Scavenged Restoration
Chapter 91
-VB-
Baroness Hewon Makhan was a lowly noble in the Capellan Confederation.
As the second lowest noble in the hierarchy, her family only controlled a single city and the surrounding lands. Their annual income, adjusted for inflation, was only around five hundred thousand Yuan or about three hundred eighty thousand C-Bills. This was, of course, not enough to buy a single Locust after a decade; most of that income was spent on paying administrators, security, house guards, taxes, fees, and more. The sudden reduction in bribes as of the last four decades has really helped her house, and allowed them to send her and her siblings to universities that their lowly status would not have guaranteed entry into.
And after a decade of education, she was now a loyal dropship pilot of the CCAF.
More importantly, she was the head of a CCAF sponsored merchant marine convoy, the Prosperous Eel Flotilla. Under her command were six dropships - three Mule-class dropships, two Danais-class dropships, and one new Titan II-class fighter carrier dropship - and three jumpships - two Invader-class jumpships and one Merchant-class jumpship. They worked under her for one reason: to move material from the Capellan Confederation to the Lyran Commonwealth.
Yes. She had been shocked when she learned about it, too.
The truth of the matter, as she had learned in detail, was that officially and unofficially, the Lyran Commonwealth, despite being allied to Federated Suns and in possession of rightful Capellan worlds, remained at peace with the confederation and fought an enemy that the Chancellor considered to be a great priority.
And so the Chancellor had ordered a lift on sale of war materials to the Lyran Commonwealth.
Of course, selling to the “richest” nation who also was not in a good relationship with the confederation meant that they sold said war materials at jacked up costs.
For example, the humble Locust, Cicada, Grasshopper, and even the Firebee. The new Locust on the open market sold on average for 1.5 million C-Bills or 2 million Yuan. A used Locust sold for roughly three-fourths of the cost of the new one. The confederation sold the same Locust that sold for 2 million Yuan on the open market for 2.2 million Yuan to the Lyran Commonwealth.
How?
Because for every two Locusts the Lyrans needed, they could only find one on the open market while they, the confederation, had a lot in stock.
And so, the Lyrans bought them - and many other mechs made by the confederation - in bulk while suppressing their financial tears. Of course, the Lyrans weren’t too interested in Locusts. But Cicadas, Firebees, Scorpions, and Grasshoppers? The Lyrans were more than happy to buy those.
This, however, presented a problem. The Lyrans weren’t like the Capellans. They were a fractious lot. Not as much as the Leaguers but the very existence and longevity of the “Free Skye Movement” alone told all Capellans enough about them. It meant that anyone with enough firepower may decide to attack her convoy because they just felt like it. After all, all Capellans knew that the Lyrans were unhappy with their Archon right now; the many losses they suffered at the hands of the Clans made the Archon look weak, especially because the Commonwealth lost more worlds to the Clans than the Combine had.
(She wasn’t going to go into the “why’s” and “how’s” of that again, not after the literal seminars about nebulas, travel route, jump distances, and everything else she had to learn about.)
This wasn’t taking into account how there have been deep raids by some of the Clans like Clan Jade Falcon. Oh, they never called it a raid, only that they were looking for “worthy opponents.”
Whatever the case may be, it left the Capellan corporate world very unsure about the safety of their goods’ transportation. So the Good Chancellor had offered up a solution: use the newly established government-backed merchant marines to transport the war materials.
And so they did (even if they had to pay a fee for using the convoy).
There were now nine such convoys sponsored by the confederation, and hers was the Prosperous Eel Flotilla, responsible for running a trade route from Sian to Marik to Donegal and back. Of course, the convoy took on wandering dropships en route for extra income for the fleet itself; that was what the third jumpship, the Merchant-class jumpship Xin Fuang was for.
Of course, because the flotilla was sponsored by the chancellor, the chancellor’s interest came first.
And today, it meant that her flotilla was not landing at Donegal but at Tharkad to deliver a very specific package.
As her dropship flipped its heading and began reverse thrusting in the atmosphere, her Danais dropship rumbled and trembled from atmospheric reentry. As she got closer to the ground, the trembling died down mostly but not completely.
“Two kilometers!” her co-pilot shouted over the still audible rumble.
She pushed hard on the reverse thrusters; they were coming in too fast.
“One kilometer!”
Sweat dripped down from her forehead as she stabilized the dropship.
“Five hundred meters!”
She looked at the speedometer. She was hitting close to thirty meters per second. That was too fast.
“Brace!” she shouted over the comms and kicked the thrusters up a notch.
She immediately felt like she was going to get squashed as the G’s ratcheted up.
“Three hundred meters, captain!”
Hewon glared at the speedometer and the turn coordinator. She was stable and reaching the speed she wanted.
“One hundred meters!”
The ship groaned as she pushed it harder again.
And then … the G’s disappeared as if they were a lie.
A full minute later, her dropship touched down with nary an incident.
Her co-pilot let out a gasp of relief. “I hate you!” he hissed out as he groaned in his seat. “Why aren’t you a fighter jockey…?”
She cackled as she got up and stretched. “Alright. I’ve got a mail to deliver. Hold the ship for me.”
He grumbled as she walked out of the dropship’s bridge and to her own personal cabin. And once inside, she pulled out the precious cargo that had been personally entrusted to her by one of the Royal Liaos, Minister Candace Liao, on behalf of the Good Chancellor.
It was a small narrow box.
She didn’t know what was in it. She didn’t care to know. All she knew was that it had to be delivered to the hands of Archon Melissa Steiner.
And so she did.
Later, she found out that it was a paper invoice from the Chancellor to the Archon for delivered war materials that came from Liao Heavy Industries.
Apparently, one of the Lyran accounting departments was late on payment.
Bastards tried to cheat her Chancellor out of his proper compensation.
-VB-
“I don’t understand why you set up the convoys, Father.”
Father looked up from his ever present paperwork and saw him.
“... Come sit, Zhuge,” he said as he patted a seat next to him that was ever present for him and his siblings. So he did. He walked around Father’s giant table and sat down next to him. “How familiar are you with the current situation with the Clans?”
“I know that you think they’re a bigger problem than the Lyrans and Feddies,” he replied. Even if he didn’t want to become the chancellor, he knew that as a Liao he needed to understand the more intricate nature of interstellar politics.
Like why Father was helping the Lyrans suddenly.
“Well, I certainly do think so,” Father said without looking at him. The voice carried neither mirth or scorn, just a flatness that came with stating an unconcerned fact. “Because even though the Clans are individually no match for any one Inner Sphere Great House, they still are a formidable force. Now imagine what would imagine if they were to start moving together.”
“... Bad?”
“Bad, yes. And I would start having to throw Capellan soldiers to stop them at our borders. An honorable task, to be sure, but one that would be unnecessary if I can solve it by sending the Lyrans some second rate mechs.”
“So that’s why the convoy exists?”
“Partially,” Father grinned before pushing a map toward him. Zhuge looked down at the map from where he sat and realized that the map tracked all of the trade routes of these “merchant marine” fleets Father set up using “excess” jumpships.
He and everyone else doubted that those jumpships were ever excess, merely made to look like it so that Father wouldn’t have to deal with annoying nobles, bureaucrats, and soldiers whining about the chancellor taking their toys away. Not to Father’s face or in his court, oh hell no. But outside of it among their circles? Definitely. Even though he wished he didn’t know about it, Zhuge assumed that Father made it happen this way to prevent “unnecessary” resentment and internal stress.
… he doubted other teenage boys in the confederation had to think about courtly politics like he did. Ugh.
Father didn’t say anything, so, after glancing at him for a moment, Zhuge kept looking at the map. Obviously, Father wanted him to see something there but he wasn’t sure what. So he stared and stared… and realized that the convoys looked like … stitches? No, that wasn’t quite right; no clothes had stitches going to the middle of the clothes instead of at the edges where they were needed, decorations not included because those were necessary.
“Can you give me a hint?” he asked.
“Oh? You didn’t see?”
“I saw stitches but that can’t be it.”
Father paused before smiling. “You got it.”
Zhuge blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Language, Zhuge.”
“Excuse me?” he tried again.
“Good. And they are stitches. Stitches that connect nations that have been so far disconnected for a very long time,” Father said as he reached over and tapped the confederation. “The confederation is the most isolationist out of the five Great Houses. Why is this?”
“Because other nations do not understand us.”
“Correct,” he nodded. “The Capellan Confederation came to being because of FedSuns’ perfidy. It was to our advantage that we came together because otherwise, we would have been individually swallowed up by the Hegemony, the League, or the Federated Suns. But this left a cultural scar on our people. Outsiders are dangerous. Outsiders want us dead. Outsiders are bad. So we became hostile and aggressive at every little offense we received. And since we did not trade with them, the others had nothing to lose by not attempting to conquer us.”
“So you … want to increase trade?”
“Yes. Now that the great works inside the confederation is maturing, it’s time to start planting the seeds for future cooperation. And that’s partially why many of the trade routes you see do not go to specific places.”
Zhuge looked back down.
There was no trade route going to the Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine, but there were many going to the Free Worlds League and some of the Lyran Commonwealth.
“Though they may be rivals, the League and the Commonwealth are ultimately the most comparable of the Great Houses, culturally or otherwise, intentionally or not. It’s also why most of the convoys specifically pass through House Marik’s worlds; other members of the Free Worlds League … they do not not matter but they certainly matter less.”
“But we’re just selling things then. How does that help?”
“Because the convoys also buy things on the way back, and most of those aren’t war materials.”
Zhuge blinked.
“They don’t.”
“Of course! We make all of the war materials we need. It’s the other houses that need our goods, not the other way around. But Zhuge, people start not liking you if you only sell and not buy because you drain their money. So we buy things, but we don’t just buy things to satisfy our needs or wants; we also sell them to others. The convoys buy Marik world specialty goods on the way to the Lyrans, deliver and sell Capellan war materials at Lyran worlds but also those of Marik world specialties and buy Lyran goods, sell Lyran goods on Marik worlds on the return trip and buy more Marik goods, and sell Marik goods on our Capellan worlds.”
He stared at Father for a bit.
And his brain kind of stuttered while trying to capture everything.
Father saw his look and laughed, which made him flush. And he ruffled his hair, which Zhuge let him do.
“Son, if I am buying Marik goods, then will Marik be more inclined to shoot me or less inclined?”
“... Less.”
“If I am buying Lyran goods and selling them war materials they desperately need as well as other civilian goods that help them keep the lights on in their worlds, then would the Lyrans be more likely to tell the Fedrats to stop shooting at us or less likely?”
“More likely.” Then he frowned. “Wait, why would the Mariks even care?”
“Because I sell them more goods than they and their worlds consume. So they turn around and sell it to their fellow Leaguers with a mark up. They make a profit not just from consuming our goods themselves but selling them on as a middleman to their fellow Leaguers. It’s not a one-sided profiteering for them but three-sided; they buy goods they need or want, they sell goods that we are willing to buy, and then they take what they don’t need and sell it for profit to the other Leaguers.”
“And the Lyrans? I thought they were upset about the cost of our battlemechs.”
“Ah, so you do read the news!”
Zhuge just stuck his tongue out at Father, and he just chuckled in reply.
“That’s the genius of this trade, my boy. Sure, the price tag is higher but that includes the shipping fee.”
Zhuge stared for a bit before his eyes widened. “B-But then we would be losing money!”
“A little bit of money, yes, but that’s what the other trades are for: to make up losses and make a profit. Selling the Lyrans our second rate war material is just an excuse for us to gobble up their market shares of imports. The very same shares that the Federated Suns’ corporations have to compete with us for.” He grinned. “And once the Fedrats tack on their shipping rates, their goods are more expensive than ours.”
“So the Lyrans will just … buy ours.”
“Yes. Perhaps they will retain some industrial ties for the sake of their alliance but the common people? Even the nobles? They don’t have anything against Capellans. On the other hand, many Lyrans dislike how the Fedrats have taken over the military apparatuses. That is already reason enough for them to not want to buy Fedrat goods.”
“But the Archon won’t be that dumb, right?”
“Of course, she isn’t. That girl is a smart cookie! I would be worried for Anastasia if she hadn’t shown some administrative prowess lately. Because Archon Melissa Steiner is someone who can think on par with her mother, her husband, and myself. In fact, if you give her and Hanse the same information, then she would make a better gambler than her husband!”
Zhuge felt a shiver run up his spine.
Someone on par with … Father?
“And that is exactly why she can’t throw our trade away, even if she were to win tomorrow against the Clans. If it comes down and she has to make a choice between the confederation’s trade or the alliance with the Federated Suns, then she will choose that alliance every single time. But right now when the trade benefits her people and she needs the extra war materials? It becomes awfully hard for her to order her people to stop buying our goods, especially things like cheap and long shelf-life chemotherapy drugs. You know, the same kind of drugs that I made sure her mother got to use to fight her cancer but is too complex for most of their worlds to manufacture.”
And with that, he slid another paper forward.
Zhuge looked down.
It was a chart. Or rather, it was a series of charts in a report titled “Growth of Capellan trade network and market share over the course of 3053-3054, Lyran Commonwealth.” Pre-3053, Capellans made up less than 1% of Lyran’s total commerce, import and export included. By the end of 3053, they made up 3%. By the end of 3054, they made up 7%.
In comparison, the Federated Suns started off at 3%, grew to 5%, and then … fell to 4%.
On top of this, the majority of the Capellan’s exports to the Lyrans were medicines,
Zhuge stared at the numbers.
And then he truly realized what Father was doing.
Father, while at war with the Clans, was laying the foundation for a disturbance in the FedCom alliance and future peace with the Lyrans. And since he wasn’t selling usually consumer goods like fancy noteputers but useful and positivity generating products like medicine. And would the Fedrats be happy with the Lyrans for buying from the Capellans? No! But the Lyrans couldn’t just end the trade because their allies didn’t like it, not when the trade brought in medicines the Lyrans couldn’t mass manufacture in every world! If the Archon chose to end the trade generating so much goodwill, then it would backfire on her and make her very unpopular.
Then Father slid another paper to him. This was labeled “Growth of Capellan trade network and market share over the course of 3053-3054, Free Worlds League.” The same was the same here. Pre-3053, Capellans made up less than 1% but the growth was even more staggering. By mid 3053, Capellans held 2% market share. By the end of 3053, 4%. By mid 3054, 7%. And now, at the end of 3054, 11%.
“Of course, this conversely also means that they also have a large market share of the confederation’s economy as well. 3% and 5% respectively. But that’s the point of all of this work: to make war with each other as unattractive as possible. Would it stop them if they really wanted war?” his father asked rhetorically before shaking his head. “No. But if I can buy a few more years for the confederation to grow even stronger before the Lyrans get over their reluctance, then all of this work would still have been worth it.”
Zhuge tried to comprehend the numbers, the byplays, the psychological work on a national level… and then had a “bluescreen” moment.
Father saw it and laughed. “I guess I was going too fast with all of the numbers and charts,” he chuckled. “But you understand now, don’t you?”
“Yes… Somewhat.”
“Good. Then I have answered your question as best as I can in the shortest amount of time possible.” Then he paused. “Oh, it’s time for dinner.”
Zhuge quickly stood up and got away from all of those papers, and Father’s chuckles followed him at his heels. Glancing back at the charts, paperwork, and the decade-long future planning Father had to do only convinced him more that he didn’t want to be the Chancellor. He didn’t want to sit behind a desk while thinking up ways to undermine his enemies while somehow generating a profit for the confederation and setting up an interstellar trade empire on top of taking care of the confederation’s administrative work.
He was definitely going to get out there and shoot pirates in the future! Or the Clanners if they are still around by the time he became a true mechwarrior.