirez said. “Our whole deployment plan and logistics train was based on having a Brigade. For that matter, there were plans for using Brigade personnel and equipment to assist the civilians. Now all those plans aren’t worth the drives they’re stored in.”

“Not only that, sir, but the Brigades are designed to operate as a whole,” Juliette LaPlace, Langley’s Operations officer, added. “The smallest combat unit that can be deployed independently are all battalion sized, and those battalions are all homogeneous units for logistical reasons.”

“We could, I suppose, take an infantry company from one of the infantry battalions,” Ramirez mused aloud. “That would provide the most manpower to fulfill the ‘Assist the civilians’ mandate, but they’d be spit in the wind if any raiders or pirates came calling. I suppose we could send a tank or even a mech company but they’re not trained to operate independently.”

“There’s always the Legion,” Brockheimer suggested. “Or failing the Legion, there’s always one of those independent merc units hanging around Port Krin looking for a job.”

“Excuse me, sir, but you are you suggesting that we use mercenaries to represent the GDI and by extension Earth and the CSN?” LaPlace said with extreme skepticism.

“Well, you have a point there…”

“Actually, we do have a company level force trained to operate independently for long periods of time,” Colonel Ivan Antonov said slowly. The former SPETNAZ officer was in charge of ANTCOM’s Special Forces command. “What if we use Black Sheep Company?”

“Black Sheep isn’t earmarked for Care Package,” Ramirez pointed out.

“Of course, neither is Fourth Brigade anymore,” Antonov replied. He turned to Langley. “But think about it, General. Black Sheep Company was designed for operations behind the lines on enemy held planets. As such, they are person for person the most effective combat unit we have available to send while still being flexible enough to do a variety of missions.”

“And I suppose you will be leading them, Ivan?” Ramirez asked sourly.

“Of course not, Albertine,” Antonov said modestly. “Colonels do not command mere companies. Black Sheep is commanded by Captain John Price. He is former British SAS. Good man. I have in the past and on separate occasions had to fight against him and by his side. He’s is very good.”

“Captain Price?” LaPlace said, recognizing the name. “As in the guy from Call of…”

“I understand that Captain Price has done some consultation work in the past with some game companies,” Antonov said quickly. “But Price is the best man we have available for the job.”

“And Price is a Black Sheep pilot too?” Brockheimer asked skeptically. “I thought Black Sheep pilots were all Japanese given that they’re the only ones insane enough to build the damn things.”

“Alas, no, Price himself is not a pilot,” Antonov said regretfully. “His expertise is for times when even ten meter tall mechs are impractical, but he is in overall command. But the Black Sheep have one other advantage to recommend them above any scratch created unit you can put together before Care Package leaves.”

“What’s that?” Ramirez asked.

“They can deploy on a moment’s notice,” Antonov said. “And when they deploy, they will have their own techs, their own supply train, and most importantly, their own Dropship to serve as a mobile base.”

“Hmph, I like it,” Langley said thoughtfully. “I’ll admit that I could never see the use for Black Sheep since we’ve got Brigade units that could do anything they could and do them better for cheaper, but for an emergency like this, they look like our best bet.”

“Emergencies are what Special Operations are for,” Antonov observed.

“Okay, Antonov, if Black Sheep can be ready to ship out by 0600 tomorrow, then they’re now Operation Care Package’s security detachment,” Langley told him.

“They’ll be there, sir.

[EdBecerra]

This is just a placeholder for JonBerry's bit with Takashi Kurita addressing his "cousin" Chou. I'm posting the link, and only the link, and it will be deleted at Jon's request.

So, for the Chou vs Takashi faceoff regarding the Ares convention, here's the post in question:

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showp...ostcount=19889

Ed.

[consequences]

Note, severely non-canon, especially the armor explanation. Included for completeness's sake:

National Training Center
Fort Irwin, California
Earth
7 June 2005

"You may have heard a lot of derision from the geek squad about battletech machineguns, and how they must mean that their infantry is utter crap. Sorry to say that isn't the case. What they call a machine gun, is actually an automatic shotgun writ large, which is why the range is generally deficient compared to our weapons, but within that range, it's a god-damned nightmare. The only good news is that if you're still in your Bradley, it won't have the penetration to do much, but since every damned mech carries something bigger, staying in a Brad in weapons range of a mech is suicide too." Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Jackson clicked the button for the next screen of the inevitable powerpoint presentation, reflecting that after all these years, it might just be time to get out of the infantry business, or maybe transfer over to Special Forces permanently.

"Next we have the 'flamer'. Again, it's not the jet of burning fuel you'd think of, somehow they jacket the incendiary material so that they get far more distance than they should. If you need proof of how well it works, you can always talk to one of the survivors of the MP company that engaged the Hermes. Using heavy infantry weapons from cover, and switching positions immediately after firing, they suffered nearly 50% casualties withing two minutes of engagement before breaking." Definitely time to make a change in career, leading light infantry against these things conventionally doesn't sound like a winning plan.

"Apart from those two problems, the gunnery threat posed by most Battlemech weaponry to infantry is low, relative to their normal firepower. Our native intelligence sources, corroborated by prisoner interrogation, indicate that almost no one uses anti-personnel rounds for their autocannons or missiles these days. Of course, that's because half of the robots in creation seem to carry two machine guns, and make no mistake, one of those models will wipe out an entire platoon in the open in ten seconds or less, even when you've got your spacing perfect and hit the dirt at the first shot. Questions?" LtCol Jackson looked out over the auditorium, waiting a moment for a response before moving on to the next slide.

"Now as far as our capabilities go, as infantry your options for inflicting significant harm are limited. Your tried and true M2 is at best the equivalent of one of their light machine guns, and even then, you'd better aim it well, and hit the target continuously for at least three seconds. Our anti-tank rockets and missiles are also a bit light for the job, current testing indicates that you'll need to hit them with multiple rockets simultaneously to sufficiently stress the armor to cause degradation. Penetration is flat-out not going to happen until the armor is completely compromised, so don't be shocked when your rounds have little apparent effect. Now, for the weirdest thing that no one can explain yet: Where you shoot is not where the armor will necessarily degrade. Somehow, and the word 'magic' is being thrown around a lot more than you or I would like, the stress from an incoming round or beam can end up pretty much anywhere on a mech. There is also some outright deflection that occurs, but in general, if you put enough rounds into a mech, it will be damaged, just not where you like. The geek squad is working on a computer algorithm to correlate shot placement to armor attrition, but with only three working models for analysis its slow going, and anything they come up with is going to require an additional Land Warrior tie-in to IVIS, because ain't no way we're carrying around a damned laptop on top of everything else, Hooah?" Jackson waited a moment for the inevitable response to subside, taking the opportunity for a drink of water.

"For more bad news, as the mech's armor degrades, its reaction to stress changes, so you can literally put two AT4s dead center a second apart, and the first will affect the left arm, and the second the left leg. Again, just pour everything you can into it, and hope that they send us more Javelins soon. I'm not going to touch on unconventional tactics and demolitions attacks, because Captain Lewis is going to give you that portion of the brief. Five minute break, then back in your seats everyone."

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by consequences

Note, severely non-canon, especially the armor explanation. Included for completeness's sake:

Ah, I remember this one. It got rejected (shouted down more like) because the technobabble didn't fit with the way the armor is usually described as behaving.

[consequences]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Ah, I remember this one. It got rejected (shouted down more like) because the technobabble didn't fit with the way the armor is usually described as behaving.

Yeah, but it accounted for the random hit locations without making Battletech targeting systems thoroughly suck.

I swear I get more shit when I try to buff Battletech than any other time.

I suppose I could edit it to remove the armor explanation, but I really can't be arsed to make the effort.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by consequences

Yeah, but it accounted for the random hit locations without making Battletech targeting systems thoroughly suck.

I swear I get more shit when I try to buff Battletech than any other time.

I suppose I could edit it to remove the armor explanation, but I really can't be arsed to make the effort.

At the risk of starting a technobabble debate, perhaps BT targeting systems deliberately spread out their fire? When I got around to creating technobabbling the armor, I explained it as each armor layer being able to absorb much more energy than is required to knock them off if said energy arrived in a short enough time frame and in a small enough spot.

Therefore, to knock off the maximum amount of armor, BT targeting systems spread out the fire a little more so that it's not TOO concentrated. This of course results in more misses, but also more armor being knocked off. And some misses could be fluffed as hitting armor shards that have already been knocked off but haven't had time to fall out of the way yet. Hell, the explanation given for a pulse laser's effectiveness in the BoK Trilogy practically agrees with this.

And the real advance of the Targeting Computer is that it lets you concentrate all your damage on a single section without wasting much firepower on sections of armor that are already in the process of being blown off.

[Barricade]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

At the risk of starting a technobabble debate, perhaps BT targeting systems deliberately spread out their fire? When I got around to creating technobabbling the armor, I explained it as each armor layer being able to absorb much more energy than is required to knock them off if said energy arrived in a short enough time frame and in a small enough spot.

Therefore, to knock off the maximum amount of armor, BT targeting systems spread out the fire a little more so that it's not TOO concentrated. This of course results in more misses, but also more armor being knocked off. And some misses could be fluffed as hitting armor shards that have already been knocked off but haven't had time to fall out of the way yet. Hell, the explanation given for a pulse laser's effectiveness in the BoK Trilogy practically agrees with this.

And the real advance of the Targeting Computer is that it lets you concentrate all your damage on a single section without wasting much firepower on sections of armor that are already in the process of being blown off.

Might I suggest bringing that up in the Gun Porn thread? That's a damn good idea.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Barricade

Might I suggest bringing that up in the Gun Porn thread? That's a damn good idea.

Okay.