1.5

Heron stared at the data... not that he hadn't been looking at it all morning. Given the limitations of jump travel ... without even factoring in other limitations it was hard to make sense of the historical entry. What sense if any did the Taurian Canopian war of the early 29th​ century make? It didn't matter. It was history, and it was really the worlds in question that were the more important concern.

The Herotitus Crisis had entailed details of spheres of influence, possession even of four worlds. The worlds were Herotitus, rather obviously given the alternate name for the conflict, Detroit, Portland, and Spencer.

The parcel of worlds weren't even within a single jump of one another. Shouldn't they have had better things to fight over? Still the history was a potential complicating factor to their problem. The Taurians really shouldn't have had any leverage or grounds to complain, in 2813 the Aurigan Coalition had not existed. The four worlds in question along with many others had all been independent of Taurian overlordship for more than a century, but the Taurians had complained about Aea and others.

On the other hand Tamati, and the Canopian ambassador were right about the security vulnerabilities. It was unlikely that Black Jack had come all this way to try and set up his own little pirate kingdom in the middle of the rimward periphery he'd made too many enemies for that. If he tried to set up within such easy distance of the border with the Inner sphere well he'd potentially get some kind of mercenary force mustered after him.... but he could feasibly use those planets as temporary bases.

Or create enough chaos that semi friendly bandit kingdoms with some degree of legitimacy took root. The Canopians were concerned about worlds like Astrokazy or worse if Black Jack turned his attention towards their other border the one opposite Aurigan space. Apparently there were some roman cosplaying Lyrans who had set up something called the Marian Hegemony.

Of course given the limits of interstellar travel he doubted that they would have had much concern. Or at least far less of one... 'they' being the Aurigan Coalition. On the other hand part of Tamati, and the Ambassador's point had merit, ignoring the problem, and ignoring their neighbors wouldn't be productive in the situation they were faced with.

The problem was it wasn't two hundred years ago. It wasn't back when the Magistracy and the Taurians had enough hardware left over from the SLDF and Kerensky's march on Terra and subsequent dissolution of the League to get in such slap fights. For Herotitus the closest basing world would be Panzyr, which would also have the benefit of not being right on the border with the Capellans. That Panzyr met Lord Espinosa's criteria as well for its HPG presence was another reason to plan for it.

The problem was trying to cover Portland if they were going to reduce forces at Tarragona. The worlds of Detroit and Spencer just simply could not be covered by forces based in the Coalition. The Magistracy couldn't cover either of them by the same metric... which was a problem because Detroit was almost surely a tempting target.

A few hours later he had turned his attention to other technical reports. XL versions of the VLAR 300 had existed in the Star League era, but they hadn't been common. Even if they had he doubted they would have survived the war with Amaris much less the succession wars. The XL versions of Fusion Engines of the Star League were too fragile subject to damage, but if there was one thing he could say it was the Clan spec XL significantly reduced that vulnerability.

They certainly weren't as robust as a heavier standard fusion engine, but the XL in the Dire Wolf made a lot possible. It was true that coupled with DHS and a smorgasbord of weapons the Dire Wolf couldn't effectively mount Ferro-fibrous protection... but he was more interested in the report of what SLDF technical personnel made of the clan spec systems.

Not that he could introduce those at this stage. He figured he had some leeway for introducing Star League era equipment. Even endo-steel frame mechs like the guillotine wouldn't necessarily warrant as much attention as suddenly producing the Dire Wolf... especially since it had only entered production after the Dragoons had arrived.

Moving production of a heavy battlemech to the Aurigan capital was going to raise eyebrows from the outside looking in, but he'd already decided on that course of action. Once production was in progress they could even begin plans to draft a version of the Catapult with major parts commonality in mind with the Thunderbolt. They'd need to among other things standardize on Medium Lasers, and engines, and missiles launchers.

If they hadn't already been fielding large numbers of Thunderbolts he might have considered more seriously the suggestion to forget the Catapult project and instead of the Thunderbolt contemplate a variant Crusader, but at this stage that was bit too far. The Catapult's inclusion was also a further carrot to increase Aurigan military exports. Introducing one mech might have a limited effect, but he was counting on that the Magistracy, and some of the worlds in between would be interested in spending money on military expenditures and the Thunderbolt might not meet everyone's interest.

It was nominally a longer term investment.

He flipped through the secure packet until he reached the information on the 90 ton assault mech. The Pulverizer had been one of those designs aboard the Dobrev. It was most interesting because it carried clearly intermediary tech, systems half way between standard royal technology of the 28th​ century and the systems aboard the Dire Wolf. That was useful for the techs to look at, even if the Pulverizer was otherwise nothing special as command mechs of the late star league went. Of course the Dobrev had also carried that Bullshark thing, among other mechs. All of that would need to b e carefully secreted away; including the Dobrev herself.

None of this material could leave the DropShip... and the sooner they were back on Katinka the better, because there was a lot of this sort of thing.

--

Ana Marie Centrella watched the force structure animation as it changed. The noble houses of the Aurigan Reach had been feudatory structures. The ruling house lords had been able to call upon their battalions for military service, and in consensus rally themselves to face threats.

Heron Arsacid had the loyalty of an army. She didn't recall the exact wording he had used with Santiago Espinosa but it had involved something along the lines of given a few months he could pull Rhinos and Maultiers out of storage and ship them along with trainers to begin preparing Aurigan troopers for their use. Apparently one of the first things that had been done was to start preparing to mothball those vehicles as Arsacid's forces had started settling the worlds in the March.

... but also that there was to be an upgrade program for the Aurigan indigenous Vargr and that the Aurigan March would be transferring the machinery to produce 240 grade Fusion Engines in the next year. The same engine which powered a number of Gray White Hellcats that had been deployed to the Aurigan Capital as part of a Ground Aero Wing.

It was a long list of terms and machines that taken all together should have been in the history books not a contemporary report. The most obvious explanation was that Black Jack wasn't the only one who'd had a real lucky strike when they'd found a cache and the comparisons to the Wolf Dragoons wrote themselves.

The problem was the Cobmine's reaction, it had always been the Combine's reaction to Arsacid personally. The Combine probably did care about that amount of metal, but there were the Davions and Taurians, and really the capellans between them and the Colonel's six 'Mech regiments.

"Hypothetically, though I'd advice against it at this stage, is that a Striker Regiment could be subdivided into three smaller Medium BattleMech Regiments by attaching regiments of vehicles, and mech infantry...."

The reason that wasn't an option was that the Aurigans didn't have the manpower for that. The Aurigan council immediately made clear that they couldn't conscious such an expenditure in the short term. That deadlocked the conversation. It was about money, and manpower, and materiel... and Ana Marie instantly saw the other potential pitfall.

Santiago Espinosa wasted no time excoriating some of the hold outs on the council. He had clear allies among the councilors were supportive of his military expenditure proposal. It didn't work, but she suspected the lord of Coromodir V had done it for the chance to engage in the theatrics of rhetoric. The councilors constituted a legislative body, and in all likelihood Espinosa likely expected that once the March worlds elected their representatives to the council he would have the votes to force through a military spending bill.

The Arsacid Margravate contained five world, bringing the total number of systmes comprising the coalition to 23. That meant once they were seated Heron's elected representatives would represent just over a quarter of the worlds in the reach, and there was little doubt given his outline of joint forces they would vote for affirming the proposal. Add those five worlds voting to the Coromodir votes and House Parata's opposition party could levy the votes to deadlock the matter of supporting the spending of central revenues, and the need for taxes, to support conventional forces being called up on a likely permanent basis...

--

Notes: I need to get back into my rewatch of Eminence in Shadow I have an update that was supposed to go up tuesday but certain IRL shit happened and fucked my free time