Collection 49 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 49

-VB-

Hanse Davion

Victoria, Arlaoskas Union

3005 February 17

The jump to Victoria from Jacson had been smooth; the AFFS had already conquered the system by the time he reached it. 

It was one thing to hear and know that the Capellan Confederation was collapsing from their folly, but it was another thing entirely to be in a system that, had he arrived mere months ago, would have tried to kill him at all cost. Not that they would have had the strength or equipment to do it anyway, but it was the thought that counted. 

His eyes opened to the blinding yet not light of a jump and rubbed the small spots out of his vision. 

And having been in the bridge at the time of the jump, he got to see first hand (and through the camera-fed screens) the first sight of Victoria that no Davion had ever seen before.

It was all so exciting! 

“Contact!” the bleary sounding sensors officer shouted at the top of his lungs. “Three unknowns heading our way, they’re -!” 

And Hanse saw them through the slim windows of the bridge. 

With a trail of light behind them like this was some sort of a movie and not reality, three ships came to a slow stop just far away enough from their position that he could see the specks of their hulls glimmering in the yellow light of the Victoria star. 

“Here…” the sensor officer finished lamely. 

“How far out?” Hanse asked while the commander of the jumpship was quick to follow through with the diplomatic procedures to ensure that their ships weren’t mistaken for pirates or enemies. 

“A hundred kilometers, sir,” the officer responded. Unlike the ambassador, no one else knew his identity except his personal guards. To everyone else, he was Colonel David Dorian-Davion. “They… they were moving faster than light just now.”

“I saw,” he hummed. “Is that what the trail of light was about? A residue or particles of some kind from their FTL travel that gets emitted as they drop out of FTL?” he muttered to himself. 

“Sir… Sir, they’re coming toward us.”

“ETA?” the commander asked. 

“3 minutes.”

Hanse whistled. “How big are they?”

“They are all dropship-sized.”

A hundred kilometers in just three minutes and then coming to an abrupt stop without the inertia breaking the ship apart? That was some thruster power and structural integrity. Or something else entirely. 

Then the radio blared. 

“This is Captain Tor-8 of the Victoria Space Defense Fleet. I have received your radio bursts. I am tentatively acknowledging your ships as part of the Federated Suns ambassadorial territory. For what purpose have you entered the Arlaoskas Union, over?” 

Baroness Anna deSalvatore stepped up. “I am Baroness Anna deSalvatore, ambassador of the Federated Suns. I am here on behalf of my nation to establish a diplomatic channel with … the Arlaoskas Union. Over.”

A pause. 

“Unknowns are slowing down.”

“Understood,” the radio crackled. “The Fleetmaster has been alerted to your presence. He will be here within the day, over.”

“The day?” she frowned. “It will take us at least five days to travel to Victoria III.”

A pause. 

“Ah, my apologies. The Fleetmaster is currently in Quimberton, overseeing the construction of the Quimberton Fortress Station.”

Fortress Station? 

That sounded… amazing yet problematic.

“He will meet you at the Victoria Fortress Station. I will be sending you the route to it and escort you there. Please do not deviate.”

Or else was unspoken.

Mere moments later, the commander’s computer lit up as he received some kind of digital package. 

“... Route to a station two hundred million kilometers from our position,” the commander noted as he looked through it. 

Hanse kept his eyes locked onto the sensors, though, because he wanted to see the ships. 

Would they be like the ones that rudely intruded on the New Avalon system or something else entirely? 

As those ships grew closer, he confirmed something. 

It couldn’t be structural integrity that would save ships like those. It was about the same size as dropships and jumpships, yes, but its true “hull” was only about a fifth of its true volume. The rest of it was filled out by flimsy solar wings that looked ready to break off if the ship made so much as a sharp turn.

And yet as those ships came around and began to orbit his ships, he saw them moving gracefully despite their … rustic appearance. They held their orbit at roughly five 

“This is Tor-8 again. I’m in one of the Slashers currently orbiting your ships. We can get a move on 

So those were called Slashers, huh. 

‘… the name certainly fits with the raptor-like design philosophy.’

-VB-

Baroness Anna deSalvatore

Victoria Fortress Station, Arlaoskas System

3005 February 18

The Victoria Fortress Station was … a monster. 

As it had been explained to her, it was a fifteen kilometer long, six kilometer wide, and three kilometer high station armored and armed to the teeth. It also housed some three hundred autonomous void fighters, each of which were the size of Leopards. Not aerospace fighters but space-specific “fighters” designed to dominate space combat by employing overwhelming firepower and armor. 

She shuddered. 

There were assault-conversions of Leopards within the Federated Suns, and while they were not as powerful as Unions and Overlords, a single Leopard AC would be capable of taking on a company of battlemechs with ease. 

Those “void fighters” were that, except Arlaoskas took the concept, applied his own technologies to it, and then pushed the idea to the extreme. And Arlaoskas’s people called them “Brawler-class gunships.”

She looked out of the window of the room she intended to use as her office. Outside of the atmosphere controlled environment of the fortress station, multiple ships came and went in patrolling the system and the station. At any given moment, there was at least one Brawler-class gunship or one of those Slashers.

While the Slashers was definitely the greater threat between the two ship classes, she found the Brawlers far more fascinating and useful for the ubiquity and ease of which the Arlaoskas Union produced them. Slashers were bigger, carried more firepower, accelerated faster, maintained a higher combat speed, and, according to the chatty guide, “tankier” than the Brawlers by a wide margin.

But she wondered if a single Slasher could win against ten Brawlers. 

But more importantly, it was the sheer industrial scale that the Union possessed which worried her. 

She paused and then sighed. 

‘Look at me,’ she thought to herself bemusedly. ‘I am still so shocked by what I am seeing that I can’t even do my job properly.’

An ambassador was the highest level of diplomat a nation could send. Each nation had a different word for it, but the Federated Suns, who used the Star League English as the court language and the common people’s language, continued to use the term ambassador for the highest diplomat. 

And yet, she was barely managing to function without her mind going into overdrive with possibilities, fears, and wariness. 

‘But isn’t it because I truly understand the extent that the Federated Suns is outmatched?’ she asked herself, and this was true. She once wanted to be a mechwarrior. She knew mechs, mech formation, mech tactics, and strategies that maximized mech efficiency. 

None of them worked against the Union. The Union already had enough ships in its fleets to send two to four ships to each of the Federated Suns systems and breakdown trade and infrastructure while the Federated Suns lacked the space capacity to counter that. 

If Fleetmaster Edward Arlaoskas wants, then he could not only ruin the Federated Suns but the entire Inner Sphere. 

He already had the capacity, tools, and manpower to achieve it. 

He could be the coming of the second Star League… and yet he’s done nothing like it when anyone else in his position would have rejected peace with the Capellan Confederation and launched a devastating war of conquest. 

Which meant that her role here as the Federated Suns ambassador to the Arlaoskas Union had just one goal.

Appeasement. At all cost.