Collection 55

Collection

Chapter 55

-VB-

Jaime Wolf

3005 July 7

This … was beyond the Star League. Beyond the Clans. 

When he and the others had arrived, they did not expect this.

For close to a year, they worked as mercenaries for the Federated Suns, one of the less objectionable Great Houses of the Inner Sphere before and after the Star League had exiled themselves from the big angry ball. 

And it was a Free Worlds League man who had done it. 

Edward Arlaoskas. 

That name and his achievements rippled further and harder than anything he and his the Wolf’s Dragoons have done. 

“We have to get our hands on that stargate technology,” Joshua, his little brother, urged. 

“And you get the same answer I gave the navy. With what navy and army?” Jaime asked his brother in return. “Have you not seen the fleet they field? Wolfnet has even noted that they aren’t even employing human soldiers. They are employing robots by the hundreds of thousands. Does no one else in the company understand the significance of that?” he snapped. 

In the room with the two brothers were all of the higher ups of the Wolf’s Dragoons. The men and women, leaders of the entire company, who had come with him to the Inner Sphere from the Clan Homeworlds. And the problem was that, despite their clear competence as leaders, they were blinded. 

“You think some robot can defeat us on the battlefield?!” someone demanded with narrowed eyes.

“With numbers, yes,” Jaime hissed as his knuckles whitened as his hands clenched into fists. “Why do you insist that this is the way forward?!”

“Because there is glory to be had!” 

“There is no glory in death,” he snapped again. “We should be focusing on our mission-!” 

“And the mission has been completed, has it not?”

Everyone turned to look at Yukinov. Jaime’s second in command in the Alpha Regiment, he was one of Jaime’s most trusted officers. But right now, the man looked determined and Jaime felt betrayed. 

“The Inner Sphere is still a mess. The difference is that they pose a legitimate threat to the Clan Homeworlds, and that is the very sort of thing we have been sent to scout out, weren’t we?”

Jaime worked his jaws. 

“Yes, and what happens if we die fighting them?”

“We would fail our mission, which is unacceptable,” Yukinov nodded. “Which is why we must quickly return to the Homeworlds and report on this. But allowing some of our warships to engage Arlaoskas’ warships so that we have data to return with will be great. After all, we cannot hope to gauge our potential enemy’s strength if we never see them in action. For all we know, their ‘carriers’ are nothing but scrap metal plates bolted onto a jumpship.”

Jaime looked around and realized that he was being out voted. 

“You would give away the existence of the Clans,” he tried one last time. “Surprise is an element we must keep close to our hearts. If we reveal that we exist not just to them but also to the rest of the Inner Sphere, then we will have no idea what kind of a response that will cause.”

“The Inner Sphere… is a mess,” Yukinov repeated. “They will be too busy fighting each other to truly consider a united response against the Clans if we were to return.”

Jaime stared at him before shaking his head. “No, I will not allow this.”

Yukinov gritted his teeth and then sighed. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, and tossed it aside. 

“I challenge you to a batchall for the direction of our mission, colonel.”

Jaime closed his eyes and sighed as well.

Yukinov was not a follower or a leader. He was a pragmatist but also a planner. It was why Jaime kept him as his second in command; the man was a better planner, tactician, and strategist than Jaime. Not enough to replace him as the commanding officer of the Wolf’s Dragoons but enough to keep him close. 

If he stood up to lay down a batchall, then he must truly wish to see this through. 

After all, Yukinov was not an impulsive man.

“I accept,” Jaime replied as he too took off his shirt.

---

From the side, Natasha Karensky whistled quietly as two burly men with gleaming muscles, sleek with sweat from how hotly they had all been debating for the past few hours, took to the center of the now cleared out room.

“Natasha, please,” Joshua muttered from her left. 

“What? I have great eye candies in front of me, and then their meats will be smacking against each other with satisfying thwacks and slaps,” she whispered. “Don’t you know that girls love this sort of stuff?”

“Yes, I do know. You keep telling me. Because you keep insisting that I oil myself up.”

She growled possessively. “And I love it when I see you oiled up.” Then she glanced at the two men ready to throw it down. “But a woman sometimes needs a different eye candy.”

“That eye candy is my brother and your colonel you are talking about.”

“I know! Your family has some great genes.”

She cackled when Joshua pinched the bridge of his nose. 

Once in the circle, Jaime spoke up. 

“Are you sure about this, Yukinov?” 

“I am.”

Natasha crooned. “This is going to be fun~.”

“Please, Natasha. Spare me your fantasies,” Joshua muttered.

She laughed at her lover’s discomfort. 

Well, she already knew how this was going to end. After all, there was a reason why Jaime Wolf was the commander of the Wolf’s Dragoons, not Kelly Yukinov. Five years spent in the Inner Sphere wasn’t going to change something that had already been known plainly back in Clan Wolf. 

-VB-

Allen Rusenstein

3005 July 5

“He’s mocking us.”

Allen ignored the precentors of the First Circuit and instead focused on the implication of the Stargates, the rapidly advancing technological prowess of the Union, and the man at the center of all of this: Edward Arlaoskas. 

He knew that ComStar was the man’s enemy. 

This was already the case with the numerous attempts on his life that the First Circuit ordered. 

What confused him was why no attack had come their way so far. 

If these “stargates,” “warships,” and “robot armies” did exist, then why haven’t they been used against Terra and ComStar already? Was it all allies? 

Or was it something else? 

Personally, he leaned toward all of those being truths. At the same time, he also acknowledged something the rest of the precentors here, including Precentor ROM, refused to acknowledge. 

Edward Arlaoskas was not a politician or a believer like them. 

One must stop thinking like a grand strategist and look at all of the events from the perspective of the man who knew that he had more power than the entire Inner Sphere. 

‘Strike too hard and too far and the entire human civilization will turn against him,’ Allen thought as he stroked his beard. ‘Strike too little and too short, and the sharks will think that I am weak.’

Cutting down a Great House without causing early Succession War levels of devastation was exactly the middle ground Allen would have gone for if he had the knowledge, firepower, and technology Arlaoskas did. A few systems in the near periphery? While that was devastating for the Capellan Confederation, this opened them up to distract the rest of the Inner Sphere. And it wasn’t as if worlds and systems critical to the continued functioning of the confederation were taken. As populous and industrious as Victoria II had been for the confederation, there were many other worlds that were just like it that were even more important. 

‘But is this a message to the leaders of the Inner Sphere or its people?’ he mused. 

Once again, he had to stop himself from continuing to think like a politician.

The people of the Inner Sphere saw a sudden invasion… that came to a stop almost instantly. By the metrics of the Succession Wars, of course. There were also minimal casualties, aside from Capellan-owned jumpships, that was. As far as wars went, it was remarkable in the lack of deaths. 

What followed the Capellan Confederation’s capitulation was a dissemination of technology, rapid production and sale of those “Mule” jumpships, and reconstruction programs. 

The regular people saw this as a benevolent move. As Edward Arlaoskas being better than most of the nobles that proliferated the realms of the Great Houses. 

‘Are you more interested in winning the hearts and minds of the people, Arlaoskas?’ Allen thought as he leaned back while Precentor Tharkad stood up and pulled his sleeves back while Precentor Sian roared out a challenge like a gorilla. 

As the two precentors, who weren’t the most fit of men and women that this hallowed room had seen, duked it out, Allen continued to think about why no attack had been sent their way. 

‘Think less like a politician and more like a civilian,’ he told himself. 

…

And then he got it. 

He snorted. 

His snort caught everyone’s attention. 

“What is it, primus?” Precentor Atreus asked while trying to hide a bundle of cash he had exchanged with Precentor New Avalon and Precenter Dieron. 

“I finally realized why we haven’t been bombed to hell despite the fact that we have been constantly attacking him before his ascension.”

“Do tell us, primus,” Precentor New Avalon, whose wallet looked a little thin, asked grumpily while Precentor Tharkad got off the ground from underneath Precentor Sian. 

“Edward Arlaoskas doesn’t want to hurt regular people.”

The precentors looked at each other. 

“... You think he is that naive?” Precentor Atreus asked.

“Naive? No. Merely good natured. But you know what they say about good men.”

“They are only good so long as they aren’t pushed past their line.”

“Exactly. Which means that as long as we keep to his line, he also won’t overtly attack us.”

The precentors looked at each other. Some looked doubtful. Others looked like they could accept his reasoning. 

---

Edward Arlaoskas

Same time

“I suppose they aren’t wrong,” I hummed as I continued to observe the precentors making an ass out of themselves in the First Circuit meeting. 

Primus Allen Rusenstein had come closest to my reasoning while the rest of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery were focused on expanding unimportant things like “implications of stargate travel” or "reemergence of warship warfare.”

They should have been looking deeper than what they saw. 

Like my access to the inner sanctum of ComStar’s network via artificial intelligence operated nanite swarm transmitting data to and from a stealthed frigate in orbit of Earth. 

… Maybe that was too much science fiction for them.

Well, regardless, Rusenstein had some of it right. I did want to limit civilian casualties. I did want to make things better for people. I did think like a civilian still. 

Because I could.

I didn’t have to think like a politician if I didn’t want to. I didn’t have to worry about the implication of political finagling because I would be above such concerns the moment I choose to toss the table. 

Even if the Great Houses tried to reverse engineer and copy what I used in the Mule Jumpships, they would be far too behind technologically. More importantly, their industrial capacity would not be able to keep up with me. 

In the region that would be known as the Fronc Reaches in the future, I was already building more stargates, more fortress stations, and even more ships. 

If the Primus missed something, then he missed the fact that I don’t care about the Inner Sphere.

Ping.

I paused. Oh, that was another point. 

I invested it into my third level of Long Term Strategic Planning.

And it told me that the best way to keep even more troublesome people out of my face was to just ignore them and put up a wall between us. Which was in line with level 2 of Long Term Strategic Planning also advised. 

Cool.

-VB-

A/N: so a few things are different here compared to how I wrote the Wolf’s Dragoons in Scavenged Restoration. This is because I had to take four things into account: Dragoon’s history in the Inner Sphere, the Dragoon’s trust in Jaime, the level of technological difference, and the lack of nativization. The last point and first point kind of intersect with each other but not fully; the Dragoons arrived less than five years ago, so they haven’t had time to fully acclimatize to the Inner Sphere.