Beating The Odds

[Middcore]

Prologue: Joyride

Calseraigne
The Free Worlds League
3027

Mathieu adjusted his ill-fitting breather mask and glared daggers at his brother. Not that Sacha could see his look of disgust he knew, not through Mathieu’s mask and goggles, his own goggles, and the clouds of dust blowing into the battered hovercar’s open windows. And not that Sacha was paying any attention to him, anyway. It was just as well. When he got like this a quick glance was often followed by a quick fist. So Mathieu took some satisfaction in the opportunity to stare at his brother and think about the contempt he really felt for him. Still, it was poor compensation for being dragged along on another one of Sacha’s pointless, moping, joyrides. Nothing ever changed.

The ancient hovercar had already long since left behind the Rust, the graveyard of fishing boats left beached and then abandoned by the retreat of the Sablier Sea. The sea had once provided the livelihoods of families like theirs, and many generations before them. Now Mathieu and Sacha’s grandfather could tell stories about working as a fisherman when he was a young man, only a few standard years older than they were now, but he was one of the oldest people in their village. When they were young boys Mathieu and Sacha had spent countless hours playing on and around the Rust, but even at an early age Mathieu had started to see how different he and his older brother were. For Sacha, the hulks were never anything more than an opportunity to physically challenge himself, miniature mountains to be scaled and creaking obstacle courses to be negotiated. As Mathieu explored the wrecks his eyes started little by little to see the purpose of things, the purpose they had once served for the people who had lived on the shores of the Sablier before him, had started to puzzle out the mysteries of mechanical function in engine rooms and maneuvering hydro-jets and cranes for manipulating fishing nets. By the time he was ten, he had progressed from fascination with broken things to taking apart working ones. At first when he tried to put them back together they hadn’t worked anymore, and the beatings he’s received from his father then had dampened his enthusiasm, but only temporarily. Now when he took something apart and put it back together, it not only worked, it worked better than before. Radios, old noteputers, flatscreens, food heaters.

That, Mathieu told himself, was why he had a future, and why his brother, like most of the others in their village, did not.

Mathieu’s stomach lurched into his throat as the hovercar cleared the lip of a dune. “Sacha,” he shouted over the howl of the fans, “How far out are we going?” Once again his brother showed no sign of even being aware of his presence, even though it was Sacha who had insisted Mathieu come along..

Mathieu couldn’t remember being this far out into the salt for years. What reason was there to come out this far? He wasn’t entirely sure there hadn’t still been some water here when he had been a child. Many kilometers away, in the deepest depressions of what had once been the sea floor, brackish remnants where nothing lived still lingered. Soon even that might be gone, if the Marquis and his friends from off-world had their way. When the old Marquis had died, people in Mathieu’s village had taken little notice. When word had reached them that the new Marquis, the nephew of the old one, had arrived on Calseraigne, they had taken even less. Generations of Marquesses had come and gone and life in the villages along the receding shores of the Sablier had changed little.

But this new Marquis was different. He had ideas, ideas like building a dam where the Gagnon River joined the Sablier, husbanding the Gagnon’s dwindling flow to save the northern lobe of the sea. As for the southern part, where Mathieu’s family had lived for centuries? A necessary sacrifice, too far gone to save. Supposedly, a corporation from off-world  wanted to “explore” the salt flats that had been the southern half of the Sablier for natural resources. Some of the people in Mathieu’s village welcomed the news, thinking it would finally bring jobs to replace fishing. Others were less optimistic. Mathieu didn’t care either way because he didn’t plan on staying around long enough to see what would happen. He was going to find a way out.

That is, if Sacha didn’t get them both killed first. Reckless driving aside, they were a good half a local hour out from the village now, it was getting late in the day, and it looked to Mathieu like a dust storm was brewing. Nobody could predict with certainty when one would whip up, and nobody could predict with certainty when one would subside. They had goggles and breathers, they could ride it out if they had to… probably. The real threat of the dust storms was the lung diseases that were a fact of life for many of the population on what had once been the Sablier’s shores. Getting killed by actually being out in the storm…well, it was possible, but it wasn’t easy. Unless you were stupid. Which was another way of saying “Unless you were Sacha.”

“Sacha…” Mathieu’s shout turned into a cry of surprise as the hovercar abruptly decelerated, and he barely had time to throw out his hands to prevent a rib-cracking impact against the dashboard.

He glared at his brother once again, waiting. Here it comes, he thought.

Sacha continued to give every sign of ignoring him, staring straight ahead through the scratched and dirty windshield, until at last he removed his filter mask and started to speak. “She told me it’s over, Mathieu.”

Mathieu gritted his teeth and waited, but there was only the sound of the winds whipping across the dunes. Finally he removed his own mask. “Who told you, Sacha?” He knew the answer, but apparently getting this over with before nightfall was going to require him to do some prompting.

“Vivien,” his brother replied, still staring straight ahead. “She said she didn’t want to see me anymore.” Sacha’s body convulsed in a bitter laugh, his mouth twisted into a sneer. “What a ****** stupid thing to say. There aren’t more than a couple hundred people in the village. She’ll still see me every day!”

Mathieu looked away and slumped back against his seat. This was what passed for witty insight from his older brother. She won’t see you every day if she gets out, you fool! Mathieu didn’t share his brother’s attraction to Vivien. She was too delicate, not his type. But she was one of the few of the younger generation who had grown up with Mathieu and Sacha that he respected. She wanted to be a doctor. Like him, she had ambitions beyond the confines of their dusty, decaying village. Which meant that her being with someone like Sacha had never made any sense; the end of their relationship had been, from Mathieu’s point of view, inevitable, but he had still dreaded it because he knew that it meant he would be dragged along on an expedition like this one.

Mathieu loved his brother. He swore to himself that he did. But every time he was forced to bear witness to one of Sacha’s bouts of self-pity, he loved him less. What made Mathieu furious wasn’t that Sacha was sad over the loss of the girl, but that he would never understand why he had lost her, would never find motivation in it to become a better man, to set his sights on something beyond the dunes and salt flats of the dying sea.

There was a gurgling sound. Mathieu glanced over and found that his brother had produced a bottle of liquor from somewhere. He groaned to himself. We’re going to be out here all night.

He slumped in the hovercar’s lumpy, torn seat and closed his eyes. The only sound was the wind and the gurgling from Sacha’s bottle. And Mathieu’s own racing, looping thoughts.

Things had to change. Things would change. He just had to find a way out.

[Lazarus Sinn]

Tagged

[Daryk]

Perhaps he should ask Vivien what her plan for escape is? ???

[snakespinner]

tagged

[Middcore]

Part I

“All politics are local.”
-Variously attributed

Chapter 1: Easy Money

Calseraigne
The Free Worlds League
3027

Kit Söderlund raised one hand to shield her eyes as she walked out of the cavernous maintenance bay and emerged into the light. Decades ago the outpost which the Black Kats had taken over as their base for the duration on their contract on Calseraigne had actually been situated on the shores of the Sablier Sea, and the bay which now housed the mercenary unit’s war machines had been used to conduct maintenance on boats out of the weather - a faint water line was still visible on its interior walls. Before her, through a gap in the base’s ferrocrete fortifications that had allowed the militia craft to float directly in, a dry gray-gold expanse blurred out to the horizon. The Sablier was long gone from here and possibly on its way to being gone completely, and the militia saw no purpose in patrolling the waste left behind, leaving the outpost to be battered by the dust storms that occasionally blew in from the salt flats until the Kats had arrived a few weeks before.

Dust storms and climate change weren’t problems you could solve with BattleMechs. So what are we doing here, anyway? Kit wondered to herself.

Just outside dusty, cracked ferrocrete walls, four of the unit’s six BattleMechs stood in line. Two more, plus the unit’s pair of light armored vehicles, remained inside the hangar behind her. She glanced up at the weathered guard tower on the wall, where one of the unit’s squad of infantry threw her a wave - the Kats weren’t much for salutes - before going back to staring boredly at the horizon. Kit searched her memory for the young man’s name, ashamed of herself for already losing track of who was who when the unit boasted no more than a couple dozen people on its whole roster. Rask. Curtis Rask. That was it.

Kit halted at the feet of her Vindicator. Like the other machines, the Mech bore the Kats’ insignia of an arch-backed hissing feline, but it had been newly painted in the blue, purple, and silver colors of the Everett family, hereditary Marquises of Calseraigne since an Everett had led the Free Worlds League’s effort to wrest the planet away from House Liao more than a century ago - the last time, to Kit’s knowledge, the world had seen any armed conflict. The current Marquis, Guillaume Everett, was the Kats’ employer, although neither Kit or anybody else in the unit had ever met the man. Their contract had been negotiated by an intermediary, and in the weeks since their arrival they had still never laid eyes on him in person. When the Marquis wasn’t in the capital city doing important things with the planetary government, hereditary noble things that Kit couldn’t imagine and didn’t care to imagine, he rarely left the grounds of his estate on the banks of the Gagnon river that fed what was left of the northern sea.

But yesterday, a member of the Marquis’s household guard had arrived at the Kats’ outpost and informed Kit that the nobleman was requesting she assemble a lance to escort him on a vaguely-explained “expedition” the following day.

This was an occasion that demanded the Kats look their best. Fortunately, the unit’s support team had already been hard at work on that front, if only for lack of anything else to do.

The Vindicator weighed in at forty-five tons, putting it towards the lower end of the medium class of BattleMechs. It had spindly limbs, the right arm ending in the barrel of a particle-projection cannon, a blocky chest, and a head which slightly resembled an infantryman's helmet and gas mask on a gigantic scale. Stenciled beneath cockpit viewports that formed the visor of the “helmet,” Kit read: CPT. K. Söderlund - “JINX”

“How’s it look, boss?” Sid Norris’s voice was full of his usual puppy-like enthusiasm. The young tech’s endless supply of energy made Kit feel older than her twenty-seven years, but not as old as the inscription below her ‘Mech’s cockpit. The callsign she had more or less embraced; she had heard plenty less flattering. Seeing the rank of captain attached to her name still made her uneasy, even if in theory it made sense for her as the commander of what was now a company-strength unit, at least on paper. If you didn’t look at the paper too closely.

Kit glanced back at Norris as he reached the top of the ramp, then back up at her ‘Mech. “Looks good, Sid. Really good.”

“Thanks, boss.” The young tech beamed, but then his face clouded with concern. “The thing is, the facilities here… they’re not fit for doing much more than painting, I’m afraid. If you ever got into a real scrap, I don’t know how we’d do proper repairs.”

Kit sighed. “I know, Sid, I know. But the only real facilities on the planet belong to the militia, and they seem to act like they’re doing us a favor squat in this moldy old place. Anyway,” she said, smiling at the tech to try to cheer them both up, “I don’t think there’s much chance of us getting in any real scraps today.” She eyed the Vindicator again. “You really did do a nice job. Make sure I tell the rest of the support team I said so. The colors are a little flashy, maybe, but we should probably get around to picking some of our own someday. Better for business.”

“And what does business look like today?” said Norris. “If you don’t mind my asking, er, Captain.”

Kit’s forehead creased in a frown, and not just because of Norris’s attempt at military formality, but she forced her face back into the cheerful mask. “Parade colors for parade duty, more or less,” she answered. “Or maybe honor guard would be a better way to describe it?”

Or maybe the best way to describe it is that we’re going to use our pretty paint jobs to intimidate some desperate, impoverished civilians.

She kept that part to herself. She was a captain now, officially, the Black Kats were a real unit, almost, and expressing those types of doubts and complaints to the enlisted ranks wouldn’t do.

But what the hell are we doing here, anyway?

***

“Anyone want to explain to me why people would be so determined to keep living here?” Ellie Jarvis was constitutionally incapable of staying quiet for more than five minutes at a stretch. As CO, Kit supposed she was supposed to tell her lancemate to clear comms, but there didn’t seem to be much need for being so hard-assed considering how unlikely it was they would encounter any actual danger on this “mission.” That left Kit with the problem of coming up with an answer to Jarvis’s question.

Kit had left the planet of her birth before she was a teenager, had left Galatea for the first time as a tech in a mercenary unit before she hit twenty, and though she had always returned to Galatea between contracts she didn’t consider the Mercenary’s Star home. She couldn’t really imagine what “home” meant to people who had lived not just in the same world but in the same village for their entire lives. “You’re asking the wrong people, Siren,” she said. “Why ask a bunch of mercs? Doesn’t the song say ‘Home is the regiment,’ or something like that?”

“Not my style of music,” Jarvis scoffed.

“Captain,” Landry Tucker broke in, “I just want to make sure I understand… there’s no chance we pull a trigger today? I mean, we’re just showing the flag, right?” That was Tucker to a tee: earnest, to the point, conscientious. Far too conscientious and by the book, it seemed to Kit, for it to make any sense for him to end up in a small-time mercenary outfit, but he wasn’t the only member of the unit whose past Kit had seen no need to explore.

Kit flicked her gaze over the BattleMaster 'Mech marching in the center of their formation, just ahead and to the right of her Vindicator. She was listening to her lance’s chatter on one comms channel while monitoring a separate frequency shared only between her and the BattleMaster’s pilot, the Marquis Guillaume Everett. The Marquis had greeted her when her lance had met up with his machine, sounding utterly relaxed, but had said nothing since.

“Can’t see a chance, Tuck,” she answered, trying to sound just as unconcerned. “Not unless the civvies were a threat to our employer… and I can’t see any way they could be.” In truth, she wasn’t quite as confident as she was trying to sound. Using fully armed BattleMechs to “show the flag” to discontented civilians had the potential to result in the type of incident that could ruin a fledgling mercenary outfit’s reputation… or haunt a MechWarrior.

The five BattleMechs - Kit’s lance, plus the Marquis’s BattleMaster - were plodding across what had once been the southern sea floor. Several standard months before the Kats’ arrival on the planet, a kilometers-wide dam had been completed at the hourglass neck where the Gagnon River met the Sablier. The sea as a whole, it had been decided, was beyond saving, but by diverting what remained of the Gangnon’s flow into the northern lobe, it could be preserved at the expense of the southern. And in return for picking up the tab for the construction of the dam, Leyda Resource Ventures Interstellar, a corporation from the nearby Duchy of Andurien, would gain exclusive rights to explore thousands of square kilometers of what had once been the bed of the southern sea. The whole project, or so Kit was told, had been masterminded by the Marquis himself, set into motion shortly after he had returned to Calseraigne following the death of his father. The result, in theory, would be the environmental and economic salvation of a part of the planet that had been sliding into oblivion for decades. Truly an ambitious and noble undertaking. Or maybe the new Marquis simply wanted to restore the seafront views from his estate, situated on what had once been the shores of the northern Sablier and was now several kilometers removed. Who knew how nobles thought?

Whatever the Marquis’s motivations, not everyone saw him as a savior. Many of the remaining residents of the decaying villages on the banks of the southern Sablier objected fiercely to bring part of the part sacrificed for the sake of the whole. Some, mostly younger people and families, had been placated by the promise of temporary accommodation at the refugee camps near the Marquis’s estate, followed by new homes with better conditions and better work in the revitalized communities on the northern shores, all paid for by LRVI and a substantial donation from the Marquis's personal fortune. Others, mostly older, refused. They were apparently determined to end their lives in the same place where they had begun, where their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had lived and died before them, even if staying meant that end would probably come much sooner than it needed to. Home meant something to some people it would never mean to Kit.

And so that was how the Kats found themselves accompanying their employer on an expedition to a village on the edge of the waste to apparently serve an eviction notice, more or less. To the best of Kit’s limited understanding, the Marquis was within his lawful rights under the neo-feudal system that prevailed to a greater extent in all five of the Inner Sphere’s five Successor States, partially as a way to handle the challenges of governing stellar empires stretched across hundreds of worlds light-years apart and partially as a consequence of centuries of warfare.

That didn’t make being a part of it feel any better to Kit, but when you were at the Kats’ level of the mercenary trade, you couldn’t afford to have qualms. The Eridani Light Horse could uphold the traditions and ideals of the Star League Defense Force. The Kats’ goals were less ambitious: string together contracts and survive, slowly grow and build a reputation if possible. The fact they had managed to do it for two years meant that they were defying the odds: Kit knew the statistics said more than half of all new mercenary commands were destroyed or disbanded within one standard year of founding. So when the Kats’ had completed their contract serving as a training cadre to the local militia on the world of Lurgatan further coreward along the League’s Liao border and word had reached them the Marquis of Calseraigne was looking for a small mercenary unit to “enhance security,” Kit had signed on without too much thought. It was a contract, and nearby, and not obviously suicidal.

So off they went: Kit in her Vindicator, Tucker’s Blackjack, Jarvis’s Wasp, Ehud “Lefty” Maier in an Enforcer, and in the center of the loose wedge formation the Marquis himself in the BattleMaster. The nobleman could pilot a ‘Mech. That was one thing Kit could add to the short list of things she knew about her employer. She eyed the Marquis’s machine once again. It was painted in the same colors as her lance, but with the Everett family crest and the eagle emblem of the Free Worlds League added. Up close it looked factory-fresh, pristine in a way that the Kats’ battle-weary machines never would, even with their fresh coat of paint. She couldn’t help but think there was something awkward in the assault-class ‘Mech’s movements, though. Skilled, experienced MechWarriors who were well attuned to their ‘Mechs through the neurohelmet interface had a way of imparting a grace to their machines. Kit knew she was a long way from being at that level herself, but she had seen enough true expert ‘Mech jocks to know from the way the BattleMaster plodded that its pilot was inexperienced. Not that it was likely to matter. Follow the little lordling around, look pretty, maybe scare some civilians, Kit thought to herself. There’s much worse things we could be asked to do. Easy money.

They had almost reached the village now. Kit could see a dozen or so dilapidated, dusty buildings a few hundred meters ahead, although from what she had seen of the region’s architecture she knew that half or more of the town might be embedded in the ground out of view, dating back to when tropical storms were a regular occurance. She could see human figures standing on some of the tilting rooftops, staring at the quintet of BattleMechs as they approached. The BattleMaster shuffled to a halt. “Thank you, Captain,” said the Marquis’s voice in her ear. “This will do.”

The mercenary lance came to a stop in a ragged line abreast on either side of the Marquis’s ‘Mech. Kit activated her microphone. “Um, my lord… why exactly are we here?”

“I am here to talk to these people. My people.” The nobleman sounded amused. “You are here because the commander of my guard insisted I not go anywhere near this place without a BattleMech escort. He neglected to extract a promise from me to stay inside a ‘Mech myself.”

Kit blinked. “I’m sorry, sir… er, my lord,” she ventured, “But if our mission on this trip was supposed to be to ensure your safety…”

“That will do, Captain,” the Marquis replied. “If you and your lance would wait here, please…” As Kit watched, the BattleMaster’s cockpit canopy opened and a figure in coveralls began to climb down. Hell, Kit observed, He didn’t even bother to put on a cooling vest.

Static crackled in Kit’s other ear. “Boss,” came Siren’s voice on the Kats’ frequency, “What exactly is going on here?”

“Not exactly sure myself,” Kit said, as she watched the Marquis reach the surface of the dry seabed and begin walking off in the direction of the village. “Looks like our employer wants to go have a chat.”

Tucker’s anxious voice in counterpoint to Jarvis’s chirp. “Is that really such a good idea?”

Kit shrugged slightly to herself, as much as the bulky neurohelmet on her shoulders would allow. “He seems pretty confident about it.”

Finally, “Lefty” Maier, as usual silent until the moment he felt the need to make a cryptic interjection others rarely understood: “Let not him that girdeth on his armor boast himself as he that putteth it off,” the Enforcer pilot intoned.

“Lefty,” said Jarvis, with audible exasperation, “What does that mean?”

Kit sighed. “Not our job to second-guess our employers, or nobles.” She slumped in the Vindicator’s cockpit and watched as the figure of the Marquis strode towards the village.

[Middcore]

That's right, I'm back with the same shit but different! A few notes:

-This is a continuation of the story of the main protagonist from most of my previous fanfics (links in signature if you haven't read them), though it's not necessary to be familiar with what happened in those to follow this story.

-I wanted to stretch myself a bit by trying some things in terms of multiple POV and somewhat more intricate plotting compared to my previous fanfics. You can be the judge in the end how successful the experiment was.

-This project is mostly complete, with a few final chapters yet to be written but I have a clear vision of the conclusion (finally). I decided to start posting it as motivation to force myself to actually get it done.

-My goal is to post at least one and hopefully two installments per week.

-The total length here will be over 40,000 words, which pushes it over the upper limit of novella and into actual novel territory according to some classifications, not that it matters what it's called. Just so you know what you're in for.

I hope people enjoy it, and if do are please drop a comment to let me know, it really does mean a lot.
 

[Sir Chaos]

-This is a continuation of the story of the main protagonist from most of my previous fanfics (links in signature if you haven't read them), though it's not necessary to be familiar with what happened in those to follow this story.

Oooh... now I realize why Kit felt familiar. I look forward to seeing how things go for her.

[Daryk]

So far so good!  :thumbsup:

[Lazarus Sinn]

i have not read your other works, but I do like this one so far.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

That's right, I'm back with the same shit but different! A few notes:

-This is a continuation of the story of the main protagonist from most of my previous fanfics (links in signature if you haven't read them), though it's not necessary to be familiar with what happened in those to follow this story.

-I wanted to stretch myself a bit by trying some things in terms of multiple POV and somewhat more intricate plotting compared to my previous fanfics. You can be the judge in the end how successful the experiment was.

-This project is mostly complete, with a few final chapters yet to be written but I have a clear vision of the conclusion (finally). I decided to start posting it as motivation to force myself to actually get it done.

-My goal is to post at least one and hopefully two installments per week.

-The total length here will be over 40,000 words, which pushes it over the upper limit of novella and into actual novel territory according to some classifications, not that it matters what it's called. Just so you know what you're in for.

I hope people enjoy it, and if do are please drop a comment to let me know, it really does mean a lot.

The unit has grown. It used to be just a lance + a Harrasser, now it's more a short company. Did they hire a couple owner-operators? I assume they picked up some decent light armor somewhere(APCs?), maybe even Atzenbrugg where we last saw them. Harrasser isn't exactly what I'd consider armored.

[Dave Talley]

Tag!

[mikecj]

TAG'd.

[Middcore]

Chapter 2: Shindig

“You’re enjoying that, aren’t you?” Kit shot a sideways glare at her XO.

Cedric Smythe grinned back at her but gave no response at first, instead seeming to pause and listen to the sound of his spurs on the polished floor of the hallway that had a ceiling twice Kit’s height. Since the Kats had no dress uniform, Smythe had outfitted himself for the occasion in his old AFFS dress greens, with the elaborate Davion sunburst layer that usually covered almost half the wearer’s torso removed but the Deneb Light Cavalry insignia still in place… and with the decorative spurs favored by Federated Suns MechWarriors still on the boots. Kit was sure he was going out of his way to exaggerate the scraping and clanking on the marble and exotic wood paneling of the Marquis’s mansion, and it was doing nothing to improve her mood.

“Hey kid,” Smythe responded. Kit was relieved that Smythe hadn’t felt the need to start calling her “Captain” all the time, at least in private. “I’m just…”

Kit rolled her eyes. “Just a hick from the outback, right.” If she had a C-bill for every time she had heard Smythe describe himself this way, she was sure she would have enough to buy a new BattleMech.

Smythe grinned wider and nodded. “Right. So you’re prob’ly thinkin’ I should be… overawed by all these swank surroundings, right? Ooh’in’ and ahh’in’? No, don’t deny it. But the fact is my upbringin’ is the reason I’m not impressed. Every Baron or Count in the Outback builds himself a place like this, and the more dirt-poor the landhold, the shinier the shack.” Smythe cracked his knuckles behind his shaved head. “So no point gettin’ a rod up your ass about it, chances are there’ll be enough folks here with that affliction.”

Kit scowled. “Laugh it up, Smitty. You don’t have to be the face of the unit.”

Smythe shrugged. “Better your face than mine, anyway.”

There was a gilded-frame mirror the size of a small hovercar on the wall, and Kit stopped to examine her reflection. Unlike Smythe, she had never served in a Great House military, and so she didn’t even have an old uniform to fall back on. When she had received the invitation to attend this reception celebrating the completion of the dam across the Sablier, she had experienced a moment of panic. She and Ellie Jarvis had made a shopping trip in the capital to find her clothes for the occasion. They had settled on what Jarvis called a “military-inspired” look consisting of a smoke-gray buttoned blouse and trousers, midnight blue bolero-style jacket with faux-epaulet tabs at the shoulders, and, to Kit’s dismay, knee-high boots with a two-inch heel that Ellie had talked her into on the basis that adding height to her slight frame would “give her more confidence.” Kit didn’t think tripping and doing a face-plant in front of the assembled dignitaries would be good for her confidence. The subdued hues of the ensemble meant that the only color which stood out was from the red in her hair. It was not an outfit designed to attract attention, and Kit was fine with that. Although we should probably at least get some unit patches made, she thought to herself as she smoothed the outfit for the hundredth time.

“You look good, kid,” said Smythe, with a quiet earnestness she heard from him only rarely.

Kit sighed. “Ellie picked basically everything.”

“What’s wrong with that? Siren’s about as fashionable as they come, for a ‘Mech jock.” In fact, being a mercenary MechWarrior sometimes seemed like it was only a stepping stone for Ellie Jarvis in her plans for a more glamorous career as a tri-vid star or something.

“Yeah, but Ellie’s hair has been three different colors since we got here, and none of them occur in nature.” Smythe laughed and Kit turned back to him with a grimace. “I guess I can’t delay it any longer, can I?”

They continued their walk down the hallway and a new, terrifying thought made her curse out loud. Smythe shot her a questioning look. “Jesus, Smitty,” she said, “You don’t think they’re going to… announce us, do you?”

***

To Kit’s relief, there was not, in reality, a butler announcing each illustrious guest who entered the mansion’s grand ballroom. In fact, hardly anyone seemed to pay any attention to her at all.

She managed one conversation with an executive from one of the planet’s leading import/export guilds which lasted all of two minutes before succumbing to the total boredom of both parties. When that two minutes was up she turned to discover that she had lost track of Smythe, damn him. She eyed the gathering from the edge of the room. The men mainly wore suits, some with tails and waistcoats. The women were mostly wearing gowns in a riot of shimmering colors which to Kit, no judge of fashion, all seemed to somehow blend together even though they would fail as camouflage among the flora of any world Kit had ever visited. She couldn’t see Smythe anywhere, although she occasionally thought she could hear the clank of his spurs on the marble, over the din of stuffy conversations and fake laughter and the music played by a string quartet that would finish one tune and then play another which seemed to her to sound exactly the same.

She found herself wondering, just like she had the last time she answered a summons from the Marquis, why exactly she was even there. On the positive side, there truly didn’t seem to be any possible way she would end up shooting anyone this time. On the other hand, she figured that there was a much greater chance she would end up wishing someone would shoot her instead.

She finished a glass of too-sweet champagne and had just plucked a second off a tray carried by a passing waiter when a voice from just outside her peripheral vision startled her.

“You must be Captain Söderlund.”

Kit whirled, feeling exposed and vulnerable at her lost anonymity as if a surprise attack had stripped off a couple tons of armor plate. The woman who had spoken to her had mahogany skin and richly textured hair. She looked about Kit’s age, and was approximately Kit’s height but with a frame that was all honed, lean muscle. She wore immaculately pressed white and purple that Kit recognized as the Free Worlds League Military dress uniform, although without any visible unit insignia. The Calseraigne Garde Planétaire wore dark blue uniform jackets with white trousers.

“How did you know?” Kit managed.

The other woman smiled wryly. “Apart from me, you’re the only woman here not wearing a gown or jewelry.” She extended her hand. “Lieutenant Naila Benichou.”

“I didn’t know there were any regular FWLM personnel on the planet,” Kit said, shaking Benichou’s hand tentatively.

“I apologize that we haven’t had a chance to meet sooner,” Benichou responded. “I’ve been posted to Calseraigne as a special military advisor to the planetary government. The Marquis has been pushing the Deputies to strengthen the planet’s defenses, as I’m sure you know.” Kit nodded even though she didn’t know any such thing. “To be quite honest with you though, I spend more of my time in a sim pod trying to stay sharp than anything else.”

Kit suddenly felt as engaged as she had all evening. “Sim pods?”

Benichou nodded. “I think that’s half the reason I ended up here, actually. The government ordered two, with the idea they would screen potential MechWarrior candidates from the Gee Pee… sorry, the Garde Planétaire… to explore whether it would be advisable to actually try to procure some ‘Mechs. A symbolic political move more than anything. They’re not academy-grade pods, but good enough you don’t feel like you’re in an arcade.”

Kit thought about the state of the simulators at the only academy she had ever been to, about the arcades on Galatea she had frequented as a teenager, and took a drink of her champagne in an effort to conceal her flush of embarrassment. “I guess I should visit sometime,” she said.

“You should!” Benichou replied brightly. “What do you pilot? To be quite honest with you, when I heard your unit had arrived on-planet I tried to get a dossier on you - thought it was part of my job, if you understand - but…” Benichou paused awkwardly. “...the information the Liaison Bureau had from the MRB was pretty sparse.”

For a moment Kit wondered if Benichou was trying to insult her by rubbing her face in what a two-bit, no-rep outfit the Kats were, but dismissed that as her own insecurity talking. No surprise the Mercenary Review Board’s dossier on the Kats was slim. If Benichou had searched for info on Kit herself, however, she probably would have found old press reports from Galatea, during the brief period when she was one of the most popular curiosities of the Mercenary’s Star. Kit hoped she hadn’t.

“I pilot a Vindicator,” Kit said in answer to Benichou’s question, trying not to wince. She knew that her ‘Mech, workhorse of House Liao, was not highly regarded by many MechWarriors outside Capellan space, especially by those from Liao’s traditional enemies in the League or Federated Suns.

“Tough old hunks of junk!” Benichou said, but with genuine enthusiasm rather than sarcasm. “Not to be underestimated.”

“You’ve fought one a time or two then?” Kit asked.

Now it was Benichou’s turn to wince. “Not personally. Only what I was told, by my aunt. Her words, that hunk of junk thing, I hope you weren’t offended.”

Kit shook her head. “Wasn’t like I exactly picked it, anyway,” she said. Fell ass-backwards into the cockpit would be closer to the truth. “A ‘Mech is a ‘Mech.”

Benichou nodded once more, glanced around the room, and smoothed her uniform. “To tell the truth, I haven’t fought any Vindicators or anything else, either, “ she said with barely-suppressed bitterness. Kit didn’t know what she was supposed to do with this information, but Benichou saved her from having to think of a response. “What about you? Seen any action?”

When Kit met the Lieutenant’s gaze again there was an anxiousness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. In her mind’s eye Kit saw a tank crewman putting a gun to his own head as he burned; a Marauder heavy ‘Mech stalking down a city street like a prehistoric reptilian apex predator; other memories she avoided conjuring up except when her nightmares gave her no choice. She blinked and took another sip of her champagne. “A little,” she managed. “Nothing to brag about.” A truthful answer, but she had no idea if it was the type of answer Benichou was looking for. She needed to change the subject. “And what’s your ride?” Kit felt quite comfortable talking about BattleMechs, if not about actually fighting in them.

“My family machine is a Wolverine,” Benichou said with a smile of pride that quickly faded. “However, I… wasn’t able to bring it with me when I was assigned here.” Kit tried not to wince; all MechWarriors dreaded finding themselves “Dispossessed” - left without a BattleMech pilot and therefore stripped of purpose and status. She mentally berated herself for managing to find a way to hit a sore point with the only person who had been friendly with her all evening.

Benichou fixed Kit with her intense gaze again. “Captain, let me ask you your professional opinion. The Marquis and the Deputies have been at odds over strengthening the GP. The Marquis hired your unit personally to enhance the planetary defenses.” Is that what he hired us for? Kit wondered to herself. “But aside from the political tensions, the biggest threat to peace here seems to be the holdouts in the southern sea zone, which isn’t saying much,” Benichou went on. “What do you think the chances are of any actual fighting happening here?”

Blake’s blood, Kit thought, It’s like she actually looks up to me! A House military officer, looking up to her. Kit was suddenly struck by what a strange line of work she had chosen where having killed people not only elicited respect from those who had not, but counted for more than anything else.

“For whatever my professional opinion is worth, I’d say the odds are pretty damn low,” she said. “Especially after the Marquis’s stunt at that village now that everyone thinks he walks on water… or could if there was any water still out there to walk on…” But Benichou was looking over Kit’s shoulder, no longer listening to her.

Kit spun on her heels again and froze. The new arrival was slender, not tall, and looked to be about thirty standard years old, give or take. His suit was the more showy tailcoat style she had seen some of the other male guests at the reception wearing, shining steel blue under the lights of the ballroom, with a pale purple waistcoat underneath. Unlike most of the other guests he wore no necktie or cravat. Kit had never seen the face before in person, but it was familiar enough from the news tri-vids. Marquis Guillaume Everett was undeniably handsome, with skin a shade lighter than Lieutenant Benichou’s, and an immaculately groomed mustache and beard that just outlined his jaw. Kit had a moment of panic as she wondered how much he had heard, although the sunny smile on his face showed no hint of offense.

“My lord,” said Lieutenant Benichou, with a slight but prolonged tilt of her head. Kit mimicked the Marik officer’s movement.

“Do you know,” the Marquis began, his voice a clear, lighthearted tenor, “That you two are the only ladies here tonight who have not yet imposed upon my time for social pleasantries?”

“My lord,” Benichou said, “Allow me to present Captain Söderlund of the Black Kats mercenary company.”

“Of course,” the Marquis said. He turned his dazzling smile on her and offered a handshake which Kit once again accepted tentatively.

“The Captain and I were just ‘talking shop,’ as the saying goes,” Benichou explained. Kit took the opportunity to study Benichou as the Marquis turned his attention back to the Lieutenant. Unlike herself, Benichou didn’t seem the slightest bit uncomfortable in the presence of the planet’s noble ruler, but there was something about her that was different from the almost startlingly forthright young woman Kit had been talking to a few moments before. Her demeanor was more reserved, or deferential. 

“Ah,” the Marquis said, spreading his arms and nodding knowingly. “Now I understand what was more interesting than me.” The cheer suddenly vanished from his face and he looked at Benichou sternly. “But if you’ll forgive me for interrupting, Lieutenant, I am afraid I must take you to task for deceiving me.”

Benichou’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Deceiving you, my lord?”

The Marquis looked at Kit again and the bright smile reappeared. “Lieutenant Benichou accepted my invitation to do a little fencing, as there’s scarcely anyone else on the planet who knows how. She neglected to mention to me that she was the bronze medallist in saber at the academy-wide tournament at Princefield her final year.” Princefield, Kit recalled, was one of the Free Worlds League’s most prestigious military academies, attended by the scions of many noble and wealthy families. Kit began to see where Naila Benichou had developed her easy rapport with the upper crust. Perhaps she was even some sort of minor nobility herself.

Benichou laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t have told you I was bronze medallist, my lord, because there were no medals. I had to settle for the title of ‘second runner-up,’ which of course itself is just a nicer way of saying ‘second loser.’”

The Marquis rolled his eyes at Benichou’s modesty. “Well, second runner-up at Princefield was more than enough to leave me feeling quite embarrassed,” he said to Kit as if relating an amusing secret. Kit couldn’t imagine the Marquis, born to privilege, blessed with good looks, and apparently full of serene self-confidence, ever feeling embarrassed by anything.

Benichou grimaced sympathetically. “I certainly enjoyed the chance to get back on the piste in any case.” She glanced across the ballroom. “If you will please excuse me, my lord, Captain, I believe duty compels me to go observe social pleasantries with Deputy Gamelin.”

“You should get a medal,” the Marquis said with a laugh. “Man’s a terrible blowhard, you know,” he observed to Kit with the same conspiratorial tone as before. With another brief bow for the Marquis and a nod for Kit, Benichou walked away.

Which left Kit all alone with the chatty nobleman. And his brilliant smile. How much had he heard of what she was saying to Benichou when he walked up?

Maybe it was better to just bite the bullet. “My lord,” she began, “I think I may owe you an apology. I-...”

“No, Captain, it’s I who owe you one! Your unit has been here in my employ for weeks now and it’s unconscionable I’ve never taken the time to meet you in person. And I wanted to say thank you for accompanying me on my trip to Besoble few days ago.”

Kit figured out quickly enough that Besoble must have been the name of the Rust village. She took a sip of her champagne as she tried to think of something to say. “We were just doing… what we were hired for, I suppose.”

The Marquis laughed. “Well then in that case, I apologize once again for subjecting you to a boring afternoon.”

“In our line of work, boring can be good,” Kit said. There was suddenly what felt like profound silence, as if every other conversation in the room had reached a lull point at the exact same moment. In her head, Kit screamed.

“Is your BattleMaster a family machine?” Idiot. He thinks you’re an idiot, she mentally berated herself, wondering at the same time why she cared if he did. Were BattleMechs really the only subject she could come up with to talk about?

The Marquis nodded, surely amused by her small-mindedness but too polite to show it. “It’s been in my family since this world’s liberation from House Liao.”

“You wouldn’t get most MechWarriors out the cockpit of a machine like that so easily.”

Everett chuckled. “Well, I make no claim to be a MechWarrior. Some would say dilettante is a more accurate description of my profession, but I would say I aspire to someday be worthy of being thought of as a statesman.” 

“Still,” Kit said, “What you did… well, it took guts.”

The Marquis shrugged modestly. “Have you run into Lombard?” He nodded across the room at a grizzled looking older man in a rumpled suit who stood near the entrance talking to nobody. “He’s the head of my family’s guard, can’t stand events like this, would rather be creeping around the estate looking for Liao spies… he was furious at me about the whole thing. He served with my father, and sometimes I think he still sees me as a child.”

Kit was seized by a sudden curiosity. “But what exactly happened when you walked into that village?” Since the Marquis had climbed out of his ‘Mech and walked into Besoble, the ugly situation in the village appeared to have been completely defused. The protesters had started to trickle out into other villages or the refugee camps they had come from, and most of the elderly holdout residents had agreed to be relocated.

Everett shrugged modestly. “I talked to them,” he said, as though that explained everything.

“You talked to them,” Kit said flatly.

“Yes. I told them, more or less, that I was sorry. That I couldn’t take full responsibility for the situation they were in, but that I was sorry that my predecessors and the planetary government had ignored them while their plight got worse and that what’s happening now is from a sincere effort to make things better.” He paused thoughtfully. “In the end, though, I think perhaps what I said was less important than the fact that I came to them alone, unarmed, unprotected, and spoke to them as people.”

“But did you, really?” The words were out of Kit’s mouth before she realized she was saying them. Was it the champagne or the man’s undeniably disarming presence that made her suddenly feel bold? “You may have gotten out of your ‘Mech to talk to them, but everyone there could see you walk up in it, and my whole lance with you, and then our ‘Mechs standing there, in weapon range, waiting. Couldn’t that be seen as an implied threat? Even…” What am I saying? “Even as a show of contempt, in the mind of a person who was already angry? Showing you had the power over those people and chose not to use it? Er, my lord.”

The Marquis stared into her eyes for a long moment. She felt her cheeks flush hot. Then he smiled, and at first she thought he was going to laugh again, but he didn’t. Instead he nodded slowly. “Captain, you make a fair point. In the end I can only say I was forced to strike a balance between mollifying the people and mollifying Lombard.” And there was the laugh again after all, and she damned him for finding everything so amusing even as she found she was laughing along with him.

The Marquis glanced away and Kit thought she saw a flicker of irritation in his eyes, the irritation she had expected to see in response to her challenge a moment before, but in an instant it was gone and his serene good humor had returned. Kit turned to follow his gaze and saw the man he had spoken to. In contrast to the finery of most of the reception’s attendees, his drab suit gave the impression of a man who had picked his wardrobe only to stay within the bounds of propriety without actually caring how he looked, or perhaps had simply put on the only suit he owned. He was no more than thirty-five, small-ish, with hair so blonde it was almost white, or perhaps had simply turned white extremely early. Kit’s first impression of him was that he was perhaps some accountant coming to wring his hands about how much this reception was costing the Marquis. As he came closer, however, she saw the intensity in the man’s eyes and realized she was wrong. If she had been forced to guess at the newcomer’s profession, she might have said artist, although she had never met any artists.

The man trudged unhappily toward them and looked as if he was opening his mouth to speak when the Marquis cut him off. “Ah, Deputy Gamelin!” the Marquis called cheerfully.

“My lord,” the man said sourly, with a stiff bow.

“Captain,” the Marquis said in his conspiratorial tone, but loud enough for the man to hear, “This is Émile Gamelin, of Calseraigne’s governing Assembly of Deputies…  perhaps the only other person on the planet who is willing to speak to me as honestly as you did a moment ago! Monsieur Gamelin, allow me to introduce Captain Katryna Söderlund of the Black Kats.”

Kit extended her hand to the man, but he only looked at it with seeming distaste, so she awkwardly let her arm fall back to her side. “I know who she is, my lord,” Gamelin snapped. “I was able to deduce she could only be your hireling from the…” He looked Kit up and down. “...Unprofessional and inappropriate military chic pretensions of her attire.”

Another flash of irritation showed on the Marquis’s face, gone as quickly as it came. “Deputy, please,” he said, sounding almost as if he was talking to a child. “Our differences are no cause for being rude to the Captain. She is here, in every sense, at my invitation.”

The look Gamelin gave her was withering, but his voice was what chilled her. She had only heard such contempt directed at her from one man before, and that man had tried to take her life. “You will forgive me, Captain,” Gamelin seethed, “If I do not care to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with a herald of war recently arrived on my beloved homeworld.”

[Sir Chaos]

Gamelin seems... nice. "Nice", as in "would be nice if something embarassing happened to him".

[Daryk]

He's totally in it to win... the current lord has "stooped" to hire mercs...  ::)

[Lazarus Sinn]

tagged

[DOC_Agren]

1 ping only
interesting so far

[Middcore]

Chapter 3: Something to Prove

Kit couldn’t have said exactly why she wanted to beat Naila Benichou so much. She just knew that she did.

It wasn’t that she disliked the young Marik officer. Kit’s brief conversation with her during the reception had probably been the most enjoyable part of the entire event, although that was setting the bar low. The woman’s friendliness seemed genuine, and she was remarkably free from the stuffiness that Kit might have expected from a graduate of one of the Inner Sphere’s most exclusive military academies. Something about the way her demeanor had changed with the Marquis annoyed Kit, but maybe that was just the way you were supposed to treat nobility; if Benichou had spent years around the scions of titled families at Princefield, she would certainly know how to conduct herself.

When Benichou had invited Kit to visit the planetary militia base to get in some time in the Planetary Guard’s simulator pods, she had been happy to accept. When Benichou had suggested a “friendly” one-on-one simulated battle, Kit had casually agreed. It wasn’t until Kit had climbed into the pod and the exercise had begun that she realized how much she wanted to win. Enough to cheat, at least a little.

Kit had picked a simulated urban environment as their virtual battlefield. Much of her limited real-life combat experience had come in urban terrain, and she hoped it would negate the maneuvering advantage Benichou would probably have in an open field. Of course, the Ares Conventions, instituted over six centuries before in an effort to minimize civilian casualties in conflicts between the various powers of the Inner Sphere, expressly forbade combat in cities… unless a military target was located within one, in which case all possible efforts were supposed to be made to minimize “collateral damage.” Every BattleMech simulator Kit had ever used, however, included urban battlefields as an option, which perhaps showed just how much weight this provision of the Conventions now carried. Ironically, it had been the Star League, now seen by many as the peak of human civilization preceding centuries of the chaotic and destructive Succession Wars, that had first formally discarded the Ares Conventions when campaigning to regain control over independence-minded states in the Periphery. Now the Conventions were treated as guidelines at best. Perhaps so as not to disturb the consciences of MechWarrior trainees, the generic cityscape created by the simulator showed no signs of human habitation, although all of the buildings started the scenario in pristine condition, which created a somewhat eerie, ghost town-like atmosphere.

But it wasn’t just that Kit was familiar with combat in urban environments generally. She was intimately familiar with this particular one. Although it wasn’t based on a real city on a real world anywhere, at least as far as Kit knew, she knew the layout of its streets like it was her own hometown. The simulator pods were running the exact same software as ones she had rented time in whenever she could afford it on Galatea years before as a kid and then as an apprentice ‘Mech tech. She had recognized it immediately. Benichou might sniff at the pods for not being academy-grade, but they had been a big step up from the arcades, and now they were going to give her a home field advantage against the Marik MechWarrior.

It wasn’t that she felt she had to prove herself by beating Benichou, not exactly. Although the Marik officer didn’t look down her nose at Kit, most objective observers would have bet on Benichou in a fight between the two of them. A Princefield graduate against a former tech trained by a washed-out Kurita sho ko should have been no fight at all. Most people would say that if Kit managed to hold her own, it would be a moral victory.

No, what made it worse, Kit decided, was that Benichou didn’t seem to consider herself superior - if anything she looked at Kit with respect because of the difference in real combat experience between them. And that put Kit under more pressure, the pressure of feeling she had to put in a good enough performance to live up to the other MechWarrior’s expectations.

It had become clear immediately that, as Kit had expected, the two of them were taking fundamentally different tactical approaches to the fight.. She had caught only brief glimpses of Benichou, enough to tell that the FWLM officer had selected a Javelin - a highly mobile machine armed with batteries of short-range missiles, renowned as an effective hit-and-run fighter. Benichou was always in motion, trying to tear around the simulated cityscape too rapidly and unpredictably for Kit to effectively stalk her. The Panther Kit had selected for the mock battle was in many respects a similar machine to her Vindicator, although ten tons lighter at thirty-five tons. It had a very slow ground speed for a light ‘Mech, but was noted for its ability to move nimbly on its jump jets. Its main weapon was an Alshain Weapons “Lord’s Light” PPC, giving it much greater hitting power than most ‘Mechs of its weight. The Panther also had a reputation as a dangerous urban fighter, Davion MechWarriors nicknaming it the “alley cat” for its hard-hitting ambushes.

Exactly the type she had lured Benichou into.

Using her remembered knowledge of the simulated cityscape, Kit had used her seismic sensors to track Benichou’s frenetic movement and stay one step ahead of her despite her machine’s lower speed. Kit had snuggled her ‘Mech up close to a simulated office building at a three-way intersection, with a third story skywalk that connected it to what looked like a parking garage and a walled courtyard in between. She had dropped the Panther into a crouch so the courtyard wall concealed the ‘Mech up to its waist, and in the gap between the wall and skywalk she could see down the street, where Benichou’s Javelin was walking into her sights, just as Kit had known she would. 

Kit floated the targeting reticle on her HUD around and over the Javelin, intentionally preventing herself from getting a target lock so that Benichou wouldn’t get a warning tone in her cockpit. The Panther’s PPC was capable of destroying or crippling many light ‘Mechs with a single good shot, but it had a narrow optimum range band where a target was close enough for high accuracy but not so close that the feedback from the stream of charged particles could damage Kit’s own ‘Mech. Benichou still showed no sign of noticing the Panther waiting in ambush in the shadow of the office building; she probably had her head down watching her own seismic scanner on a secondary cockpit display. Only a couple more steps…

Now. Kit settled her crosshairs center-mass on the Javelin, waited two agonizing seconds before the reticle turned gold to indicate a solid targeting lock, and squeezed the trigger for the PPC on her right joystick.

Before she had even flexed her finger on the trigger, however, the Javelin had lurched to a halt and twisted violently at the waist, as though something had suddenly caught its attention in one of the high-rise towers lining the street. The result was that instead of striking home right in the middle of the Javelin’s boxy chest, Kit’s PPC shot hit just above the machine’s left elbow. The limb snapped off and embedded itself in the front of a simulated department store, but the Javelin’s torso was no more than scorched by the spent energies of the charged particles.

“Arienai…!” Kit breathed.

Benichou’s reaction time was unbelievable. You couldn’t teach something like that, even at Princefield, or at least Kit didn’t see how. The Javelin twisted its torso back into line and let loose with a flurry of SRM’s from the launchers built into its chest, although only a couple of them made it through the gap to pock-mark the Panther’s armor while the rest collapsed the skywalk in front of Kit’s ‘Mech and battered the office building. As Kit recovered from her surprise, an icon on her HUD indicated her PPC was ready for another shot, but the Javelin danced nimbly backwards around an intersection out of view before she could re-establish a lock.

There was no doubt Kit had gotten the better of the exchange in terms of raw damage dealt, but the Javelin, unlike many ‘Mechs which carried their main weapons in their arms, wouldn’t be significantly diminished in fighting ability by the loss of the limb. After being certain Benichou had made the fatal mistake she had been waiting for only a few moments earlier, Kit had accomplished precious little. At the very least, she had rattled Benichou, because the Leaguer MechWarrior had made a hasty retreat instead of trying to rush Kit’s position and bring her superior close-range firepower to bear. But chasing after the faster Javelin would be playing the game Benichou’s way, and it wasn’t going to work to just try to trap the Marik officer in a blind alley or something; Benichou would be more wary after the first ambush, and her uncanny reflexes could equalize any fight where Kit didn’t put her down with the first shot.

That was when Kit had realized defeating Benichou was going to take tactics that all her academy training would never teach her to expect. Because they weren’t, strictly speaking, possible. At least not in the real world.

Now Kit was once again patiently waiting for her opponent to appear, but this time from an elevated vantage point like the Panther’s namesake lurking in the treetops. It had taken precise use of the ‘Mech’s jump jets to reach this position crouched atop a high-rise apartment building, and Kit had twice almost overshot her landings and plunged back down to the street. Kit knew that her opponent couldn’t fail to hear the sound of the Panther’s superheated plasma exhaust echoing through the metal and glass canyons, and would be trying to locate the landing point of Kit’s leaps with her seismic sensors… and be baffled when she couldn’t.

The Javelin’s movements as it crept down the street below Kit’s perch seemed to convey its pilot’s confusion. Kit allowed herself a grin of satisfaction as she floated her crosshair around the Javelin. She held her fire until the Javelin had just passed her highrise ambush position and she had an angle on the back of Benichou’s ‘Mech before she settled her targeting reticle and pulled the trigger.

The Javelin’s thin rear armor may as well have been non-existent for all it did to stop the beam of stream of charged particles and the ‘Mech staggered. As the crackling electrical arcs from the PPC entry wound cleared Kit could see the telltale glow of an impending ammunition explosion. The Javelin was doomed, and any sensible MechWarrior in Benichou’s position would be pulling the eject handle.

Instead, Benichou steadied the stricken Javelin, spun it on one foot to face Kit’s highrise, and sent it leaping skyward. Kit’s jaw dropped. No malfing way.

The Javelin rocketed upwards until it was level with Kit’s Panther, and Kit stared into the missile tube ports on its chest as it hung there for a moment on pillars of burning plasma. Then the ammunition bins finally cooked off.

The rather crudely simulated shockwave from the Javelin’s detonation wasn’t strong enough to do more than rock the Panther back slightly on its heels. The simulated chunk of debris that smashed against the Panther’s head, though it stood no chance of penetrating the ferroglass viewports, still triggered a very real involuntary reflex reaction in the pilot.

Kit’s flinch, transmitted to the Panther’s gyros through the neurohelmet that was supposed to allow the pilot’s own sense of balance to keep the machine upright during delicate maneuvers, was just enough to send the ‘Mech toppling backwards off the edge of the apartment tower roof.

Stupid way to “die,” Kit thought. Then the simulator pod went dark.

***

Kit climbed out of the pod, set the training neurohelmet down on the command couch, and sat on the edge of the platform that housed the pods’ tilt and rotation motors, her face flushed as much from embarrassment as from the simulated reactor heat pumped through the pod’s climate control vents.

The place the militia had chosen to locate their pair of sim pods in their base on the outskirts of the capital city spoke volumes about how seriously they took the planetary government’s initiative to explore adding BattleMechs to their forces. It looked like an old storage room, with ceilings barely tall enough to accommodate the pods. There was no observation room with tri-vid or even flatscreen feeds of the action going on inside the pods, which meant the best an instructor could do to monitor an exercise was connect a noteputer to a jack on one of the pods themselves.

Benichou emerged from her pod and Kit was relieved to see her expression was a chagrined smile that showed no anger. Wiping sweat from her palms on her shorts, she offered Kit a handshake, which Kit accepted with more enthusiasm than at their first meeting.

“You always shake someone’s hand after you kill them?” Kit asked, taking a swig from a bottle of water.

“From where I was sitting, you killed yourself,” Benichou responded. “Habit I picked up from fencing, I suppose. Now I have to know: how the hell did you get up on top of that building?”

Kit smiled sheepishly. “Honestly? I cheated. The city map in these pods is the exact same as ones I used to use on Galatea. Most of the buildings in that map will collapse like they should if you’re dumb enough to jump on top of them. But there’s a few where the programmers got sloppy and forgot, or made them destructible from the ground level but didn’t think any ‘Mech could jump high enough to get on top, so they’re not coded to fall if you do manage it by hopping from rooftop to rooftop. I was bored enough a while ago to figure out which ones, and it was pure luck that you were hunkered down in a place where I could use the glitch to my advantage.” She sighed. “Sorry, guess it doesn’t really count as training the way you’d fight.”

Benichou sat down next to Kit and shook her head as she sipped from another water bottle. “Well, in real life I would have had to punch out instead of trying that last-ditch effort to take you with me. But I don’t mind saying I was frustrated at myself, especially after you almost got me with that first ambush.”

“When did you know I was there, that first time?”

“Not until after you fired, actually. When I got the target lock warning tone, I knew you couldn’t be on my flank because there were tall buildings on either side of me, but I actually thought you had snuck into my rear arc somehow. Thought I was going to lose my right arm instead of the left.”

Kit shook her head. Benichou talked about using her ‘Mech’s limb as a shield to block a killing shot so casually, but most MechWarriors Kit had seen didn’t have the reflexes to make such a tactic even worth considering. “My professional opinion is that the Free Worlds League is wasting you as an advisor on this…” Kit had to stop herself from using a word like backwater. “...in a place like this.”

The Lieutenant winced. “Thank you, truly. If only you could convince my parents.”

“What’s the story there?”

Benichou leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “I was born on Mosiro,” she said. Kit vaguely recalled that Mosiro was the capital world of an “archipelago” of three systems near the League’s Andurien province, with one of the Inner Sphere’s largest populations of adherents of the Islamic faith. “My family is one of the most prominent on the planet,” Benichou continued. “Not nobility, but wealthy. They made their fortune in optics… My great-great-grandfather helped set up the astrophysics lab at the University, and then applied what he knew about telescopic lenses to go into business. Not the type of optics in a laser or anything as exciting as that, mind you. Consumer stuff, like what’s used in tri-vid projectors. Not that I got to watch many tri-vids growing up,” she said with a laugh. “My mother considered the content in most of the popular ones appalling.”

Abruptly, Benichou stood up and began to pace the room, fists on her hips. “Anyway, those who chose military service over business have always been the black sheep in my family. My parents hated it when I would beg my aunt to tell me war stories when she came back on leave. When they saw I wasn’t going to grow out of it, they bought my way into Princefield.” Benichou spun to face Kit, raising her hands defensively. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Nobody gets in there without money or a title, no matter how good you are. It’s just… how things are.” Kit nodded. She wouldn’t think of judging the other woman for her family connections; however she had gotten into the prestigious academy, she clearly had the skill to back it up.

“Anyway,” Benichou went on, “I proved I deserved to be there, as much as anyone did. But when I graduated, I found out that my parents had pulled strings to keep me from getting posted to a line unit. They’ve made their peace with me having a brief military career because they’ve decided it will be a resume-enhancer, sort of like the way they use my aunt’s Wolverine as a gate guardian at one of their facility complexes for marketing. They just want me to live long enough to get bored, admit they were right, and go join the family business.” She shrugged, and her toned shoulders slumped. “As best as I can tell, I ended up here because when the Assembly of Deputies put out a request for a consultant from the FWLM, some desk brass thought he would be doing the Marquis a favor. Princefield’s way of looking out for its own.”

Kit blinked. “I don’t follow.”

“The Marquis’s father was a Princefield grad,” Benichou explained. “Georges Everett was… a bona fide hero, actually. He was inducted into the Order of the Saber.” The young officer said this as though she expected it was common knowledge, although it took Kit a moment to remember that the Order was a decoration the Free Worlds League awarded for valor and not some sort of elite fencers’ club. “He actually gave a lecture to my class once on the meaning of duty that… ” Benichou trailed off and flashed another rueful smile. “But you don’t want to hear about that.” Kit didn’t know whether she should feel insulted. “So, anyway, here I am,” Benichou finished. She sat back down next to Kit.

“So if you’re supposed to be an advisor to the planetary government, what kind of advice have you been giving them?” Kit asked.

Benichou sighed. “Nothing they want to hear, or, I suspect, that they don’t already know. Calseraigne has to be among the most weakly-defended planets along the whole Liao border. Their point of view is that since the Confederation hasn’t tried to take the system back in a hundred years, why should Max Liao suddenly take an interest? Especially since they’re supposed to be our friends now.” Benichou’s short, derisive laugh said all there was to say about her views on the Concord of Kapetyn, a shaky pact between the Successor Lords of Houses Marik, Liao, and Kurita to counterbalance the impending Steiner-Davion alliance that had completely thrown off the Inner Sphere’s balance of power.

“But the Marquis feels differently. Obviously.”

“The Marquis isn’t a soldier, but his father fought the Confederation, and I suspect instilled him with a healthy distrust of Capellan friendship. It’s barely been more than ten years since the Confederation backed Anton Marik’s revolt!” Benichou said with intensity. “And there’s an argument to be made that Calseraigne has only been peaceful for so long because there was nothing here worth fighting over.”

“But if the natural resources project out in the old southern seabed is successful, that could change.”

Benichou nodded. “Right. That’s part of why the Marquis had to fight so hard to get the Deputies approval for it.”

Kit quirked an eyebrow. “Why did he need their approval? I thought hereditary rulers could just… rule.”

The Lieutenant made a face. “The political situation on Calseraigne is… a bit more complicated than that.” Kit groaned inwardly and wondered if there was any place in Marik space where politics weren’t complicated. The Free Worlds League was notorious for its internal disputes. “The people of Calseraigne have always placed a high value on democratic ideals, and the Marquis’s predecessors have always been very hands-off,” Benichou explained. “It’s better for everyone if the Marquis and the Assembly are in accord. The Marquis has pushed the Assembly to allocate funds for strengthening the Garde. But some of the Deputies seem to think… that being prepared for a fight makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, as if the Capellans will be drawn like moths to a flame.”

“That explains the charming member of the Assembly I met after I talked to you at the Marquis’s reception,” Kit said. “He called me… what was it? ‘A herald of war.’”

“Gamelin? He’s a firebrand. Leader of the faction in the Assembly most stridently opposed to the Marquis getting more involved in the planet’s affairs, more out of pure principle than anything else.” Benichou sighed again. “So, anyway, here I am,” she repeated. “There are four or five young militiamen who I run through exercises in the pods here, once a week or so when they can find time. Most of the Pee Gees aren’t even full-time, you know - they have other jobs. But it’s basically paid recreation to them. I don’t think any of them seriously believe the Garde will ever get any ‘Mechs for them to pilot. “ Her shoulders slumped. “That’s how useful I’ve managed to make myself.”

Kit found she had no idea what to say. Did Benichou expect her to pour out her life story as well, since they were getting so well acquainted? “Well, Lieutenant,” she said, “I appreciate the history and civics lesson, it should dramatically lower my chances of making a fool out of myself if anyone else actually talks to me at the next reception I have to suffer through.”

The Marik officer smiled. “Please, call me Naila. You may as well after I poured out my soul like that earlier,” she said with a chagrined smile.

“Well in that case, call me Kit. No need for ‘Katryna’ unless you’re presenting me to someone again.”

Naila tapped her water bottle against Kit’s in a toast. “Agreed,” she said with a grin. “But just because we’re on a first-name basis now, don’t think I’ll forget next time we do this that you’re a dirty cheat.” She glanced over at the gleaming simulator pods. “It’s not the same, is it?”

Kit found to her surprise that she knew instantly what the other woman was talking about.

“In a simulator, I can treat this like a game, like fencing,” Naila reflected. “But when it’s actually life and death… it’s not the same at all.”

Kit met her gaze, but it was a different fire than the ambition and drive burning in Benichou’s eyes that she saw. “No,” she said quietly, after a long silence.

Benichou nodded, seemingly lost in thought.

[Daryk]

Nicely done!  :thumbsup:

[Middcore]

Hi folks. I hope to have the next chapter of this up "soon" but I went on a brief trip and came back with kidney stones as a souvenir, so I can't promise specifics.

[Daryk]

OUCH!  Sorry to hear that... I wish you a speedy recovery!

[Middcore]

Chapter 4: Perspective

The simulator duel with Naila Benichou had done something to clarify for Kit just where she stood on the hierarchy of raw MechWarrior talent. Her conversation with the Marik officer afterwards had done little to clarify what might be expected of her mercenaries during their time on the planet. As far as the state of Calseraigne’s defenses went, both the Marquis’s position and the Assembly’s objections seemed reasonable on the surface. If the Marquis had any concrete, specific reason to believe something might happen that would scratch her unit’s new paint jobs, though, she owed it to her people to find out. She had made up her mind to ask for an audience with her employer when the nobleman stole a march on her.

Once again, a messenger in the livery of the Marquis’s household security forces had arrived at the Kats’ repurposed militia base, two days after Kit’s conversation with Naila, carrying a sealed invitation to come to the nobleman’s estate the next day. She had held the creamy textured paper in her hands delicately, like something that might explode, and probed the man for more detail on the reason for the request. It had been about as productive as talking to a very genteel armor plate.

The optimistic view on the Marquis’s invitation would have been that it pointed to them being of the same mind, that he wanted to make up for ignoring her during the Kats’ first several weeks on-planet by giving her a thorough explanation of his purpose for hiring the unit. To Kit, it felt more like her employer was somehow in her head. Answering the Marquis’s summons instead of suggesting a meeting herself made her feel she had somehow lost the tactical initiative, and she had to remind herself Guillaume Everett was her employer, not her enemy.

Before she could ask her employer any questions, he once again preempted her by asking a question of his own. One she certainly had not been expecting.

“Have you ever flown before, Captain?”

At first Kit had been puzzled. Of course she had flown on DropShips dozens of times, starting as a young child. The nobleman dismissed this, however - DropShips, he said, weren’t “really” flying. “Especially the spheroid types that so completely disregard aerodynamics and rely purely on brute thrust,” he declared. And of course she had flown a number of times on atmospheric passenger shuttles. The Marquis was unimpressed with this as well. “On a shuttle they do everything they can to make you so comfortable you’re practically anesthetized and forget you’re in the air at all.”

What the Marquis considered “real” flying turned out to be a tiny personal recreation aircraft which the Marquis said was called an OpenSky. It had a teardrop-shaped fuselage that looked like it was as much glass as steel, with a pair of diminutive turbine exhaust nozzles at the back on either side of a thin spar leading to a T-tail, and high-mounted straight wings. It could accommodate two people seated comfortably side by side. Kit climbed into the right-hand seat beside the Marquis, with some reluctance, and they took to the air from the small paved runway at the edge of the estate’s gardens.

Once they were airborne, Kit had to admit that it was a totally different experience from any of the “flying” she had done before. The view from the OpenSky’s bubble-like cockpit as the Marquis took her on a tour of the seacoast was spectacular. She only wished she was able to enjoy it more. There was definitely no danger of forgetting you were in the air in the tiny craft; it seemed to bump and bob with every swirling air current and gust of wind, and Kit often found herself holding on to the bottom of her seat and only half able to pay attention as Everett went over the finer points of the ambitious project to save the northern Sablier as the first stage in an economic revitalization of the whole planet. Apparently, that was his purpose in inviting her on this joyride: to explain his grand vision for his family’s fiefdom from a bird’s eye view. She only hoped at some point he might get to touching on the Kats’ place in all of it.

He had shown her where construction was underway to improve living conditions in the villages on the northern lakeshore where the waters were returning after the construction of the dam on the Gagnon. Turning south, they had passed by the estate again. From the air, its lawns and gardens, watered by pumps drawing from the recovering northern lake, were an island oasis of green in the arid expanse. Just to the west of the estate was the ad-hoc city of tents and prefab barracks structures housing people displaced from villages on the old southern lake shore, awaiting relocation to permanent homes in the north. If the estate was an emerald island in a golden ocean, then the white tents and gray structures gave the impression of boats clustered around a harbor. Now they were flying over what had once been the southern lobe of the Sablier, dotted along its edges with more-or-less abandoned villages and the rusting hulks of ancient beached fishing vessels.

“At one point, Captain,” Everett said, “Calseraigne was considered an important enough planet by the Capellan Confederation that they had a WarShip named after it… since that was back when WarShips existed, it tells you how long it’s been since Calseraigne was considered important.” The last WarShips, militarized versions of the JumpShips used for faster-than-light travel between star systems with massive armaments, had been destroyed during the Second Succession War almost two centuries before. Now, with the principles of manufacturing the Kearny-Fuchida FTL drive only barely still understood as a result of the Inner Sphere’s technological degradation, the fragile, weaponless JumpShips which remained were universally considered off-limits to military action, too precious to destroy. “There were several pitched battles fought over the system during the First Succession War, which resulted in the devastation of much of the planet’s larger, southern continent, which had much of Calseraigne’s arable land. The battle that my ancestor won to bring Calseraigne into the League wasn’t much of a fight in comparison, if I can be honest with you, Captain. One of the League military’s ‘Liberation Units’ he commanded exploited discontent among the populace to topple the Liao government towards the end of the Second Succession War, and by thenConfederation was in no shape to do anything about it.”

Evererr banked the aircraft into a turn and Kit had to force her hands to stay on the armrests of her seat. “To thank my ancestor for his service, the League in its wisdom appointed him noble ruler of Calseraigne.” He smiled at her. “You see the irony, of course. He had won over the planet’s populace talking about freedom and democracy, and then found himself presiding over the place as a feudal landhold.”

Kit didn’t have much interest in politics, but she knew enough to see that the irony of Calseraigne’s situation was more or less the irony of the entire Free Worlds League in a nutshell. The League touted itself as a bastion of freedom and democracy. It was true that the League’s Parliament probably had more actual power than any representative body in any of the other Successor States, and that individuals in League space had more personal liberty than people in the Confederation, or the Draconis Combine where she had been born. Yet the Captain-Generalcy of the League was basically a hereditary position exclusively held by members of House Marik, fundamentally no different from the way the other four Great Houses each held sway over their own vast interstellar realm.

“So what was my ancestor’s solution?” the Marquis asked. “Well, it was to run away, in essence. He who never ran away from a fight left the day-to-day business of governing the planet up to the elected Assembly and built his estate here as a retreat, and a rarely-used one at that, while he continued his military career.” He paused and looked at her quizzically. “Are you quite alright, Captain?”

He had finally noticed her white-knuckle grip on her seat. Embarrassed, she forced a smile. “Fine, my lord,” she insisted. “You were right, it really is totally different from the type of ‘flying’ most people are used to.”

“Perhaps you might like to take over for a bit,” he suggested.

She flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. She had piloted a BattleMech into combat; she was hardly going to be impressed by getting her hands on the stick of the Marquis’s little aerial sightseeing runabout, as unique a craft as it was. Does he think I’m a child? “Not necessary, my lord,” she answered. “Please, continue with what you were saying.”

The Marquis studied her. Then slowly, almost ceremoniously, took his hands off of the aircraft’s control stick and folded his lands in his lap, and gave her a serene smile.

She stared at him for a long moment. Then the aircraft suddenly lurched in an updraft. Her hand flew out and before she realized what she was doing, she had grasped the identical control stick on her side of the cockpit. She felt her cheeks flush again and breathed a curse.

Everett chuckled. “Please don’t think I’m trying to patronize you, Captain. It’s just that I think I understand where your discomfort comes from.” She glanced this way and that out of the bubble, anywhere but at him. “You’re a MechWarrior, and an officer,” he went on. “You’re used to being… in control. When you’re in an unfamiliar environment, and not the one calling the shots, you can’t just relax and enjoy the view. Circle us back north-northwest, please,” he asked. “Gently… yes, just like that. We’ll conclude our tour with a pass over the planetary capital.”

She still seethed as she listened to him, but as she found the correct amount of force on the stick for the minute corrections needed to keep the aircraft flying straight and level, she found that there was truth in what he said: her anxiety had started to drain away the instant she felt she was the one flying the aircraft, even though she barely understood the basics of doing so.

The Marquis stroked his well-groomed beard. “Where was I? Ah, yes. Most of the people who lived in this region made their living by fishing,” he said, gesturing expansively at the wasteland passing beneath them. “With so much southern land lost, the Confederation embarked upon a project to divert part of the Gagnon’s flow to create irrigation for new farmland to the north and west, near the new capital. Unfortunately this, combined with the changes to the planet’s climate already underway, had drastic consequences for the Sablier and the people who depended on it for their way of life.” The Marquis sighed. “I’m ashamed to say that my ancestors did nothing to stop the downward slide. Did nothing to address the increasing human misery, right in our own back yard, as it were. Whether out of apathy, or out of embarrassment at asserting themselves into the planet’s affairs, I don’t know. But they did nothing.” He turned to look at her, and she was startled by the passion in his eyes. Was this the real man, she wondered, concealed beneath a cultivated facade of a vain, almost foppish nobleman? “That is what I meant when I told those people I take responsibility. I will not rest on the laurels of what my ancestors did for this world over a century ago. I will make this farce of a title mean something by making life better for these people and building a future for this world.”

There was silence for a while then, aside from the whisper of the aircraft’s tiny turbine engines. Kit was surprised by the Marquis’s intensity, and Everett himself seemed almost embarrassed. In the distance, the planetary capital was clearly in view. Deloy looked tiny after the years Kit had spent in Galatea City, although she judged from her hazy childhood memories that it was roughly the same size as the capital on Outpost where she had grown up. Home meant something to some people it never would to her.

“My lord,” Kit began, “Thank you for inviting me on this flight with you. I understand that’s going on here much better with this new… literal and figurative… perspective. And I admire what you’re trying to do. Sincerely.” She hesitated, second-guessing her own words. People adding “honestly” or “sincerely” to their statements usually ended up making themselves sound less trustworthy and not more, in her view, but she also presumed the Marquis was accustomed to flattery. “But what I still don’t understand, and what I hoped to find out today, is what role we play in all of this? My unit, I mean? How is a demi-company of BattleMechs and light armored vehicles going to help you make better lives for these people and reverse centuries of neglect? Lieutenant Benichou tells me you’re been trying to convince the Assembly that Calseraigne needs stronger defenses.”

Everett opened his mouth to speak. There was a tremendous bang. The control stick jerked almost hard enough to rip itself out of her hand, and the little aircraft shuddered.

“Javlar!” she exclaimed. Everett seized the controls on his side. She scanned the instrument panel. She didn’t know the specific meaning of most of the lights now illuminated or blinking, as there was little direct analogue between the aircraft’s systems and those of a BattleMech, but she was willing to bet from the sheer number of them calling for attention that none of them meant anything good.

“What the hell was that?” Despite the mild profanity, the first Kit had ever heard him use, the Marquis’s tone seemed more confused than alarmed, as though he was reacting to a particularly puzzling faux pas committed by a guest at one of his receptions. “The engines are out,” he reported, now sounding slightly more concerned.

“Something hit us,” Kit said, her thoughts racing but still somehow sluggish to process the implications of what was happening. “Somebody’s shooting at us. A MANPAD?” Everett looked at her blankly. “A shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile!” she explained. “We need to lose altitude fast in case they have more than one.”

“I’m not sure how much choice we have,” the Marquis said mildly. Kit suddenly noticed that the sound of the turbines had died away, leaving only the eerie howl of the wind rushing by outside the bubble. The Marquis seemed to have the glide under control, but the aircraft was going down. Slowly, but inexorably.

“Kuso!” she hissed.

“You are from Rasalhague, then?” he asked. She stared at him, bewildered by the irrelance of the question. “I thought you might be, with your Scandinavian surname,” he explained, as though there was nothing else more important to talk about. “Still, one never wants to be rude by assuming. But the trace of accent I thought I detected gets stronger when you are, ah, under stress… and then after hearing you use both Swedish and Japanese profanities, I felt it was a fairly safe guess.”

“My lord…” she began.

“Please, call me Will,” he interrupted. “My friends always have.”


The man was exasperating. “Are we friends now?” she said, clutching at the bottom of her seat in spite of herself as the powerless aircraft bobbed in the spiraling air currents. 

He smiled, a flash of his dazzling, vacant, playboy smile, the one she still couldn’t classify as a true reflection of the man or a mere facade. It occurred to her she might not get time to finally figure it out. “Well, Captain,” he said, “It seems there’s at least some chance we’re about to die, and I don’t know about you, but I would rather die among friends.”

Kit ignored that. “The runway at the spaceport… can we make it?”

“Somewhat doubtful, I think,” Everett said. “There’s also the matter of whether we still have intact landing gear…” He scanned the instrument panel and flicked switches whose function Kit didn’t know.

The aircraft lurched. Kit was thrown forward against her seat harness. The nose of the plane dropped and she found herself staring down through the bubble at the ground, coming rapidly closer.

[Brother Jim]

Oh dear, they appear to be in quite the pickle !?!?

[Daryk]

If it's truly a plaything for the rich, it will have a parachute...  ::)

[Sir Chaos]

If it's truly a plaything for the rich, it will have a parachute...  ::)

If it´s truly a plaything, it will have one parachute.

[Daryk]

Certain Cessnas have parachutes big enough for the whole plane...  ^-^

[Horsemen]

An interesting read so far.

[Elmoth]

Nicely done! Waiting for more :)

I still need to collect this unit after we convinced you to mangle proper spelling with the unit's name xD

[Middcore]

Chapter 5: Mission Briefing

The walls of the private office reserved for the Marquis in Deloy’s Hall of Government were paneled in dark wood and decorated with military mementos: unit patches, a fist-sized shard of what looked like BattleMech cockpit ferroglass, a tattered Capellan Confederation flag, a faded old-fashioned photograph of a quartet of smiling young men and women in cooling vests, one of whom, Kit realized as she paused to study the image, looked strikingly like the Marquis. They were, Kit realized, keepsakes from his father’s career. They might be of interest to Naila Benichou, with her obvious admiration for Georges Everett, the late League hero, but they told Kit nothing about the character of Guillaume Everett, her current employer. This was a soldier’s office and whatever the current Marquis de Calseraigne might be, he was not a soldier.

“Captain,” Everett was saying as he reclined in the plush leather chair behind the desk, “I hope this experience won’t put you off of flying. You were actually showing a real feel for the controls.”

The Marquis was in a strikingly good mood about the fact someone had tried to kill him less than a standard day before, especially for a civilian. Kit would have expected the man to be shaken, she would have understood him being angry. A continuation of the man’s customary almost-arrogant cheerfulness as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened was difficult for her to process.

She and the Marquis had gone on living thanks to an ingenious feature of the OpenSky that Kit would have appreciated knowing about before they had been forced to make use of it: an emergency parachute which deployed from the craft’s tail - by some stroke of fortune undamaged by the MANPAD hit - and allowed the no-longer-airworthy craft to float to the ground at a safe rate. Whether this was an option marketed specifically to aviation-enthusiast VIP’s as a hedge against assassination attempts, or was a standard feature meant for more mundane in-flight emergencies, Kit didn’t know. It was bad luck that the crippled aircraft had come down in the middle of the Gagnon outside the capital rather than actually on the ground, but a gendarmerie patrol boat had plucked her and the Marquis out of the OpenSky well before the aircraft sank.

Whatever accounted for the Marquis’s good mood, it wasn’t doing anything for Kit’s. An easy contract was now looking much less easy in view of the facts that someone was apparently trying to kill her employer, she had no clear idea who it was, and her employer himself didn’t even seem to be taking the whole thing very seriously.

“With all due respect, your grace,” said Cedric Smythe, “I’m failin’ to see the humor in all this. Somebody just tried to assassinate you, with my CO thrown into the bargain.”

The Marquis inclined his head towards the mercenary XO and spread his hands. “Forgive me, Lieutenant, if it seems like I’m being flippant about the situation. Perhaps it’s just the exhilaration of being alive. However,” he went on, “The truth is that I’ve been half-expecting something like this to happen. It’s almost a relief to see my enemies finally make their move.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, but when exactly were you plannin’ on tellin’ us about these enemies, your lordship?” Smythe’s determination to use every possible form of address for the pseudo-nobleman except the correct one was the type of thing that she ordinarily might have written off as part of the “Outback bumpkin” act he put on to amuse himself and put others off their guard, but in this case it almost seemed like a deliberate effort by Smythe to irk their employer.

“My apologies once again, Lieutenant,” the Marquis responded. “I wasn’t trying to deliberately conceal things from you, and I deeply regret that Captain Söderlund was put in danger when I was targeted.” Kit scowled. She was the type who got angry when someone tried to kill her, and being assured that she would only have been collateral damage didn’t improve her mood. “I admit I didn’t expect that they would act so boldly and so publicly. I mean, with all of the capital city for an audience.” A civilian news VTOL had arrived overhead as Kit and the Marquis were stepping on to the rescue boat, and the descent of the smoking OpenSky had been captured from a couple of different angles by cameras in the city.

“Who is ‘they’, my lord?” Kit asked. The circumstances didn’t seem appropriate for “Will” now.

“The seeds of the conflict which had its first shot fired yesterday were planted a century ago, Captain, when the League tried to make this world the personal fiefdom of my ancestor… and that advocating for change, however necessary the change may be, will always bring opposition.”

“Could you be a bit more… direct, my lord?”

Everett steepled his fingers. “As you know, Captain, I’ve taken a more active interest in Calseraigne’s affairs than most of my predecessors. This has provoked the indignation of those who are more concerned with upholding abstract principles than standards of living for this planet’s people, and who think they have achieved something by maintaining peace for a hundred years when the sad reality is that the planet is simply no longer worth fighting over.”

“Lieutenant Benichou gave me a crash course in Calseraigne’s history and politics,” Kit said.

The Marquis smiled. “Lieutenant Benichou is a credit to my father’s alma mater. A pity that her abilities are being wasted here.”

“I want to be sure that I’m entirely clear on what you’re saying here, my lord,” Kit said. “You believe that it’s the elected representatives of your own world, or someone aligned with some faction of them, that just tried to kill you?”

“If you have another theory to offer, Captain - based on your recent crash course in Calseraigne’s history and political dynamics - I’m willing to listen,” the Marquis said. “A jealous husband from my wasted youth before returning here to take up my father’s title, perhaps.”

Everett’s flippant attitude was truly incredible. “Obviously you’re in a much better position to say what’s going on than me, my lord,” she said. “I… simply find it hard to believe someone thinks they could simply assassinate the noble ruler of a world in one of the Successor States in peacetime as a solution to a political dispute and get away with it.”

“Is it peacetime, Captain?” the Marquis said, arching his eyebrows. “The general consensus seems to be that the Third Succession War did ‘end’ sometime in the past several years, but that’s only so the Great Houses could catch their breath. Nobody knows what the Davion-Steiner union will bring. The Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation continue to raid each other all along the border, despite the Concord of Kapetyn. There are also certainly precedents for noble families losing planetary fiefdoms without the system being conquered by a foreign power. To mention just one example: About thirty years ago on Hortense, in Davion space, the ruling Grandin family was overthrown by a popular uprising, and New Avalon recognized the new democratic government without a second thought, leaving the Grandin family to sulk in exile. I find much to admire about the Federated Suns,” the Marquis went on, nodding towards Smythe, “But they have never had democratic traditions as strong as the League’s. I am the last of my line. If something were to happen to me, I have no heir to plead for justice or claim my title. Atreus may have made my family lords of this world a century ago, but if I were out of the picture, it would be quite easy to simply look the other way and let things continue on this unimportant world more or less as they have for the last hundred years.”

Kit couldn’t deny that what Everett said made some sense. There was little to be gained for the Free Worlds League’s federal government by investing resources in investigating the assassination of a noble lord on a remote planet, and still less to be gained by appointing a new Marquis if the Everett line went extinct - especially when the Marquis’s opposition were theoretically acting in the name of the League’s democratic ideals. She still wasn’t entirely convinced, but mainly she just didn’t want to believe she had brought her unit into the middle of a messy civil conflict. “My lord,” she said, “I’m afraid I do have to return to my executive officer’s question: when were you planning on telling us about all of this?”

The Marquis considered her. “Are you wishing you had asked more questions before accepting this contract, Captain?”

With conscious effort, Kit froze her face in a neutral mask and hoped the flush in her cheeks was less visible than it felt. It was true that when the opportunity for the Black Kats to take the contract on Calseraigne had presented itself, she hadn’t been too inclined to research it beyond the sparse details available in the solicitation circulating through the HPG network, even if it had been possible to get more information about such a backwater world. The Kats had been able to string together one short-term contract after another moving spinward along the Free Worlds League’s Periphery rim, but when they had finished a stint of militia cadre duty on Lurgatan, they had found their options were to take the gig on Calseraigne or begin a long, costly journey back to Galatea. When you were at the Kats’ level of the mercenary business, you generally took work where you could find it.

She was relieved when the Marquis’s question turned out to be rhetorical. “I’m afraid this isn’t the type of dirty laundry that I can broadcast in a contract solicitation,” he went on. “It could be considered provocative, to say the least. And it’s not as if I knew something like this would happen. Of course you’ve heard the adage, ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?’ I had both a best-case and a worst-case scenario in mind when I decided to seek out a mercenary unit.”

“Let’s talk about the best-case scenario, my lord,” Kit said, spreading her hands in a gesture that invited him to elaborate.

“Very well, Captain. My hope was that your unit would be able to serve the duration of your contract here as, in essence, a showpiece for domestic audiences.”

“By domestic audiences,” Kit said, “You don’t just mean things like our trip with you out to that village?”

The Marquis shook his head. “I haven’t made any headway in my efforts to convince the Deputies that we need to improve Calseraigne’s defenses. Hiring your unit is a show of good faith that I am willing to bear part of the burden myself, and of challenging them to take action, not to say shaming them into it.”

Kit took a deep breath. “And the worst case that hiring us was intended to help you prepare for?”

“I think you already more or less have an idea, Captain. I think you’ve been thinking about it this entire conversation.” Damn. It really was like the man was in her head. “Perhaps you’re imagining your BattleMech kicking down this building with the recalcitrant Deputies still inside? Well, let’s be direct.” He locked eyes with her. “If I ordered you to do such a thing, would you do it?”

“Maybe that’s a question you should have asked before hirin’ us, your honor,” Smythe said in a voice that was almost a growl.

The Marquis nodded at him. “Touché, Lieutenant. Ours is a marriage of convenience, on both sides.”

Smythe’s efforts to provoke their employer, if that was what they were, didn’t seem to be having any success, but her XO had at least given her time to consider her response to the Marquis’s question.

“My lord, all I can say is that I have to look beyond each and every order we might receive from an employer, and even beyond each contract. I have to think about the next contract, and the one after that. For a mercenary… especially at our level of the trade… building a reputation is everything. I won’t deal in hypotheticals, but I will say I will never comply with an order that would be suicidal for my unit… either literally, or reputationally.” In the corner of her eye, she saw Smythe glance at her. She couldn’t quite be sure, because she kept her gaze locked with the Marquis’s, but it seemed to her he looked pleased for the first time since the meeting had started.

The Marquis nodded thoughtfully. “A circumspect answer, Captain. Perhaps even a statesmanlike one.” He suddenly flashed his signature smile, and the abrupt change from his previous intensity was disconcerting. “You should be aware though, that however conscientious you may be, there are those on Calseraigne who assume the worst about your intentions, and about mine in bringing you here. Do you keep up with the local press, Captain?” Kit shook her head. “Just a day after you made planetfall, an anonymous editorial ran in Deloy’s leading daily all but openly insinuating that I had hired you as a personally loyal force of storm troopers to crush Calseraigne’s democratic traditions.” The Marquis chuckled as if the very scenario he had brought up moments before was absurd.

“I’ll tell my people to be on their best behavior when off-duty in the capital,” Kit said. For all the good it sounds like it will do.

“That would be prudent, Captain.” He rose from his seat, and so Kit and Smythe did the same. The interview was clearly over.“I truly believe my adversaries have done us a favor on several fronts,” Everett said. “They have made their intentions clear, and after acting so publicly and failing it’s unlikely they will take any other overt action in the immediate future. Yesterday’s events will probably make me more popular, actually. In the short to medium term, it will of course be necessary for me to take some additional security precautions, and you will be involved in those plans.” He smiled at her again. “This has been a most valuable discussion, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kit nodded and forced herself to smile back. “Indeed, my lord.” And I thought this contract was going to be easy money.

[Daryk]

Heh... there's no such thing as "easy" money...  :D