Part 299: Political Vote 12

Political Vote 12

The number of JumpShips remaining in service in the Inner Sphere was a matter of great debate among the scholars of the Inner Sphere. The Great Houses each listed some hundred ships or so under the direct command. That the numbers were even was of no surprise, after all each Great House had to have put a certain number of ships in reserve before the first Succession War. It was a naïve but understandably easy assumption to make; but even the most jingoistic of scholars had to admit it couldn’t be the complete picture. And so most conservative scholars estimated perhaps a thousand JumpShips—plus whatever ships were at House Kurita’s disposal—still existed in the Inner Sphere.

Their estimates never took into account the ships owned by the Inner Sphere’s interstellar conglomerates; those of the vast messenger fleet ComStar used to supplement their HPG Network; or the thousands of ships controlled by the Ryan Cartel’s Ice Fleets. Nor was it strictly true that calling up every single JumpShip owned and operated by a single Great House’s nobility or private shipping firm would drive that house to bankruptcy, though conventional wisdom certainly said otherwise. In truth, JumpShips were substantially less rare than most people believed; it was simply those owned and operated by an individual Great House—and thusly capable of moving military forces—that were rare.

Hanse Davion stared deeply into the massive holotank in the center of his war room on New Avalon and smiled. “I had always wondered,” He said slowly, “how Takashi did it.”

He turned slowly, clasping his arms behind his back, to regard his visitor. “Our estimates always put House Kurita at ninety-odd regiments; and yet even when pressured simultaneously by myself and my esteemed colleagues in the Lyran Commonwealth, you were always able to get troops where you needed them. The implications were obvious but God take me for a blind man, I never saw them.”

The icons for four-hundred thirty-seven JumpShips, blinked in the massive holotank. Some—those now part of the Duchy of New Syrtis—were grayed out. Most bore the sun-and-sword of the Federated Suns, while the rest sported the symbols of various transport firms who operated solely within Hanse Davion’s sphere of influence. These corporations wouldn’t, or couldn’t, reject his call to military service. Across the former border, some nine thousand vessels of various types shone the dragon-in-a-meatball symbol of Hanse Davion’s greatest enemy.

Ex-greatest enemy, he swiftly corrected though his gut still told him otherwise.

“There are no truly privately-owned JumpShips in Kurita space?”

“None,” Jannike Kurita-Davion replied with a smile of her own. “I trust it won’t be too much for the Fox to handle?”

“Not at all,” Hanse laughed. “I’m just amazed we ever managed to hold you back.”

“You almost didn’t,” she pointed out. “You still may not. Marcus Kurita is agitating against you again and I can’t refute him. What news from the front?”

“Jeronimo has already fallen,” Hanse replied pensively. “We can claim the ultimate victory, but a Clan force of indeterminate size managed to fight its way off-planet and escape. One of their DropShips suffered a catastrophic failure in orbit. I’m told there may be survivors but in all honesty I don't much care: the world is ours.”

At her inquisitive glance he explained further. “Our other troops report that Codoux, Bangor, Marshdale and Wolcott probably won’t be far behind Jeronimo.”

“Then you were correct, the Hell’s Horses exhausted themselves taking Luthien.”

Hanse nodded, “It appears so. If we can capture clear through to Courchevel in the next wave, we should cut them off from any more reinforcements.” He paused thoughtfully, staring at the massive holo-map and toggling the view towards current estimates of Clan captures. Four different symbols glared at him: A spider, a scorpion, a horse; and the new ‘Jade Falcons’ that were, as the irritating Marcus Kurita was swift to point out, proving to be a proverbial yellow bird for Kurita troops by smashing through their formalized battle lines and striking from all directions.

“Assuming the Clans are as fractured as they appear,” Jannike replied. “If they’re sharing resources, nothing we do will impede these Falcons. Still, I prefer your analysis to Marcus’s. They won’t be able to tolerate us at their backs. Either the failure of their garrisons will sap morale or the idea that you’re waiting to smash them from behind should do it. The moment they divide their forces to better garrison the worlds they’ve taken will only benefit our defense.”

She smiled viciously, “After that, we should be able to grind them into so much dust.”

Hanse only smiled, “With luck, we can do so without grinding our own troops down into the same.”

“I shall help you send the proper orders to prepare our—er, House Kurita’s—”

“Our,” Hanse agreed.

Jannike bowed. “Of course. I shall help you prepare orders for our troops, for the next defense.”

“You’re too good to me,” Hanse finally turned from the holotank. “But we won’t be preparing a defense.”

“Oh?” She blinked her Kurita-blue eyes before her mouth dropped into an ‘o’ of surprised comprehension. “I see. Well then, now I absolutely have to help. If I don’t, we’ll never have time for a proper Kurita-Davion heir.”



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The crews of the Ryan Cartel’s massive ice fleet only rarely named their ships and that never officially. Identified only by number and sphere of operation, each ship simply randomly generated a name from a short list whenever they arrived in a customer’s system. It was in just this way that the JumpShip currently declaring itself the “Flurry” arrived in the Galatea system with massive chunks of pure water-ice and a pair of Octopus-class tugs securely attached to her docking rings.

Galatea, the Mercenary’s Star, had been water-starved even during the height of the Star League. Galatea’s position, far from its gigantic primary, had proven ideal for swift debarkation but she was also a harsh planet whose sole biome consisted almost entirely of a vast world-spanning desert and what few hardscrabble grasses capable of growing in soil long sterilized by a high-energy sun. Grass and the ubiquitous crop quillar which, as the saying went, would grow anywhere a man could irrigate.

The crews of the Ryan Cartel were proficient and as numerous as the fleets of any great house. The Flurry’s crew was especially so, having served twenty years without replacing a single crewman. They knew how to handle desperate pirates, overzealous customs craft, and every emergency from a micrometeorite impact to a blown hydrogen seal.

They were not prepared for the sudden appearance of dozens of ships or the sirens of centuries-old warning systems screaming about firing solutions and target locks. In their panic, they maintained silence until a few thousand tons of their dorsal ice chunk sublimated away at the near miss of a naval PPC. The Flurry lurched as the superheated gasses pushed it off its thrust column.

Less than three seconds later, the Flurry surrendered.



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A warm sun beat down on Larsha, bludgeoning the humid little hellhole like a street thug with a baseball bat in one of the planet’s innumerable dark alleys. With a soft metallic thud, thirteen year old Cassie Suthorn let the tip of her bat smack lightly against the ferrocrete. She knew those dark alleys, and those thugs. More often than not, she’d been the thug.

Guru Johann disapproved, at least to some extent, but the old man understood the value of practical experience. That very few fights happened in an open and well-lit dojo. He was the one who taught her to seek out the least steady ground she could on which to train. To hone her sense of balance until it was as keen as a razor’s edge.

She leaned up against the side of a five-ton dump truck and flipped a half-smoked cigarette off the edge of the roof. In the distance, sunlight glinted off the domed head of a fifty-ton Enforcer in the quartered green and white of the Duchy of New Syrtis Fusiliers. Cassie froze as the `Mech’s torso twisted her direction; and past. She smiled.

The metal monsters she’d hated so intensely ever since a pirate Atlas had killed her mother in front of her when she’d been a child were too reliant on computer systems. They were vulnerable. They couldn’t see her. All the fancy sensors and equipment in the galaxy might help them fight each other, but those sensors couldn’t spot a slip of a girl on the roof of an eight-story parking garage. Or maybe the vulnerability was a pilot who just didn’t see her as a threat.

Since their arrival on Larsha two months ago, the Syrtis Fusiliers had been bogged down fighting Larsha’s militia. Although the militia had no `Mechs of their own the perseverance of the defenders and their willingness to take the fights into the tight confines of a city—where even an infantryman’s rifle could be dangerous—had kept the Syrtis Fusiliers at bay.

“Come along, gweilu,” Cassie mumbled. “The militia’s fighting your friends on the west side. There isn’t nobody here to stop you.”

As if encouraged by her words, the Enforcer pressed forward, its body hidden by the bulk of the parking garage. Cassie smiled, and leaned into the dump truck’s open door and pulled a brick out from under the gas pedal. The idling vehicle lurched in a cloud of formaldehyde-scented smoke as the cinder block she’d tied to the gas spurred the massive truck forward. Its alcohol-burning engine didn’t hum so much as roar; but even that was lost amid the rumbles of the fifty-ton enforcer’s footsteps.

With a loud crack the truck smashed into the guardrail and for a few moments Cassie feared it wouldn’t be enough. Then the ferrocrete skirting gave way, and Cassie uttered a prayer of thanks for the consistency of shoddy local workmanship. Still roaring, the truck plummeted over the edge. Five tons of steel fell six stories and smashed into the medium `Mech’s domed head, cracking the cockpit open like a butcher cracking open a goat skull in one of Larsha’s open-air markets.

On roaring jets, a Crusader leapt to the roof of the garage, its arms swinging about as it searched for targets. Cassie was already gone, her legs pumping as she rushed down the stairwell. She hadn’t stopped to if see the truck hit. Her time on Larsha’s cruel streets had long ago taught her: never stick around to gloat.



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Thomas Hogarth coughed and sputtered, staring incredulously at his friend the Archon. His Friend the Archon, he corrected. It had such a nice ring to it. His Friend, the Archon Frederick Steiner. Who was he to refuse a task so vital to the survival of the Lyran Commonwealth? He ran his fingers over his face to hide his shock, to smooth his features as well as his glorious moustache.

“My lord,” he replied to the Archon’s piteous entreaty, “I am in the middle of filming! I would be more than honored to carry your message to the upstarts in Skye; but to put the film on hold at such a time! The economy is in dire enough straits—”

“Thank you, Thomas,” Archon Frederick sighed. “I know what this film means to you. I shall find another envoy, but I will ask that the ending to your film be changed.”

The Archon speared Thomas Hogarth with a cold, calculating gaze. “Portraying Skye as villains is something we can no longer afford. Introduce a new villain, a mastermind manipulating them from behind the scenes. Duncan Marik. The Red Corsair and her Pirates. Duke Aldo Lestrade. Hanse Davion. The Clans. I don’t care, but you will not portray Melissa Steiner or her Husband in a negative light.”

“It shall be done, of course,” Thomas replied, snapping what he felt was a crisp, military-looking salute. “Archon, I shall be honored to carry your message to the, er, misguided Skye rebels. Personally. I only ask that you give me another month to finish the filming. We can fix any continuity errors in post, I’m sure, and the movie should reach Skye about the same time I do.”



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The white-robed medical adept stood slowly and clasped his hands respectfully before him. Originally born in the Draconis Combine, the technician lacked the honey-wheat skin that had been in vogue there for the past four centuries. Unlike the most recent influx of ComStar recruits, the doctor hadn’t joined in protest of the recent merger with the Federated Suns. He had come to ComStar in the 3020s when his family fled the typically-fatal displeasure of the Benjamin district’s Warlord Syovo Yorioshi. Young, near-nobility, and already a promising doctor, ComStar had taken Yoshio Yamato as an adept. A small price for secreting his family away on some backwater in the Capellan Confederation and far from a Warlord’s wrath.

His head dipped in a shallow bow, violating his taboos to close the eyes of the dead man. This dead man was worthy of that much respect, at least. He straightened, turning to face the five most powerful individuals in the Inner Sphere.

“Precentors,” Yamato announced in low tones. “The Primus has passed—the final stroke was too much for him to bear.”

Uthar Everston, Precentor Tharkad loomed closer to confirm that the Primus had indeed passed away. “It has been a very bad week for the First Circuit,” he muttered.

Pedregor Aliz nodded grimly. “The Primus has left us with no clear successor and no one who knows his complete plans. Precentor New Avalon has vanished. And of course the fate of Myndo Waterly remains a concern for us all.”

“Of course,” Villius Tejh agreed insincerely. He loomed over his templed hands like a vulture trying to bluff other vultures away from some decaying prize. “And equally obvious: we all believe that we deserve to be the next Primus. So, the question is which of us will sacrifice his dream to spite his most hated rival? As the Lyran Commonwealth is on the verge of collapse, and the Free Worlds League distrusts our blessed order, and as we have no representative from the laughable Draconis Suns, it’s only logical that you elect me the new Primus—”

The furious argument that broke out at the commencement of Tejh’s speech filled the room with bitter recriminations and threats of violence. The crack of a laser pistol cut through the noise like a scalpel through a man’s carotid artery.

A man at the threshold of the First Circuit’s chambers glared at its squabbling members. A lattice of gruesome scars radiated outward from the eye patch covering his right eye left no doubt as to its total ruination, but the left was filled with an intensity that promised the same ruination as the glow of a PPC’s charging coils. He wore the simple white robes of a Precentor, bearing only the symbol of ComStar on his left breast, and a downward-pointing sword on the right. The barrel of his laser pistol glowed an angry orange and the scorch mark in the stone ceiling left no doubt as to the weapon’s lethality. He was flanked by Charles Seneca, the Precentor ROM, though the First Circuit members ignored that as thoroughly as they always did.

Uthar Everston was the first to speak, his initial stammer dying in an offended rage. “How dare you bring a weapon into the First Circuit chambers! Who the hell do you think you are?!”

“I,” the man paused perhaps melodramatically or perhaps to warm up a voice as ruined as his good looks, “am the Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht. But you,” he swept each First Circuit member with his good eye, “may call me Master.”



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Political Vote 12:

Frederick Steiner:
A) “You’re right, Thomas. The good PR could help your mission, I’ll send you after a short delay.”
B) “I’m sorry Thomas, but I can’t afford to wait. I shall send another.”

The new Villain of Hogarth’s Heroes:
A) Duncan Marik
B) Hanse Davion
C) ComStar
D) The Red Corsair
E) Duke Aldo Lestrade
F) Subhash Indrahar
G) The Clans
H) Someone Else: __________________

Villius Tejh, Precentor Sian
A) Kneel to Anastasius Focht
B) Defy Anastasius Focht

Pedregor Aliz, Precentor Atreus
A) Kneel to Anastasius Focht
B) Defy Anastasius Focht

Uthar Everston, Precentor Tharkad
A) Kneel to Anastasius Focht
B) Defy Anastasius Focht