Scavenged Restoration 62 (Patreon)

Sorry for the slow update despite it being Thanksgiving Week. I got stunlocked by 28 hours of migraine.

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 62

-VB-

I stared down at the information that I received from the Maskirovka. 

This was not the first time I received critical information from them, but it was the first interstellar actionable intelligence from the other side of the Inner Sphere that I hadn’t attributed to them that came from me. 

“You are sure about this?” I asked the new director of the Maskirovka, Marion Calvoda.

The lanky black-haired and long bearded man was not someone you expected from the Maskirovka and its agents. In fact, I’d wager that if Severus Snape ever lived to become fifty, this was what he would look like! If he had a long beard, that was. 

But I chose him to be the new director of the Maskirovka for a reason. 

More than his ability as a spymaster, he was utterly and truly devoted to me and House Liao, in that specific order. 

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he replied with a bow and with his hands clasped under the green silk sangbok, a Korean/Joseon version of the Chinese mangfu that many others in the court wore. 

Marion was also an eccentric who changed small details in his life so he could look for people who could spot the differences. Oh, he tested me, too, and he really liked it when I got it right the first time he wore it. 

“I see,” I hummed as I gave him the message back. “Do you think this is critical enough for me to use the Red Phone?”

The Red Phone was what I liked to call the special procedure Katrina Steiner and I had for critical information both of us believed we each needed to know. And yes, I named it after the red phone of the Moscow-Washington Hotline. Only the historians seemed to get the reference. 

As for how this happened? 

Well, let’s just say that a lot of things happened over a decade. Things exactly like what I just read on the Maskirovka report that her own people sometimes missed. 

Or did they? 

I had a feeling that once this particular crisis was over, LIC was going to need a purge, especially if they missed half a brigade moving underneath their noses. 

I paused when my office doors creaked open.

“PAPA!” my little girl shouted from the doorway while servants fretted over the clear breach in etiquette. 

Her long brown hair flowed behind her as Anastasia pitter-pattered across my office before throwing herself onto my lap behind the desk.

I let her jump on me and she giggled as she planted herself right in my lap. Then swung her feet up and down as she looked at all of the papers on my desk and tried to understand what was there. She pouted when she saw that it was all of the “boring” stuff of ruling. 

My eight year old daughter was too cute. 

It was only a few moments later that her mother marched into the office.

“Anastasia, what did I say about leaving your father alone at work?!” Allison demanded not loudly but certainly firmly as she stood outside my office. I nodded, and she quickly walked in.

Contrary to her upbringing, Allison had taken to the Capellan way of life. Everything from her demeanor and behavior to outfit and language.

This made her a role model for many Capellan women. The propaganda department in particular liked to point to Allison as an exemplar migrant. Of someone not only of high standing but a woman who changed her lifestyle and culture to fit in with the “superior” Capellan culture. 

Personally, I didn’t care about that. 

What I saw as a person and a man was Allison doing her goddamn best to be with me and not create trouble for me. 

I, in turn, did my best to make her happy. Everything from subsidies for her House and original world, to giving her more authority in certain fields. 

(Some people complained about this, but I didn’t care. It was only natural for a man to want to reward his woman, and little trinket gifts didn’t do much for people at our levels of society.)

Allison stopped after pulling Anastasia off of my laps and into her arms. She stared at me and then at the Maskirovka director. 

Realizing that I’ve left the director without orders, I turned to him and smiled. “You can send the message to the Archon.”

-VB-

The 8th Lyran Regulars… weren’t the sort of people who should be out here in the Lyran borders along the Draconis Combine. 

Within the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces, there were obviously prestigious and less prestigious positions. Similarly, there were prestigious and less prestigious units as well. The Royal Guards were, obviously, the most prestigious. Then there were the Donegal Guards and the Lyran Guards. Not as prestigious as the Royal Guards but no one would talk bad about them at all. The Skye Rangers might not be the largest or the best armed corp of them all, but no one would deny that they were not up to snuff when push came to shove; fighting to the teeth right in the jugulars of the Lyran’s connection to Terra did that to a unit. 

The Lyran Regulars … weren’t. 

Most of the time Lyran Regulars were posted on worlds as garrisons. Not quite militia but heavily armed and armored enough to ward off would-be pirates and raiders. But they were also not respected. 

Why was this? 

Some would argue that it had a lot to do with how the Lyran Regulars considered themselves. 

If the Lyran Guards and the Royal Guards were the face of the LCAF to the wider public and the Inner Sphere, then the Lyran Regulars were the backbone… or so they claimed themselves. They did not hold pageantries. They did not put on airs. They were the grim and gritted regular men and women of the LCAF doing the work that the nobles and rich would turn their noses at. 

And because the Lyran upper society was filled to the brim with those nose turning nobles and rich who wouldn’t bother to dig a latrine ever, the soldiers of the Lyran Regulars disdained them for not doing the work the Regulars did. Similarly, the upper class disdained the Regulars for not giving them the respect they believed they deserved. 

This, of course, led to problems. The upper class made up … a lot of positions. Generals. Colonels. Strategic logisticians. So on. So when time came to distribute supplies, they would obviously favor the more prestigious Lyran Guards. 

(Royal Guards got the best stuff. No one even suggested that they didn’t. Doing so was a one-way ticket to dismissal from the LCAF… or demotion to the Lyran Regulars.)

The Lyran Regulars would then see that they were snuffed by the nobles and the rich, which would then deepen their own disdain and disregard for the silver spoons. This would then go on and on and on, being inherited by new generations of Lyran leadership and the Lyran Regulars in a self-fulfilling and self-repeating prophecy of sorts. 

Case in point, most Lyran Regulars were not invited to join in on the Fourth Succession War.

They were told by high command to “stay put, garrison worlds, and do the job that would distract the good soldiers of the Guards who needed to do the good fighting on the frontlines.”

Suffice to say, there was a distinct dissent brewing in the Lyran Regulars. And it had a whole decade to shimmer and ferment. 

They wanted their chance at glory, too! They wanted to show that they too mattered! That they too were mechwarriors and Lyrans who wanted to fight the good fight! Why were they not allowed to fight?!

Alas, the war came to an end and the Regulars were left without an iota of glory. In fact, many in the Estates General blamed the Regulars - who they have been stiffing on their supplies for generations - for losing a few worlds to the Combine and the League! 

Again. Suffice to say, the Lyran Regulars grumbled and let their anger bubble. Quietly. Slowly. But constantly.

Then they saw the prosperity and the improvements across all LCAF units. Better armor. Better weapons. New weapons. New mechs. 

Finally, they had a chance to prove themselves. 

But then they were rudely interrupted. 

The Archon told them no. There would be no war. 

The Regulars… were upset. Robbed of their chance at glory. To bring honor and fame to their family and house. All because they had the shitty luck of being assigned to the Regulars and told to play house.

To their surprise, they found an ally in the Lyran high society. The very same people who stiffed them agreed with them. Why were they not going to war? They had better weapons, armor, mechs, and even support vehicles. They had recovered from the Fourth Succession War. Why weren’t they taking the fight to the Combine, at the very least?! 

The social generals ranted… and were ignored by the Archon. 

And so the social generals and the Lyran Regulars found common cause. 

Then they found their third ally. 

The Homeless. 

They were the lords and ladies whose worlds had been taken from them, either by the League or the Combine. They saw the newfound military might of the commonwealth and demanded for a renewed war. For their worlds to be retaken! Why was the Archon not doing anything?! 

And so the Homeless of the Estates General became the Regular’s second ally. 

With both the social generals and the Homeless of the Estates General on their side, it was not hard for some of the … more self-sacrificing members of the Lyran Regulars to stage a deep raid. 

‘This is for the good of the Commonwealth,’ Leutenant-General Raymond Vargus thought as he rode down to the Combine planet with all of the true sons and daughters of the Commonwealth who were equally willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause. 

As much as the Commonwealth gained from the Fourth Succession War, he saw how the political scene was developing between them and the Federated Suns. It was clear to everyone with a brain that the Archon and her heir was giving the First Prince too much power over the Lyran’s state of affairs. 

The only way, he saw, to stop this was to force an issue and to grow larger than the Federated Suns so that even if the First Prince wanted to control them, he would not be able to.

To pull the full might of the restored Lyran Commonwealth against the Draconis Combine so that once the snakes were finally neutralized, the Lyran Commonwealth will be able to expand into the Free Worlds League without the Federated Suns being able to grow! 

Yes, he could see it now! The Lyran Blue covering two-thirds of the entire Inner Sphere! 

… But he knew he would not live to see the day. 

He was old. 

He was weak.

Give him a few more years and he wouldn’t even be able to pilot his mech anymore. 

This … this was his final mission. For his house. For his legacy. For the Lyran Commonwealth.

“Ten minutes to landing, general,” the pilot of the Fortress-class dropship called out. “Fortress-2, Overlord-1, Overlord-2, Overlord-3, Leopard-1, Leopard-2, and Leopard-3 are all also on schedule.”

“Good,” he muttered to himself as he stared at the holographic view of the planet below him.

Alshain.

The capital of the Alshain Prefecture and the home of many many critical Combine industries. 

Heavily defended as it was with Combine aerospace fights, the 8th Lyran Regulars needed to land to achieve their objectives. 

To plant nuclear bombs on all of the factories here. 

Yes.

They must succeed here…

“ETA five minutes.”

His mech and the Fortress dropship he was on shook as Combine aerospace fighters engaged them. Explosions further rocked it, but like its name, his dropship held. 

“ETA one minute!” 

He would lead his men to strike directly at the capital city of Alshain. He would personally carry the nuclear payload. 

If he succeeded, then he would leave this world to face the Archon’s wrath.

If he didn’t, then he would detonate the bomb in the heart of the city. 

“In 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…!”

The entire dropship lurched and gravity reasserted itself properly. 

The bay doors dropped open, and the morning light shined through. 

“As planned, ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted over the comms and rushed his Atlas out of the dropship first. “FOR THE COMMONWEALTH!”