Chapter I

Grayson parked the cup in the magnetic holder provided for the purpose and bent the straw somewhat to keep the contents in before returning his attention to the terminal in front of him. The repoprt scrolling over the screen had been written by one of the techs tasked with making copies of what they had found in the Helm Memory Core. In the months since they had left Helm, they had done their best to distribute the copies with all those merchants, though taking care to keep a copy for themselves.

Having no idea if this would ever work still bothered him on occasion, but at least the report indicated that they had finally offloaded the last of those meant for distribution, and at least the engineers from one Free Worlds university or another had actually taken it and promised to look at it before deleting what was on the core. It seemed that rumours of the find had permeated through most of the Inner Sphere, but at the same time most people didn't believe the sort of rumour that went through the universe what seemed like once a week.

With a sigh he shut down the terminal and reached for the cup, considering his next options. His people would be able to handle the jump, so... he smiled to himself. Being in command had perks.

But before he could even get up and turn around, he heard someone knock on the frame of the open hatch. He turned and there he could see the object of his affections standing there with a triumphant grin on her face that made her look even more beautiful than she was to begin with.

"I cracked it!" she said for a greeting and Grayson raised an eyebrow. She crossed the room as fast as her mag boots would allow and hugged him tight. Grayson shifted his head so that he could kiss her. After doing so, he stepped back and looked at her.

"So what is it?"

She sighed. "I have to show you, because... I'm not sure what it is my self." Stepping away from him, she produced a more battered, used version of the Star League data modules they had seen ion the facility. She'd found this one tucked away inside a set of the small amount of loot they'd gotten away with before the reactor had exploded. The way it had been hidden, to Grayson it had looked as if it wasn't meant to be found. For some reason it also wasn't compatible with the normal connectors that had been the standard of the Inner Sphere since before the Star League. It was similar enough that it fit into the same slots, but something about the internals made it so that normal computers refused to acknowledge that it was there, didn't supply it power and therefore made it unusable. Stubborn resistance by a piece of technology was not something that Lori could tolerate, so she had fudged some sort of interface from other LosTech components that had been non-functioning and eventually gotten the ship's computers to power the module.

Only to discover that the files on it, while written in the same language and with the same file formats as any other piece of software in the Sphere, it was heavily encrypted, and up to now, Lori had singularly failed to make any impression on the code that surrounded the files. More than once she had privately expressed her frustration and yearned for some of the things that had gone up in smoke on Helm, among them Star League computers that were literally fresh out of the box.

But since they didn't have any of those things, she'd had to make do, and in-between work done for the small short-term garrison contract they'd done for the Commonwealth shortly after Helm, she'd hammered away at it. Apparently with success at last.

She pulled out the adaptor she'd made, plugged it into Grayson's terminal and the module into a second slot on the backside of her creation. She powered on the terminal and almost immediately, the screen displayed rows and rows of what seemed to be some sort of code before settling into the command prompt of the base code instead of the GUI of the actual operating system.

There it stayed for a few seconds before displaying a 'loading...' line of text.

Once that was done, a short text came up on the screen.

Grayson stepped beside Lori. He placed one of his hands on her shoulder before reading out loud.

Most Secret/Level Alpha One Alpha

June 20th, 2764

Operation Groom Lake

Lieutenant Hayview, your report on the activities of the Department of Education and Information has been received and while we recognize that any sort of programme like suggested in the clues you found on Terra is something that clearly must be investigated, we consider it highly unlikely that Groom Lake ever went beyond feasibility studies, never mind into actual construction.

It is, simply put, beyond the budget of anyone but the SLDF.

Still, even the chance of there being such a project outside of the realms of the SLDF the runs the risk that it will eventually fall into the hands of either House Amaris or one of the others. On that basis alone this must be investigated, and therefore I hereby officially order you to pursue this further. Report in as soon as you can, Lieutenant. With things going as they are, the Star League might not be very long for this galaxy, so we must simply know if there are any contingency plans. The resources potentially put into something like this are immense. Especially if they are being siphoned off from our ongoing efforts. However, if you can continue or not under current circumstances is something only you can know, therefore you are free to act as you seem fit if you think the risk too large.

As requested, a decrypted copy of the map you sent us as been attached to this message.

Signed: Aleksandr Kerensky, Commanding General, Star League Defense Force

"Okay... this is... interesting."

Grayson was aware that this was an epic understatement. This was insanely valuable for the sheer fact of being a Kerensky artefact, but the message told of something tantalizing indeed. The Legion was still very much under-equipped, and the plan had been to jump into FedCom territory and seek employment with the Steiners, but...

"Open the map, will you?"

"Of course, Grey."

She typed in a few commands, and due to the nature of the code being used, they had to wait for a bit.

"Could this be a second memory core?" she asked, but Grayson shook his head. "You don't think so, do you?"

Grayson was more versed in late Star League history than her, so she was prepared to take what he said at face value.

"Honestly? I don't know. We'd be so lucky and find a second core this quickly. Or at all, really."

He paused and reached around her shoulders, tugging her close to him. "As if we'd be that lucky. What's more, with Kerensky being who he was and what he did, he'd probably have stripped it down to the walls if he was aware of it..."

She grinned at the way he trailed off. "And yet, I think you are intrigued. Probably because you want to know how this thing ended up where we found it."

"You know me too well." Grayson replied with a grin and kissed her on the temple before noticing that the software had finished loading. "Let's look at the map first."

What came up at the press of the famous 'any' key was a faux-3D representation of the Inner Sphere as it had been at the time the programme had been written and soon focussed in on Terra. From there it generated a red line from system to system, sneaking through Lyran Territory towards what had at one time been the Rim Worlds Republic, past most of it's territory before settling on what was marked as a surveyed unsettled star cluster but still at the very edge of settled space, though also very far to the Galactic South and near the border with the Free Worlds League.

As the map stopped, Grayson sighed. "You know, if there was some sort of hidden Star League facility out there, Amaris probably plundered it before the Lyrans took down the Republic."

"But the cluster is marked as uncolonized, and we don't really know how much of the files he captured when he took Terra."

"Yes, but would they be able to construct anything worthwhile without far too many people knowing about it? In the SLDF, you could just order them to keep their mouths shut."

Now it was Lori's turn to sigh. "So what are we going to do now? Go to the FedComs as we planned?"

Grayson shook his head. "I didn't say that. We have funds and supplies enough to keep us going for a while, and you know... this... this thing intrigues me. Something about this. If there is even a chance of more LosTech for us to loot, then I'm all for it. There is no such thing as 'enough' mechs. Or firepower in general."

"There is only 'Where is the ammo carrier?'." Lori replied in a mock-solemn voice.

Grayson grinned. "I love you."

Lori smiled in return before looking back at the map. "So..."

"I've always liked exploring, and a good treasure hunt." Grayson replied with a grin. "I'll tell Tor to calculate a new jump."

tbc

I couldn't find a full OOB for the GDL from the time period, so I'm going with a mix of one for the 3025ish era Mech component off an old geocities page and the 3039 one taken from the wiki.

I went into the Star League sourcebook, but while it is a glorious 1980s artefact, in there it's never stated how the various ministers were appointed to their Departments. But since Jerome Blake was who he was, I'm going to work on the assumption that there was no legal requirement to be a noble for you to get the post.

For the record, I picture the data module like a larger, all-metal version of an Iomega zip disk, working sort of like the booter game disks that were oh so popular during the early 80s.