Chapter 5

Over the next three weeks and five days it took for the Claremont to make the jumps, first to Winfield, then to Iron Land, there was a veritable buzz of activity, mostly from the technical staff, but also from various other sections of the crew as well as from myself. Mostly, I kept busy training in several aspects. Firstly, I had Chief Jankowski put me through my paces with his security teams for the first week. Infantry training was first-year stuff at Blackjack School of Combat, mostly used to whip Noble recruits who'd never so much as picked up a rifle before enrollment into shape. I was fit and in the top percentile of my graduating class for Infantry Training, but I quickly found out that didn't mean much when compared to elites like Chief Jankowski or Lieutenant Adamski. Still, I'd held up better than they'd thought I would.

Next for me was a refresher course on my spacer training. This was something that I'd been trained from a young age to be able to do, but Blackjack didn't have a Spacer Training Program, which meant that I had to shake the rust off. I did this by assisting various Captains. Not only Captain Gomez of the Claremont but also Captain Haesteinsson of the Hoplon. Notably, I was doing a refresher course on Dropship Weapons Officer Training when we were recharging over Winfield when an unidentified Leopard CV-Class Dropship and an Invader-class Jumpship practically exploded out of a pirate point further toward the edge of the system and began launching six, TR-Ten Transit Medium ASF and began attempting to snatch some of the automated ore haulers traveling from the mines on the outer planets of the system to the processing facilities on Winfield Five.

It was a fairly standard snatch and grab and the sudden arrival via pirate point meant the Garrison on Winfield Five was out of position to intercept the pirates before they could make off with an ore hauler or two. Fortunately, both the Hoplon and the Lynx were in position and ready to go. I hadn't anticipated that I would have quite this hands-on a refresher course, but needs must. Two Dropships and eighteen ASFs bore down on the Pirates. We had them outnumbered by a factor of two to one in dropships and three to one in ASF. Furthermore, our crews and pilots were better than theirs were. The skirmish was short but brutal and in the end, we managed to capture a damaged Leopard CV-Class Dropship and a completely unscathed Invader-class Jumpship, and down six TR-Ten Transit Medium Aerospace Fighter with only modest damage to the Hoplon and Lynx. For our help, Duke Marcus Winfield offered us repairs for all craft including our captured Leopard CV gratis.

Repairs took another six days, during which time I brushed up on my technical training by helping with some of the easier repairs. By the end, we managed to offload our newly repaired Leopard CV to Duke Marcus for eighty-million C-Bills, some of which was used to hire crew for our new Invader-class Jumpship, which was apparently named the Antelope. We also took the time to repair our ships and get back underway. The last stretch of time was spent brushing up on my strategy and tactics via the simulators installed on my noteputer. I fought and re-fought several key battles from various historical wars from both sides until I was confident I could at least stalemate the simulator AI half of the time. I'd get better over time, slowly increasing my proficiency, but for now, at least a stalemate in fifty percent of battles was a good baseline to go off of.

By the time we arrived on Iron Land, I'd brushed up on every facet of my training I could save Mech piloting and Combat Vehicle Crew training, mostly because there wasn't any room for either of those with everything so packed like it was. Of course, I wasn't the only one who had been busy on this trip, far from it. Plenty of others were just as busy. Some were routine, like the flight crews for the Various ASFs aboard going through routine maintenance and system checks, or Chief Jankowski's Security Troopers going through their daily PT in a corner of Cargo Bay Beta. Others weren't routine in the least, having only been spurred to action by my orders.

That last bit was the case with Doctor Acker's team. They'd taken several types of specialist munitions to workbenches, taking them apart, testing individual components, and putting them back together. By the time we reached Iron Land, Doctor Acker's Team had finished drawing up designs for armor-piercing, incendiary, flak, and precision specialist autocannon rounds and had started work on attempts to reverse-engineer CASE Ammo Storage, which would be complete in the twelve days or so it took to burn from the Jump Point to Iron Land Proper.

Meanwhile, Senior Technician Sokabe's team of Computer experts had managed to pull a complete design for a few things off of the terraforming technology memory core. Complete designs for Soletta Arrays, Oxygen Filters, and Water Ice and Soil Seeding Processes for the purposes of Terraforming had been pulled off of the memory core by Sokabe's team before the core had scrammed itself, too corrupted to continue. Fortunately, between those, reverse engineering the Water Purifiers, and reverse engineering the Storm Inhibitors, that should get us a valuable, if basic, suite of terraforming technology that could be used to better colonize the multiple frozen iceballs that crowded this section of the Periphery.

As well as all that, Doctor James had tentatively labeled some of the points on the Star League Star Map that were missing some of its annotations as Star League bases. Including the Burnt Rock Medical Research Facility and the Odawara General Research and Development Facility. Both of those were within the territories of other successor states, however. Burnt Rock was deep within Lyran Territory, more than six jumps away from my closest world. Meanwhile, Odawara was even further away in the Pesht Military District of the Draconis Combine. Trying to get at either would be a long trip and while the Lyrans were on friendly terms, the Dracs were far from it. Fortunately, there was a system closer that Doctor James had marked out. Tertiary Research Site Epsilon Rho Kappa. According to Doctor James, Tertiary Research Sites often contain an eclectic mix of data and technologies.

Finally, however, after over a standard month of travel, I'd finally made it to Iron Land. Crews were being put ashore and cargo offloaded before the Claremont would head back out toward Epsilon Pegasus to scoop up another batch of LosTech, including the Excalibur-class Dropships that they would park on the Claremont as glorified Cargo Containers to hold extra LosTech until we could get crews for them. In the meantime, while Captain Gomez was doing that, I would be taking dropships to the Iron Land SLDF Base to try and see what we could wring out of it. For right now, though, I was just glad to have the opportunity to stretch my legs.

Apparently, Iron Land had a population of around eighty-thousand people, mostly clustered around its one, moderate-sized settlement and the archipelago it sat on. Iron Land was a tropical world, over eighty percent water and hot. Most of the inhabitants tended to be strung along an of archipelago off the western coast of the main landmass, with the main settlement of Smelter Base, a town of some thirty-thousand people, on the largest island on that archipelago. The Archipelago, named the Lighthouse Islands, had the thirty-thousand people of Smelter Base, along with some forty-thousand living in smaller towns stretched out among the islands, fishing, farming tropical plants, or tending the Iron Land Island Boars that provided a good deal of the meat the planet consumed.

The Main Continent, named Orelode, was primarily used for mining, with various mining settlements set up along the mountainous coastline of Orelode. About ten thousand miners and prospectors made their homes in the Seatop Range, running the Mining Platforms and extracting a wealth of useful minerals from the bones of the mountains. The largest town in the Seatop Mountains was Murtagh's Strike, named after a prospector who had found a large Germanium Deposit on the spot and used the strike to build a town. Mutagh's strike had around two-thousand-eight-hubdred people living in it. When the average Seatop Mining Settlement consisted of one to two-hundred people, this was quite large.

Beyond the coast was a massive basin filled with jungle and all sorts of nasty insects including the dreaded Orelode Stinger, a Centipede that was supposed to be able to grow up to three feet long with a deadly, venomous, bite. The Stinger was thankfully, confined entirely to the jungle basin, unable to handle the mountain climates. This Green Hell sprang up around a river that flowed south through the desert into the Siltlands, an area rich in agricultural land and light on deadly insects that were primed for farming if only the planet had the population. In fact, the Siltlands was where the former heart of Iron Land had been. A large city of over a million people, with millions more in the farming areas around it.

Unfortunately, the Amaris Coup and subsequent Civil War had whittled those numbers down, and the First and Second Succession Wars had done much the same. The great city of láspiopolis had long since sank into the loamy silt from which it had gotten its name, and the survivors had either fled Iron Land or relocated to the Lighthouse Archipelago. I had plans to rectify this, but they would have to wait until I was able to put them into motion. For the moment, most people believed that Iron Land was a depopulated wilderness, even ComStar. Advertising for people to come join the colony now would be a bit counterintuitive to keeping the fact that it wasn't depopulated hidden, and I wanted it hidden. Not just for the obvious reasons of having an SLDF Base in the System and a Baronial Guards Mech Company with SLDF Vintage Gear on-site either. No, there was another, altogether more mundane reason for the secrecy.

Smelter Base had a working Battlemech Production Facility capable of turning out light and medium mech designs. True, the output wasn't large, only a single lance per year, but that was more than could be said about the vast majority of the Periphery. Thankfully, we were still flying under the Radar for the moment, but unlike New Ålborg or Zertarum, who could call upon a few Militia Regiments and a Guards Regiment to strengthen their defenses, Iron Land didn't have the population to field more than a Guards Company and a few Militia Battalions. Anyone who wanted to attack Iron Land would be able to do so if they came in force. Until I could build up some, anonymity was Iron Land's best defense.

Ironically, for such a small colony, Iron Land seemed to boast a fairly robust downtown, with several bars and gambling parlors catering to factory workers, off-duty soldiers, fishermen, and miners. These people weren't nobles from the Inner Sphere, not by any stretch of the imagination. The whole picture put me in mind of nothing so much as the Wild West of Old Terra, or possibly a mid-sized town out on Cerillos in the Trinity Worlds somewhere. The climate might be different and we might be in space, but the frontier was still the frontier, with all the dangers and wonders that entailed.

Speaking of wonders, I dropped my things off at the house that my father maintained on Iron Land and headed out to sample the local bars. I made the unfortunate mistake of going out drinking with a pair of Flight Lieutenants from Thureos and Scutum Squadrons and wound up getting completely trashed on the fermented Cassava Liquor they made on-world. By the end of the night, I had apparently agreed to pay both of their debts, a whopping six-million C-Bills in total. Thankfully, I was good for it and able to more than pay that. It wouldn't do to welch on a deal made with the Men, after all. The Boss needs to be seen to be as good as his word. Unfortunately, no sooner had I taken a dose of Canopian Hangover Cure Drugs and transferred the funds to the accounts of my two erstwhile drinking companions, than a message popped up on my noteputer from Captain Haesteinsson. The dropships were all present and correct, just waiting for me to arrive before setting off for the Asteroid containing the SLDF Base. I was apparently fifteen minutes late already.

Cursing drunk me for an asshole, I pulled on my clothing, not even bothering to shower, and headed for the Smelter Base Spaceport, ready to meet my destiny. . .

XXXX

AN: OK a little time-skippy chapter so we can get to the good stuff with the SLDF Base sooner than we would have if I'd gone week by week on the Jumpship. The pertinent info is that some of the tech was figured out, like specialist Autocannon Rounds and CASE Ammo Storage, and that he captured and Invader-class Jumpship from pirates.

There isn't a whole lot of canon information about Iron Land, funny enough. Just a rough outline of the planet and system. I decided to just make up my own setup for the planet.

And of course, once again we see Drunk Jozef get sober/hungover Jozef into trouble. This time he had to pay out six million C-Bills and was late for his Dropship. Fortunately, he's the Boss, so the dropships will wait for him. Also fortunately, his sticking to his guns and actually paying out on his drunken bet is going to earn him a good chunk of goodwill with the Company. ASF Pilots like to talk, after all.

At any rate, the next chapter will be part one of the Base Exploration.

Stay tuned. . .