Character Test"Destruction is easy……any idiot can do it." Supervisor Samuel explained. "You hear about the power of military forces or warrior castes, you even talk about it." He put the beer stein on the bar, and turned to face them. "Let me tell you a story. I can crack a planet for less in resources than it takes for the five of you to raid a
village, and I don't need high-end industrial support to do it."
Samuel was on Alpheratz because
Evanescent was in orbit.
Evanescent was in orbit, because Admiral Gomez needed a non-AI ride to testify to the Clan Council that was holding court in the Parliament's buildings.
"Neg, You are exaggerating! Nobody could do that!!"
Samuel shook his head. "Do I need to show you the math, or do you want a demonstration?" he asked. "The math isn't even
complicated, any one of you who's passed basic gunnery can do it-if you know how your targeting system works, or if you know a cadet's level of astrogation. Force equals mass times velocity."
The senior warrior's sneer dropped. "No."
"Yeah. For less than the price of a single battlemech point's deployment." Samuel told her, "Less in fuel than an invasion force uses too, and the destruction can be scaled, you just have to decide how much lead time you want and how far out you start." He said, "Destruction? That's easy, a clock and some hydrogen and it's simplicity itself. Want a real accomplishment, well…" he shrugged, "For that you gotta find something
hard to do...then make it simple enough even a guy like me can do it."
"To destroy a planet?"
"Ruin a world." he corrected, "Destroy a city, make somewhere earth-like uninhabitable. It's not that tough, they knew how to do it back in the nineteenth century. We didn't do that, but it wasn't because we didn't know
how."
One of the bolder 'mechwarriors, a Star Commander, spoke up, "Then why did you not?"
"Because it would be
Ruining a planet." Samuel enunciated pedantically, "Thing about ground forces, is that they exist because some things are valuable enough to keep, and too easy to destroy, so you send in the ground pounders because anything really
powerful will destroy what you're trying to capture. The purpose of military operations is to come out
ahead." He reached over and picked up his beer again, "Your job exists, because if something is worth going to war over, it's usually worth taking mostly intact."
"There are Naval Commanders who would disagree with you." the Star Captain in charge of this group of Warriors commented.
"Yeah, well…I don't work for them." Samuel stated. "I solve problems for the Privateers, sometimes that means doing the math that in the wrong hands-the hands of an idiot, would destroy what we came to liberate." He met her eyes and didn't shy away like a lower Caste.
The room went silent, and the sound of chairs and tables moving could be heard.
"Huh, I guess that's an unpopular opinion." Samuel quipped and put his now-empty glass on the bar.
"You are suggesting we are mindless barbarians, intent on repeating the mistakes of the corrupt House Lords and the darkest times when the others lost their way. We are Clan Warriors. There is no glory or honor in flattening a city. In an ideal universe we would always take our target completely intact. But because of freebirths like you we will never live in an ideal universe”" the Star Captain stated.
“Looks like I touched a nerve.”
“Aff.”
Samuel began counting.
"What are you doing, more of your math?" she scoffed.
"Nope, I don't know how many of you it's going to take before you're satisfied, but I'm getting a count of how many you're going to use." This triggered a wave of side glances and embarrassed looks.
She held up a hand, "He's
mine!!" she affirmed with a tone of anger, a statement that seemed to keep the others where they were.
He didn't assume a stance, he just remained relaxed against the bar, but he did put his glass down.
"Well?"
The first swing was textbook, what happened wasn't, as the Sol-belta born Engineer simply wasn't
there for her fist to connect to.
The bar was.
"AAAUGH!!" she howled, shaking her right hand as if to relieve the sudden pain of striking the bar, instead of the gut of the man she'd punched instead. He relaxed against the bar again. He held up a finger, "refill it chalky."
Her second was wild, and wide, and missed his face, because ducked back
just enough.
Her stomp-kick aimed at his shin, found the bar-stool instead.
"HOW??"
"Space and volume." he said, and stepped aside. "Velocity and force…the whole universe is numbers." He managed to look casual as he stepped around her limping, furious attempts to strike him.
"Strike BACK!!" she cursed at him.
"Um, mirror." he gestured and ducked to the side as her follow-on punch snapped out. Again, instead of a solid hit, there was a brief glancing and her knuckles tugged at his tunic.
"What about it??"
"You. Female, me, raised
properly." he stated. "Gentleman doesn't strike a woman without a damn good reason. Political argument? Not a good reason."
He leaned almost comically back,and stumbled, a few blows sort-of-connecting at the worst angles-from the attacker's perspective.
"That is insane! I am
attacking you!!" she launched herself ,and again, he just seemed to
be elsewhere, leaving her stumbling into her comrades.
"I don't have a good reason to hit you
back." His light, half-drunk tone said it all-as if it were entirely self-evident that until she landed a clean blow, he would not start fighting.
It made her pause. "So insults?"
"Only matter to someone else." he said lightly, "I really don't care, I either don't respect the person doing it, or the insult isn't true and therefore isn't relevant."
Thus, Samuel made the mistake of giving her motivation.
Throw enough punches, eventually one connects. Her first connect was a glancing strike, "There!! I HIT you!!!"
"No harm." he shrugged it off, "Not worth more than.." he popped a slap on her cheek.
A light slap, not even one driven seriously.
This was too much for one of the other warriors, who didn't wait to be tagged in.
Samuel demonstrated his restraint was NOT extended to men, giving pretty much everyone present an interesting sight, as his left foot snapped up, in a standing splits, over his own height, kicking the Elemental-breed in the chin hard enough that the breaking of teeth and jawbone could be heard.
"Numbers. Proportional force." Samuel explained as the female Star Captain scowled at the dishonor of having one of her men interrupt HER trial, then Samuel grinned, "Boot to the head. Someone call this guy a Medic?"
The witnesses held back after that, and persisted until the Shore Police arrived.
****
"I understand……the position, I really do." Lori Crow said, "I just can not credit the charges as being real. If anything I wanted to assign a bodyguard on him, Samuel is…not a violent man. I hesitate to imagine what a 'violent' Samuel would even
look like."
A change in Khan meant a change in national policy. Dierdre McKenna was not Alberto Crowe, and was quite alright with getting rid of some of Alberto's debts-at least, willing to entertain the idea of turning over a wanted fugitive.
"Make your case." Khan McKenna instructed, "Explain that last bit."
"Samuel is both introverted and patient." Lori said, "He tolerates things most civilians would find intolerable, he is socially awkward. What he is not, is prone to acts of violence in the manner listed in this warrant-I imagine he
could have been putting us on, but for well over ten years?" she shook her head. "For a while I wondered if there was something
wrong with him- if he does not care for a directive or order, he simply does not obey it!"
"So he is undisciplined."
"Neg." Lori found herself falling into Clan-language habits, "negative, Mister Samuel is almost
supernaturally disciplined. In the midst of a shipboard emergency, he is the man who keeps his head while everyone else is losing theirs. He never panics, he barely raises his voice…"
"Well, we are going to test that." the Khan told her.
"What??"
"I read your reports on your fugitive colleague, and assigned someone to
test that." Deirdre told her, "If the testing satisfies, I will tell the Republic's justice department officials that there will be no extradition, if he fails this test, I will authorize it without a moment of regret, you have my meaning, quiaff?"
"Aff." Lori looked miserable. "How are you going to test…him?"
The Khan gave an enigmatic smile, "You will see."
***
"yes, he's one of mine……what kind of damage?" Admiral Esme Gomez stood in the precinct.
"Mister Samuel was participant in a disorderly event involving a room full of Snow Raven warriors, Admiral." the constable explained, "in which, he broke one man's jaw."
"Ouch. so how bad did you have to rough him up?"
"Through here…" the led her back to the cells.
Samuel was seated serenely on the bunk in the cell, and the other prisoners were giving him a wide berth.
"Are you drunk?"
"No ma'am." Samuel answered. "Can I go now? These people don't seem to like me very much."
"Tell me what happened." Esme ordered.
"I was having a discussion with an attractive young woman and this very large man stepped in and tried to hit me." Samuel explained, "I was extolling the virtues of being creative instead of destructive. He took offense, I guess, so I kicked him in the face."
She glanced at the police officer, "That's it?"
"The 'discussion' broke two bar-stools and a table, and injured a Clan 'mechwarrior, the Elemental in question, apparently, claims to have stepped in."
"Where's the other one?" she asked.
"Women's block."
"Samuel!! Did you-?"
"No ma'am." Samuel said, "I was on my best behavior…she was probably drunk, she kept trying to
hit me."
She sighed, "What's the bail?"
"Take him out of my cells." The cop told her, "Please?"
***
"Which Belt faction… …were you with in your old life?" Esme asked as they walked to the door of the station.
"Smiling Buddha." he answered, "Kuiper belt region."
"Right…Sam, where are you going?"
"They also arrested the young lady I was having a conversation with." he told her, "I should check on her, make sure she's okay. She punched that bar pretty hard. Based on how OUR Snow-Raven personnel act, I think she was flirting with me."
"You think you're going to
get lucky?"
He shrugged, "I am on leave, unless this incident means I have to go back to work tonight…"
"Go ahead, have some fun." Esme told him, "be more careful, okay?"
"Of course…why is it that people always insist on believing in things that are
wrong??"
"That is a puzzle for the ages, Samuel, but keep in mind-they generally don't like to be corrected, and you have a nasty habit of trying to correct them."
**
"Mister M'benge, no." Khan Dierdre McKenna stated, "I will not support the extradition of Samuel Perkins to the Republic of the Sphere on these charges, and neither will President Avellar-though for quite different reasons."
"What are your reasons?"
"He is…valuable and useful to the Clan, and placing him into the Republic's prison system would be a waste of a resource we already have possession of." the Khan stated.
"The man is wanted for a violent crime!!"
"He is
ours and of no concern to you." she paused to let that sink in, before continuing,
"Also, I suspect he is NOT the criminal your predecessors claimed him to be." the Khan produced a document, "This is OUR psychological work-up on Samuel Perkins, he is almost, but not quite, pathologically pacifistic-that is, he is non-aggressive and sits on the autism scale far enough that his commanding officers assign people to keep him from being
assaulted. Despite this, it is not that mental illness that makes me unwilling to release him to your custody, it is the fact that he is, in fact, quite capable of fighting in his own defense, when properly motivated. His restraints against it reflect well on the discipline of a Technician Caste who works with Warriors on a regular basis, and I do not flush such useful additions over something as petty as
money."
"You are claiming he is non-violent yet you praise his capacity for violence?"
"If he lacked it, I would have signed off on sending him to the Republic in binders without hesitation or concern." Deirdre explained patiently, "if he were less intelligent, I would have approved your move for extradition without blinking an eye, if he were
ordinary...but, he is one of the plank-holders of the OWS
Evanescent and a contributor to the Clan whose work has been…exceptional. I am a conservative, not an idiot. Here is what would happen…you would collect him here for a tour of some lovely penal facility near Holy Terra, only he would not stay past in-processing before being spirited off to work in a weapons laboratory. We get better use of him
right here."
"You have him working as an engineer on a warship that barely qualifies as a warship…"
"Yes, he works there, and works freely. It is right in the word..'Free-Birth'." she said, "round peg, round hole, perfect fit, I see no reason to disrupt that, and no significant gain to the Clan from permitting it to
be disrupted."
*
"I thought……you were going out to get your shag on." Lori said from the hatch.
Samuel looked up from where he was working. "I did," he told her.
"She kicked you out?"
"It was mutual." he told her, "We had a nice time, and went our own ways, she was not interested in a long-term contract and honestly, no-attachments sex is kind of boring-I can get the same thing without the hassle and mess." He set the tacking iron aside. "I never really enjoyed casual relations, it is not the rubbing of body parts that excites me, it's the mind of the person I'm with."
"You're
weird, you know that?"
"I have been told." he nodded. "I don't
think there were hard feelings on her side…when do we return to Port Orphan?"
"As soon as Esme finishes briefing the Khans and the Clan Council." Lori answered, "Should be tomorrow, maybe Tuesday at the latest…what're you working on?"
"Oh, an improvement to the sensor arrays…" he started to drone on about physics and engineering, before stopping himself, "You're bored, Lori, you should find something you actually want to do while there is still leave time left to do it."
"I'm fine, that's very interesting." she lied.
"It is nice to have friends." He returned to narrating his work as he picked up his tools and began reassembling the system's panel.
-Finis-
