Chapter Fifty-Two: Trolls…

Chapter Fifty-Two: Trolls…

Davion Palace New Avalon, Federated Suns October 30th, 3011

"You should have heard your voice." Ian laughed harder. "She hung up on me!" He mocked.

I just stood there. Not finding the fact that my time had been wasted on a joke funny.

"And, you just kept trying to convince her." Ian doubled over again.

"Maybe I can just let him die." I thought in my head with a mental shrug. "Surely Hanse will do a better job anyway." I had pointedly tuned Ian out at his point.

"No." I thought to myself, shaking my head in the process. "Hanse would be just as bad, only he'd take time to set up his trolling moments, better the obvious troll than the smug younger one."

"Hello." Ian waved his hand in front of my face finally getting my attention."No one's ever been able to tune me out like that before."

"I had practice." I shrugged, giving Ian my attention now. "When you grow up the oldest of fourteen and then get married with two kids…" I trailed off.

"You learn to tune the crazy out." Ian finished for me. "Damn it. I had an entire series of jokes for this and they're all ruined now." He shrugged. "Oh well. Now what was so important that you had to rush over here?"

"Can we move this to a briefing room?" I asked. "And you might want Yvonne and some of your advisers for this one."

"Yeah, I'll call for a meeting." Ian called his secretary in and had her gather the people on his advisory council. "You have thirty minutes to get together whatever you need for this." Ian looked at me. "When you've got what you need, have one of the servants guide you to the main briefing room."

October 30th, 3011

"On June 30th, 3011 we encountered what appeared to be a Draconis Combine Raiding party battalion sized in strength." I said, using the Tri-Vid screen to show pictures of the four dropships that had jumped into the system.

"Seeing as we had superior aerospace assets in the form of one of the new Stinggunships along with a near regiment of aerospace fighters, we met them halfway between the jump point and the planet of Kentares." I flipped to the next slide. "We destroyed them with minimal losses among our forces."

"But this isn't what we're here to talk about." I gestured for Rook to take the lead. "It's what we pulled from the dropship's computers that was important."

"I'm the chief computer tech of the Marksman, and due to us being issued Mithril for recovery operations I was pulled in to examine the dropship's computers and see if we could recover any intelligence." Rook paused for a deep breath. "We found two things of particular interest. The first thing we found was Nukes laced with extreme amounts of Cobalt." Rook took a cue from me and waited for the angry shouting and reactions to die down.

I gave them a couple of minutes to have their little moment before meeting Yvonne Davion's eyes. She was the only one calm in the room besides Rook and myself. She raised an eyebrow inquiringly, and I just nodded in response. A sharp whistle then echoed throughout the room and Yvonne lowered her hand down from her mouth.

"Children, the adults are trying to have a conversation." She said now that quiet had entered the room. "Lieutenant Rook, if you could please continue."

"Of course Ma'am." Rook struggled, not knowing whether to salute or not before just deciding to finish the briefing. "It was the second thing that was more important. These were not Draconis Combine Dropships." He stated. "They were too new, and had none of the signs of Combine ownership in the past."

"What do you mean by too new?" One of the advisors asked.

"Well, there's a certain amount of clutter that builds up over time in computers. Different errors that have been logged, small glitches that never get fixed, all sorts of things." Rook tried to explain. "But there was no clutter on these dropships. And whoever was in charge of security screwed up, they left us with coordinates of where they had come from." Rook nodded to me and passed the baton over.

"We fired the Nukes into the sun." I started. "We don't need something to go wrong on Kentares after the Massacre." People nodded in agreement. "And we did some digging on the star coordinates, and couldn't find anything. We know that it's close to Markesan, and that every piece of equipment that they used had been manufactured in the last year or so after analysis from our Astechs and engineers." I paused for breath. "Have any of you heard of a system called Versailles?"

"Well, neither has anybody in my company or on the planet." I shrugged, "So we're here to do some digging, and maybe see if we can get some payback for trying to nuke us into oblivion."

The room erupted into questions and slight chaos.

An hour later….

"Well, that was quite the shitstorm you stirred up in there." Ian said as he entered the sitting room Mathis, Rook, and I were resting in. "Mark, follow me." He gestured for me to stand up and follow him.

I followed him back to his office where a map of the Inner Sphere from before the Succession wars started. "I found it." Ian stated as he pointed to a system called Versailles. "It's right here, I don't know how we lost it, or who deleted it, but Versailles was a part of my nation."

He grinned at me. "Thanks for dropping an adventure onto my lap." And then he took off at a slight jog. I maintained pace with him until he had reached a side office.

"Hey Yvonne!. I'm taking my buddy Mark here and the Heavy Guards to go do some exploring. Be back soon!"

I just facepalmed and started to try and appear invisible when Yvonne poked her head out and saw me. "You," She pointed at me. "My office, now."

Knowing there was no escape, I hung my head and walked into her office.

"Want a cookie?" Yvonne waved a chocolate chip cookie at me. "I made them fresh last night."

"Ooh." My eyes got wide. "I haven't had homemade cookies in years. I will absolutely have one." I accepted her peace offering with a slight tear in my eye.

"I thought you were going to chew me out for a second there." I said, with a slight chuckle.

"No point." Yvonne shrugged. "I'm surprised I managed to get Ian to sit still for as long as I did." She offered another cookie with a glass of milk. "Thanks for that by the way, I managed to make him do his job for the first time in years because he couldn't push anything off to me when it came to the distribution of the Helm Cache."

"You're welcome." I responded. "These are really good, I'll trade you for the recipe."

"What kind of trade?" Yvonne had a gleam in her eyes.

"Well, I just so happen to have a recipe for White Chocolate Chip Caramel cookies." I replied.

"Done." Yvonne grabbed a sheet of paper and tore it in half for us to both write our recipes on.

"Now, was there anything else you needed Ma'am?" I asked, now that our business transaction was concluded.

"Make sure Ian comes back alive." She looked at me with slightly sad eyes. "I know that he's going to throw himself at trouble, but you seem to have a decent head on your shoulders."

"I do?" I asked, knowing I had a tendency to draw fire for my troops in order to win battles.

"You don't rush into combat unless it's made its way to your area." She said, "I've seen the battleroms, and read the reports. You stay in the HQ until someone gets too close, and then you engage." She sighed. "Ian wants to be on the front the entire time, and Damn the consequences."

"I'll do my best to bring him home Ma'am." I said seriously. "I can't make any promises though."

"That's all I can ask for." She said, "When you get back, I'll have tested that recipe out though."

"I'll sample them when I return." I replied, and shook her hand. "Thanks for not chewing me out."

"It was intel that we needed." She shrugged. "I don't shoot the messenger."

November 4th, 3011.

"Boy am I glad that I grabbed my backup Warhammer." I said to Mathis, Rook was on his way back to Kentares and would hopefully be bringing some reinforcements if this went the way I thought it would. "Nat's Marauder was still being worked on when we left."

"Me too." Mathis replied. "I'm glad I managed to talk them into letting me borrow the prototype." He gestured to the armor being loaded into the bay via forklift. "The Mark 15B Mithril is a bit slower, a lot heavier, and will last for a long time out in the field."

"Don't blow it up." I told him seriously. "We need the testing data from it."

"I'll try my best Colonel." Mathis shrugged. "But no promises."

We were being loaded into one of the Davion Heavy Guards dropships and would be taking off soon.

"You remember your orders?" I asked Mathis. "We can't afford to screw this up."

"I remember Colonel, I've got your back." He replied. "You still got that letter Yvonne gave you?" He asked me.

"It's going in the chest pouch of my Mithril." I said. "If Ian does anything stupidly heroic, I may need to use it."

"Then we are as prepared as we can be." We walked into the dropship and got ready for takeoff.