I thought I would post a note about writing "Cold," there's a lot going on in it.
So, Cold Collaboration came about in a lot of happy accidents. When the solicitation went out, I went scrounging for threads I could turn into a story.
The disappearance of the 7th seemed like something I could work with, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to solve a mystery. But once I started digging, and discovered the 305th Assault cluster had been stationed there, I knew I had a story. The Black Crusader had been through hell on Tukayyid, and was now a devout hunter of Spheroids. This had potential.
Craig Reed once said, during a solicitation, you’re on the clock, and he’s right. The first thing you do is look for stories/ideas you haven’t fleshed out yet and see if you can tweak them. Or in my case, resurrect them. I submitted to Jason years ago about a merc captain that mutinies against the commander of “The Green machine,” killed him, and threw him overboard to take over the Battalion. Jason liked it, but kicked it back because it was too cut and dry. The “bad guy” was pure evil, the heroine too shiny, etc. I could never fix it, so that one’s been sitting in my rejected folder for years.
So, I had a hook, and an idea. A mutiny against the commander, to escape the black crusader. Jason tentatively approved, but noted that the black crusade still alive in the sourcebooks, so he was curious how I was going to write it. So was I, at this point… ;-)
Bensinger is an icy world, but I didn’t want to make it hoth- my very FIRST rejected story, in fact, treated it like Hoth (same regiment, the 7th, totally different story that is as dead as latin) But I didn’t want to go that route this time. So, I aimed for Canada-ish, specifically, since I’ve stopped at the Gander airport, Newfoundland. I looked up slang and decided to write it in.
Now I needed a protagonist- she started to form, based kinda on the old story, but I had this idea of her hiding who she was through the slang terms. I was looking through the TRO:3025 to decide what Mech the lead should pilot, and I came across Paula and her Heartbreaker, and I decided I wanted to use her. I held a sweet spot for her when the TRO came out, way back when, and I decided to see if I could work her in. She disappeared after the orginal merc handbook, which I took as a good sign, though that took a lot of research through all the Wilson’s Hussar’s stuff.
I wrote the basic sketch and then started the story while on leave, visiting my family in Missouri; I wrote over half of it, though, in two days while sitting in a bar/coffeehouse in Dekalb, Illinois. One of those nights was open mic night, and that was kinda UNREAL. There was some decent acts, one HORRIFIC one, and a badass on bagpipes in a kilt. But that’s where the story came together.
I worked hard on the language, harder than I ever had- I’ve got a few clan stories in production (one I’ve sent in) and it’s amazing what you can do with language, even without using contractions. But I –really- wanted to hammer home Paula’s choices, and language became a way to show it: if you look, you’ll see it: there’s a point in the story when she’s still using slang, and then she’s not.
A moment about the time period before I discuss Bouncer. If people point to “the Galtor Campaign” as the end of the 3rd SW, this is quite possibly one of the last battles of the Succession Wars. Everything about this is… old. The original merc handbook discusses how MechWarriors are often sub-contractors, since they own their own BattleMechs, even MechWarriors in line regiments can be independent contractors, according to the merc book and the original roleplaying game. Units hired owners, in those days; this is gone by, oh, 3055, the new merc handbook and certainly by, say, FM: Mercenaries where the Black Cobras discuss how they will add a command lance when they can “buy” more Mechs. That wasn’t DONE in the Succession Wars. The old merc handbook also discussed why not paying your admin costs, your overhead, was bad, and I made a point of putting it in there about pay: yes, Paula owns a farm and a business on the side, but she’s not a charity, and it’s a mutiny point (just like the rules point out) The interlocks haven’t been seen since “Far Country,” I believe, but that story is set in nearly the same time period: I wanted to bring that back just to help place this as “pre-invasion technology.” This is the end of an era.
Which brings me to Bouncer. I do try to listen to my editor, and when he said “too black hat,” about the dead story, I listen. So, I was stuck to make Bouncer not fully wrong- to do this, I made hime out of touch. In 3025, 3049 even, against a Great House, he would have been making the right call. A BRILLIANT call. In another time, another place, this would have been the escape of a lifetime; hell, it would’ve made a great FASA-era RPG scenario. But this is a Clan-held world, and the Black Crusader is unlike anyone Bouncer has ever dealt with, and he doesn’t get that.
It was a hard line to walk, getting him sympathetic enough, and making Paula not pure, either. She’s WRONG. No one is pure good or bad in this story- even the Black Crusader isn’t pure evil, she’s an officer who’s sanity snapped on Tukkayyid.
Hmm, final notes: I’m a huge Alpha Strike fan, so I tried to make the final battle replayable in AS as best as I could. I assume (I do NOT know) the new re-seen BattleMechs may end up in a new lance pack or something, but really, other than the Marauder and “Heartbreaker,” you can get all the other Mechs in lance-packs and recreate the battle. Timbiki really does make whiskey, but no one ever mentions that; the disabling of the Mauler’s ejection seat is a direct result of the fluff based on the old cartoon; “Chase” was just supposed to be a placeholder name (I got it from a kid’s show my boys were watching while I typed) but it seemed cool enough to keep, and that’s about it? If I think of anything else, I’ll add a note.
But, overall, this was a tough story to try and write, to make it enjoyable to you, the reader, and to keep it very much a product of a by-gone era. I hope you enjoyed it!