Battletech Make-up the Difference [Battletech crossover]

7b - Burning like a Silver Flame

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Miyako City
Sendai, Draconis Combine
20 June, 3028


The three other women were gathered in the center of the room around the tea-making table, none having spoken a word yet. It would break with tradition for discussion to start before drinks were poured. A formality, but like all formalities an essential one.

According to tradition, the most junior Miko present was charged with performing the tea ceremony. Usually, the senior priestess would carry out the ceremony, to better emphasize that the Order was socially superior to their visitors. But since the visitors today were also members of the Order of Five Pillars itself, it was the rank of those present that mattered and had to be adjusted for. A situation which only presented itself among meetings of the Order's priestesses or when the Order met with representatives of The Dragon.

Bending at the waist, the Miko in charge of tea--and incidentally the topic of the meeting--carefully fanned the coals on the underside of the table. She focused on the act to the exclusion of everything else, trying not to notice the unlucky number of people in the room and instead place her attention on how to balance how much air she blew onto the coals. They needed more than they currently had, but if she was too enthusiastic they would begin to burn instead of slowly smolder as she wanted.

Rei Hino focused her efforts and only moved the fan with careful, deliberate motions that allowed her the most control over its effects. She still had trouble balancing the heat versus the flames. It seemed as if every time she was charged with tea, the coals became restless at her mere presence and blew up at the slightest provocation. No matter how slowly she fanned them or how little air she let actually pass in, they always burst into fiery displays that had no place in what she was doing.

If she were forging a sword, perhaps the massive pyres of fire she created would be appropriate. Or if she were meeting with particularly despicable people she wanted to subtly show her displeasure towards. But for tea meant for her superiors, that much heat was unnecessary, wasteful, and insulting.

At the moment, being wasteful or insulting was the last thing she needed. With three senior priestesses of the Order of Five Pillars gathered together in the room, the last thing she needed was to make a mistake that would reflect poorly on herself and N'goto's training of her. Particularly considering the topic under discussion.

Rei nodded in satisfaction as the coals, for a change, obeyed her wishes and flared to a black-outlined red-hot glow that was perfect.

As if to spite the thought, a small sputter of orange tried to come to life in one corner. It burned for an instant, but was lacking in fuel and air and burned itself out almost as quickly as it had come. But the fact that it had come was enough.

Her nod died at almost the same time as the flame. Acceptable then, but not perfect. Not perfect by a long shot. She didn't know how she was supposed to do it!

Putting the mistake behind her as best she could, Rei transferred the pot of water onto the grate above the coals. She gave it one quick, light swirl to make sure it would steep evenly, then leaned back into the proper position--head bowed, back straight, and knees together underneath her.

Tyrson was ignoring her, which was comforting. If the Illuminatus didn't notice her, it meant she had done nothing incorrect that would draw her attention. Tyrson's nonverbal vote of confidence was reassuring, even if Rei wasn't entirely certain she deserved it.

Less comforting were the stares focused on her by the two other priestesses accompanying Tyrson. They did not even have the courtesy to try and hide the critical eye they had on her, and Rei felt a twinge of sympathetic embarrassment on their behalf. Amazing that one could rise so high without learning basic courtesy!

When the tea was ready, Rei kept her eyes on her task as she poured it for everyone at the table. She forced her mind to obey the same dictum. She admired many things about the Order. Its inner political workings was not among them. Especially when they had been used to shuffle off her mentor to what should have been an honored position in near disgrace. Being 'promoted' to a position in the orbit of Marcus Kurita, no matter how close it might be to the Coordinator, was a deliberate slap in the face.

What she couldn't figure out was why she was being sent to duties elsewhere rather than stepping-in for her old master as tradition dictated. That thought occupied center-stage in her mind as she set the teapot back upon the table.

"Konichi-wa Tyrson-sama, you honor this humble shrine with your visit. How was your trip?" Rei said after taking a courteously small sip from her cup.

She hid a flinch of anger in her lips behind the cup as Tyrson allowed one of her lessers to answer the question. It was going to be one of those kinds of meetings, then.

"We experienced only minor inconveniences. There was a delay of some days in Sulafat because the helium-tanks on our jumpship required repair and refueling. The captain had grown careless in his maintenance concerns and damaged the jumpship through his negligence. We shall have to hope his second-in-command takes better care of the Dragon's infrastructure." One of the two lower-ranking priestesses said.

"Indeed." Rei responded simply, not willing to grace the verbal trap with any further response.

Her master had been reassigned in disgrace. It was no accident that Tyrson's retinue had decided to share the story of a disgraced leader as their opener. The message was obvious: Serve the Order better than your former master did. The question was what N'Goto had done to deserve such a harsh condemnation.

Rei kept her face impassive as she lowered her teacup and listened politely to the other priestess as she continued. N'Goto had done nothing but serve the Order for as long as Rei had known her. The elderly woman had taken the time to train her in the Order's ways after her first master had been struck by a bus. N'goto might as well have been a mother to her, and the same to at least three dozen others on Sendai! The shrine's attendants and maintainers were made-up of everything from street-urchins and the family-members of dishonored DCMS personnel to the relations of out-and-out yakuza.

Now the Order had thanked N'goto for the sacrifices she'd made in taking in such a wide variety of what otherwise would have been little use to the Combine by shuffling her away. Heaping shame on her as if she had done something wrong by teaching the Order's ways to those in need of them! As if she deserved to be punished for making the Order stronger!

Her own proposed reassignment to be the head miko on another planet, in that context, was more insult than compliment. They thought her a protege of a disgraced priestess who needed to learn the Order's ways further before being promoted to further duties.

She, however, knew there were things of greater importance she should be doing. She could feel it.

"This is a very good brew." Tyrson interrupted, her voice lighter and airier than her juniors. There was the barest trace of an accent behind the Japanese, more guttural and less flowing than it was usually spoken.

Rei jerked upon the realization that Tyrson had spoken because her cup had gone empty. She bowed slightly as she grabbed the teapot and refilled the Illuminatus' cup, thankful that the slight bow allowed her to hide the blush that colored her cheeks at the mistake. Usually tea at these kinds of meetings was little more than a decoration, and she'd already refilled Tyrson's cup once!

She should have been paying better attention.

"It is, isn't it? The best part is that we need not import it from off-planet, either. The locals grow enough to trade with us in return for their ivory." Rei answered, doing a much better job than the other two junior priestesses had of hiding her barbed point behind properly courteous words.

"Sometimes it is the smallest blessings of a place which make it a pleasure to serve there." Tyrson continued.

The words themselves were harmless enough, but now the implications of what Tyrson was saying was clearly worrying the two others with her. From the only half-concealed glances they exchanged with each other, they had expected to speak for their superior throughout the entirety of the meeting.

Rei caught the veiled message clearly, and had to wonder why Tyrson was so friendly to her argument. The elderly Illuminatus was well-known for her conservative bent, which in the Order of Five Pillars was an extraordinary accomplishment. But she was offering implicit support to Rei's point by being so complimentary and accepting. So much so it was throwing off the two inferiors at her side!

To be honest, it was throwing off Rei as well. But she was much better at concealing it than the other two.

The two junior priestesses got themselves under control better in the next few moments, however. With their next words, things returned to the pattern that had been established before. The two underlings spoke to Rei in place of the senior priestess, all while Tyrson did naught but sip at her tea.

Though Tyrson did wave Rei towards her compatriots almost-untouched cups when the conversation began to turn to the actual reason for the meeting.

"The Order has new duties it wishes to ask of you. The senior priestess for Kervil has become indisposed. The Order recognizes you as deserving of her position. Would you be willing to set your affairs here on Sendai in order and make this journey?"

Rei hid a huff of disappointment and offense behind a careful sip of tea. So rude! Worse than that, so shaming for them to bring up the actual business of the meeting so quickly. Tradition dictated at least another fifteen or twenty minutes of courteous small-talk before the actual topic of the meeting was broached. Even then, as host it should have been her who began such discussion by inquiring as to the purpose of their visit. They were skipping over all of that as if it didn't matter in the slightest.

She might have considered her own reaction as excessive, but Tyrson also broke her own facade to tilt her head at the two junior priestesses beside her. The newest members of the Order seemed to have a disconcertingly low degree of patience and a serious lack of respect for the traditions of the Order. Rei knew she shouldn't criticize the two priestesses in such a way, as they were about the same age as her. But they conformed to the stereotype so well she couldn't help but notice it.

She quietly took one hand off her teacup and rubbed it against the side of her robes. This was the part where things would get interesting. She had been exchanging polite but irate messages with other members of the Order for a number of weeks now. She had seen the insult against her master and herself and, mostly at the behest of N'Goto, had been arranging things to her benefit in contesting it for weeks now. Rei never wanted to be involved in the politics of the Order, but she could appreciate it when someone who knew the ins-and-outs as well as N'goto did talked her through how to take advantage of it.

"I have a great number of commitments here on Sendai which demand my attention at the moment, Masood-san." Rei said. Not a refusal, that would be rude. But a negative placeholder that would put the onus on them to either make it into an explicit order or rethink themselves.

She didn't have much hope in them actually reconsidering. But she could force them into shaming themselves by having to break with tradition and order a priestess into a new temple. It was the most extreme protest she could give for her 'disgraced' former master, and N'Goto was worth whatever dishonor she might acquire in others' minds by her own actions.

"Whatever minor concerns the people of Sendai have can be dealt with by the new head miko." The second protege of Tyrson said, crossing her hands over each other in her lap. She hadn't so much as taken a sip from her cup yet, a calculated insult if Rei had ever seen one. But it was almost juvenile in its obviousness. A more accomplished and subtle message would have been to pantomime drinking but let her cup remain full in spite of the act presented.

"The concerns of the Dragon's subjects are never minor. I would be remiss if I did not attend to them as quickly as possible." Rei responded without missing a beat. She tried not to feel smugly satisfied at the purple hue that rose from the other woman's neck at the words, but failed entirely. Where had the Order found such a pair of bumbling ingrates like these, the Periphery?

Tyrson slowly raised one hand and cut-off whatever retort either of her two juniors might have had. She made a small circular motion with her index finger. Clearly trained to react to the gesture, both of the other two priestesses rose and shuffled their way to the shoji-panel door that led out of the tea-room. Masood gave a heated glare before exiting and closing the door, but Rei ignored it as easily as she had every other rudeness the pair had focused on her.

She had to grudgingly admit that the silent way they manipulated the door was commendable. She had expected them to slam it in the same manner as a child throwing a tantrum.

The silence that developed was interrupted only by the soft bump and whisper of Tyrson's teacup floating through the air and being set against the table. Tyrson took a slow, quiet breath and the beginnings of a smile crept onto the edge of her lips.

"Better. Much better." She said, half-closing her eyes.

She went silent again after those three words. Tyrson's entire world became centered around the teacup in front of her, and Rei began to feel like an intruder in her own temple. She dared not say anything to interrupt the Illuminatus' thoughts, and did her best to settle in herself.

Everything seemed to conspire to stop her from copying Tyrson's easy relaxation. A slow fire began to creep up her right leg in protest of maintaining the knees-tucked posture she'd held. There was a bothersome whistle of air from the ceiling where the vent to the rest of the temple and the outside was located. The biting smell of the burning coals seemed to curl into her nose instead of drifting out of the room as it should have.

Tyrson took one final, somewhat-barbaric gulp of tea from her cup and set it back onto the table with a loud clink. She visibly breathed, then pushed the teacup further into the middle of the table. Before Rei could stop her, she picked up the kettle herself and refreshed her cup.

Rei leaned back at the unorthodox assumption of control over the ceremony and replayed the preceding conversation in her mind. There had been four priestesses present until Tyrson had dismissed them, a symbol of disrespect and ill-will in most cases. But Tyrson had taken eight drinks of tea now, which was a subtle message of opportunity that was conveyed when explicitly stating so would be rude or impractical. But how was this supposed to be an opportunity?

"The Order saw fit to burden me with the two neophytes out there to present you with four priestesses in the room." Tyrson said. Her hands floated into the air in front of her to encompass the room around them.

Rei tilted her head, not sure how to take the admission. It was still confusing why Tyrson would admit such a thing. All the power in the symbol was in them not being acknowledged.

"Politics." Tyrson said, as if she could read Rei's mind. The older woman tucked her arms together into the sleeves of her robe and a small frown developed on her face as she stared at the tea set.

"There is discord in the House of the Dragon." Tyrson continued, now almost whispering.

Rei nodded, not trusting her voice to be steady enough to grace the comment with a verbal reply. The ongoing feud between Takashi Kurita and his son Theodore was widely-known in the Combine. The continuing court intrigues engaged in by Marcus Kurita were also destabilizing. But both were deliberately not spoken of. To do so could only promote disharmony and dissension.

"The Keeper is unsatisfied with that arrangement and wishes to make it known in as public a manner as she can." Tyrson stopped, raised an eyebrow at Rei. "She does not, however, wish to be seen as promoting discord. A delicate balance. You allow her to strike that balance."

Rei's mouth went dry. The Keeper of the House Honor of the entire Order of Five Pillars was interested in her?

"Kervil is not in need of a new priestess. A jumpship traveling through that system very soon is. The Keeper wishes to use you as a message to both the Coordinator and Hanse Davion. Only a very junior priestess will do."

Whatever iota of moisture that might have still existed in Rei's mouth disappeared, and she painfully swallowed. She was being used as an insult. Constance Kurita was playing a dangerous game, so half-blatantly insulting the Coordinator. Takashi Kurita would take note of the slight, no matter how it might be able to be formally explained as aimed at Hanse Davion instead of him. Inviting the Coordinator's ire was not typically something a miko would be demanded to do.

At least it explained why her protests had been taken so seriously.

Rei considered her tea for a long moment. When she had reached a decision, she inclined her head towards Tyrson.

The remainder of the meeting passed in a pleasing silence. Rei almost regretted it when she had to escort Tyrson to the exit and reengage with the other two priestesses. She kept the disdain she felt for the two undisciplined priestesses from coloring her actions, but only just.

She didn't know why, but now this felt like the right thing to do.

**********************************

The fasteners that secured the grate over the air return slowly wormed their way out of their tracks. Silently, the entire grate shifted until the only thing supporting it were the pair of black-gloved hands on the inside. Worming its way forward, the figure those hands belonged to slowly exited from the air duct it had hidden inside.

One leg shakily stretching out to rest against the closest of the room’s five pillars, the figure completely removed itself from the air duct. Its entire body seemed to shake and contort in extreme effort as it held itself up just below the grate. It kept the grate it had removed balanced in one hand as it rotated in place, and then reattached the fasteners.

Only when that was done did the obvious fatigue it was under affect it and the black-clad figure dropped from its position. Despite everything, it slowed itself as it fell, and impacted the floor with only a soft whuff of displaced air. Even this would have been too much sound in any other instance, but this was an irregular moment.

Lifting up the stylized cat-mask that he wore over his face, the figure quietly sucked down air that wasn’t loaded with the byproducts of the coal that still smoldered in the center of the room.

Had he known it was going to be a formal, ceremonial meeting rather than the work-session he had suspected, he would have found another place to observe. But his passage underneath always distorted the sound to an almost-indecipherable degree, and the Guardian’s redesign of the ceremonial room after N'goto had left had eliminated the shadows behind the fifth pillar he’d grown too dependent on.

He’d gotten lazy and stupid. Bored with his seemingly endless observations, he’d become secure in the knowledge that nothing would disturb them. The head of their Miharu No Seishin had suffered the same failing years before, and carelessly walked in front of an oncoming bus. That carelessness had landed the Guardian in the charge of the Order of Five Pillars temple instead of in the more benign safekeeping of the Nekakami. He and his four companion spirit-cats had much to make up to the Guardian for.

He swallowed down an urge to puke, and rolled onto his side. His heart was beginning to work more normally as he let the concentrated near-hibernation he’d forced onto it fade. He could tell because it was pounding in his ears every time it beat and pumping white-hot pain into his extremities. On the bright side, the head-splitting migraine that had been developing was beginning to recede.

In the future, he would have to be more careful. Even focusing his ki had only barely been enough to keep him alive. Another stupid mistake like that, and he would never have to worry about his charge's safety again.

He mentally groaned as he floated onto his feet and padded across the room to the exit furthest from where Tyrson and the Guardian had left. She was about to get put into a position where it would be much more interesting to even try and observe and protect her. He never would have thought himself a coward, but suddenly the boredom and inaction forced on him by the last years he’d spent skulking about the Order’s temple didn’t seem so bad.
 
7c - The Summit of Beauty and Love

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Hilton Head Island, Terra
21 June, 3028


"Is there any more manner I can be of service?"

The words were spoken with a harsh, biting accent that resembled that of a backwater Lyran speaking English for the first time. It was even further pronounced here, though, but was coupled with a lilting, strung-together rhythm that made the words even more difficult to puzzle out. But Adept Chapapaderong had improved dramatically. Back when he'd been fresh off the refugee-ship from the Periphery colony he'd called home up until the year before, his entire knowledge of English had consisted of 'Yes' and 'No'.

"It would be 'any further manner I may be of service', Inash. At least when you're speaking professionally or formally." He said, holding the lift's door open with one hand so it wouldn't close before he could offer the friendly correction.

Chapapaderong grimaced, and offered a slight bow of thanks for the correction. Once upon a time, he would have prostrated himself entirely and begged for forgiveness in the weirdly mashed-together dialect of French and German his planet had spoken. It had taken months for him to be broken of that habit.

Julian couldn't help but feel guilty whenever even the most tangential link to that previous habit arose. Inash still saw the Order in general, and Julian in particular, as his family's savior. All ComStar had been able to do was rescue the half-demented survivors of the old colony after most of the stronger Daimons had moved on. The Order was utterly undeserving of his praise. The Explorer Corps had only stopped-off in Un-pour-tous as a recharge-point while they tried to find where Wolf's Dragoons had come from.

"I understand, Primus." Inash said.

Julian Tiepolo let his hand come off the lift's doors and smiled a farewell at Inash. Before the doors had even fully closed, Inash had rotated in place and unshouldered the centuries-old Mauser 960 rifle he'd kept at port-arms out of respect for Julian. The ancient weapons were a status-symbol for the Hilton Head facility's guards. But they also were a purely practical choice of armament. In order to access the facility, an assault force would have to come through the extended hallway Inash and his subordinates were stationed at. That assault would be extremely costly and take a very long time. Long enough--it was hoped--that further reinforcements could be summoned from the ComGuard barracks below.

As the lift hummed into life, Julian could hear Inash barking orders out for the other pair of permanent guardsmen--who unlike him weren't cleared to know who entered or left the facility--to return to their stations. He could feel the stomping and pounding of their power-armor frames in his stomach as much as he could hear it in his ears until the lift had dropped him an entire floor.

Julian hated the perpetual secrecy so much of the Order's work was kept in. But it was a necessity he had long before been convinced of. Even within ComStar, he had encountered enough corruption of both the mundane and supernatural variety as to know just how valuable secrecy was. It was bad enough that the Houses, if they knew of the stores of 'LosTech' the Order kept hidden from them, would fall all over each other in fighting to claim it. He did not want to think of what members of the Order who'd been suborned by the Dark might do if they knew what the ComGuards training facility on Hilton Head Island truly concealed.

He leaned against the rear of the lift as it slowly descended through the necessary twenty-seven levels. For the first time in what felt like months, he let himself relax and just breathe. The air in the lift was recycled and stale, but just having the opportunity to be alone and mostly unobserved felt like a nice break.

Another massive war had seemed to be on the horizon with Melissa Steiner's marriage to Hanse Davion and the union of her Commonwealth with the Federated Suns. But the organization--and subtle publicization to Davion and Steiner informants!--of the Kapteyn Accords had nipped that worry in the bud. The nascent 'Federated Commonwealth' might be able to rattle its sabers provocatively, but it faced too many different avenues of threat to focus its ire on the Draconis Combine.

Hanse Davion might be 'The Fox', but he was too much a Davion to abandon his House's centuries-long feud with House Kurita. Especially as neither the Capellan Confederation nor the Free Worlds League had done anything that would raise his anger against them.

Finally, finally, there was the real possibility of a break in the perpetual Succession Wars and a chance for him to weed out the rot within ComStar. The threat of mutual destruction the two opposing alliances presented wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a decided improvement over the previous situation. Particularly if they both suffered, as they would, from internal dissension.

The Free Skye Movement in the Lyran Commonwealth could be counted on to oppose both Katrina Steiner and any further integration of her realm with Hanse Davion's. The still-restless provinces of Rasalhague in the Combine served as a useful distraction for Takashi Kurita. The Free Worlds League was the Free Worlds League--internal dissension there was a given, and Maximilian Liao's paranoid streak already ensured the Capellan Confederation focused much of its resources internally.

War between the powers was impossible if those powers had to constantly vie with internal opposition and rebellion. It might still be destructive and deadly, the Combine and the Confederation in particular were not well-known for their restraint in handling such matters, but in the aggregate less would die and less vital infrastructure and technology would be destroyed this way than would if the Houses themselves went to war again on the scale they had.

At least, that was what he insistently reminded himself every night before he went to sleep. On those nights he could actually get to sleep. They seemed to be getting more and more infrequent.

Which was what had driven him to come here again.

The lift came to a smooth halt. Before the doors could begin to open, Julian slapped the red halt button three times in quick succession, and then pressed the proper sequence of floor numbers. The lift dinged, but gave no other indication anything had happened.

To aid the computer in its job, Julian tilted his head back and focused his face on the pinhole-camera in the upper-right corner of the lift. He'd tried holding his breath before on the assumption that perhaps even those subtle movements would throw off the facial recognition software, but he'd quickly found out it made no difference.

"Primus Julian Tiepolo, alone, to see level twenty-eight." He said, enunciating every word. He hated having to repeat himself to the machine.

Nothing happened for almost a full minute. Just long enough for him to begin dreading that the mechanical voice would come back with a 'your message could not be understood' response. But just as he was beginning to grow certain that such a thing was coming, the lift shuddered to life once again.

He could feel it slowly creep its way sideways for a number of meters before the more familiar downward sensation began again. He'd always admired the staggered vertical passageways that made up the lift system in the Hilton Head Island Complex. It was overly complex and prone to mechanical breakdowns, yes, but it was also just so darned convenient when compared to the single-tube, single-building lifts that were used above ground in the more public areas of ComStar's administrative center.

The lift stopped, and opened its doors to reveal the unlisted 'level 28'. Unlike the hallways of the rest of the facility, these still shone with bright and shining stainless steel trim. No Mechwarriors had leaned against the wall and left the telltale scrapes and stains from the cooling vests, and no harsh chemicals had ever needed to be used on the floor to try and recapture its original sheen. Level 28 was a closed environment. Disturbed only irregularly and immediately cleaned afterwards by small robotics which could be depended on never to speak of what they saw in the course of their cleaning.

"Welcome, Primus." The tinny, slightly-feminine voice of the computer said as he stepped out.

He would give an arm and a leg to have a human secretary like he had above ground. Once again, the concerns of secrecy took priority over the concerns of human interaction. The last time there had been two conscious people on level twenty-eight had been when Rusenstein took him there after resigning.

It was more secure this way, but it gave him the same cold, impersonal feeling that the ICU of a hospital would.

"Hello Eunice." Tiepolo said, shaking his head at the silly name and the sheer weirdness of speaking to a computer as if it were a person.

'Eunice' wasn't just a computer, though. Painstakingly transplanted piece-by-piece from the devastated Unity City by Jerome Blake himself--or so the story went--the Unity Intelligence System was the most powerful computing machine in the Inner Sphere. Supposedly, it had been the Cameron's solution to managing an interstellar Empire where the composite pieces had a tendency to hate each others guts. It could singlehandedly read, analyze, and collate data from HPG traffic throughout the Sphere into a basic intelligence outline and force assessment in the time it took for ROM to prepare an incomplete report on a single system.

A fact that had allowed him to realize just how inaccurate the reports he was getting from ROM were.

"Would you like a status update, Primus?" 'Eunice' asked.

"No, that won't be necessary." Tiepolo said as he began to pace the hall, letting one hand float along the paper-smooth walls.

It had been only a dozen hours since he'd last been briefed by 'Eunice'. A dozen worry-filled, stomach-twisting hours that didn't say anything good about how the coming weeks would feel. When it came down to it, he had a basic idea of the status of things even without the periodic reports. He had ever since 'Eunice' had relayed to him the message from Guardian Pluto.

He hoped the Guardian was alright. He dared not make any explicit moves in support of her until he could narrow down who the corrupted ones in ComStar were. Delivering what she needed to the University of Geneva had been risky enough. Anything more would only put her in further danger.

As guilty and ashamed as it made him feel, he could justify putting average people into danger by manipulating the Houses against each other and themselves. But if there was going to be a future of humanity, he couldn't so much as risk one of the Guardians. They were too important. A person simply didn't compare.

He hated himself for that judgement, but he knew it was correct in the grand scheme of things.

"Open the central processing room please, Eunice." Tiepolo asked as he reached what looked like the end of the hallway.

There was a pause. A loud ka-chuk sounded as four rectangular corners of the wall removed themselves from the end and retracted into the sides of the hallway. In a larger-scale imitation of them, the rest of what looked like a wall followed suit, sliding into the nearest corner of the wall with an almost relaxing hiss of mechanical noise.

The room beyond was almost disappointing after such theatrical exposure. While it opened up somewhat and provided a wider floor-space than the hallway offered, the walls and floor were virtually identical to those present in the hallway. The only immediately obvious difference was the morass of wires, tubing and conduits that were strung across the ceiling so thick as to make any guess as to what the actual ceiling looked like a purely academic exercise.

He entered. Years of experience meant that when the hidden door slammed itself closed directly behind him, he only jumped a little bit. One of these days, if he lived long enough to reach old age, that was going to give him a heart attack.

Dull, white lights interspersed in the wiring of the ceiling slowly fluttered to life. All of them focused on a small circular spot in the middle of the room where the floor's regular, flat pattern was interrupted. Etched into the floor in its place was a circular cut that would almost have been invisible on cursory inspection.

It became more noticeable when it twisted in place, and slowly extended upwards. In small sections, the cylinder bore upwards and then locked in place with every step, slowly building its way towards the ceiling. As it emerged, coolant-vapor radiated off the outside of the pod that was contained within. A handful of the wires and conduits that had hung loose from the ceiling were pulled tight, and the entire setup locked into place with a bone-rattling thunk that sounded like something one would hear from a 'Mech, not a lesser machine.

Julian took a long breath of the coolant-tinged air, briefly transported back to his earliest days in the Order trying to keep cobbled-together HPG facilities working smoothly. He shook himself out of the memory as quickly as it had come. Stifling a yawn, he forced himself to cross halfway around the cylinder.

The preservation fluid inside the pod tinted everything inside an unnatural silvery-blue color. The skin was odd enough, looking like a very unhealthy gray pallor from outside. But once again it was the hair that struck him as the most surreal. It was like something out of the most ridiculous and youth-oriented discotheque on Solaris VII.

Inside the pod, the Guardian's hair seemed to blaze in an almost painfully bright neon-blue, every strand illuminating itself against the off-white background of the pod's back. As he watched, the strands slowly drifted in the slow micro-current the cycling of fluid produced inside.

Just like every other time he saw such an unnatural setup, he was struck by the desire to start pulling wires and disconnecting tubes. Just as with those other times, he didn't act on the impulses. As he understood it, they had to be very careful when they unhooked Duchess Mercury from the HPG system.

"I'm sorry." He said once again to the inanimate body. He imagined many Primuses before him had said the same things. At least he might soon be in a position to do something more than just say words.
 

Ganurath

Well-known member
I always love reading the Combine's courtly dialogues, where so much is going on unspoken, and the viewpoint character is analyzing every action everyone takes for potential implications. If it weren't for the nation's widespread moral and logistical failings, I'd actually like them.

Rei's scene here is one of the better examples I've seen.
 

Laskar

Would you kindly?
Founder
Commenting on Chapter 7A, because you updated before I could comment: I have no idea what you're doing either, but I'm enjoying it.

I always love reading the Combine's courtly dialogues, where so much is going on unspoken, and the viewpoint character is analyzing every action everyone takes for potential implications. If it weren't for the nation's widespread moral and logistical failings, I'd actually like them.

Rei's scene here is one of the better examples I've seen.
Agreed. The little details in this story about contraband lingerie and tea etiquette are greatly entertaining. I was actually taken aback with how well done the sort of backhanded political etiquette was done in chapter 7B. @prinCZess has a lot of range when it comes to writing character drama.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
I agree, it was a very fine descriptive scene of social behaviour.
 
7d - And Venus was Her Name

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Jojoken
Andurien, Free Worlds League
22 June, 3028


The girl was surprisingly short, standing mostly-even with the trash bins that were scattered about the alleyway even with the aid of heels that added almost ten centimeters to her height. Unlike the dull plastic lids that covered the garbage cans, she was topped by a thick sheaf of golden-wheat hair that ran almost down to her knees. The hair swayed in time with every meandering, drunken step she took, peeking out from one side of the cherry-red cocktail-dress she wore and then the other as she overcorrected to try and keep her balance.

“Rolling down the street, smoking indo, sipping on gin and juice!” She sang.

The words were obviously and horribly off-key, with heavy slurring throughout that made them almost indecipherable. But sometimes being off-key and blatantly drunk was part of the fun.

"Like, what in the world is 'indo', anyways? They don't have it in the Magistrate? And if they, like, don't have it in the Magistrasse--Magocracy--Magistratacy, it doesn't get you wasted!" Mina 'Centrella' half-slurred, half-yelled into the darkness of the alley, solely for the benefit of anyone listening.

Someone from inside one of the nearby apartments yelled at her to shutup. She began to scream back an irate reply about the man’s mother, but stopped halfway through so she could bend-over beside a waste-bin and make puking noises that were about as loud as what she had been about to yell.

“Eughh, no more for Me-nah. Uh-uh. Nope. Nuh-uh. No more. Me-nah is done. I am never drinking again. Not even water.” She mumbled to the ground below her, resting one hand against the ferrocrete wall of the alleyway she was in. Her other hand joined the first a moment later as she stared at the patterns in the ferrocrete of the wall.

The crisscrossing lines tickled at something in the back of her mind. Something she couldn’t quite track down but that seemed to scream to her in importance from them. They were cut into the surface in the regular and even way that canals might be somewhere that water was rare. As if they were the lines a river made in a desert. Or the chiseled passageways water would make on a moon.

She blinked a few times and shook her head, trying to run-down the feeling of familiarity that thought provided but instantly blocked from it. Gritting her teeth, she tried not to think about how frustrating the phenomenon was. Instead, she focused on her surroundings.

There was nobody else in the alley. At least not yet there wasn’t. The thumping bass-and-synth rhythm from the club she’d just exited echoed slightly from behind her, but it was muffled to a mere background detail by soundproofing and the other natural sounds of the night. There was an occasional whine from vehicles on the main thoroughfare a few blocks over. Her own confused thoughts were loud in their own right, but she didn’t seem to be speaking the same language as them at the moment!

Mina leaned forward slightly, and let her forehead rest against the cool wall. A handful of blonde locks were caught in-between, but they weren’t enough to keep the cold from penetrating to her skin. She enjoyed the sensation for a few long breaths, clearing her head of the madcap confusion it had chased itself into. It would look just like she was recovering from the spins or something else equally hedonistic, so it even served two purposes at once!

For probably the first time, she missed the easy days of laziness in the Palace back on Canopus. There, before she’d known what she was she’d never had these flashes of half-remembrance. She hadn’t been bothered by the tickling mutter in the back of her mind that told her when she was missing something. Or if she had, it had been much easier to ignore it.

She took a long breath, letting her head loll back-and-forth against the wall. No matter how much she tried, she had yet to succeed in remembering what it was that bothered her. Undoubtedly it was connected to her status as a ‘Guardian’, but knowing that did nothing but make it useless to try and investigate. The only place it seemed to exist in the proper context was the orders Kyalla had shown to her when she told Mina what little she knew.

Mina forced herself off the wall and put the unimportant distractions behind her. Certain to stumble and over-correct every few steps, she passed through the alleyway without any trouble but that from her own mind.

Supposedly, the evening of clubbing by the Magestrix’s bastard daughter was in celebration of ‘continued good relations between the Duchy of Andurien and the Magistracy’ as well as the coming marriage between Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner. But Mina was astute enough to know when public perception was being manipulated. Winning support through free drinks was a very Canopian way of going about things. On the bright side, it seemed to be working.

It had all seemed so much more important the previous day. It had seemed much more fun the previous day. Mina couldn’t explain it, but she was suddenly looking forward to being off the planet. What she wouldn’t give for a nice, relaxing deployment against pirates or the like back in the Magistracy. She didn’t much like this skulking about and masquerading silliness that had been shoved on her. But she owed the Centrellas for caring for her over the years. Going after some Andurien ne’er-do-wells for them was, in a real sense, small compensation.

She played-up the difficulty of opening the passenger door of her car when she finally reached it. She still couldn’t be sure if someone was watching, but she had that feeling. The odd buzz in the lower part of her stomach that always started when she was on the verge of action of some kind had come along only a few minutes before inside the club, and had been the reason she’d left a party that looked like it would be going long into the morning. But such a public venue wasn’t a great place for a confrontation.

Mina paused before entering the vehicle, disguising a quick scan up and down the road as resting on the roof of the vehicle. There were a handful of people on the streets. Most were obviously waiting for rides of their own and those few who weren’t were walking—stumbling usually—in one direction with the single-mindedness of the extremely intoxicated.

Mentally shrugging, Mina slid into the passenger’s seat. Someone in her condition was in no position to drive, and the tint on the windows of the car would let her observe the street without concern of being noticed. The only question in the back of her mind was whether or not whoever she was supposed to be waiting for wouldn’t take the easy route and try to assassinate Kyalla Centralla’s bastard daughter the quick and dirty way. She had survived explosions that should have killed her before, if she believed Kyalla she had survived them numerous times before, but she didn’t know how. Not knowing how, she definitely didn’t want to put it to the test.

Frowning, Mina slid the seat back slightly and used one hand to pull a coat she kept curled up on the rear seat over her chest. The heels she had been in all evening came off in the next moment, and she couldn’t help but groan in relief at the way the pressure finally let up. She hated heels.

Now, all she had to do was wait and watch.

********************************************

“Why isn’t it going off? Shouldn’t it be going off by now? What’s she doing?”

Cooper sighed at the incessant whispered questions from his apprentice and handed the spotting scope in his hands over. The young man was commendable in many ways. He had a good head on his shoulders for prep-work, and a natural skill at blending in. He’d gotten close enough to identify Mina Centrella as the real-deal inside The Silver Slipper without alerting the handful of local security that had been assigned to her. But the boy suffered from a decided lack of patience during these portions of operations. If he was ever to be initiated, he would have to improve.

Though, to be fair, such impatience was also a failing Cooper had as well. He’d just had many more years to learn how to fake it.

“She just got inside. It won’t go off unless she actually turns the key.” Cooper explained unnecessarily, rubbing at his face and idly scratching at hid beard. He hated rushed operations like this. If they’d had just another day or two they could have rigged up a real, remote-detonated bomb rather than relying on connections to the ignition forcing a containment failure. But for a bomb to get through security-checks, he’d have needed a much more sophisticated jamming device than existed anywhere in the Free Worlds League or a lot more connections with the mechanics who’d been in charge of the car. Overriding the fusion engine’s limiters from across the street had been a much easier course of action.

His apprentice harrumphed and almost threw the spotting scope down. Cooper could sympathize with the feeling, but turned a critical eye on the boy anyways as he snatched back the tool.

They had two options. Kill time and hope that she got moving before sunrise or go to the secondary plan. Waiting was more appealing in many ways. Much as it strained at his desire to make something happen, it posed the least risk of Murphy interfering. But they were on a time-limit. They only had an hour or two before sunup brought many more people to the street.

In the end, that made the choice for him. Botched robbery was much more blatant than a containment failure on a GM-40 engine, and would probably inspire all kinds of investigation into potential assassination, but he wouldn’t have to worry about that once he left the League.

********************************************

A whip? Why was she using a whip? That was a really odd day-dream to have. It said some really awkward things about her subconscious if it was steering her in that direction...

No. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a toy. It was a weapon. A weapon she needed to fight…What? It was right there. She could practically feel it.

The car rocked slightly as the door opened and snapped her out of the thoughts. She turned, eyes momentarily dazzled by the slightly-brighter glare from the streetlight without the windows to reduce it. She could imagine a police officer doing such a thing if it were early morning, but it was still nighttime. Unsure what else to do, she threw the coat up-and-off in preparation for what she could only assume would be a lecture by a newly-minted officer who hadn’t yet learned what could best be left alone.

The brilliant-white section of blade that stabbed its way into the coat only to be caught in the faux-fur of its neckline made her reconsider that assumption. An officer’s first-move would not be to stab a loiterer. Had someone really just tried to stab her?

She almost grinned. Found ‘em!

Instinctively, she took a firmer hold on the coat and gave it a fierce twist. The knife flew from its wielder’s hand and into the ceiling. Her attacker, still moving forward from his thrust, grunted in pain as his wrist rolled into an awkward position on the other side of the coat. Now, Mina did grin.

As she did, her left leg kicked out. It arced across her waist and into the man’s abdomen in a contortion she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of normally. His grunt of pain turned into a muffled yell, stopped-short only by the lack of air he actually had to really yell. He was temporarily impaired, but to really take him out of the fight, she would have to follow through.

Mina grabbed the edge of the doorframe with her right hand and pulled. She forced the rest of her body up-and-around in the seat, sending her other leg back to join its sister in the process. Mina felt as much as heard the sharp crunch underneath the heel of her foot as it connected with the man’s chest. His gasping pain came to a sudden and satisfying halt.

The urge to secure the area battled with the ocean wave of relief that crashed over her at the danger being over.

It was then that she caught sight of the second attacker.

Unlike his younger companion, he’d kept his distance. Instead of closing in on the car, he’d taken up a position at the edge of the alleyway nearby. Half concealing himself behind the elaborately-inscribed ferrocrete, he was drawing on her with a small, black shape that had to be a projectile weapon or a laser of some kind. The dark made it difficult to tell for sure. It was very…professional of him.

No time to think about it.

Mina stretched one arm to the ceiling and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the knife. In one motion she jerked it free of the roof, flung her entire arm forwards, and snapped it to a stop at full extension only a few centimeters clear of the open door into the cab of the car. Her fingers all pointed at the second man’s chest—as if driven by some unconscious force on their own—and the knife slid out of her palm in the same direction.

The second assassin spun almost entirely around when the knife connected with the right side of his torso. He collapsed to the ground with a very quiet huff and the jangle of whatever clothing and material he had on underneath the dark overcoat that had concealed him. His weapon clattered against the sidewalk, sliding about a meter away from the body where he’d be hard-pressed to reach it.

She jerked out of the car anyways, half-stumbling over the first assassin’s body as she did. The ferrocrete of the sidewalk instantly bit into her feet, the stockings she wore useless as insulation. But it was much easier to move without the heels on, and she certainly wasn’t going to waste time putting them on just because of a little cold!

She stalked the short distance to the second assassin’s body, diverting briefly only to scoop up the auto-pistol that had clattered out of his hands. Reaching him, she smashed the wrist on his uninjured side down with one leg, and used her other to carefully prod at the knife’s hilt. She began to line the pistol up with her attacker’s head, only to stop midway through the motion and leave it pointed at the waistline of his overcoat. He might not be the Periphery pirate she was used to using the threat on, but men tended to have very similar reactions to the gesture whatever their background.

“Knife to meet you.” She tried not to grin. She failed. Despite the beard, she could tell the man paled slightly.

The groan her words inspired may have come from the physical pain. But it just as well may have come from mental pain. She tapped the ball of her foot against the hilt of the knife to draw another groan and be certain. Since it sounded just like the previous one, she could be reasonably certain the assassin was just in a great deal of pain rather than unappreciative of her wit.

“I assume you know how this works? I ask, you answer? Since we’re short on time, let’s start with the obvious one. Who hired you?”

She had to give him credit, he met her eyes. When she wasn’t playing the dumb slut of the Centrella family—which had plenty of competition from the Magestrix herself—people always found it difficult to meet her eyes. She hadn’t yet met a pirate who could do it. At least that she remembered.

He had the gall to smile back at her instead of saying anything.

Before she could escalate her threats, his entire body began to twitch and shake. She kept his arm pinned down, but the rest of his body flopped around on the ferrocrete like a fish out of water. He took a final gurgling breath a moment later and went limp.

Well that was just great. How was she supposed to get any answers from a dead man? She hated professionals. They were so much more frustrating to interrogate!

There were not enough curses in existence to make her feel better, so she distracted herself as best she could. Rearranging a crime scene required a good deal of concentration, and she couldn’t be too obvious about it just in case someone was watching. But before she started shrieking the pistol needed to be wiped at the very least, and she needed to come up with a more plausible explanation, one that suited her cover.

Mina’s actions hiccupped at that thought. She wasn’t completely certain when she’d begun to think of ‘Mina Centrella’ as a cover rather than who she was. But she couldn’t deny how true the feeling was. She wasn’t Mina Centrella. Mina Centrella was, perhaps, who she wanted to be but couldn’t be. Because…Because she couldn’t remember who she really was.

She glanced at the two dead men. What quirk of fate had given her an unnatural lifespan but a memory that only lasted a handful of years? Beyond that, why was she so good at killing people and why did it never bother her?

Instead of letting her thoughts run down that dead-end for the thousandth time, Mina shrieked and rushed over to the car so she could use its communications system to contact the Jojoken Internal Security Forces.

“Hello? You have to help me! They came out of nowhere! And they had a gun and a knife and they were so much bigger than me and your good-for-nothing officers were nowhere around and these thugs were about to—well—but they started arguing over me and then—now, I guess—they’re both dead!” Mina screamed into the receiver as soon as the other end had been picked up, certain to make every third or fourth word so garbled by drunken mumbles as to be practically impossible to pick up on.

She forced herself to start shaking as the emergency-worker on the other end tried to calm her down and get her to provide more useful details. She shuddered with muscle spasms as random as she could force on herself making her calves stutter in pain and her hands shake.

The shaking made it difficult to rip the cocktail dress across the front in a suitably provocative manner, but both the shakes and the rip would do wonders for her story when the constables arrived. She could only hope that the two mysterious assassins would be more well-known to the planetary authorities and they’d let something slip about them around her.

**********************************************

“Lady Centrella--” Lieutenant Cash began, only for the still half-drunk and far too handsy Canopian to make those eyes at him.

“Just Mina will do. Only my half-sis is ‘Lady Centrella’.”

He sighed at the thinly-veiled flirtatious lilt in the girl's voice. He really should have let one of the rookies handle this one. Whatever gene-altering magic the Centrella’s had used to produce a daughter that was blue-eyed and blonde-haired, it had apparently also affected other parts of the girl. Until this morning, he could honestly say he’d never been groped. Not anymore.

Miss Centrella, then.” He corrected, refusing to give any indication he’d noticed her attentions. “Are you certain that one of your attackers kicked the other?”

“Yes? Does that matter?” Mina nodded, then giggled and blushed much more than was believable. She was really kind of cute when he let himself--

“It could.” He growled, writing down ‘high-gravity world’ under his list of suspicions about attacker number one and firmly centering himself on the case. It took a rather powerful man to break multiple ribs with one blow and shoot them back into the vital organs. He’d only ever seen similar things in high-speed hovercar collisions.

“Awww, how much longer am I gonna be here? I wanna go home! Or at least out to breakfast. Can you take me to breakfast? Do you get off anytime soon? Or, I guess more importantly, do you want to? Tee-hee.”

Cash swallowed and kept his eyes fixed on the paperwork for a heartbeat. Had she really just gone ‘tee-hee’? There was no way Canopians actually used that kind of stereotypical language, was there? She sounded like one of the girls in those kinds of movies, not a daughter of the ruling family!

Cash looked up, sensing somehow she might not be serious. She was staring at him with her lower-lip pursed outward and a frown that, contrary to his thoughts and her words, looked very serious indeed. For an instant, he might have sworn she was frustrated. But then the regular distance of the inebriated fell over her eyes, and he was certain it had just been his imagination.

He really should have passed this one off to someone else.

“I have work to do, sorry. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, would you mind repeating how the knife—“

Before he could finish his question there was a very loud crash from just outside the interrogation room. The door flew open on its hinges, propelled by a very large man in a very large suit. The man scanned Cash up-and-down from behind midnight-black glasses, then stepped aside. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be grateful or insulted that he apparently didn’t look like some kind of threat to the bodyguard.

The thought crossed his mind at the same time as he saw the woman behind the bodyguard and knew that any prospect of actually getting to the bottom of what had happened was going to disappear. The Magestrix of Canopus had arrived. Which meant his time with her bastard daughter was at an end.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit! He knew there was more going on here than she was letting on—Probably some Canopian intrigue of some kind or another. But he needed more time to draw it out of her! Time he wouldn’t be getting now because the Canopians would undoubtedly invoke their diplomatic privileges.

He had been willing to bend the rules before, no matter how much it angered the mayor or his chief. But trying to put a criminal hold on not just a member of the Canopian diplomatic corps but on a member of the Centrella household? That would get him not only on the shitlist of the chief and the mayor, but on the personal shitlist of Dame Humphreys herself.

Cash was proud to consider himself a loose autocannon in a station full of idiots who attached themselves to bureaucratic neceties, but he wasn’t stupid. There would be no winning for anyone if he went up against the head of Andurien itself. It was politics, and it sucked, but he couldn’t change it.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Kyalla Centrella’s voice was deceptively calm. But he could hear the undercurrent of absolute, livid rage that was waiting underneath it. He’d pushed his luck as far as he could interviewing the girl again. Now it was time for détente and deescalation. Before his department got hit with a WMD of political ill-will and he got chosen as the fall-guy to absorb as much of the fallout as he could.

“Magestrix! This is truly an honor.” Cash stood and began to offer the dark-skinned woman a salute before hesitating, smiling an apology at her, and settling on a half-bow.

His immediate, if awkward, compliance seemed to shake the dark-skinned noblewoman out of her barely-contained rage. She blinked, seemingly lost without a clear target to focus her ire on, and her head tilted towards her bastard daughter, as if for directions.

“Detective Cash-y here was keeping me company while I waited, momma. He said he'd take me out to breakfast, but we got roped-up in all this boring paperwork he's been forced to do.” The girl said with a head-rolling groan that concealed the wink she offered to him from her mother's sight.

It was nice of her to cover for him. The Magestrix’ temporary confusion seemed to disappear with her daughter’s words, and Cash was relieved to see a more familiar look of parental consternation cross her face. She even gave him an eyelid-fluttering look of exasperation that he assumed was directed at her daughter.

The way the Canopian leaders eyes drifted down his chest immediately afterwards, he could tell they were related.

“Officer Cash, far be it from me to accuse Andurien’s Internal Security Forces of harassing a diplomatic mission.” The much higher-ranking woman said after very slowly and deliberately looking at the name-badge on his chest, “As such, would you be kind enough to get my daughter and I a cup of something hot while she and I have some words in private before we iron this whole situation out with your bosses?”

Cash could tell it was a command rather than a question. But it gave him a chance to step out of the room that was rapidly becoming way too stuffy and political for his taste. He didn’t know just how much shit he’d stepped in by not immediately informing the Canopians of Mina’s situation, but he was sure it was a quite large amount. He wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to bow out. Not when the camera would capture whatever the two women said to each other, anyways.

In his considered opinion, criminal conspiracies needed to be investigated regardless of where they originated or who they targeted. His gut told him that the attack on Mina Centrella had been a conspiracy of some kind, but trying to iron out what it was had proven nearly impossible. None of the facts fit together, they had no leads on who the men even were, and as far as he could tell there was no motive. He had investigated murder in the Free Worlds League long enough to know that combination meant some kind of political conspiracy not ‘random attack’.

“Certainly, your grace.” Cash said with another half-bow.

It took him a moment after he had left the room to realize why he felt a slight pain just inside the seat of his pants. The Magestrix herself had pinched his butt on the way out!

“Canopians.” Cash sighed. He kicked at an imaginary fleck of dirt on the station floor and wandered towards his desk. Sometimes there seemed like there was just nothing that could be done.
***************************************************
AN:
Bad threadmark-pun now completed! And I've actually gotten a little ways into an actual new update, so that's still in the works, yippee!
 

Ganurath

Well-known member
*sees the chapter title*

I now have the Bingo song stuck in my head.

*sees in AN that it was deliberate*

In the words of a certain party respected and admired by Michael Garibaldi, you're despicable.

In all seriousness, though, I remember this subplot from when you posted this story on SB. I'm still confused by it.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Heh, I hadn't realised this wasn't new material--but then I am a new reader.
 

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
In all seriousness, though, I remember this subplot from when you posted this story on SB. I'm still confused by it.
All of the previous three-four sections, and this one, were meant to just be 'introductions' that let me play with the Sailors personalities and drop some allusion to the larger picture and semi-explain where they were and that their memories were kaput, so there wasn't much long-term planning or relevance intended for them...So that's my excuse.

This one was supposed to vaguely suggest that there was some kind of plot going on against Mina in particular that might be nefarious, but that the conspirators weren't completely informed themselves (the bit between Mina and Kyalla Centrella on Earth is supposed to be a vague suggestion of what was going on, but I let it fade into the background a lot...And it still might come back up later-on :p).
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
All of the previous three-four sections, and this one, were meant to just be 'introductions' that let me play with the Sailors personalities and drop some allusion to the larger picture and semi-explain where they were and that their memories were kaput, so there wasn't much long-term planning or relevance intended for them...So that's my excuse.

This one was supposed to vaguely suggest that there was some kind of plot going on against Mina in particular that might be nefarious, but that the conspirators weren't completely informed themselves (the bit between Mina and Kyalla Centrella on Earth is supposed to be a vague suggestion of what was going on, but I let it fade into the background a lot...And it still might come back up later-on :p).

It might indeed become important later even if you hadn't planned for it, that's something that has happened to me a few times in the past with story-writing and plot points.
 
8 - Jump (or Float) Around!

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Jumpship Invidious
Savannah system, Free Worlds League
12 July, 3028


The only light in the room came from the two-dimensional video projection at the front of the room. A dozen individual seats and a trio of couches were scattered around the room, all directed towards the upraised platform where the video played. The flashes of lasers and glare of explosions on the projection temporarily revealed the pits and stains that dotted the seating, only for them to disappear once again when that extra light faded or the perspective of the ‘camera’ changed.

The vid-room on the gravity deck was usually packed with members of the Legion. Exercise-space was more important from a purely objective standpoint, but for morale there was a definite positive to having a space where his men could watch Solaris matches or the news without having to deal with the annoyance of zero-gee and its constantly-changing perspectives. Somehow, watching entertainment vids in hold-down straps didn’t have the same appeal as simply watching them in regular gravity. What a surprise.

Gray’s solution to let him get away with practically monopolizing the room had been to stay up most of the ‘night’ until the early-‘morning’ shift. Despite the standard 24-hour schedule the Legion broke into while in space, there seemed to be a natural rhythm they fell into that revolved around the twelve hours arbitrarily designated as daytime according to the Terran clock.

His solution had worked quite well. There’d only been two others in the vid-room when Grayson had entered, and they had clearly been more focused on each other—or more accurately each other’s tongues—than they had been on the terrible, tri-vid romance they were ‘watching’. Gray suspected they’d adjourned to a cabin and he’d only sped up their plans rather than interrupted them.

Reaching forward with a small yawn, Gray paused the video just as the Wasp in the center of the frame began to disintegrate into a massive ball of fire. Stabbing down a pair of buttons on the remote in his hand, he shrunk that video so it restricted itself in size to the bottom-left portion of the entire vid-projection. Above it, another stopped at almost the same time but from a separate angle waited for his attention. With a few more clicks directing where the projector should look for the appropriate files, he started into another piece of BattleROM footage that one of his tankers had managed to capture of the battle on Helm.

It was still just as impossible as it had been. He wasn’t sure whether to be thankful for that or not. On the one hand, it meant he wasn’t crazy for believing ‘magic’ as the explanation. On the other, it meant ‘magic’ was the explanation. To his knowledge, magic hadn’t been an acceptable explanation for anything for something like fifteen-hundred years. Now, it was not only an acceptable explanation, it was the only one. He still wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about that besides a dumb sense of amazement that felt like it would be with him forever.

He paused the third video just as the Wasp began to explode. Instead of immediately moving on again, he took the chance to lean back into the couch and rub at his eyes. The only way to get anything valuable from the BattleROMs was by comparing every frame of scanner footage they’d recorded to the visual recordings. Thermal imaging showed the explosions and the lasers that the Wasp fired, but nothing else. Magscan wasn’t even that useful. According to it, neither the Wasp nor Mariah, nor the ‘Daimon’—as Mariah insisted on calling Rachan—even existed.

That had led him to the only hard conclusion of the morning. Magic was bullshit.

Something tickled at his forehead. Something that smelled decidedly like the artificial-orange Lori always gravitated to for her shampoo for reasons he still hadn’t heard explained beyond it ‘smelling nice and fruity’. His suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

“You work too much.”

He popped open one eye and mockingly glared through his fingers at the smirking face staring down at him. Even without looking he could see the fists-on-waist posture Lori liked to adopt when lecturing him about something.

“No, this is all wrong. If you’re up this late I’m the one who’s supposed to be telling you that. I must be dreaming.” Gray muttered, sure to keep the words just loud enough that she would have to lean down slightly to catch them.

“You’re not dreaming you—” Lori began, only to descend into a wordless scream as Gray rose slightly, snatched her by the armpits, and dragged her back onto the couch with him.

Keeping both hands around her waist, he rested his chin on her shoulder, ignoring the slight urge to sneeze her hair gave him. From his perch at the edge of her face, he got a close-up seat to the way her cheeks quickly went from pale perfection to red embarrassed-perfection. It was good, but it needed a final twist.

Gray sighed as obnoxiously as he could as he came up with the perfect coup de grace.

“Yep. I’m definitely dreaming.” He said, resting the side of his head against Lori’s.

She made a series of stunted attempts at speech that ended with an embarrassed closed-mouth groan.

Gray didn’t even know a word to adequately describe the color that came to Lori’s cheeks with that. ‘Apocalyptic red’ came close to expressing the tone, but it probably wasn’t dark enough. It was a good thing there weren’t any other members of the Legion in the room or the blush might have been bright enough to overshadow the vid itself.

That would have been about the cutest thing ever for him to see, but probably would be the last thing he ever saw. She would—probably—be gracious enough to give him a headstart, but exposing her reaction to public displays of affection like that would undoubtedly result in her tearing his head off with an improvised weapon of some sort after chasing him down so she could call it a ‘fair hunt’.

“You are a child, you know that?” Lori growled, the forced nature of the irritation in her voice betrayed by the way she relaxed into him.

“Lori, would a child pilot a seventy-five ton BattleMech designed to destroy everything in its path?”

She frowned, “If they could, yes. So would you prefer I be more specific and call you a tall child?”

He tried to think of something clever to fire back with. He failed. Kissing Lori’s cheek was as good a retort as anything else.

“Can’t even let me win an argument with any dignity can you?”

“Honey, dignity is overrated.” Gray replied with a shrug.

Lori shook her head, but seemed to accept the answer and settle further into him. Gray’s thoughts went back to the two he’d walked in on earlier, and he found himself having to fight down his own blush. Contrary to his words, there was a slight amount of dignity he had to maintain as the head of the unit. Swapping spit, or anything else for that matter, with his second-in-command while watching ‘Mechs destroy each other wasn’t exactly a dignified image to put out there. Even if the majority of the Legion would do nothing but toast and brag about it if he was caught doing it.

In fact, that they’d respond to it so well was one of the reasons to keep things at least slightly more restrained.

“Find anything helpful about our friendly shipboard magical girl in all this?” Lori finally asked, nodding towards the video.

The question offered him a glorious distraction. One that he latched onto with the ferocity of a dehydrated man offered water in the desert. Granted, it did fulfill the stereotypical ‘think about ‘Mech battles’ advice that one of his father’s lancemates had offered him years before for when he was with women, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, it made more sense in this context than what it had originally been for.

“Not much about her.” Gray answered, “As near as I can figure, she really does have impossible, reality-breaking powers.”

“Magic?” Lori pressed, raising an eyebrow.

“Magic.” He confirmed, nodding his chin into her shoulder slightly.

“You’re lucky it was Khaled who called her a genie and not McCall. Otherwise you’d never live that down.” She said, playfully poking at the top of his leg with one finger. “I assume there’s something else you’re watching this for, then? Because if you’re just cooping yourself in here, alone, watching BattleROM footage on repeat, I’m going to get Doc Whitmore to sedate you for the rest of the trip. Before you start scribbling incoherent messages on the walls and talking to people who aren’t there.”

She was joking.

Gray studied the half of her face that was easily visible. Her eyes, like his, seemed to be half-struggling to stay open, but there was no other potential indication whatsoever of possible humor.

He thought she was joking. Lori had a very good delivery.

“I’m not that crazy—“

“Not yet.” Lori interrupted.

Grayson grunted in acknowledgement of the hit, “I’m not that crazy yet, then. I haven’t actually been watching our magical hitchhiker from the past. It’s been more useful to watch her opponent.”

Lori silently pressed him for details. In answer, he only restarted the playback on the videos he’d collected. He’d prefer she saw it for herself and formed her own connections. He suspected she’d come to the same conclusion as he had, but it was always good to have someone checking him. Lori had a tendency to point out when he was making things too complicated or relying on strings of logic that didn’t actually hold up.

“The black shadow stuff, you mean? It’s freaky, but I noticed it before…” Lori let the word hang and shrugged.

Gray had been busy fiddling with the controls. The videos scrambled backwards and shifted to infrared as they started up again. Lori, clearly catching on to his intent, went quiet and narrowed her eyes at each of the videos in turn. In true ‘Mechwarrior fashion, her eyes took in the visuals in one glance before taking quick sample readings from the other instrument data that the videos kept on small, unobtrusive panels near each square’s bottom.

“Those black tendrils mask the heat signature.” He explained, pointing to the places where they radiated off of the ‘Mech they had latched onto. “Since they don’t overlap there’s a lot of bleed-through that makes it hard to notice, but keep an eye on the missile tubes when it launches.”

Lori followed his advice, and her head slowly tilted as the video played on. Clearly she’d noticed it. Now all he needed was to finish.

With the press of a few more buttons, Gray switched the videos to display Magscan readings. Halfway through the missile launch, Lori snatched the remote out of his hands so she could play the relevant bit back.

“They hide everything? It’s trying to mask itself just like she did.” Lori began with surprising caution. There was no mistaking who she was referring to with ‘she’.

Lori went through the same series of menus Gray had fifteen minutes before to display targeting reticules in each of the videos. Just like him, she didn’t look surprised when they flashed out of existence whenever one of the black tendrils entered into them.

“Exactly like she did.” Gray agreed, placing just enough emphasis on the first word to draw Lori’s attention. “And even money says she did it the exact same way.”

Judging by the whip of the head and partial stink-eye she gave him, Lori clearly wasn’t too convinced of that. He wasn’t honestly sure he was convinced of it either, but it did present a terrifying possibility that he needed to come up with some way of addressing.

“Just watch the videos. Those tendrils appear out of nowhere and they disappear into nowhere on occasion. Doesn’t seem like a stretch to assume they can be permanently invisible.” Gray explained, fishing the remote back out of Lori’s hand.

“And if you don’t want to rely on that leap of logic. Well…” Gray shrugged, rewinding back to the initial explosion of the Wasp and removing the different sensors that muddled the video until it was nothing but the barebones visuals.

At first, the small half-circle of pitch-blackness in the center of the explosion where the ‘Mech’s cockpit would have been looked like a trick of the light. Like an effect produced by either the overloading PPC or the mid-meltdown engine twisting light in just the right way that it tricked a camera into recording it. But that it showed up in four different cameras from four different angles put a large wrench in that theory.

Lori was silent for entirely too long, visibly scanning between the different videos. If she’d noticed anything, she’d have told him. He had been halfway hoping that she would just so he could be less concerned about the woman they were transporting.

“It is ‘magic’. We don’t understand it. It makes sense that it wouldn’t work any different for her than for one of these ‘Daimons’. Makes as much sense as any of this insanity, anyways.” Lori said. It was a decent attempt at a defense, but he could tell by her voice that she didn’t quite believe the words herself. She was challenging him with the obvious objection.

“Maybe. With how little we know about her or how she does what she does, we can’t be sure. I’d still prefer to have some way of dealing with it. Any of it.” Gray said. He chewed on one lip, chasing down thoughts that had been niggling in the back of his mind all morning. Regular targeting was unusable, Magscan didn’t show anything, even seismic somehow didn’t register from the…magic, phantom ‘Mechs. Which, quite simply, just wasn’t fair. But…

“Blitz.” Lori mumbled, face scrunched up in thought.

Gray’s thoughts veered off-track with the word. This time, he cocked his head at her in silent question.

“Get into close range with the things and obviously you can still engage them physically.” Lori said with a slight nod towards the video at the front of the room.

“Yeah. Can’t say I’d want to be the first one to try that, though. I was thinking more along the lines of complete manual targeting. If the system doesn’t recognize it as a target, we force it to shoot anyways.”

Lori winced and twisted slightly in his arms so she could look at him more directly. He could see just how skeptical she was of the idea. But it was the only one he could think of that would allow them to maintain some distance.

“Pilots would have to set focal points for their lasers, discharge distances on PPCs, strip guidance packages on missiles. God, Gray, we’d have to spend as much time drilling that as we spend for regular engagements. Maybe even more.”

Lori visibly fought down a yawn, though she had to shut her eyes to do it. Gray cursed as he felt that bring on the urge in himself. As if desperate to find something to do, she brought a hand to her brow and slowly curled a strand of hair around one finger. When she continued, her voice had lowered slightly.

“Could drill using Inferno missiles as short-term targeting aids? Splash one on the target and then have everyone else fire on the thermal bloom.” Lori hesitated, “You really think she’s so dangerous we need to reorient the entire unit towards fighting her just in case she pulls a repeat of what happened on Helm?”

Lori almost sounded betrayed. Or maybe it was just a very deep pessimism. Either way, something he wasn’t entirely used to hearing out of her. Gray shook his head.

“I’m not as worried about her as I am ComStar. Much as Eli might have been convinced they’re shining beacons of light, it was one of their precentors that got us into this mess and we might yet have to fight our way out. I might just be shipping us right into the Dragon’s den on this one.”

Gray felt his entire body tense in unconscious reaction to just how worrying that prospect was. He very well might be leading his men to their deaths—again!—and none of them seemed to be calling him on it yet.

In a single instant, Lori’s pessimism vanished and she nodded slightly. She curled her legs onto the couch and leaned sideways into the crook of his arm. The move brought her fruity, sneeze-inducing hair back to a position just below his face. Despite that, Gray found himself unable to really protest the move. To his surprise, he couldn’t even work up the same degree of worry as he’d been able to a moment earlier.

“Nobody here who didn’t know exactly what they were getting into when they stayed on.” Lori said, settling firmly into place on top of him.

I don’t even know what we’re getting into, how can they?”

“Easy. They leave worrying about what they’re getting into to you. They know whatever it is the ‘Boss-man’ will do his damndest to get them out again.” Lori shifted her shoulders upwards in the best approximation of a shrug her position allowed without driving a shoulder into his face.

Gray couldn’t do anything to stop the small shudder that ran through his body at that as he remembered the massive portion of the Legion and their dependents he hadn’t managed to get out from Helm. Hatred and anger he could have understood, but how could they have any faith in him after he’d let that happen? It made no sense!

“That’s stupid.” Were the only words his sleep-deprived brain could think of responding with.

“That’s mercenaries, Gray.” Lori shot back immediately, speaking through a yawn.

He could only shake his head. It was still amazing to him how often he had to hear those words as an explanation for his men’s behavior.

“Of course, I’m here because I’ve always enjoyed babysitting, and you require it constantly.” She continued.

Gray rolled his eyes, pushing the lingering doubts to the back of his mind.

“Really? I thought you were here because way back on Trellwan I pointed a missile launcher at you and forced you to give me your ‘Mech? And since then you’ve been living happily ever after at my side.” He needled right back, wrapping up the words with a dreamy sigh. It took much of his courage, but he accompanied the words with a light-hearted poke at the side of Lori’s exposed stomach.

He was completely prepared for the impact when one of her hands shot up and smacked into his shoulder. What he wasn’t prepared for was the deep-throated mumble Lori accompanied it with.

“When we have kids, you are not allowed to tell them that story if they ever ask how we met.” Lori mumbled.

Gray knew it might invite another playful smack, but couldn’t stop himself from grinning.

“What’s that? ‘When’ not ‘if’? ‘Kids’ plural? Why Lori, it sounds like you’ve given this some thought.”

He’d expected another hit. Or perhaps some kind of mumbled attribution of the slip to her being tired. Or at the very least an explanation from her of how he ‘shouldn’t make so many assumptions’. What he got was full-body twitch followed by an extended silence as Lori’s face once again did its best imitation of a tomato.

Oh.

Well then.

“I f-forgot to mention, Tor sent me down here to tell you another jumpship just popped in-system. He offered the Captain a copy of the Memory Core and got a very positive reply.” Lori said. Gray wasn’t sure if it was so quiet because she was on the verge of falling asleep or if it was because she was embarrassed.

Gray forced himself to accept the sudden shift in topic. Lingering on the previous one didn’t seem appropriate all of a sudden. Trying to engineer a way out from underneath the smaller woman, he started shifting his hips and moving his legs.

He also said,” Lori bulled on, words now almost half-slurred, “That I was to sit on you if need be to make sure you got some rest and kept off his bridge until oh-two-hundred at the earliest.”

He knew better than to argue with that tone of voice. He also knew that, strangely enough, he was oddly comfortable where he was. He’d give Lori a few minutes to think she’d won and then get back into action.


*******************************

Mariah let herself float across the cabin, legs crossed below her and hands folded behind her neck. The position let her feel out the wall or the floor with an elbow or knee before she really hit against them. Not that she’d yet come anywhere close to running into the walls or the floor.

There was something oddly comfortable about it. It was infuriatingly slow, and mind-numbing to a degree that almost made her physically sick. But she could use a little bit of dumb comfort at the moment.

Two jumps finished. There were four left to go before they reached Terra. Two-hundred years prior, such a small number would not have even mildly concerned her. Six jumps? That was nothing. It hardly warranted a moment’s attention from her, much less the perpetual concern that insinuated itself into every waking moment of her days since the first jump had scrambled her insides and driven her to puke.

It might have been more manageable if it weren’t for the week-plus delays she was forced to wait through as the drive charged and Carlyle hared about in each system finding ways to pass off the Memory Core to every planet and jumpship he could. While it was satisfying to see the man carrying through on his promise, it meant she had to put up with the slowly accumulating dread of the next jump. Worrying that the next time what she could tell was a degraded KF drive would act up and do something Wrong.

She had seen the engine room. She had seen just how many of the systems, safeties, and controls that she was familiar with seeing on earlier ships were outright missing from the Invidious. Not only that, she’d had to listen as the man who claimed to be an engineer bragged about how the ship had undergone a refit in recent years and was one of ‘the most spaceworthy jumpships in the ‘Sphere!’ . Even if that was true, which was disturbing by itself, she had still retreated form the engine room in utter and absolute terror.

Perhaps if she had been more well-versed in how the drives worked she could have done something. But as it was the only thing she knew to do was to keep a close eye on things during actual jumps and cross her fingers in hopes they went well. It wasn’t proactive at all and made the waiting between jumps absolutely infuriating.

She had already tried to distract herself by catching up on events in the Inner Sphere. Unsurprisingly, that had just been a depressing slog through the exact things she’d expected. The House Lords fought over the scraps of the Star League, some admittedly more competently than others. But all with a blind single-mindedness. Planets whose terraforming had required ongoing maintenance or been incomplete at the fall of the League had been abandoned or rendered nearly uninhabitable by the passage of time. Those were joined by a depressingly high number of planets the House Lords had depopulated themselves in the course of the conflict. Planets She had pushed forward to be more suitable for human life had been nuked, gassed, or bombarded from orbit until their landscapes were nothing but desert or their atmospheres naught but toxic gas.

The only real bright spot seemed to be the upcoming Steiner-Davion union. Even that she couldn’t put too much stock in, though. The last inter-House marriage had ended in an interstellar war that had required the Star League to intervene and put a stop to it. Now there wasn’t a Star League, was there? There was only her.

If she wiped-away Terra with the couple on it, then she might just be preventing another such war. More likely than not, it was some kind of Dark influence that was driving the marriage anyways. The House Lords were very basic humans. Whatever they might say, they wouldn’t risk losing their familial power for something as nebulous as ‘peace’.

She threw the thought aside as she recognized the familiar argument about to restart in her own mind. She couldn’t afford to spend so much time or energy moralizing. She knew what had to be done and she would do it, whatever the consequences. After that things could get better.

Approaching designated point.

Mariah sighed and opened her eyes to confirm the message. Sure enough, only about a meter away was what had once been the far bulkhead of her cabin, slowly getting closer as she watched. Uncrossing her legs, she threw both arms out in front of her, and rotated in midair until her feet touched against the bulkhead. With a soft extension of her feet, she pushed herself back off a moment later. She glanced at side of the cabin she had just crossed from before letting her eyes close and relaxing once again.

New point designated.

She took a long breath, trying to resist the urge to once again look at the timer she had set that would signal when the drive was charged for another jump. Constantly checking on it did nothing to make the time pass any faster. Then again, neither did floating uselessly about her cabin worrying about…everything in the entire universe.

She called up the timer and immediately cursed at the bare handful of minutes that had passed.

After a dozen more crossings, working out to about twenty-three minutes, the buzzing tone that signaled someone just outside the cabin interrupted her worrying. The tone was harsh and grating, a tinny quality interfering with the noise itself to somehow make it even more aggravating than it would have been. She missed the crystal-clear, undistorted sounds that she was used to from such devices.

Seemingly overnight, she’d gone from a universe where everything worked to one where Kearny-Fuchida drives were frighteningly crude even after being ‘refit’, electronics were hit-or-miss, and Daimons were powerful enough to manifest themselves on planets with hyperpulse generators.

She mentally kicked herself as she redirected her trajectory towards the door. Everything hadn’t worked before, had it? She’d just been able to ignore what didn’t. Until she was one of those things that wasn’t working anymore.

Arrogance. She had picked that up from Michiru, hadn’t she?

Fighting off the small frown that accompanied that thought, she slapped the door controls. She didn’t have much question who it was. Lori seemed to have made it a point to knock on her door every other day or so and invite her to have a meal with her. Mariah had yet to accept.

Until now, she hadn’t considered how arrogant that was.

To her surprise it wasn’t Lori but instead Grayson’s face that immediately confronted her when the door slid open. Lori was across the hallway and offered a brief wave, seemingly more concerned with trying to gather her hair together and tie it into something more manageable than the wild, free-floating mess that hovered around her head.

They both looked rather disheveled. Gray’s clothes looked like they had been pressed, but only on a single sideways strip running from his shoulder to his waist. The rest was a mess of wrinkles and set-in folds that suggested either he’d wadded them up and thrown them into a compactor, or that he’d slept in them. Lori’s wasn’t much better, though she lacked the strip of flattened fabric that broke-up Gray’s.

“Care to join us for break—“ Gray hesitated, visibly checked the time, “—lunch? My jumped-up jumpship Captain is being jumpy and doesn’t want to let me look over his shoulder and tell him what to do for another couple of hours.”

Mariah wasn’t sure if the head-toss Lori carried out at Gray’s words was to assist in her collection of hair or if it was the natural result the woman rolling her eyes so hard they transferred momentum to her head. Mariah felt her own lip twitching at the dumb wordplay, and it took a great degree of focus not to audibly sigh. She wasn’t going to give up floating around in her cabin in the dark for this?

There was that arrogance again.

“I will join you.”

Lori jerked at the answer and had to scramble for a handhold with one arm to correct the movement before it sent her floating into the middle of the hall. Gray’s eyes widened a bit. Mariah was pretty certain she was the most surprised herself. But she didn’t have to be completely distant with the Legion and, perhaps more importantly, maybe just listening to conversation would make time go by faster.

It might even be right. Moving through the halls of the dropship, and subsequently the jumpship, forced her to set aside her thoughts to instead focus on navigating in zero-gee. More active than just floating, the short trip required her to actually pay attention to other people’s traffic as she transitioned between handholds.

It had been a very long time since the last time she’d bothered to use something as slow as a jumpship for transportation. If she’d actually had to split her attention between Gray and Lori’s conversation, avoiding the other passing mercenaries, and her own movement, it might have been challenging. Since she didn’t have to do much to cover the latter two problems but follow the directions of the machine in her head telling her where to put her hands and how long to hold on to each of the grab-bars, it was less of a problem.

The mess hall of the Phobos was roaring with conversation when they entered. To Mariah’s surprise, the presence of people on both the deck and the overhead relative to her own orientation spurred a moment of head-swimming vertigo. It really had been a long time.

Gray and Lori’s entrance pushed down the roar of a conversation to a mere rumble for a few moments. Conversations paused so their participants could nod or casually offer upraised arms in greeting to the pair. But the noise quickly picked back up to its previous level. It was an amazingly informal reaction. SLDF ships had insisted on much more formality.

“Ladies first.” Grayson offered, sweeping one hand in front of him towards a warming rack.

Mariah followed Lori past the man to where he had pointed. Though the way things were organized or done on the ship was unfamiliar to her, the resealable plastic pouches of warm soup laid out were practically the same as those she’d seen centuries before. It seemed the food that a typical spacefarer had on voyages hadn’t changed over the years.

The Star League Defense Force had usually blown lots of money on gravity decks big enough to accommodate entire crew’s having a meal at almost the same time. When they hadn’t, there’d usually been an officer’s mess at the very least that was included on the gravity deck that they invariably took advantage of. The meals that were actually practical to eat in gravity with a fork-and-knife were quite a bit more appetizing than the soups or purees that had to be eaten through a straw.

As if she needed any further demonstration, Gray and Lori’s willingness to eat the zero-gee rations alongside their lower-ranking comrades spoke well to their character. She had seen plenty of SLDF officers who would’ve seen themselves as above such plebian affair…And she had cooped herself up in her cabin for much of the last few weeks avoiding public appearance as much as possible, hadn’t she?

Lori hovered on after taking one of the packages for herself. She drifted in front of a trio of tall cylinders meant for containing different liquids, grabbing another empty packet from a small dispenser beside them as she did. At the same instant she slipped the packet over the dispensing nipple, she somehow managed to go completely still while floating. Her attention had been wholly absorbed by a sheet of paper that was hanging on the front of one of the cylinders.

Striking fast enough to send her entire body twisting and rotating about in the air, Lori ripped the paper down. In the same motion she crumpled it into a ball in her hands. Somewhere in between when she was taking it down and when the momentum brought her face around towards the rest of the mess hall, her eyes narrowed into thin lines. Perhaps most telling was the spike in her heart rate.

Once again, conversations died down and most of those eating turned their attention to Gray and Lori. Gray, for his part, seemed just as confused or interested as anyone else in what Lori had found. He pushed himself off the nearest bulkhead so he could see around Mariah, though the cartwheeling motion that sent him into brought him back to where he’d started in a matter of seconds.

Lori’s stare continued, her focus traveling across the other mercenaries until finally settling on the red-haired ‘Mechwarrior that had been shot out of his ride on Helm. Mariah had to resort to the machine in her head to remind her it was a ‘Davis McCall’. The man was confident enough to wink and hold his packet of soup up in mock-salute. The confidence visibly faded as Lori kept up her stare.

When a tight-lipped smile developed on the woman’s face, McCall suddenly found something else much more interesting.

“Lori? Something wrong?” Gray asked.

She shook herself and turned back around. Returning to what she had been doing, she tossed the paper aside so Gray could grab it. Judging by her still-elevated heart-rate, something was still bothering her despite the act she might be putting on.

“Not at all. McCall just volunteered for all the extra duty.”

Gray, clearly confused by the answer, picked the wadded-up paper out of the air and straightened it out. The image was almost difficult to make out, with too many shadows and too little light. Whoever had taken it had probably been in a hurry or been inexperienced at using image-capturing software. But she could make out Lori curled up in Gray’s arms, both of them clearly asleep.

Underneath, a small caption read ‘Caffeine: Always in moderation! The crash can interrupt important activities!’

“Are you going to let one of your men get away with being so unprofessional?” Mariah asked, finding herself interested in the morass of contradictions the Gray Death Legion seemed to be.

“Yes, I suppose I am.” Gray swallowed, eyes turning to a strangely happy-looking Lori.

“Are all mercenaries that forgiving?”

“You misunderstand. McCall is going to wish I’d punished him officially by the end of the day. Lori has another month to extract her revenge.” Gray almost chuckled and shook his head, suddenly growing much more quiet and somber, “Besides, after what the Legion’s been through, I don’t think I could bring myself to be a hardass about some lighthearted mocking pointed at me.”

Mariah was silent, satisfying herself by simply noting it as another difference between Carlyle and a typical Star League officer. If he kept it up, she might find herself actually liking and engaging with the man. But that wasn’t so bad. He didn’t have to be on Terra when she did her job.


*********************************************************
Jumpship Invidious, nadir Jump Point
Graham system, Free Worlds League
10 August, 3028

Gray took a long breath of the stale, recycled air of the jumpship. The jumpship and its attached dropships had seemed to be growing smaller with every passing day. Now, even the bridge was too small. With all the activity everywhere, he was growing convinced everything was too small.

He was still trying to figure out when exactly he’d begun to suspect that. It was undoubtedly a recent development. Perhaps even something he’d only realized after Mariah had come on. Years before the mere ownership of a jumpship had been completely outside of any ideas he had for the future, and even after it had dropped into his lap he’d always been struck by a certain sense of largeness and grandiosity whenever he’d used the ship as transportation.

Once, the bridge itself had been awe-inspiring to him. The two rows of computers in the center of the deck and the cutouts in the bulkheads had always looked imposing when fully-manned for a jump, even with the handful of empty spaces for crew that hadn’t been necessary for an operation as relatively light as his.

That same feeling had hit him this time, but it had been tempered by the more practical part of his mind realizing that even the bridge of the jumpship was getting far too busy because of the Legion’s expansion. The full cargo load his dropships were carrying meant both loadmasters needed to be present in addition to the regular bridge crew, filling up two spaces that otherwise would have been free. Then, considering their quasi-outlaw status he and Tor had agreed on the necessity of someone manning the console that could connect to the dropships enough to partially control their weapons. That eliminated one of the remaining two seats, and then he filled the last actual seated position on the bridge.

It would have been full even without the plus-one that Mariah’s presence had created at every jump since Savannah. But sitting in midair at the front of the deck, legs crossed in front of her and slowly spinning in zero-gravity, the woman seemed to fill all the free space that existed in the bridge. She definitely made it feel too small. Or maybe it was just that she still made him feel too small. Magic was bullshit.

“Ladies-and-gentlemen, boys-and-girls, children of all ages of the Gray Death Legion, this is your friendly neighborhood navigator speaking. It brings me great joy to announce five minutes to jump. I repeat, five minutes to jump. Section officers please ensure that all equipment and personnel are properly stowed.”

Gray shuddered underneath the strap that kept him in his seat, chilled in the lower part of his spine by the voice coming from two chairs behind him. Though Winston Tor was deliberately affecting a light-hearted tone, the entire bridge seemed to be holding its breath. Winston was covering a very real fear with the words. Gray couldn’t think any less of the man for it, either. He felt the exact same way himself. Mankind’s home, ComStar, and judgement—whatever its resultwere all literally one jump away.

Mariah silently spinning at the front of the bridge didn’t help the atmosphere either. He was glad that the woman had at least come out of her shell enough to become a semi-regular sight on the ship, but every single person on board was fully aware of who and what she was. Or, at least, who and what she claimed to be. He’d already had talks with some of the crew who had slowly begun to offer different explanations for the events that had happened on Helm. None of them made much sense, but a few people clung to them anyways. He couldn’t really blame them. ‘Magic’ didn’t make much sense either, did it?

Gray double-checked the strap over his chest and shifted inside it so he was seated in a slightly more comfortable position. Jumps were stressful enough affairs as it was, but each one that had brought them closer to Terra had also brought them that much more worry. Like every jump they’d made since Helm, this one was being done relying solely on the jumpship’s systems and built-in failsafes to detect any problems. The prospect of relying on decades-old sensors to warn them of anything in close proximity had been scary enough before he’d seen modern sensors utterly blind to an entire ‘Mech. Now it seemed like utter stupidity.

Normally, they would have contacted Graham IV’s traffic control and gotten a higher-resolution scan of the jump point to make sure there weren’t any micrometeorites or the like in the area. The Invidious’ detection-systems were reliable enough, but when facing the possibility of a misjump there was quite simply no such thing as ‘too safe’.

Unfortunately, Graham IV’s controllers had taken a page from Talitha’s and Acuben’s and every other stop they’d made to recharge. At least Graham’s had the decency to contact them in real-time and refuse to associate themselves with his ‘suspect’ mercenary company. The best they’d received in other places had been canned, prerecorded messages and cold indifference to any attempts they’d made to actually talk.

But even if the style was different, the message was the same. Everyone was insisting on completely separating themselves from any contact with the Legion until ComStar’s Mercenary Review Board had cleared them of wrongdoing. Not even the recorded message from Eli that none of them would be held liable for aiding or abetting outlaws considering the ‘questionable nature’ of that condition had mollified the local authorities. Renfred Tor and his brothers had been forced to jump the Invidious five times already without the added safety more information provided. The jump to Terra would be the sixth.

Hopefully it would be the last one.

“Terra’s not going to be the same, you know. Most of the orbitals and outer habitats disappeared during the Coup.” Gray heard himself commenting into the cold air of the bridge.

The Tor brothers and the handful of other crewmen were busy at their terminals behind him; it only seemed natural that the job of playing guide to Mariah would fall to him. He was seated the closest—a situation that had been deliberately arranged for every jump since Winston had been in the position and so completely embarrassed himself.

Just below jokes playing off of the image of him and Lori sleeping—still going around even after more than a month, to the considerable irritation of Lori—the second-favorite joke of the Legion was impressions of the youngest Tor brother’s repeated attempts at small-talk with Mariah and her blunt way of shooting down the topics. The jokes exaggerated the tendency somewhat. She and Winston had talked about jump accuracy for a couple of minutes on more than one occasion. If Mariah was bothered by the jokes, she didn’t show it.

“I know.” Mariah said, gracing him with a momentary glance.

Gray tried not to sigh. If anything bothered Mariah she didn’t show it. He shouldn’t be all that surprised. After the brief instant of near-levity she’d reached on Helm piloting the Wasp, she’d fallen back into a pattern of behavior that floated between indifference and what seemed to be apathy. He wasn’t entirely sure what more he could do to try and coax out the real her or get her to engage with the present, and he was running out of ideas for how to keep trying.

She was using him. He knew that much. He even knew what she was using him for. Once they reached Terra, that would be the end of it. But the question he’d wanted to ask since Helm, but hadn’t, remained. Why did she want to go to Terra so badly? The half-answer she’d given Lori wasn’t the whole story—he could feel Mariah intentionally leaving out information in some smug, self-assured way of keeping her distance from him, Lori, and the Legion.

It was amazing how much she had in common with the planetary authorities he’d tried to talk to over the last two months in that respect. He supposed she could, like them, be trying to keep from being overly associated with ‘outlaws’. But that explanation just didn’t feel right to him.

“You can’t always trust the history books.” Gray said.

“No. No you cannot.” She looked at him again, one corner of her mouth turning down as if she were angry.

After studying him for a heartbeat, the same corner jerked upwards. She stopped it, but at the cost of her entire chest jerking inwards slightly. Her entire face contorted into a bizarre position, as if she’d just eaten something rotten but smelled something delicious in the same instant. Her chest jerked again, and then she couldn’t stop it. She started to laugh out loud.

It wasn’t very loud, soft and light like something a child would make. It only went on a moment before Mariah slapped a hand over her mouth and stifled it even further. But it was unmistakably a laugh. The sound was so alien and unexpected from her that a half-dozen of the other members of the bridge crew began snickering themselves. The indignant, almost pained, expression Mariah turned on them only cemented the progress of the snickers and escalated them. Winston in particular seemed to take a certain amount of joy in the moment of quasi-vengeance. If the boy hadn’t been strapped into his seat and there had been any gravity on the ship, he probably would have fallen out of it onto the deck with how hard he laughed.

Gray had not realized just how much he’d missed it that kind of unrestrained laughter. The exhaustion in the immediate aftermath of escaping from Helm and the constant reminders with every system they jumped to that the Sword of Damocles that was outlaw status still hung over their heads had sucked most of the actual humor out of previous attempts, for him anyways. But maybe things would change once he got Mariah to Terra. If Eli was to be believed, he might even be rewarded—though he still didn’t like the idea of trusting the same organization that had gotten him and his men into this mess. There was something distinctly wrong with ComStar.

Trouble was, to hear Mariah tell it there was something distinctly wrong with the entire Inner Sphere. ComStar was only a potentially inconsequential part of the problem if her version of events were true.

Gray tried not to shake his head and turned his eyes onto the slow countdown flashing across the screen in front of his seat. ‘Guardians’? Magical warriors that fought evil? The very concept was insane. Any mercenary worth his salt knew there was no such thing as evil, only excessive self-interest.

Sure, there were pirates who were to be treated with contempt, but other than that? Other mercenary companies or House units one faced in the field were only opponents. Employers who had a history of breaking or manipulating contracts were only self-interested negotiators. What more could be expected? Everybody had to look out for themselves and their people first. After a few years fighting for one side, a mercenary company might find itself hired to support the opposition, after all. Good and evil were all relative to the employers’ perspective, right?

Hell, he’d found himself working with Duke Ricol on Helm. The man who’d killed his father had become a business partner in the interests of saving the rest of the Legion! Standing on such a morality as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ would have done nothing helpful for him. It was a childish view of the universe. Mariah was, at best, deluded if she thought those standard were workable anymore—if they ever had been!

Despite all of that, after what had happened on Helm? He knew she was right. The only word he could come up with to describe Rachan’s attempts to discredit and destroy his Legion, all for the sole purpose of destroying a memory core that could save trillions of lives, was ‘evil’.

Beyond that, she’d demonstrated the ‘magical warrior’ portion of her story quite spectacularly. Sure, the idea of magical warriors fighting evil was impossible. But he’d seen it. How was he supposed to argue with that?

“I don’t think I ever said thank you.” Gray said, half-whispering so the words wouldn’t be quite as audible to the rest of the bridge crew.

Mariah moved one arm in a half-circle so she spun to fully face him, having to correct the movement midway through after it sent her too far around. She still had that same half-blank, half-condescending look on her face that had spurred-on the rest of the bridge to laughing, but she met his eyes without reserve. The collar of Gray’s uniform felt like it was too tight around his throat.

“Thank me? For what?”

Gray shrugged, “Saving my unit. Letting us stuff the cargo-holds full of Star League equipment that I think, technically, still belongs to you. Not blowing up the planet. You know, the usual. Thank you.”

Her façade broke for an instant. Not as obviously as it had when she’d laughed. Gray suspected that had only made it through her typical veil of indifference because it was relatively inconsequential. But after spending the better part of two months learning to read the woman, the way her eyes misted over only to immediately harden the next instant was as revealing as a screaming fit might have been by someone else. Something he’d just said had been the emotional equivalent of a Hatchetman tearing into the woman at point-blank range.

“One minute to jump. All section officers secure yourselves for transition.”

Gray almost jerked at the voice and turned to glance first at the countdown on his screen and then at Winston Tor. Mariah was visibly pulled out of whatever thoughts she’d had by the voice and turned her attention back to the front of the bridge. Winston looked utterly oblivious to everything but the screen in front of him and Gray had to let the untimely interruption go without comment.

“Ten seconds to jump! Nine…Eight…”

Gray shifted in his seat and gave a final look over the status display on the screen in front of him. Every compartment represented on the crude diagram of the Invidious and the two connected dropships was colored-in with a steady green that signaled readiness for the jump.

“Five…Four…”

Mariah held one hand out and rested it against the front-most bulkhead of the bridge.

“Don’t thank me yet.” Mariah finally said, though it sounded more like she was talking to the empty space in front of her than to Gray or anyone else on the bridge.

“Two…One. Initiating jump.”

Any response Gray might have had to Mariah was forced out of his head by the unnatural feeling of being ripped through reality. In one infinitely long but instantaneous moment, the Kearny-Fuchida Drive launched them across twenty-six light years of space. His brain danced for ages to a tune composed more of color than sound, and he swore that somehow the ship had left all of his internal organs behind. An instant later, he wished that had actually happened, as his brain pounded against his forehead and twisted around inside his skull.

“Jump complete. Ship verifies arrival at nadir jump point of Sol system.” Winston said from behind Gray, sounding as if he had just run a marathon and someone was sitting on top of him as he tried to catch his breath.

As far as reactions to jumps went, Gray knew that was relatively mild. He had to fight down a message from his stomach about how little it appreciated the sudden, unnatural movement across space. There were dozens of people scattered about the dropships who’d be puking and nauseous for days yet. There were even more who’d be just about useless for the next few hours. Gray had yet to meet the person who was unaffected by a jump. Even Mariah had dropped one hand down to her abdomen and squeezed her eyes shut in obvious physical discomfort.

Gray chuckled slightly, and immediately regretted it as it drove a small bit of puke into the back of his throat. On the first jump out from Helm, Mariah had descended to hyperventilating into a bag and trying not to puke, only to fail. That more than anything she’d done on Helm they could only see recordings of had convinced the rest of the bridge-crew she was alright. If Gray was honest, it had gone a fair ways towards convincing him as well. He didn’t care how insistent Lori was, it would have been too weird if Mariah hadn’t been discomfited by a jump. Only machines could work through a transition without showing any effect from it.

“Well done once again, Winny.” Renfred Tor said, smiling when the younger brother made angry noises over the childish moniker he still hadn’t grown out of. “Align us with Sol and get us some distance from the jump point. Melvin, get the sails extended. I’d like to have them out sooner rather than later”

The entire jumpship seemed to shudder around him, and Gray’s backside was lightly pushed into the slight padding of the seat. It almost wasn’t enough to even notice, but after two months of being in free-fall most of the time, he was thankful for what he could get. From the soft mutters of relief across the bridge, it was a common sentiment. Even Mariah dropped both feet onto the deck and seemed to lose a slight bit of the uptightness she took with her through every jump.

Renfred turned in his seat to look at Gray, one corner of his mouth ticking upwards. “You want us to try and hurry the charging along just in case, Colonel? We could cut two--maybe three--days if you need us to?”

That was a question most jumpship captains would never even present as an option. Kearny-Fuchida Drives were sturdier than they had any right to be, but the one thing they did not stand up to was fast-charging. Besides the massive maintenance issues it caused, trying to charge the Drive too quick had a very long record of causing misjumps. It took particularly stupid, or dedicated, captains to propose it as an option.

“That’s—that’s alright.” Gray swallowed past the small lump in his throat the question inspired and told himself it was still just the post-jump nausea. “One way or another I think things will be settled before there’s a chance for Invidious to do anything.”

“That is true.” Mariah agreed flatly.

Grayson wasn’t sure how to respond to that assessment, and let it go. Had she been so dispassionate before the Star League had turned her into whatever they’d turned her into? The Free Worlds League still barred those with cybernetic implants from holding the title of Captain-General explicitly on the justification that they made one less human and less alive. Was that the case with Mariah?

The thought floated at the back of his head as the Tor brothers and other crewmen on the bridge brought the ship out of its jump-prepared state. Gray let the commotion run over him, leaning back in the chair and available if Renfred needed him for something, but otherwise simply letting his presence be noted.

Mariah seemed to be alright just watching him for the first minutes. After those extended out into more, she took the opportunity to exit the bridge. Grayson was the only one to immediately notice, raising a hand in quiet farewell and surprised when she returned the gesture. Every other person on the bridge was too preoccupied with their own small zone of responsibility to pay any heed.

A rising tone on the captain’s console that signaled an incoming message drew much more attention than the quiet exit of the magical Star League woman. It was almost funny. Enough time with anything or anyone and it became ordinary.

“Colonel? ComStar’s trying to send you a message.” Renfred said after silencing the alert and looking at whatever it was for.

Grayson wasn’t impressed. As far away as the Invidious was from the planet, the delay on any communications would be unbearable. He didn’t know what the controllers thought they might be accomplishing by even trying to contact them so soon. He could commend their reaction time, but not their actual intelligence.

“Just send back a text answer that we’ll talk to traffic control in real-time when we’re closer.” He said.

Renfred grinned, “It’s not traffic control.”

Before Gray had to ask what was so amusing, Renfred sent the message to him. Upon seeing the hook-nosed, elderly man in ComStar robes on the screen, any confusion about Renfred’s reaction disappeared.

“Colonel Carlyle, let me be the first to welcome you and your Gray Death Legion to the Sol system.” Julian Tiepolo said, leaning forward into the frame of the recording device.

“I do hope your journey here was pleasant.” The recording continued. “As you and I share a mutual concern of some major importance, I think you could understand my worry that you might not submit yourselves to ComStar’s authority.”

Gray frowned. It was being said as if Tiepolo was referencing the Legion’s outlaw status. But the Primus of ComStar wouldn’t involve himself with something that minor, would he?

“In any case, because of the peculiar circumstances of your arrival, I would very much prefer you do your business through my office and those directly employed by it. I must admit, as much as it pains me to do so, that our traffic controllers are a bit overwhelmed at the moment in preparation for the upcoming marriage. I think it would be easier on all involved if you did not bother them with your presence. Please, when you require terminal tracking or advice on the availability of landing-space, do not hesitate to contact the frequency attached to this message.”

“Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly.” Renfred muttered, though he went quiet after a single look from Gray.

“I very much look forward to meeting you in person, Colonel. Hopefully any matters of confusion or concern on both our sides can be laid to rest soon enough. Until we meet in person, may the peace of Blake be upon you.” Tiepolo’s message concluded, the man performing a small head nod that almost looked like a bow.

The bridge was quiet.

“That man sounds more like a politician than a priest.” Winston finally offered, glancing between the other occupants of the bridge.

Gray had to agree.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Brilliant. I love the continuing focus on the uncertainty of handling Mariah’s nature. Too often superpowers are just shrugged off by people around them in stories, which I think very unrealistic.
 
9 - Maskirovka and Masquerade (pt. 1)

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Office of Precentor ROM
Hilton Head Island,Terra
14 August, 3028


He had His vessel, Nicholas Cassnew, sit at the edge of the trivid recorders pickup window. By tradition, Precentor ROM was virtually never called on at meetings of the First Circuit, and He knew that seeing only a faint human outline was more intimidating for other members than a clear picture of His face would be. Their fear of the unknown was almost as delicious as it was baffling the way they seemed to ignore it whenever the mood struck them.

As He watched the Precentor of Dieron, Myndo Waterly, gesticulate wildly through her speech, He had to wonder at just how much use the continuing façade of impartiality on His part was. This latest move by the Primus to pardon the Gray Death Legion made it obvious that the man had discovered something of Waterly’s attempts at trying to gain the rights to the Star League cache on Helm. The only question was whether Tiepolo would manage to see past the excuses Waterly was throwing up now.

Probably not. If Tiepolo had traced Waterly’s adventures back to her directly, he would’ve just ordered her assassinated by ROM. If the Primus suspected back-room deals from ROM, he would have replaced Cassnew. If he suspected what was actually going on, he would have mobilized the ComGuards and leveled as much of the headquarters on Hilton Head Island as he could before the wedding. Instead, Tiepolo had done little more than tinker at the edges trying to accomplishing his own plans.

Frustratingly, that tinkering still told the entity inside Cassnew little about exactly what the head of ComStar’s plans were. The old human had pushed for heavier recruitment for the ComGuards, and a mass reconsolidation of the HPG system since he’d become Primus. While the Guards had been slowly building up after the embarrassments they’d suffered in the Periphery, disagreement between the orthodox and those who ascribed, legitimately or by outside influence, to Waterly’s more proactive viewpoint had stalled even discussing changes to the HPG network.

Tiepolo, once a zealous advocate of Blake’s word himself, was slowly becoming more and more marginalized by a fervent movement he’d encouraged in the first place to form his own power bloc on the First Circuit. There was almost a measure of...humor, perhaps, in the slowly-growing role Waterly played as a voice for the strict adherents to Blake’s doctrine who had once looked to Tiepolo as their leader.

Humans were so pathetically fickle in their loyalties.

“Will we truly take on more murderers and rapists to fill out the ranks, Primus? I would have to question just how much this pardon will impact ComStar’s reputation. These aren’t two-bit Periphery raiders nobody has heard of or random psychopaths accepted into our ranks to die fighting monsters in the Deep Periphery, after all. Why, just a few years ago this ‘Gray Death Legion’ was cleared to operate by the Mercenary Review Board on Galatea itself! Though I suppose their choice of moniker should have been a warning even then that they’d willingly take part in the destruction of an entire city. This will do nothing but get us some very pointed questions from the House Lords!”

Waterly shook her head in dramatic condemnation of the presumed oversight, playing the role of disgusted mother-figure to perfection. Considering it had been her orders in the first place that resulted in the destruction she now condemned, it was an impressive act. But that was what made her so useful and part of what made her such a good tool for the Mistress. Her almost complete lack of morals and questionable attachment to reality just completed the package.

It was so much easier to use someone when they constantly thought themselves to be the ones in the position of power. It was a little snippet of human thinking He had come to appreciate quite thoroughly in His time working ‘for’ Waterly and observing her behavior towards Tiepolo. Somehow, she seemed completely incapable of the same attitudes existing in those underneath her.

“Have you seen the news at all, Myndo? The Legion arrived in-system yesterday and the coverage of four different newsvids didn’t even mention it. The Steiner-Davion marriage is overshadowing anything as minor as the mercenaries who might have committed genocide.”

There was Precentor Tharkad, chiming in with his usual support for the Primus. Interestingly, this time it was in a more backhanded form than it usually took.

“Precentor Dieron’s concerns are valid, Ulthar.” Tiepolo cut-in before the argument could escalate, “Were we to pardon them immediately it could raise some embarrassing questions, even with the marriage attracting so much attention.”

The interruption was just a little too quick, though. It was a little too well-practiced. It looked like Ulthar and Tiepolo had planned a way of corralling Waterly’s objections. As Tiepolo continued, that only became more clear.

“That is why I intend only on putting them on ‘probation’. The Mercenary Review Board will examine all the evidence available for as long as they need to, Precentor Dieron. In the meantime, ComStar will be magnanimous enough to permit the Gray Death Legion carry-out contracts to maintain themselves so long as those contracts are pre-screened by our officials and the Legion’s operations subject to ComStar observation. It is only fair.”

As the entire First Circuit shared a brief laugh at the comically innocent appearance Tiepolo took on with his conclusion, Waterly shrunk back. Even the entity that inhabited Cassnew could note the humor of Tiepolo’s unspoken additions to the ‘public story’. If ComStar was going to be the one determining their contracts, then the Gray Death Legion would find themselves working solely for ComStar, and likely at a much lower rate than was standard undertaking missions that were much more dangerous. By the time their ‘probation’ was over, it was unlikely any of them would still be alive. It was an impressive way of solving the problem the mercenary company presented.

‘Cassnew’ idly drummed his vessel’s fingers against its chin in a pointless mannerism He’d picked up from one of His human subordinates. It was sometimes frustrating how incorruptible Tiepolo himself was. Despite her love of political machinations and intrigue, Waterly just wasn’t all that good at the multi-level thinking they required. ‘Cassnew’ had long-ago realized how hopelessly complex humans were. It was a lesson Waterly seemingly hadn’t accepted yet. Perhaps it was something she would gain with time?

In the end, it was no real matter one way or another. Soon enough neither of them would be relevant.

“What of security arrangements for these rabid mercenaries?” The Precentor from Sian asked, breaking his typical silence to at least offer some circuitous support for Waterly.

“Already settled, I assure you. At the press of a button, we could cripple their dropships entirely and any attempts by them to cause trouble could be met with an overwhelming response by nearby ComGuard forces I’ve deployed on my personal authority. One way or another, these mercenaries shall not be causing any difficulties for us while they are on-planet. Even if we need imprison the lot of them for the entirety of the wedding to keep any of the Houses from complaining.”

Waterly seemed to sense an opening, “Even so, Primus, having them on Terra at the same time as this grand marriage you’ve orchestrated—“

“I believe it has been Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner who orchestrated it, Precentor.” Tiepolo said, voice darkening.

Waterly scowled, “Even so, having this Gray Death Legion on Terra during the wedding can only invite problems, Primus. The House Lords will not be amused to find themselves sharing landing space not only with their rivals but now with an unknown third party as well! It is a recipe for disaster.”

“Which is why it won’t be an unknown third party controlling those dropships but ComStar.” Tiepolo sighed, “If you really must know every detail, Precentor, I intend on at least temporarily crewing those ships wholly with ComStar personnel to ensure this Gray Death Legion is properly obedient. My secretary may be able to provide you with further details if you contact her wishing to know the names of all those involved and what their birthdays are, but for the moment I believe that should address even your concerns over the matter, yes?”

Waterly blinked, staring at the Primus without any reaction for a solid ten seconds. Finally, she gave a tiny nod and mumbled something that sounded roughly like agreement. Precentor Sian scowled, but drifted back into silence. Only the Precentor from the Free Worlds League shifted uncomfortably at Waterly’s treatment, but the man clearly buried whatever protest he may have been thinking of after scanning the rest of the First Circuit and finding little support even among his allies for continuing the argument.

The meeting continued, in less confrontational tone, for another half-hour. The appropriateness of offering Terra as a neutral location for the wedding threatened to come up again, but Precentor Sian seemed to lose his nerve when even Waterly refused to support the criticism.

‘Cassnew’ indulged in the odd-feeling grin humans used to express mirth. Of course Waterly supported the wedding location now that she thought it granted her an opportunity. Wouldn’t she be surprised?

“I believe that concludes our business. So, unless there is any further objection?” Tiepolo barely paused before declaring the meeting concluded.

One-by-one, the Precentors winked out of existence. Their bodies dissolving into the static of no-signal briefly before even that disappeared as their video-connections closed. Tiepolo clearly waited until every other primary member of the First Circuit had exited before closing his own connection, offering a friendly nod and two-fingered wave to ‘Cassnew’ as he did.

There was no reason for it, but humans rarely had reason for such minor actions. After some of the worries the entity inside Cassnew had begun to have about Tiepolo’s suspicions, it was refreshing evidence that He was still unsuspected.

Instead of signing off, Tiepolo reached down and clicked a series of buttons on his desk, changing the encryption key he was transmitting with. The ‘room’ around him that had displayed the other Precentors and the Primus warped for an instant, walls curving inwards and ceiling twisting, but then it all snapped back into place with an audible pop. He checked the readings on one of the side-panels of his desk. There were two other connections. Only one of them was immediately visible.

“What isn’t that old fool telling me about his plans for these mercenaries? He doesn’t intend to distribute that damned memory core they found, does he?” Waterly demanded.

“I have heard nothing more than that which he’s already discussed with the First Circuit. I believe the Primus has no plans for them and is unconcerned with the core they recovered, ma’am.” He said, bending His vessel’s head down as He spoke. Waterly always responded well to such displays.

“Really? And how much have you actually heard to make such a prediction, demon?” She snapped, standing up so quickly that she went out of the field of view of the cameras picking her up and ended up a screaming, decapitated torso.

‘Cassnew’ experienced what He was certain was frustration. It was this pounding, swelling emotion inside of him that seemed to consistently rise up whenever he had to deal with Waterly for extended periods of time—like seconds.

“The Primus has left the disposition of the Memory Core recovered from Helm to me and issued no particular instructions as to its treatment. Beyond that matter, the ComGuards have been placed on higher alert, and a sizeable-enough contingent to fully crew two Union-class dropships drawn from them and placed under his direct command. Should you wish, I will attempt to contact individuals in those units to receive regular updates to them as to their status.” He answered.

Waterly descended back into the frame of the pickup and her eyes scanned over His face. She was looking for something, but seemed not to find it whatever it was. With a heavy sigh, she sunk back into her seat.

“See to it, and be sure to forward me a copy of that core. With the recklessness that old fool is managing the House Lords, I may need it to keep things properly in check between them. Now, what of the rest? Have you managed to track down this woman who accessed the HPG network right underneath your nose?”

Ignoring the pounding frustration, He slowly went through the intelligence brief normally reserved for the Primus—including the admittance that no, His men had not yet been able to find the mysterious woman yet. She seemed to be on the verge of berating Him again, but finding out her own pair of disgustingly shackled lesser ones had also failed forced her into silence. She had an odd attachment to Romulus and Remus He had no desire to look further into.

He was sure to remove a few of the more consequential matters from his report that otherwise might give the woman too much of an idea of what was going on, though. Those he reserved for His Mistress, not this human who believed themselves such.

Unsurprisingly, Waterly wasn’t any happier by the end of his words than she had been at the beginning. But at least the time seemed to have calmed her down.

“Fine.” She said, perhaps the most reaction his detailed briefings to her ever elicited. Typically, the word would have been her cue to end her transmission, at which point he could get to the real meeting. Today, however, she hesitated.

“You will have Romulus, Remus, and Karen permanently assigned to your detail.” She said.

His vessel’s body actually tried to jerk at the comment, and a very odd sensation passed up its spine as He continued to unflinchingly meet the Precentor’s eyes. If He had less physical control over Nicholas Cassnew, the words might have caused some kind of involuntary reaction. As it was, though He wasn’t sure why, they erased what slight feeling of comfort He had received from the Primus’ friendly send-off.

Waterly stared at him with eyes barely open enough to see through. Unsure what she was waiting for, He bowed His vessel’s head.

“As you order, ma’am.”

She held the stare, breathed loudly, and then disconnected without another word.

“She suspects you of being in greater control of that body than you let on.” The other entity still in communication with him ‘said’. The voice was distant and unfocused, as if it was an echo from far, far away. The Master had to be very careful interacting with the HPG network to contact Him like this.

“How? I have done nothing to raise her suspicions.” He said, a small semblance of that same emotion he’d felt speaking with Waterly bubbling back up to the surface.

“You still have much to learn about humans. They can have frustrating bouts of ‘intuition’.” The voice twisted into a dark amusement, “Supposedly, the female of the species is particularly capable of such feats. At least according to their legends.”

That was, undoubtedly, one of the silliest things He had ever heard. But He was beginning to realize just how much about humans was nothing but silliness and contradiction that made no sense.

“Miserable creatures and their ridiculous stories.” He growled.

The laughter that comment elicited actually hurt His vessel’s ears.

“Much to learn about humans, indeed, little one. It is a wonder you have lasted so long without exposing yourself. A wonder.” The voice said, lilting up-and-down in obvious mockery, “If you don’t pay heed to their stories, you won’t know what they fear. If you don’t know what they fear, you won’t know how to make them behave properly.”

“It is somewhat less direct when I cannot merely threaten their lives and be done with it.” He said, allowing a touch of the continuing frustration he was feeling into his own words.

The pain was excruciating. Ripping, tearing, twisting at His insides in ways that went beyond the occasional physical discomfort His vessel went through. He desperately wished that His vessel would fail and he could return to the comfort of the Dark.

It faded to a dull ache and then the comfortable, familiar nothingness just as quickly as it had escalated to wild fury.

“See to your duties instead of making excuses, ‘Nicholas Cassnew’. There is nothing to justify your recent failures.”

“Yes Mistress.” He said, grinding his vessel’s teeth against themselves. Another habit, He realized, picked up from the humans He’d spent so long working around.

The connection dropped, leaving Him alone in His office.

*********************************************************************
Dropship Deimos
Atlanta Spaceport,Terra
16 August, 3028


The pair of guards that flanked the Primus were visibly jumpy as they scanned the ‘Mech-bay of the Phobos. Their eyes bounced between Gray, the catwalks and gantry-bays around them, and then back in a never-ending cycle of threat assessment. Gray couldn’t exactly fault their nervousness; even he had been surprised when his initial insistence on meeting ground had been agreed to by the head of ComStar.

He’d expected to be pushed into accepting to, at best, meet in some out-of-the-way spot nearby, maybe one of the empty landing pads at the spaceport. More likely, he’d expected to be dragged away from his men and their dropships entirely and forced to meet the Primus in ComStar’s headquarters. But instead, Tiepolo had immediately agreed to meet inside the Phobos itself. He could only imagine the old man’s security was royally pissed off about that.

“So. Good gendarme, bad bluecoat?” Lori whispered. Her insistence on wearing a pistol on each hip and the way she stood with her palms resting on their grips probably didn’t help ease the ComStar bodyguards’ minds. But that was their problem. It sure made him feel better.

“It can’t hurt I suppose.” Gray allowed.

“Nice, I’ll be the bluecoat.”

“You’re always the bluecoat.” Gray took his eyes off the approaching Tiepolo long enough to give Lori his best put-upon glare.

“That’s because I’m so much better at being bad than you are.” Lori flashed her canines and rocked her hips hard enough to bump into him.

Gray only stopped himself from loosening his collar by reminding himself it was exactly the reaction she wanted to see. Instead, he swallowed and looked back towards Tiepolo.

The Primus of ComStar and his guards stopped their advance just a few steps away. Unlike his men, the Primus himself only seemed to have attention for Mariah standing behind him and Lori. Old, blue eyes with just a trace of hawkish predation behind them met the centuries-old woman’s and didn’t even flinch. After a long moment, they slid over to Gray and settled. Apparently, even the Primus of ComStar had a hard time locking eyes with the magical woman from the Star League. Hopefully that was a good sign?

“Primus Tiepolo.” Gray said in simple greeting as he extended a hand.

He had a moment of indescribable mental vertigo as the older man took it in a firm grip and gave it a somewhat weak but still-confident pump. He was shaking hands with one of the most powerful men in the universe while a woman who no-joke used magic to fight evil stood behind him and watched.

It was a hell of a long way from causing trouble on Trellwan to where he was. Barely two years earlier, he’d thought negotiating with a representative of Janos Marik for the land-grant on Helm would be the height of his mercenary career.

Gray winced inwardly as he remembered just why he was shaking hands with such rarified heights of power. If he had the choice, he still would have preferred never being accused of mass-murder and never having to force his way into the Castle Brian on Helm.

Tiepolo’s voice, much softer and aged in-person than it had been on the message, forced Gray back into the moment.

“Colonel Carlyle. Your reputation precedes you. I assume all of these are recoveries from the cache on Helm?” Tiepolo asked, sweeping his hand around the BattleMechs in the hangar.

Gray stiffened slightly at the comment, unsure if the words were some kind of underhanded jibe or test of some kind. The friendly smile Tiepolo gave him a moment later seemed as if it was meant to discourage that very thought, which only succeeded in making Gray more uncomfortable.

Tiepolo seemed to notice the discomfort and immediately held up a hand.

“Just trying to make conversation, I assure you. I fear I am not very good at it. Too many years of walking a verbal tightrope has gotten me into bad habits it seems I can’t turn off even when I wish to. Though your suspicion does you credit, Colonel.” Tiepolo tilted his head towards Mariah, “Guardian, need either of us be concerned in the others company?”

Mariah floated forward to Gray’s side, shrugging off an intense glare from Lori that would have stopped anyone else in their tracks.

“No.”

Tiepolo let out a very long sigh of relief at the single word, his head dropping down and shoulders following suit a moment later. One hand jerked upwards and waved into the empty air over his right shoulder, as if he were swatting at a fly. Apparently a cue, the two men behind the Primus each took a hesitant step back. Their eyes still didn’t stop scanning the hangar, and from how their frowns deepened they were clearly unhappy with their boss, but they seemed to drop from being on the verge of drawing their own weapons to merely being ready to.

Gray couldn’t help but be a little jealous. If he waved his hand like that the most he could expect was for Lori to raise an eyebrow at him as if he were being an idiot. Apparently, being one of the most powerful men in the universe came with some handy perks.

“In that case, there is much to discuss.” Tiepolo said, raising his head and eyes scanning around the hangar. “Perhaps somewhere more private, Colonel?”

“I trust my men.” Gray said simply.

To his credit, Tiepolo once again flushed in embarrassment. “Sorry Colonel, I—I’m sorry. I really am not used to speaking frankly with anyone. I did not mean to imply anything about you or your people. In fact, I rather wish I could say the same about my own.”

The solid faces of both of the Primus’ guards visibly winced at that, and Gray was suddenly struck by the image of a pair of wounded puppies. Tiepolo turned, and this time escalated from merely waving away his guards to actively shooing them off. Both backed up a few more steps, each seeming to compete with the other for who could move slower.

“Just cover the hovercar. I’ll contact you if I need you.” Tiepolo muttered to the both of them.

Both had fixed their eyes on the pistols at Lori’s hips, the most obvious threat in the entire hangar excepting the multi-ton war machines that surrounded them. Gray might have almost thought the focus absurd if he wasn’t half-certain the bodyguards would have known if any of the machines were powered-up.

He’d been tempted to have one of the techies keep his Marauder at the ready just to see if it got any reaction, but had kept his word to keep all the machines powered-down. When it came down to it, that was more important at the moment than information about ComStar’s capabilities. He really didn’t doubt they had the technology to detect an at-the-ready ‘Mech.

In any other situation, Lori probably would have responded to two large men staring at her hips by drawing the pistols there and threatening to use them. Apparently more capable of diplomacy than he ever gave her credit for, the woman brought her hands up and folded them across her chest. The gesture clearly didn’t make either of the retreating guards happy, but it kept them moving backwards until they exited the dropship.

“How dramatic. On everyone’s part.” Lori said flatly, staring a hole into Tiepolo’s forehead as if cementing where she wanted to place her shots before turning the same boring look on Mariah.

“Drama has its uses.” Tiepolo said with a wan smile. Mariah bobbed her head in quiet agreement.

“A little bit of drama also makes these kinds of things much easier to discuss without causing unnecessary rumors and panic. Usually. You’d be amazed how much people will believe when it’s wrapped-up in the right package. When it’s a story that appeals to them instead of an unpleasant truth.” Tiepolo continued, shaking his head. He bulled on a moment later, “The report I heard from Helm said you were unlikely to conceal Duchess Saturn from your crew?”

“Considering they saw her take out a ‘Mech with a pointy stick, it would have been pretty stupid of me to try. They deserved to know. I trust my men.” Gray answered.

“Yes. So you said before. You must have quite an outfit if you can afford a luxury like trust.” Tiepolo harrumphed and bit his lip, “That complicates things, but I can work with it. In any case, I believe the first thing I should—“

“Why isn’t Pluto with you?” Mariah’s voice sounded almost desperate. Gray was entirely unused to her sounding desperate. Disinterested? Resigned? Even, on occasion, amused? Yes. But she had never once sounded desperate.

Tiepolo gave Mariah an obedient nod, and a thin smile formed on his lips. He withdrew a short-range communicator from the sleeve of his robe. After waiting for a nod from Gray—and Lori—he typed out a short code on the device and then slid it back into his sleeve.

“The first thing I should do,” Tiepolo continued as if he’d never been interrupted, “Is the first thing any earthling should do with visitors from outside the solar system. Take you to my leader. Or, in this case, bring my leader to you, I suppose.”

Tiepolo flushed, and Gray got the impression he had been trying to plan a way to work that comment into his words since he’d known the Legion was in-system. Not wanting to credit the words with a response himself, he reached one hand out to rest on Lori’s shoulder as her hands dropped back down to her pistols. Whether the move was because of Tiepolo’s terrible joke or the new figure coming up the dropship’s ramp he couldn’t be sure.

Chances were it was both, because Tiepolo was supposed to be the head of ComStar.

Judging by the woman’s functional dress-and-blouse, she could have been drawn from the board of any corporation in the Inner Sphere. Gray was immediately struck by how much she looked like a civilian, long dark hair that seemed to be shot with green every step she took hung down to below her waist in a style no Mechwarrior would ever have indulged themselves in. Over one shoulder hung a satchel-sized purse, pushing her into an appearance that could have been as appropriate for a middle-aged mother as a business official.

Gray was certain neither of those came anywhere close to the truth. The way she walked with steady and precise movements and the way her eyes seemed to absorb every detail of the dropship’s bay in an instant were too similar to a veteran combatant’s to belong to a civilian.

“Mariah?” Lori asked.

Gray turned, catching the Star League officer as she broke into a run towards the long-haired woman. Mariah crossed the distance in seconds. Barely slowing down as she approached, she threw herself into the taller woman and wrapped her arms around her waist.

“Colonel Gray, I have the honor of presenting Setsuna, Duchess Pluto and another Guardian of the Star League.” Tiepolo said, extending one hand out towards the still-distant pair of women who seemed to be preoccupied hugging each other.

“Mariah mentioned a ‘Pluto’ in passing.” Gray said, he cocked his head at who he’d thought was the leader of ComStar, “Is she—“

“Three centuries old? No, actually. Supposedly she’s even older.” Tiepolo interrupted, grinning like a hyena.

“I was going to ask if she could also do the whole spooky, magical-powers-destroying-a-planet thing, actually.” Gray said, bringing his hands up to waggle his fingers at Tiepolo.

“No. As far as I know, her,” Tiepolo hesitated, let out a long breath, “Magical powers, have something to do with time.”

Lori started, “You’re shitting me?”

Tiepolo shrugged.

“When did I jump into a Saturday morning cartoon?” Gray muttered, turning back towards Mariah and her newfound old friend.

They were still holding on to each other. While Setsuna had seemed surprised at first, she’d apparently settled into place with a few seconds to gain her bearings. One arm hung over Mariah’s shoulder, the other rested on top the shorter woman’s head. It might have been heartwarming but for the way Mariah’s chest was spasming with every breath she took.

“Wonder what that’s all about?” He continued.

“Our friendly Duchess Pluto said ‘Hotaru’. I think it’s a name.” Lori said flatly.

Tiepolo’s furrowed brow and half-open jaw focused on Lori had to be a close approximation of his own stunned expression.

“What?” Lori shifted her focus between the both of them. Cocking her head, she pointed to one ear that had a small plastic receiver wrapped around it. “I like her but she’s obviously hiding stuff from us, and not to put too fine a point on it, Primus, but we’ve already been fucked over by ComStar. I wanted some warning if it was going to happen again.”

Gray was more annoyed she hadn’t bothered to tell him. Sure, he probably would have objected. But still.

“We shouldn’t be listening in on such a personal moment.” Tiepolo said.

“Mariah’s demanding Setsuna not call her that.” Lori narrated.

With a shuffle of his robes and a light cough apparently meant to cut short any more of his own protests, Tiepolo leaned in to better hear.

Gray wished that simple act on the part of the man didn’t worry him as much as it did. He could deal with having massive unknown factors weighing on his mind—He’d had to for the entire trip from Helm. But there had always been the knowledge in the background that there existed someone else who knew what was going on and might eventually be able to explain it without the cryptic half-answers Mariah—Hotaru?—was so fond of.

Taken with the shrug he’d given earlier in answer, the Primus of ComStar—the man who should know what the hell was going on—had practically shattered that conception.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. We’re back now.” Lori said, pitch dropping a bit in what Gray guessed was an approximation of Setsuna’s voice.

At least she sounded like she knew what was going on. Apparently not only had Mariah not been very informative, she hadn’t even been using her real name.

He owed Lori an apology. She’d had the right idea dropping a bug on the woman.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lori said, slightly higher but with something close to Mariah’s quiet insistence.

“Never apologize for things you didn’t do.” Lori continued in the same lower-pitched voice she’d used earlier. At the edge of the dropship bay, Setsuna crouched down to fully wrap Mariah—if that was her name—in a hug.

Gray shifted his weight, trying to push down the discomfort that was slowly creeping its way up from his legs. At the same time, he couldn’t deny he was curious to hear what would come next in the conversation they weren’t supposed to be hearing.

“But I did.” Lori repeated.

Across the bay, Mariah returned to jerking in sobs. Lori went silent, either because nothing was being said or she didn’t think any of it was important enough to pass on.

“Care to explain any of that, Primus?” Gray asked quietly.

“During Amaris’ Betrayal, I’m given to understand there were,” Tiepolo bobbed his head left and right, “Difficulties between the Guardians. Some of them were twisted into helping him at first.”

Gray frowned. It didn’t exactly tell him anything new, but he was starting to get used to that. With Lori’s help maybe they could puzzle out some kind of background on the pair by getting independent information from the pair and comparing it to the other’s story and whatever was in the records.

He swallowed with the uncomfortable realization it was the kind of process he’d go through when he took on a new contract with an employer.

“Speaking of being twisted into helping questionable people, where does the Legion fit into the near future, your worship?” Lori growled, still riveted on Mariah and Setsuna.

Tiepolo didn’t respond immediately, instead shifting his attention between the pair of Guardians and Gray. For the blink of an eye, he looked like a very old man ready to fade into an easy retirement, eyes bagged and expression a blank stare into the future. His composure returned quickly, but something about it didn’t seem as refined.

“Your arrival let me stand up a portion of ComStar’s…security…That I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. I’d like to contract with you to supplement that force until the end of the wedding. After that? Well, we can confront those details later.”

“Not in the habit of taking contracts under duress.” Lori snapped back.

Gray found himself unable to pay as close attention to the back-and-forth as he should have. Tiepolo claimed he’d get a favorable judgment from the Mercenary Review Board, Lori hardballed on it being a requirement before anything else, but even they sounded like the pre-negotiation was more formality than anything else. A comfortable piece of the familiar they could both use to fill the time.

He found himself focused on Mariah and Setsuna, mind insistently playing-back the smaller woman decapitating a man-like thing on Helm.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there staring. When he finally shook back to reality, Mariah was before them again with Setsuna right behind her.

“This is yours?” Mariah asked, digging out a small, circular wafer of electronics from a pocket and holding it out towards Lori.

“Thanks.” Lori said simply, not even blushing as she took back the bug.

From closer-up, Gray’s earlier observations were only reinforced. She wasn’t so blatant as to scan him up and down, as Mariah once had. Instead, she held her focus on his eyes for a few seconds before methodically shifting to Lori. Absently, she straightened out the few wrinkles that had developed on her clothes while she and Mariah had been clutching each other.

“I appreciate you finding and caring for Ho—“ Setsuna swallowed, “Mariah, Colonel Gray. I’m sure she was very confused when you found her.”

“I assure you the feeling was mutual, Miss Setsuna.” Lori said before Gray could even begin to respond.

The two women locked eyes, and Gray felt the indescribable urge to duck. As Setsuna spoke, he tried to edge his way closer to Lori in case an elbow—or an entire arm—was needed to keep her from going too far. Why did he ever let her play the bad bluecoat?

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Miss--?” The magic, time-manipulating woman said, head tilting sideways slightly as if she was observing a peculiarly interesting animal.

Captain Lori Kalmar.”

“Oh, you looked a little young to hold a rank.”

“Someone with so much experience would think that, I suppose. How old are you, anyways?”

Gray had been through artillery bombardments that were more comfortable. He could only imagine how much worse it was to sit through the exchange of fire for someone like Tiepolo who’d never been on a battlefield.

For some reason, the guns went silent. Only then did Gray realize he’d been holding his breath.

“That is a good question, Captain. Even if it is impolite to ask a lady her age.” Setsuna finally said, a smile more evident in her voice than on her face, “The answers range from two months to tens of thousands of years, depending on your definition of age. H—Mariah’s awakening and using her powers on Helm let me return from something you could probably compare to limbo. Like Mariah, all of us have been passing the years in one form of hibernation or another.”

Mariah—Hotaru? He was going to have to ask about that at some point—shrunk into herself as Setsuna spoke, covering her eyes with her bangs and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

“How much did she tell you about Daimons, Colonel Carlyle?” Setsuna continued, bringing one hand to the shorter woman’s shoulder.

Gray floundered, smirked “Daimons are forever?”

Setsuna didn’t even flinch. Tiepolo coughed roughly. Even Lori stared at him with a flat, disappointed look in her eyes.

“Evil, magic-using things from hell that can possess people and eat ‘Mechs?” Gray corrected, running a hand through his hair to shield him from Lori’s glare.

“More the other way around, but otherwise a workable definition. The major problem is they’ll keep showing up, and keep growing stronger until we correct a mistake that was made two-hundred fifty years ago. Considering ComStar’s been infiltrated as well…”

Setsuna paused and shared a glance with Mariah. The shorter woman nodded very slightly.

“Colonel Carlyle, I don’t know what the Primus has said on the topic, but I would like to hire you and your Legion.”

That…Had not been quite what he was expecting.

“You expect us to fight these Daimons for you?” Gray said, once again remembering the blackness-engulfed ‘Mech on Helm Mariah had gone up against.

“No. I would expect you to fight their servants, should they ever appear. It’s something I’d hoped ComStar’s regiments would be available for, but considering recent discoveries I’m unsure how much they can be relied on. Since the Kell Hounds and Wolf’s Dragoons aren’t available, and since they’d probably suspect me of being insane lacking the personal experience you have with what I’m talking about, you’re my only option, Colonel Gray.”

“I suppose I’m flattered.” Gray said.

Here it was. If he declined he could likely still get an official letter of pardon from Tiepolo and the Review Board. Likely still turn around and run to the Periphery to lie low for a few years and rebuild his reputation in a dull but inoffensive garrison duty somewhere. He could get out from the insanity that had gripped his life since Helm and perhaps settle back into the steady conflict that was ‘normal’ for the Inner Sphere and its Periphery.

But maybe that wasn’t supposed to be normal.

“I’ll consider it, on the condition you answer two questions first.” Gray said, as if he hadn’t already decided to take the offer.

“Three questions.” Lori corrected immediately, locking eyes with Gray and daring him to say anything else. He wasn’t dumb enough to take up that dare.

Setsuna nodded.

“How do you intend to pay?” Gray asked. He thought he did a pretty good job of making it sound like he cared.

“Hmm.” Setsuna made the noise sound like an entire sentence itself, “Primus?”

“ComStar would be honored to absorb the expense, your grace.” Tiepolo said quickly, though with an obvious awkwardness.

Setsuna nodded, “Almost as easy as using the black accounts the Star League had. Your other question?”

“What the hell is Pluto?”

Setsuna started, the hand on Mariah’s shoulder tightening down. For a moment, she almost looked like she was going to yell. Her face flushed noticeably even on her darker skin, and her brows curled inwards slightly.

It’s a planet. The ninth planet of the Sol system, in fact.”

Gray supposed that made more sense, even if he’d never heard of it. Diving through the records in the Helm Core, the only ‘Pluto’ he could track down had been a cartoon. Maybe he hadn’t been looking in the right places.

Setsuna took an audibly long breath, and tilted her chin towards Lori.

Lori shrugged and held finger-guns out at Setsuna and Tiepolo, “Yeah, I just want to hear more about these ‘ComStar regiments’ you mentioned earlier.”

Gray supposed it wasn’t very surprising to find out his girlfriend could inspire stumbling, stuttering nervousness in the most powerful man in the Inner Sphere.
*****************************************************************
A/N

Yes, it's aliiive. Just a bit of a shambling, stumbling zombie. We've made it to Earth now, so that's progress, right? Why, at this rate we'll be at the beginning of the wedding in five or six more months! Been somewhat unhappily editing this for basically a month. Still not really satisfied with it. Feels wrong somehow. But time didn't let me find what I disliked so bugger it, we're pressing on in the name of pressing on.
 

Ganurath

Well-known member
Remember all those things I said I liked about Combine dialogue?

Take that, and compare it with Myndo's dialogue in the context of her being a Combine loyalist, and... either she's really good at hiding her cultural roots, or even more blatantly unhinged than the text itself would indicate.

On a lighter note:
“When did I jump into a Saturday morning cartoon?” Gray muttered, turning back towards Mariah and her newfound old friend.
A little over twenty years too early, and even then it'd be more focused toward Somerset.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
I love Pluto’s response to the matter of Pluto. And here, after asking the lady her age, you run the real risk!
 
9 - Maskirovka and Masquerade (pt. 2)

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Dropship Pearl of True Wisdom
Atlanta Spaceport, Terra
August 17, 3028


Makoto growled as a laser reached out from the ridgeline towards her Thunderbolt and impacted into her ‘Mech’s side. A quick once-over of her instruments told her the shot had done little notable damage. Some armor melted and another scratch at her pride, but little else. She didn’t know why her opponent was so reticent to use his own long-range missiles to pick at her, but wasn’t about to question the accommodating failure.

Quickly twisting her ‘Mech towards the attacking Centurion’s half-obscured profile, she lined up the upper half of the enemy in her sights. Not bothering to wait for the solid tone or bright-red indication of a hard missile lock, she instead released a small swarm of her own LRMs the instant the reticule switched to the yellow targeting indicator over the other machine. Waiting until the missiles were halfway to their target, she then loosed the large laser in the Thunderbolt’s right arm.

The cockpit’s temperature jumped. Breathing through her nose and lifting her arms up as best she could to let some of the air in the cockpit circulate underneath the cooling vest, Makoto sped up and changed course just to be sure she wouldn’t provide as easy a target if the Centurion peeked back up.

She had the endurance to absorb the piddling bits and bobs of damage he occasionally pecked at her with in these little engagements. When he got lucky he, at most, melted and weakened some of her outermost armor. But if she was even half as lucky his Centurion would be worn down by the superior firepower of her LRMs.

This was not the first time they’d exchanged fire like this. The Centurion’s pilot had decided to play a game of cat and mouse instead of closing the gap and dealing as much damage to her as he could. It wasn’t a bad decision on his part, and did a much better job of using the terrain to his benefit. But the cliff-ridge he was using to cover himself only ran for another half-kilometer before into the same river-bottom she was stuck in. On even ground, she would be able to tear the lighter ‘Mech apart, and he either hadn’t noticed or was hoping for something to break his way before they reached a more even field.

Most of the missiles she’d fired failed to track with the limited lock-on they’d been allowed and continued on a straight path into the sky, an unfortunate consequence of the only semi-targeted snap-shot. A handful visibly angled downwards from their original flight paths however, dropping down on their terminal approach to the enemy ‘Mech. Her systems predicted a handful of hit, and displayed more battle damage across the Centurion’s torso.

It was little more than the computer’s guess; the only way to find out for certain if the damage estimate was accurate was to get another solid look at the other ‘Mech for more than a few seconds. But the spattering of missile-hits that the machine estimated joined a slowly-increasing number of other hits she’d also scored, all the while suffering little in return. Granted, she’d already expended the majority of her missile ammunition on relatively little accomplishment, but she felt justified by the enemy ‘Mech’s behavior. The kind of feinting, speed-oriented ambush-tactics the Centurion was using was not what she had expected of a Death Commando.

She had actually been halfway looking forward to a close-in brawl. Even if her advantage in tonnage would have made the victory somewhat less meaningful, a real one-sided victory would have been a welcome change of pace from the endless string of losses she’d had on Saint Loris. Now that the simulator aboard the Pearl of True Wisdom was actually working, she wanted to at least prove once that she could win.

She kept an eye on the ridge as she advanced. She could probably try to get out of laser range from the Centurion and circle around, but the terrain had to be as obvious to the other pilot as it was to her. She disliked the idea of giving them any chance to prepare an ambush, and when it really boiled down to it, she could take the punishment.

Perhaps that was undue vanity on her part? Maybe even selfishness? Overvaluing her personal assessment of her own strength above the needs of the Confederation?

Despite lessons from Sifu Clark addressing all of those, she was growing to see more and more contradictions in what he’d told her and what the actual lessons of his teachings seemed to be. Now that she’d seen the Liao family firsthand from Candace’s shoulder, she was sadly aware just how present selfishness and vanity were in the Confederation’s Chancellor and his Celestial Majesty’s family. Romano Liao was indication enough they weren’t even free of the untamed recklessness most schoolchildren were disciplined out of. Perhaps, if what Candace said was true, Romano was even…

Makoto chased away the errant—and near-treasonous—thoughts by remembering where she was. There were more important things to be focusing on during combat, simulated or not. Who knew, maybe the Maskirovka had developed a method of detecting traitorous thoughts by reading the information produced by neurohelmets in the process of piloting. Simulator training would be a wonderful excuse for loyalty tests, wouldn’t it?

She shook her head, and this time actually refocused on the controls. Her Thunderbolt was just beginning to come over the small hill that the previously imposing ridgeline had given way to. In moments, if she had guessed right, there would be—

There!

She had to give credit to the other pilot even as she turned to destroy him. If he had been a little quicker or she had been a little slower, he may have been able to close the distance between them more and set-up a proper surprise by putting the claws grafted onto one hand of the Centurion to use—

Claws?

Before Makoto had time to properly process how wrong that sight was, the opposing ‘Mech opened up on her with an autocannon that was far more powerful than it should have been, advancing forward as it fired. She could hear the expensive, freshly-maintained hydraulics outside the simulator pod squeal in protest as they were forced to push themselves to the limit in the name of realism.

The cockpit shuddered around her, sending a wave of nausea into her mind as the computer read how hard the hit had been. Had she been in a Raven or another light ‘Mech, she was certain the simulator would have read her as mission-killed right then-and-there. In even a medium ‘Mech the surprising blast probably would have been enough to knock her onto her back, and being on your back in combat was as close to being dead as you could be.

Even for the heavily-armored Thunderbolt it was bad enough. Damage indicators flared to life all along her instrument panel and some of the screens around her that controlled less vital functions filled themselves with blank fuzz or simply went black. The charge indicator on one of the medium lasers in her ‘Mech’s torso blinked out, the sensor it relied on read as damaged in the Centurion’s barrage.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to stop her!

Makoto grinned as she began to stab her right thumb down onto the topmost button on the stick. In the next instant the Centurion would melt away underneath the Thunderbolt’s trio of medium and single large lasers. The short-range missiles that would accompany them an instant later would only be a kicker. He was done.

There was a slight jolt of static as her thumb came down.

The simulator went pitch-black. The entire simulation disappearing in a single flash of light as every monitor and screen went out at the same time.

Makoto jerked against the controls in surprise. She’d expected the near-Alpha strike to run the temperamental ‘Mech into the red, even been prepared for the mandatory cooldown ‘Bitching Betty’ sometimes called for after using its entire energy-weapon armament together. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the complete blackness that had come the instant she’d fired.

She sighed. The only explanations were that the simulator had read the overheating as bad enough to have set-off the remaining missile ammunition in her ‘Mech or the techs were still trying to track down the weird operating bug that had been plaguing them ever since she’d come aboard and seemed to have a love for killing the entire simulation.

When no ‘You have lost the engagement’ screen appeared before her, she knew it had to be the latter explanation.

“I had him!” Makoto growled, slamming a fist into the side of the pod to vent her anger.

She didn’t want to risk taking it out on Jian or his subordinates when she got out. Maintaining and updating the coding and programming that let the simulators function was a thankless but wholly vital function. Too many ‘Mechwarriors forgot that and considered the technicians as just another aspect of the machinery.

If she ever wished to join the ranks of real ‘Mechwarriors, she would accord herself better than them. Where they might be drawn off by pride, she would show proper Yi. Unless incompetence had come into play, there was no more reason to blame Jian or his assistants than there would have been to blame her ‘Mech in the field for any loss she suffered.

Makoto took a long breath and quickly let it out, letting the frustration fade into the air with it. Unstrapping, unplugging, and unseating herself from the piloting couch, Makoto ran one hand through her hair as she pulled loose the neurohelmet. Even the relatively short engagement had padded her hair down with wet sweat, and she tried to fluff it up and out as best she could. The best option was to get out of the still sauna-like heat of the simulator.

Throwing herself to her feet, Makoto twisted over the controls and panels that filled the space until she could reach the exit.

She hadn’t even gotten the door of the simulator completely open before the apology came.

“One thousand pardons, honorable ‘Mechwarrior. We experienced some kind of technical difficulty with the machinery.”

“It is understandable.” Makoto said automatically, acknowledging the deep bow from the technician with a nod.

She was slightly embarrassed at the frustration within her at being addressed by one of Jian’s subordinates instead of the Chief Tech himself. She thought it was out of condemnation for the man’s cowardice in sending one of his men out to apologize to her, but equally likely was it being spurred by her own vanity.

The oddity was explained, and Jian revealed as not being attempting to peg the shame on one of his men, a moment later when she heard the more senior tech’s voice repeat an almost word-for-word rendition of the apology to the ‘Mechwarrior emerging from the simulator pod beside her own. Though his address got a few modifications she wasn’t entitled to.

“One million pardons, most honorable Citizen Xiang. There was some kind of technical difficulty with the machinery.”

Citizen Justin Xiang, personal advisor to the ‘Celestial Wisdom’ himself and—as rumor had it—the heir-presumptive to leadership of the Maskirovka, shrugged off Jian’s apology and kowtowing with an ease that seemed like it could only have been possible for someone not born or raised in the Confederation.

It was no wonder Jian hadn’t apologized to her personally!

Makoto blinked, shrugging out of her cooling vest and letting the cool air of the sim-room circulate around her. It was no wonder the Centurion hadn’t been a standard model! No wonder its pilot had not fought like a Death Commando. She had been fighting Yen-lo-Wang, the eater of the dead, itself! With the Champion of Solaris at its helm!

“No pardon is necessary, Jian. Please. I should be the one apologizing to you and your staff. This arm,” Xiang let the words hang in the air as he brought his left hand in front of him and stared into its palm. He shook, “This arm is nothing but trouble. Perhaps I could criticize you if I could tell you the first thing about how its interface with Yen-lo-Wang works. But as it is? I very well could not have you apologize for my own failing, could I?”

Even if it did conform to propriety, it was a decidedly un-Capellan answer. Or at least one that most Capellan ‘Mechwarriors would never have given, certainly not one of the Death Commandoes. But it seemed to be the proper response; Jian rose from his kowtow almost blushing at what amounted to effusive praise from Xiang.

“I would still ask for your pardon, Citizen. I swear to you I shall see this malfunction is solved before this dropship leaves Terra.” Jian promised.

Makoto almost missed the first step she was taking down the stairs at the side of the simulator. If Xiang’s reaction had been uncommon, Jian’s was outright unheard of. Making an oath to a Citizen could have extremely unpleasant impact on one if they did not carry-through with it. Maintenance techs, quite simply, never made them for that exact reason. There was too big a chance they wouldn’t be able to succeed.

Xiang clapped Jian on one shoulder—another very un-Capellan action, “I can only ask your best. The Confederation will need you whether you succeed in this minor matter or not.”

It was more than simple reassuring comment, it was a subtle promise by Xiang that he wouldn’t actually hold Jian to the oath.

The words only seemed to make the technician even more determined to accomplish his task, and he had turned towards the simulator and dived into an access-panel on its side almost before Citizen Xiang had actually dismissed him.

Makoto stopped at the bottom of the stairs and watched as Xiang descended his. Whenever she’d seen him before, it had been from her place at the shoulder of Candace Liao. Usually with her Death Commando opposite at Candace’s other shoulder, and always in settings where it was appropriate for everyone in the room to be fully-clothed. At the very least, he had always been covered by the flexible workout clothes he wore when he coached Lady Liao through the basic forms of tai-chi.

What the pair did in their private briefings she had forced herself not to put any thought into.

Now, confronted by a wide, heaving chest still lined with sweat from the heat inside the simulators, and flecked with a modest amount of hair, Makoto caught herself very aware of what Candace Liao and Justin Xiang likely did during those ‘private briefings’. Somehow, the difference in skin-tone between the mechanical hand and forearm on his left arm and the rest of his tanned body only enhanced his figure. And—

And his eyes were further up than she was looking. She felt like more of a silly schoolchild than she had when she’d once been pining over Sifu Clark.

What was it about older men with authority?

Well, some older men with authority. Praise the heavens she hadn’t had any reaction to the Chancellor himself…Though who knew, maybe that was just because she hadn’t seen him in his underclothes!

Makoto offered a bow—not the kowtow Jian had performed, but neither the exaggerated nod another Citizen may have used—to Xiang as he descended the ramp outside his simulator pod. He was entirely deserving of the act, but more importantly it helped her hide the effects of the increasing heat she could feel in her cheeks. With the direction her thoughts had been forced, it was hard not to be conscious of the fact she was in little more than a pair of sweat-soaked underwear herself.

At least it wasn’t too cold in the sim-room. She might have actually found out if it was possible to die from embarrassment.

“An instructive loss, Citizen Xiang.”

She didn’t quite mean the words, but they were the appropriate thing to say.

Xiang paused, shook his head. “Even bet on how that would’ve panned-out, Initiate Kino. If not for this arm of mine, perhaps we actually could have found out for sure one way or another.”

Makoto rose back up so she could nod in agreement. She wasn’t entirely sure how he gave himself even odds in the situation he’d been in, but she wasn’t about to question his assessment. It was already more generous to her than it needed to be.

“I must say you put up more of a challenge than the Death Commandoes I’ve faced.” Xiang continued, eye twinkling in humor.

Makoto swallowed. Offered a polite laugh. Tried to recite back the Solaris champions of the last decade. Then Realized her mind had betrayed her when she got hung up on the first name to come to mind—‘Justin Xiang’.

No. Bad mind. Not ‘Justin Xiang’. Never ‘Justin Xiang’. It was Citizen Justin Xiang. Citizen Justin Xiang the Mandrinn. Citizen Justin Xiang the Mandrinn in the Maskirovka, and in a very close relationship with her liege. That was four things that made him decidedly not good to have a crush on.

“Would you be available to speak with me further, Initiate?” Xiang asked after a brief scan of the sim-room. “After a shower, of course.”

No! No, no, no, no no no…

“I’m afraid I need to relieve Duchess Liao’s nighttime detail, Citizen Xiang.” Makoto said slowly, careful to phrase the rejection just right.

Instead of reacting as she’d expected, Xiang beamed. “Perfect. I am supposed to join her for breakfast. You can escort me there.”

Oh great. That was great. The greatest, even!

Somehow Makoto managed not to scream as she retreated into a private cubicle to shower. The thought of leaving before Xiang occurred to her, but was quickly beaten out by the basic understanding that one; he was in the Maskirovka so refusing his requests was a bad idea, and two; he was in the Maskirovka and that was one of the worst ideas she’d ever had.

It was still tempting though. Especially as she buttoned her uniform around the Davion-made bra she’d brought with her from Saint Loris. Justin Xiang was not well-known for his good feelings towards his previous country.

Exiting the small privacy afforded her, Makoto found to some chagrin that Xiang was already waiting for her. She would just have to walk as fast as she could to Duchess Liao’s suite on the upper deck of the Jumpship.

At least the modest, semi-formal wear he’d changed into was more modest and easily-ignored than the shorts he’d had on for the simulator.

Xiang acknowledged her with a simple nod before setting off through the halls of the ship himself. As they passed by a trio of techs on their way somewhere, he seemed entirely content to walk in silence. Only when they disappeared down one of the side access-ladders did he speak.

“Forgive my lack of understanding, but may I ask why you remain ‘Initiate’ Kino? I was under the impression that the Warrior Houses did not release Initiates to offworld duty?” Xiang asked, voice almost dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.

She wasn’t sure whether to be immensely relieved at the question, or a bit annoyed. She settled on a mixture of both.

“I am a special exception.” Makoto said, not sure what else to say.

“Does House Lu Sann make those often? Special exceptions?”

Judging by the way he held up one hand, he must have been able to read the answer to that in her face.

“No offense meant to you or House Lu Sann.” He assured her, waving the hand to his side before folding it behind his back with the other, “I am merely trying to get information from someone with firsthand knowledge. His Celestial Majesty has charged me and a small group of associated with compiling a more accurate estimate of Capellan forces combat-readiness. Unfortunately, one of the things we’ve discovered is a rather widespread tendency to report only what we want to hear. Individuals with experience in the units, sad to say, have been some of our best sources of more accurate information on their readiness.”

Well, it was better than him being interested in her as part of the more counterintelligence work the Maskirovka carried out. It was infinitely better than him being interested in her as part of his personal interest as well. To her embarrassment, Makoto realized she’d been holding her chest out just a little further than she needed to as she walked.

Traitor! Makoto raged to herself in her own head. Seriously, what was it about handsome older men that turned her into an idiot?

“I am in a special position only because other initiates came to see picking a fight with me as some kind of tradition. I was only good enough to beat them rather than defeat them.” Makoto explained.

Xiang tilted his head.

“I never got them to stop coming at me for the ‘challenge’. Master Samsonov believed it a failure that require my training continue. ‘The true warrior fights only on her own terms to protect what she loves—or fights not at all.’ he always said.”

Now that she repeated the words, she realized how far they tread from the accepted orthodoxy of the Warrior Houses and even the Confederation itself. Not even the Lorix Creed itself went so far as to suggest ‘Mechwarriors fighting only when they wished. The Confederation’s policies definitely didn’t support or accept such a radical view being taken by any of its soldiers.

Makoto pouted. She kept encountering this kind of thing. Samsonov and Sifu Clark’s actual lessons conflicted with the rhetoric. What they’d taught kept contradicting how they’d taught it. Especially to the other initiates…

“A wise man, to instill love of country alongside the training in how to defend it. I can see why he would be the Master of House Lu Sann.” Xiang said.

Makoto knew she’d gone pale, and focused on steadily keeping pace with the Maskirovka official’s steps. She reached for some kind of excuse or explanation she might be able to make for Samsonov, but anything she could think to say would only make things worse. Best to remain quiet and hope he never found reason to second-guess his own misinterpretation.

“The Confederation will need those kinds of men and women in the coming years.” Xiang shook his head, “I just wish we had more of them right now. The military needs a stable cadre of levelheaded officers with real knowledge of the art of war at its head, not some motley collection of self-interested sycophants.”

They turned a corner in the hallway, only to run into an elaborate and well-dressed procession of a half-dozen people. At their head was none other than Romano Liao herself, the second in line to inherit the Celestial Throne from his Majesty.

On the bright side, she was already too pale and afraid for the additional presence to even register. Maybe there was a little more sweat on her palms or her feet got a little colder, but not enough for her to notice in the already half-terrified state she was in.

“Speaking of.” Citizen Xiang whispered as he stepped to the edge of the hall and bowed.

Makoto almost stumbled over her own feet as she mimicked his move to the edge of the hall. It was simply not something you said. She had to bite down hard on her tongue to keep from reacting to the words. A gasp would have been bad enough, but she’d felt a bubble of shocked laughter threatening to come out behind it. It might be the truth, but it was a truth that only Candace Liao or the Chancellor himself were supposed to speak of. Laughing at it would have been complicity in saying it.

Makoto bowed lower than Justin had and tried to act as if she hadn’t heard him. The words had to be a test to determine her reaction. She would give him nothing.

Romano Liao’s procession almost passed by, but something caused the Liao woman herself to pause before them. Makoto could practically feel her staring into both of them.

“Are you unsatisfied with just my sister, Citizen Xiang? I cannot fault you for choosing from among the ranks of the Warrior Houses, but there are other alternatives.” Romano said, seeming to hover at the end of every word she spoke as If fully considering the implications of the next.

Makoto focused on the panels of the deck below her and kept her head down in the bow. She slowly rubbed her fists against her legs. Candace had a tendency to ignore her presence, but at the moment she would have given anything for that instead of being spoken about as if she were a piece of furniture.

Once again, Samsonov’s lessons conflicted with the rhetoric she remembered. The one insisted the Liao’s had the right to address and use those who were not Citizens as they saw fit, the other subtly implied that irresponsible and uncaring leadership was undeserving of its authority. Which of those was she supposed to believe?

“I fear you misunderstand, m’lady. We were merely discussing a run in the simulators.” Xiang said, voice chilled into a flat sheet of ice.

“Oh yes. Of course. How silly of me to think otherwise. I must admit to being curious just who the Champion of Solaris deigned to face in the ‘simulators’ though.” Romano said.

A pair of fingers passed through Makoto’s vision and rose up against the bottom of her chin. Remaining bowed as deeply as she could, Makoto raised her head so that Romano would be able to see her face. The back of her neck strained at the unnatural position, but she had no choice but to obey.

“Initiate Makoto Kino of House Lu Sann most honorable and supreme One.” She answered.

Romano’s fingers twitched as she pulled them away from Makoto’s chin. An odd tremor seemed to pass through the edge of the woman’s eyes before traveling down her nose and causing her nostrils to flare. One canine poked out from behind her lip before Romano’s mouth returned to a dismissive and neutral line.

Maybe it was something she had against House Lu Sann?

Romano made an odd sound in the back of her throat. It was something midway between a grunt and a hum. Raising an eyebrow at Xiang, she snorted.

“Well, don’t let me delay whatever it is you and your new friend are doing to serve the Confederation, Citizen Xiang.” The woman finally said, waving her fingers up the hall as if trying to get particularly nasty bits of dirt off of them.

“Of course. With your leave, m’lady.” Xiang answered immediately, wasting no time in rising up and setting off away from the woman and her entourage in a quick-march. Makoto had skip into a half-run to catch up with him. Only her long legs spared her from having to maintain the same half-running pace at his side as they traveled up the hallway.

Makoto only took one chance as they retreated to look back over her shoulder at the third-most powerful person in the entire Confederation.

Romano hadn’t moved. Still glued to the exact spot she had been, even her fingers were held out in the same spot they had been when she’d dismissed them. From the terrifyingly cold sensation emanating from her, Makoto almost would have assumed there had been a coolant leak in the exact spot the Liao woman was standing.

The worst of it was that she swore Romano was directing a hate-filled stare at her rather than Xiang.

Makoto looked away and tried to put the glare out of her mind. It had to just be fear talking. It wasn’t like she’d given the woman any reason to hate her beyond her association with Xiang.

************************************************************************

Hilton Head Island
North America, Terra
August 17, 3028


Terra was a miserable planet she desperately wished they’d never left Canopus for.

It shouldn’t have been miserable. The environment, in many places given more than two centuries to recover from the ravages of Amaris’ insanity, was filled with hundreds of different species of flora and fauna that made any even moderately-sized parcel of land a pleasure to look at. Their reception had been friendly—almost as warm as that they’d received on Andurien, even. There was nothing to complain about there.

ComStar was long-storied for its neutrality in the constant wars that beset the other Successor states. Better, according to Kyalla and the ancient mimeographed orders the Centrella family had received centuries before, ComStar was charged with the same thing she was as a Guardian. Supposedly, their entire founding purpose had been fighting back the evil spirits and monsters that so often made their homes in the Periphery. So there was even a real degree of safety on Terra that was lacking almost everywhere else.

Despite all that, something about things still felt off to her.

“Would you look at that? They’ve still got fusion-powered cars running around!” Mina gasped as a bright yellow sports-car passed by the convoy in the opposite lane. It was the fifth or sixth time now that she’d tried to get some kind of conversation started.

In the backseat, her ‘half-sister’ Emma hummed in agreement, not even bothering to change which window she was looking out of to actually catch sight of the vehicle.

Mina tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried to put the dismissal out of her mind. It was possible that what was bothering her about Terra had less to do with the planet itself and more to do with how Emma had been behaving.

There hadn’t been much opportunity on the jumpship for her to notice anything—everyone already subject to the whims of the schedule more than anything else meant they only saw each other in passing during a shift-change or other major shakeup. But since detaching from the jumpship and riding The Blazing World down to Terra’s surface, she got the impression Emma had been actively avoiding her.

Which took special effort from the heiress, because avoiding your own head of security was not an easy thing to do. Emma had been obviously trying. She’d even succeeded on more occasions than Mina cared to admit, and she had no idea why.

The last real conversation she and her ‘sister’ had gotten to have had been on Andurien almost two months before! It was ridiculous, and all she could do to explain why the once-bubbly 20 year-old had withdrawn into herself was guess.

Though she suspected her guess might be fairly accurate. Kyalla hadn’t quite come out and told Emma that she’d be marrying an Andurien to secure the very quiet alliance she was working towards. But Emma was smart enough to have noticed the suggestions were already there. Combining that knowledge with the Davion-Steiner marriage and Mina could understand some petulance on the other girl’s part.

Though it did hurt that Emma was withdrawing from her as well. They’d grown up together. Emma very much was her sister—in soul if not biological fact.

Mina drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. She only had a few more years that she would remember growing up with Emma before things started over again. It hurt to have to spend even a little bit of time as the target of Emma’s frustrations.

Well she was tired of it, and there was a very obvious, if inelegant, solution.

“There something wrong, Em?”

Her sister jerked slightly in her seat, finally focusing on Mina in the rearview mirror for the first time since she’d entered the car. After all that, though, the fake smile she forced onto her face made it more insulting than anything.

“Just off with Kerensky’s fleet. I keep getting distracted by stray thoughts for some reason. You know how it is.” Emma said, her words much more honest than her features.

Emma shifted and looked back out the window. “Melissa Steiner is two years younger than me and she’s already getting offered up to secure an alliance between the Lyrans and the Suns. I guess I’ve just got a bit of melancholy for her sake.”

Mina could tell there was more to it than that, but it was a fair enough reason on its own.

“Don’t let any of the Cappies hear you say that. They’re paranoid enough they’d see that kind of empathy as you being on the brink of allying with the ‘great Davion menace’.” Mina said, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Yeah. Paranoid.” Emma agreed simply, one corner of her mouth dropping before any other words she might have had were buried underneath a long breath. Emma’s eyes returned to the passing trees a moment later and the conversation ended with as much suddenness as it had started.

The rest of the drive passed in similarly aggravating fashion. Mina would think up whatever topic she could, introduce it, and then pull words out of her sister as if they were teeth. Then, just as she thought she was on the verge of getting Emma to open up, the other girl would shut back down and retreat into silence again. Gone was the carefree exchange of bad jokes, insincere insults, and frustrated ranting both of them had always liked to indulge in. To be replaced by, most painfully, nothing but an awkward nervousness that seemed to stand between them and prevent the familiarity they once had.

If Kyalla hadn’t assured her she hadn’t yet told Emma about the rather unique circumstances Mina faced, Mina almost would have figured it was Emma reacting to the knowledge her ‘sister’ was nothing of the sort. According to Kyalla that sort of thing had happened a few times over the centuries, with the youngest Centrella’s being offended at being lied to for so long about a ‘fake’ family-member. But the only one who could have told Emma was Kyalla, and she had been insistent she hadn’t.

So what was the problem?

The question plagued her, but Mina had no answer to it. As they approached the bridge that led onto Hilton Head Island she finally had to put it to the side in favor of more pressing matters.

ComStar might proclaim itself neutral and might even be an enemy of the Dark, but her time in Security had taught her just how easily the lower echelons of any organization could be infiltrated. The first investigation she could remember being granted any kind of authority over had involved a ring of black marketeers in the Magistracy’s Armed Forces who’d been selling to pirates. She wasn’t about to risk her sister’s security on assumptions about anyone’s intentions.

The pair of lead cars in front of her and Emma’s vehicle cycled through the checkpoint without issue. Their occupants disembarking so they could briefly go inside to be scanned by ComStar police forces and disarmed before being waved through. After moving past the gate, both the cars pulled to opposite sides of the bridge before again stopping to wait for the rest of the convoy. Once in position, the guards inside the vehicles moved out and took up close overwatch positions over the ComStar personnel at the gate.

“I wonder if any wedding in history could compete with how much is going to be spent on security here?” Mina half-joked, moving the car forward to the gate. Of course, Emma didn’t respond.

Turning the vehicle off, Mina exited before her sister. In a slight jog, she crossed around the car to open the door for her ‘older sister’. It was proper protocol, but it also gave her the chance to scan the ComStar personnel from close-up for anything, or anyone, suspicious.

As had been promised, only one sidearm was in sight. Hanging off the hip of an elderly officer watching the half-dozen others under his command inspect the car. There seemed little direct threat from the men. All had large flashlights on their duty belts that might be able to serve well as an impromptu club, but they were unarmed of anything more immediately lethal. What they did have in abundance were scanning wands everywhere she looked and a pair of backpack-mounted versions of the wands that they were meticulously passing over the entire car.

Mina opened the door, and allowed her sister to step out before moving to the rear of the vehicle and grabbing their bags.

Another older man, dressed in ComStar robes instead of the more utilitarian fatigues of the security personnel stepped out of the guard building and held a hand up in greeting.

“Welcome to Hilton Head Island! If your grace would be so kind as to step inside for a moment, we will scan your personal items and affects and try to get you through without too much hassle.” He said, waving his head at the doors he’d just emerged from.

Emma hesitated, pausing at the bottom of the small ramp with one hand on the rail at its side. She was staring at the ComStar official but frozen in place. Walking up behind her seemed to break the spell, though, and she jerked into motion once again.

Mina dutifully followed her sister inside, keeping a tight grip on the heavy bags as she passed through the doors. The ComStar acolyte gave her a respectful half-smile, but she couldn’t bring herself to return it. He was about to disarm her of every tool that made her better at her job. She had confidence in her fists, but weapons made things a lot easier.

“If you would place the bags on that conveyor belt, remove any weapons on your person, and then step through the detectors please?”

Mina obeyed the instruction with as much enthusiasm as she could force, putting the bags onto the conveyor system the ComStar official had referenced and then preceding Emma through the detectors.

The machine immediately emitted a sharp, warbling alarm.

Mina backed through it again with an entirely-faked wince and wordlessly withdrew the laser-pistol from the holster hidden underneath her blouse. She shrugged innocently when the man operating the conveyer machine gave her a funny look for it.

The detector let out the same alarm when she walked through it.

There were a lot more eyes on her now as she withdrew a small holdout pistol from her back and a two-shot derringer from the right sleeve of her blouse.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying, right?”

Nobody else laughed. She suspected if they didn’t think her last name was Centressa there may have been more extreme consequences.

The detector was quite pleasantly silent when she went through the third time. Of course, that was only because she was quite unpleasantly unarmed.

Apparently taking the process as an example of what not to do, Emma reached down and removed a small laser-pistol from around her own ankle before waltzing through the detector. It didn’t go off, but even the one was a surprise to Mina. She hadn’t known Emma had even taken to carrying a weapon with her—in the past she’d gone so far as to call it ‘silly’ considering how poor a shot she was.

“Miss, could we ask you a few questions about these personal effects of yours?” The uniformed security officer asked, coughing slightly to get Mina’s attention.

He had her bag open, but seemed to have stopped there. Though whether he had stopped out of courtesy or out of awkwardness from being faced with a complicated outfit predominantly made of straps and D-rings and an assortment of cuffs, chain, and rope was another question.

“This is going to take a while isn’t it?” Emma asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Probably.” Mina answered, almost at the same time as the security guard.

“Is there a restroom nearby that I could use, then?”

“The fourth door on the right, your grace.” The robed official offered, pointing further into the building.

Emma nodded her thanks to the man and continued into the building. Mina compromised with her own overly-intrusive desire to accompany her sister by instead just keeping her eyes fixated on the hallway until Emma had disappeared into the bathroom.

“Alright, ma’am, to start with, can you please explain this?” The guard asked, embarrassment obvious in his voice.

Mina spared a momentary glance for what the man was referencing before returning her eyes to the hallway to keep an eye on her principal’s location.

“It’s a whip.”

“Yes. I can see that. But why do you have a whip?”

Mina rolled her head to bring him into sight again, narrowing her eyes into the best ‘that’s the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked’ look she could.

“For fun, of course. Why else would I have a whip?”

He didn’t seem to have an immediate answer for that.

“C-Captain? I’m really going to need some advice on those weaponry guidelines they passed on to us.” The guard said, speaking into a com-device that was mounted on his shoulder.

Mina sighed and set to tapping one foot against the tile floor. “If one little whip is this much trouble, you guys are going to have a terrible time trying to deal with our mom’s luggage in a few cars.”

**************************
**************************

Emma Centrella pushed the door to the restroom closed. She was relieved to find the door itself could lock and snapped the bolt into place. Safely insulated from the outside, she withdrew the ‘pad the ComStar acolyte had passed on to her.

The last two months had been torture. Practically confined to her quarters aboard the Jumpship in the name of safety, she’d still found herself constantly worrying about someone coming into the cabin. It was the first time she ever remembered having to take security seriously. Before, it had always been little more than an inconvenient formality. A display meant more to reinforce her position as the presumptive heir to the Magestrix than anything else. Best of all, it had been a way for her and Mina to stay closer together than they otherwise would have been able to.

Not being able to trust—even having to actively suspect—her half-sister and her own mother in the conspiracy was the worst part of everything.

She booted the ‘pad up and was unsurprised to find a single contact in its memory. Most likely, if it functioned anything like the ones the Magistracy’s Intelligence Ministry used, it was the only contact it would allow. Undoubtedly it was bugged itself as well.

“Hello Lady Centrella. I hope your travels were uneventful?” A man answered.

She didn’t bother to hide her snarl, “Quite. And you can skip the pleasantries. I’m of half mind to tell you to skip everything, in fact. If I wanted to hear incompetent fearmongering, I would listen to reports from the Capellan Broadcast Service. Perhaps their reporting would be more reliable than what you’ve told me.”

‘Acolyte Smith’, the only identifier she'd ever gotten from the man, was silent long enough for her to suspect he’d hung up. Only a soft cough on his end of the line belied that he was still there.

“I’m sorry to hear you think so little of us, Lady Centrella. I admit my last warning may have been somewhat inaccurate, but—“

Somewhat inaccurate? You claimed my mother and Dame Humphreys were going to attempt to assassinate me! Instead, Capellan agents tried to assassinate my sister. I don’t think you could have possibly been more incorrect.”

‘Acolyte Smith’ let out a breath loud enough for it to be picked up on the line, “This I realize, Lady Centrella, and I apologize for it. As near as we can figure, the intent of Dame Humphrey’s and your mother was to use a known Maskirovka sub-section on Andurien to eliminate you. Perhaps fortunately for you, however, their orders only specified ‘Lady Centrella’ and unsure whether to go after you or your sister, the team tried to organize two successive assassination attempts instead of asking for clarification from their ‘superiors’ and risking an accusation of cowardice or disobedience. Your sister, of course, brought their plans to a halt before they could involve you.”

Emma held back her first response and forced herself to neutrally consider the explanation. It was a frighteningly plausible reason for why the assassination attempt she had been expecting never actually materialized. A Capellan attack on her would do as good a job of cementing her mother’s alliance with Dame Humphrey’s small domain as would a marriage between her and one of the Dame’s children. It could also mean Mina wasn’t involved…But she couldn’t be sure.

She had never considered the kind of cold, calculating behavior that kind of scheme would require as something her mother would indulge in. Mom was always more the hot-blooded and passionate type in whatever she did. But Emma didn’t know quite as much about Dame Humphrey’s, and if the embarrassing rumors about just how close mom and her were, then maybe…

“I assume you actually have something to suggest this beyond your own guesswork?” She said, keeping as much of the earlier rage and frustration from her voice as she could.

“Certainly, Lady Centrella. There should be a number of the communiqués we base that analysis off of loaded onto that ‘pad already. Please feel free to compare them to your own resources.”

Emma snorted. That was easy for him to say. ComStar’s resources for intelligence gathering were frighteningly beyond anything she could have organized even if she had complete and total access to the MIM. Which, conveniently for him, meant her opportunity to double-check his work was nearly nonexistent.

She didn’t believe for an instant that ‘Acolyte Smith’ was helping her solely in the name of maintaining the status quo of leadership and succession in the Magistracy. But neither had she been able to puzzle out just who he actually was and what his real motivations were. Until then, she had to take his claims seriously no matter how one-sided the evidence for them was, didn’t she?

“I will do exactly that.” Emma said.

She manipulated the ‘pad and tracked down the handful of electronic documents loaded onto it. Once again, most of them looked to be HPG messages that had been copied-over from their original format into a form the ‘pad could read. Wasting no time, she forwarded them on to a private messaging account so she could read them later from something else.

“Excellent. Our only interest is your continued well-being and the status quo of nations, Lady Centrella. We can contact you on this ‘pad again should we uncover anything new.”

Emma frowned at the idea of dragging a undoubtedly-compromised ‘pad around with her everywhere. “I don’t think that will be necessary, Acolyte Smith. I am certain you are resourceful enough to contact me again if that proves necessary.”

He began to protest of course. She didn’t bother to listen to any of the words however, and instead threw the pad into the paper-filled trashcan at the end of the bathroom’s counter. She might trust the disembodied voice of a man she’d never met enough to take his warnings of conspiracy somewhat seriously when they were backed up with what seemed to be copies of original messaging traffic, but she wasn’t about to trust it in directing what she carried around with her.

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Mina set the whip back into her bag and slammed it closed with a thin-eyed glare at the beet-red guard across from her. It definitely wasn’t as good a weapon as the laser-pistols she’d had access to before, but it was slightly better than nothing. Definitely worth the modest trouble they’d given her over it.

It could be surprisingly useful to be from a star-nation renowned for its debauchery.

She’d spent hours in The Blazing World’s machine-shop crafting the relatively harmless-looking handle on the whip and experimenting with different materials for it. She’d found plenty that were dense enough to work, but trying to find one that also threw-off weapons-scanners was more of an endeavor. Thankfully, the thick layers of leather-and-lead wrapping had seemed to at least partially solve the problem.

If everything else failed, including ComStar’s security, she could at least use the handle as a decent blackjack. Though she’d quickly learned in the dropship’s training gym that unlike the occasional dreams she had where she could wield one of the thing’s with ease, the whip portion of the makeshift weapon was actually very difficult to manipulate—and made for a very poor weapon.

That only raised the question of why she was having dreams about using a whip like that, though. Maybe the act she’d put on wasn’t as inaccurate as she thought?

Emma’s return provided her with a good excuse not to think about that.

“Ready to go, Em?”

Her sister nodded in quiet confirmation.

“Anything else you need to ask about?” Mina said, giving the guard a playful wink.

The guard’s only reaction was to somehow go even more red.

Mina managed to hold back her giggle until she and Emma had gotten back into the car and pulled through the gate. By then, she was practically ready to burst, and had to double over the steering-wheel as she laughed.

“Did you see his face? He looked like some poor fifteen year-old getting the sex talk! If there’s more men like him around, this might actually be more fun than I thought!”

Mina had hoped that the comment would finally open Emma up—boys were always an easy topic to dish about. True to her previous form, though, Emma only offered a halfhearted response.

Mina suspected it wasn’t actually going to be more fun than she’d thought. Not if her sister stayed in this same blue funk throughout the wedding.

************************************************************************

Hilton Head Island Compound
North America, Terra
August 17, 3028


Rei admired the rich wood paneling on the walls as the Combine’s procession slowly made its way through the entranceway. Supposedly, this section of the Hilton Head Island Complex had been built up from a preexisting luxury resort that dated back to even before the Amaris’ Coup, and the ornately decorated passageways like these made her think the rumor might have a kernel of truth to it. The acolytes that had escorted them from their rooms to the ballroom had certainly been certain that there was real history here.

It was unfortunate things had quickly taken a turn to the more mundane. The acolytes had to spend almost a dozen minutes arguing with the Coordinator over following the Free Worlds League delegation into the ballroom. Even that small concession had still required Rei to step in and manufacture a more acceptable reason for it than their ‘because the random number generator said so’. She wasn’t sure if ‘two is a number of good fortune’ was too vague as far as a ‘properly Draconis’ reason went, but it had been enough for the Coordinator to agree to ComStar’s request.

Those had been the first words she and the Coordinator had exchanged since she’d joined his retinue. She was certain that she had only been invited to the procession because Takashi didn’t wish to advertise any more disunity in the Combine than his son’s absence from it already did. Bad enough that officials from the other Successor States and a number of the more major mercenary commands would see that. But if the Order of Five Pillars representative was also absent from Takashi Kurita’s party it would fuel even more rumors of discontent and division within the Combine.

With the questionable state of Takashi’s succession, and Marcus Kurita on Luthien waiting for any opportunity to seize power, discontent and division were the last images the Coordinator could afford to display to his enemies. Even if they were inaccurate, they could still work to shape reality. When they were more right than not...

Then they had to be worked against as much as they could. Rei understood the politics of it, but was unimpressed by how the Coordinator had handled them. Was he truly that enraged at his own son?

Rei sighed as she stepped forward, taking what chance she could to enjoy the different views Earth provided her. She could be sure that once the wedding was over, she would return to being the ‘closeted priestess’ aboard the Yamato. The Coordinator may have been silent on the insult her mere presence was, but he would not be inactive on it once she had fulfilled her purpose. Once she was no longer needed to make a point, she could count on being lent to the first Combine world they jumped to as a traveling priestess.

It would be a massive demotion for her, but Rei had long since come to peace with that. She did, after all, get to witness a truly monumental piece of history in exchange for it. Three hundred years since the last attempted unification of two different dynasties in the Inner Sphere. She could understand why it worried the military commanders in front of her, but it was intellectually fascinating. How would the Lyran Commonwealth and the Suns handle the personal union? In the short-term it may be a military alliance before anything else, but in time would come other benefits—and many more difficulties.

Was even the Fox good enough to manage the tensions opening the Suns military-geared economy to Lyran businessman would invite? How would Katrina Steiner address the charges from within the Commonwealth that she was selling their sovereignty and her own daughter to a foreign master? What kind of pushback might result in Skye or Michael Hasek-Davion’s Capellan March?

They were fascinating questions to consider. She wished there were more civilian officials in the Combine’s delegation she might discuss them with. Per the Coordinator’s orders, the wedding delegation was front-loaded with a much greater proportion of military officers to anything else. It might make the delegation more impressive, but it did little favor for conversation.

Rei corrected the thought as she followed the two men in front of her in their slow procession towards the entrance into the actual ballroom. Akira Brahe had been surprisingly insightful, particularly on matters dealing with the Rasalhague Military District, and Yorinaga Kurita had somehow managed to spur her into thought on a number of occasions without uttering a single word.

Sadly, they were the exception. She had also had to serve tea to a procession of infuriating commanders who’d apparently considered out-bragging each other about their victories, military, alcoholic, and female, as the pinnacle of refined conversation.

She didn’t understand how the Mustered Soldiery could possibly have such a wide range inside of it. All of those men came from noble and respected families, yet they were just as capable of being boors as the mercenaries they decried the very existence of. It was a completely intolerable situation.

Thankfully, parading out in front of the other attendees of the ball didn’t take as long she had feared. By the time she’d passed through the doors, most of the other attendants in the hall had even turned back to their original conversations—or been distracted by Takashi and Jasmine Kurita.

Rei followed the Coordinator and Yorinaga Kurita a little ways into the crowd where they wouldn’t block the soon-to-descend delegation from the Capellan Confederation. If not for the automatic movement staying inside the small circle of Combine personnel demanded, she might have found herself stunned into immobility by the sights around her.

The room itself was something else. All four walls were almost completely covered by banners from across the entirety of the Inner Sphere—and even the Periphery! The central wall at the front of the ballroom held the bursting-comet banner of ComStar interposed between the Mailed Fist of the Lyran Commonwealth and the Sword-and-Sun of the Federated Suns. Taking up the last bits of space on the front wall were the Combine’s Dragon and the purple ‘Marik Eagle’ of the Free Worlds League.

Curiously, the grasped-sword of the Capellan Confederation had been pushed-off to the right-hand wall. The positioning meant the Capellan banner was relegated to sharing virtually the same position as the horned-bull emblem of the Taurian Concordat on the opposite wall. Rei couldn’t help but wonder if it was merely ComStar’s interior decorator having a momentary lapse in thought or if it were an intentional message from the wedding couple about the current state of the Succession Wars.

Beyond the room’s decorations though, were the sheer assortment of people and uniforms inside of it. Civilians in dress clothes were common, but officers of every power and a number of mercenary units could be picked out in the swirling crowd. Immediately in front of her, a Davion Captain in his white-and-red dress uniform and spurred boots was loudly arguing the advantages of air support to a Free Worlds League officer in dark-purple blouse-and-sash. Further into the room, a Taurian in a dull blue double-breasted jacket seemed to be in deep conversation with a woman in the sea-green cocktail dress of the Magistracy and a pair of men in tanned leather jackets that she thought meant they were from the Outworlds Alliance.

She had to wonder if ever before in the entire history of the Succession Wars this much military experience been on the same planet without shooting at each other being involved.

“It is my very great honor to welcome all of you to our Compound.”

Rei started at the amplified voice as it echoed in the massive room. She turned her eyes back to the front of the room. Ulthar Everston, Precentor Tharkad, stood underneath the ComStar banner with his arms outstretched in request for silence and attention that had already been achieved by how loud his first words had been.

“We are all present to witness a most hollowed event in the lives of its participants, its observers, and truly all those of the Successor States. It is the hope of all of us on the First Circuit and every acolyte of Blake’s Word that His Peace be upon you during your stay here. If there is anything we may do to make you more comfortable during your stay, please do not hesitate to ask.” The Precentor paused for a moment, and then held his arms out once again as doors at the edge of the ballroom opened and revealed an extension to the room that already had soft, string-music playing from what seemed to be a live band.

“Now, we ask that you join in an evening of music, dance, and food in celebration of this momentous occasion. If you would simply--”

The words faded to a whisper before stopping entirely as the Precentor stared at someone who had just entered.

Rei turned, and hummed in disapproval. This wasn’t going to be good for the appearance of the Combine.

At the top of the small row of stairs that led into the ballroom stood a man in another very distinct uniform. A uniform that, until recently, had been in service to the Draconis Combine. Almost completely black, with only a single red bloodstripe on the pants, the uniform belonged to Wolf’s Dragoons, and the man inside that uniform was instantly recognizable across the Inner Sphere.

Jamie Wolf turned his head in a slow half-circle, eyes burning with a clear and intense purpose. When he spotted his target, seemingly staring straight at Rei, he brought up his right arm and rested a long cloth bag over his shoulder as he began to descend the stairs. A pair of Dragoons followed close behind him, one of them just as focused on Takashi Kurita, the other continuing to scan the crowd.

Many in the crowd disappeared into the just-opened ballroom, apparently uninterested in the coming confrontation. Those that remained dutifully parted for Colonel Wolf, retreating to the sides of the room where they might be able to listen and observe, but wouldn’t be at risk of attracting any fire themselves.

It was the duty of the Order to intercede in these kinds of perilous social matters.

Rei found herself stepping forward alongside Yorinaga to confront the mercenary commander. Wolf paused before them, but his attention was solidly focused on Yorinaga. Behind him, the short-haired blonde Dragoon who had been staring at Takashi finally seemed to notice the other people in the Combine delegation, and pushed his elbow into the woman beside him with odd-colored emerald-green hair, forcing her attention forward as well.

“Colonel Wolf, it is an honor to meet you.” Rei said, horribly unsure on what she could possibly say to defuse the man but intent on trying something.

Jamie Wolf’s boiling eyes turned towards her for the first time. She returned the expression, daring him to do something further.

That seemed to shake something within the mercenary, and he gave her a reluctant and very small nod.

“I believe the Colonel wishes to address the Coordinator. Honor demands this be allowed.” Rei heard from behind her as a hand gently pushed on her shoulder to encourage her out of the way.

Rei dutifully stepped aside at Takashi’s command and let the Colonel by, unsure why the Coordinator would open himself up to the confrontation. But if he wished it, there was little to be done. Jamie Wolf passed her by.

The move put her directly under the stares of both the other two Dragoons, and only years of instruction by the Order of Five Pillars in propriety prevented her from extending the same fiery challenge to them that she’d given to their commander.

The clattering of steel against tile snapped her attention back to Jamie Wolf.

The cloth bag he’d had over his shoulder had spilled open, dropping a paired set of swords at the Coordinator’s feet.

“Those are all that is left of a good man! A man who stood by his honor to the end. You were a fool to force him to this.”


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A/N: Hey, remember those giant stompy robots that fight each other? Remember how that's a thing in Battletech? Well have a few hundred words about that before we return to your regularly-scheduled soap opera of character drama and FEELINGS!

I'm a bit dissatisfied with Rei's section in this. Trying to go for that 'quiet, obedient, but strong-willed' vibe in combination with the 'reserved and demure' cultural hang-ups the Combine is always presented as having...and I feel like it's falling down and I'm having a lot of trouble portraying that kind of personality to the point where it's coming off more as 'bored and disinterested' instead.
 
D

Deleted member

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@prinCZess in fairness, Rei probably would be bored and disinterested with what goes on at MechWarrior social hour if it's anything like fighter pilots. She doesn't seem like the type to slam shots of Jeremiah Weed while talking like a fifteen year old boy.
 

Ganurath

Well-known member
On one hand, a sailor scout and Warrior House Initiate.
On the other, Candace Liao.
Justin needs some canon divergence in his personal life.
 

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