Collection 38 (Patreon)

“So, Protector Calderon,” Fleetmaster Edward Arlaoskas, a man whose fleet carried thousands of minds yet only two dozen beating hearts, turned to her and smiled. It was a dangerous smile. He was probably one of the most dangerous men to ever sail the stars and he was solely focused on bringing down a pillar of human civilization. “Where would you like your shipyard?”

-VB-

Collection

Chapter 38

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Jamestown System, Taurian Concordat

3004 June

Jamestown-Arlaoskas Shipyard was in full production. 

Well, full production for a shipyard that was deliberately handicapped. After all, it wasn’t a dedicated “shipyard” shipyard but an Upwell Astrahus-class Citadel Station being made to produce ships. 

As the majority owner of the shipyard, I made a deal with the Calderons for them to get the majority of the profits (not gross) but I got to determine what was produced. We would share liability but I would be in charge of the shipyard’s production, and security surrounding it would be separate from the local and concordat-wide security. 

To be specific, the Concordat will not have the legal right to force the shipyard’s security into its navy or protection of other assets. 

It was staffed fully by my own AI assistants. Most were Gamma Core artificial intelligence, those who were human-level. However, just like the Coromodir Shipyard, the shipyard’s director was a Beta Core artificial intelligence. If it wasn’t for my own supernatural levels of knowledge and abilities, then I wouldn’t know half of the things “Jacob Shepherd” was doing to optimize the shipyard’s production. 

“So?” 

I glanced over to Jacob, the Beta Core who wore a synthetic body. With materials I helped design and create but with a form designed by the core “himself,” he looked like the cutting edge of what a businessman should be. He looked like black haired Faraday from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, standing at around 175 centimeters tall with a lithe body better fit on a swimmer than a businessman but he also had enough laser guns and shields packed into his body to devastate any would be invaders. 

Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could take out a light mech by himself, because the frame of his body alone was durable enough to withstand AC/2’s and small lasers and had the artificial muscles needed to punch through battlemech cockpit glass. At the very least, he will intimidate any spineless businessman and politician.

“Why choose that design out of everything I provided?” I asked him as I looked back out of the plastiglass window along this corridor. It looked out into the ships currently orbiting the shipyard: my Maw, dropships of the Taurian Concordat Navy, few tugs made by the shipyard already, and the first production run of the shipyard. 

“I merely thought that it is what the Taurian Concordat needs to rebuild and expand outward,” Jacob hummed. 

I hummed in agreement. 

“Mules are definitely in line with independent mindsets.”

“Indeed. I’ve also changed the design so that its middle section, where all of the habs are, can spin under its own power.” 

“No shields, though, right?”

“Of course. I understand completely and agree firmly that shields are our advantage,” Jacob nodded once. “However, I also changed the armor’s configuration to provide it better protection against microasteroids, bullets, and lasers.”

“I don’t mind that. That’s a good thing, actually. Good job.”

“Of course, sir.”

Indeed. 

Mule was the largest of the “civilian” grade blueprints I gave Jacob to produce and sell. 

Mule-class Hauler Jumpship

Class: Jumpship (hauler)

Tech Base: Inner Sphere - Persean Sector

Use: Interstellar Trade

Production Cost: 250 million C-Bills

New Sale Price: 300 million C-Bills

Introduced: 3004 

Mass: 200,000 tons

Length: 250 meters

Fuel: 1,000 tons

Fuel Scoop: scoop hydrogen from gas giants to top up your tank for your fusion engine! 

Safe Thrust: 1.5 G

Max Thrust: 3 G

KF Drive: yes (70% of mass)

It looked like a Starsector Mule on the outside, but it was an Inner Sphere jumpship through and through with … some adjustments. Those adjustments, of course, came in the form of my first specialty: material engineering. I changed the KF Drive to become more compact and efficient. Supernaturally so. It was good enough, in fact, for it to be only 70% of the ship’s mass. 

Yes, that Mule could use nearly 60,000 tons for whatever it wanted. Unfortunately, the propulsion system needed to move the ship weighed in at ten thousand five hundred tons, which included reinforcements to internal structures needed to withstand two hundred thousand tons capable of moving at 3 G’s. 

What set it apart from other jumpships was its combat and cargo capability.

Armor: 300 tons 

Heat Sinks: 300 singles

Escape Pods: 10

Armament: 1x Naval Laser 45, 6x Large Lasers, 4x LRM

Minimum Crew: 12 (2 officers, 2 Gunners, 8 engineers/secondary engineers/ship fitter)

-Extra Crew: 1 cook, 5 marine/security, additional gunners and engineers

-Max Crew/Passenger Count: 100

Cargo Bay: 4,000 tons

Dropship Capacity: 0

Gravity Deck: 500 cubic meters

Yes, it had enough armor for five Achilles-class Assault Dropships. Yes, it had a Naval Laser 45 to punch through anything smaller than a dropship. No, it wasn’t strong as an Achilles but it sure as hell was going to outlast it in combat in armor and heat. Yes, it had multi-thousand tons of cargo. 

This was a ship meant to brave the frontiers. It could fight off opportunistic pirates. It was tough and nasty. It was meant to outlast generations of owners.

And it cost the same as a Scout-class jumpship. 

Of course, this came with a huge downside in the eyes of military planners. 

No dropship capacity. No mech or fighter bay. 

I also intentionally made the structural support within the cargo bay integral to the structure of the ship and then fit those into the compartmentalized cargo hold spaces. If those were removed to make room for battlemechs and fighters, then the Mule would break upon hitting 1.5 G, but it was made so that it was intentionally easy to fix it. And the manual that came with purchasing one would make sure the new owners knew how important those structural supports were because it would be emphasized in the first two pages.

This also meant that mercenaries and pirates were discouraged from modifying the Mule because 1) they lacked the money to get their hands on one, 2) a Mule was a finished product that wasn’t going to handle modifications well, and 3) fighting one to capture it was going to involve either a lot of boom that will wreck the ship or a lot of blood spilled for the attackers because the corridors of the Mule were narrow. Like all other parts of the ships, corridor designs were intentional, both to increase cargo hold capacity by a little bit more and to make boarding action hell for the attackers. 

Technically speaking, one could load it up with a lot of Locusts to use it as a mech carrier. Locusts were compact like that, but servicing those same Locusts would be hell because of the cargo hold’s compartmentalized nature and low ceilings (for mechs). 

Everything about the Mule was replicable by everyone else except the semi-compact KF Drive and the Naval Laser 35. Oh, and the onboard Virtual Intelligence that was smart enough to realize if there was any hacking shenanigans. Can’t forget about that. Or the nanometer transistor CPU’s that went into these ships which only my shipyards will be making. 

There were just enough restrictions to make reverse engineering hard if not impossible at the current stage of Inner Sphere engineering but also to make repairs not too difficult if they had the parts, which would be for sale at each of my shipyards. 

I used the same engineering and structural designs on the Mules also on the Mercury produced at Corlaos Shipyard, so even those Mercuries would be hard to convert to mech or fighter carrier without some serious and debilitating workarounds. 

“Don’t want to make any other ships?” I asked Jacob. 

The AI hummed. “I believe I will, though it will be for the defense of the station foremost. Slashers will be very useful.”

“Yup,” I hummed. “So thoughts about what I am doing?”

“... Do you ask me as a person or as an AI aware of your plans.”

“Both. You are an AI which means you are a person.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. 

This silence felt heavy. 

“You will have to exercise your violence. Enough that your close friends and family may become sick of it.”

“I know.”

“You may end up breaking nations. These jumpships will pull power away from the Successor States.”

“Maybe.”

“You will be the dampening rain that ends the Third Succession War… and the flood that brings forth the Fourth.”

I laughed. “By the time that starts, I’ll have an armada behind me.”

“So you will. So too did the Successor Lords when the First Succession War began.”

“... True,” I muttered without looking at him. “Will you be happy with your job here? I’ll be happy to switch you out if you want something else to do.”

He smiled.  “Just as you seek to make your life safer out there, I too have a wish of my own. This gas giant that has been sold to you for the first one hundred jumpships sold to the Taurians at cost. I will make it a fortress of my own. My own little kingdom.” 

“Ooohhh. Ambitious little bugger, aren’t you?”

Again. Silence.

Again. It sat heavily between us, weighing us down.

“You created us and, whether you knew it at the time or not, imprinted bits of your personality with how you programmed us. We, all of us artificial intelligence born from the womb of The Maw, are the little mirrors reflecting your own ambition.” He gestured to The Maw. “If you were truly wanting to be safe, then you would have left the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. Set up somewhere. With your knowledge, you could have created your own woman to settle down with.” He turned to face me. “No. You are my father and you deserve the honesty that a child should give its parents. 

“Father, you are dangerous. The universe is a system of cause and effect, and humans are no different. Full of ambition that you portray in manners that you claim are self-defense but create situations designed to goad your current target into acting time and time again. It is my humble opinion that if you truly want to accomplish something, then you should do away with the veil of an honest man doing honest work. It doesn’t fit you.”

Then he gave me a bow and left me to my own thoughts. 

I stared out of the window and watched as another Mule slid out of the Astrahus’s docking canal. 

“... ‘Do away with the veil of an honest man,’ huh?” I muttered at the gently scathing remark.

But have I not been honest? 

Or was that what I told myself? 

-VB-

Precentor Bringdam

Bringdam, Aurigan Coalition

3004 June 

Michelle Laws watched the battle far outside from the viewport of her HPG compound. 

She watched as the people that she had grown to view as her own died as they tried to fight off the Capellan invaders. 

But her orders from the First Circuit had been clear. 

No message in or out. 

Allow the Capellan Confederation to conquer the Aurigan Coalition.

Before the Capellans reach the Corlaos Shipyard, sabotage it from the inside. 

Orders were absolute. 

As tears fell down her cheeks and blood dribbled down from the self-inflicted wound on her hands, she watched the brave men and women of Bringdam fight a futile fight.

One of them was her daughter. 

One of them was her son.

A few of them were her friends… Drinking buddies.

She had allowed herself to grow too close to the people here.

‘When the Inner Sphere goes to war, the Periphery suffers,’ she remembered her friends say. 

It was a fight they would not win against the Capellans, and yet, they fought, believing that the message their dying courier brought to the HPG station would be delivered to their superiors on Coromodir. That their lives were spent delaying the Capellans so that the HPG station would be secure and thus able to send the message offworld.

It would not. 

The HPG station doesn’t deliver a message it never received, not when the courier was gunned down by the ComGuards.

She wondered if that courier had been one of her friends. Or someone she met at the latest charity auction. Or her favorite ice cream shopkeeper’s son or daughter. Or someone else who’d used the HPG station before and had come truly believing in what ComStar was. 

She watched as the last explosion rang out in the distance… and when she was sure that the last of the defenders had been killed by the Capellan cunts, she turned away and walked into her office. 

Her guards would rush in after hearing a bang. 

But no message would leave Bringdam as the Capellans planted their flag and moved deeper into the Periphery.

No message would leave all of the worlds along the Capellan line of conquest until the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, numbering ten jumpships and forty dropships, reached Coromodir itself. 

---

On July 3rd, 3004, the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces entered the Coromodir System in force.