One Rabid Fox changes the Succession Wars

One Rabid Fox changes the Succession Wars

A BattleTech Isekai​Sakhara Academy Dorms, October 3015

[2 years After Arrival]

The life in another world, in a universe of an eighties esque future of giant stompy robots, and plenty of neo feudal drama was complicated... even for an isekai protagonist, especially for an isekai protagonist. The truth was he didn't remember nearly enough of the lore to really do much per se, and he'd already irrevocably changed the timeline. Ironically a change that no one had really recognized or taken notice of as anything special, because it had meant someone not dying... that someone being the First prince of the Federated Suns... so he was the only one who recognized he'd changed things.

He had shown up on Mallory's world two years ago, and killed Yorinaga Kurita before the Phantom MechWarrior could kill the first prince...

That was fine.

It was equally fine really that the Davion News Media had focused on Ian Davion's victory over Takashi Kurita, his equal and equivalent in the Draconis Combine in the subsequent victory won at Halstead station. He assumed that the Combine either didn't really have news media or valued their lives enough to not talk about it. He doubted the other successor states cared.

That wasn't to say there weren't rewards... not counting the illicit salvage that he had engaged in under House Davion's nose while under contract for them. Not that he regretted that. The measly 25 points he accrued a day really wasn't nearly enough to do much by itself... he needed to accumulate more points to get the most out of his Isekai Cheat Power; 'The Essence'.

The thing that allowed him to rapidly boost his skills, as well as purchase equipment using currency or the points ... and in a world like BattleTech it was especially useful... especially considering that his Essence besides its gamer like functionality also had really broken exploitable values brought over seemingly directly from table top rules that emphasized combat by giant stompy robots.

He hit the blocky rectangular key marked play on the message machine. Future Eighties Man, he almost muttered. There were times where he was just prone to outbursts of the first reaction the things that just popped into his head... maybe it was just stress ... they were less frequent now, he had gotten used to being in this other world.

He didn't bother to play the messages... not right now. Truth be told he could sort of guess what they were about, and if he was wrong well then so what. He was trying to avoid planetary travel when he didn't have to less chance of the change in gravity fucking with his bones or something. He wanted his fucking adult height back... and surely part of that was how gangly a teenage body felt. How freaking unbalanced he felt ... outside of a mech anyway.

He consulted, as he habitually did his gameresque stats display. Clanners ... with their gene modded phenotypes could exceed the human normal... he couldn't do that, but even so he planned to eventually work his way up to peak human. The points were a limited resource, and by not leaving the planet he had no large income of points to expect.

... the only way he might be able to boost his points was if the Combine attacked. That was unlikely... not impossible but that would also mean the usual bullshit fighting over salvage rights in response to defending the planet... that was his least favorite thing about contract negotiations. It hadn't come up until after they'd left Halstead Station that the Davions had asked to see his battle roms of fighting the second sword of light, and well his gunnery results tended to leave a lot of mostly intact salvage. Mechs were precious in this era so, he was pretty sure the merc liaison had noted that in his file that they should prioritize that they wanted salvage rights... and the Davions didn't offer that great of pay.

Then again, he doubted he was being underpaid... it was just... salvage was so much more useful to him than the going rate in c bills for bounties...

... but all of that was moot because he didn't expect to be attacked... maybe that was arrogant of him.. they were only two jumps from the Combine Border... but...

The bells rang signaling it was eight in the morning, and he looked down at his feet. He wasn't going to be late, but he did need to finish getting dressed. The Sakhara Academy was just the right sort of strange place he really fit in.... which was saying something since he was somewhere between full time student, and teacher.

He rifled through his close threw a white oxford on, and worked the sleeves until the buttons closed around his wrists, he tossed a look at the sky and put his shoes on, and through the bag over one shoulder heading out.

The Davions weren't ungrateful but he'd been too young to really take seriously. If the Robinson Rangers hadn't been there then Lord Aaron, Duke of Robinson might not have heard, and might not have made the offer to come to the RBA. That would have unintentionally made Ian Davion, and the Federated Suns ruling house look ungrateful... but he hadn't been looking for charity... and he'd have been the one looking ungrateful if he refused a place at Sakhara. So thereby instead of leaving for the periphery he'd accepted the prince's invitation into the local system of feudal landholding.

Sakhara was a mineral rich world of course it wasn't like they had given him a useless piece of land... but there were days he really expected he might have gotten along better on the Lyran side of the fence... or not. Robinson might have been easier too, the academy was smaller less prestigious but there was a battleMech works there... but it was Sakhara that was the place.

So he'd inaugurated a JumpShip shipping firm. After all it was two jumps to Robinson, well it was actually three jumps... and it was even more to get from Sakhara to New Avalon. Seven Jumps.

The immensely silly rules that governed his isekai cheat power meant that Star Lords were cheaper by points than Invader class JumpShips, and so as he settled into life in the Fed Suns he'd added a few more of the big bastards but settled for spawning Merchants on the realization that those were cheaper and less likely to attract more attention. As it was he was still only having them play strictly internal routes of trade within the Federated Suns. It made him money. He liked money. He liked safe money.

--

Sakhara Academy was in a sense the Oxford or Yale of Fed Suns BattleMech schools. Those and not say... Sandhurst or West Point He didn't know how it had gotten to this point, or how it worked elsewhere but this place was the location of the elite and privileged. Graduating from Sakhara was a misnomer the best students got to do two years in a grad school esque posting with the training regiment a slot in a Mech battalion further improving on MechWarrior skills and tactics. That was why there were so few slots in the so called 'graduates'.

Everyone else who had made it through 4 years, well they were head hunted for slots in the AFFS elite units. People like Justin Allard were in that secondary category. It was kind of an open secret he wasn't going to make the cut to go to the training battalion.

The man's black jack was part of the problem.

He looked him up and down, and sighed, "I'm sorry Justin, even if we put you in a Warhammer I really couldn't see you making the difference up..." Because the truth was it wasn't just his mech... but putting his ass in a Warhammer would have helped... Justin had other sorts of problems.... but not enough problems that he couldn't secure a posting with a Guards RCT.

That was part of the reason he wasn't doing more. Justin would be fine. He was a good pilot... and he also didn't want to fuck the timeline if there was a chance of... well whatever Justin's life was supposed to be. 

His counseling was interrupted by a disgusted expletive about Justin Allard's half breed status... that was something else he didn't understand. "Half breed?" It was the 31st​century, and why did the Cappies get it, and not the combine then... "Ok, can it you." For a minute there was stumbling break in the other student's bravado, "No I mean it, unless you want to find yourself on the other end of my Heavy mech you can stow it."

The irony was despite Allard being older than him, Sakhara academy was a college after all, he was already taller and that showed as the fifteen year old straightened stepping in front of the full time senior cadet, and his antagonist. The other guy was vaguely spanish looking the wisp of a goattee that threatened the schools already mild dress code but really the high cheek bones and aquiline nose of a Castilian land holder really Don Juan here was the picture of a hidalgo right down to his presumption. He started to squabble a protest.

"No, I don't want to hear it." He replied, "Gear up, and go run course two again. Your fucking a minute behind par time already so hearing this shit out of your mouth just pisses me off more." There were no further protests and the cadet in his gym shorts and cooling jacket was gone running off to his Enforcer.

Justin did his best moody boy emo, I didn't need you to save me routine, but he got told to stuff it to, to gear up and get ready to run the fifth circuit course down by the river again. "If you ship to Spica," With the 5th​, "they're going to give you the same. Fair or not the Capellans are the enemy... they're a modern day slave state in the Inner sphere, thats what the servitor caste is." He grunted, "And you can expect deep riven suspicion, and doubly so because the Capellans are the weakest of the great houses, and yet still have the fifth seat at the table."

--

... and it was precisely conversations like that how he ended up sitting down with the student council president. Lovely. Since of course he was also sort of a student. The truth was while Justin Allard had no chance of getting into the training cadre slot he was all but assured one, after all he was the Rabid Fox...

... for some reason the Davions had assumed that was his call sign rather than the name of his Mech... and attempts to correct that had failed miserably such that it had ended up as his call sign despite his protests...

... and the truth was he benefitted from attending Sakkara academy the baccalaureate education especially. Alexandria Cunningham the Countess Kestrel and heiress to the ducal landhold of the planet... this also meant she was Allard's nominal dynastic senior and made this even more of a headache.

"So why don't you do something about it?" He regretted asking the question as soon as he said it... because she was right in retorting it was none of his business, but then did deign to elaborate it was because Allard had been a mistake. His father shouldn't have married his mother, who'd been a Liao noblewoman, and the family didn't approve.

It was also true that Lord Allard the elder had powerful friends at court, but at the same time ... he had some of the same problems as his son... just without the whole issue of being nearly a bastard in the eyes of the aristocracy of the federated suns. He couldn't do anything about Justin Allard's life but try and see that it mostly went per cannon... but...

He grunted, and rested his head in his palm... and then had to look up to avoid staring into her chest... "So you suggest I just ignore it?"

"So you're just going to fight Justin's battles for him? He'll need to figure things out on his own." She replied, "Even if you could give him a heavier mech that's only going to win you favors with his father... and Quintus Allard isn't lacking in his share of rivals."

... She probably assumed Quintus had put him up to this but that was a stretch. It was true he'd met Quintus at the wedding of Hanse Davion... if one called a mostly sloshed Ian Davion dragging you around to introduce you to people an introduction... that was actually also how he had met the student council president... not that she'd been said to be that.. it had been hard to miss the dusky beauty all dolled up in white and gold.

Being a teenager again sucks, he mused running a hand through his dark hair, fighting the hormones back down.

He looked over her head and out to the carefully manicured grounds... he distracted himself with thoughts about the messages on his answering machine this morning. The careful staging of those digging machines... that and the memories of Halstead station. H e was going to make money off of the Fed Suns by pretending to build JumpShips until he could actually build JumpShips and pretending to have found Germanium was part of it.

He would build Merchants and sell some to the Fed Suns.

"Eh, whats that look for." She looked down wondering if she'd managed to get her uniform dirty. Reminding him that she was also a young person.

He laughed, "Its nothing like that," And the bell saved him, "I've got to go. I'll see you around Lady Lex." Life in another world of giant stompy robots wasn't so terrible. He didn't waste any time getting up, and moving out the door of the student council school room before anything could happen, and especially before she could stop him, or anyone else could show up. He did actually have class... even if some of the basic course skills for leadership were merely refreshers from a previous life, he was expected to attend them as a student most of the time rather than as a lecturer... but really it was in protocol, and military history of the Federated Suns that he needed to attend it was the area, areas he actually needed to study in.

It was really sort of a headache. He dodged around a couple of other cadets, and continued his daily life as a minor noble, landholder, mechwarrior living in the Federated Suns in a future eighties neo feudal universe of giant stompy robots.

--

Notes: Alright welcome to Chapter 1 of my other Essence of MegaMek Lab fic that has consumed too much of the past week. The previous segments aren't necessary to read. They can be summarized as follows but will be mentioned in subsequent chapters anyway:

MC arrives (as mentioned) on Mallory's World and assists the Davions in repelling the invasion, saving Ian Davion from Yorinaga Kurita (and racking up kills on 1st Btn / 2nd SoL), 2nd SoL as per canon, withdraws to Halstead station. Ian pursues to Halstead, MC between the 4th and 5th of January 3014 with some assistance from the 1st Robinson Rangers kills off the remainder of the 2nd SoL after Takashi gives them permission to go attempt to avenge Yorinaga culminating in the destruction in particular of 2nd Btn / 2nd SoL's formation on the Madison Plains  

This allows House Davion to thoroughly loot the University of Madison on Halstead Station of all its goodies while also tweaking Takashi's nose good.