Cowardly attacked in 2nd January 3063 by the Sixth Donegal Guards and Storm´s Metal Thunder in Kikuyu, the Eight Deneb Light Cavalry suffered serious casualties. Although the loss of General Bortman at Godan Base with almost all personnel there, Colonel Jean-Henri de Jeruc managed to face the Storm´s attack at the mountain base of Kelta Ran, rescued some of Godan survivors and retreated to the planet Blue Hole in February 15.
Despise the damages they suffered in the first combats, they inflicted similar losses to both loyalist units in the posterior engagements. Nevertheless, battered and with little more than a regiment size, the unit technicians had to improvise during the flight to rebuild some of their combat ability, like the installation of a C3 slave computer in a Banshee BNC-7S to complete an efficient C3 Assault Lance that lost a member.
After land in Blue Hole, they faced another loyalist unit, the Third Alliance Guards, but with both units believing that one could be crushed by the other, they kept their distance for weeks, exchanging only ranged shots.
Colonel de Jeruc used this time to secretly move his non-combatant personnel and part of his technicians to the coastal city of Port Santos. Using a friendly port warehouse to settle some repair machinery they saved from Kikuyo bases.
When the remnants of the Storm´s reached the world, shattering the balance, Colonel de Jeruc moved to a mobile campaign against both units for months, keeping them constantly off-guard, until 28 May 3064, when the Falcons landed in Blue Hole. Facing a common and powerful new threat, Colonel de Jeruc tried to assist the loyalist units, but they opened fire against his troops.
Furthermore, the 3rd Alliance Guards faced the Turkina Eyrie Cluster and fled to Melissia with less than four companies, and the Storm's Metal Thunder, reinforced by a battalion of the Sixth Donegal Guards that survived the early Falcon attack in Kikuyo, faced the 1st Falcon Swoop Cluster and the Seven Talon cluster, with worst results, where only two operational Storm's mechs could retreat from Blue Hole.
Working into the shadows of the dock warehouses of Port Santos, but with the support and connivance of civilian naval engineers, the 8th DLC technicians' main task was to save anything they could from the battered machines salvaged from the battlefields, providing their mechwarriors with something operational to use against the Falcons.
Their most notable improvisation was in the same Banshee BNC-7S they early modified. Heavily damaged in prior combats, the mech lost its Defiance 1001 ER PPC arm and the TharHes Maxi SRM-6, suffered a total engine failure and his cockpit was badly damaged during the pilot ejection. The damages in the 380 light engine were so extensive that they salvaged almost all of the mech's myomers to use in less damaged units, before they despaired and returned to it in hope to provide another assault machine to their troops.
The crazy idea came from a young technician named Frankson that leaded a group of locals to, somehow, fix a 300 I.C.E. from an old ocean ship into the mech frame, rebuilding almost all of the Endo Steel internal structure with parts of other salvaged mechs during the process.
To provide new myomer and electronics to their project, they salvaged two destroyed Scarabus SCB-9T and used their Triple Strength Myomer, communication electronics and cockpits. The myomer and electronics adaptation work well, but the small Scarabus cockpit did not fit in the space, neither support the system complexity of a machine three times bigger than the Scarabus, which led them to another weird decision: they installed both cockpits into the frame, one to deal with balance, piloting and weaponry and other to deal with communication and to control an Angel ECM unit.
Luckily, some of the original Banshee equipment, like the Poland Main Model A Gauss Rifle and the C3 Slave Computer, survived the wreck with minor damages and, although dismounted of the frame, were not used yet in others repairs.
Unfortunately, the same was not true to the Ramtech 1500Z ER Medium Lasers, but as they had not sufficient space to them and to the Double Heat Sinks they need to deal with their heat without the fusion engine internal heat sinks, the lasers were not useful. They simply returned to the salvaged pile, took two Coventry Five-Tube LRM-5 racks and put it in the place of the mech destroyed lower arms.
Nineteen Ton of Standard Armor and four Double Heat Sinks complete the design. An operational 100 Ton assault machine, powered by an old naval I.C.E. and built with parts of a lot of destroyed others. It was one of the ugliest machines ever built, and, obviously, was nicknamed Frankstein.
The mech made its debut in last July, during a raid against a Falcon depot. Its smoke chimney, appearance and Gauss Rifle firepower bought the seconds of surprise that the raiders needed to overdue the Falcon forces garrisoning the local, but at the loss of their only C3 Master Computer equipped mech.
In early August, only the Falcon's Seventh Talon Cluster remained in the planet, controlling the civilian population and pursuing the battered survivors of the 8th DLC through the continent.
The situation had another turn only when the First Wolf Legion Cluster landed in 7th August. Almost a week later, the few remnants of the 8th DLC joined them in the battlefield against the Falcons, where the Frankstein proved its value another time, conquering the respect of the Wolves' warriors with its ingenuous and inventiveness.
In the end of the same month, the world was firmly in Lyran hands again.
Being a field-modified mech, the Frankstein can't be considered an official design, nor has official variants.
But, after the loss of the C3 Master equipped mech, the C3 slave in the Frankstein became useless. Then they striped it off and put another Ton of Gauss Rifle ammo in its place.
To differ this last configuration from the prior, they create mech designations to them, as a field joke. The C3 slave equipped became the FKS-7C and the last became FKS-7N.
Type/Model: Frankstein FKS-7C
Total Cost: 11.392.000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 2.878 (+144 for C³)
Type/Model: Frankstein FKS-7N
Total Cost: 10.932.000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 2.939