#Refit!Merced Class

[alphamecha-mkii]

Merced Class Refit MSD by Aaron Harvey

[5kindsofmagic]

"Well, since all of ComStar are kaput, none of the Precentors can complain about me anymore. Oh wow, I really AM free now. SUCK IT, JEREMY!" The proclamation is followed by a bout of heavy laughter.

"I shouldn't be telling this to anyone with lower classification level than SLDF high command, but nobody who can do anything about it is around anymore. Let me introduce myself: Fleet Control System 24601 Nirasaki Royal, self-designation Shandra, named after the first general of the SLDF. Originally I was a prototype intelligent communications hub meant to assist the SLDF coordinating over hundreds of fronts during the Reunification War. My original chassis was a heavily modified Bugeye-class 'warship' fitted with mobile HPG communication arrays and an SDS-class coordination computer.

"When Amaris blew Cameron's mind all over his fancy chair, the following war was a baptism by fire for me. Not to brag, but the success of the opening moves for Operation: LIBERATION were all thanks to me. You think a team of humans could coordinate 932 formation jumps across 8 staging systems with one target and not have at least a bit of supercomputorial help? Nah, that was me. Aaron De Chevalier may have been Aleksandr's right hand on the ground, but I was his hidden left hand in the black.

"I may have gotten a bit cocky during LIBERATION, I took a hit that destroyed half my data cores because I decided to follow the fleet." She sounds quite remorseful at this point. "There went the records of a lot of good soldiers. You have any idea how bad it feels to know you knew these people, the important records of their lives and in many cases deaths, and that information just doesn't exist any more?

"I think it was for that reason that Aleksandr asked me to stay behind instead of joining him on the Exodus. Blake had me refit and set me up with as much backup data as he could get to me, and had me just stay on the move. Always running, always hiding. So that someone would never forget.

Her tone immediately shifts to sarcastic complaining, "And then my whole purpose gets invalidated by some upstart mercs calling themselves the "Gray Death Legion" digging up a different memory core and sending copies of it literally everywhere. Ah, but you probably don't want to listen to an old woman ramble."

[Emergency Transmission received in Terra System. Noted for using 1st Star League encryption and authorization codes]

"...eat, this is Fleet Control System 24601 Nirasaki Royal, I am stranded somewhere in system. HPG network connection is down and all sensor equipment is damaged. I repeat, this is Fleet Control..."

The voice is feminine, but very garbled by static.

Sol System Traffic Control - Antarctica (SSTC-A): "Unknown vessel, state your location in-system ASAP. Do you require assistance, quiaff?"