040. K. H. M. E. Think of Rasalhague
April 2992, Blackjack III, Providence Class Jumpship Eggers
Katherine von Eggers looked down at the four infants.
Mine, the ever present beast in her breast rumbled. Content for now. Its hoard had increased after all.
With the help of Dobless, she had decided on a series of names. Names to represent the future, a tradition that had been carried through with her own. Katherine the queen of old, conqueror of empires.
Their names would be just as portentous.
Boudicca, Athena, Trieu, and Juno.
A warrior queen.
Two goddesses.
And an insurgent leader against a nation several times of her own.
One would hope, of course, that her children would survive without being tortured, or killed by ancient Terrans, or gods, or committing suicide to avoid capture.
Denied, the beast rumbled.
Really, the names were aspirations, not life goals.
In any case, as the little bundles of wrinkles gormlessly moved about. Like small slugs desiring nutrition or shelter, Katherine watched with satisfaction, these were hers, born from her flesh, from her blood. Sure, they weren't capable of much now, but in time, they would move onto great things.
If Huu had proven anything, it was that with a little push, even the most hermit-like of people would achieve legendary glory. Granted, the one who had done the pushing? Well, she hadn't found them yet, neither had Phan... but when she did?
There would be blood the beast had demanded. She agreed entirely with it in this situation.
Bundled up as they were, the creatures were never long without human contact, Katherine holding Juno closely, Huu rubbing the cheeks of Boudicca as she grabbed at his fingers.
Unable to properly identify the world around them, Katherine knew, from personal experience, that the beast hungered within. The grasp of their fingers, the near claiming of those that were around them.
So had she as an infant.
Not yet cognisant of the world, yet knowing, in her very bones, that these formless shapes were her people.
It was why she had allowed the Wolverines to be present in number. The Wolverines, her own retinue (who should have their own unique name at this point), and those of Eggers General Utility that were of... 'great value'.
Those that she could trust, those that she felt were worthy of the honour.
For these little ones, like herself, would claim all who were around them. Individuals of worth that would protect them, guide them... and most importantly of all. Be of value sufficient to earn a place in their hoard.
Theirs.
Mine... Ours the beast acquiesced. The children were its children as much as hers.
She would share of course, for they shared the Beast, one that ran through her family line, a maternal blessing and curse. She wondered what would have happened if Huu possessed such a curse. Would he have been driven insane?
A single minded focus on a goal that was unreachable? A never ending thirst that, no matter the wellspring, could never be quenched? Driven insane by the betrayal of his body in the face of requirements to leave his room? To brave the outdoors?
She did not know... and was grateful this was not the case, he had been born... normal.
Eyes panning left as Iris Steiner, betrothed to join her family, through Huu (a minor detail). Held Trieu with great concern. As if this were the first time she had done this. Here with several Blackjack instructors to establish a sister school to the Blackjack School of Conflict.
Which... really... might be the case now that she thought about it.
"Hold her tighter, arm under the back, hand out along the back shoulders." Iris jerked at the voice, looking panicked.
Trieu, for her part, already knowing what she liked and did not, whined in frustration.
Katherine nodded in approval, as with any child of the Eggers family. One must know what they desire, know what they want above all else.
If one denied the beast, it would do nothing but lead to insanity.
Which was why they were on the Eggers, first of the Providence Class ships. Travelling onwards to New Oslo now.
She had been unable to deal with the infiltrators that had threatened her son, mine, mine, mine, and was going to make up for it with the thorough annihilation of those that would threaten him on New Oslo.
The very idea that the Combine would not try? Hah. Impossible.
She would wait for them, would see great joy in their annihilation, for nothing else would satisfy her, not here, not now.
+_+
Huu glared at the sky. In between bouts of jump sickness, and playing with his new siblings. They were always the best at that age.
He remembered his younger sister and brother. How they had been the cutest ever. Carrying them around, pushing them on the stroller around the neighbourhood, getting them walking and having fun.
Then the first word to come out of their mouths had been 'no'.
Oh, the betrayal.
Then they had complained about his beard being itchy.
What was he? Their grandpa!?
Ugh.
Hopefully, these little ones would go a little while longer before deciding he was the uncool one, before they needed someone to drive them around that is.
In any case.
He was glaring at the sky because he hadn't read the questions properly.
A curse in his existence, damn you for tricky questions System! Daaaamn you!
++ System Reminder; Host's reading comprehension is not a function of the System. ++
Yeah, yeah, screw you system.
Getting everyone uniforms was great! Until, it hadn't shown completed status.
Why? Because he needed to get the bloody life-expectancy rate up first!
One objective at a time... oh how he had been betrayed by his reading comprehension.
Grrrr.
So. Life expectancy.
How did one improve that?
By having people not dying when they were old. It was rather simple, no?
The question, was how did one have people who weren't going to die?
Healthcare.
Infrastructure improvements.
Better work conditions.
Personal satisfaction.
Ability to relax and enjoy life outside of work.
Preventative strategies in the workplace and culture.
Cultural reformation from the top down.
Because the problem, in simple terms, was that everyone was dying when they got to 48!
Thankfully, they had been able to solve the issue, with the deployment of money!
It was genius!
It was like the two systems were working together to help him solve his problems.
To lose money and create the businesses he needed, he would help his people! A big circle.
Yes.
That was the mindset of a noble!
Or something.
More importantly, he was only allowed to spend money on those outside his company, if they were his subjects. The two systems working together!
Synergy, the word every manager loved to use, and now he too could use it without sounding like an idiot.
His people were his treasure, each and every one of them was a loss making machine!
Which was why he had dug far.
Had dug deep.
And discovered, through Dobless Information Services, that the solution for all his problems, was right in front of his face!
Radio Calisthenics!
He was going to former Combine territory, which meant that they were basically Japanese, right?
Radio Calisthenics was invented in Japan, which meant it was a perfect fit.
Like, really, could it get any better? A way for him to hire an enormous number of people, prepare an enormous amount of equipment. Paying people to actually do it, so they develop the habit. Providing food and clothing... oh yes, all those losses would just roll in.
A voice that was giving you movement directions as well as a music accompaniment. The goal being for everyone, once a day, to move their bodies in a preset pattern. Like a dance, but for general health purposes.
Establishing the announcement system in every population centre on every planet, sending out the recordings, the instructors... and... best of all? He wouldn't be penalised for wasting money because the Tycoon System was the Noblesse System with a different hat.
++ Slander. ++
Oh, this would be perfect.
What a way to waste money.
The Healthcare was even more obvious, just setting up his own private healthcare company, that provided healthcare to everyone anyway. What he needed to do to meet the standards set by the Estates General, like... the sheer basics.
Basics that would let him lose money!
Hah, governments all over Earth in his first life had tried to do everything they could to cut healthcare welfare. It was losing them money, after all. Therefore! Cutting welfare was how a government made money. But he wasn't trying to save money, he was trying to lose it. The solution then was to spend more!
And the resources.
Hah, Wotan Orbital Mining had that sorted!
Oh, this was perfect.
Eggers Public Calisthenics.
Eggers Healthcare.
Wotan Orbital Mining.
All of his objectives completed in a single go, was there anything better? All would make him losses, one way or another.
Huu thought to himself that this was the greatest idea that he had.
Citizens really were there to lose you money, weren't they?
It was really too bad that he couldn't set the tax rate to zero. Worse, that idiot of an Archon had given him a tax exemption!
Seriously, what the fuck was he thinking? Huu was here, trying to spend his money, to give him the standard 30% cut of his revenues as taxes. As all nobles did in the Lyran Commonwealth... all of those billions, those hateful, hateful billions. And the Archon had decided E.G.U didn't need to pay taxes.
Fuuuuuck offf Alessandro you fuck, he had wanted to say when he first heard it.
Worse still, he couldn't set the tax rate to zero according to the System, he would be making money...
Which is why all of their taxes would be going right back into the Kingdom, all of it. He couldn't allow them to make him money, it was against the rules! Not the System rules, but his rules, as Huu Eggers. Citizens were forbidden to make him money.
They would try to do it anyway, of course. He had been betrayed too many times to trust in the inherent good nature of humanity.
But, don't worry citizens, Huu Eggers, as a noble, will use all of his money on you!
He had sent out the instructions to do all of that before they left Blackjack III, which was good.
Because...
"Jump Warning. Please settle yourselves for the jump, limbs inside the jumpship. Please turn off non-hardened electronics for your own safety."
The world turned almost... purple.
The Eggers disappeared from his sight, the ceiling, the hull, all of it bled away in a miasma of rain... no... it was mist. Almost pink, pastel-like, almost... unreal in a way.
Enormous blazing red eyes entered his vision. Each the size of Battlemech, sliding up on their stalks, moving gently as the beast it was attached to decided it needed to get a closer look at this intruder in its domain. Focused unerringly on his prone form, Huu, thinking that this was a weird as fuck dream. Coming closer, always closer, surrounding him, the vaguely 'main' part of the body soon joining the eyes.
At least, before Voidy, almost languidly, rose up. Arrogance bleeding from its every pore... or shell-hole-thing?
The enormous creature, one who resembled a flower, if each petal was made from razor blades. The pollen-carrying-things on a regular flower were replaced with eye-stalks. Waving tentacles of hate and pollen, culminating in eyes that screamed of hunger and hate.
Just... lots of hate in a single package really. Just like a real life flower!
One was the size of a jumpship, a kilometre long.
The other the size of... wow, Voidy had gotten really big huh? Nearly an arm-length at this point.
Still, tiny.
A puny size that didn't do anything to detract from its presence, with a dismissive flick of its tentacle (did it learn that from his mother?), the enormous flower monster recoiled back.
Voidy descending with dismissive casualness. The hate-creature, a flower, leaving with great haste.
Huu's last thought before he lost consciousness being 'thank fuck I don't remember my dreams'.
+_+
May 2992, Verthandi, Providence Class Jumpship Eggers
Katherine Eggers moved, as she always did, with great confidence, an almost unseemly arrogance.
In the circle of equals, Mairi, Vice-Lord of the Veelvraat, could not help but be impressed by the Eggers Bloodright. As part of the 'family' as it were, he had been present for the first few months of the children's birth.
Already at three months old, they possessed the same hunger in their eyes that Katherine did.
If their bodies were at least average for the Inner Sphere, their minds, their sheer determination, would make them some of the most dangerous beings in the Inner Sphere. That much, at the very least, was clear after the Wolverines had spent time in the Inner Sphere.
They, who craved victory the most, would find it.
In the Pentagon Worlds, all fought for the right to carry the name, to carry the honour, to be the 'chosen' one. To die gloriously as to be spoken of in their Clan's Remembrance Saga.
It was all that they had, they fought to the death in a controlled environment where all were made as equal as possible. Where, despite the ferocity in which they fought, it resembled little of how war was actually fought. How battles were actually fought. They could not comprehend what the Wolverines had learnt through blood in the Inner Sphere.
It was individual determination that made that difference between victory and death.
Watching Katherine von Eggers move was like imagining what her daughters would be like when they became of age.
And move she did, working to refine what was quickly becoming a martial art, Exosuit Combat Arts, they called it.
When one wore a suit of armour that prevented a straight blow of a blade from killing. Prevented shots from a weapon from killing. Prevented most of what they had trained with their vibroblades and combat tactics from killing.
A system that required an entirely new... or rather, entirely old method of fighting.
To hark back to the days of ancient Terra, where knights in full plate armour needed to negotiate the armour of the opponent to kill one another. Blades simply unable to penetrate the armour given its hardness, unable to cut through like one might think from a poorly made holo-vid. The Battlemechs of their age, in other words.
The way that weapons evolved to handle the protection, how armour evolved to counter the threat, how entirely new schools of hand to hand combat had risen and fallen with each new iteration of the never ending battle.
The culmination of the which was the Battlemech, a suit of armour able to withstand any weapon... at least once.
Yet, it had been brought back to life in the here and now.
No longer the domain of the noble, but for the average soldier. For in the future, all would be wearing the Armsman, especially when it sold for 1,000 C-Bills. A quarter again of a regular Infantryman's monthly wage.
Or, rather, one could purchase 5 Armsman for a single vehicle grade machine gun.
When the simple fact of the matter was that the design was the cheapest possible system, using the bare minimum in high-tech equipment, it meant that everyone could access it. The stripped down variants that used glass in the helmet, and steel armour?
Even cheaper.
The first true technological revolution in the Inner Sphere since the Succession Wars began where it all started, all those thousands of years ago. The designs that had prompted an arms race of their own... plate armour.
Which is why they were learning from the treatises that had been identified, adapting and utilising what worked... and what didn't. For the sole purpose of developing a killing art that would make the Veelvraat the premier fighting force on the battlefield. Able to ensure none could hurt their principal, Lord Eggers, no matter what they armoured themselves within.
Each of their number was certainly capable, each of their number a warrior of exemplary skill.
Yet... Katherine von Eggers had a way with a blade that spoke not of skill, but... an uncompromising need to kill. Said need driving her to always go for the killing blow. In a way that many, normal human beings simply did not possess.
It was in understanding this, that Mairi had invited her to this project, to develop Exosuit Combat Arts to their full potential.
There were two main schools at this point in time, that of the smash and the stab.
The smash advocated for a return to the hammers and picks that ancient Terrans had used to defeat armour. Using the concentrated brute strength of the Armsman and the hydraulic assist, combined with the myomer, to smash all that force into a concentrated, singular location.
Smashing the armour, denting it, and injuring the individual inside through sheer concussive force, even if there was no penetration. It required some thought when one was wearing BAR10 armour with its ablating nature. Hammering away at an opponent like one would a rock, cracking them open like a sand-bison through speed, ferocity, and brute force.
The other school advocated the use of stabbing implements. Utilising long blades like Estocs, to penetrate the armour's weak points, needling the blade inside the gaps, pushing through and stabbing the one within. The thin point navigating past the internal myomer layout to strike flesh. A school that filleted its enemies through careful application of violence, vision, and complete, total, overwhelming concentrated force.
Both schools advocated the return of the dagger. A long, sharp, one handed blade to act as a sidearm of sorts. A weapon of last resort... or first if one were to choose the grapple.
For battle in Armsman armour was not as simple as it might appear. Not when, quite simply, the best way to get around one's defensive and offensive options, was to grapple.
To close in, nullify any range advantage they might have with a longer weapon, and then take the knife to work at their joints. Especially important since being so close gave one so many more angles to move a knife in.
As he watched, the duchess disregard all of this thinking by throwing her blunted axe like a spear into the unarmoured neck joint of his Veelvraat. Getting past the enlarged gorget that was standard, its arc taking in under the helmet and the collar, into the soft neck. Mairi shook his head at the sight.
Always with the killing blow, no matter how unorthodox it may be. No matter the circumstance, in a one on one, nine times out of ten, it would be her walking victorious from the ring.
She was just... that... good.
+_+
June 2992, New Oslo
Erwin Jaxon was on New Oslo already, part of the advance wave.
To make sure that he was able to get things sorted for the Lord to arrive.
Sure it was the wrong nomenclature for a King, but, well, those who knew him as the Little Lord called him Lord.
Huu Eggers, their King was arriving, and they wanted it to be perfect.
The factories had been established, and those that had been set up by his nieces and nephews. Well, those were just upgraded.
It wasn't like there was going to be a reduction of demand this close to the Combine border now, was there?
Already the Combine had tried to strike.
Their ISF teams moving with unprecedented ferocity to try and kill anyone they could get their hands on.
It was too bad that a rather large portion of the Rasalhague population wanted Huu Eggers here. He was the one standing between them and starvation, after all. Well, that and healthcare, of workplace reform, of simple forcing many civilian companies from the Combine era to adapt to these new circumstances.
Hell, Eggers Construction was already building Blocks, turning them into Sections, then entire Hexes. Hiring people, putting people to work, housing yet more, and uplifting an entire peoples.
Living standards were improving, taxes were down... all of it funded with the Lord's money. Was it any wonder the population wanted the good times to continue? E.G.U in their eyes was too good to be true... but they wanted things to continue for as long as possible. If only, in the manner of all humans everywhere, to drag out the benefits as much as possible.
Still, this was strange, their LIC liaisons had made it clear just how out of the norm it was. ISF were fanatical, yes, but stupid?
No, something else was going on, and Erwin didn't like it one bit.
As he moved his arms over his head, stretching his flanks, following along with the Radio Calisthenics. A set of movements that the Lord had decided every employee of Eggers General Utility, as well as the Rasalhague Kingdom, needed to do every morning.
Stretching and opening up his lungs for the day ahead. Listening to the cheery sound of a children's cartoon as he did so.
Pondering over the latest order that had been issued by the Lord to Eggers Armaments.
He wanted a tank that could be dropped by parachute from orbit without further assists, could engage and destroy enemy armour at range, could shoot cannon and missiles out of its barrel, and weighed less than 20 tons.
In short, an impossible vehicle.
The historical version being the M551 Sheridan.
A boondoggle of a vehicle, yet the Lord knew what he was doing.
He wouldn't assign them to design such a vehicle, vulnerable to basic weapons fire, with vulnerable ammunition, with such a high fatality rate in its crews upon impact.
No, the Lord knew what he was doing.
There was a purpose to this, and Erwin Jaxon would find it.
He would start by upgrading the original design, analyse it as a test bed... perhaps there was some value to be found in that line of inquiry.
The idea that the Lord had deemed this a high priority, choosing to develop a boondoggle, never even crossed his mind. The idea that the Lord did not have a plan?
Impossible.