Scavenged Restoration 45

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 45

-VB-

There had to be defectors -. No, there had to be collaborators within ComStar and ROM sneaking technology from ComStar’s hidden libraries to the Capellans.

But why? 

Why?

Because… because they were after her position. Why else? Weaken her position through external scandals and loss of face, then kill her so that they can just slide into her position.

It had to be that. 

Which meant that it had to be Precentor ROM or … or …

There wasn’t anyone else. 

She needed to kill Precentor ROM before he killed her. 

No. If she just killed him, then the rest of the First Circuit might revolt. She saw how they looked at her last meeting. They hated her. They didn’t trust her to do the right thing as the Primus of ComStar. 

They wanted her gone.

… No.

She wasn’t going to go down without a fight. 

She would kill them all before they killed her. 

All of the First Circuit needed to die! 

All of them! 

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF -.

---

“Are you sure you gave her the right poison?” 

“Yes. She’s been receiving a regular dose of meth for some time. It’s a wonder how they don’t check for it anymore, even though it is so easy to make.” 

-VB-

The Second Canopan Cuirassiers got mauled.

Emma barely recognized her unit after she and her unit escaped from Fanadir after the Capellans landed. Instead of fighting regular bugmechs like the Locust, Stinger, Wasp, and Spider with the occasional Vindicators and rarely their new heavy mechs, she and her unit had found themselves fighting off Victors, Cataphracts (the new Capellan heavy mech), Vindicators, and the horrifying abominations that were the Firebees. 

And they were sneaky about it, too.

Vindicators and a new light mech called Raven would act as scouts. They would lure in the Cuirassiers into a battle where the Victors and Cataphracts would come charging in, but never quite enough to get them the victory. Then when the Cuirassier committed - and God forbid, overextend - the Firebees would rush in from their flanks with surprising speed, jump capabilities, and maneuverability. While Firebees hadn’t been fast as Locusts, it didn’t need to be because a commit Cuirassier lance and company would be composed of mostly medium and heavy battlemechs like Shadow Hawks, Hunchbacks, Phoenix Hawks, and odd heavy mechs like Crusaders and Awesomes. 

For every lance they deployed, the Capellans fielded at least equal their number in Firebees alone. 

So when a medium weight mech company found themselves engaging an equal weight Capellan lance, the Firebees would sneak around and then attack their rear and flanks. And then they would lit their asses. Literally. 

As the Union dropship landed with a loud rumble, Emma found herself letting out a sigh of relief. 

“I guess we’re safe… for now,” she muttered as she looked down at her still scorched mech.

Those Firebees loved inferno SRMs. In fact, it was what was responsible for killing most of the heavy mechs that the 2nd Cuirassiers had. When the Firebees flanked them, the only mechs that could survive long enough to retreat were mechs that were capable of outrunning the Firebees without firing their weapons to maintain minimum heat. 

As a result, once caught in a trap, not a single heavy mech survived the Firebee Trap. She survived because her Vulcan was just fast enough to outrun the Firebees. The most common mech in the 2nd Cuirassiers was now the Phoenix Hawk, because the already ubiquitous medium mech was the only medium mech that could reliably outrun Firebees among the mechs they had. 

Hunchbacks, Awesomes, Shadow Hawks, Rifleman, and Blackjacks? All of them and their mechwarriors died, if not in fire from inferno SRMs, then from the overwhelming firepower of the Cataphracts that wouldn’t die.

That wasn’t to say that they didn’t give as good as they got. In an equal number fight, the 2nd Canopian Cuirassiers performed well. Firebees weren’t that good in a straight-up fight. Even her Vulcan, which wasn’t exactly a great frontline or even cavalier mech, could take on two Firebees without a problem.

But Firebees? 

They were never alone or in pairs. They were like mosley-hyena packs. They traveled in lances and ambushed anyone they found with reckless abandon. When they ran out of ammunition and were on the verge of being disabled, they would lunge forward to grab and slow down the closest mech so that their allies can set both of them on fire.

Oh, her comrades fought. They bled, burned, and broke inside their mechs, but they fought to the bitter end. Only the fops who bought high ranks surrendered easily. Everyone else? The true matriots of Canopus? 

They died, and she had been willing to die by their side. 

They didn’t let her. 

Called her the future of the magistracy. Told her that she had duty elsewhere. Smiled at her. People she ate food with. Joked with.

Even as their faces turned red, their skin peeled off from the fire, and their mechs melted from under them smiled for her and told her to go. That someone like her dying in a small skirmish wasn’t going to save the magistracy. 

“Hate the Firebee” became the motto of the entire month she spent fighting on Fanadir. It was what she and her comrades chanted every time they lost someone. Every time they had to retreat. 

That’s what she told herself when Janice stayed behind in her Hunchback. Said with a smile that a true orthodox Hunchback wouldn’t run from a chance to shoot an AC/20 to someone’s face. 

That’s what she chanted in her mind when Michael, the silent asshole that he was, took his family’s only medium mech, the Shadow Hawk, and drew wrath of the Capellan bees and led them away from her lance. He didn’t say a word as he condemned himself to death.

… And now she was home.

At least now, she could get her Vulcan fixed for the next fight -.

---

“What do you mean the League cut off trade with us?!” 

Having been called to court to “assist” her mother, Emma didn’t think this disaster was what she would walk into. 

The Free Worlds League had cut off trade with the Magistracy on the account of the Magistracy declaring war upon the Capellan Confederation, who was an ally of the League. And then they also closed the border.

They called it “sanctions.”

Emma called it something else. 

‘The magistracy is dead,’ Emma thought as she looked at the panicking court, and her mother looked wrathful on the throne. Wrathful but powerless. 

The Magistracy didn’t produce enough food for itself. 

It didn’t produce enough mech parts to maintain any sort of replacement rate; the only mech factory in the magistracy produced Shadow Hawks and bug mechs. And made less than a dozen mechs… per year.

If ComStar News Network was to be trusted, then the Capellan Confederation made a dozen Firebees. 

Per week.

At a minimum.

Maybe if they were better fighters… Maybe if they were better armed and better prepared.

Maybe.

Maybe they might have been able to sue for a ceasefire and then offer concessions for peace. 

But there was no maybe here and now. 

The Magistracy of Canopus was dead should the Capellan Confederation want them dead. The League might protest… but they won’t protest too hard if the Capellans offer to split the Canopian worlds between the two of them. Or split the magistracy into smaller duchies and make them into “protectorates.”

She shuddered. 

Then something flew.

And then hit her in the temple. 

Emma staggered and looked up in numb confusion. 

She reached up and touched her temple. When her hand came back down, her hand was stained red with blood. 

She looked around and saw her mother’s arm slowly lowering from where it had extended in a perfect pitch throw. 

“... Mom?”

“Get that idiot out of here!” her mom shouted instead at the guards. 

Emma stood there, shocked.

Her mom just threw a dataslate at her with pinpoint accuracy. It hit her temple hard enough that her vision was swimming. 

If that hit her eye, then she would have lost it. 

She stood there as the security guards pulled her away respectfully.

Her mother, who started the war, almost maimed her. 

Her mother, whose pathetic political maneuvers endangered the nation, whose overestimation of their military power, who underestimated a monster ready to devour their nation… chose to vent her anger out on her. 

‘Ah,’ her mind uttered with an almost calm enlightenment as she finally turned around and left the throne room instead of being guided out like an invalid. ‘Mother is ruining the country.’

And that made her next decision apparent and the path forward clear.

-VB-

Hanse stared at the news from the Capellan Confederation and his hand twitched.

He wanted to get another shot of the bourbon sitting on his desk, but he couldn’t. 

No, he couldn’t afford to get drunk when he needed to analyze everything with a crystal clear mind. What the Federated Suns needed right now was not a First Prince drunk with self-pity but one who needed to plan for the future. 

When he and Katrina first began their planning for the unification of the Inner Sphere, they imagined that they would control the worlds around Terra. They did not have this. 

When they strategized over how to devour the Capellan Confederation to establish the needed corridor, they planned to not only create a corridor of safe passage but buffer systems to prevent easy raids into the safe corridor systems. This did not happen. In fact, the opposite happened; a corridor where every Successor State agreed to uphold neutrality by giving the defense of those systems to ComStar. This shattered whatever dream of control the future Fed-Com alliance had. 

When they planned for future conflicts beyond the Fourth Succession War, it was with the assumption that they, the Federated Commonwealth alliance, would be the strongest power in the Successor State. This remained true on the surface and by a barely slim margin, because the Capellan Confederation may have lost all former Terran Hegemony worlds, but they lost none of the industries that had been there since the conclusion of the First Succession War; they had been destroyed long before the Fourth Succession War or moved to other worlds deeper inside the confederation. 

When he planned to cripple the Capellans, he expected to feel satisfaction. He didn’t get any. 

When the war ended, he only felt relief. 

When the current “Andurien Crisis” showed him just how close he had been to losing it all when the Capellans showed their refurbished warship, the relief he had felt only deepened. 

But what he did to the Anduriens was what he had tried to do to the Capellans. 

And while he floundered, Chancellor William utterly crushed his opposition. 

Hanse saw the reports. 

Saw the battle plans. 

Saw the utter devastation and decapitation the Anduriens experienced. 

And when he looked at himself after everything…

He felt like a fraud.

Inferior. 

Weak.

They called him “the Fox” in front of him but called him “the Fool” behind his back. The latter became a stronger sentiment as the Capellan victories came in week after week, month after month.

Oh, he crippled the Capellans alright, but now knew that he hadn’t crippled them enough.

Even if his own economy fell apart, he should have pushed harder and deeper. He should have broken Tikonov. 

He should have Styk.

He should have sent more than just the Eridani Light Horse to Sian.

Should have.

Should have.

Should have.

He jolted in his seat and looked up.

Melissa looked at him with a sad smile on her face. 

That only made him feel even more pathetic. Here he was pitying himself while his much younger wife was propping him up.

It was not an overstatement to say that it was her efforts that kept the public confidence in House Davion from dropping beyond the point of no recovery. She’d swayed his people more than she had hers, and they loved her for her dedication to their people. 

He bit his lips in his moment of vulnerability and nodded in thanks. 

Then he raised his hands up and slapped both of his cheeks. The slap echoed in his office almost thunderously, and he kind of regretted it a little. However, it also pulled him out of his funk. Was it going to be temporary? Probably. 

But he had work to do.

He was the First Prince of the Federated Suns. He was also the father of the heir to the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth. Sure, he might have fucked up his reign with the Fourth Succession War, but that just meant that he had to make sure what he gave his children was better than how he got it. 

“Ow,” he muttered, unable to keep himself from uttering that. Because his cheeks really hurt! 

Melissa laughed softly, and their child coo’ed in her arms. 

Yes. For Melissa and their children.

He smiled. It was a little heavy. A little wary. But it came naturally.