8
Scavenged Restoration
Chapter 8
-VB-
As the wedding day drew closer, my need to prepare the confederation against the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth grew in size.
So much so that I spent countless nights theorizing, planning, and calculating everything my people and I can do to survive. To not be crippled. To be able to hold our heads up when the final hour came and found us wanting.
And it was through such nights that I found one method I could use to pivot the situation.
One method that might work. Probably work, no. Potentially work, yes.
Was I banking too much on it? Not really. I've done what I can through policies, reforms, and doctrines what I can to prepare the Capellan Confederation. What I intended to do next was merely an offer. A suggestion.
After all, I was not Maximillian Liao. My sister and brother were not Romano Liao.
And so I sent off an HPG message long before I boarded my own dropship to attend the wedding in Terra.
But before that happened, my Hands returned.
But they did not return unscathed.
"It was the Mariks," one of five Hands who survived the venture reported to me on a cloudy and dark day on Sian. "A full month after we had landed, a Marik jumpship came through with two Union-class dropships, Celestial Wisdom."
"I see. Who was it?"
"It was the 1st and 2nd Companies of the Gryphons of Connaught."
Gryphons?
Gryphons?
The butt of the joke Gryphons?
"... I see."
There was no way in hell that the Mariks got word of my Hand's movements. New Dallas wasn't even a world that they kept an eye on because it was a literal radioactive hellscape that kept reminding them of their own sins.
No.
No, there was only one group of people who could potentially keep an eye on New Dallas: ComStar.
It was obvious that they alerted the nearby Gryphons regiment on Connaught, and the Gryphons, wanting some kind of a win after decades of being pounded by the LCAF, came through with a much larger force to get some kind of win.
"Continue."
"Thankfully, we had disguised ourselves before we even left Sian, and so the Free Worlds League companies didn't think too highly of who and what we were. After our first engagement, the major in charge of the Gryphons gave us an ultimatum for grave digging. Hand over what we had."
"And what did you have on hand?"
"... Thanks to the ground penetrating scanners, we managed to dig up a couple of Star League-era mechs. None of them were in good condition, but the technicians we brought with us from CCAF had surmised that we might be able to get one or two mechs operation by salvaging parts from non-functional mechs. We also had the core at hand, but we managed to hide that very well. They also wanted our non-damaged mechs. We handed all of the found mechs and our non-damaged mechs over in exchange for peace, and they kicked us out, seemingly content to make us leave without having achieved anything."
I took a deep breath in and let it out. "It was a close call, but good job."
"Thank you, Chancellor."
"And the core…?" I asked as he looked at the dirty thing currently sitting to the side of my desk. "It works?"
"Yes, Celestial Wisdom. It wasn't even encrypted."
Nice.
"I see. You've done the confederation proud, Hand. You've done me proud."
He immediately dropped to his knees. "I don't deserve your praise, Chancellor!"
"No, you do." I stood up, walked around the desk, and laid my hands on his shoulders, making him freeze. "With this, you have saved more Capellan lives than you could have possibly dreamt of. You've done your people proud."
The man's shoulders shook a little and I let it slide.
The New Dallas Core was here. It was mine.
And RetroTech was solely the possession of the Capellan Confederation.
-VB-
… And so my people and I took our time to look over the New Dallas Core for the few days I was still on Sian.
Our conclusion was simple.
Mechs we could make from blueprints we had on the New Dallas Core could be made faster, cheaper, and easier than the current average battlemechs produced everywhere. Oh, there were information on royal mechs as well and the means to make them, but my focus was on the RetroTech itself.
For example, the Firebee FBR-1. It was a bipedal battlemech that had 1 Large Laser, 1 LRM-5, and 3 SRM-2's. My engineers and manufacturers determined that we could produce a single FBR-1 at basically most Locust factories for merely 1.8 million C-Bills at about the same amount of time. This was only half a million more than a Locust but having twice if not thrice the firepower. This alone meant that the bug mechs that would go to most green pilots would instead be replaced by Firebees that could kill far better than Locusts. And because I intended to make sure these Firebees would get jump jets, it would be harder for them to get flanked by the enemy and make it easier for the Firebees to flank instead.
But it would take at least a few months for the factories on Capella and surrounding systems to retool their factories to start production of Firebees. Those few months would be covered by my own travel across Capellan Confederation to reach Terra, so by the time Davion-Steiner alliance declared war upon my confederation, Firebees would have been in production for at least a month. And considering that the engineers surmised that we could make at least three FBR-1 mechs per month because of how much easier it would be to make them even compared to Locusts, there would be several dozen Firebees ready for deployment. It would be a nasty surprise.
… In a way, the Firebees would be the Capellan Panther. It wouldn't have as much armor as the Kuritan Panthers but it would have similar firepower.
But there were improvements elsewhere, too.
The Cataphract had begun full-scale production, and so they would be available for my mechwarriors even before I arrived on Terra.
Support and armored vehicles rolled out of the factories.
New mech designs for militia was made using Vindicator chassis and named the Watchman. Named after the canon Watchman that the AFFS would have made, I had my people use the locally made Vindicator chassis instead of the Enforcer chassis that the Federated Suns would have used.
This mech, too, was to be made cheaply. Instead of more weapons, I had the engineers give it more armor so that planetary militia would have an easier time acquiring and fielding these things.
Make the mechs tougher to defeat, not harder to use.
Candace managed to get more of the Capellan's people loyal to me, if only because I gave them some rights they didn't have before, and sent talented people among them my way to turn them into whatever I needed them to be.
Tormano and the Warrior Houses trained the planetary militia and garrison regiments across the Tikonov and Sarna Commonality. Paired with the new mechs being sent their way, I could hope that they would hold out better than before.
Hell, even dropship production quickened as I managed to open up one more factories on Capella and two more factories on Sian through sheer force of will. The end result, though, was spectacular, even if no new dropships came out of these factories. Ultimately, my crowning achievement there was not the factories but the logistics needed to make dropships.
… I may have caused some of the factories producing civilian goods across Sian Commonality to suffer for the sake of military production.
There were a thousand and one things like these that I put into motion. Some made it. Some didn't. Others caused damage while others succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
But then I ran out of time.
This was it.
It was my time.
With an entourage following my every move, I stepped out of the Palace of the Chancellor and moved toward the only Princess-class dropship within the Capellan Confederation. It was the luxury dropship, and not having one as the Chancellor would have shamed great many chancellors of the past. Personally, I didn't care about it or even the image of the Chancellor, but I rode it because it was available and would fit the needs of the many nobles who would be joining me.
Servants and workers alike loaded the dropship with all of my luggage and that of the lesser nobles.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned around to look up.
Candace stared down at me from the top of the staircase.
'She will keep the state running while I am absent,' I thought with surety. She would not betray. I knew for sure.
My mind went to my little brother, no doubt training the lowly militia and brave soldiers of the Sarna Commonality. I trusted him and the Warrior Houses to sharpen the blade of the Capellan Confederation.
And so… I now needed to do my part.
I gave Candace a nod and turned back around to board my dropship.
Even if it was impossible for me to convince First Prince Hanse and Archon Katrina to not declare war on me, I still had to try.
Besides, I didn't need to convince both of them for peace. Just one would do.
One would be enough for me to buy time, and every single day that I could buy for the sake of my country was one more mech, one more tank, one more dropship, and one more rifle that my people can use to fight off the invaders.
Or, if failing that, to make them bleed profusely for every single inch of my nation.
And perhaps after that… No, that's a thought for the future.
As I boarded the dropship and took one last breathe in of Sian's air, I couldn't help but suddenly wonder if I would disappear like dad and Romano did.
A misjump. An accident.
… Well, if I did disappear like that, then I would go out knowing at the very least that I have accomplished as much as I could for the sake of my nation and everyone would know that I did all I could.
That actually wouldn't be a bad way to go.
I chuckled as the dropship bay door clunked and rose up to close behind me.
'At the very least, it would be a fast way to go,' I thought morbidly.
-VB-
Mere days later, an HPG message would arrive on a snowy world.
The adept manning the HPG station would bring the message to a mega complex that sat at the heart of a Germanic empire.
The said adept would find an audience with one Archon Katrina Steiner and deliver to her a simple letter from the Capellan Confederation's Chancellor William Liao.
To my fellow peer Archon Katrina Steiner,
I would very much like to discuss the peace my father rejected