Author’s note: this one is kind of insisting I write it, no matter what I want
to concentrate on. It’s a lot less polished than I normally prefer, and really more of an out-take from Ense Petit Placidam
than anything else, but I might as well run it up the flag-pole and see if anyone salutes....CASTILLO BA-5, ENSENADA
Outside Nuevo Buenos Aires
August 14, 2827 Hammer doesn’t know where she’s going; she’s not sure she cares, as long as it’s away from the room behind her. She can’t even see the hallway clearly through the tears, and she knows her face is red, and that seeing her in a mess like this will probably hurt her professional image in the eyes of any enlisted who see her, but she’s not sure she cares. All she can really see or feel is the churning mass in the pit of her stomach, the nausea and grief and horror and
rage left behind by the imagery she just watched. She can vaguely hear footsteps behind her, and Olivia’s voice saying something, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t heed the words.
Somewhere along the way, she runs into someone. The collision jolts them both, and she looks up to see who she hit. He’s a young Ensenadan lad, wearing Fleet white-over-field-grey, half a head taller than her, vaguely cute in a gangly sort of way... and as he sees the state she’s in, his expression is shifting from surprise to puzzlement to... contempt?
“What’s wrong, Army – did someone steal your dollie?” he smirks.
Her memory never files the next second or two. When she finds she’s stopped moving, the Fleet boy is pinned back against the corridor wall, her forearm across his throat like a bar of battlesteel, and all she can do is keep leaning ever-further into the chokehold and think how, sooner or later, the increasing pressure will collapse his windpipe. And she’s not sure she cares.
“Triss, no!” Liv’s half-tackling her from behind, frantically yanking on her arm to lift the choke-grip, urgently hissing into her ear. “Boss-
chica, lay
off!
He gets the message, dammit!”
Kuznetsov doesn’t recognise the voice she hears, a guttural snarl a wolf would cringe from. “
This ****** -”
“
He’s not the one who needs killing!” her CSO shouts.
Somehow, that reaches her. Still panting, the red haze of murder-fury still fogging her vision, the blonde MechWarrior somehow stops herself increasing the pressure on the boy’s trachea and backs off a centimetre or two to look him over. His eyes are wide and terrified, his face rapidly colouring from lack of air.
“...
gkt ...
grk ...”
Liv’s right. Killing this loudmouthed little cabrón
won’t do anything for Mandy. Her forearm pulls back half a centimeter or so, enough to let air trickle back into the shitheel’s lungs but still keeping him pinned. Gone is the feral growl; now she finds herself in a mote of clarity, an eye in the storm of her turmoil, and her tone is near-clinical. “There’s an old Army saying, Fleetie: ‘It’s a lot harder to get your teeth kicked in if you
keep your ****** mouth shut’. D’you hear there?” she adds mockingly.
The boy nods frantically, still goggle-eyed.
She pushes back from the wall, letting the Fleetie collapse to one knee and start frantically whooping in air. As her vision clears, she sees several others standing a few metres down the corridor, most of them also in Fleet white-over-field-grey; the leaders appear to be a brunette in CPN midnight-blues and a silver-haired man in the field- and pale-grey of Fleet Strike Infantry with Sergeant-Major’s badges on his sleeves. She turns a flat gaze on the Marine. “If you’re going to bring a puppy in here, you need to keep him on a shorter leash.”
“Yes, ma’am!” he barks, nodding crisply.
With the anger and adrenaline fading, Kuznetsov can feel the emptiness of fatigue rushing in to replace it, and she sways a little. Liv catches her by one arm, gently steadying her pilot. “Captain, how about you head back to quarters and get some rest? I’ll bring you some chow.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s... that’s a good idea. Thanks, Liv.”
— * — * — * — * —
The loudmouth massages the bruises already flowering on his throat as Kuznetsov’s form retreats, and he carefully waits until she turns a corner before speaking again. “What the
****** is her problem?”
Olivia Bella’s body was the primary instrument of her profession even before she joined the Union Army, and she’s always taken care to keep it in absolute top condition. The boy’s eyes widen again as she hauls him to his feet, and half a centimetre off the ground to boot, before slamming him back against the wall again with a tooth-rattling
thump. “Her
problem, Midshipman...
Markov, is that she’s the commander of my BattleMech company. And we just finished watching gun-camera footage of Pog troops hauling one of our pilots out of her cockpit, dousing her in inferno gel, and
burning her alive!”
Markov goes grey and goggle-eyed, jaw sagging. The Cylon woman swallows loudly, carefully not meeting Liv’s gaze. The Marine turns a glare on his wayward underling that makes paired PPCs look like laser-pointers.
After a moment or two, Markov looks up, horror and shame warring across his face. “Jesus. I... I ****** up
bad this time, didn’t I, Galindez?”
“
Ya think?” growls the Marine.
It’s the names, and that phrase – and seeing one of the Fleeties beyond the group aiming a trivee camera at the whole tableau – that finally makes things
click in Liv’s mind, explains the nagging sense of
familiarity she’s had about these guys since she saw them. Somehow, she manages not to react to the realisation, but she’s still righteous pissed enough to deliver one last jab before she goes. “I don’t know why you Fleetie ****** are here, but if you’re going to be staying much longer, do yourselves a favour and be
****** invisible until you’re done. Got it?”
— * — * — * — * —
Back at their shared quarters – and trying not to think how many of the other rooms in the company bay are empty – Bella sets her platter on the desk and reaches into the bottom bunk to touch her pilot’s shoulder.
Damn, the Hammer really was
zapped – she barely got her boots off before she laid down! “Boss-
chica, food’s here.”
“Thanks, Liv.” Scrubbing sleep from her eyes with one hand and pushing her threadbare plush rabbit to the back of her bunk with the other, Kuznetsov swings up to sit on the edge of the bunk and accepts the tray Bella offers her before also sitting on the bunk’s edge. The battalion cafeteria actually does decent all-day breakfasts – Bella got her pilot one of the
mixto sandwiches she likes, with apple-and-raisin
blinchiki on the side and
café con leche – and the Captain disposes of her first
blinchik in two bites before her CSO can even reach for one of her own chorizo-bacon-and-egg burritos. “How badly overheated was the Sar-Major over me bracing his guy?”
“Once I told him why you were so worked up? He took the kid aside and gave him a
Marauder-sized boot up the ass. With luck, it’ll
take.”
“He’s lucky you came along, Liv,” Kuznetsov says softly. “I... I really don’t know if I would’ve stopped.
Thank you.”
“
Es nada, muchacha,” Bella returns, gently squeezing her friend’s shoulder with her free hand. “But there
is a ****** huge complication. Did you recognise those guys?”
“I wasn’t exactly running in the green, Liv. What’d I miss?”
“That guy wasn’t actually a Fleetie. He’s an
actor, his name’s Daniil Olivares. From that crime-show
Section Six, about the Fleet cops? Sarah (Twelve) Grantham and Ramón Vostrikov were with him, too – they must be doing some kind of location shoot to cap off the fifth season.”
Kuznetsov’s hand wavers, then slowly lowers her half-finished sandwich back onto the platter. “Oh, ****** me, that was a
civilian I clobbered?”
“And their camera-guys got the whole thing, too,” Bella nods, again squeezing her friend’s shoulder. “Better make the most of that last meal, boss-
chica, because Colonel Féliz is gonna chow down on
both of us when he hears about this. And
not in the fun way.”
