Beating The Odds

[Middcore]

Part II

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take
an interest in you.”
-Pericles

Chapter 7: Earning Your Keep

Kit kept the Vindicator’s throttle dialed back to a brisk 40-kilometers-per-hour walk. There was no point charging into an engagement before you fully understood the situation, her grandfather had taught her that. No matter how eager you were for a fight.

And Kit was eager, eager enough to surprise herself.

The last time she had led her own unit out in the wastes of the seabed, she had wondered what they were even doing on the planet, seemingly nothing more than a showpiece meant to intimidate desperate villagers. Everything that had happened since then had made things more complicated, and she still wasn’t sure she had a firm handle on the situation she had gotten herself into by signing the contract on Calseraigne. But here, today, was something she was certain she did understand: a fight, in her ‘Mech, and against a real enemy.

The last time they had gone out into the wastes, she had had to reassure Tucker they wouldn’t be killing anyone. Today the odds were better than even that they would, and she felt ten times better. For a moment she wondered what that said about her, but there was no more than a moment for wondering.

“They’re still on a direct vector for the city, Captain,” came Miles Morency’s voice in her ear. In the background she could hear the roar of the Harasser hovertank’s fans as Miles’s brother Martin guided it over the desert, shadowing the enemy lance. “Best guess is three lights and maybe one medium… they’re clustered too close together to separate out seismic and magres.”

“Copy, Klicks,” Kit answered. “We’re moving out to block them. Just keep them on sensors for now. You’ll know your moment to get in the mix.”

The unidentified DropShip had landed in the salt flats of the former southern lakebed about an hour before. Whether it was the start of Calseraigne’s first pirate raid in years, the first Liao raid in even longer, or something else entirely, right now it didn’t matter much. Whoever they were, their intentions, though unannounced, were clear enough. The dry lakebed was the closest place to land a DropShip for an assault on the capital, except for the spaceport itself on the north side of the city, and even Calseraigne’s militia couldn’t have failed to notice an invasion force literally landing on their doorstep. Probably.

The first word of the mystery force’s arrival had been from one of the Rusters who had pulled up to the gates of the Kats’ outpost south of the city in a buggy. Kit had scrambled all her ‘Mechs and vehicles.. The latest report she had gotten from Corporal Palmberg, heading up the Kats’ infantry contingent and left to maintain communication with the Gee Pee, was pessimistic about the militia managing to organize any sort of response before the whole thing was over.

On either side of Kit’s Vindicator marched “Lefty” Maier in the Enforcer and Landry Tucker in the Blackjack. A couple hundred meters ahead, rising in and out of view as they traversed the rolling undulations of the waste, her Bravo Lance of Smythe’s Commando, “Siren” Jarvis’s Wasp, and “Fuzzy” Farrish’s Spider formed another loose three-’Mech wedge. “Alright, boys and girls,” she radioed, “Whoever this is didn’t come for a social call. The twins say we’re looking at a lightweight lance of ‘Mechs, and their pilots might even know how to use them, so… stay sharp.”

There was always a moment when she said these kinds of things to her unit, things commanders were supposed to say, that she felt a twinge embarrassment, as she wondered whether she said them for her unit’s benefit or for her own. Some of her people had more combat experience than she did, and in House military units. Purely as an individual, as a ‘Mech jock, she was confident enough in her skill. She knew she was far from the best, but she had been trained well and gotten out of some tight spots. In a cockpit, she felt at home - although out of one, in her nightmares, doubts mocked her. But there was no place for a lone MechWarrior except perhaps in arena gladiator fights, and her own brief gladiator career had been a farce. In real fights, MechWarriors were either leaders or followers, and every moment of every day she was aware that she had become a leader only because of very, very improbable circumstances without ever even getting the chance to be a follower first. Some moments, like this one, she was more aware of it than others.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to figure it out entirely on her own. “Smitty,” she radioed, “Switch to command frequency.”

There was a couple of seconds of silence and then Smythe’s drawl in her ear. “Tell me what you’re thinkin’... boss.”

Kit smiled slightly, knowing that her XO had just stopped himself from calling her “kid,” even though nobody else could hear their conversation. “Whoever this is,” she said, “They’re probably working off old intel. That means they won’t know about us. They’ll think the south end of the capital is undefended.”

“Yeah, safe enough bet.”

“So I’m thinking you take Bravo in head-on to surprise them, stop them short… then we’ll come in behind you to clean up.”

There was another pause as Smythe considered. “We have numbers on them. Could have Alpha hold the line while Bravo circles behind. Better chance of a clean sweep.”

“Whatever they’re here to do, it looks for damn sure like they want to do it in the city,” Kit pointed out. “First priority is to deny their objective, not to inflict maximum losses. My lance is too slow, we can’t take the risk of them just blowing past us.”

“Fair enough,” Smythe agreed.

“I’m sorry, Sarge, you’ll have to fight them almost fair for a minute, even with the twins joining in.”

“I know you’ll be right behind us,” Smythe reassured her.

She and Smythe relayed the plan to their respective lances and the Kats’ entire ‘Mech force accelerated to a run. Smythe and his two lancemates in their faster machines quickly outdistanced the three medium-weight ‘Mechs in Kit’s lance, and Kit started to second-guess herself. The risk in her plan was that it would leave Smythe’s lance to take on the enemy lance in a more-or-less even fight, or even at a disadvantage considering only the number of ‘Mechs, for a brief period before her slower lance could catch up and bring their superior firepower to bear.

There was no sound except the thumping of the Vindicator’s feet as it loped across the lakebed in a spine-pounding run. Then Smythe’s voice crackled in her ear once more: “Contact.” His lance had met the enemy.

“Copy,” Kit responded, although she knew Smythe might have already switched back to his lance frequency. She marked Bravo lance’s position on a secondary cockpit display. Then silence again, except for the sound of ‘Mech feet and the growing internal chorus of Kit’s doubts.

Finally, her lance passed under one kilometer to the contact point. “Let’s get their attention,” she called to Tucker and Maier. “Pop up on three. One… two… three.”

Kit stomped down on her foot pedals and grunted as she was pushed down into her command couch. The Vindicator hurtled into the air on columns of flaming plasma, flanked on either side a moment later by the Enforcer and Blackjack as her lancemates fired their own jump jets.

As she cleared the dunes and her jump reached its apex, she had a clear view of the fight taking place between Smythe’s lance and the raiders. There was no time fully to pick out who was who in the melee, but she quickly counted off seven ‘Mechs  moving and shooting, which meant nobody on either side was down yet - although the Morency twins’ Harasser tank was nowhere to be seen.

One of the ‘Mechs in the furball abruptly came to a stop, looking in the direction of Kit’s rising lance with obvious and almost comically human surprise. Kit knew by its silhouette that it was a thirty-ton Javelin like the one Naila had piloted in their simulator duel even before the Vindicator’s warbook computer tagged it. She dropped her targeting reticle over the raider and launched a flight of long range missiles without a lock, aiming for more distraction rather than damage. The Vindicator’s descent prevented her from seeing the results.

The Vindicator touched down on the sea floor again with a teeth-rattling impact. Kit steadied the machine’s balance and brought it back up to full running speed. She was in range for her main weapons now but rolling dunes blocked line of sight to any target.

At last she reached the top of one particularly tall former undersea ridge and found the whole tableau of the battle spread out in front of her again. “Pull up!” she radioed to her lancemates. “Firing line here.”

Four hundred meters away she spotted the Javelin. Whether because of the distraction she had provided or some other reason, the raider MechWarrior was in big trouble. The Javelin twisted in a failed attempt to draw a bead on the Kats’ Harasser as the hovertank flitted by and delivered a double-handful of short range missiles that cratered the Javelin’s green paint. The ‘Mech’s’ left leg buckled underneath it and the pilot only barely caught their machine with its left arm. Giving up on the departing Harasser, the Javelin swiveled its torso back in the direction of Farrish’s nearby Spider and fired an SRM salvo of its own which missed completely.

“For ******’s sake…” Kit muttered at the enemy pilot’s stubbornness. Her targeting reticle glowed gold and she let loose with another flight of LRM’s, followed up by a blast from the Vindicator’s right arm PPC. Her shots crushed the right side of the Javelin’s torso, blowing off the arm it was using to prop itself up and leaving it lying flat on its face. A moment later the ‘Mech’s ammunition cooked off, gutting it completely. There was no chance for the pilot to eject.

“They’re running,” observed Tucker. Kit wrenched her gaze away from the burning Javelin. The fight in the raiders seemed to have died with their lancemate. A Stinger and a Firestarter were headed back in the direction the raiders had come from at maximum speed. The fourth enemy ‘Mech, a forty-five ton Phoenix Hawk, whirled back and forth, squirting bursts of machine gun and laser fire at the Kats’ light ‘Mechs in an effort to hold them at bay and perhaps cover its comrades’ retreat.

That has to be the lance commander, Kit thought to herself. Finally the Hawk pilot seemed to notice Kit’s firing line for the first time. Setting its feet, it raised the massive laser it gripped in its right hand like a pistol.

Kit’s targeting reticle was already over the Phoenix Hawk’s chest. Her finger was on the trigger. But she found her hand had suddenly gone slack. In her mind’s eye she saw another Phoenix Hawk on another world raise its weapon and take aim…

Her view of the outside world dimmed for an instant as her cockpit ferroglass polarized to keep her from being blinded by the laser beam that barely missed the Vindicator’s head. Her hand convulsed and her view returned just in time to see her reflex PPC shot crack wide of the target.

“You alright, Captain?” It was Tucker’s voice, with a thundering staccato background as he and Maier pummeled the Hawk with autocannon fire. Barely staying on its feet, the raider pilot back-pedaled over a dune out of sight in the same direction it’s lancemates had fled.

“Fine, fine,” she responded, knowing it was only good luck her lapse hadn’t gotten her killed and mentally cursing herself for it.  “Hold here. No pursuit, we couldn’t catch them and stay together anyway. Klicks,” she called to the Harasser crew, “Distant shadow again. Make sure they’re really leaving.”

“Uh, might have a problem here, Cap,” reported Morcency. “Got a new heavy metal reading. And I mean heavy.”

Kit’s mind raced. If the raiders were bringing reinforcements, it was a damn strange time to do it. “Same vector as the first lance?” she asked.

“Negative, Cap. Coming from the Northeast. One ‘Mech, taking a peek now… aw, what the hell?”

Kit’s heart pounded and she lurched the Vindicator into motion again. “Klicks. Talk to me.”

“Warbook tags the new arrival Bravo-Lima-Romeo,” Morency reported, his exasperation audible even through the radio. “I think there’s only one of those on-planet?”

Kit cursed and fired her jump jets again to clear the dune the Phoenix Hawk had used to break contact as Maier and Tucker fell into line behind her. She saw it off in the distance, its gait unsteady, apparently slowed by leg damage, but already at the edge of her weapons’ range. And she also saw, plodding forward in an apparent effort to block the raider’s escape, a BattleMaster, unmistakable in the Everett family’s blue, silver, and purple.

“What the ****** is he doing?” she shouted to herself. It had all been over - the fight had been won. The raiders were running away with their tails between their legs, and her force had suffered nothing worse than armor damage. And now her employer had come to play hero and put himself in danger of being killed by one lucky shot!

The Vindicator touched down hard, compressing her spine, but she ignored the pain and kept the ‘Mech moving at a dead run, trying to settle her targeting reticle on the Phoenix Hawk’s back, telling herself No, no, no, this was not going to happen all because she had hesitated, because she had gotten lost in a waking nightmare for just one moment…

The Phoenix Hawk swiveled its torso towards the BattleMaster, then slowly shuffled to a halt. Its arms dropped to its sides. On Kit’s sensors, the infrared signature of the Hawk started to go dark as the fusion reactor at its heart shut down. She slowed the Vindicator to a walk and started to breathe again.

The BattleMaster came to a halt, ponderously ruined to face the raider ‘Mech, and fired. Parallel streaks of artificial lightning and coherent light drove into the Phoenix Hawk and toppled it to the lakebed floor. Kit stared, uncomprehending, speechless.

“Jesus! What the hell? ******!”

Landry Tucker was not speechless; his scream in her helmet’s earpiece was loud enough to make her wince. “Settle down, Tuck,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Blake’s Blood, Cap, didn’t you see? That Hawk jock was powering down, he was surrendering! I mean, what the ******?”

“Tucker,” she said, willing her voice not to shake, “Can it.” She switched frequencies. “Palmberg, you read?”

“I read you, Captain,” said the infantry squad leader. “Good to hear your voice. What’s the situation?”

“We’re done out here. We need a medevac though… Gee Pee, civilian, whatever you can get.”

There was a slight pause before Palmberg responded. “Copy, Captain. Who-...”

“Not one of ours,” Kit said. Things could have gone worse, she told herself. Much worse. Focus on the good: mission accomplished, no losses… employer didn’t get his ass blown off. Not our job to second-guess nobles. We did our jobs.

For the first time since arriving on Calseraigne, in fact, she had done a job she felt like she understood. But as she stared at the fallen Phoenix Hawk, she realized that for all her earlier eagerness, that thought brought her surprisingly little pleasure.

[Daryk]

Nothing good is going on there, that's for sure!

[Horsemen]

I think I smell some politics coming.

[Sir Chaos]

I smell another great fanfic coming back to life!

[Elmoth]

New Kats entry!!!
You made my day sir :) Short and sharp combat.
Mr nice guy does not seem to be so nice after all.

[Middcore]

Chapter 8: Conference

Try as she might, Kit couldn’t stop her gaze from drifting to the conference room window. Outside, laid out on its back on the militia headquarters parade ground, was the raider Phoenix Hawk. Gathered around it and on it were a couple platoons’ worth of GP techs, infantry troopers, a few officers… pretty much everyone on the base who didn’t have anything better to do, it appeared. Some of the part-time militiamen had probably even come to the base while off-duty just to take in the sight.

The Kats’ contract on Calseraigne didn’t include salvage rights, a clause that had seemed insignificant when the agreement was drawn up given how unlikely it had seemed that any actual combat had occurred. That meant that the Hawk was now de facto the property of the GP, although they had only been able to haul the wrecked machine in from the lakebed after Kit had offered the services of the Kats’ MRV. What the militia intended to do with their unearned prize, she had no idea. She doubted they had the technical skill or resources to restore it to operational condition. The small horde of gawkers assembled around the fallen Hawk unpleasantly reminded Kit of insects swarming on a corpse, although they moved with much less organization or purpose.

There was precious little to distract her inside the conference room where she now found herself sitting. Seated next to her was Naila. In the two chairs on the opposite side of the table were General Bollier, the CO of the Garde, and an aide Kit thought might be a major, although her understanding of the GP’s uniform rank insignia was hazy. The two militia officers wore their dress blue and whites, the General’s straining over a frame that had once been powerful but had now run to fat, the aide’s creased as sharp as the gaze he had flicked over Kit when the pair had entered the room. Naila was wearing her FWLM field uniform. Kit was wearing technician’s coveralls that she thought were mostly clean. She had been about to start assessing the damage to Smythe’s lance’s ‘Mechs when she had received the request to attend this unexpected meeting and there was no time to change, not that she had anything much better to change into. Naila had greeted her warmly, offered her congratulations and said she was sorry she had missed out on the fun. The two militia officers sat in stony silence and seemed determined to pretend she wasn’t there.

On a flatscreen mounted to the wall, an aerial view showed the Marquis’s BattleMaster standing over the smoking form of the fallen raider Phoenix Hawk. A news VTOL had arrived over the scene of the battle just in time to capture the aftermath of what was now being treated as an act of heroism by the nobleman, although the coverage occasionally managed to mention the Kats’ contributions in turning back the apparent Liao raid as well. Kit looked away before what she knew would be coming next: a quote from the Marquis saying that he simply couldn’t sit by and wait for the outcome while others risked themselves fighting to protect his home. As if that wasn’t the reason you hired mercenaries. As if they hadn’t done their jobs, as if the fight wasn’t over by the time the Marquis had wandered in and more-or-less murdered the surrendering Phoenix Hawk pilot, whoever he was.

Kit felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck prick up. The door to the conference room opened and in walked the man of the hour. “As you were please, gentlemen and ladies,” the Marquis said as Kit and the others started to rise from their seats. He glanced up at the flatscreen and winced. “Can we turn that off?”

The screen went dark as the Marquis took his seat at the head of the table. Casually and yet immaculately dressed, Everett looked more like he had prepared for an interview session with a celebrity lifestyle magazine than for a military conference. Despite this, Kit could tell from a glance that something had disturbed the Marquis’s usual carefree attitude. In fact, he looked more troubled than he had during their plunge into the river.

“The purpose of this meeting,” the Marquis said, “Is to discuss steps to ensure Calseraigne’s security.”

General Bollier shifted his bulk in his chair. “You know I am always ready to discuss such matters at your pleasure, my lord, even if we have not seen eye to eye in the past, he said. “But if I may be frank…”

“I’ve never known you to be any other way, General,” the Marquis interjected with a smile that was too obviously strained to have its usual charm.

The General grunted. “I don’t see what’s to be gained by including… junior personnel in the discussion.” He gave Kit and Naila a smile that made the one the Marquis had given him look sincere by comparison. “Nothing personal, of course.”

“Lieutenant Benichou has been a great resource to me,” the Marquis replied, “And we would be foolish not to make use of her expertise. As for Captain Söderlund,” he went on, “I think we should all be able to agree that she has earned her seat at this table.” There it was again: the reality that she was in a business where having killed people gave you credibility more than anything else. It was strange how the Marquis saying she belonged made her feel even more self-conscious about her presence at the gathering.

The General grunted again and carelessly waved a hand at his subordinate. “I trust there is no need to recapitulate the basic facts of the raid…” the maybe-a-major began.

“I think we need to start at the beginning,” the Marquis interrupted. “Why were we caught so unprepared?”

General Bollier rumbled and shifted in his chair. “We simply never anticipated such an attack profile, my lord. The Capellans’ objective in attacking from the southern side of the capital is a mystery. There is simply nothing there.”

“Nothing except people,” Everett observed.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the General said with the same half-heartedly-swatting-at-an-insect gesture. “My point is that it makes no sense except as a pure terror raid.”

The Marquis steepled his fingers. “And would that be so surprising from the Confederation?”

“If I may, my lord,” Naila spoke up. “Even Liao isn’t in the habit of committing atrocities with nothing to be materially gained. But with respect to the General, just because we can’t determine a material motive for the attack doesn’t mean none existed. We have to be wary of ‘mirror-imaging’ and assuming the enemy thinks the same way we do.”

“Yes. Well.” The General sniffed. “The Lieutenant makes a valid point,” he said, the emphasis he put on Naila’s rank leaving no doubt about how little he actually appreciated her input. “Who can fathom the inscrutable Capellan mind?”

“It is possible that the purpose of the raid was to test our defenses.” This suggestion from the possible major earned him a sideways glare from his superior which he seemed not to notice.

“Well, in that case we can only hope that what they learned will buy us some time to improve our preparedness,” the Marquis said. “But Captain Söderlund and her people will not be here to fill in the gaps in our defenses forever.”

“On that note,” Kit interjected, “I need to raise an immediate, practical concern. Right now my unit is in no shape to respond to another attack. Half my ‘Mechs have significant damage, and getting them repaired at the facilities provided to us will be… challenging.”

Bollier waved his hand again. “You have what we could spare… Captain.”

“Perhaps I can suggest a solution?” The General fixed Naila with a stare which left no doubt how little he wanted a solution from her or probably anyone else. Naila didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “The Garde could benefit from getting that Phoenix Hawk out there up and running, at least enough to give some of the men I’ve been putting through the simulators hands-on experience. You have some good repair facilities, but no technicians with any experience in ‘Mech repair. Am I correct?” Bollier said nothing but his aide nodded. “The Black Kats need better facilities to repair their ‘Mechs, but they have experienced techs, including Captain Söderlund herself, isn’t that right, Captain?”

“I started wrenching on ‘Mechs when I was twelve.”

“And didn’t stop until just a few moments before coming to the meeting, by the looks of it,” General Bollier sneered, casting an eye over Kit’s coveralls.

Kit stared back across the table at him. “I’ve been getting my hands dirty so the Garde doesn’t have to. But don’t worry, General,” she said, showing her palms. “I washed them before I got here.”

“Is there any reason,” Naila went on, cutting off further verbal barbs, “That there couldn’t be some type of arrangement where the Kats trade their assistance repairing the captured Hawk for the usage of the Garde’s repair facilities?”

The Marquis smiled. “This sounds like an excellent idea to me,” he said. “General Bollier, is there any practical reason why it wouldn’t work?”

The militia commander was saved from having to think of one by the sound of a knock on the door. “Come,” he barked. A young non-com (Kit guessed) entered the room, gave a quick bow to the Marquis, then stooped in between the two militia officers to whisper something in the General’s ear, then departed.

“Well,” the General said, “It seems that at least we may soon be able to get some insight into the motivations behind this attack. It seems the captured Capellan ‘Mech pilot is conscious.”

The Marquis stared, open-mouthed. “He’s… he’s alive?” he stammered.

Bollier nodded. “As soon as he’s well enough to move, we’ll transfer him from the hospital in the capital for interrogation here at headquarters.”

Everett slumped back in his chair, clearly shaken. “Well. Whatever the man’s intent or cause was, I can honestly say I’m glad to hear he’s alive. To be honest, the idea I had taken a life has been… weighing on me.” The Marquis sighed. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. All of you may have had similar feelings after your first combat, but this is new to me.”

A silence descended on the room. Kit glanced around the table. Naila seemed to have withdrawn into herself. The two militia officers looked down at the table uncomfortably. Did either of them even have any combat experience? Was Kit the only one in the room who had actually been under fire? Would she ever get over how bizarre it was to be regarded by others with respect or even jealousy because she had spilled blood?

The Marquis cleared his throat, collecting himself with a visible effort. “But back to the main topic of this discussion. Although there are surely useful things we will be able to learn from analysis of the previous attack, what matters most is ensuring we are prepared for the next one, if and when it comes. To that end, I have two specific measures in mind which I want to discuss.”

“Do please go on, my lord,” Bollier said, sounding happy to have the subject changed.

“The first is a large-scale training exercise to be held on the southern Sablier. It will involve as much of the Garde Planétaire as you can call up for duty, General, with Captain Söderlund’s unit acting as… I believe the term is ‘OPFOR’? This will give the Garde experience in how to respond to another quick-strike raid by a BattleMech force.”

“I see.” A joyless smile spread across the militia General’s face. “And will you be participating as well, my lord?”

Everett’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, General.”

“If the purpose of the exercise is to give me troops experience in defending against a BattleMech attack, then surely it would help to have more ‘Mechs available,” the General said patiently. “In fact, I believe yours is the most powerful ‘Mech on the planet, outclassing the ones used by Captain Söderlund’s unit by some margin. Unless after your recent, ah… experience you don’t feel ready to get back in the cockpit again, my lord? It would be entirely understandable.”

Bollier’s voice was all exaggerated deference and sympathy without a trace of genuine respect behind it. The Marquis looked at him with a flash of irritation and dislike Kit had seen only once before, when Deputy Gamelin had appeared at the reception a few weeks before. A flash, and then it was gone, replaced by the nobleman’s customary air of confident good humor. “I appreciate your concern, General, but there won’t be any problem. Your point about the practical advantages of having another ‘Mech available for the exercise is well taken.” He smiled brightly. “You and I have been debating about Calseraigne’s defenses ever since I became Marquis, General. It might be enjoyable, having the opportunity to make my point in a personal way.”

The tense silence as the nobleman and the militia commander held each other’s gaze was finally broken by Bollier’s indeterminately-ranked aide. “And the second measure you wanted to discuss, my lord?”

Everett nodded. He folded his hands on the table, and his expression became more serious. “There are short-term, practical steps we can and should take to strengthen Calseraigne’s defenses. But there are limits to what we can accomplish on our own. And by ‘we,’ I don’t just mean those of us in this room; I mean Calseraigne as a whole. We have always valued our independence, but there comes a time when independence becomes irrelevance… and when insisting on being left alone just means being left behind.”

As the Marquis spoke, General Bollier’s expression of affected indifference had rapidly given way to confusion and then concern. “My lord…?”

“Since I inherited my father’s title,” Everett went on, “I have been absorbed with considering how to reverse our world’s decline and put us on course for a better future. A better future not just in the sense of military and political security, but of economic prosperity and standards of living for Calseraigne’s people as well.” The Marquis’s worlds were clearly carefully chosen, and when he paused, clearly for dramatic effect, Kit realized that she was probably hearing a rehearsal of a speech he intended to deliver to a much larger audience in the near future.

“I intend to petition that Calseraigne be admitted into the Duchy of Andurien. Within the next several weeks, I will travel to Andurien to discuss the matter with Dame Catherine Humphreys and offer my personal assurances of fealty.”

Everett’s quietly-spoken declaration of intent hit the room like a thunderclap. Even Kit, an off-worlder who knew just enough about League politics to know she knew practically nothing, could see the momentous implications of what the Marquis had said. For an independent world like Calseraigne to align itself with one of the League’s provinces would be one thing; for the world’s hereditary noble ruler, whose very existence was resented by some, to bring the change about unilaterally was sure to cause protest. On top of that, the Duchy of Andurien, composed in large part of worlds which had once been part of the Capellan Confederation, was known for its fierce hatred of House Liao; and its ruler, Catherine Humpreys, was known as a bitter critic of Captain-General Janos Marik. 

Kit glanced across the table at Naila, but her friend didn’t seem to notice, too preoccupied with her own thoughts. General Bollier’s broad face had flushed brightly and sweat had broken out on his forehead. The militia commander’s obvious consternation was in contrast to his aide. The younger officer’s expression showed no reaction to the announcement at all, as if his face had been as crisply ironed and pressed as his uniform.

“My lord…” General Bollier choked out, “Has the Assembly of Deputies been informed of this?”

The Marquis shook his head. “Not as of yet. I intend to address the Assembly and publicly announce my intentions soon, possibly as part of the celebration of League Day. I chose to disclose this to all of you first because the sad reality is that the announcement could lead to some degree of unrest. Assuming that the Confederation will be deterred for the time being by the defeat of their raid, political tensions could be a greater threat to Calseraigne’s security in the short term than House Liao.”

“That was very circumspect, my lord,” Bollier choked out. “I assure you in such an event the Garde will fulfill its duties.”

Kit’s mind raced. Every new development seemed to make the situation her unit found itself in the middle of Calseraigne more complicated and more fraught with potential pitfalls. Marching out into the desert to meet the Capellan raid had been the one moment where this contract had seemed straightforward.

And then the raiders had turned out not to be Capellan at all.

[Daryk]

Even Junior Varsity FWL politics are ROUGH! ;D

[Elmoth]

*popcorn*

[Horsemen]

Nicely written. I expected the raiders were not Capellans. I have my suspicions so it will be interesting to see which it is.

[Middcore]

Chapter 9: Purpose

Not caring for once about dirtying or rumpling her uniform, Naila clambered up onto the gutted Phoenix Hawk’s chest.

Crouching, she peered into one of the rents in the Hawk’s torso. She reached out to touch the blackened metal and yanked her hand quickly away. The heat emanating off of the ‘Mech’s metal hide was intense, like a memory of the conflagration that had ripped out its heart under the guns of the Marquis’s BattleMaster, although Naila knew that it had more to do with the machine being laid out on the parade ground under Calseraigne’s blazing sun for the entire day.

The sun was going down now. The crowd of curious militiamen had long since dispersed, and with most of the Garde’s personnel living off-base, the parade ground was practically deserted. She was alone. There was nobody watching her. There was nobody to keep up appearances for, nobody to mediate between. She could be honest, if only with herself, about how she felt.

And she felt like shit.

Naila’s sense of duty had always been unflinchingly clear, even if it didn’t always align with her parents’ ideas about her obligations to the family. Now, for the first time she could remember, she was unsure about what duty demanded of her.

Was she obligated to inform the trio of Deputies about the Marquis’s plan? Strictly speaking, it didn’t clearly fall within the realm of advising the planetary government about security matters, which was her ostensible purpose for being on the planet. On the other hand, the Marquis’s entire rationale for the plan hinged on keeping Calseraigne secure.

She was aware of the fact that if the Assembly found out about the plan before Everett felt like informing them, he would know someone in the room had leaked. But she had to put that out of her mind. Now of all times, she couldn’t let her decision-making be corrupted by self-interest.

And yet she found her mind was too full of selfish feelings to even focus on her dilemma. Feelings of uselessness, jealousy, and a childlike indignation - a petty, absurd, and yet nonetheless real sense of unfairness, that she had been the victim of a cosmic injustice.

She gazed at the half-obliterated Capellan Confederation insignia on the Hawk’s chest. How she wished she had gotten the chance to be a part of that fight. In the end, she didn’t give a damn what the Capellans’ reason for showing up on Calseraigne had been. Fighting them would have, if just for one moment, allowed her to feel clarity of purpose, like her presence on Calseraigne could be justified, like she was doing something here that mattered. But she had missed her chance, because she had no ‘Mech. Instead, Everett, the arrogant ass, had taken a walk in a ‘Mech he could barely control and came out looking like a hero.

What had she achieved since coming to this planet? In terms of practical results, suggesting the agreement to let Kit’s unit use the militia’s repair facilities was probably her greatest accomplishment. Smoothing over a petty squabble between people who were supposed to be on the same side.

As she surveyed the wrecked Hawk, she realized this was the closest she had come to a BattleMech since graduating from Princefield.

Naila had always believed that combat was the closest thing in the universe to real meritocracy. As a “prole” at Princefield, she had learned to endure the taunts and snubs of the blue-bloods. Let them say what they liked; she knew her abilities were the equal of anyone, and someday, if she kept her will strong, she would get the chance to prove herself. But what if she never got that chance? What if this was the closest she ever came to a real fight? What if the trial by fire that would allow her to show her worth never came?

Naila reached out and touched the destroyed ‘Mech’s searing steel hide again and forced herself not to pull her hand away, grimacing as she tested the strength of her will against the pain.

[Daryk]

There's going to be a conversation with a somewhat cross medic in her future... :D

[Elmoth]

More please. I like the character development in this story.

[Middcore]

More please. I like the character development in this story.

Thanks. That's very encouraging. When I was a kid and I'd read BattleTech novels I would look for the 'Mech combat parts and kind of skim everything else, and to honest I think there's still a lot of BT fiction being published that have engaging plots without engaging characters, so having someone tell me I'm succeeding at character development really means a lot.

[Elmoth]

I reallyu like the Kats. I think their stories are up there with the top crop of any official BT fiction publication.

[Middcore]

Chapter 10: Bedside Manner

Kit hated hospitals.

Of course, she reflected as she sat in the stuffy waiting area, she had never met anyone who liked them. Maybe the people who worked in them did - the doctors and nurses and researchers who had chosen the business of saving lives. Kit had spent far more time in the company of people who were in the business of taking them. The same business she was in now.

The last time she had seen her grandfather was in a hospital bed, just before she had left Galatea as a junior tech with Pressler’s Privateers. He had not tried to convince her to stay. When she made it back to the Mercenary’s Star several months later she had returned to the hospital to find he was gone. It hadn’t come as a great surprise. She had sat in a waiting room much the same as the one she found herself in now and realized that she was well and truly alone in the universe.

She had gotten used to being on her own, to relying on herself. Most of the time she could be alone without being lonely. But hospitals were the loneliest places in existence.

“Captain… Söderlund?”

Kit could hear the doctor’s surprise and skepticism when the woman laid eyes on her, despite the effort she made to hide it. If her coveralls had been inappropriate for the meeting with the Marquis and the militia general, they were hardly more appropriate for this setting, but she hadn’t been planning on coming to the hospital in the heart of Calseraigne’s capital. Stupid, she thought to herself. They didn’t believe me. I came here for nothing.

“If you would please follow me, Captain?”

Kit tried to hide her own surprise as she stood up and fell into step beside the doctor. “I must say, Captain, this is highly irregular,” the woman said, the heels of her shoes clicking on the scrubbed floors. She flicked a side-eyed gaze over Kit once again. “I would have expected the Marquis to at least send you with… some sort of credential. To be quite honest, we wouldn’t have believed the Marquis had sent you if we hadn’t recognized you. From the news, I mean.”

Kit and her people had managed to avoid press attention after their clash with the raiders. All of it had gone to the Marquis. Kit realized to her chagrin that the doctor would only mean the coverage of her and the Marquis being fished out of the river. Well, it got me in the door.

“I apologize, doctor,” Kit said. “I would have come better prepared, but when the Marquis received the report the enemy MechWarrior was alive and conscious, it was imperative to find out what information could be gleaned about the attack from him as soon as possible.” True enough, except that the fact-finding mission was her own, and not the Marquis’s as she had implied.

“Hmm. Well, I don’t think you’ll get anything very useful from him at the moment. But I can give you ten minutes with him for the Marquis’s sake.”

At the end of the wing, an overweight hospital security guard stood by the only room with its door shut. “No offense, but is this security adequate?” Kit asked.

The doctor stopped in front of the door and crossed her arms. “Let me be clear with you, Captain. We had to amputate the man’s right leg above the knee, and his right arm just below the elbow. With the dose of painkillers he’s on, he would be no danger to anyone even if all of his limbs were intact.” She nodded at the security guard, who produced a key card to unlock the room. “Still… you can see for yourself. Ten minutes, Captain.” She spun on her heel and clicked away back up the corridor. Kit slowly entered the room and heard the door shut and lock behind her.

The curtains in the room were pulled shut, and the only illumination came from blinking lights on the various devices on either side of the bed monitoring the patient’s vitals. The room was silent, and for a moment Kit thought that perhaps the raider had lapsed back into unconsciousness, or at least fallen asleep. Then she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and knew she was wrong - she was being watched. Kit’s hand found the switch on the wall and she flipped on the light. She heard a groan and what might have been a muttered obscenity.

The raider’s bed was positioned so that the man’s left side faced the door. From this perspective, the man’s injuries weren’t immediately apparent. Only as Kit took a step closer did she see the bandages wrapped around his right arm and leg, or what was left of them. The sight brought her up short in spite of the doctor’s description.

“The other nurse was cuter.” The man’s voice was somewhat high, cracking.

“I’m not a nurse,” she replied.

“Well, you’re sure as hell not the interrogation goon squad.”

The raider giggled idiotically at his own joke as Kit approached his bedside. His gaze was benign and somewhat unfocused, clearly showing the effects of the amount of drugs in his system. Up close, Kit decided that he wouldn’t have looked very intimidating even with whole limbs and a fully lucid mind. He was thin, and his features were an odd mixture of youthful and haggard, like they had been frozen in place by a hard life before having a chance to fill out to maturity. It was a face that gave a stronger impression of a kicked dog than a hungry wolf.

The raider stopped laughing and lay there blinking at her. Kit realized she had made no actual plan for how she was going to get any useful information out of the man if she managed to bluff her way this far.

“I know you’re not Capellan,” she said flatly.

There had been plenty of time to examine the downed Phoenix Hawk before hauling it from the desert to the Garde base on the Kats’ MRV, and Kit had spent enough time wrenching on BattleMechs to know this one was not what it appeared to be - what someone was trying to make it appear to be. The Capellan Confederation national insignias had only recently been applied, but insignia for any specific unit was totally absent. The machine was in an overall poor state of maintenance, worse than Kit would expect from a ‘Mech belonging to a Great House military. To be fair, Kit had never worked on a House ‘Mech - but the Hawk was in worse shape than any clapped-out merc ‘Mech she had ever had the misfortune of trying to patch back together.

The raiders weren’t Liao. She would bet her life on it, almost. But since everyone else - the Marquis, the militia, even Naila - seemed to be taking it for granted they were, and she didn’t have any idea who they might really be instead, it hadn’t seemed like a good idea to bring that up during the meeting. The more complicated the contract on Calseraigne became, the more it seemed like every move she made might actually mean betting her life.

“Well,” the raider said, dreamily, “So what do you want me to do? Argue?”

“So I want you to tell me who you really are, and why you came here,” Kit said. It can’t really be this easy? Can it? “If you’re a  pirate, there’s nothing in the city worth looting.”

The raider shook his head slightly. “Won’t argue with that either. Wouldn’t know, I guess.” His eyes grew cloudier and his forehead creased in a hint of a frown. “They weren’t supposed to be there.”

“Who wasn’t?”

He seemed to notice her again after having drifted away somewhere else. “Who wasn’t what?”

Nope. Not going to be easy. “You said someone wasn’t supposed to be somewhere,” she said as patiently as she could. “What did you mean?”

“Somewhere?” the raider repeated, sounding amused. “We’re in a hospital. I know why I’m here.” He raised the stump of his right arm feebly and then let it fall back to the bed. “You’re not a nurse… so why are you here?” He started to dissolve into giggles again.

It was a fair question. Kit walked back over to the locked door and slumped against it. Whether the maimed man was truly as drug-addled as he seemed or simply ****** with her (which she couldn’t totally rule out), she wasn’t getting anything very useful out of him, certainly nothing she could use to help her plot a course out of the murky situation she had gotten her outfit into on this world. She really didn’t know anything more than she had when she arrived at the hospital.

The raider had fallen silent again and was staring vacantly up at the light in the ceiling. When she approached his bedside once more his eyes showed dull surprise, as though he had already forgotten she was there.

“I killed your friend,” she said. “The one in the Javelin. I killed him.” She meant for the statement to sound matter-of-fact, like it was of no greater significance to her than saying it looked like it was going to rain. Listening to her own voice, she didn’t think she had been entirely convincing.

Still, her gambit had produced some effect on the crippled man in the bed. She could tell because while he laughed again, it was a very different laugh from the moronic, spaced-out tittering she had heard before. It was hoarse and bitter and unpleasant. “First,” the raider said, “Dimi wasn’t my friend. He was a lucky sumbitch, that’s all I’ll say for him. Until he wasn’t, I guess. Second,” he glanced at where his right hand should have been with a look of surprise, then held up two fingers on his left hand instead. “Second, you might have killed him… but you’re no killer.”

“How do you figure?” she asked, wondering whether this was just leading to more painkiller-produced dream logic.

The hoarse laugh again. “Because,” he said, “Whole time you’ve been in here, you won’t look at me.”

She scoffed. “I’m looking at you right now.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly on the pillow. “You’ve been… been looking at my damn face this whole time. Never been that malfing handsome. You just don’t want to look at me. At what I am now.” He raised the remnant of his right arm and feebly waved it back and forth at her like he was trying to brandish a weapon held in fingers that were no longer there.

Kit spun on her heel and paced the room, cursing herself once again for wasting time by coming to a place she hated to be taunted by a doped-up, crippled pirate. He was watching her as she stalked at the end of the bed. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” he said. “Militia here doesn’t have any ‘Mechs.”

“I’m not militia,” she sighed, and realized that the raider had probably learned more about her than she had about him.

“Oh.” He nodded slightly. “So did you come here to say you’re sorry?”

“I didn’t put you in that bed.”

“Not for this,” he replied. “For Dimi, since you thought he was my friend.”

She shook her head. “I was doing my job.”

“Oh,” he said again. “What is it then, killer? Why are we talking? You like hospitals so much? You just lonely?”

She was really starting to hate this man. “When I kill someone,” she snarled at him, “I like to have some idea why.”

He wasn’t watching her anymore. He was blinking up at the light again. “What for?” he asked placidly. “You’re just a finger on a trigger, same as me. Right, killer?”

For a moment Kit strongly considered physically harming the man, but she decided that assaulting cripples in hospital beds wasn’t something she was prepared to stoop to, even if she was in the business of killing people. Words would have to hurt him enough. “Speaking of fingers,” she spat, “You realize you’re never going to pilot a “Mech again, right?”

The not-Capellan, no-longer-a-MechWarrior regarded the bandaged stump of his forearm, and for a moment Kit thought he was going to dissolve into laughter again. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s going to suck. Once I come down from all the shit they shot me up with and can really think about it.” He turned and looked at her, and though there was no hatred in his eyes, Kit found she didn’t want to meet his gaze. “Guess Dimi was the lucky one after all.” The raider’s head sank back into the pillow, and his eyes closed. Before Kit could think of anything else to say, he was asleep.

[Daryk]

That went almost as bad as her conversation with the Marquis is going to go... ;)

[Elmoth]

Well, this man will be as lucky as Dimi in a few hours, I guess. Overdose administered by a Marquis's goon is my bet. He is a loose thread form his public image and official discourse. And he can't have that.

I like how Kit is so far removed from the perfect protagonists of so much of battletech.

[Middcore]

Chapter 11: Pep Talk

“I’m a hundred percent sure now, Sarge,” Kit said. “Based on what I got out of that poor bastard…”

“What you got out of him while he was drugged out of his mind, you mean,” Smythe interjected.

Kit rolled her eyes. “Granted. But my bet is those guys we tangled with were mercs. They weren’t Capellan, and bandits don’t show up where there’s nothing to steal.”

Smythe nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. Mercs workin’ for who, though?”

Kit’s shoulders slumped and she kicked at a crack in the floor. “That I don’t know yet.”

“So a lance of mercs show up to get a bloody nose from us, but we don’t know who hired them or why.” He sipped his beer. “Yeah, makes perfect sense.”

“I can’t figure out why you don’t seem to care about this, Sarge,” she said, glaring at him. “We killed one of those people, Sarge. I killed one. Don’t you want to know who they were?” She turned away to look out over the darkening desert. The two of them were in a sort of control tower at the center of their temporary base, overlooking what had once been the docking area for patrol watercraft. With the southern Sablier long gone, it offered an unobstructed view of kilometers of desert on one side and of the Deloy skyline on the other.

“Might make things easier if we don’t,” Smythe said quietly. She remembered the maimed man’s words and suppressed a shiver. Just a finger on a trigger.

For three years she had leaned on Smythe as an outlet for anxiety and a source of trusted advice. Kit may have brought what a new merc outfit needed to get started - some minor notoriety on Galatea, some objectively foolhardy ambition, and most importantly a lance of ‘Mechs - but Smythe had brought the sober-headed experience that the unit to survive, if not exactly thrive. She didn’t kid herself about the fact that Smythe had, by any meaningful measure, been running the unit more than she had up to this point, although she hoped it wasn’t as obvious to everyone else as it was to her. He never challenged her decisions in front of the rest of the outfit or employers, but she would have been hard-pressed to think of a major decision she had made without consulting him.

Now, the murkier the situation on Calseraigne got and the more she felt she needed his advice, the more reticent to give it he seemed to become. “Don’t go looking for trouble” might be a decent maxim for the merc business much of the time, but Kit was increasingly convinced that the Kats were already in the middle of trouble, and in it deep. But Smythe couldn’t or wouldn’t see it, and not seeing eye to eye with him left Kit feeling confused and alone.

“So what did his honor have to say?” Smythe asked. “That above my pay grade?”

“Don’t act like you’re sorry you missed it,” she growled at him. “The Marquis wants us to train against the Gee Pees. Basically have us make his point that the militia’s not ready to protect this planet… as if we needed more proof of that. I can’t say I’ll mind embarrassing General Bollier, though.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, nothing too important,” she said bitterly. “Just that he’s going to join the Duchy of Andurien because he says Calseraigne can’t keep going it alone anymore. He’s the Marquis, so he can just… do that, I guess? Go kiss old Catherine Humphreys’ ring or something and it’s a deal? Hell if I understand how it works.” She shrugged.

“Now that is above my pay grade,” Smythe said. “He ain’t payin’ us to give him political advice, though.”

“Political mistakes lead to wars, Sarge!” she replied, running her hands through her hair in frustration. “And he clearly thinks this decision could blow up in his face when the rest of Calseraigne finds out about it, or he wouldn’t have told me and the militia brass about it even before he told the civilian government.” She stared through the sand-blasted windows into the night. “Everything that happens makes me think it’s more likely we’re going to end up in the middle of a civil war.”

“Always a non-zero chance when you take a contract in the League,” Smythe drawled. “Occupational hazard, just like if you work in Steiner space you got to watch out for-...”

“Damn it, Sarge, will you get serious?” she exploded. “This isn’t a punchline! This is something that could kill our rep, if it doesn’t actually get us killed!”

“So what do you want me to do, kid?” Smythe asked, crossing his arms. “Argue with you?”

Kit’s thoughts ran back to the maimed raider in the hospital bed. Men contradicting, belittling, or dismissing what she had to say was something she had experienced often enough, but she had never imagined she could be so frustrated at having two men in one day refuse to argue with her. She turned her back on him and fought the urge to pace the cramped room.

“Alright,” Smythe said, breaking the silence. “Alright. You want serious? The fact is, if there’s going to be a civil war here, we probably can’t stop it. You’ve got to be realistic about what you can accomplish in this business we’re in. Hell, even the biggest names in the trade ain’t really changed the status quo. Few hundred years of fightin’ and dyin’ and it’s still the same five families runnin’ the show...” He shrugged. “Anyway, if everybody runnin’ the show on this rock is as determined to fall ass-backwards into a civil war as you think, there’s not much we can do about it. Historically, peacekeepers tend to get shot at by both sides…”

“Enough with the history lesson, Sarge,” she said with a tired smile. “I take your point. But if we can’t stop this, then we need to decide what we’re going to do when it comes.”

“Nothing new to tell you, kid,” he said. “Think about what the line you won’t cross is. Beyond that, whatever has the best chance of saving our asses and our rep… in that order of priority, I guess. Your call.”

Kit stared out into the night. My call. Smythe’s deference might have been intended to build up her confidence, but its effect was to make the weight of responsibility press down on her even more heavily. If there was anything to be said for her leadership of the unit for the past three years, she felt it was that she had managed to select contracts from the limited pool available to an outfit of the Kats’ insignificant stature where their duties were straightforward. But this… this contract was different, no mere bandit hunt or cadre stint. Kit tried to fight off the feeling that she had already made the wrong call in bringing them to Calseraigne in the first place.

“After all,” Smythe continued, clapping her on the shoulder as he ambled out of the room, “You ain’t gotten us killed or disgraced yet. From what I’ve heard, that means we’re beating the odds.”

[Daryk]

A cliffhanger invoking the name of the story?  That's next level, good sir! :)

[Elmoth]

Nice. I am sure the big guy is involved. But I am still debating with myself if he is in league with his supposed political opposition or not.
And that hospital guy is unlikely to survive the night.
In any case that PHX will be a good ride if Naila joins the unit.

[Horsemen]

Looking forward to the next installment. Thank you.

[Middcore]

Sorry for another delay. Holidays and then starting a new job. New chapters coming 'soon.'

[Daryk]

No worries!  Real life always takes precedence... :)

[Elmoth]

Congrats on the new job!!

We will wait, of course. Real life has right of passage.

[Horsemen]

Congratulations on the job! Hopefully you find it a decent place to be.

[Middcore]

Chapter 12: Fun and Games

Even standing at its foot, Kit’s trained eye couldn’t detect the telltale signs of repairs made over decades or centuries on the BattleMaster the way she could with most ‘Mechs. That was the kind of top-tier maintenance that being a hero of one of the Great House militaries got you, she supposed - and then when you pass the machine on to your descendant who doesn’t use it for anything besides looking impressive and attempting to murder people who were in the middle of surrendering…

She frowned and shook off the unpleasant though. Glancing at Sid Norris, she was surprised to see that he was making a sour face as well. “Not impressed?” she asked the young tech.

“Call me crazy,” Sid responded, “But I’ve just always thought the BattleMaster was a little… well, a little overrated. It has to get so close to really hit hard, and that big bubble head may as well be a shoot me here sign.”

Kit gazed up at the massive machine. In MechWarrior circles, Sid’s opinion would definitely have been in the minority; the BattleMaster design had built up an iconic reputation in its centuries of existence. None of the units Kit had worked for as a tech had been lucky enough to have one in their TO&E. This was as close as she had ever even come to one - and now she was going to get a chance to pilot it! She tried to focus on that thought to cheer herself up and chase away her worries.

“If it’s good enough for Hanse Davion and Takashi Kurita,” she observed, “It ought to be good enough for me.”

Sid scoffed. “And when was the last time the high and mighty Successor Lords did any real fighting?”

“Alright, how about James O’Gordon then? Grand champion of Solaris, 3009 to 3012.”

“Arena fighting isn’t real combat,” Sid declared.

That’s what I thought, Kit reflected, Right up until I almost got malfing killed. “Well, good thing today’s not real combat either then, Sid,” she pointed out. Just a friendly little war game, where if all goes as planned, I completely embarrass that fat ass General Bollier’s militia.

When the Marquis had revealed this underground hangar beneath the mansion of his estate, Kit realized it had somehow never occurred to her to wonder where he kept the BattleMaster he had piloted out into the Rust and maim that annoying bastard in the hospital bed. The hidden ‘Mech bay was big enough to accommodate and maintain a full lance, and had been built by the first Everett Marquis at a time when a Capellan effort to retake Calseraigne had seemed like a much more realistic possibility. The current Marquis related with apparent amusement that there were supposedly multiple hidden tunnels leading from the bunker out into Deloy or into the desert in case the Marquis ever needed to make a surreptitious escape from the estate, although he said that only his chief of security Lombard knew how many there were and where they led.

A short time later, Kit and Sid had completed their external “walk-around” inspection of the ‘Mech and all of Kit’s irritation was forgotten as she seated herself in the cockpit. As she and Sid began running startup diagnostics, she was struck by an uncanny feeling. She was used to ‘Mech cockpits that smelled like years of accumulated sweat, if not worse. The BattleMaster’s cockpit mostly just smelled stale, like the air in a room that had been shut up for a long time.

“It’s always pleasing to see people in their element. It helps you understand who they really are.”

Kit was so engrossed in checklists and monitor readouts that the familiar voice startled her. She turned to see the Marquis standing on the cherry-picker lift outside the cockpit, smiling at her. “The reception where we met was clearly - I trust you won’t be offended by my saying so - not an environment where you felt comfortable, “ he said. “Neither was the sky on our sightseeing flight the other day, although you were showing some natural aptitude. But here…” He nodded at her. “You have the look of someone who is where they feel at home. Where they are meant to be.”

It was strange how the Marquis saying she looked like she was right where she belonged had the effect of suddenly making her feel self-conscious and exposed. She had her maintenance coveralls unzipped down to her waist and tied around her hips, and the skin left bare by the tank top underneath suddenly chilled. “I’m not sure how to take that, my lord.”

“Take it as a compliment, Captain,” Everett said with a smile. “I could never get so comfortable in that seat in a hundred years. My father insisted I learn to at least march old Durandal around, but that’s about as far as I got.”

Kit banished the thought of the gutted Phoenix Hawk once more and looked at Everett quizzically. “Durandal?”

“The name my father gave this machine when he piloted it,” the Marquis explained. “Durandal was the sword of Roland in French legend. Most people who knew my father would have been surprised to discover he was so literary.” Kit wondered if every conversation with her employer was going to leave her feeling so uneducated. “He seemed a bit embarrassed himself when he told me,” Everett went on. “I was only a child then; perhaps he thought it would make me more interested. I've always been fascinated by the names people choose to give to war machines, though. BattleMaster is hardly one of the more imaginative. Remind me what type of 'Mech you normally pilot, Captain?"

"A Vindicator."

The nobleman nodded. "Ah. Sort of abstractly, philosophically belligerent. And have you given it a more personal name, if I may ask? That is if I’m not getting too personal, Captain.” Kit shook her head. The thought had never occurred to her - maybe, she reflected, because a part of her still didn’t think of the Vindicator as hers. “I heard once there is a type called a Guillotine, though, and I must say that is my favorite name for a 'Mech I've heard of,” Everett said. “It's very… honest.”

Kit blinked. "My lord?"

He smiled at her. "What is a BattleMech, if not a killing machine?" Before she could think of a response, he leaned forward and peered at the cockpit monitors. "Anyway, how is my ancestor's old steed holding up?"

It took a moment for Kit to remember what she had been doing. It was unlike her to lose focus on a technical task. "It's fully mobile. Reactor output is solid, no actuator squawks. I can't really be sure of the missile or machine gun ammo feeds unless we do a live fire test, but the PPC and lasers all show green, and it’s not like we’ll be using them at full power today anyhow.” She frowned as she continued to scroll through the results of the self-diagnostic check on one of the secondary cockpit displays. “It looks like there may be a problem with the life support…”

“That sounds rather bad.”

“It’s the sealing system. What keeps the cockpit airtight if you were operating underwater, or in an environment with a non-breathable atmosphere.”

“Ah,” the Marquis said with a chuckle. “So not a pressing concern for today’s pantomime, then.”

Kit smirked. "Won't get in the way of me showing up General Bollier's weekend warriors. The recordings are already loaded into the comm system. You’re confident the General will react the way we want?”

“I know the man all too well.” The day’s exercises would pit one force consisting of the bulk of the planetary militia’s armor and mobile infantry assets against another force consisting of the Kats and a much smaller militia detachment. In planning, Kit and the Marquis had bet that General Bollier, who had resisted all of the Marquis’s calls for reforming and strengthening the militia and whose troops had been caught flat-footed while the Marquis and his mercenaries had gotten the glory for fighting off the Capellan raid, would want to use the exercise to get a measure of revenge for that humiliation. This was the belief on which they had built their plan: that the Marquis’s BattleMaster would be both literally and figuratively the biggest target on the battlefield.

Except it wouldn’t be the Marquis in the BattleMaster. It would be Kit, broadcasting a few pre-recorded taunts from the nobleman on open frequencies to encourage the General to send his forces after her on a merry chase and neglect real objectives.

“Alright,” she said as she scrolled through the last diagnostic display. “Ready to bring the reactor up out of maintenance mode. The only thing, my lord,” she added, a little embarrassed to have to bring the subject up, “Is that I’ll need to know your spoken code phrase.”

“Hmmm?” Everett blinked at her. “Oh, that. There isn’t one.”

Kit’s jaw dropped. “It hardly seemed necessary,” Everett explained in response to her look of obvious shock. “If anyone could infiltrate my estate and reach this space, they could do worse things than steal this machine.”

Logically, what the nobleman said was true enough, but Kit still found it hard to comprehend. The code phrases MechWarriors used to unlock the full combat capabilities of their mounts were more than just practical security measures: they were, even if few ‘Mech jokes would actually say so, marks of ownership and the bond between human and machine. To own a BattleMech, one passed down through generations of family, and feel so little attachment to it…

Idiot, she chided herself. He has a whole planet to worry about. “Ah. Well then. In that case, it’s time to start the show.”

The Marquis flashed a dazzling smile at her. “Make me look good, Captain.”

He rode the lift down out of view as she dogged the cockpit canopy shut. Pulling the coveralls the rest of the way off, she put on her cooling vest and neurohelmet and jacked the helmet into the BattleMaster’s computer systems. There was the familiar, indescribable mental tingle that always accompanied the moment her own sense of balance began to be transmitted to the huge machine’s gyros - but instead of dissipating quickly like she was used to in her Vindicator, it lingered at the base of her skull. It was a telltale sign of the pilot and machine being slightly out of sync - inevitable unless she had the chance to continue piloting the BattleMaster for an extended period of time so the ‘Mech could imprint with her neural patterns, which was highly unlikely.

No matter. The slight discomfort wouldn’t be enough to stop a MechWarrior trained by a veteran of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery’s elite Sword of Light regiments from running rings around some backwater militia. It wasn’t even discomfort, really - more like a nagging worry in the back of the mind, like when you feel you’ve forgotten to do something important. As the BattleMaster took its first step, that worry faded into the background like all of her others - worries about what her employer might be hiding from her, about who was really behind the “Capellan” raid, about her unit getting drawn into a civil conflict, about whether she had been foolish to take this contract at all with so little information. For the first time since she had arrived on the planet, she was looking forward to having some fun.

[Daryk]

She's only missing the worry about her cockpit not being actually sealed... ::)

[Elmoth]

I can see a few more things than she mentioned as turning bad for that reason as well...

[Middcore]

Chapter 13: A Chance Encounter

Once again, Mathieu found himself stuck out in the middle of the dead lake, against his will, listening to a fool. Truly, nothing ever really changed.

“Try radioing company command again,” Fleury said from where lay sprawled on top of the Galleon tank. Mathieu had heard that a galleon was a type of ship, from long long ago, on Terra. That seemed appropriate; with its broken track, right now the tank was about as useless as the rest of the disintegrating abandoned vessels that dotted the dry seabed.

“They don’t answer,” Savard replied, popping up from the driver’s hatch near the front of the vehicle. “Nobody in the whole company answers.”

Fleury swore. “The Marquis and his damned mercenaries can’t have gotten them all.”

“They got most of the second company before we ever got out here,” Savard observed. Fleury’s only response to this was to turn his head and spit over the side of the tank.

When Sacha had made his last self-pitying joyride out into the Rust, Mathieu had just been relieved at first that for once his brother wasn’t dragging him along. When Sacha hadn’t returned by sunset, he wasn’t overly concerned. Even when the sandstorm had started to blow in, Mathieu had figured the odds were better than even that his brother would sheepishly drive back into the village the next morning. The two of them had spent a night out in the wastes during a sandstorm once before as mere boys, huddled terrified inside an old hulk. They had gotten the whipping of their lives when they had made their way back home the next day, and had given solemn promises to never do anything so stupid again, but for years afterwards when it was just the two of them they had looked back with pride on their adventure.

By sundown the day after the night after the storm Sacha still hadn’t reappeared. The next morning Mathieu had borrowed a buggy and gone out to look for his brother. At least in theory that’s what he was doing. Driving around aimlessly would have been a more accurate description of what he was doing. The storm had erased any tracks. A day of wandering found no trace, but Mathieu never expected to find any.

People in the village said they were sorry. They said all the things they were supposed to say, at first. It hadn’t taken long after that for life in the village to become unbearable for him, though. He couldn’t stand the way they looked at him. Like he was somehow responsible, like it had been his job to look after his brother even though he was younger. Because after all, everyone knew that Sacha was a fool.

Anyway, there was nothing left tying him there. They had all but laughed at him at the militia base when he said he wanted to enlist. He told them honestly he had no interest in fighting, and probably wouldn’t be very good at it, but that he could drive well enough and that he was good at fixing things. They probably would have thrown him out, but by a stroke of luck, the recruiting officer had a malfunctioning climate control unit in his office.

Mathieu gathered quickly that the Garde Planétaire didn’t do much fighting, but there were always things that needed fixing. That was why most of the militia members who were supposed to do the fighting, assuming any ever occurred, had other jobs and only came to the base a few days a month, but Mathieu got to live in the barracks full-time.

He didn’t make any friends, but he had never really had friends besides Sacha. The other techs made fun of him for being a “backwards Ruster,” and when they had to explain some things to him at first as though it was his fault he had never had a chance to work on a tank or a VTOL before, but as always he caught on quickly and then was mostly left to work in peace. He couldn’t say he was happy, exactly, but he was more optimistic than he had felt in a long time. A year, maybe two in the militia would prove his mechanical skill, and then maybe he could parlay that into a civilian job somewhere else in the capital, and then maybe, just maybe, with a little luck, he could build on that experience to get a ticket off Calseraigne.

“Wonder where the Marquis gets the money to hire a bunch of mercenaries, anyway?” Savard said idly. Mathieu had no concept of how much money it took to hire a mercenary unit, or how much money it was realistic to expect the Marquis to have.

Fleury sat up and waved his finger at his companion. “He got the money for his mercenaries the same place he got the funds to build that dam out there. And for what? To get the thanks of some destitute Rusters?” It apparently did not occur to the man to ask Mathieu’s opinion on whether the Rusters were grateful for the Marquis’s project, but Mathieu had gotten used to people talking like he wasn’t there. “There’s a fortune out here, underneath us.”

When the Marquis’s plane had been shot down, there had been days of inconclusive debate at the militia base about who was responsible. Mathieu didn’t feel informed enough to venture an opinion, but he quickly realized that the Marquis was not beloved by all of his new comrades. One popular theory about the attack was that it was the work of spies from House Liao, a theory that had gained even more support after the attempted Capellan raid on the capital, although Mathieu hadn’t even known the attack was happening until after the Marquis and his mercenaries had stopped it. On reflection, Mathieu decided that as long as he didn’t have to do any fighting, he didn’t much care if the Capellans conquered the world. Regardless of whose flag flew over Calseraigne, there would always be things that needed fixing.

Shortly after that the war games had been announced and Mathieu was busier than ever as he and the rest of the support technicians were asked to get more of the militia’s vehicles running all at once than he had seen since enlisting. When the work was done and the day of the exercise came, Mathieu had been looking forward to taking a well-earned rest… until his sergeant had put him behind the wheel of a truck and told him to drive out to a dot on a map in search of a broken-down tank.

And so that was how he found himself listening to the complaints of a fool. Well, arguably two fools. Fleury was definitely a fool. As for Savard, Mathieu wasn’t so sure about him, but that was only because he talked less.

Fleury peered over the side of the Galleon at him. “Aren’t you about finished yet? When the sandstorm blows in they’ll call this whole thing off, and I don’t want to be the only ones still out here.”

Mathieu glared up at him. “What if the Capellans attacked in the middle of a sandstorm?”

“Shut up, Mathieu! You don’t know anything! You probably didn’t even know the Capellan Confederation existed a month ago.” Fleury resumed his sprawled position on the back of the Galleon. “I keep trying to tell everyone, all of this paranoia about the Capellans is nonsense.” He spat over the side of the tank again to emphasize his contempt, and Mathieu shouted in protest as the projectile almost landed on his shoulder. “Stay sharp, Ruster,” Fleury sneered, “You’re in a combat zone now after all.”

“So who do you suppose shot down the Marquis’s plane, then?” Savard asked.

“Bah! It’s simple…” Fleury began. Mathieu was sure that the two had had this conversation before, possibly several times, but apparently Savard found going through it all once more preferable to sitting in bored silence.

Mathieu would have welcomed silence, but when it came it brought a sudden feeling of unease.  He wasn’t much interested in Fleury’s theory, but it was unusual enough for Fleury to stop talking once he got going that when the steady drone of his voice did stop the effect was startling. Mathieu stopped working and looked up to see what the matter was.

“Do you hear that?” Fleury asked.

From somewhere in the desert came a muted rumble of rhythmic, reverberating impacts. Mathieu stared out across the dunes, bewildered.

“‘Mech!” shouted Savard. It was the first time Mathieu had ever heard him sound excited. “‘Mech coming!”

“Get the engine started!” shouted Fleury, rolling towards his hatch.

“The track isn’t fixed yet,” Mathieu pointed out mildly.

“Bah! You’re useless!”

Their heads disappeared inside the tank and the hatches closed behind them, leaving Mathieu standing by himself. There was a scratchy whining sound from within the Galleon as Savard tried to start the engine, then it abruptly subsided with a cough of black exhaust smoke that made Mathieu wince.

In the meantime the BattleMech footfall sounds were getting steadily closer. Mathieu trudged back to the truck, climbed into the cab, and considered what to do. There was no way to know if more ‘Mechs and vehicles might be swarming into this part of the waste any minute as the war games went on without him, and if that happened he would have preferred to be out of the way. He could drive back to the base and report that the Galleon, in addition to a thrown track, now had an engine problem which he didn’t have the parts or tools to fix. But was it better to wait until the tide of simulated battle had passed by and suggest to Fleury and Savard that they come back with him in the truck? If he didn’t, there was a chance they might have to ride out the sandstorm here in the waste. Surely they would be safe enough inside a tank. But they were fools…

Then the ‘Mech came in sight and all other thoughts vanished from his mind.

Technically, it was not the first time that Mathieu had seen a BattleMech up close. Like everyone else at the Garde base, he had walked out to gawk at the wreck of the Capellan ‘Mech the Marquis and his mercenaries had brought down. It hadn’t made much of an impression on him, looking like little more than a giant metal marionette with its strings cut.

Seeing a BattleMech functional and on the move was something else entirely. Mathieu was not awed, exactly. The sheer size of the machine was impressive, yes, but it was still just a machine, and not a very elegant or imposingly-designed one at that. Mathieu’s attention was immediately drawn to the large, almost oversized cockpit canopy which seemed in his (admittedly uninformed) opinion to leave the pilot far too exposed, although he assumed that the bubble canopy was made of tougher stuff than it appeared. More than anything else Mathieu felt an overwhelming curiosity. He wanted to take the thing apart and see how it worked.

As Mathieu watched, the ‘Mech leveled the muzzle of the weapon held in its right hand for a moment at the lifeless Galleon, then turned its attention on the nearby truck with him at the wheel. It was near enough now that Mathieu thought that he should have been able to see the pilot inside through the cockpit canopy, but the polarized bubble gave him only a faint outline of a person’s head and shoulders encased in the awkward neurohelmet. As Mathieu gazed upwards, transfixed, the ‘Mech’s left fist unclenched and pointed at him with an index finger, then jerked upwards. The gesture would have been understandable to any child playing war games in the Rust: Bang! You’re dead.

The BattleMech made a shuffling turn and stomped off into the waste. Mathieu climbed out of the truck’s cab and watched it go. Behind him he heard the creak of the Galleon’s hatches opening up again, and a steady stream of profanity.

“Was that him? What type of ‘Mech was that?” shouted Fleury

“It was a BatteMaster,” Savard answered. “At least, I think it was.”

This triggered another burst of foul language from his companion. “That’s his ‘Mech! Us just stuck here with our thumbs up our asses, and that was him!”

“Who?” Mathieu asked.

“The Marquis, you idiot Ruster! You don’t know anything!”

[Daryk]

Glad to see a new post! :)