25

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 25

-VB-

I drummed my fingers while staring at the call for truce in front of me. 

Obviously, the truce didn't involve anything concrete; that would be decided when we met up on Terra. 

Where else would we meet when all five Great Houses were involved in this war together rather than in an everyone for themselves kind of war that had been all other Succession Wars prior to this one?

"We shouldn't accept it."

I glanced up in surprise. "I'm surprised that you're the one saying that, aunt," I said honestly. 

My aunt, or rather the Director of the Maskrivoka Chandra Ling, raised an eyebrow. "Why else? You and I have access to the same data. While our people definitely do suffer, the Davions and Steiners will suffer even more as their own fickle populace turns on them because of some economic hurdles while our people fight for our survival."

"You just want me to push them back out of Tikonov Commonality."

"That does play a part in my advice, yes," she replied with a shrug. "Is it not our right to our sovereign territory which connects us to Terra?"

Was it our right? 

No.

Was it the privilege of the Capellan Confederation to retake what was ours? 

Yes. 

I truly did believe that the Capellan Confederation deserved more than it did. Sure, it had pseudo-slavery in the form of the servitor caste, but it hadn't started out that way before the Succession Wars. According to the documents, semi-public journals, and private diaries, the servitors were meant to act as an example by taking the most unwanted members of society and making a big show out of it. 

'Look at these ingrates who are wasting their life away! Look at what happens when you slap away the chance to greatness!' Or something like that. 

Was it unfair? 

… No. It wasn't unfair. In fact, it was unfair for everyone else to have to suffer for the sake of the few. Of course, the reverse was also true. The few should not be expected to suffer for the rest. Everyone worked, fought, suffered, and triumphed together because that was the Capellan way.

That might not have been the case had Romano taken over.

It certainly wasn't the case for hundreds of years. What should have been was not always what was.

"Personally, I don't care about Terra and neither should our people."

She looked at me in surprise. 

As did Candace, who was in the room with us. This was a private meeting, not a meeting with the Prefectorate. Even if it was, I would have brought her in. Her advice was valuable because despite everything that had happened, she had been the one trained to be the heir for far longer than either I or Tormano.

Not that Tormano got much or that dad even cared about me. If he did, then I wouldn't have been under house arrest for a decade for trying to improve the Capellan Confederation, now would he? 

And while I have been busy, Candace had been keeping a pulse on the court and the people. Her advice here would be valuable at the very least. 

So it surprised me that Candace was the one to frown.

"Why?" she asked me. 

I looked at her and hummed. 

"Tell me," I asked her. "If our ancestor had chosen not to partake in the Succession Wars, then where would we be?" 

"... Better off, but you can only make that question with the benefit of hindsight."

I nodded. "That is true. Then let me ask again, how did the Capellan Confederation and the rest of the Great Houses become strong?" 

"... I don't follow."

"All five of the Great Houses became strong because they took more solar systems than their rivals and didn't stop their expansion until they had no other choice but to. And then the Star League and the Succession Wars happened because that was their next attempt at expanding."

"So what are you saying…?"

"The future of the Capellan Confederation, in my opinion, does not lie with the nuclear bombed shells of barely functioning worlds that was once the Terran Hegemony but out there in the Deep Periphery."

Aunt Ling frowned. "You make it sound so easy but you also know why humanity as a whole hasn't expanded out in that direction."

"Oh, I know… or did we?" I asked with a smirk as I brought up a hologram map of my own making. "This … is the true known human space."

There was a lot of holes and empty space on the map but there were five specific areas that stood out to us all. 

The first and the largest of them all was the Inner Sphere and the immediate Periphery, filled with the usual: the Five Great Houses, the Three Periphery Nations, and the rest of the pirate and bandit kingdoms that popped up and down as time went on. 

That's where the second region of space came in: the Jarnfolk, New Delphi Compact, and the dotted star systems where Interstellar Expedition publicly claimed. 

The third region of space was isolated in the opposite direction: Auxumite Province. 

The fourth region of space had two nations: the Hanseatic League and the Nueva Castile. 

And the last space, furthest from the Inner Sphere, was, of course, the Clan Homeworlds and the Pentagon Worlds. 

"This is human space," I said to them. "The ones known to us, ComStar, and the random periphery traders… along with Wolf's Dragoon."

At this point, I was weaving a narrative rather than what I actually knew. Well, I knew that the Clans existed as well as all of the other nations in the Deep Periphery, but that came from an out of context source (i.e. me) and thus I couldn't provide evidence for.

But Helm had existed so those must also.

Both Candace and Aunt Ling looked at the map.

"Where did you get this?" Aunt Ling glared at me. "Didn't you promise to share all information?"

"I tried," I shrugged. "This is more sort of a bunch of disconnected information I put together. Like random notes from father's hidden safes which includes bits about one Dragoon soldier he managed to interrogate or records from the ComStar's own library of rumors and the like. And the map you see before you is the closest I can make it without adding outright falsehood or completely unverifiable information."

"And these people are…?" Candace asked as she pointed to New Delphi and Jarnfolk.

"Not Kerensky's people."

"Oh." 

"They're coreward," I said and pointed to the Clans. "And according to the one Dragoon… they are what we imagine techno-barbarians to be. Including why and how they would come back to the Inner Sphere."

That got their attention. 

"It might be in our lifetime or our children's lifetime but they will come in that timeframe," I told them. "They wouldn't have sent the Wolf's Dragoons to scout us out otherwise. If you know their history, then you saw how they operated in each of the five Great Houses…?"

Ling looked at me and then almost slapped herself in the face. "Why didn't I see it…?!" she hissed uncharacteristically for her as she stared at her failure in the face. "An outsider with fantastical technology from the Inner Sphere moving from one state to another when most would have fought for landhold…?! It should have bee obvious!" 

Candace's eyes widened, too. 

"And the Clans … are on the other side of the Inner Sphere. Now imagine a whole sub-civilization of humanity who are all like the Wolf's Dragoons or better." For a given definition of better. "Even if I somehow managed to get Terra in my lifetime, can we hold it?"

The lack of an answer was the answer. 

No, we could not. Even with my bullshit knowledge and push, I could not bring the Capellan Confederation up to technological state in time to fight off the Clans by myself. 

Good thing we won't have to then, huh? 

"The Lyrans and Kuritans," Candace frowned. "They are in the way."

"Indeed. That area will become a near free-for-all war zone that we cannot afford to get involved in. Instead, I propose this idea: we start colonizing, developing, and integrating the rimward Periphery and make a defensive alliance with the Taurian Concordat. Even if they are weak right now, I intend to build them up as an insurance against further Davion incursion. Next time, they won't be just fighting the now prepared rivals but also those they initially dismissed. Their defenses there are weaker, too, so having Taurians strike at their weak point will help to distract them at the very least."

"Why not the Magistracy?" 

"Aside from the fact that the current Magistrix and Duchess of Andurien are allies whose troops have been moving towards our borders?" 

Ling narrowed her eyes. "Yes, I did submit that report to you, William. You truly think that they are willing to risk the ire of the Captain-General?"

"Funny thing about that, actually," I sighed. "If the Anduriens lend them out to the Magistracy, then they are legally within their right to do so as far as the Free Worlds League's byzantine laws are concerned. And the Captain-General can't stop her. And from their perspective, we must look very weak indeed."

Both of the women chuckled darkly at that. 

Indeed, we looked weak if you haven't been in the middle of our conflict with the Davions. I suspected that the Steiners and Davions had a rough estimation of our mech replacement rate and partially why they were looking to make this truce happen. 

Factories across the confederation were being established, not just being repaired, and the number of light mechs in particular that we can produce were starting to unnerve the Davions. 

Because our projection was that by the end of this year alone, we'll be able to manufacture half a regiment of Firebees alone from Sian Commonality.

That's streamlined factories for you.

With that much Firebees on the field and deployed cheaply, it didn't matter how many mechs the enemies brought. 

That also meant that while, yes, worlds close to the Magistracy currently only had three mech regiments defending them and "only" a dozen combat vehicle and infantry regiments on top of that and thus would be easy pickings for the Magistracy-Andurien forces, I already prepared regiments in the spinward worlds along the Davion borders to prepare to jump toward antispinward border. 

At most, Magistracy-Andurien forces might amass twenty or so mech regiments and just as many supporting regiments, assuming they learned anything from watching the Fourth Succession War. I was … I think the confederation could fight that off without taking on too much damage. 

"... So you are looking far ahead into the future then," Candace noted. "Since Terra and the other side of the Inner Sphere will become a war zone on par with the late stages of the Second Succesion War if not comparable to its height, you're just going to go the other way."

"Yes," I nodded. "And I also don't think that the Federated Commonwealth of the Davion-Steiners will last more than two generations, especially with how shaky their start is. And when they eventually break apart, the confederation will be in a good position to retake he Hegemony worlds and then some. And to ensure that happens, I also want to push for a pro-League foreign policy…"

The discussion lasted into the night. 

Not a lot of things were set in stone but it was still productive.

A month after that night, I left for Terra for the truce conference. 

It would be the second time ever that all five Great House leaders would meet again in my lifetime.

-VB-

A/N: Candace's new and updated portrait is *mwah* sexy. I didn't realize that BattleTech: Legends II updated a lot of portraits. I feel dumb.