I gotta tell you, that transfer time from jump point to orbit is brutal. You never get used to it. Here we are, a stone's throw away (relatively speaking) from out new home planet, and though it took us virtually no time to make the jump LIGHT YEARS across the inner sphere to get here, now it takes a week and a half to get the rest of the way to orbit.
But we made it!
The drop from orbit went smoothly. There's Commonwealth all over the place, now. We're setting up in a coastal town on the Western end of the Kazan' continent.
A little history, if I may. Tikonov was settled hundreds of years ago primarily by folks from the Asian continent of Terra. It was named, in fact, for the last Premier of the Soviet Union (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, an old Terran nation), one Oleg Tikonov. Not sure what his patronymic would have been. Anyhow. The four major continents of Tikonov are named for old Soviet cities: Pskov, Ufa, Krasnodar, and Kazan'. Kazan' in particular interests me, so it's cool that we're going to be living there. The city of Kazan' was home to significant numbers of Muslims, at times the majority (primarily ethnic Volga Tatars, though also some Uzbeks and other Central Asian Muslims), as well as some Jewish population. It's said (:::--I know this from personal experience, and let me say, Kazan' is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL city, has the single most gorgeous mosque I've ever seen, and was the first place I got to see the RF President and Gogol Bordello on the same stage, only an hour apart--::
that one could walk from a Jewish to Orthodox Christian to Muslim place of worship in 10 minutes without breaking a sweat, and be welcomed at each without question.
Kazan' was home to considerable industry, including military. The old Kamov design bureau build some helicopters there. Also, the Soviet (and between iterations of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation) military's school for armor officers was nearby, too, along the highway to the airport. The Kazanka and Volga Rivers met there, in front of the Kremlin, and just upstream was a small palace of sorts, from which Tsar Ivan 'Grozny' oversaw the seige and recapture of Kazan' from the remnants of the Golden Horde.
ANYHOW, we're here now, on the Kazan' continent of Tikonov, and I'm buried under work. Nat was a sweetie and gave me a first day's pass on household stuff, like picking out better furniture and coloring the nursery and all that. Oh yeah, and we have a maid and cook. Two meals a day prepared for us, dishes and laundry and all that taken care of while we're at work. So that's pretty cool. We're basically living the lives of Federated Suns officers. I'm sure the regulars would be offended, except the only regular officers of any house we've seen, are all logisticians and intelligence types.
Second Crucis Lancers RCT is the main garrison unit here, and they're apparently going to inherit a good bit of our trade-in gear, but we don't have much reason to be in contact with them. For now, they're staying out of a 150-km radius of our site. Sooner or later, I'm sure they'll be rotating through for training as well, but not any time soon.
That letter I mentioned earlier? I read it. Turns out that Uncle Leonard is still ALIVE! Looking for a way back to Commonwealth space from the Draconis Combine, but safe and sound at any rate! Not sure why he'd choose to hand-write a letter, and he didn't leave any contact info in there to reply. For that matter, it's just a little strange that he'd be able to even FIND me to get me that letter. Odd. Who knows, maybe he'll pop in one day? That is, assuming the security folks here would even let him. Just in case, I left word with the academy's public relations staff that he might do so, and that I'd like to be made aware if/when he shows, as he's one of VERY few living blood relatives I have. Boy, will he be thrilled when he hears I'm going to be a DAD!
Oh, and of the 18 mechs I brought along, we're now replacing at least 13 with Clan mechs, mostly (but not all) Smoke Jaguar types. And, just to really get into character for this OPFOR thing, we're now officially referring to them by their Clan names. SO, we've got 2 Arctic Cheetah, 1 Dire Wolf, 2 Ebon Jaguar, 2 Storm Crow, 1 War Hawk, and 1 Mad Dog. Those are all Smoke Jaguar. Add to that, 2 Timber Wolf and 2 Shadow Cat. We're still talking initial organization, to make it all make sense by Clan organization. More word tomorrow on whether there are any more coming.
I couldn't tell you which omnipod configurations we're getting. But DAMN are these omnimechs something brilliant!
See, the omnipods allow for REALLY quick field reconfiguration, as I may have mentioned before. The interface between them is standardized for each mech, so each left arm, for instance, has the exact same mounting provisions to attach it to a left torso, and each left torso has the same attachments for the left arm. And so on. There are three torso omnipods, that make up everything including the waist gimbal and all. There's a head omnipod, which in a couple cases includes a weapon mount. There's a pod for each arm, and one for each leg. Each is sealed and self-contained. Where ammo passes through between two omnipods, even THAT has provisions to seal it against the environment. It's downright brilliant! Modular battlemech design! Engineers all over the inner sphere have been slapping themselves in the head over how simple but brilliant it is. The individual omnipods are a bit of a pain in the backside to maintain, and far more troublesome to reconfigure than are components of our battlemechs, but that's hardly a problem for a tactical unit. It's freakin' GREAT!
A couple other things they do just blow my skirt up. For instance, their autocannons are really cool. All of them fire more like the Ultra AC/5, in that they fire multiple rounds. The rounds are smaller and more efficient, tonnage and space-wise, than regular AC ammo here. Overall, not a HUGE difference in ammo storage capacity, but it's significant enough. And apparently some of their autocannons have the capability to double-fire, like the UAC/5, and occasional jams HAVE been observed in battle. Something we're going to have to deal with, is building a whole new checklist for such things.
In case you didn't know about mechwarriors and memorizing checklists and emergency procedures, and all that, I'll get to it next time.
Right now, I'm due in a conference room at the other end of the admin building. Time to interview some potential new talent.
Oh, and the guy from the jump? Hired. Started work today, and is taking to omnimechs like a fish to water. It's like he's worked on them before or something. Bit of a loner, but he gets along well enough anyhow, and he's eager to learn. Can't beat that.
Right. Interviews. Cheers!