Embers After Flames, Chapter 7.8 (Patreon)

7.8

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Life continued. Even the new additions didn’t change that. Until the next set of suckers arrived, it stayed relatively quiet, though, and I appreciated that. The RLF had time to fix themselves up. I scheduled a decent amount of R&R for the Firekeepers, letting them get the stress out so that the next flood of events wouldn’t be too hard on them.

Once they did arrive, things kicked back into gear. New corps, new mercs, but nothing really out of the ordinary on that particular front.

The rest of the year passed quickly, at least.

Raven and Flatwell’s deal continued to last. Time and support drew us closer and closer, though we never quite reached the point of being friends so much as allies of convenience. It was, I’ll admit, a genuine pleasure to watch Raven work. They’re a true monster of a pilot, more than worthy of the name that they claimed. They worked like they were on a personal crusade, and the PCA continued to suffer for it.

Further compounding that was the Firekeepers keeping up their tasks, an eternal source of pressure for the PCA, ensuring that they would never be able to build sufficient facilities on Belius to handle their problems. By this point, they didn’t really do much else unless the corps fucked around; if there were any Dosers left, they weren’t bold enough to bother the RLF anymore.

What was left of that year had been rather dull. 

The next few years, on the other hand, was where we started to see the culmination of all of Flatwell’s efforts.

Flatwell of course had wasted no time in taking advantage of the PCA’s continuing distraction. With all of his preparation in place from the RLF’s previous continuous growth, he’d now maneuvered things in preparation for a massive expansion, made possible as its industry had finally overtaken its personnel. He started the program right at the beginning of the 39th year after the Fires, and the civilians flocked in as the spots opened up, with scores of already half-trained volunteers going through the prepared training that had been left for them.

They also went through the C6 Augmentation procedures at the same time. Healthier than ever from the effects of the first two stages, and then rendered superhumanly capable by the third stage, they had extremely high morale and motivation.

The new blood vitalized the RLF significantly. Positions all across the continent grew significantly, strongholds and hardpoints transforming into fortresses in just a few short months. The incoming engineers and mechanics vastly expanded the RLF’s maintenance and construction capacity, providing support for the incoming pilots. BAWS’ factories proved to be up to the task of supplying them, new model MTs flying off the lines as fast as they could be manufactured.

To outsiders, the growth surge might have seemed absurd, downright impossible, even. Of course, if one knew just what the RLF had done over the course of its existence, it was no surprise. The fact that safe civilian zones existed at all was because of the RLF’s efforts. The truth of the matter was that pretty much every civilian on this planet was already part of the RLF, they just hadn’t formally declared that in order to keep safe from the PCA’s overreactions.

Nobody blamed them for it. Cities could, would, and had been burned for being too loud in their support for what the PCA labelled as ‘insurgent sympathies’.

Of course, as the capacity of the RLF expanded, it was inevitable that some of that was directed towards supporting the AC pilots. By the end of the year, there were two new, fully prepared and trained teams to handle AC support, and that meant a pair of new AC pilots graduating from their nearly continuous simulation training. Flatwell’s plans called for the development of at least two more teams every year for as long as it was possible to sustain, and by every metric I had access to, it seemed like that would be quite a few years indeed.

Rusty was now officially one of the new pilots. He was young, nineteen going on twenty at the moment, but he had distinguished himself completely, and he had earned his inclusion.

Little Ziyi had been so terribly jealous, hah! Seven years with us, and already a determined little hellion. She’d thrown herself headfirst into the practice, too young to truly understand what she claimed to want, and yet too determined to be deterred from eventually fighting alongside the family who’d raised her.

I did wonder how long that would last. Unfortunately, she did have the possibility to join, because even with this expansion, it was going to take quite some time before we were finally ready to make our play.

We were just waiting to get to that point.

So it was that the 40th year also passed quickly. Flatwell’s recruitment drive raced neck in neck with the RLF’s capacity to handle it. Seria even recruited both Ezra and Lyla to handle the vetting and security side of things, the trio carefully managing things while Flatwell handled the broader picture. 

There wasn’t a lot that happened that year. A pair of moderate conflicts saw a particularly unlucky corp get pushed out of Rubicon, but other than, it was the same grinding pace that defined things. The PCA obviously saw that the RLF was increasing in power, and while they tried to halt it, their efforts only amounted to slowing it, instead. The resistance was growing, and the resistance had been fed. 

The PCA, by this point, was starting to get very concerned. I was able to track an even more extensive amount of resources being sunk into their Research and Development programs. The designs of their machines went through iterations almost every second month, fractionally increasing the capacity of their machines, new designs enhancing their abilities. BAWS didn’t take it lying down; the constant battles with the PCA meant that the RLF could provide them truly enormous amounts of quantitative, real-world data in combat conditions. I could only imagine how many engineers across the galaxy were salivating at the prospect, fighting an internal design war so that their machines would be the next ones deployed to the field.

Across the entire Human Sphere, there were no conditions quite like those on Rubicon. 

It was pretty easy to tell that the PCA wasn’t enjoying it. They towed a second asteroid into orbit in the second month of 41st year. It was larger than the previous one, with higher ratios of metalics and useful matter. The first, by now, had been all but depleted, and if they wanted any more use out of it, they were going to have to prepare for nucleosynthesis on an industrial scale. I doubted they would resort to that. There were plenty of other, more useful, asteroids after all.

By the 42nd year, Raven’s efforts had intensified enough that the PCA was making them a priority target. Raven, and Branch as whole, had stolen a downright concerning amount of data from the PCA, surgical and precise. I eventually noticed a shift in behaviour from them, Raven switching from hitting random bases to moving in a pattern. They probably found something, though neither Raven or the Operator informed us.

That suspicion became even larger when I was able to acquire the list of the next set of mercenaries coming to Rubicon. By this point, it was a lucrative and well-established business, fit for many mercs if they were willing to try their luck and skill, so it was no surprise to see quite a few mercs with good, established reputations. Of all of them, however, I only recognized a few- and I’ll admit that I was surprised by the fact that I recognized more than one name.

The first was Coldcall. His records read like a list of infiltration and annihilation missions, but all of that was merely to place a guise on his true nature. Coldcall was an assassin, a black market killer who normally worked for corporations. He was either here early, or he was expecting good business relatively soon. Still, while he was a problem, I left the matter for Flatwell to deal with. It was up to him if we wanted to kill a successful assassin before he could achieve anything.

The second and third were much more interesting. Both of them were independent mercenaries, both of them possessing very good pedigrees. One was advertised as the ‘ideal mercenary’, with a nearly ninety percent success rate on his missions. The other was regarded as a nearly unstoppable force, armed with weapons of devastating firepower.

King and Chartreuse. 

An S-Ranker and an A-Ranker... but not necessarily our enemies.

Both, as it happened, were friends of Raven, members of Branch.

I had to wonder whether Raven had them called them in or not, honestly. The change in behaviour, the arrival of these other two members... Didn’t that just seem like they were getting ready for something?

Well, whatever. I told Flatwell about their arrival, though not their affiliation, since I had no way of justifying that knowledge. He had a pair of jobs ready for both of them within the hour, and while Chartreuse rather politely declined on the citation of ‘preparing for operations’, King went right ahead and announced himself by opening a corporate stronghold in much the same way someone would open a bottle of wine in a high-class restaurant.

He had a reputation for finesse, and I had to admit, they really hadn’t been kidding. King made the violence look like an artform, even if he lacked Raven’s lethal efficiency or Dolmayan’s absolute determination and experience.

In any case, both of them dropped off the map for a bit after that, before I eventually managed to catch sight of them alongside Raven. I left Flatwell to handle that particular bit of information. He chose to expand the support that Raven was getting, figuring that it was better to make sure that the high-class mercenaries were at least predisposed to us rather than anybody else.

By the 43rd year, King and Chartreuse were reasonably active mercenaries among Rubicon. Out of some form of professional courtesy, probably because we were supporting them on the down-low, neither had taken high-profile jobs against the RLF. Mostly, they operated on lucrative corporate contracts against other corporations, taking in material support from Flatwell’s own commissions on the down-low. Steady, profitable work- which enabled them to take on far more clandestine efforts against the PCA.

It was also becoming increasingly obvious that they were preparing for something. Raven’s efforts shifted from information gathering to subtle subterfuge, my analyses indicating that they’d moved to pulling security keys and access codes from the Enforcement System. Preparing for their canonical raid, I assumed, but before I could make up the justification to confront them about it, they surprised me by contacting us first.

Raven’s Operator was their spokesperson, even meeting Flatwell face-to-face. She informed us that Branch had uncovered information from the PCA’s own systems that indicated that, somewhere on the planet, there was a large mass of Coral still present, sufficient for civilization-scale usage. She wasn’t aware of where, precisely, because the PCA had hidden the info, but she also knew that it far surpassed any supply that the RLF had access to. She also informed him that they had access to significant amounts of data that indicated the PCA had undertaken multiple actions that had violated its charter, but any data proving this conclusively had either been destroyed, or redacted beyond the highest clearance. 

Flatwell promptly asked if Branch intended to release this information to the rest of the Human Sphere. Raven’s Operator didn’t bother denying it, agreeing that it was the plan from the very start. 

The only thing that had changed was that, over the years they’d spent on the planet, Branch had the opportunity to see that the RLF also had a plan. They had front row seats to see what we were up to. She asked if Flatwell had any intentions of stopping Branch.

Flatwell, to my surprise, had only laughed, and asked only that they wait until at least halfway through the next year. Before she left, he told her that Branch’s plan would make them the highest priority target for the PCA, and asked if they were prepared to handle that. Raven’s Operator claimed to be, and honestly, I believed them.

I asked Flatwell about it afterwards, curious as to why he was alright with the incoming chaos that their actions would cause. He told me that while it was problematic, it was also a chance to get ready for a complete coup, with the PCA so completely distracted that they wouldn’t be able to handle it.

I told him that there were others who wouldn’t hesitate to use the opportunity to jump in, and he said he was counting on it. I chose to trust him. He spent the next three weeks talking to his contacts.

And so it was that, forty four years and six months after the Fires of Ibis, Branch kicked off one of the greatest shitstorms that the planet had ever seen...

By attacking one of Closure Satellites and telling the entire galaxy that Rubicon still had a motherlode of Coral on it.