Chapter Thirty-Seven: Setting up (Shop)
Kentares IV Draconis March, Federated Suns. June 7th, 3008
It had been a long six months. After looting two of the half dozen depots I had on my list, we had just about run out of lift capacity, having to quite literally squeeze one of our Leopards into a bay before leaving to meet up with the rest of the Marksman on Pierce. We arrived right in time to see our second Invader show up with the two freshly repaired and painted Overlords we had stolen from the 2nd Mac.
We made landfall on Kentares IV about a week and a half ago, landing in one of the abandoned cities that we were going to do our level best to restore. I made sure that the Jabberwocky's and Daedalus were the first out. We had given the Industrialmech pilots a set of blueprints and told them to scavenge whatever they needed from the city in order to build the fortress we needed/wanted.
It's always interesting how technology both advances and regresses all at once. For example, where sometime around the industrial revolution walls had become obsolete, and with the advent of aircraft following World War II, there was less entrenching involved as the tank improved. But the further into the future you get, the more necessary these things become until they are once again rendered obsolete.
With that bit of woolgathering finished, I climbed into my shiny and new Warhammer WHM-6RM and made my way back to the prefab buildings we had set up temporarily while we were working on the main base.
Everything was starting to come together nicely, and while I was definitely paranoid, I was also doing my best to prepare for every eventuality. Dunham had negotiated with TTI and the Calderons, and they would not only be putting a Mithril plant in addition to the Toro plant, but they had granted me a license to manufacture Toro's of my own and TTI had sent people with Dunham to help open a branch into the Federated Suns. It turns out that me having returned a large portion of their national pride and talked Zarantha into improving relations had resulted in a much more profitable relationship between the two nations.
The TTI people had identified a couple of factories that they would like to begin reconstruction on once the main base was set up and the defenses running. And it would take a year or so to get those factories up and running. In the short term, we had taken the factory that we had taken off of Tybalt and were assembling it into an abandoned factory. We were going to be churning out the Mithril suits for infantry, pilots, and vehicles for as long as we could keep up production.
Our new Colossus was being used as housing for now, while the air base that we had repurposed was launching flights of new trainees all the time. Wardog and Strider had complained for all of ten minutes before they hopped into their shiny new birds and had begun to turn tricks like nobody's business. They enjoyed training people, both those new to piloting aerospace, and those that had been in the business for a while. Wardog and Strider were hands down some of the best pilots in the 'Sphere, and they had proved it time and time again.
Just because we were all pitching in to build new facilities, didn't mean that we were slacking on training, both the new recruits and our veterans were training with the new equipment we had, and getting set up just in case the Draconis Combine decided to drop down for a raid. On top of training, we were upgrading our mech forces over time and those we weren't upgrading, we were incorporating into lances where they could still make use of the advanced tech we were putting into use.
We had a lot of metal now, and our main job before Christmas was to get our meat trained up while we were still on a rest period. Because as soon as I put our unit out for contract again, the Davions would have us raiding.
"How do you still manage to do that?!" Major Sheppard shouted as he jumped out of the simulator, he had finally done enough therapy that they (the doctors) were letting him get back into a combat role instead of the teaching/admin role he had been in for the past eight months.
"Well, I finally have both the speed and armor to do some of the crazy things I've always thought about trying but couldn't because I didn't have the speed or armor." I replied, cackling a little madly. I had been in the simulators all day, doing a sort of battle royale per se. I had started with Sheppard's Fireteam and was now working my way through one of our mech battalions. One by one they came, and I began to dismantle egos. I didn't care if one of my people managed to beat me, but I didn't need ego destroying the camaraderie I had built up and maintained.
An hour later…
At this point, there was a live tri-vid of the simulation battles, with people taking bets and shots based on what Hull or his opponent was doing. The ones that had managed to get close to taking him out had been a tanker crew driving a Manticore in an urban setting. They had used their small profile and led Hull around for a merry chase as they stripped armor with their PPC and LRM's. Hull had managed to close the gap on them, but not before they had nearly cored his mech with a skilled gunner.
The Colonel had actually climbed out of the sims at that point and walked over to congratulate them for almost winning the scenario.
He had then climbed back into the simulator and gotten back to it. He had basically stated he would be in the sims until someone managed to take him out.
It had been hours. People had come close to taking out the Colonel, but somehow he always managed to dodge the worst of it and come out on top. It was almost like his Warhammer was responding before he was sometimes, and it was uncanny. Finally, a Demolisher tank team led by Lance Corporal Kerensky had managed to barely eke out a victory over the Colonel.
The entire regiment cheered and threw Kerensky and her crew onto their shoulders and carried them to the table that had the liquor and beer on it and began to pile drinks on them for being the team to finally beat the Colonel.
"Dammit." I said to myself as I woke up with the beginnings of a migraine. "I knew I overdid it yesterday." I shuffled to my closet and got out a fresh uniform, laying it out over my bed before heading to the bathroom for a five minute shower.
Once I had a fresh clean uniform on and was showered, I headed for the command center we had put together to see how the regiment had recovered from yesterday's spontaneous festivities. Walking outside and wincing from the frequency of the light, I reached into my pocket for the sunglasses I was rarely without only to find nothing.
"Oh.. that's right, that red headed she devil took my sunglasses as part of her bet." I started muttering to myself. That had been my only pair of sunglasses from the 21st century. And now I was going to be stuck with 80s styles. "Oh well," I shrugged to myself. "I guess I'll have to find a pair of aviators."
I finished my walk to the CIC and took a seat at my desk, enjoying the fact that we had proper aides to sort through the paperwork again. I took care of the small amount of documents I had and then went to check on the fort we were building. Our engineers had been told to go wild, and I was finding that if I had wanted this done fast I should have gone with civilian contractors instead of the combat engineers I had.
I moved through the regiments various quarters, observing training, maintenance, and whatever else they were up to. The NCO's and regulars were the beating heart of a unit and I needed to constantly keep my finger on the pulse. One of the constants I got was to import more of the coffee that I brought with me. Apparently that brand only did limited edition stuff and I had lucked out when I found a stash of it.
One of the things we had implemented while the cities around us were abandoned was to do urban environment training, this was for our Mithril, our tankers, and our mech Pilots. So once a week, we ran a simulated urban training scenario and looked to see how we could improve.
Kentares IV Draconis March, Federated Suns. July 15th, 3008
"Dear Colonel Mark Hull,
"I, Ian Davion and brother Hanse Davion, would like to cordially invite you to spend Christmas on New Avalon with us. Please make all of the preparations necessary and depart with all due haste. Thank you, Ian Davion. PS. Wear your uniform"
There was a bunch of other stuff in the letter, but it basically amounted to "You can bring an escort, but it can't be massive."
I got together with the Senior staff and put together a team that would go with me. I was going to take the King Henry V and the Messenger as my dropship and jumpship. And I had a "Bodyguard" team of four people. I was going to be lifting off in a couple of hours and I had handed a series of operational plans to Major's Sheppard and Peterson expecting them to be able to handle the construction and training while I was gone again.
Authors note: I'm tapped out for the day/night ladies and gentlemen. I'm about to crash. (You know you're tired when you're leaning over a computer cackling to yourself as you type an inside joke