Adept Stevens was troubled. ComStar was not, had not ever, and to his certain knowledge, was not capable, of the results displayed upon his terminal. He blinked, hoping that he had misread the query results, but the words remained, floating in midair in direct contradiction of all the laws of Blake and man.
Memphis System, Crucis March, Federated Suns
Solar body: Ra
Planets in System: 5, 1 major asteroid belt
HPG Facilities: Class A Hyperpulse Generator
Comments: Memphis was founded by religious zealots of the Baptist faith.“ComStar does NOT misplace a Class A HPG Station. I refuse to accept this.” Adept Stevens slammed down the terminal panel, and went in search of a better answer.
The Adept had been mistaken – ComStar can, and has, forgotten a great number of things in its history – but in this case, it was not a thing forgotten, but rather a situation that ComStar was never fully aware of. Memphis was founded before the Star League, by a group of Baptists that had outstayed their welcome on about every world they landed upon. They were given colonization rights to the Memphis system, and sent on their way.
The first years of a colony world are always harsh, triply so without outside support. Eventually, the survivors were taken off world by a trader who had been in system trying to sell agricultural equipment (he now understood how long a memory that bastard poker player had….stiff a guy once and he just overreacts…), and the desperate colonists traded their stake for transit to “anywhere with running water and plentiful restaurants.” The trader, Alexander Starr, spent the next decade building towards his dream- to retire on the world with the rainbow deserts, surrounded by as many nubile young things he could con into going with him.
Of course, it didn’t work out quite that way- but Alexander had a great deal of charisma, and, after a finding a germanium-rich asteroid, a great deal of money. The second colonization attempt on Memphis fared much better, assisted in no small part by the presence of the FarStrider, Starr’s ragged JumpShip. The colony became self-sufficient over time, and by the golden years of the Star League, it was readily apparent that the system held immense resources, if the facilities were put into place to mine and process them.
Memphis became a “boom town”, on the literal edge of the Periphery but crowded with jumpships, dropships, and construction platforms. They were building a permanent mining station within the Asteroid belt, establishing a surface base on the 1.5 G, iron-rich, low-atmosphere world of Sekhmet, even completing a communications station on remote and dark Set, the last planet in the system. The existing aluminum mines and processing on Memphis were modernized, and a large spaceport was begun, along with a tremendous planned city to house the workers of the day and the miners and workers of the future. Glory days, however, quickly turned to the waning years. As the Star League began to crumble from within, the projects began to trickle out. The advanced HPG station on Set was completed, but left unstaffed. The Zenith-point refitting station was completed, housed a number of Jumpships that had no orders, due to a breakdown in communication. Wind whistled through half-finished hallways on Memphis, as residents scratched their heads and wondered what the heck they were going to do with a 10 square kilometer erector set.
Melissa Starr, CEO of Starr Traders, Inc., just smiled. She looked at the jumpships waiting for orders, and looked at the people waiting for answers, and saw, in the fall of the Star League, hope for her planet. The problem with the grand plans of the Star League was that their projected mining projects would have gutted the system within 200 years, leaving the Memphis system with no means of support. But with a few more ships added to Starr Traders fleet, and the ability to refit vessels, mine within reason, and a half-built university sitting on the doorstep, there was a hope of a long future for Memphis.
The 1st Succession War was not kind to anyone, but the worlds near Memphis weathered the storm well, at first. Too remote to be under direct attack, the main enemy was a lack of supplies. Starr Traders lost their 3 registered Jumpships to the AFFS high command, and were forced to run their 2 remaining Invaders, along with the 2 Tramp and one Merchant class ex-SLDF ships, to pirate points and other smuggler tactics to keep from loosing them as well. The 5 ships kept much of the Davion Periphery border worlds fed for the dark days of the war, and, once the fighting had died down a bit, cemented a political alliance that has grown ever since. These worlds never forgot that when the war came, their government left them to starve.
Memphis, Sherwood, and Lackland became almost a triple system – Memphis as the transport hub and supplying metals, processed goods, and grains; Sherwood providing lumber, cattle, and small arms, and the water world of Lackland providing aquaculture and rare minerals. Together, the 3 worlds formed the core of a “shadow government” that looked over the worlds of the “periphery march”. In 2830, Starr Traders was absorbed into TriStar Interstellar, which in addition to becoming the most powerful corporation in the region, became the de facto state business of the ‘Periphery March’.
TriStar spent the next 2 centuries expanding and reinforcing their empire, growing into the 2nd largest shipping company in the Federated Suns, as well as becoming the third largest media buyer and reseller. Their media brokerage services and trade routes gave TriStar and its owners a huge passive intelligence network, which allowed the leaders of the ‘Periphery March' to take a long, informed view of their future.
In the early 31st century, shortly after the emergence of the Wolf’s Dragoons into the Inner Sphere, the leaders of the PM decided to begin what they considered stage three – an acceleration of their plans for self-governance, although they were careful to stress, not independence, from the Federated Suns. At this point, ComStar got back into the picture. Comstar had never sat easy with TriStar’s existence, the true extent of the company’s media handling and message traffic having been realized in the late 2990’s. Fearing a possible alternative to Comstar’s services, Comstar began an active campaign to discredit and disrupt both the Memphis and TriStar political and business leadership. This decade-long dirty tricks campaign, on both sides, ended abruptly with the death of Belasarius Starr, president of Memphis, and his wife, Marlene Starr, CEO of TriStar Interstellar. Although no formal charges were made, ComStar was widely, in quietly, held responsible for their deaths. The TriStar board of directors, along with the political leadership of Memphis, Lackland, Sherwood, decided to assist a young Tennessee Star, son of the slain President and CEO, in forming a small mercenary unit. Although Tennessee was unaware of the maneuverings behind the scenes, his unit, the Terran Revengers Company, was certainly helped by access to TriStar’s immense transportation assets, and after proving himself on a number of assignments, Tennessee was called home to Memphis in 3023.
“Pissed? Oh hell yeah, I was pissed. Just as I was thinking that the Davion family might actually give a damn about their people, they go and show us what ‘subject’ really means. Subject to bad policy, subject to the whims of a power-craving military, subject to the snobbish prats that dominate New Avalon. My kids had just begun to see that there was a life beyond subsistence farming, and the rat bastard takes their schools away! Great Leader my ass!
-Martha Culhane, Coordinator, “University of the Stars” traveling school program
Rumbles of an upcoming military operation had circulated wildly throughout the shipping industry, as government agents began chartering almost any jumpship available. Even the traveling school system originally implemented by TriStar, and popularized by Hanse Davion, had been sidelined due the demand on shipping. TriStar, having learned the lessons of the First and Second SW, flatly refused leasing their jumpships outright – instead demanding to retain control of their vessels, but offering attractive rates for cargo transport. The efficiency of TriStar’s shipping network led the AFFS to accept, and by the time of the second Operation Galahad exercise, TriStar was certain that there was something in the works.
Although they were forced to dramatically curtail the University of the Stars program, TriStar officials sought to minimize the damage. Many of the faculty set up shop on planets with TriStar facilities, where they augmented and sometimes became the local education assistance, with housing and facilities provided by TriStar at cost or free. The “warehouse schools” of the FedSuns outback may have been a common joke among the New Avalon elite, but their success – a rise in literacy rates of 25% in the communities served, and a stunning rise in collegiate attendance gave evidence that the system was working. At the collegiate level, it was decided to use the facilities of the Memphis Mining Academy on Memphis. Housed in the half-built remnants of the Star League, the facilities could be expanded and modified to create a new University by keeping and expanding the staff for the traveling programs. This step brought a real research and scientific center to the Periphery March, and can be considered one of the major reasons for Memphis being chosen as the site of the Defiance Industries FedSuns location in the late 20’s.
ComStar was kept placated at the time due to the “turning” of the Adept assigned to the planet. In truth, the person involved had tired of the “toaster worship” that dominated the ComStar party line, and found it easy to lose reports and slow down transmission of information about the true goings on, to the point that ComStar, and many other intelligence networks, garnered great amusement at the country bumpkins playing school.
SIDELINE: Lucky Amateurs or Skilled PSYOPS?The early TSG was thrown together in a manner that caused most onlookers to dismiss them as what, in truth, they were - a vanity project run by leaders who possessed little practical experience. Much of the early flamboyancy was intended to reinforce those claims, both to reduce concerns that the Guards were intended as a means of self-defense against FedSuns units but also to dissuade serious inquiry into the unit.
What began as camouflage did change over time, into a tradition that makes it difficult for outsiders to understand exactly what is serious, and what is just amusing window dressing - which is still used as a low level screen for intrusions, with in-jokes and inferred humor remaining the hardest items to translate effectively.
With war rumors mounting, the board of directors informed TS that he was to form two regiments of mercenary troops as soon as possible, with a possible third regiment. Tennessee, having been fully informed as to the aims of TriStar and the planets of the PM,had already been sketching out a similar plan. His recruitment efforts, aided in large part by the combination of his personal charisma and TriStar’s media outlets, garnered enough troops to form 3 combined arms regiments. The unit commanders, fond of their commander but realizing his lack of large-unit command experience, jokingly suggested that the unit be named the Tennessee Star Guards. The joke became fact, and the regiments were named for the three capital worlds of the Periphery March, the 1st Memphis Militia, 3rd Lackland Regulars, and the 7th Sherwood Cavaliers. The numerical disharmony was intended to confuse onlookers as to the ultimate size of the TSG.
The new unit had a number of advantages in the form of good transportation and sound financial backing, and had a number of seasoned officers in the mix. They lacked, however, any commanders familiar with large scale operations – most commanders had nothing more than company command experience. The exception to this rule were two colonels, one infantry, one armor, who formed the nascent command staff of the unit. The 1st Memphis and 3rd Lackland regiments participated in the second operation Galahad, where their first engagement showed their obvious youth. Quickly reorganizing their command structure, and integrating a much higher level of communication between units, the TSG faired much better in their second mock battle.
The TSG was up to speed just in time for the Fourth SW, which netted the unit much-needed exposure and battle experience, and made TriStar a fortune on shipping contracts as well as new markets. Many of the markets opened at this time remain in effect, even after conquered worlds returned to the CapCom – TriStar’s carefully maintained image of charity and concern for the average citizen worked wonders for their public image, especially as they managed to keep distant from the FS bureaucracy. The most important coup of the time, however, was the knowledge of the AFFS “black box” systems. TriStar captains quickly discovered their use during the invasion, and after the war, TriStar secured the blueprints to the system in exchange for supporting Hanse Davion in the press, a favorable rate on shipping, and agreeing that the TSG would never be used to attack FS troops or territory. Hanse Davion was likely also swayed by the fact that the black box technology would provide a useful, if far less efficient, backup to Comstar for the commercial sector.
SIDELINE: Improvised C3 SystemsOne of the first problems that the TSG faced was the lack of adequate command facilities and communication networks – such luxuries as Cyclops command ‘mechs being unobtainable on the open market. TSG techs, most of whom were from either TriStar dropship crews or retired military, and led by Solaris 7 crew chiefs, developed an innovative quick-fix that became standard practice. Techs would utilize civilian tri-vid remote broadcast gear, hooked into a commercially available scrambler gear. Although their transmission would be able to broken into after some time, the gear allowed real-time transmissions at a much lower cost than mil-spec equipment. In addition, the gear provided a very useful psyops and public service role with its ability to interface with civilian transmitters, as shown by the 7th Sherwood’s units broadcasting evacuation routes to civilians during their raid of XXXXXXX.
This early reliance and use of C3 integration is a TSG hallmark, and was a major factor in their selection of the MON-80 as the first new-tech Battlemech to be produced by MMW.
After the Fourth SW, the Memphis system became a boomtown for a second time. With the announcement of the FedSuns/LC merger, trade blossomed. When word came out that Defiance Industries was going to build a plant in the Federated Suns, TriStar pulled out all the stops to gain the facility. Despite having absorbed the Trolland and Trolland works on Sherwood, and the Memphis Motive Systems factories on Memphis, the Defiance plant, with the fusion engine assembly facility, was a strategic pearl that TriStar saw as essential to the PM eventual self-sufficiency. What resulted was a facility that was almost completely financed by TriStar, but with the Defiance name and know-how behind it.
The facility had produced no more than 200 Rommel/Pattons before TriStar dropped their ace card – through careful manipulation of voting shares and outright bribery on many fronts, they gained complete ownership of the plant, and integrated the plant into Memphis Motive Systems, Inc. As the output of the plant remained constant, FS officials were not hard pressed to object too much – especially as local sentiment found great satisfaction that the Lyran merchants had been beaten at their own game.