BattleTech Legends: The Hunters by Thomas S. Gressman

Author:Thomas S. Gressman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2016-11-23T08:00:00+00:00

The system had been designated Waypoint Juniper during the planning phase of the operation. It was indistinguishable from a thousand others across known space, and millions beyond the human sphere. With an M4 star and no habitable planets, the system had little to attract settlers.

It was that M4 star that worried Commodore Beresick. Because of the vagaries of the physics involved in operating a Kearny-Fuchida drive, it would require at least 205 hours for the jump sail to collect, convert, and store enough solar radiation to power the fleet’s jump drives for their next hyperspace transit. That meant the fleet would be lying doggo for eight and a half days.

Up until this particular recharging stop, no one had paid much attention to the length of time the fleet would be lying quiet, gathering solar energy to recharge their K-F drives. Now, in the no-man’s-land of the Periphery, with the danger of encountering pirates—or possibly even a Clan raiding party hanging over them—the tension among the officers and men of Task Force Serpent began to mount.

At first, the effects were subtle. Restlessness and the inability to concentrate were easily countered with shorter watches and extra time allotted on the vessel’s grav decks. But, as the hours mounted, so did the stress level.

Before the mid-point of the charging process had been reached, Captain D. C. Stockdale, the Eridani Light Horse’s chaplain, had already been asked to speak three times with troopers who had become embroiled in bitter arguments. The last of these, sparked by a disagreement over the outcome of a ‘Mech combat simulation, had nearly brought two veteran warriors to blows. Stockdale, with the aid of Sergeant-Major Young, had to separate the men before they could inflict damage on each other.

Even the officers were not immune to the drain of tension on one’s patience. Once, during a change of watch, Morgan asked Commodore Beresick to check on the rotation schedule of the pilots flying the BARCAP. As Morgan tried to explain his concern for the alertness and combat readiness of those badly overworked aviators, Beresick snarled, asking him why he wasn’t so concerned for the ships’ crews.

Aboard the Bernlad, a Star Lord Class JumpShip belonging to the Knights of the Inner Sphere, Paul Masters spent fifteen minutes dressing down his personal technicians for not completing a scheduled maintenance procedure on his Phoenix Hawk when he thought it should have been done. When the Knights’ chief technician heard that Masters had reprimanded the techs, he tracked the Colonel down and gave him a scathing rebuke of his own. During the profanity-laced diatribe, the tech became so incensed that Masters feared a physical assault.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.