Battling the Present to Save the Future: 1

Mitchell stared at the intelligence brief, like it was a letter of doom.

It might as well be.

Amos Forlough is a real person. I had never heard of his name before the misjump, and yet he exists. His forlorn hope that the vision had been a hallucination, nothing more, dashed.

Mitchell's hand twitched for the intercom. The Concordat had little in the way of intelligence sources in the Hegemony, and yet he was certain they could find some criminal willing to…

He pulled his hand back and remembered an old story.



There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.



The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.



"Let's not make it our story, Mitchell." The vision had been horribly… compelling, but also incomplete. He hadn't been given the vision of the closed rooms, the negotiations that must have taken place. He'd seen the great and powerful, the movements that had shaken the sphere, but… not the currents that ran underneath. Why had Amaris been so trusted? Why had the new league turned on all of the Periphery states? That seemed foolish, if for no other reason than it spread their forces.

"Don't be an idiot, Mitchell." He didn't need a vision for that. No state would risk another getting ahead. They had created an entire set of rules around making war, not for their people's sake, but so they wouldn't destroy the treasures they were struggling over.

He looked up at the painting he'd ordered displayed in his office.

Liberation.

The painting was of the survivors from Tentativa debarking. There was a lot of artistic license in the artist's work. They hadn't walked off, and they hadn't raised their hands in joy—most of them had been driven off, too malnourished to stand, especially since the Taurian forces hadn't expected to liberate a slave camp.

Just over a thousand had died, the Concordat's limited medical care unequal to their salvation.

If our founders had known, we could have run for a thousand more light years.

But they didn't.

Peace wasn't an option. If Forlough was real then he'd have to assume the rest of that nightmarish vision was true. The house lords, pulling down civilization in an ecstasy of hatred. Inglesmond, Lone Star, other worlds, and surely others beyond that he had not seen. Burned, irradiated, poisoned… The last populations dying when their "lords" decided the planet was no longer worth anything, and why bother rescuing the people?

No. Peace would last, until and only until they decided it was better to take. Even if they submitted, something that would see Mitchell torn apart in the street, it wouldn't help. The League would collapse and then their prostrate worlds would be fought over, treasures to take, treasures to destroy to deny them to others.

Do nothing? Pretend he'd seen nothing, let fate play out as it had.

After all, the Concordat still existed and he could create caches of material of technology to prepare for a future rebirth.

And how many billions—trillions died? How many worlds died, including Concordat worlds? Mitchell knew that leaders had to make hard decisions, but to do nothing… No, He'd be damned.

He wanted to start a full program of crash armament now. But that got to explaining why and… "I saw the future, and why are you taking me to a white room?" He said to the empty office.

But the heir to the Concordat had resources. Not as many, nor without as much oversight, as the Great Houses, but enough. 40 jumpships and more dropships were part of his personal estate, although they were traditionally left to the navy and merchant marine. But of money… he was well provided.

Ten years. Less before it became clear to everyone else, but time to start preparing.

With that, Mitchell got up and headed out. It wouldn't do to keep his guests waiting.


The Auditorium wasn't the largest, and it was protected by every tool known to the Concordat.

Inside were just over 100 people. Some retired, some not even out of college, all vetted. All had signed the Official Secrets Act. All chosen not just for their skill, but signs they thought outside of the box.

"Gentlemen and Ladies," Mitchell said, waving to keep everyone in their seats. "You've been called here, because you're creative. In some cases…" He glanced at a retired officer. "Too creative for your superior's comfort. We have need of that creativity. What I am about to say is not backed by physical evidence but… we have reason to believe that it is likely."

And not just me. He'd handed the question of what a unified Inner Sphere would do to intelligence, and as a theoretical exercise, they had come to the same conclusion he'd seen.

"The Inner Sphere will raid a neighbor's strip mine when their mine starts to decline, instead of just digging deeper." One officer said.

"There is a move in the Hegemony to unify the various Great Houses." There was a stirring of confused looks. "The reason that concerns us is that I believe, once such a unification occurs… they will turn their eyes outward, to the Concordat, as well as our neighbors, and we will not simply be facing the Federated Suns, but perhaps the might of the Suns and the Hegemony—at once."

Now the whispers had a undertone of fear. None of the people here were stupid. Some had even traveled to the birthplace of humanity. They knew, more than any tabloid reporter talking about how the strength of the Bull would drive the enemy back, just what kind of power that represented. The entire industrial output of their nation might exceed that of the Earth System…

But not by a great deal.

"We cannot, as yet, take overt action. Neither I nor my Mother would make the lies of the Inner Sphere's tabloids true by attacking…"

"And it's never smart to poke a hornet's nest if it's leaving you alone." A voice called out, and there was a brief bit of uncomfortable laughter.

"Indeed." Mitchell said. "But this one won't be leaving us alone forever, I'm afraid. You'll be divided into groups based on your skills and interests, and over the next month will work on ideas to keep us independent and safe. If worst comes to be, ideas to make up for our material disadvantages… and if the absolute worst occurs… Ways to preserve some fragment of our people as a free civilization."

The room was absolutely silent.

Mitchell shook his head, and laughed. "It's not usual to say this, but I hope and pray that you will look back on this one day as an all expenses paid vacation where you got to spin out every paranoid fantasy your parents told you to stop talking about, before I came to my senses and forced you all to go back and work for a living."

The laughter was half-hearted, the men and women catching his mood.

"But if it isn't. Then what you do here, starting in the next month and continuing on for however long it does, may save our people and your families."

And may you succeed.