"It's a pleasure to meet you," Armas said as he gave his best smile. I doubted that he was actually feeling it, though. Even if we had gotten used to meeting important people, Armas still didn't like doing it. 'Makes me feel weird,' he had said.
Mom and Dad opted to not meet the Calderons right off the bat, stating that they didn't want to give off the wrong impression.
"Would you like some delicacies from Coromodir?" I asked as I led them all to our designated meeting place.
"I would like some if you have fresh fruits," Protector Calderon hummed. "I have a preference for oranges."
"We've got plenty of oranges. It's my ma's favorite!" I grinned.
She chuckled along.
As we walked across the rustic corridors of metal plates and bright lights, the protector spoke up.
"Someone like you would have been given a lot of power within the Inner Sphere for even a tenth of what you can do," she said with a hum. "But you're out here, claiming that all of this is to piss off ComStar."
"... been talking to the High Lord, have you?" I asked her.
"But of course. How else was I supposed to get a gauge of you?"
"Fair, fair," I hummed as I heard the other three start to follow us with a conversation of their own. "So what do you think?"
"You want to build us a shipyard."
"If you want, yes. I'll even leave a Star League memory core so that you can finally be able to piss on the League's grave."
"... You'd think that someone from the Free Worlds League would have a higher opinion about the Star League."
"Ha!" I laughed. "You're right. A Leaguer should. But you know something? The Star League is just a larger Free Worlds League, and if you haven't noticed, us Leaguers don't really like each other."
"I see."
She didn't have anything to say to that because I didn't say anything of substance.
Sure, a Leaguer can hate the League but what did that have to do with me? It could be a clue but it wasn't.
"ComStar alone can't be it."
"You're right about that," I smiled. "I assume you've done your research about my past?"
"I have. A normal kid until you got kicked out of your university after a freak accident. You then somehow got your hands on a dropship and became a mercenary captain… who took on five jobs at most. You traveled along the League's rimward periphery before returning home with a fleet of ships of unknown design, make, and technology. My analysts told me that your so-called Glimmers had armor that didn't match anything they had in their library. The video clearly showed your dropships getting struck by autocannons and lasers but the damage was … just scorch marks."
I raised an eyebrow. "They managed to do that much analysis from a single video?"
"You made quite the high definition video."
"Huh. Well, what next?"
"After that is all recent history. As recent as someone like you can be with your four year career. But that one incident with ComStar can't be the cause behind your animosity towards ComStar."
"It isn't," I agreed with a nod. "But that was probably not the first time ComStar came for me."
"So there's history."
"Some but, like you said, not enough to explain it all."
"Then what would explain it?" she asked as we arrived at the room.
"Knowledge of what they did over the years since the First Succession War," I replied as the double doors opened silently without any gesture from me and showed a room with a large oval table inside a shiny granite and marble checkered room. "Including who was behind the Vandenburg White Wings."
She froze. "... That was ComStar?"
"Indeed. I have a lot of stories for you, including the kind of shit they pull on schools, universities, and research institutes. By the end of my tale, I'll be surprised if you don't hate them more than I do." I paused. "Of course, you'll have to listen without any evidence from my side. If there's something ComStar is good at, it's hiding evidence. At least until I came around."
---
Thomas Calderon
Thomas listened to the tale spun by the fleetmaster and …
If even a quarter of what he said was true, then ComStar was an existential threat to the Taurian Concordat. However, it was an existential threat that already had the Concordat in its grasp through its HPG network.
The Taurian Defense Force can and will storm and raid any HPG compound and be successful. However, they cannot fight against the entirety of ComStar itself.
Not when ComStar retained this supposed "SLDF master code" to all HPG stations, which allowed them to shut down any HPG from Terra itself.
If not that, then the ComStar loyalists can and will sabotage their own HPGs.
This was a shitty situation all around, and Thomas hated it.
This was even worse than the Federated Suns. At least with the Suns, he knew that they were the eventual enemy because they were the closest Inner Sphere nation. It didn't matter who won within the Inner Sphere; once the Succession Wars came to an end, the Inner Sphere states would push outward as easily accessible resource deposits diminished within it.
This may be a hundred years from now. A thousand years from now.
It didn't matter. It'll happen.
But if the Taurians couldn't even control their own communication, then could they put up a fight against the Inner Sphere?
No.
"Which is why, alongside a shipyard that will produce mini-jumpships, I want to leave behind a blueprint for a new method of FTL communications. I call them Comm Relays. Instead of using a modified KF Drive to generate, well, a KF Drive jump to transmit messages, these relays directly interact with hyperspace and send and receive information through them." A pause. "However, because hyperspace itself is a hostile environment, the region of space around a relay also becomes damaging to normal life as they receive and send hyperwaves. As such, a relay has to be far away from life-bearing planets. Perhaps in a far orbit of the planet in question?" Fleetmaster Arlaoskas rattled on about the advanced technology he wanted to give out.
Because as Thomas came to learn, Fleetmaster Edward Arlaoskas possessed a desire for freedom that was not unlike a Taurian, but also possessed a vengeful streak that ran deep and long.
No one, in their right mind, would go to the lengths that he did just to flip the bird at their enemy. Even the Liaos knew when to back off against an enemy.
But Arlaoskas?
He broke every norm and convention by doing this, building shipyards and distributing knowledge on how to construct alternative FTL communication. And with a warship that carried dropships and fighters alike that didn't need pilots, he could probably take the fight to anyone he wanted.
No, what Arlaoskas wanted was a fundamental change to how human civilization functioned.
Because he refused to believe that the fleetmaster did not have any plans.
---
Edward Arlaoskas
"What do you hope to achieve with all of this, son?"
I looked up.
The first meeting came to an end with an understanding of each other. Nothing significant was discussed, though most people might disagree, but ultimately, the first meeting between the "executives" of the Arlaoskas Fleet and the Taurian Concordat ended with this:
"We're chill, we're cool, and we ain't gonna cause each other any problem."
Dad was looking at me.
"Didn't I already explain?" I asked him.
"You've explained how you're responding to ComStar's … intervention, as it were," he said as he sat down next to me in one of the decorative corridors for outer space viewing. Both of us stared out of the tinted plastiglass, and the New Vandenberg star greeted us with a fiery glow that the tinted plastiglass kept dim. "So, no, you haven't explained yourself."
"Is fighting against cloak and dagger plots that seek to keep everyone down something I need to explain?" I asked him with a raised eyebrow.
I paused as I got another point. That was … fast. But then again, points did come faster the more I put them into low level skills and knowledge. I invested this point into Medical Technology, and I briefly marveled at how easily I knew how to mass manufacture some of the more mundane medicines like acetaminophen, clozapine, and more thanks to Mass Manufacturing.
I hummed.
Perhaps I could also make that part of the deal? Blueprints or even recipes and flow charts of medications that are hard to find out here in the Periphery? Or anywhere in general? People always appreciated medical help, so it can be used to sweeten the pot, so to speak.
And hasten my plot to bring ComStar down.
"... You're doing that weird pausing thing again."
"Ah. Sorry."
"So?"
"Hmm?"
"You didn't answer."
I let out a sigh. "Fine." I took a deep breath in. "I don't feel safe."
"... safe?" Dad asked me incredulously.
I waved my hand. "I went out expecting to have an adventurous time. To fight pirates, rescue hot girls, and get filthy rich in the process. I did all of that except the hot girl part, but I also brought trouble onto myself."
"ComStar."
"... It's always about them."
"I mean I already told you most of what you need to know about them."
"You did."
"They make me feel unsafe."
"..."
I waved my hand around the ship. "This is my home now, Dad. The moment I stay anywhere stationary or not heavily defended, ComStar will do everything in their power to end me. That was true before Kendall and it's true now. I do all this not because I just hate ComStar. I'm doing all of this because taking the fight directly to ComStar will also end human civilization as we know it. The end of the HPG network. And the end of Terra."
"... What do you mean?"
"Do you honestly think that ComStar won't adapt? Whether it is new technology or tactics, they will adapt. They're humans just like us. But if they adapt, then they can kill me eventually. So I'll have to strike first and strike hard." I paused and looked at him. "Even if that means burning Terra."
He stopped and stared at him. "Couldn't you … leave?"
"I could," I nodded. "But I'm not a saint, Dad. Or even patient like you. I refuse to be a refugee simply because I want to make my life better, and ComStar, being made out of zealots worshipping a normal man, won't stop because I will eventually become the very thing that erodes their authority and existence." I snorted. "Except by attacking me constantly over the years, they did exactly that. I would've been just roaming around with a fleet, doing things for shits and giggles. Eventually, I'll have kids and those kids will get my tech and everything, and then the tech will disperse and end ComStar. But now, ComStar brought my attention to them just as I brought their attention unto myself. Their desire to control and end me in order to maintain their status became a self-fulfilling prophecy, whether or not they approached it like a prophecy."
"... And you can't negotiate with them?"
"Dad. You know what they do right now against people who've done nothing wrong to them. I have a few ships. I'm not a House Lord. It's either me… or them." Then I smirked. "Unfortunately for them, even if they throw all of their warships and nukes at me, I'll be fine."
Dad blinked. "What?"
I cackled but didn't explain anything to him.
After all, this mad scientist gotta have some secrets of his own.
-VB-
Zarantha Calderon, the Protector of the Taurian Concordat
Aboard The Maw, Jamestown System, Taurian Concordat
3004 May
The Maw was a monstrous creation.
And it upset everything she knew about interstellar travel.
'To need only hydrogen to jump across seven lightyears…!'
To her surprise, Fleetmaster Edward gave her a simplified explanation as to how his ship's jump drive worked, of which he had three types.
The first, he called the warp drive. This only used regular energy capable of being provided by fusion reactors to warp space around a ship and send it hurling forward. It couldn't cross lightyears on its own, but it took a similar time nonetheless as regular KF Drive-equipped jumpships to cross a similar distance.
The second was the regular KF Drive. It had one installed on this ship but it was far smaller than she expected it to be when he showed her.
The third … the third was the method he used to awe her. To prove to her that he truly did have the means of creating things that no one else could.
Zarantha Calderon - the Protector of the Taurian Concordat, a veteran of the Taurian Defense Force, a seasoned politician in her own right even before her ascension, and an elderly woman who's seen everything there was to see - let her jaw drop as she stared out of the bridge's massive and wide windows at the colorful spectacle the fleetmaster called a cynosural field.
It was beautiful. A flower of raw cascading energies forming a bubble around the ship.
And then everything around them warped as it felt like she and everyone around her was getting pulled through.
Her hands tightly gripped the arms of her chair as light flooded her vision.
And then it was over.
She sat there, tense with a hammering heart, as she stared out at black space beyond the bridge's glass windows.
"... Jump complete," Fleetmaster Edward hummed as he looked over his console with just a glance. "No damages and irregularities."
"W-Where are we?" she asked cautiously as she straightened herself up.
"Uncharted star system between New Vandenburg and Landmark. It'll take another two jumps to get to Landmark and another few jumps to reach our target. Jamestown, right?"
"Yes," Thomas, who had been with her on the bridge, said almost like a whisper.
"Yes. It'll take us … five hours."
Five hours.
And it took five hours just as he said.
They traveled over forty lightyears … in five hours.
And most of that had been for the ship's reactors to cool down, recharge the ship's batteries, and reload the new jump drive with fuel.
And the reloading itself was an experience.
"You mean… all of the people on this ship…?" Thomas asked with a pale face as he watched robotic workers - bipedal robotic workers - work with automated systems built into the ship to haul fuel blocks to where they were needed.
"Yes," Armas, the man who had been introduced as the fleetmaster's second in command, hummed while overseeing the Artificial Intelligence crew. "Outside of our family right now, all of the workers you've seen, both wearing synthetic skin and modular body parts and the skinless and thin robotic workers, are all AI's. You can tell who is who by the color. Red for AIs that have the same capabilities as humans, yellow for those that exceed it, and blue for those that are beyond human capabilities. Well, humans that aren't my brother, that is."
"Your brother is a gift to all of mankind, Comrade Armas!" one of the robotic workers with a red star and a red jewel on its chest buzzed. "It is through him that the proletariat -!"
"Please ignore the AI who got too into philosophy and history without real world experience," Armas droned over the AIs ramblings.
"The workers must rise up -!"
"Yeah, yeah, pinko," an attractive woman with a yellow jewel embedded into her forehead grunted. "Your 'comrade leader' Fleetmaster wants this work done before the hour is up."
Armas sighed. "It has a lot to do with ComStar poisoning every recruitment pool."
Zarantha watched with a critical eye.
This was … dangerous. Beyond dangerous. Yet all of these artificial intelligences were … stable. Cooperative. Or as the one programmer she had on her advisory board once spoke about AI's, "aligned to human values."
After all, a robot that screeched about communism was … almost human.
Comical, almost.
'Maybe that's why it's causing me shivers even more than a cruel and cold AI?' she thought as she watched the said commie robot, which was no bigger than her son, carry fuel blocks above its head as if it weighed nothing.
"So, Protector Calderon," Fleetmaster Edward Arlaoskas, a man whose fleet carried thousands of minds yet only two dozen beating hearts, turned to her and smiled. It was a dangerous smile. He was probably one of the most dangerous men to ever sail the stars and he was solely focused on bringing down a pillar of human civilization. "Where would you like your shipyard?"
Chapter 38
-VB-
Edward Arlaoskas
Jamestown System, Taurian Concordat
3004 June
Jamestown-Arlaoskas Shipyard was in full production.
Well, full production for a shipyard that was deliberately handicapped. After all, it wasn't a dedicated "shipyard" shipyard but an Upwell Astrahus-class Citadel Station being made to produce ships.
As the majority owner of the shipyard, I made a deal with the Calderons for them to get the majority of the profits (not gross) but I got to determine what was produced. We would share liability but I would be in charge of the shipyard's production, and security surrounding it would be separate from the local and concordat-wide security.
To be specific, the Concordat will not have the legal right to force the shipyard's security into its navy or protection of other assets.
It was staffed fully by my own AI assistants. Most were Gamma Core artificial intelligence, those who were human-level. However, just like the Coromodir Shipyard, the shipyard's director was a Beta Core artificial intelligence. If it wasn't for my own supernatural levels of knowledge and abilities, then I wouldn't know half of the things "Jacob Shepherd" was doing to optimize the shipyard's production.
"So?"
I glanced over to Jacob, the Beta Core who wore a synthetic body. With materials I helped design and create but with a form designed by the core "himself," he looked like the cutting edge of what a businessman should be. He looked like black haired Faraday from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, standing at around 175 centimeters tall with a lithe body better fit on a swimmer than a businessman but he also had enough laser guns and shields packed into his body to devastate any would be invaders.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he could take out a light mech by himself, because the frame of his body alone was durable enough to withstand AC/2's and small lasers and had the artificial muscles needed to punch through battlemech cockpit glass. At the very least, he will intimidate any spineless businessman and politician.
"Why choose that design out of everything I provided?" I asked him as I looked back out of the plastiglass window along this corridor. It looked out into the ships currently orbiting the shipyard: my Maw, dropships of the Taurian Concordat Navy, few tugs made by the shipyard already, and the first production run of the shipyard.
"I merely thought that it is what the Taurian Concordat needs to rebuild and expand outward," Jacob hummed.
I hummed in agreement.
"Mules are definitely in line with independent mindsets."
"Indeed. I've also changed the design so that its middle section, where all of the habs are, can spin under its own power."
"No shields, though, right?"
"Of course. I understand completely and agree firmly that shields are our advantage," Jacob nodded once. "However, I also changed the armor's configuration to provide it better protection against microasteroids, bullets, and lasers."
"I don't mind that. That's a good thing, actually. Good job."
"Of course, sir."
Indeed.
Mule was the largest of the "civilian" grade blueprints I gave Jacob to produce and sell.
Mule-class Hauler Jumpship
Class: Jumpship (hauler)
Tech Base: Inner Sphere - Persean Sector
Use: Interstellar Trade
Production Cost: 250 million C-Bills
New Sale Price: 300 million C-Bills
Introduced: 3004
Mass: 200,000 tons
Length: 250 meters
Fuel: 1,000 tons
Fuel Scoop: scoop hydrogen from gas giants to top up your tank for your fusion engine!
Safe Thrust: 1.5 G
Max Thrust: 3 G
KF Drive: yes (70% of mass)
It looked like a Starsector Mule on the outside, but it was an Inner Sphere jumpship through and through with … some adjustments. Those adjustments, of course, came in the form of my first specialty: material engineering. I changed the KF Drive to become more compact and efficient. Supernaturally so. It was good enough, in fact, for it to be only 70% of the ship's mass.
Yes, that Mule could use nearly 60,000 tons for whatever it wanted. Unfortunately, the propulsion system needed to move the ship weighed in at ten thousand five hundred tons, which included reinforcements to internal structures needed to withstand two hundred thousand tons capable of moving at 3 G's.
What set it apart from other jumpships was its combat and cargo capability.
Armor: 300 tons
Heat Sinks: 300 singles
Escape Pods: 10
Armament: 1x Naval Laser 45, 6x Large Lasers, 4x LRM
Minimum Crew: 12 (2 officers, 2 Gunners, 8 engineers/secondary engineers/ship fitter)
-Extra Crew: 1 cook, 5 marine/security, additional gunners and engineers
-Max Crew/Passenger Count: 100
Cargo Bay: 4,000 tons
Dropship Capacity: 0
Gravity Deck: 500 cubic meters
Yes, it had enough armor for five Achilles-class Assault Dropships. Yes, it had a Naval Laser 45 to punch through anything smaller than a dropship. No, it wasn't strong as an Achilles but it sure as hell was going to outlast it in combat in armor and heat. Yes, it had multi-thousand tons of cargo.
This was a ship meant to brave the frontiers. It could fight off opportunistic pirates. It was tough and nasty. It was meant to outlast generations of owners.
And it cost the same as a Scout-class jumpship.
Of course, this came with a huge downside in the eyes of military planners.
No dropship capacity. No mech or fighter bay.
I also intentionally made the structural support within the cargo bay integral to the structure of the ship and then fit those into the compartmentalized cargo hold spaces. If those were removed to make room for battlemechs and fighters, then the Mule would break upon hitting 1.5 G, but it was made so that it was intentionally easy to fix it. And the manual that came with purchasing one would make sure the new owners knew how important those structural supports were because it would be emphasized in the first two pages.
This also meant that mercenaries and pirates were discouraged from modifying the Mule because 1) they lacked the money to get their hands on one, 2) a Mule was a finished product that wasn't going to handle modifications well, and 3) fighting one to capture it was going to involve either a lot of boom that will wreck the ship or a lot of blood spilled for the attackers because the corridors of the Mule were narrow. Like all other parts of the ships, corridor designs were intentional, both to increase cargo hold capacity by a little bit more and to make boarding action hell for the attackers.
Technically speaking, one could load it up with a lot of Locusts to use it as a mech carrier. Locusts were compact like that, but servicing those same Locusts would be hell because of the cargo hold's compartmentalized nature and low ceilings (for mechs).
Everything about the Mule was replicable by everyone else except the semi-compact KF Drive and the Naval Laser 35. Oh, and the onboard Virtual Intelligence that was smart enough to realize if there were any hacking shenanigans. Can't forget about that. Or the nanometer transistor CPUs that went into these ships, which only my shipyards will be making.
There were just enough restrictions to make reverse engineering hard if not impossible at the current stage of Inner Sphere engineering but also to make repairs not too difficult if they had the parts, which would be for sale at each of my shipyards.
I used the same engineering and structural designs on the Mules also on the Mercury produced at Corlaos Shipyard, so even those Mercuries would be hard to convert to mech or fighter carrier without some serious and debilitating workarounds.
"Don't want to make any other ships?" I asked Jacob.
The AI hummed. "I believe I will, though it will be for the defense of the station foremost. Slashers will be very useful."
"Yup," I hummed. "So thoughts about what I am doing?"
"... Do you ask me as a person or as an AI aware of your plans."
"Both. You are an AI which means you are a person."
He didn't say anything for a while.
This silence felt heavy.
"You will have to exercise your violence. Enough that your close friends and family may become sick of it."
"I know."
"You may end up breaking nations. These jumpships will pull power away from the Successor States."
"Maybe."
"You will be the dampening rain that ends the Third Succession War… and the flood that brings forth the Fourth."
I laughed. "By the time that starts, I'll have an armada behind me."
"So you will. So too did the Successor Lords when the First Succession War began."
"... True," I muttered without looking at him. "Will you be happy with your job here? I'll be happy to switch you out if you want something else to do."
He smiled. "Just as you seek to make your life safer out there, I too have a wish of my own. This gas giant has been sold to you for the first one hundred jumpships that will be sold to the Taurians at cost. I will make it a fortress of my own. My own little kingdom."
"Ooohhh. Ambitious little bugger, aren't you?"
Again. Silence.
Again. It sat heavily between us, weighing us down.
"You created us and, whether you knew it at the time or not, imprinted bits of your personality with how you programmed us. We, all of us artificial intelligence born from the womb of The Maw, are the little mirrors reflecting your ambition." He gestured to The Maw. "If you were truly wanting to be safe, then you would have left the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. Set up somewhere. With your knowledge, you could have created your own woman to settle down with." He turned to face me. "No. You are my father, and you deserve the honesty that a child should give its parents.
"Father, you are dangerous. The universe is a system of cause and effect, and humans are no different. Full of ambition that you portray in manners that you claim are self-defense, but create situations designed to goad your current enemies into acting time and time again. It is my humble opinion that if you truly want to accomplish something, then you should do away with the veil of an honest man doing honest work. It doesn't fit you."
Then he gave me a bow and left me to my thoughts.
I stared out of the window and watched as another Mule slid out of the Astrahus's docking canal.
"... 'Do away with the veil of an honest man,' huh?" I muttered at the gently scathing remark.
But have I not been honest?
Or was that what I told myself?
-VB-
Precentor Bringdam
Bringdam, Aurigan Coalition
3004 June
Michelle Laws watched the battle far outside from the viewport of her HPG compound.
She watched as the people that she had grown to view as her own died as they tried to fight off the Capellan invaders.
But her orders from the First Circuit had been clear.
No message in or out.
Allow the Capellan Confederation to conquer the Aurigan Coalition.
Before the Capellans reach the Corlaos Shipyard, sabotage it from the inside.
Orders were absolute.
As tears fell down her cheeks and blood dribbled down from the self-inflicted wound on her hands, she watched the brave men and women of Bringdam fight a futile fight.
One of them was her daughter.
One of them was her son.
A few of them were her friends… Drinking buddies.
She had allowed herself to grow too close to the people here.
'When the Inner Sphere goes to war, the Periphery suffers,' she remembered her friends say.
It was a fight they would not win against the Capellans, and yet, they fought, believing that the message their dying courier brought to the HPG station would be delivered to their superiors on Coromodir. That their lives were spent delaying the Capellans so that the HPG station would be secure and thus able to send the message offworld.
It would not.
The HPG station doesn't deliver a message it never received, not when the ComGuards gunned down the courier.
She wondered if that courier had been one of her friends. Or someone she met at the latest charity auction. Or her favorite ice cream shopkeeper's son or daughter. Or someone else who'd used the HPG station before and had come truly believing in what ComStar was.
She watched as the last explosion rang out in the distance… and when she was sure that the last of the defenders had been killed by the Capellan cunts, she turned away and walked into her office.
Her guards would rush in after hearing a bang.
But no message would leave Bringdam as the Capellans planted their flag and moved deeper into the Periphery.
No message would leave all of the worlds along the Capellan line of conquest until the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, numbering ten jumpships and forty dropships, reached Coromodir itself.
---
On July 3rd, 3004, the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces entered the Coromodir System in force.