Clan Wolf-in-Exile Alpha Galaxy Barracks Complex
Arc-Royal
Lyran Alliance
April 14, 3093
Star Captain Mikhail Sender was working late into the night. The rest of his trinary had long since turned in after a tough day of training. But Mikhail Sender was so obsessed that he ignored the physical aches of his body.
His tiny berth quarters on Arc-Royal were covered in documents and data chips. Some of them had labels like “Hidden Hope Doctrine” and “Nadia Winson’s 3000 Address to the Grand Council” and “Ulric Kerensky’s Personal Journal” indeed to the casual eye it would appear that half of Clan Wolf-in-Exile’s library was scattered across the tiny berth, stacked on furniture and laid out in grid squares on the floor.
Fighting a kink in his neck, Star Captain Miikhail Sender finished the last few lines, and then the furious typing stopped.
He paused to read what he had just written on his personal computer, and then scrolled up to read what he had written before.
“Delete that, aff typo…and it is almost done,” Mikhail Sender said. “Let us see what Petra Sender thinks of this version.”
He opened a communication application and sent the document on its way.
A day later and light years away on Tamar, Star Captain Petra Sender was in the middle of a daily routine. Paperwork for her trinary was piling up and the Star Colonel wanted it finished today. But she couldn’t ignore it when a Clan Chatterweb icon appeared in the corner of her screen, relayed to her through the planetary HPG. She clicked the icon, read the message and then opened the attachment.
The more she read, the more she leaned in closer.
“Surat, Mikhail, this is good, I like the way you used…wow,” Petra Sender muttered. “But it needs a name…wait.”
Petra Sender’s opened a new window on her computer and found the broad assortment of files on a range of topics. She opened a search window and typed the words “Hidden Hope Doctrine.” This caused a familiar document to appear in front of all the other open windows.
Her eyes scanned carefully. She had read this a hundred, neg, thousand times, but she was looking for something in particular.
“Return to the Inner Sphere is impossible for us. Our heritage and our convictions are different from those we left behind. The greed of the five Great Houses and the Council Lords is a disease that can only be burned away by the passing of decades, even centuries. And though the fighting may seem to slow, or even cease, it will erupt again as long as there are powerful men to covet one another's wealth. We shall live apart, conserving all the good of the Star League and ridding ourselves of the bad, so that when we return — and return we shall — our shining moral character will be as much our shield as our BattleMechs and fighters.”
Her eyes were drawn to the last sentence, which she had previously already underlined as part of this ongoing project. But it wasn’t the entire sentence that was catching her eyes, it was a few words.
“Shining moral character,” She said aloud, as though testing the words against the air. “Shining…shining something…shiny? Neg…character….valor…hope…eh these all sound like something a Nova Cat would write.”
Idly testing an idea, she typed the words “Shining Example Doctrine” at the top of Mikhail Sender’s document.
“I like it,” She finally muttered to herself.
She opened a HPG communication application and sent her revision back to Mikhail Sender. But after that she was still stirred, moved, maybe anxious. She felt the desire she always had, to do something more with this than a back-and-forth with her sibmate living in another Clan.
At the same time she was pressed against the wall by a promise she had made to that same person. To keep this between themselves, for now…
But Petra Sender had not achieved what she had in her short career as a warrior by being patient.
She opened a new communication application, a different one for a specific sub-group of the planetary chatterweb network. A Clan Wolf icon hung over the display like a flag on a mountain. She selected a user group from a list labeled “Alpha Galaxy” and then loaded up a short message and uploaded the lengthy document she and Mikhail had been working on.
Petra Sender didn’t hesitate, once it was ready she pressed send, and the message and document both were transmitted to every warrior in Clan Wolf’s Alpha Galaxy, her unit.
She thought that would relieve her anxiousness, but now it was worse. Now it was public.
The file, labeled “Shining Example Doctrine” first went out to all the warriors of Clan Wolf’s Alpha Galaxy, both on and off Tamar. A number of warriors read it, some disregarded it, others read it again. Within a day people were talking about it, between meetings and briefings, over lunch, during field marches and while observing Trial of Bloodright matches.
One warrior shared it his trothkin in Delta Galaxy and he started reading it, despite the fact that his Cluster was engaged in a Trial of Possession that day against the Jade Falcons, the recipient, waiting idle in his bunk for the order to climb into his Jagatai for the Trial. Once he read it a few times and shared it with his point-mate and wingman, he sent the document on to the rest of the Cluster.
Like a wildfire, the Shining Example Doctrine spread across Clan Wolf’s warrior caste. Within a week it came full circle back to Mikhail Sender on Arc-Royal, who learned from other trothkin in his former Clan that the document had gone out. Initially he was angry that Petra had put their work out there without asking him first. But then he saw some of the comments and messages, copied by his trothkin. The response was beyond positive. People were becoming obsessed with the document. Not just warriors, but individuals from other castes as well. He was surprised, pleasantly surprised, and how far and wide this was going. It had started as a simple scholarly project.
To Mikhail Sender, the Shining Example Doctrine wasn’t finished. But it was already out there. Feeling like he had nothing to lose at this point, he sent the document to his own Beta Galaxy, of the Clan Wolf-in-Exile. He was curious now, to see just how far this could go.
Within just three days, it had been read by every Exiled Wolf, not just the warriors, but the lower castes as well. People were throwing it around, debating its meaning and ramifications.
Something was happening, something that neither Mikhail or Petra had predicted. Their ideas were taking root in both Clans. People would turn it over in their minds again and again until it had taken a firm hold. Within a matter of days it was beginning to change everything.
Khan Tanya Radick was listening patiently to the Loremaster’s report on the floor of the Clan Wolf-in-Exile Clan Council chamber. The presentation was not news to her. The Loremaster had been preparing a briefing on the Clan’s Watch reports for a month and Khan Tanya Radick basically already knew the essence of it. But regular presentations to the Council were part of the Loremaster’s purview, to keep the Council aware of events both near and far in the Inner Sphere.
But she was surprised by a sudden change in the Loremaster’s choice of words.
“ULTRA, which we now know is part of the Free Worlds League, continues to be part of their offensive, but the push now clearly involves forces from both,” Sarrin Shaw stated. “The way Spheroids wage war one each other is horrible, the Successor States care not if they kill another billion, there is a better way, the Way of the Clans.”
It wasn’t just what Sarrin Shaw said, it was the way the towering elemental was saying it, a touch of reverence in his voice. For a moment it also sounded like Sarrin Shaw was reading something.
“Is that a quote?” Tanya Radick suddenly found herself asking sitting slightly straighter.
“Aff my Khan,” Sarrin Shaw replied with a touch of awkwardness.
“The words seem familiar,” Tanya Radick inquired with a light touch.
“The words come from something I read recently, it was called the Shining Example Doctrine,” Sarrin Shaw stated.
“Aff….ok…umm…moving on, please continue,” Tanya Radick caught herself saying, but a mark had been left, not just in her mind but in the minds of the Clan Council members in attendance.
A day after the Loremaster’s briefing, Khan Tanya Radick was trying to get some work done in her office just a short walk from the Clan Council chamber. But instead of working she had found herself reading the Shining Example Doctrine…for a fifth time.
Her solitude was interrupted when saKhan Nathaniel Vickers walked in. Tanya’s old battle buddy from the Golden Keshik wasn’t much for formality around her and he plopped himself into a chair. By his casual nature you would never know he was the Clan’s best duelist in a ‘mech.
“Hey, have you read this Shining Example Doctrine?” He asked.
“Reading it now, actually,” Tanya Radick said, barely looking up.
“Apparently it is everywhere, among the warriors, the lower castes…”
“I know, it is all anyone is talking about,” Tanya Radick said. “I am surprised this Star Captain Mikhail Sender sent it out, especially admitting that he had conspired with his sibmate to write it, apparently the pair are quite the scholars.”
“Well you know we have always unofficially allowed contact with the other Wolves, sometimes even officially,” Nathaniel Vickers replied. “But you are right, for someone to brazenly mention collaboration is unusual, especially after what happened to the Isegrim project scientists. In any case, it is excellent reading, I mean it takes the Warden philosophy to a whole new level.”
“Neg…it does not,” Tanya Radick said with a deliberate pause.
“I do not…wait, what? Nathaniel Vickers asked perplexed, frozen.
“Listen,” Tanya Radick said and then read from the screen. “Phelan Kell became more than a convert to the Way of the Clans, he became one of the fiercest defenders of Kerensky’s ideals. Imagine Kerensky’s ideals spreading throughout the people of the Inner Sphere, infusing in them a flame in belief that we can make this Inner Sphere a better place than even the golden age of the Star League.”
“I do not see…”
“Keep listening,” Tanya Radick cut him off. “Vlad Ward understood that tradition could not be used as an excuse not to do what is right. Our Khan ordered the Kerensky chapel on Strana Mechty destroyed, an act of sacrilege and of sacrifice because his cause was just and time has vindicated that bold action is rewarded when your cause is just.”
saKhan Nathaniel Vickers was quiet now, his head and eyes dropped slightly, as though contemplating a riddle.
“It is not Warden at all,”
“That is not even the best part,” Tanya Radick continued reading. “The Crusader in us is willing to go wherever we are needed, regardless of personal risk or sacrifice, to fight that good fight on any battlefield at any time. The Warden in us seeks to protect the people of the Inner Sphere from the moral decay of the Successor States who too often believe that their agenda justifies all the ceaseless wars and death.”
“Strange,” Nathaniel Vickers said with a slow shake of his head as he sat up straighter. “When I read this myself, it sounded like a new variation on Warden Philosophy, but it is not, and yet I know it is not Crusader, every word that ever came out of Vlad Ward’s mouth made my blood boil.”
“It is genius, it is a breakthrough,” Tanya Radick said sitting back in her chair. “We have spent decades, nearly a century, entrenched behind Warden and Crusader beliefs, and this...do you know what this is?”
Nathaniel Vickers just waited for her to continue.
“It is ‘new’, I have always felt, since I was in the sibko, that the Warden and Crusader doctrines were old, that they were written by another people for a different time…”
“And in a different place…” Nathaniel Vickers chipped in.
“Aff, I always felt out of touch with them, like they were mostly right, but only, I do not know, 80 percent right,” Tanya Radick said now talking with her hands.
“Closer to 60 percent myself, but I do not embrace a lot of doctrine, the simple practical warrior, it is part of my charm.”
“Uh huh,” Tanya Radick replied simply as though she did not want to debate that point. “Do you remember what I told you after my election as Khan?”
Nathaniel Vickers’ eyes turned toward the ceiling for a moment as though recalling an important memory.
“You said that you wanted to be Khan, but now that you were, the path forward seemed impossible, that Ulric Kerensky and Phelan Kell had set the clock and now we were just its spinning hands with no control,” Nathaniel Vickers. “I remember it vividly, you are usually so confident in front of the Council, it was stunning to hear you say that, like you were confiding in me some great secret.”
“Well it was true, until I read this,” Tanya Radick said. “Phelan Kell, Ulric Kerensky, their actions were driven by a belief in what they had to do and that dramatic action needed to be taken to protect the Inner Sphere. Yet here now, decades later, the Inner Sphere does not feel like it needs or wants our protection.”
“The invasion is over, the Crusaders are finally starting to wrap their heads around the fact that plopping their butts on Terra will not magically make them the IlClan and that the rest of the Inner Sphere will just simply bow and accept Kerensky’s wisdom,” Nathaniel Vickers chipped in. “Even those who still believe it, they cannot conceptualize a way to actually make it happen, further evidence was provided when the Snake Clans put everything on the line trying back ’77 and did not even reach New Avalon, let alone Terra.”
For a moment there was silence in that office, a thoughtful contemplative silence, and then Tanya broke it by speaking but chose her words with great care.
“saKhan,” she said in her formal Khan voice. “I want you, to find out what our people, of every caste, think of this Doctrine, I need data.”
“Aff, no problem.”
“Then I want you to find out what Clan Wolf thinks of this Doctrine.”
That brought Nathaniel Vickers up short. His lips moved a bit before uttering a sound.
“We have sources, but why?”
“We know this got out to the Crusader Wolves, I just want to know what they think.”
“Ok…I mean…aff my Khan.”