Chapter 2: Shindig
“You’re enjoying that, aren’t you?” Kit shot a sideways glare at her XO.
Cedric Smythe grinned back at her but gave no response at first, instead seeming to pause and listen to the sound of his spurs on the polished floor of the hallway that had a ceiling twice Kit’s height. Since the Kats had no dress uniform, Smythe had outfitted himself for the occasion in his old AFFS dress greens, with the elaborate Davion sunburst layer that usually covered almost half the wearer’s torso removed but the Deneb Light Cavalry insignia still in place… and with the decorative spurs favored by Federated Suns MechWarriors still on the boots. Kit was sure he was going out of his way to exaggerate the scraping and clanking on the marble and exotic wood paneling of the Marquis’s mansion, and it was doing nothing to improve her mood.
“Hey kid,” Smythe responded. Kit was relieved that Smythe hadn’t felt the need to start calling her “Captain” all the time, at least in private. “I’m just…”
Kit rolled her eyes. “Just a hick from the outback, right.” If she had a C-bill for every time she had heard Smythe describe himself this way, she was sure she would have enough to buy a new BattleMech.
Smythe grinned wider and nodded. “Right. So you’re prob’ly thinkin’ I should be… overawed by all these swank surroundings, right? Ooh’in’ and ahh’in’? No, don’t deny it. But the fact is my upbringin’ is the reason I’m
not impressed. Every Baron or Count in the Outback builds himself a place like this, and the more dirt-poor the landhold, the shinier the shack.” Smythe cracked his knuckles behind his shaved head. “So no point gettin’ a rod up your ass about it, chances are there’ll be enough folks here with that affliction.”
Kit scowled. “Laugh it up, Smitty. You don’t have to be the face of the unit.”
Smythe shrugged. “Better your face than mine, anyway.”
There was a gilded-frame mirror the size of a small hovercar on the wall, and Kit stopped to examine her reflection. Unlike Smythe, she had never served in a Great House military, and so she didn’t even have an old uniform to fall back on. When she had received the invitation to attend this reception celebrating the completion of the dam across the Sablier, she had experienced a moment of panic. She and Ellie Jarvis had made a shopping trip in the capital to find her clothes for the occasion. They had settled on what Jarvis called a “military-inspired” look consisting of a smoke-gray buttoned blouse and trousers, midnight blue bolero-style jacket with faux-epaulet tabs at the shoulders, and, to Kit’s dismay, knee-high boots with a two-inch heel that Ellie had talked her into on the basis that adding height to her slight frame would “give her more confidence.” Kit didn’t think tripping and doing a face-plant in front of the assembled dignitaries would be good for her confidence. The subdued hues of the ensemble meant that the only color which stood out was from the red in her hair. It was not an outfit designed to attract attention, and Kit was fine with that.
Although we should probably at least get some unit patches made, she thought to herself as she smoothed the outfit for the hundredth time.
“You look good, kid,” said Smythe, with a quiet earnestness she heard from him only rarely.
Kit sighed. “Ellie picked basically everything.”
“What’s wrong with that? Siren’s about as fashionable as they come, for a ‘Mech jock.” In fact, being a mercenary MechWarrior sometimes seemed like it was only a stepping stone for Ellie Jarvis in her plans for a more glamorous career as a tri-vid star or something.
“Yeah, but Ellie’s hair has been three different colors since we got here, and none of them occur in nature.” Smythe laughed and Kit turned back to him with a grimace. “I guess I can’t delay it any longer, can I?”
They continued their walk down the hallway and a new, terrifying thought made her curse out loud. Smythe shot her a questioning look. “Jesus, Smitty,” she said, “You don’t think they’re going to…
announce us, do you?”
***
To Kit’s relief, there was not, in reality, a butler announcing each illustrious guest who entered the mansion’s grand ballroom. In fact, hardly anyone seemed to pay any attention to her at all.
She managed one conversation with an executive from one of the planet’s leading import/export guilds which lasted all of two minutes before succumbing to the total boredom of both parties. When that two minutes was up she turned to discover that she had lost track of Smythe, damn him. She eyed the gathering from the edge of the room. The men mainly wore suits, some with tails and waistcoats. The women were mostly wearing gowns in a riot of shimmering colors which to Kit, no judge of fashion, all seemed to somehow blend together even though they would fail as camouflage among the flora of any world Kit had ever visited. She couldn’t see Smythe anywhere, although she occasionally thought she could hear the clank of his spurs on the marble, over the din of stuffy conversations and fake laughter and the music played by a string quartet that would finish one tune and then play another which seemed to her to sound exactly the same.
She found herself wondering, just like she had the last time she answered a summons from the Marquis, why exactly she was even there. On the positive side, there truly didn’t seem to be any possible way she would end up shooting anyone this time. On the other hand, she figured that there was a much greater chance she would end up wishing someone would shoot her instead.
She finished a glass of too-sweet champagne and had just plucked a second off a tray carried by a passing waiter when a voice from just outside her peripheral vision startled her.
“You must be Captain Söderlund.”
Kit whirled, feeling exposed and vulnerable at her lost anonymity as if a surprise attack had stripped off a couple tons of armor plate. The woman who had spoken to her had mahogany skin and richly textured hair. She looked about Kit’s age, and was approximately Kit’s height but with a frame that was all honed, lean muscle. She wore immaculately pressed white and purple that Kit recognized as the Free Worlds League Military dress uniform, although without any visible unit insignia. The Calseraigne
Garde Planétaire wore dark blue uniform jackets with white trousers.
“How did you know?” Kit managed.
The other woman smiled wryly. “Apart from me, you’re the only woman here not wearing a gown or jewelry.” She extended her hand. “Lieutenant Naila Benichou.”
“I didn’t know there were any regular FWLM personnel on the planet,” Kit said, shaking Benichou’s hand tentatively.
“I apologize that we haven’t had a chance to meet sooner,” Benichou responded. “I’ve been posted to Calseraigne as a special military advisor to the planetary government. The Marquis has been pushing the Deputies to strengthen the planet’s defenses, as I’m sure you know.” Kit nodded even though she didn’t know any such thing. “To be quite honest with you though, I spend more of my time in a sim pod trying to stay sharp than anything else.”
Kit suddenly felt as engaged as she had all evening. “Sim pods?”
Benichou nodded. “I think that’s half the reason I ended up here, actually. The government ordered two, with the idea they would screen potential MechWarrior candidates from the Gee Pee… sorry, the
Garde Planétaire… to explore whether it would be advisable to actually try to procure some ‘Mechs. A symbolic political move more than anything. They’re not academy-grade pods, but good enough you don’t feel like you’re in an arcade.”
Kit thought about the state of the simulators at the only academy she had ever been to, about the arcades on Galatea she had frequented as a teenager, and took a drink of her champagne in an effort to conceal her flush of embarrassment. “I guess I should visit sometime,” she said.
“You should!” Benichou replied brightly. “What do you pilot? To be quite honest with you, when I heard your unit had arrived on-planet I tried to get a dossier on you - thought it was part of my job, if you understand - but…” Benichou paused awkwardly. “...the information the Liaison Bureau had from the MRB was pretty sparse.”
For a moment Kit wondered if Benichou was trying to insult her by rubbing her face in what a two-bit, no-rep outfit the Kats were, but dismissed that as her own insecurity talking. No surprise the Mercenary Review Board’s dossier on the Kats was slim. If Benichou had searched for info on Kit herself, however, she probably would have found old press reports from Galatea, during the brief period when she was one of the most popular curiosities of the Mercenary’s Star. Kit hoped she hadn’t.
“I pilot a
Vindicator,” Kit said in answer to Benichou’s question, trying not to wince. She knew that her ‘Mech, workhorse of House Liao, was not highly regarded by many MechWarriors outside Capellan space, especially by those from Liao’s traditional enemies in the League or Federated Suns.
“Tough old hunks of junk!” Benichou said, but with genuine enthusiasm rather than sarcasm. “Not to be underestimated.”
“You’ve fought one a time or two then?” Kit asked.
Now it was Benichou’s turn to wince. “Not personally. Only what I was told, by my aunt. Her words, that hunk of junk thing, I hope you weren’t offended.”
Kit shook her head. “Wasn’t like I exactly picked it, anyway,” she said.
Fell ass-backwards into the cockpit would be closer to the truth. “A ‘Mech is a ‘Mech.”
Benichou nodded once more, glanced around the room, and smoothed her uniform. “To tell the truth, I haven’t fought any
Vindicators or anything else, either, “ she said with barely-suppressed bitterness. Kit didn’t know what she was supposed to do with this information, but Benichou saved her from having to think of a response. “What about you? Seen any action?”
When Kit met the Lieutenant’s gaze again there was an anxiousness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. In her mind’s eye Kit saw a tank crewman putting a gun to his own head as he burned; a
Marauder heavy ‘Mech stalking down a city street like a prehistoric reptilian apex predator; other memories she avoided conjuring up except when her nightmares gave her no choice. She blinked and took another sip of her champagne. “A little,” she managed. “Nothing to brag about.” A truthful answer, but she had no idea if it was the type of answer Benichou was looking for. She needed to change the subject. “And what’s your ride?” Kit felt quite comfortable talking about BattleMechs, if not about actually fighting in them.
“My family machine is a
Wolverine,” Benichou said with a smile of pride that quickly faded. “However, I… wasn’t able to bring it with me when I was assigned here.” Kit tried not to wince; all MechWarriors dreaded finding themselves “Dispossessed” - left without a BattleMech pilot and therefore stripped of purpose and status. She mentally berated herself for managing to find a way to hit a sore point with the only person who had been friendly with her all evening.
Benichou fixed Kit with her intense gaze again. “Captain, let me ask you your professional opinion. The Marquis and the Deputies have been at odds over strengthening the GP. The Marquis hired your unit personally to enhance the planetary defenses.” Is that what he hired us for? Kit wondered to herself. “But aside from the political tensions, the biggest threat to peace here seems to be the holdouts in the southern sea zone, which isn’t saying much,” Benichou went on. “What do you think the chances are of any actual fighting happening here?”
Blake’s blood, Kit thought,
It’s like she actually looks up to me! A House military officer, looking up to her. Kit was suddenly struck by what a strange line of work she had chosen where having killed people not only elicited respect from those who had not, but counted for more than anything else.
“For whatever my professional opinion is worth, I’d say the odds are pretty damn low,” she said. “Especially after the Marquis’s stunt at that village now that everyone thinks he walks on water… or could if there was any water still out there to walk on…” But Benichou was looking over Kit’s shoulder, no longer listening to her.
Kit spun on her heels again and froze. The new arrival was slender, not tall, and looked to be about thirty standard years old, give or take. His suit was the more showy tailcoat style she had seen some of the other male guests at the reception wearing, shining steel blue under the lights of the ballroom, with a pale purple waistcoat underneath. Unlike most of the other guests he wore no necktie or cravat. Kit had never seen the face before in person, but it was familiar enough from the news tri-vids. Marquis Guillaume Everett was undeniably handsome, with skin a shade lighter than Lieutenant Benichou’s, and an immaculately groomed mustache and beard that just outlined his jaw. Kit had a moment of panic as she wondered how much he had heard, although the sunny smile on his face showed no hint of offense.
“My lord,” said Lieutenant Benichou, with a slight but prolonged tilt of her head. Kit mimicked the Marik officer’s movement.
“Do you know,” the Marquis began, his voice a clear, lighthearted tenor, “That you two are the only ladies here tonight who have not yet imposed upon my time for social pleasantries?”
“My lord,” Benichou said, “Allow me to present Captain Söderlund of the Black Kats mercenary company.”
“Of course,” the Marquis said. He turned his dazzling smile on her and offered a handshake which Kit once again accepted tentatively.
“The Captain and I were just ‘talking shop,’ as the saying goes,” Benichou explained. Kit took the opportunity to study Benichou as the Marquis turned his attention back to the Lieutenant. Unlike herself, Benichou didn’t seem the slightest bit uncomfortable in the presence of the planet’s noble ruler, but there was something about her that was different from the almost startlingly forthright young woman Kit had been talking to a few moments before. Her demeanor was more reserved, or deferential.
“Ah,” the Marquis said, spreading his arms and nodding knowingly. “Now I understand what was more interesting than me.” The cheer suddenly vanished from his face and he looked at Benichou sternly. “But if you’ll forgive me for interrupting, Lieutenant, I am afraid I must take you to task for deceiving me.”
Benichou’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Deceiving you, my lord?”
The Marquis looked at Kit again and the bright smile reappeared. “Lieutenant Benichou accepted my invitation to do a little fencing, as there’s scarcely anyone else on the planet who knows how. She neglected to mention to me that she was the bronze medallist in saber at the academy-wide tournament at Princefield her final year.” Princefield, Kit recalled, was one of the Free Worlds League’s most prestigious military academies, attended by the scions of many noble and wealthy families. Kit began to see where Naila Benichou had developed her easy rapport with the upper crust. Perhaps she was even some sort of minor nobility herself.
Benichou laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t have told you I was bronze medallist, my lord, because there were no medals. I had to settle for the title of ‘second runner-up,’ which of course itself is just a nicer way of saying ‘second loser.’”
The Marquis rolled his eyes at Benichou’s modesty. “Well, second runner-up at Princefield was more than enough to leave me feeling quite embarrassed,” he said to Kit as if relating an amusing secret. Kit couldn’t imagine the Marquis, born to privilege, blessed with good looks, and apparently full of serene self-confidence, ever feeling embarrassed by anything.
Benichou grimaced sympathetically. “I certainly enjoyed the chance to get back on the piste in any case.” She glanced across the ballroom. “If you will please excuse me, my lord, Captain, I believe duty compels me to go observe social pleasantries with Deputy Gamelin.”
“You should get a medal,” the Marquis said with a laugh. “Man’s a terrible blowhard, you know,” he observed to Kit with the same conspiratorial tone as before. With another brief bow for the Marquis and a nod for Kit, Benichou walked away.
Which left Kit all alone with the chatty nobleman. And his brilliant smile. How much had he heard of what she was saying to Benichou when he walked up?
Maybe it was better to just bite the bullet. “My lord,” she began, “I think I may owe you an apology. I-...”
“No, Captain, it’s I who owe you one! Your unit has been here in my employ for weeks now and it’s unconscionable I’ve never taken the time to meet you in person. And I wanted to say thank you for accompanying me on my trip to Besoble few days ago.”
Kit figured out quickly enough that Besoble must have been the name of the Rust village. She took a sip of her champagne as she tried to think of something to say. “We were just doing… what we were hired for, I suppose.”
The Marquis laughed. “Well then in that case, I apologize once again for subjecting you to a boring afternoon.”
“In our line of work, boring can be good,” Kit said. There was suddenly what felt like profound silence, as if every other conversation in the room had reached a lull point at the exact same moment. In her head, Kit screamed.
“Is your
BattleMaster a family machine?”
Idiot. He thinks you’re an idiot, she mentally berated herself, wondering at the same time why she cared if he did. Were BattleMechs really the only subject she could come up with to talk about?
The Marquis nodded, surely amused by her small-mindedness but too polite to show it. “It’s been in my family since this world’s liberation from House Liao.”
“You wouldn’t get most MechWarriors out the cockpit of a machine like that so easily.”
Everett chuckled. “Well, I make no claim to be a MechWarrior. Some would say dilettante is a more accurate description of my profession, but I would say I aspire to someday be worthy of being thought of as a statesman.”
“Still,” Kit said, “What you did… well, it took guts.”
The Marquis shrugged modestly. “Have you run into Lombard?” He nodded across the room at a grizzled looking older man in a rumpled suit who stood near the entrance talking to nobody. “He’s the head of my family’s guard, can’t stand events like this, would rather be creeping around the estate looking for Liao spies… he was furious at me about the whole thing. He served with my father, and sometimes I think he still sees me as a child.”
Kit was seized by a sudden curiosity. “But what exactly happened when you walked into that village?” Since the Marquis had climbed out of his ‘Mech and walked into Besoble, the ugly situation in the village appeared to have been completely defused. The protesters had started to trickle out into other villages or the refugee camps they had come from, and most of the elderly holdout residents had agreed to be relocated.
Everett shrugged modestly. “I talked to them,” he said, as though that explained everything.
“You talked to them,” Kit said flatly.
“Yes. I told them, more or less, that I was sorry. That I couldn’t take full responsibility for the situation they were in, but that I was sorry that my predecessors and the planetary government had ignored them while their plight got worse and that what’s happening now is from a sincere effort to make things better.” He paused thoughtfully. “In the end, though, I think perhaps what I said was less important than the fact that I came to them alone, unarmed, unprotected, and spoke to them as people.”
“But did you, really?” The words were out of Kit’s mouth before she realized she was saying them. Was it the champagne or the man’s undeniably disarming presence that made her suddenly feel bold? “You may have gotten out of your ‘Mech to talk to them, but everyone there could see you walk up in it, and my whole lance with you, and then our ‘Mechs standing there, in weapon range, waiting. Couldn’t that be seen as an implied threat? Even…”
What am I saying? “Even as a show of contempt, in the mind of a person who was already angry? Showing you had the power over those people and chose not to use it? Er, my lord.”
The Marquis stared into her eyes for a long moment. She felt her cheeks flush hot. Then he smiled, and at first she thought he was going to laugh again, but he didn’t. Instead he nodded slowly. “Captain, you make a fair point. In the end I can only say I was forced to strike a balance between mollifying the people and mollifying Lombard.” And there was the laugh again after all, and she damned him for finding everything so amusing even as she found she was laughing along with him.
The Marquis glanced away and Kit thought she saw a flicker of irritation in his eyes, the irritation she had expected to see in response to her challenge a moment before, but in an instant it was gone and his serene good humor had returned. Kit turned to follow his gaze and saw the man he had spoken to. In contrast to the finery of most of the reception’s attendees, his drab suit gave the impression of a man who had picked his wardrobe only to stay within the bounds of propriety without actually caring how he looked, or perhaps had simply put on the only suit he owned. He was no more than thirty-five, small-ish, with hair so blonde it was almost white, or perhaps had simply turned white extremely early. Kit’s first impression of him was that he was perhaps some accountant coming to wring his hands about how much this reception was costing the Marquis. As he came closer, however, she saw the intensity in the man’s eyes and realized she was wrong. If she had been forced to guess at the newcomer’s profession, she might have said artist, although she had never met any artists.
The man trudged unhappily toward them and looked as if he was opening his mouth to speak when the Marquis cut him off. “Ah, Deputy Gamelin!” the Marquis called cheerfully.
“My lord,” the man said sourly, with a stiff bow.
“Captain,” the Marquis said in his conspiratorial tone, but loud enough for the man to hear, “This is Émile Gamelin, of Calseraigne’s governing Assembly of Deputies… perhaps the only other person on the planet who is willing to speak to me as honestly as you did a moment ago! Monsieur Gamelin, allow me to introduce Captain Katryna Söderlund of the Black Kats.”
Kit extended her hand to the man, but he only looked at it with seeming distaste, so she awkwardly let her arm fall back to her side. “I know who she is, my lord,” Gamelin snapped. “I was able to deduce she could only be your hireling from the…” He looked Kit up and down. “...Unprofessional and inappropriate military chic pretensions of her attire.”
Another flash of irritation showed on the Marquis’s face, gone as quickly as it came. “Deputy, please,” he said, sounding almost as if he was talking to a child. “Our differences are no cause for being rude to the Captain. She is here, in every sense, at my invitation.”
The look Gamelin gave her was withering, but his voice was what chilled her. She had only heard such contempt directed at her from one man before, and that man had tried to take her life. “You will forgive me, Captain,” Gamelin seethed, “If I do not care to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with a herald of war recently arrived on my beloved homeworld.”