Amphiplex Storage Facilities
Greater Geelong
Brisbane
Taurian Concordat
First Quarter, 3065

Stepping into the dark room, Mark "Maverick" Pike was reminded of his old days as a lone mercenary. The wide open space of the musty room slightly resembled the storage warehouses he had grown accustomed to sleeping in during those earlier years of his life. Looking up to the tall ceiling overhead, he noticed a few species of alien bat-like creatures, probably native inhabitants of this planet. Mark decided to stop looking around and concentrate on the situation at hand. The Strider's Strikers, whom Mark was currently a full time member of, were a relatively small mercenary unit. With less than a regiment under Clan Commander Devon Carns and Inner Sphere Commander Mike Strider, the Strikers had little business in dividing their forces. Yet these were times of political fire, with an interstellar civil war raging in what was now the remnants of the Federated Commonwealth. Cultural interactions fed fuel to these fires, causing unease and mistrust amongst hundreds of peoples, even those far from the disaster of the civil war.

Clan Nova Cat had been trying for years now to gain some trust from its new Inner Sphere allies. The citizens of the Draconis Combine had yet to completely accept the Nova Cats. With a little help from the Combine's Coordinator and products of the integration processes, like the Strider's Strikers themselves, the Warden Clan had begun its road to acceptance.

Despite widespread unease in the Nova Cat realm of the Irece Prefecture, the Strikers had divided their forces four ways. Taking up contract with Davion loyalists, the Clan half of the team under Devon Carns had traveled to Steiner space. The remaining Inner Sphere half had split into three sections, but these were divided unequally. Probing the Steiner resistance under Duo Maxwell's leadership, five lances of the team worked under a private, secret contract. Holden Trumphay, granted his first large scale commanding duty, was the backbone of the Striker defense remaining at the team's base within the Labrea system.

Mike Strider had left to lead a small two-lance team towards the peripheral edge of Liao space while searching for a team known as the Acer's Hueys. The Hueys' old base had been discovered by Striker tank crews in the Labrea system, only adding to local rumors of a hidden lostech spacecraft in the area. Strider, with his command lance and a group of young trainees under lance commander Betty Stalwart, had finally found the Hueys team by travelling throughout the Periphery. This was necessary since the Huey team had gone "rogue" almost 25 years ago, a direct result of their partner team Llana's Breakers having been completely destroyed by unknown forces. The Hueys database history log hinted at employer betrayal, with the Hueys and Breakers conned into accepting patrol contracts that were actually suicide campaigns. After breaking the contract illegally, Hueys' commander Ace Leghorn Esquire had led his team to the Taurian Concordat in an attempt to escape any Combine bounty hunters.