Sakhara 2.5
Sakhara 2.5The Duke of Robinson had looked at the Assault Cluster with evident interest. It was no surprise. Colonel Robinson had laid out the operating doctrine of her command. Firepower at the expense of speed for the most part. Their fusion powered demolisher mark III tank with their dual 185mm assault cannons backed up with other weapons were intended to insure withering close in fire on an enemy when they were defending or besieging.
That was something of the problem. She had expected some push back from the Draconis March government at some point. As DMI2 she had no authority to give the posting orders, but she was counting, treading heavily on that she would be able to convince the first prince of certain positions. That wasn't a sure thing, but Yvonne was sure some of the Field Marshal of the Draconis March's umbrage was his recognition that she might be able to do just that. That she could potentially succeed in convincing Ian to agree to the proposal.
That was why he was insisting to accompany them to New Avalon so he could petition the First Prince directly. That was a headache, especially since there was no practical way to stop him... and even if the combine did attack that would be a momentary distraction and probably in the long run do more to convince the other parties that the Draconis March should take priority.
No ironically the best case scenario was an attack, but one where the Hasek's utterly dropped the ball on defending the frontier and looked incompetent enough where Crucis March troops needed to be brought in... but she wasn't really counting on the sick man of the inner sphere to do her any favors.
That was why she knew better than to directly contest Sandoval's presence. She needed to sway Ian to her position and prioritize Kathil. It was for the realm. If she'd been doing this for personal gain they'd be going to New Avalon for entirely different reasons.
She sighed in annoyance and looked at her Guards officer, "Do you have them?"
He presented the called for paper work.
Captain Haakon's JumpShips had departed with some going inward in the realm... and another carrying the rake thin man to do his master's bidding. To Mountain Wolf Battlemechs with the intention of a partnership with them, for their heavy battlemech, and if rumors were right their extinct light mech? It probably wouldn't be in its star league configuration... but the rumors were Clay had a few of those somewhere and parts besides. Corean would be a fifty ton medium, and there was the sudden explosive chatter about seventy tonners.
Then of course there was the manufacturing of armor and apparently ASF in discussion. Anything that could use a 240 engine ... which suggested Clay had some confidence in his ability to produce the engine in question in numbers necessary. That would mean the heavy vehicles in his cluster... and that was certainly of interest to the duke of Robinson... and the 240 was also the engine in the rifleman.
"What is it?"
"Apparently he's been in rapid communication with Major Cameron of the rangers. The chassis they were discussing in question equates to a seventy ton frame, and involves a 280 engine." The officer replied. "I." The pause was a moment, "The conversation entailed Kurita's warhammer," Yorinaga in this case, the machine that had been literally punched down into the sandy soils of a wind struck expanse of Mallory's world, "and the Warhammer design lineage." The conversation, between the two mechwarriors, had wound its way around to including apparently the indigenous Davion design the Battle Axe. "Should we expect another one? Another machine?"
"I would say so given the animated nature of the conversation."
That was the thing that worried her. Clay's techs probably had a long history of dealing with their lord's proclivities they seemed to be quite good at putting things together at a request, and were used to this enough to chide any of the more ridiculous ideas. Apparently having dissuaded him from a slightly better armored rifleman as redundant and not worth pursuing for example. It would have been nice if she had had that sort of pull. She sighed, "And?"
"Tentatively, well they're calling it the Longsword. Apparently something about armored knights and keeping with theme of previous designs."
... oh it had a name, that probably meant it was close. She had been hoping for at least a couple of quiet days, but it was not to be. "Has Coleridge been informed of what they're up to?" Of that, the guards officer didn't know.
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Henry had a number of particular interests. He'd been exposed almost constantly to the future eighties aesthetic and the reality of Battlemechs, and of course part of that was that weapons were grouped into types, categories based on performance. There were outliers in different models but for all intents and purposes the performance down range of most weapons after the several hundred years were homogenous across their class... but they could look different, in the case of autocannons they used different calibers and ammunition requirements.
Different parts in a mech could often have different appearances, and well that lead to the moniker frankenmech were people often out of desperation or lack of the correct spare parts added things on and kitbashed a solution to make a functional mech for the battlefields of the succession war.
The Longsword though as it was taking shape, and in this case as techs were installing the last of four Magna Mark II Medium Lasers into the recesses in the chest, was much harder to call a frankenmech.
Part of that was that fairly typical bidepdal mech layout that comprised the BattleAxe and Warhammer designs. Indeed the layout of bundles of myomer fiber were similar to that of the latter design and the layout of internal parts were designed to insure rugged reliability but hte major change were the cooling jackets in the arms. It added additional armor to the warhammer but also dropped potentially risky ammunition dependent weapons in favor of greater mobility and two additional Medium lasers over the warhammer's design.
They'd replaced the Rawling jumpjets found in the BattleAxe with HildCo models used in the Victor. The machine was therefore unlikely to enjoy the stability as a platform of the standard warhammer, but it was a concession for mobility. Someone else might have decided this was all too much trouble and either just decided to make more warhammers, or go a step further and reintroduce the 26th century version of the black knight... but Henry figured that after the cataphract maybe a new seventy tonner design would encourage the Federated Suns to make new BattleMech designs.
There was no guarantee that would be what would happen but he didn't understand why more effort more federal funding hadn't been put towards trying to rebuild... well apparently that was what fucking magic was for, he thought humming the first few bars of the 1812 overture as the gantries retracted, and techs moved out of the way.
"Now remember if anyone who asks, this is intended for training purposes."
"Oh yes it would very terribly be irresponsible of us to let a cadet in without first insuring it was safe."
He watched as the kilted david bowie took the machine out of the shop and to a test enclosure that was ... mostly sand with a series of large ferrocrete embankments. Two PPCs represented roughly equivalent firepower to an assault autocannon at a greater range. The 280 rated engine would allow the longsword to maintain pace with the Cataphract model Justin was using, or a standard warhammer and thus in practice the longsword was in many ways a less complicated warhammer.
Fifteen minutes later Bard had returned. "So do you really need Corean?"
"I do. Putting one of these together by hand, is one thing. Mass production, producing them en masse thats another so if you want to see these in service in the Draconis March we have a lot of work that needs to be done." And more that, the truth was as much as he would have liked to introduce this latest new thing... the Centurion was already in wide scale service with the Federated Suns... and if Henry were to express the true scope of what he had in mind... he wanted there to be factories on Robinson and on Sakhara producing hundreds of Centurions a year that way the Federated Suns could begin rebuilding its Medium BattleMech units more akin to a simple logistic force that could be used to free up larger heavier units for assaults and invasions.
The centurion's common usage was what precluded other designs. It wasn't the Militia Mech concept these were going to be military 'grade' battlemechs not industrial mechs but he needed Corean to provide cover for mass production even if Corean wasn't thinking that far ahead.... and the simple reality was that it would be easier to get lots of Centurions operational and for the Federated Suns to use them since they already knew what they were.
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Notes: this drops a small section, and Eminence in Shadow will be updating Friday. I'm currently trying to figure out what my scheduling for August updates is going to be, but this is most likely to be regularly updated. Aurigan Renaissance less so. I do want to get to the start of the pirate wars in that timeline, but there is other stuff I would like to update, and I will probably padding out some of the first week of august with updates of Essence of Viltrumite content (If you haven't seen Invinicible from Amazon prime, I recomend it).