Gejagt

GejagtCover.jpg
Gejagt
Product information
Type Novel (serialized)
Author Daniel Isberner
Pages 408
Cover Artwork Janina Robben
Publication information
Publisher Ulisses Spiele GmbH
Product code US52027
First published 13 May 2015 (print)
19 November 2014 (first Ebook episode)
ISBN-13 978-3957520524
MSRP 11,95 € (Omnibus print novel)
1,99 €/Episode (Ebook)
Content
Era Jihad era
Timeline 3067

Gejagt ("Hunted"), subtitled as the Silent-Reapers-Zyklus, is a German BattleTech novel by Daniel Isberner. It is an omnibus print edition of the six Silent Reapers cycle episodes that were previously individually published as Ebooks since November 2014.

Canonicity[edit]

Written in German and exclusively published in that language to date, the Silent Reapers cycle does not meet the current criteria for canon in the BattleTech universe. As an official product published under a valid license, it should be regarded as apocryphal.

Some characters and events from the book, as well as the eponymous Silent Reapers mercenary command, have since made appearances in canonical sources (though the original novel as such remains apocryphal).

On 15 March 2022 it was announced that an English translation is forthcoming, which would canonize this story, though changes are possible.[1]

From the back cover (translated from German)[edit]

Omnibus print edition
“ The Silent Reapers mercenaries have specialized in missions that others can't—or won't—carry out. Commando operations and infiltrations are par for the course, and a profitable business. A questionable contract on Capra marks the unit as hunted and puts the Silent Reapers' future into question. Only the Word of Blake is willing to keep their hiding place secret and offer them a contract. But betrayal from within and a nuclear strike on Tharkad make the Reapers doubt their employer. Is the demise of the Silent Reapers sealed? ”
Tödlicher Kontrakt (Deadly Contract)
Ebook published 19 November 2014
Ebook cover for episode 1
“ The Silent Reaper mercenaries have specialized in missions that others can't—or won't—carry out. Commando operations and infiltrations are par for the course, and a profitable business.

However, their latest assignment tests the limits of what the Silent Reapers are ready to carry out and their employer seems to have plans of his own—plans that do not entail the survival of the Reapers.

”
Auf der Flucht (On the Run)
Ebook published 18 December 2014
“ Hunted by ComStar and the Great Houses, the Silent Reaper mercenaries have retreated to Fletcher. Cut off from the HPG network this world provides perfect cover to rebuild after their losses and intensify their cooperation with Word of Blake.
But their cover seems to have been blown, and Anori must struggle to keep the secret of the Silent Reapers—at the cost of her own life if need be. 		”
In Blakes Namen (In Blake's Name)
Ebook published 15 January 2015
“ September 3067: Word of Blake has got a mission for you!
The Silent Reapers arrive at Laurieston to carry out their first mission for Word of Blake. They are to break into a chemical plant and take samples and research results for a new medication. It sounds easy but turns out to be a difficult endeavor when their hostage's employer has a message for them.
Meanwhile on Capra Lucas is looking for evidence to prove the Reapers' innocence, but not everything is what it seems. To uncover the secret he must find the truth about their employers. 		”
Verraten und verkauft (Sold Down the River)
Ebook published 5 February 2015
“ Sakumoto has vanished and rumors about a Word of Blake attack on Outreach cause alarm within the Silent Reapers. While Anori leaves no stone unturned on Laurieston to find her lover, the traitor among the Reapers has other plans that will change the unit forever.
Lucan meanwhile makes a pact with an unlikely ally to learn the truth about the conspiracy against the Reapers. But can he trust the Sandovals? 		”
Blakes Horror
Ebook published 4 March 2015
“ Tharkad lies in ruins!
Stories about a Word of Blake nuclear strike against the planet's capital unsettle the Reapers and make Anori wonder what it really was they stole from Lakegaard Chemicals. Can they give Word of Blake access to a bioweapon or would they risk all life in the Inner Sphere in doing so? 		”
Allein gegen Alle (Alone Against All)
Ebook published 2 April 2015
“ Hunted by the Lyrans and ROM agents the Reapers fight for their survival. But lacking a DropShip and with dwindling resources their demise is just a question of time.
The era of the Silent Reapers is drawing to an end. 		”

Plot Summary[edit]

On 23 February 3066, a squad of four Silent Reaper troopers in modified Gray Death Scout battle armor capture ComStar Precentor Yves Jaunechose in Capra City on Capra under contract with House Sandoval and hand him over to their employer's "interrogation specialist". They are dismayed, but not surprised, to learn of Jaunechose's death the following day. Working outside the auspices of the MRBC, the Silent Reapers decide that they cannot afford to break contract over this as they need to protect their mercenary reputation, and that they shall thus carry out the remainder of their mission, namely an attack on the HPG station. However, CO Juan McFaris privately admits to Lucas Hammilton, the commander of the unit's black ops infantry, that their employer threatened to kill his daughter Anori McFaris (who is serving in the Silent Reapers as a battle armor trooper). Anori meanwhile is uncomfortable with the specific orders they have for securing the HPG station, and on a hunch alters the battle plan, overriding their employer's explicit order that the outlying offices have to be secured first. Arriving at the HPG core early with her squad, they find that the staff has been massacred already and the station rigged with a bomb. The Silent Reapers narrowly escape the explosion that engulfs the entire HPG compound. The interrogation specialist has vanished, and the two guards monitoring her are dead. Since it is now undeniable that the unit has been betrayed by their employer, the Silent Reapers immediately pack up their gear and evacuate aboard their DropShip, O'Cavanaughs Gold, pursued by local military forces. A Lyran JumpShip can be convinced to carry them away, for a price.

Some three months later, the Silent Reapers have changed their identity and gone to ground on Fletcher in the Chaos March, as the unit is now wanted for the Capra massacre and their reputation destroyed. House Sandoval, meanwhile, is not mentioned in the news. They are approached by Franklin Hirosir, who identifies them by their real name, reveals that he knows they were set up by House Sandoval, and offers to hire them on behalf of the Word of Blake, who are actively hiring mercenaries to safeguard their Chaos March assets. The Silent Reapers take up working for the Word of Blake as the Rote Kralle ("Red Claw") mercenary unit, receive technology upgrades, and hire new members to replace losses from Capra. They also begin to investigate into the Capra situation, hoping to find evidence that will clear their name.

However, by December, Anori is approached by a man who tells her her real name to her face and demands ten million C-bills to keep it secret. An inquiry by the unit's hacker, Peter Brantling, soon uncovers the obviously fake identity of one "Jupp Blomhoofd" and a hotel address where the man is apprehended by Anori and her lover Sakumoto just as he is preparing to leave. Anori is injured in the operation when she stumbles into a totally unrelated altercation between other hotel guests. Despite interrogation and even torture, the captured "Blomhoofd" refuses to share information and at one point even attacks Anori with a knife that he should not have had, indicating he may be receiving inside help.

Nine months later, in September of 3067, the (undercover) Silent Reapers embark on their first mission for the Word of Blake, an objective raid against the Lakegaard Chemicals plant on Laurieston. They arrive as tourists by late September, and check into their HQ hotel as several smaller groups. Anori and Sakumoto take their prisoner with them to Laurieston, but right upon setting foot on the world Anori is handed a written note from the mysterious man's employer addressing her as Ms. McFaris (while the clueless messenger had addressed her by her undercover name for the mission that not even the unit's employer should know) and stating that she has one of his employees and that he is going to take him back. Alerted to a possible mole in the unit, Anori and Sakumoto hide the prisoner in a townhouse, separated from the unit's base hotel, and take turns watching him (though they give up on attempting to interrogate him). On 5 October, the raid against Lakegaard Chemicals is carried out and data storage units are retrieved from the labs. However, upon returning Anori finds that the captive has vanished, Sakumoto—who was guarding him—is missing, and large amounts of blood have been spilled in the townhouse. The neighbors pretend to have seen nothing, until Anori kicks in a door and questions the inhabitants at gunpoint. She learns that seven men stormed the house, two of them were carried back out, plus Sakumoto and "Blomhoofd", and all left in a car.

Infiltration specialist Lucas Hammilton has meanwhile traveled to Capra upon learning that one of his operatives there has died in a suspicious traffic accident. En route aboard the Mammoth-class merchant vessel Traumhändler he discovers the ship to be a slave trader, and manages to commandeer it with the help of the freed slaves. On Capra, Lucas finds the HPG station's critical components were not destroyed after all. He deducts the bomb had apparently been designed to harm the Silent Reapers, not the HPG itself. Before long he is lured into a trap and captured near a warehouse that he has identified as a House Sandoval safe house. He escapes from captivity, but is wounded and decides to seek the help of the local yakuza. Returning to the warehouse two weeks later with yakuza soldiers, he finds it empty save for a desk with a written note to him: House Sandoval claim they have been misled just as he has been, and offer to work together.

Still on Laurieston after the heist, on 21 October the Silent Reapers learn of the Scouring of Outreach through INN newscasts and that the Word of Blake is suspected to be behind it. They are concerned, but feel that they are not immediately affected since most of their contracts are off-the-record, and their MRBC rating was probably low anyways. But General McFaris and his daughter also receive a parcel containing Sakumoto's index finger and a note ordering them to stop searching. At this they order a hasty retreat from Laurieston and relocate to the city of Samarand, the former capital 600 km away and featuring another spaceport, while Anori investigates into three mysterious corpses that arrived at the morgue but never made the news. In the morgue, she and Jim Morgenstern encounter four other men who initially draw guns on them, then mysteriously seem to kill themselves with suicide pills. Their weapons indicate them to be ComStar ROM operatives. Two of the corpses in the morgue show clear marks of having been killed by Sakumoto, confirming them to be two of the unknown attackers; the third has no such marks. At the provisional base in Samarand, Anori finds her father murdered in his office on 27 October. The DropShip O'Cavanaughs Gold arrives two weeks early on 1 November under a false identity and fakes technical problems to be rerouted to the Samarand spaceport, to exfiltrate the Silent Reapers. However, the DropShip is attacked by Hammerhead aerospace fighters and Partisan AA tanks, and the crew has to evacuate over the city in altogether eleven escape pods; Captain O'Cavanaugh manages to move the ship away from the inhabited are and it eventually crashes into a mountain range. Anori McFaris is now the general in command of the Silent Reapers, but feels she cannot trust any unit members who were on Laurieston with her. XO Konstanze Schubert meanwhile delivers a message from their employer, signed by one Apollyon, who demands the data from the Lakegaard Chemicals raid be handed over by the end of the month, or the mercenaries will have defaulted on their contracted mission, but Anori instead concentrates their efforts on locating and rescuing Sakumoto. Juan McFaris' killer meanwhile, under orders from the Word of Blake, resolves to coerce Brantling into sharing the Lakegaard data that he is still trying to decipher.

Back on Capra, Lucas Hammilton tries to find a middle ground to work with both his yakuza contacts and the Sandovals. His contact person with House Sandoval, Hellena Sartras, provides evidence that bank records were expertly forged to indicate House Sandoval paid the Silent Reapers for the Capra mission from one of their accounts; the bank statements for the real account do not list the transaction. However, tracing the money flows back leads nowhere. For a lack of other options they infiltrate the HPG compound. Just as Hammilton reports to Hasiguche, the yakuza leader, that they had found none other than the Word of Blake to be behind the account transactions, the yakuza hideout is overrun. The Silent Reapers' former liaison officer for the attack on the HPG and the capture of the Precentor is leading the attack that decimates the yakuza. Falsely believing Lucas dead, she briefly ignores him which allows him to shoot her. In the aftermath, Lucas is briefly held captive by yakuza bouncer Yuuri and determines he must have been in league with the attackers. A House Sandoval team under Sartras rescues Lucas from captivity, and together they track Yuuri to the secret Word of Blake base. On 1 December they assault and seize the base. Five days later, they openly approach the new ComStar Precentor with proof of the Silent Reapers' innocence and Word of Blake duplicity.

On 6 December, news break of the Word of Blake's supposed nuclear attack against Tharkad. This, combined with the realization that the Lakegaard data is a bioweapon, finally convinces the Silent Reapers to break contract with the Word of Blake and refuse handing over the data. (Brantling had however secretly done this already under pressure, but included a script to hopefully report the location where the file was opened, and then self-delete the data.) When Anori finds out that Brantling had acted suspiciously, she mistakes him for the traitor who also killed her father, and proceeds to beat him and lock him up without telling anyone. When Brantling comes to, the base is being evacuated and under attack by a superior force of 'Mechs and vehicles. He manages to convince Anori of the true traitor's identity.

Three days later, the Silent Reapers have fled to the Kuegrat Mountains with losses, but also have managed to capture one Lyran MechWarrior alive and have received an HPG message from Lucas Hammilton explaining what he found out on Capra. Anori is at a loss why the Word of Blake would go to such lengths to coerce the Silent Reapers when they could have straight up hired them. They are continuously hunted and harried by both Lyran and Word of Blake forces. However, as it turns out the Word of Blake have ironically convinced the Lyran government on Laurieston that the mercenaries are on-planet to deploy a bioweapon, and offered their own troops to the Lyrans as support in hunting them down. Peter Brantling meanwhile meets with his aunt who happens to be a ComStar member with ROM, and the newly installed Precentor on Laurieston. He briefs her fully on all that has happened, and through ComStar they even manage to locate his mother (her sister) who is held as a hostage on Menkalinan. She is however killed in a failed rescue attempt.

The Silent Reapers are whittled down over weeks of continuous pursuit. Just as they are making a stand on 18 January 3067, Lucas Hammilton arrives with the Traumhändler and deploys a company of ComStar-provided BattleMechs to stem the tide. The remains of the Silent Reapers finally evacuate Laurieston aboard the ship with all the salvage from the final fight. Anori finds that Hammilton had pledged their support to ComStar to fight the Word of Blake forthwith, and happily agrees.

On 1 January 3071, Sakumoto, interred in Camp RBMU 105 on Kittery, meets another inmate who introduces himself as Devlin Stone...

Featured Characters[edit]

Featured places[edit]

Featured BattleTech[edit]

'Mechs[edit]

Vehicles[edit]

Battle Armor[edit]

Spacecraft[edit]

Other[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Shrapnel, Issue 8: "Commander's Call"

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