Collection 66 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 66

-VB-

Ian Davion

New Avalon

3006 December 20

After he had watched the live fire exercise of the GM Kai, First Prince Ian Davion knew that he needed to import more of it from the Arlaoskas Union. 

For one, he wanted for himself. Because what hot blooded warrior didn’t want a cheerleader helping him in the cockpit?

However, there were problems.

“So what if it has an AI?” he asked nonchalantly. He knew that it was a serious problem because they didn’t know exactly how far reaching or intrusive these AIs were. But he didn’t care because he didn’t need to care! 

All of the bureaucrats and spies around him were worried that the AIs could be used against the Federated Suns, but they kept forgetting that the Union didn’t need to use the Mikus to crush the Federated Suns. 

The ComStar Execution showed that plenty well enough. And if the Union wanted to crush them, then they would bring their warships around and the Federated Suns would have to capitulate, especially considering that they have independent records and videos of those warships tanking nuclear explosions. 

So he intended to focus on what he could, meaning that he would buy these GM Kais and deploy them against Liao and Kurita. 

And his advisors didn’t seem to understand him! 

‘Oh, we have to be careful about untested technology.’

‘It does not use any ammunition manufactured within the Federated Suns.’

‘It would make us dependent on the Union for replacement parts.’

Valid, valid, valid.

And utterly irrelevant.

“Out, all of you,” he sighed after listening to them for what had to be the past three hours. 

They protested, again, but they eventually left, leaving just him, his brother, and Aunt Yvonne. 

“... your thoughts?” 

He may not be a good politician, but one does not become as great of a warrior and general as he was by ignoring details. And he recognized that his family members hadn’t commented while the rest of the cabinet members and ministers were yapping away. 

Hanse was the first to speak up.

“GM Kai is important, if not for direct use in the battlefields than at the very least in the hands of our engineers and scientists so that we can at least attempt to reverse engineer its secrets. Even if we fail to reverse engineer all but one technology used in the GM Kai’s construction, that would be worth the investment of a hundred Kais.”

That wasn’t Ian’s angle… but he also recognized how important that was. This was why Hanse should have become the First Prince instead of him; his little brother could see the bigger picture that he sometimes failed to see. 

He was just fantasizing about how good it would be to shove a sword through a samurai-wannabe Combine mechwarrior and see how they reacted to that.

“And you, aunt?” he asked.

Yvonne Davion was currently the assistant director of the Analysis and Speculation division within the DMI. This was technically her specialty, even if this was where Hanse put her after her clash with House Hasek saw her almost quit the military.

She tapped her fingers on the table for a full minute before she stopped. 

“It won’t matter. Not in the long run.”

“See?!” Ian grinned. 

She may only be an assistant director, but no one else in both brothers’ opinions was more suited to the role of being in charge of the Analysis and Speculation division.

“But,” she added. “Importing these mechs and the … AI components will be adding a structural weakness to the AFFS’s procurement efforts, even if we know that the Arlaoskas Union can’t produce as many Kais as we can buy. But this also means that the rest of the Great Houses and nearby Periphery Powers will also be able to purchase them. Even if we don’t use them, others will. So we need to take advantage of this as quickly as possible, but not allow it to become a mech central to our war efforts.”

“... so allow each mechwarrior and knight house to acquire and use one if they want to but don’t make it something we officially endorse?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ian grunted. “Hanse?”

Even though he was the First Prince, Ian knew better than to make a move if Hanse said no. It also helped that he was the only Davion to have ever visited the Arlaoskas Union and, outside of the videos that everyone’s already seen of them in action in Victoria, Terra, and those “Hidden Worlds” of ComStar’s, had the loyalty, honesty, and sense to tell him and everyone else in the inner circle how they should approach anything related to the Union.

Hanse looked contemplative. Really thinking hard and long. 

“I think… we should try to set up a long term contract with the Union,” Yvonne added while they waited for Hanse’s response. “If we are dependent on their whims, then we might run out of Kai parts when we are in the start or the middle of an offensive.”

“I’ll be back.”

Ian blinked as Hanse rose up and left the room, leaving him with just his aunt. 

“... What do you think?” he asked her. 

“About Hanse? No doubt he has an idea but until he talks to us, we won’t know.”

Ian grunted. “Guess we’ll just have to wait. In the meantime, do you want some cookies?” he asked her as he brought out his cookie jar. 

If he had a weakness, then it was his sweet tooth. And murder. Definitely murder.

---

Hanse Davion

While everyone in the Federated Suns speculated, Hanse decided to do something smart. 

An hour after he left the palace, he found himself within the newly built ComSat Relay Station. It sat right next to the HPG Station now operated by the new Federated Suns Communications Ministry. The ComSat Relay Station (or CSR Station because people had to make acronyms out of everything) possessed a smaller bandwidth but received continuous updates from across the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. Wherever people built them actually, because Fleetmaster Arlaoskas straight-up released the technology and made it public. 

Which was why New Avalon now received news from far away as Circinus Federation and Oberon Confederation, both of which were bandit kingdoms in all but name, but hey, at least they saw the news from there instead of being left in the dark. 

“Prince Davion,” the guards at the front saluted. They recognized him because he was intimately familiar with the people working at the CSR Station; he had been the one to advocate for and put his political weight behind its construction, after all. He made it a point to know everyone who worked here. 

“Matthew, Simon,” he nodded to them both as he strode in with his three bodyguards. 

When the receptionist saw him, she immediately stood up. 

He lifted his hand to get her to stop. “It’s alright, Jessica. I’m just here to make a call.”

“O-Of course, Prince Davion. Booth 7 should be ready for you.”

“Wonderful. Lieutenant?” he asked as he turned to his bodyguard. 

The bodyguard in question nodded and walked into the booth, a ten by ten by four meter sized room really, and made scans with his eyes and a few handheld devices. When it all came back clean, he came back out and nodded. 

Hans walked in… and made a call to the Fleetmaster. He walked over to the call station between the center of the room and the door and entered a “booth” specific serial number.

A melodious guitar thrummed softly in the background.

And then the call went through.

“Greetings, Prince Hanse Davion. I didn’t expect to get a call from you,” Fleetmaster Arlaoskas spoke, the audio coming through before the visual, before a holographic face of the Fleetmaster appeared on the other side of the room.

He had this number because it was one of the last things the former diplomat did before she married the Fleetmaster and left her citizenship behind.

“Good afternoon, Fleetmaster Arlaoskas. I just had a question, so I thought to make a call.”

“... Sure. What’s the question?”

“What is your manufacturing capacity and schedule like for the GM Kai? My brother wants to use it against the Capellans and the Kuritans.” 

It was blunt and direct. 

Which was more or less how the Fleetmaster worked. This too Hanse learned before the former diplomat left her job to marry the man whose holographic image stood in front of him in … sweatpants and a T-shirt. 

For all of the power that Fleetmaster Arlaoskas had, he was a very lax creature who thoroughly enjoyed his comforts. 

One might even take a gander and think that ruining that comfortable status quo the Fleetmaster enjoyed was what got the man moving in anger. 

“Oh, the Kais? I have a production line dedicated to it here in Victoria System. It will make mechs and parts in 80:20 ratio.”

Hanse blinked. “You are deliberately producing excess parts?” 

“Why not?” the man shrugged. “It’s a cool mech, but I won’t see it in action around the Inner Sphere if they keep breaking without parts to repair them.”

“... And how much are you producing?”

The Fleemtaster hummed. “Well, the production line is currently at 15% capacity, making around forty GM Kais a month. A separate production line makes the M1KU Cores that are installed into the Kais, and those make ten cores a month due to the complexity of creating an AI core that allows a sub-gamma that can’t grow while still being an AI. It’s not just the limitation of software and hardware but the convergence of the two and acquired memory that the entire core has to account for, you know?”

Hanse understood most of that. 

He knew that the AIs created by the Union were graded on a scale of sub-gamma to Alpha.

Sub-gammas were less than humans in most aspects but still capable of being human-like.

Gammas were more or less humans, full stop.

Betas were beyond the grasp of regular humans, capable of doing things like holding two dozen conversations at once. 

And then there were the Alphas. 

An Alpha could govern an entire colony of millions by itself. 

By itself. While it might need law enforcement, bureaucrats, and other AIs on the ground to make its edicts a reality, an Alpha could and would be a colonial governor by itself with unfathomable efficiency, scale, and planning, dictating everything from minimum wage and water rights to planning housing for a hundred years into the future and coordinating active defense of the planet.

And the man in front of Hanse right now was someone who supposedly surpassed those Alpha AIs.

So what Hanse understood was that the M1KUs were deliberately “shackled,” as some in the DMI and MIIO were calling it, to a lower level.

Good to know.

“So you are producing more Kais than M1KUs?”

“Yes. It takes time to grow them.”

Grow them?

The AIs?

Interesting. It meant that AIs weren’t something that could be mass manufactured. But how did that explain the initial boom of AIs that the man created? Was it different or simply the nature of M1KUs that prevented mass manufacturing?

“Would it possible for me to set up a contract with you to sell a certain number of GM Kais you make every month?”

The Fleetmaster raised an eyebrow, and suddenly, Hanse felt a little tense. He couldn’t help it. This was the man who showed that he could end any of the Great Houses on a whim. Because it was something that most people overlooked in light of the very scary drones and the fall of ComStar throwing the currency market and the economy into shambles, but not all of the Fleetmaster’s ships were present to take Terra.

The moment stretched on for quite a bit before…

“Sure, why not? But I won’t be selling to you directly. I will simply reserve it for your traders, merchants, and state procurers to come and buy. If you fail to buy all of the allotted mechs, then that’s it for that month and you’ll have to wait for the next month. Or bid on the mechs that will be sold to the market.”

“Understood. Do we need to make a contract or…?”

“A contract works. Ten percent or five mechs reserved, whichever is higher. No fault ten-year length contract should work with the option to extend it if neither side objects at the end of the contract?” 

“That works for me and the Federated Suns. Thank you for your cooperation.” Hanse wanted to argue for higher reservation, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Mostly because he didn’t know how well the Fleetmaster took to bargaining and Hanse didn’t want to ruin what deal he had in front of him to find out.

“No, thank you for using my mechs. I honestly didn’t expect you of all people to contact me like this for them. Ah, but I’ve got a business to attend to, so if you’ll excuse me, Prince Davion. Have a good afternoon.”

“See you next time, Fleetmaster.”

The connection cut. 

… And just like that, he got everything he needed. 

Sweet. Time to tell his brother the good news.