Scavenged Restoration 39 (Patreon)

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 39

-VB-

Information. 

Fools would think that information itself was all someone needed to push them above the rabble. That they would be just as smart, just as lucky, and just as powerful as someone else who had information. 

Such idiots were far and few between within the Capellan Confederation but not so in other realms of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery.

Why was that? 

Pavel Ridzik had a theory. 

The state-controlled education system did not coddle the children nor did it tolerate foolishness. Dreams and ambitions were good, yes, but only when it did not impinge upon the needs and direction of the state. Because unlike the other Successor States that had plenty, interfering in the direction of the state was a direct opposition to the survival of the Capellan Confederation.

This was why anyone caught interfering in the education of servitors’ children was executed. 

Yes, anyone without a sufficient value who interfered in the education of the children of slaves were executed. And even if one did have sufficient value to not be executed on the spot by the Maskirovka or the local police, they would not come out unscathed. 

The Capellan Confederation understood that information itself was not good enough. If given information, then any given individual will twist that information to suit their needs rather than looking at the information objectively. No, everyone - from the top to the bottom - needed to be educated on how to see information, how to contextualize that information, and how to use that contextualized information into an applicable work that benefited themselves and the state. 

Because, otherwise, the other successor states will come in and ruin their lives. 

Ridzik’s theory was simple. 

The Capellan Confederation had fewer fools because fools died quickly or suffered a long life as a servitor.

A great of this was none other than Duke Michael Hasek-Davion. 

The man sought information but did not know how to use it, and Ridzik did not mean how the man used that information to better himself. If he had offered all of the information he gained from the Maskirovka to Hasne Davion, then he would have bettered his life, though to a lesser degree, but, more importantly, he would have bettered his realm by making it safer and thus indirectly increasing his own quality of life. 

By selfishly keeping information to himself, Michael Hasek-Davion made his life only marginally better than before without accomplishing anything, helped the Capellan Confederation directly make his life worse by letting them sabotage a shipyard and steal jumpships, then made the realm less secure by hoarding battlemechs he pilfered from the Star League cache, and finally, stole his realm’s rightful property by stealing a whole factory from underneath it for his own personal gains. 

For all the shit people gave the former Chancellor Maximillian Liao behind closed doors for his madness, Ridzik had followed his liege lord because Maximillian Liao’s madness had been an impotent madness.

His was a madness that ultimately did not rob the state and its people. 

Was he overly harsh and cruel? At times, yes. However, his targets were often those whose value had been lost in either their own ego and pride or simple incompetence. Oh, Maximilian Liao never executed or tortured a scientist or mechwarrior who worked. He never butchered civilians who, even if they protested, went back to work at their allotted time. 

He only tortured scientists who wasted time and money on impractical fantasy projects, executed mechwarriors who ran cowardly when his comrades stayed to fight to the death, and suppressed rioters who started to harm their neighbors and the state. Because each and every single one of them caused harm to the state and its people. 

What use was a scientist who wastes tens of millions of C-Bills of the people’s hard-earned taxes?

What use was a cowardly mechwarrior whose very job was to defend the people?

What use was a protest when the rioters began to destroy the city?

No. Despite how his former master was painted by the other states, Chancellor Maximillian Liao had ultimately been a decent ruler who knew when he needed to step back and when he needed to bring the boot down.

The current Chancellor, William Liao, was a man of Maximillian’s level of brilliance without the overly harsh and cruel madness that came with the former chancellor.

However, Pavel Ridzik wished that he had more information to know what was truly going on at times. 

Yes, the very same information that drove people to do stupid and selfish things. He wanted it because he felt frustrated with his lack of insight into the future of the Capellan Confederation. He knew that the chancellor trusted him; why else would he have been sent to quell the Anduriens with an overwhelming force to truly crush the upstarts? 

The lack of information on his part, however, left him feeling less like a Strategic Director and more like a regular senior colonel. He worked with step by step instruction and not afforded the trust to be able to act on his own for the betterment of the state, not just his own benefit. 

And Ridzik felt that keenly when he stared down at the treaty terms that he was to push as directed by the chancellor himself. 

Pavel Ridzik did not like these terms.

His feelings, however, were not going to be something that dictates the terms. It was the chancellor’s direction, and he would carry it out. 

“These are the terms,” he said as he slid the paper across the table.

In a small manor far away from the capital city of Jojoken, he sat across the table from Colonel Michael Humphreys. The heir to the Duchy of Andurien was here on behalf of his family… and he was here to sign away his inheritance. 

Michael looked down at the paper that was between his hands. 

The terms of the peace treaty were simple. 

• The Duchy of Andurien, as a whole, would be annexed by the Capellan Confederation. 

• Catherine Humphreys and Michael Humphreys, as the two highest political actors of the Duchy of Andurien, would resign from their position as the Duchess and heir of the Duchy of Andurien.

  • Upon signing this treaty, both individuals acknowledge that they will never be able to legally reobtain their positions. 

  • House of Humphreys will be allowed to retain their personal battlemechs.

• The Defenders of Andurien will be reorganized into Andurien Reserves. All commissioned officers will be demoted one rank, and the regimental commanders will be assigned by Chancellor William Liao.

• Native Andurien military industries will be absorbed into the Capellan industrial network. 

  • Any partial ownership the House of Humphreys holds over native Andurien military industries will be transferred over to the House of Liao. 

  • There will be no compensation for the loss of the ownership.

  • All assets slated for the Magistracy of Canopus will be confiscated.

• The Duchy of Andurien will be reorganized into the Andurien Commonality. 

  • All citizens of the Duchy of Andurien without a job classified as “necessary,” “important,” or “critical” by the Ministry of Citizens will assume the rank of Resident. 

  • All members of the House of Humphreys will remain on Andurien V indefinitely and assume the rank of Citizen until allowed otherwise. 

The treaty went on for a few more lines but that was the important gist.

Compared to many historical treaties, it was a simple treaty. It helped that this was an outright annexation instead of incorporation like how the Capellan Confederation came about. 

No… what Pavel found issue with was a significant lack of punishment for the Humphreys. Executions, exile, or even servitor-ship would have been what he would have issued, but he had an inkling as to why the chancellor didn’t do so. 

By stating outright that the Humphreys were merely to be quarantined under “planet arrest” instead of executing its matriarch and enslaving the rest, he was making it far easier for them to swallow the treaty. 

Except this didn’t make sense to Pavel because they were already crushing the Anduriens in all of the engagements. They had already outright invaded and conquered all of the border worlds. All of Andurien V had fallen except for the capital city, and that was because the CCAF deliberately left it alone.

This was not a peace treaty. 

This was an unconditional surrender and everyone knew it. 

However, the chancellor insisted on a formal treaty that the Humphreys themselves signed. 

He watched the eldest of the Humphreys’ current generation before the man picked up a pen… and signed away his inheritance with the resignation of a man who knew that it was over. 

-VB-

The media was calling it the Four Month War or the War of 3030, even if the war itself ended on January 3rd of 3031. 

It was a military debacle for the Anduriens and a strategic and tactical masterpiece for the Capellans. If the Inner Sphere and the Periphery thought that the Capellans had been weak from how they lost nearly all of their Tikonov Commonality, then the Four Month War proved that, no, the Capellans weren’t weak at all.

In fact, the idea that the new Federated Commonwealth only won because of their numbers began to float around the Inner Sphere. That it wasn’t martial excellence from the part of the Feds or the raw might of the Lyran warmachines but just pure, raw numbers of two of the largest realms breaking down the smallest of their kind. 

And so the talk within the Draconis Combine and the Free Worlds League only grew louder. 

If it took just two Successor States to focus their efforts on killing one Successor State to reduce it down so much, then couldn’t that happen to them? 

This fear was one of real consequences for the Draconis Combine and its military leadership. Even with the new Terran Corridor connecting them to the Free Worlds League, they were militarily isolated by at least three jumps. This was more than what the Capellans had; they had an entire border with the Free Worlds League. 

Better minds like Theodore Kurita planned for the eventuality of a war that the Federated Commonwealth would bring upon his people. 

In the Free Worlds League, the talk was there, yes, but it was quieter compared to the more militant talks from the Draconis Combine. Their troubles laid with their Parliament.

What were they doing? How did they let the Capellans eat an entire duchy? What’s taking them so long to put out an official statement?

For smaller states within the Free Worlds League, representatives got called back and changed. 

For larger states that were run by noble houses, planets were considering breaking away from them, knowing fully well that they weren’t being represented. Or protected. After all, look what happened to all of the planets that were part of the Duchy of Andurien! They were now Capellan! 

What was the military doing? Why didn’t they interfere? 

On and on and on, people demanded answers, but the political elite had no answer to give. Or at least, they didn’t have an answer that won’t get them screwed over. 

Because their answer was simple.

They fucked up.

They didn’t think that it would escalate this quickly, end that drastically, and, hell, see a warship! 

Yes, that was the other fuck up.

The Capellan Confederation had a warship and they nearly used it on a Free Worlds League world (ignoring the fact that the Anduriens left the League out of their own volition)!

And the politicians, the representatives, didn’t know how to react to this. It was always the Captain-Generals who made the ultimate call on matters of war, mostly because it was the Marik troops who always fought all over the League and beyond its borders. 

And the Marik troops? 

Something most people, including those within the Free Worlds League, forgot. 

They answered only to the Captain-General, who was usually the Head of the House of Marik.

And that Captain-General was in a coma and his heir was … well, not experienced enough to whip up the Parliament in time.

So imagine everyone’s surprise when Janos Marik woke up on February 19th, 3031. 

And almost got a stroke, again, after hearing what happened to the Duchy of Andurien.