Bob's Battletech

For anyone interested !

The 101st Royal Hussars as implied by their title Royal were an all Terran Independent Mech Regiment of the S.L.D.F , raised mainly from the old British Islands in the European Continent. Part of the 12th Army’s XLII Corps  which was initially deployed in the Lyran Commonwealth sector. It was moved to the periphery and reported destroyed during the periphery uprising in 2765.

That is were the official history end’s.

But……… A company of battered mechs survived, rescued from the final destruction by the timely arrival in the system they had been making a last stand by the SLDF Black Prince a Black Lion class Battlecruiser, and two Essex Class Destroyer Havoc and Hardy.

On arriving aboard the ranking Survivor of the 101st Major James Trevalion found himself himself in command of his own company(squadron on Hussars terminology), but also a Hodge podge of two Infantry companies, a mixed company or armour and a battery of self propelled Artillery all like themselves Survivors of the rebellion.  Under the command of Commodore Pierre Ringtown ( the Black Princes Flottilla commander) he was to provide the majority of the ground defence forces for a mission that had come directly from Alexander Kerensky himself.

They were to escort a convoy of Jumpships full of scientist and Engineers who were to set up a base operations on a isolated planet in this sector of the Perphery. The planet had to have a high density of ores and minerals to allow the building of a arms and munitions for the SLDF independent of the major supply lines back in the Terran Hegemony.

The 3 warships had been reported as lost In Jump ship failures as had the commercial jumpships ( if anyone had checked three was an above the normal percentage of losses that year).

The dropships attached to the commercial Jumpships were loaded with machine tools, industrial and construction mechs fo such a purpose. All gathered from disperse parts of the whole Star League in order to hide their true purpose.

The 101st Survivors and the other units had been gathered as they had all been officially reported as destroyed and as such would not be on any official reports or documentation, another part of the high level of secrecy given by Kerensky to the project.

Now with all ready the force jumped……and were not to be seen for for nearly 300 years.

Perhaps it was challenging fate that the fleet had Been lost in Jump accidents, in that it suffered a jump accident , if it was that  Mercian Scientists have been debating what happened for some 350 years and Still haven’t worked out the maths.

The 1st the crews and passengers knew is that they had all been knocked unconscious for an hour when they became aware post jump. The 2nd thing they realised was that the stars in no way matched their planned destination.  The fact the  whole flotilla  was still together did not help   as Fleets disappearing together was only the stuff of Legend.

After a couple of hours and a lot  of argument between the various navigation crews , they realised they had transported right across Known Space. How was put on back burner, where became the main question. Best guess was they were about 5 jumps from the edge of known Space assuming they could find jump points. The fact that all the ships Jump Drives were in need of serious maintenance at best  if not complete rebuilds did not help.

The fact that they seemed to have appeared in a habitable system that at 1st appeared to be a copy of the Sol System ( A whole religion was to grow up amongst many of the crews following the event when some of the variables were calculated).

As they closed on the planet ship alarms blared all over the flotilla as various ship alarms detected another ship in system at the pirate jump point . Aerospace fighters were launched to investigate and the fleet maneuvered into battle positions. As they closed the fighter sensors struggled to identify the ship but it was obviously old. Eventually one of the Engineers recognised it as a design used in the early days of interstellar travel and the initial human expansion into the Galaxy. As they did fly pasts   no sign of life could be seen and all the dropships collars were empty.

To add to the mystery no signs of civilisation could be seen on the planet. No radio traffic could be detected or any signs of technology.  The planet itself was a match for Terra, similar land to sea ratios though continents different in shape and size with  similar atmospheric conditions an ideal world on initial findings  it had a moon in a similar orbit though initial scans showed it had way less mass than it should for its size.

The 1st low fly pasts did show habitation on one Continent only  but appeared to be little more than mud huts and substance farming  . One pass finally found signs of technology  the wrecks of 4 dropships in one valley some way off from the various settlements.

What had happened on the planet it was decided should be left till later and it was decided to land and make a base  on a uninhabited Continent and once established and the base requirements of the Fleets survival, one of the priorities being the overall of at least one ships Jump engine. Trouble was they needed certain base materials and a way to manufacture the parts would need to be established.

So a base camp was set up with accommodation for construction crews and a barracks for the Ground Forces, at the same time shuttles were sent to investigate the abandoned Jumpship and the moon.

The 1st suprise was finding that the moon was hollow  at some point in its history a large object had blown a hole to the void inside    a void large enough to easily hold the the whole fleet with room to spare and that the moon had very little gravity.

This was another major oddity yo the various scientists debating for years   the navy men didn’t care but began planning how it could be used as a major base to repair and hide the fleet.

The trip to the jumpship  confirmed it age  and the initial survey found it pretty much wrecked  , with just about anything of any use seemed to have stripped our  . It was theorised that the ship had barely survived its last jump and the crew must have joined the dropships crews and headed for the planet.

Another Scouting group investigated the downed Dropships  all appeared to have been wrecked on landing . An engineer who had gone with the group reckoned all the ships had also been damaged in the last jump and had been patched together with salvage from the  jumpship, the patchs had failed them on planet fall.

A lone distress beacon was found to be barely transmitting , but they were able to establish that the ships belong to the Mercian Agro Company   a corporation that had been big in setting up agricultural settlement back in the early days of  Space Colonisation. A taped log was found detailing how their had only been a handful of survivors,  virtually none of the crews had survived  with the majority being colonists .

The tape gave the fleet a name for the Planet ‘Mercia’. By this time 3 months had past, it took a further 6 months to fully establish the ground base, scouts to the human settlements found on the main Continent established what had been suspected , that the few survivors of the tragedy of the 1st colony had survived more by luck than planning   but had managed to survive at little more than a  subsistence level, most of their history had been lost over the hundreds of years of their isolation,  falling into tales of Legend, the population had grown over the years , expanding over the Continent but in all only numbered a few 100,000. They were not suprised by the arrival of strangers as their legends foretold the arrival of rescuers from the Stars. Conflict amongst the various settlements was rare as mutual cooperation had become a must for their continual survival. So the offer of help from the new Star men on ways to improve food production was gladly received.  In only a few short months these methods allowed for surplus food not only for themselves but the hungry star men.

Survival had been the Units main priority,  repairing the jump drives had been a low priority , building the settlement and building the production plants to build the tools to maintain their technology turned the months to years and it was nearly 40 years before they had the industrial base to repair their ships.

One civilian scout jumpship was repaired enough for a expedition to return to the human Sphere and fid out what happened in the Sphere.