Battletech Make-up the Difference [Battletech crossover]

[prinCZess]

My ongoing (albeit currently in cryo-sleep) first attempt at fanfiction as opposed to bits and bobs of fanfiction on other peoples fanfiction (fanfiction-ception? It's just now occurred to me that's, like, two orders of nerdy magnitude down the rabbit hole, isn't it?). Gradually be putting it up here over the next bit of time to possibly solicit opinions and mainly give me some further pressure/encouragement to actually work on the bloody thing which I've been ignoring for too long.

******************
Star League Castle Brian
Inside Nagayan Mountain, Helm
17 June 3028

Grayson Death Carlyle ran his fingers across the lettering engraved in the ferrocrete of the solitary building inside the underground chamber and felt a profound shock to see those words in this place. He, and what remained of his ‘Gray Death Legion’, had been expecting a weapons cache. A Star League Castle Brian installed during the final death throes of the League two centuries before. Instead, they had found this empty chasm and the building that read only: STAR LEAGUE FIELD LIBRARY FACILITY, HELM, DE890-2699.

“What does it mean, Gray?” Lori asked, eyeing the inscription herself.

“I think it means we’re going to have some trouble explaining things to Duke Ricol. This isn’t what any of us had in mind when we thought of a Star League treasure.” Grayson said. He wasn’t sure how the Duke would react to such a blasé ‘treasure’, but he couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of guilt at not living up to his side of the bargain they’d struck. It would feel cheap of him to take advantage of the Duke’s offer of evacuation without providing him with anything.

Grayson sent a man to fetch the datastick that had allowed him to open the massive facility’s outer doors. There were innumerable legends of Star League facilities that had been booby-trapped by their creators, and he had no desire to test and see if this was one of them. Besides, with how empty the chamber had looked, he didn’t want to risk damaging anything that might still be left that was of value.

The door into the building opened smoothly after he slid the datastick into the appropriate port, and Grayson cautiously entered. Centuries-old lights recessed into the ceiling snapped to life as if they had been installed the previous day. Besides a utilitarian desk on the far-end, the room was completely bare. Whitewashed walls with the occasional inlaid speck that had to be tri-vid projectors and other such electronics gave the entire room a clinical and cold feeling that Gray did his best to ignore. The only interruption in the white screen made by the walls were a pair of doors on opposite sides of the room to his left and right.

Grayson was struck by the sudden impulse to back away, as if he was intruding somewhere he should not be. As if at any moment a sentry in a Star League uniform might open one of the doors and order him to halt for inspection. Everything inside looked as if it had been left the previous day and the builders had expected to return. There wasn’t even a single speck of dust to be found in the room!

Lori cut away from him and opened the door that stood on the right. After scanning it for a moment, she closed it back up and began across the room towards the remaining door. Grayson tried not to sigh at the needler-pistol she held in her hand. She was just a little too paranoid, sometimes.

As Grayson continued further into the room, the entire wall on the far side came to life in a blaze of color and light. Unlike with the computers he’d always dealt with, there was no extended delay or the high-pitched clicking and whining as electronics went to work. Even centuries-old and without maintenance, Star League technology worked so much better than that he was used to!

Words flashed across the wall in a dozen different languages: “If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security." –Samuel Adams

When Grayson touched a key on the panel at the base of the quote, the words vanished. In their place, a rather blasé-looking list appeared. Ranging from a ‘General Reference’ listing at the beginning to ‘Technology and Applied Sciences’ at the end, there had to be at least twenty different categories! His heart pounding in his chest, Grayson used the panel in front of him to select the final category, daring not to hope that the Library was actually intact.

There was a rumbling roar of machinery all around him, and the walls filled themselves with images of power-generating stations, ‘Mechs, and Jumpships. The list of categories was replaced by an entirely different one, this time dealing with a more narrowly-defined set of technologies and scientific topics. As he highlighted each one he was bombarded by links within them to images, tri-vids, scientific papers that discussed the technology talked about.

The Library—or at least one of the most valuable portions of it—was completely intact! Even the entire student body of the New Avalon Institute of Science would be hard-pressed to study all of this!

“Lori. I think it’s all here! It’s a complete Memory Core! And it works!” Grayson said, feeling a stupid grin spread itself across his face as he began to wildly click buttons on the Star League computer.

If Duke Ricol could see past the fact that this was not the weapons and armor he’d been expecting, then Grayson had no need to worry about cheating the man. In the almost three-hundred years of constant war since the fall of the Star League, vast amounts of the information and knowledge inside the tiny memory core had been lost. This was one step towards recovering all of that! If they could keep it away from those who wanted to destroy it or keep it to themselves…

“Grayson?” Lori asked in the cute whisper-hiss she used whenever trying to get his attention in public.

Grayson turned to find the woman standing in front of the other door inside the room. The needler was still held with the barrel towards the ceiling, but Lori looked to be on the verge of fainting. Which was impressive because Grayson didn’t think fainting was something she’d even accept as a possibility.

Her mouth moved, but no words came. Instead, she waved him over with her free hand.

Shaking his head, Grayson stepped away from the Star League computer that held detailed knowledge of who-knew how many pieces of lostech. What could possibly be more stunning than that?

Grayson tilted his head so he could look over Lori’s shoulder into the room, and found the answer to his question.

**********

Sensors indicate that a credentialed and authorized entry to Helm DE890-2699 has taken place. Emergency beacon disengaged.

Date estimate inaccurate. Minor stasis-pod malfunction suspected.

Reoxygenation sequence initializing…

Beagle Active Probe-derived force estimate: Not Available. Minor stasis-pod malfunction suspected.

Neural Network Primary Systems activating-BOOT ERROR-Unable to establish connection. Primary Systems…Offline.

Stasis fluid undergoing neutralization…

Neural Network Secondary Systems activating-BOOT ERROR-Unable to establish connection. Secondary Systems…Offline.

Adipose tissue thaw and repair in-progress…

Neural Network Tertiary Systems activating…53% online-ADDT’L POWER REQUIRED-

Thermal stress remediation begun…

Estimated time to revival completion: 23 seconds.

It had been waiting a long time to wake up the Duchess. Had it been capable, it might have felt relief or satisfaction at its impending release. Had it been capable of confusion, it might also have experienced that. After all, the BattleMechs it had detected were of quite nonstandard configuration and were Quite Late—if the stasis-pod’s date estimate was correct.

Estimated time to process completion: 15…14…13…17…9…13…12…

It kept the data on unidentified BattleMechs—and the estimated date—to itself for the moment. Information overload during stasis revival was a major concern. Besides, the House militias were always grafting strange combinations of weaponry onto their ‘Mechs. More concerning was the late arrival of these reinforcements, but there undoubtedly existed a relativistic explanation for that as well. Items of concern, certainly, but not ones that justified a potential life-process failure for her.

Authorized entrant has booted Memory Core. Companion is approaching stasis rooms.

Estimated time to revival completion: 3…2…3…2…1

Thermal stress remediation complete.

Adipose tissue thaw and repair complete.

Stasis fluid neutralization complete.

Reoxygenation complete.

Pod doors opening. Thermoregulation mechanisms set to default. Minimal dosage Alpha-MPEA applied.

Mariah snapped from an almost complete lack of awareness to a very unpleasant consciousness.

Her back was freezing. Her hair padded together in multiple places with thick, wet remnants of the stasis solution. Her veins themselves seemed to throb in pain. Every breath she took fought past a thick lump in her throat and sounded like a painful attack against her ears whenever she let it out.

Drugs were Bad.

Perhaps not physically. At least nor for her. But in terms of the sensations they produced? Of how much infuriating minutiae they made her notice? Drugs were most definitely Bad. She didn’t like drugs.

Fighting down a groan, Mariah leaned upwards. The stasis-solution was still making its way through the permeable upper layer of the pod, and getting her back out of that puddle of fluid brought an end to a few of the drug-enhanced sensory assaults she was facing.

In desperation to end the painful, rhythmic thump-thump-thumping coming through the IV line on her right arm and spreading through her entire body, she pulled it free. Only afterwards did she realize that the sensation wasn’t caused by the IV but by her heartbeat. She dropped the empty IV line to the side, and tried to ignore the pain.

It was odd. She would have needed to be out for decades to experience the kind of stasis-induced atherosclerosis this had all the symptoms of. The stasis-pod must have been faulty and not done a perfect job of preserving her capillaries. Considering the failures it had apparently encountered tracking the passage of time or interfacing with the BAPs that lined the cache’s outer walls, that wouldn’t be too surprising. At least the emergency beacon clearly worked as intended, as evidenced by the tall blonde woman at the door.

Ignoring the woman for the moment, Mariah began to methodically tear away the electrostimulus patches that dotted her body. They hadn’t been necessary, but appearances were always important. Which was also why she wasn’t going to be the first one to speak. It put her at a disadvantage.

She probably couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat anyways.

“Grayson!”

Mariah’s head was viciously stabbed by the scream, and she leaned over slightly as a precaution. When she puked a moment later, sending silver and black gobs of stasis-fluid onto the ferrocrete floor, she was glad she had. Puking on herself might give off the wrong impression.

Being naked didn’t exactly give off the right impression. But until she got a few more uninterrupted breaths into her lungs, that was something she couldn’t do anything about. Stasis revival always took at least a minute or two to recover from. It would be odd if she didn’t display the same issues.

Another face appeared at the door, this one a man’s. Angular and a little harsh, he looked like he hadn’t slept in a very long time and was rather annoyed with the woman who had called him over.

His face went hilariously blank when he spotted Mariah. She smirked slightly at that. He didn’t know it yet, but his authority had just been superseded. The only question was who he was and what unit he belonged to. Supposedly the Fifty-first Dragoons were—

No identification-chip data available-individuals are not Hegemony or House citizens. Insignia not recognized. Periphery militiaman probable.

Mariah jerked at that information. Neither of the two even had a chip? That probably meant Taurian. How had jumped-up periphery settlers gained authorized access to a Star League facility? Was Kerensky so desperate as to impress into service any trash that he crossed paths with? That certainly fit the style of the militaristic old codger, but she wouldn’t have thought any Taurians would willingly serve under League command. Not after New Vandenberg.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Taking a deep breath, Mariah rolled over the side of the stasis-pod and onto her feet. She wanted to sigh as she finally came free of the sticky rubberized fabric of the pod, but held it in. It wouldn’t do to look relieved just yet. She still had to go through the ‘weak’ stages of revival.

Mariah let her legs buckle slightly, and quickly put one hand on top of the pod as if to steady herself. “You will take me to the nearest HPG.”

Periphery barbarians or not, she wasn’t going to look past the chance to finally get out of the Helm facility and get word out. She may have stopped Keeler’s madness, but the man himself had gotten away thanks to his damned single-coded security-system. That seemed like a situation that needed to be corrected. Violently. Before he could escape to another world and subject it to his insanity.

Sliding open a drawer on the stasis-pod, Mariah grabbed the plastifilm bag within and withdrew the underwear and bra inside. She’d feel considerably less awkward in the conversation if she wasn’t naked.

The two people at the door exchanged a look with each other. Her being clothed would probably make them more comfortable as well.

“There’s a naked woman in here, Lori.” The man said. His voice was choked and amazed, as if he’d never even seen a stasis-pod before. If that was the case they were from even deeper in the Periphery than Mariah had thought. Which only made things more confusing as to what they were doing here and how they’d arrived. Perhaps she’d just had the misfortune of meeting the dumbest pair in the unit?

Mariah ignored her rising annoyance by raising one leg to slide into the underwear she held. Letting the motion push her upper-body over, she acted as if she hadn’t been prepared to lose the leg. She caught herself before she actually fell, though.

“Yes. There is. She came out of that tube.” The woman—Lori—said.

She brought the underwear up and settled it around her waist, but stayed silent. This seemed like a conversation the pair was going to have to finish on their own. Though she wasn’t quite sure what the point of it was. Time was a-wasting and they seemed intent on stating the obvious before any progress could be made.

“There’s a naked woman in here, and she came out of that tube?” The man practically repeated, twisting his head back-and-forth between the subjects of his statement.

“Yes. She came. Out of. The tube.”

They were clearly intent on repeatedly stating the obvious. Trying to suppress a sigh, Mariah slammed the bra down over her breasts and offered a glare at the pair of imbeciles who were still standing in the doorway rather than doing anything useful. No wonder it had taken Kerensky’s bully-boys so long to stop the Taurians if this was the kind of idiots he had in his service.

“There. I’m not naked anymore. Yes, I came out of the pod. That is generally how the things work. Now, would you be so kind as to get me your commanding officer? Tell him Major Mariah Hawkins desires his presence immediately.” Mariah growled. Clearly she had to make them recognize her as some kind of authority to get the idiots in gear. Otherwise they’d probably stand there talking about what they saw all day, and none of them had time for that.

The man had the gall to laugh of all things.

“We’re going to have a lot of trouble explaining things to Duke Ricol.” He said.

No such Duke in records. No such planet in records. ‘Ricol’ as a surname yields results in excess of easy sorting.

Trying not to grind her teeth together, Mariah seized on the name as quickly as she could despite its unfamiliarity. She was desperate for any authority higher than the two in front of her and she could sort out the other oddities about it later. Someone might use a minor and relatively unknown title or rank in order to appear more inconspicuous. She’d been doing it for centuries. She was doing it now. Who was she to judge?

“You are going to have trouble explaining to him why you’re taking so long to respond to simple orders as well.” Mariah said before she could stop herself. She forced her tone down a notch, “So, just take me to this ‘Duke Ricol’ so I can get a ride off of Helm. I must report to General Kerensky.”

More accurately she needed to convince the warlord not to be a complete and total idiot as he already had been. But these two didn’t need to know that.

The man snorted slightly before suddenly going serious and locking eyes with her. “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Major. Nobody’s seen Kerensky in almost two-hundred and fifty years”

Date estimate was not in error. Currently June 17 of 3028.

Mariah’s legs really did buckle this time, and she dropped back onto the stasis-pod as all the strength she thought she had abandoned her. Two-hundred and sixty years! She had been in stasis for two-hundred and sixty years?

Two-hundred and sixty.

Two hundred. Then another sixty.

Suddenly she could sympathize with the constant repetition of words her rescuers had been indulging in.

Two-hundred and sixty years. Gone. Without her even noticing. The irony almost made her want to laugh for a moment. A moment.

When the moment passed, she found herself leaning sideways against the stasis-pod violently trying to puke out of an empty stomach.

How many people were dead because she had been trapped here?

What had happened to the Others?

What had happened to humanity?

 

[prinCZess]

Mariah’s hands curled into fists as she fought down the dry-heaves. Nails which had almost two centuries to grow with only minor limitation from the stasis-pod dug into her skin, making deep indentations in the synthetics. It hurt.

She focused on the sensation. Using it to fight down the illogical portion of her mind that insisted this couldn’t be happening. It clearly was. Perhaps she even should have expected it when she’d been locked away.

Or perhaps there was a simpler explanation. She had only hoped that the stasis-pod’s emergency beacon would be strong enough to get through the rock ceilings of the facility. If it hadn’t been…Well, it explained her current predicament.

Whatever the cause, she had to deal with the result.

She was late. There was no way to change that. At least, not that she would be allowed to take advantage of. Trying to would be violating one of the taboos and most likely result in more harm anyways. She just had to accept it and work with it as best she could. Perhaps there was still time for some good to sprout from a final end of the Star League.

On the bright side, she could take some measure of comfort in the fact there were still humans. While it was a certainty that many more had died because she had been locked away, that some survived to carry on was enough. It had to be. She clung to the small glimmer of hope they represented as tightly as she could. It was all she—or they—had.

Billions were dead because of her inability to do her duty. She could only hope she wasn’t Too Late for those that remained.

“Lori? Go get a medtech in here.” She heard Grayson say.

All biological functions read as nominal. Some slight involuntary myomer contraction has been detected in right calf, but is due to a temporary stoppage in electrolytic fluid dispersion. Problem corrected.

A medtech couldn’t be allowed, then. Even a Star League doctor with a classified clearance wouldn’t have understood. Some Periphery barbarian who dabbled in medicine was certain not to. Worse than that, if they saw any unedited scans of her body they would start to ask questions. She had more important things to do than explain such minutiae. Not when it would be completely irrelevant in a short period of time anyways. Especially not when they might try to stop her.

Best to do things quickly then.

She focused for a moment, reaching out Beyond and feeling at the planet itself. Opening herself to everything and everyone on it so she could see what they were like. It was an odd sensation. Like approaching a stranger to ask them to dance. Not that she knew what that was like, but she’d heard stories…

Mariah grinned slightly at the memory, but quickly refocused herself. In this case, the prospective dance-partner was quite insistent it had no interest in taking a whirl around the floor. It wasn’t even listening to the music.

Mariah pulled herself back. It was still not yet Helm’s time. She’d have to find a different location.

With how the Great Houses had been preparing to burn each other to the ground when she’d been forced into stasis, doing so shouldn’t be terribly difficult. She just had to get off the planet and find a more suitable one. One whose time was up.

Much as it frightened her, Lori and Gray looked like the best bet for doing that. The only thing that mattered now was accomplishing her duty, no matter how late it might be. They could help. They would help. Whether they wanted to or not.

An edited report of health status has been transmitted to stasis pod. Original diagnostic overridden, downloaded to internal memory, and is available for reference if required under heading ‘Health Status – June 3028’.

Mariah pushed herself off the edge of the stasis-pod so she was more properly sitting atop it and forced her fists to relax. “A medtech will not be necessary. I am in perfect health. The pod will tell you that much. I am not in any physical pain.”

“It’s not exactly physical pain I was worried about. Might not be all-there after so long in a fancy tube.” Gray muttered. She wondered if he’d even meant to say the words out loud.

The blonde man paused and raised an eyebrow towards Lori, this time apparently deciding on making his voice clearly loud enough to hear. “I suppose it’s not like we exactly have any medtechs qualified for geriatric care though.”

Mariah didn’t laugh, but one corner of her lips ticked upwards in appreciation of the comment. It was actually pretty funny. Lori made a growling noise in the back of her throat. It sounded like a well-used response to the stupidity of someone very close.

They made a cute couple.

“What were you doing in here Major Hawkins?” She finally heard him repeat, for what must have been the third or fourth time judging by the strain in his voice. It was a reasonable question. But it could also prove useful to avoid it and see how they reacted.

“Obviously I was in stasis.”

The man bobbed his head slightly and bit his lip, apparently accepting the answer as his due for poor phrasing. Lori grinned, but the smile only reached as far as her canines. It wasn’t vicious or sadistic, but it was clearly not amused.

“I think what Colonel Carlyle meant to ask is why you were in stasis.” She asked.

So it was ‘Colonel Carlyle’, was it? That could be enough for a datanet search to draw up something useful.

Planetary datanet unavailable. Local network operations only—ADDT’L POWER REQUIRED—

D’oh. That was going to be hard to live without for the short while she’d need to.

“Ah. You see, I was in stasis because I was trapped in this facility.” Mariah said. It was almost fun to playfully frustrate their attempts at friendly interrogation.

“And why were you tr—no—what were you doing here before you got trapped?” Lori pressed, apparently catching on to the game. Clever girl.

“Inspection of the facility. I was in charge of quality control.” Mariah lied effortlessly. “In retrospect, considering the way he used it to keep me in here, the decision to grant the primary engineer lockout privileges was ill-advised.”

“The primary engineer locked you in here? What for?” The questions came from Colonel Carlyle this time.

“Because he’s a homicidal maniac.” Mariah answered simply. The bluntness seemed to shock him. Or perhaps the words themselves did? She’d have thought Keeler’s atrocities would have been well-documented.

“I don’t like this, Gray. She’s ghosting up my sensors worse than a Kell.” Lori whispered, turning towards the man and speaking as if they were the only two people in the room. How infuriating! Granted, she was whispering so low another human probably couldn’t have heard what was said from Mariah’s position. But it was the principle of the thing.

“Well what are we supposed to do? Shoot her?” Grayson whispered back.

Lori almost nodded, but cut if off at the last minute. “We could kick her out of the place. She’s not telling us something, I can feel it.”

Mariah experienced a moment of reflection and decided she may have been a bit too frustrating towards the pair. Normally she wouldn’t have given any reason for someone to think she wasn’t telling the truth. She’d blame it on lack of practice for now. It had been two-hundred and sixty years since she’d last had to lie.

Two-hundred and sixty years.

Mariah dragged her focus away from that matter as quickly as she could, just in time for Colonel Carlyle to come to a decision.

“Well. Sorry to cut your welcome so short, but I’ve got a unit to save. We were expecting a Castle Brian full of weapons and ‘Mechs, not this. Lori? Get her some clothes and…I don’t know…Some food or something. You and her seem to be getting along just great, after all. I’ve got to try and figure out what the plan is now that we’ve walked into the world’s most secure library.” Gray continued, rubbing at his temples and beginning to turn-around in the doorway.

Mariah snorted and pushed herself off the stasis-pod. Her legs were still a little unsteady, but she locked them in place. The best way of getting people to do what you wanted was to help them at the same time.

“Would it assist you in your planning if I told you that this facility was both a library and a Castle Brian Mister Gray?”

“It’s Cap—” Lori shot an elbow into Gray’s side, “Colonel Carlyle, actually. Grayson Carlyle. Of the Gray Death Legion. And I’d be very interested.”

While she had some appreciation for the name, Mariah had never heard of the Gray Death Legion before…Of course she hadn’t. It wasn’t three-hundred years old. But if she accessed the planet’s datanet she’d be able to get a brief—

Planetary datanet unavailable. Local network operations only—ADDT’L POWER REQUIRED—

Mariah fought down a sigh. This lack of knowledge was going to be very inconvenient.

Ignoring the complaint as best she could, she carefully opened another drawer on the pod. Biting her lip, she let the silence play out for a little while as if she were thinking as she rummaged through the bin. Her course of action was plain to see, but they would expect her to mentally debate the idea for at least a few moments.

Besides that concern, she did want to find a set of clothes. While she wasn’t cold thanks to her internal heat-management systems, she would feel much more comfortable in something more than the bra and panties she’d managed to worm into.

She let out a slight murmur of appreciation as she found what she was looking for. The SLDF navy crest on the left shoulder of the jumpsuit inside the pod might make everyone around her uncomfortable this far into the future—present? But that was an advantage more than anything. The more they focused on one oddity, the less they’d notice any others.

“Alright. Consider this, Colonel. Agree to get me off the planet, and I’ll open up the rest of the place for you.” Mariah said as she slid her legs into the jumpsuit.

“The rest of the place?” Lori repeated back, eyes going narrow.

“The rest of the place.” Mariah zipped her jumpsuit up to emphasize the statement and cocked one eyebrow at the other woman. She didn’t much like repeating herself so much, but it seemed necessary with these two.

“Just how big is the rest of this place?” Lori asked next, a hint of bite entering her words. Apparently that was what she had meant to ask with her first question.

“A few dozen kilometers. It extends underneath the Nagayan Range all the way to the beginnings of the Vermillion Plains. That portion is the Castle Brian full of weapons and ‘Mechs. This was what the planet’s leaders got shown. Much better PR to build a hidden library than an impenetrable fortress.”

“And you’d be okay with us marching through? Taking stuff with us? Looting?” Grayson asked.

“It’s not my home. It’s not what I was sent here to protect. It’s the place I’ve been trapped. And a Ground Defense Force staging area, to boot. Me? Sailor was my job.” Mariah pointed to the insignia on her jumpsuit, slightly amused at the way those words would be taken, “Take whatever you want. The SLDF won’t be needing it any time soon. I’ve been stuck here too long already. I just want to leave this all behind.”

What little amusement there had been died rather quickly at that. She’d made herself sad with the memory of her failure. She might have stopped Keeler from wiping out the planet, but she hadn’t been able to stop him from destroying Freeport and every member of the Star League garrison who’d lived there. Hadn’t been able to stop him from getting away and locking her away underneath this damned mountain. How much hadn’t she been able to stop because instead of carrying out her duty she’d been trapped in here?

She was suddenly very oddly cold, and felt a shudder work its way up her back.

Myomer waste-heat disposal temporarily lowered to ninety-eight point eight percent.

Mariah frowned slightly at the sudden flush of heat. It didn’t do the job as well as she wished it would. She wasn’t physically cold anymore, but there was a very artificial feeling to the warmth. It didn’t quite feel like it belonged.

“You have me at a bit of a disadvantage, Colonel. You know who I am and what I served, while I have no idea who you or this ‘Gray Death Legion’ you lead are.” Mariah asked, trying to distract herself from the past with more immediate concerns. Who her rescuers actually served, even if she didn’t have any context to the information, might be useful in due time.

Grayson and Lori exchanged a look that almost told her more than any words could. What did they have to be nervous about?

“We actually work for the Free Worlds League—” Lori began, only to be interrupted by Grayson.

“Worked for the Free Worlds League.” He hesitated, “They’re currently trying to kill us, so I’d say our contract is null-and-void at this point.”

Mariah tilted her head slightly and had the strangest sensation of being out-of-place in familiar territory. The Free Worlds League still existing made sense. It was disappointing the rotten husk of a nation hadn’t cleared the way for something better, but that was her failure. It was understandable. But the fact that Grayson’s unit was contracted to the League? Military units didn’t serve under contracts. Businesses did. That made no sense.

“They’re trying to kill you for no reason at all, I am sure?” Mariah finally said. Her curiosity about the screwy military organization that would operate by contract wasn’t really that important. Not as important as establishing who her rescuers were.

“For a pretty good one, unfortunately. They think we blew up a city of almost twenty million people.”

Mariah froze, and her eyes drifted to the pistol Lori still held. She could easily cross the distance between them before it could be trained on her, but she was less certain of her chances of destroying both opponents before they could warn anyone else. There was always the pistol inside the stasis-pod, but reaching for it was liable to get her shot if she tried it right now.

“Did you?” Mariah asked, doing her best to keep her voice even. She might have to rethink any plans of associating with the pair.

Lori tried to disguise the step-back she took as a simple effort to get more comfortable. Mariah wasn’t fooled. The woman was trying to get into a better shooting-stance. Apparently she wasn’t easily fooled either. Something to keep in mind. Clever girl.

“Do I look like a psychopathic maniac?” Grayson asked, throwing his arms out.

“Edwin Keeler was a five-foot three, balding man who wore glasses and had a speech impediment. I know he murdered at least six hundred-thousand people. Looks can be deceiving, and you’ve already admitted to being businessmen who apparently fight under contract for money. You might be able to understand my hesitation.” Mariah replied in the same flat voice.

There was a long pause in the conversation, and the temperature of the stasis-room seemed to plummet. Lori still hadn’t actually pointed the pistol at her, but both her hands were on it now. Grayson seemed to be the only one who was relaxed.

Mariah pushed down her instinctive reaction to a city being destroyed and tried to think about things logically. If he had destroyed a city, he probably wouldn’t have told her. That wasn’t exactly something advertised to what you thought was a former military officer.

Besides, she didn’t sense the aftereffects of such mass destruction around him. She would be able to tell if he was responsible for that many deaths. He wasn’t. She knew that as a solid fact now that she could focus on the matter. But she would have to make an appearance of distrust.

Sometimes behaving properly in life was so much harder to puzzle out than giving things a proper death.

“If I was half that evil, wouldn’t I have just shot you already?” Grayson protested.

Mariah shrugged and slowly reached into the stasis-pod with one hand. Lori’s pistol was now pointed at her, though not entirely raised.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I was foolish enough to offer opening more of the facility to you before I knew anything about you. Greed is a very human emotion. It can sometimes take-over for good sense.”

Mariah’s hand seized upon the gun-belt inside the drawer and she jerked the entire harness out in a single motion.

Pistol remains at full charge and is currently set to fire a medium-level anti-armor beam point-oh-oh-four seconds prior to discharging its solid projectile.

Lori flinched and began to bring her pistol up. But Grayson’s arm shot out in front of her before she could complete the motion. To his credit, he only raised an eyebrow.

“Is this the part where you try to shoot us because you’ve gone nutty after two-and-a-half centuries of bad dreams?”

“No.” Mariah said after a heartbeat-long pause, and she began to secure the belt around her waist. “This is the part where we establish we aren’t going to shoot each other. My entrance-key to the rest of the facility is in the right pouch of this belt, right behind my pistol. I’m going to get it.”

Mariah tightened the belt to her waist and slowly reached for the pocket. Lori tensed, but only adjusted her grip on her pistol rather than raising it any further. Grayson, impressively, didn’t even flinch as she reached towards her holster. He likely just assumed the weapon wouldn’t function after so long. Or maybe he really was that calm under pressure.

Snapping open the latch on the small pouch, Mariah withdrew the datastick within and tossed it towards Grayson. The thing would have survived a tank rolling over it, so his potentially dropping it didn’t present any danger. Three cheers for Star League engineering!

Lori slowly loosened her grip on the pistol as Mariah brought her hands back up and folded them across her chest. It was so nice when people were predictable and decent! Much better than the alternative. Besides, she couldn’t kill either of the two. It wasn’t yet their time. Trying to just disable someone was a lot more difficult and really risky. Humans were just too fragile.

“Well then. Now that that’s settled…Shall we?” Mariah asked, waving one hand at the door.

Lori and Grayson shared another one of their Looks. They really did make a decent pair.

“After you, Major Hawkins.” Lori said after the slightest hesitation. The pistol went into its holster, but she took a few careful steps deeper into the room so Mariah wouldn’t have to approach her to exit. In a way, it almost felt like a compliment from the woman more than anything else.

Mariah nodded and the edge of her mouth ticked upwards. “I’m a prisoner, then? Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten out of the pod.”

“Prisoner? Not at all. Otherwise we’d disarm you. For now, consider yourself an…Uninvited—and unexpected—guest.” Grayson said.

Mariah had trouble not laughing at that, “It seems like I always am, Colonel Grayson. It seems like I always am.”

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

Grayson was surprised at how well the rest of the men handled Mariah. There were, of course, a great number of screamed questions. Two infantryman from the Concordat made very blatant threats but had been hushed down by their fellows when it was explained Mariah was leading them deeper into the facility. And one of the tankers—of course it would be one of the tankers—had half-jokingly asked her to dinner. Mariah had gracefully declined that offer without showing much other reaction.

He suspected most of the relatively calm reaction from his men was thanks to the crippling fatigue that was beginning to wind its way through the Legion. They’d been running for days, engaged in a knock-down fight before that, and suffered casualties throughout the process he couldn’t even think about yet. All after carrying out an entire campaign on Sirius.

Worse, the casualties they’d taken recently included dependents and support staff who were never supposed to be in danger. His men were going numb and listless, thoughtlessly following commands because they still somehow trusted him to lead them to safety and deadening their own thoughts to hide from the fear and pain that grew there.

Which only made him notice how weird Mariah’s reaction to everything was. He had expected some measure of ‘cracking up’ from her, just as he would from his own men after they’d been in battle for too long. God knew she deserved it just as, if not more than, they did. Waking up completely removed from everything you knew had to be at least as stressful as battle.

But instead of presenting any signs of that stress, other than an instant when she’d first awakened she’d not shown much of anything besides a logical approach to the problem. It was…offsetting, to put it mildly. She hadn’t even asked about the Star League or the Successor States, or even Kerensky. Grayson had expected her to ask about Kerensky. Everything he’d ever read always seemed to present him as a legend of the SLDF even in his own time. All she’d asked about was who he was. What he was doing on Helm. Why mercenaries existed.

Why? The simple explanation was that she was triaging her own thoughts. Mimicking the listless following of orders his men were doing with a slightly different emphasis towards learning the basics of the new world she found herself in. But that didn’t feel right as an explanation.

The simple fact was that she just didn’t seem all that bothered by the events that had befallen her. Not for the moment anyhow. Maybe it would come? Maybe she was just hiding it very well? The more Grayson watched her, the more he became convinced it was neither of those possibilities.

After closing the camouflaged gate they had entered through, Mariah had led them to another rock outcropping inside the chamber. Apparently, it was coded to react only to wireless signals from Mariah’s key and open only after the proper input-sequence was broadcast on the right frequency.

Gray didn’t even pretend to understand it, which had seemed to push her into being even less animated about her situation than she was. She’d tried explaining it to the techs next. None of them had understood either, which had driven her to silence for a good twenty or thirty minutes.

What all of them could understand was the way what had looked like just another rock-face of the cavern had separated itself and opened after Mariah’s complicated performance. Beyond had been what looked like a loading/unloading bay from inside a dropship, but expanded to a degree that was stunning. It was complete with both cargo and personnel shuttles for three entirely separate tunnel systems, where a dropship would have only had a single such track for everything.

Even the shuttles themselves were expanded versions of their dropship-sized selves. There was enough space for three ‘Mechs and almost a hundred people on the one Mariah had led them onto. Perhaps most impressively, the motors still worked. With just the press of a button, the shuttle had noiselessly slid into motion carrying them deeper into the facility.

The facility itself was far larger than any of them had expected. Extending through the natural cavern they had entered from and into the depths of the mountain itself, portions of the complex had been dug-out by an underground river. But the League had expanded on that natural causeway over the course of decades to include a series of offshoots and storage shafts that turned the place into a virtual maze of crisscrossing passageways. The process had turned the entire mountain into a continuous facility, and lined the surrounding area with underground tunnels that would have allowed reinforcements to arrive anywhere in the Nagayan Range within a day at the most.

Gray knew that the find was going to make his men insufferable. Coming to the cache had been an act of desperation on his part, and now not only was it moving them towards safety it was moving them towards a treasure that Mariah freely admitted would still be there. He could hear them muttering amongst themselves about him as if he’d actually known what he was doing! It made him decidedly uncomfortable.

As the Star League officer led them around, Grayson also learned that the datastick he’d inherited had originally belonged to Edwin Keeler. Contrary to the history he’d read, Keeler had not been an engineer on the project but rather something very close to a madman in charge of the project. Hawkins insisted the other Star League officer had intended on using the fortress as a safe-haven for himself and unleashing some kind of bioweapon on the planet.

What exactly he’d intended to accomplish with the plan she didn’t explain. Maybe if he’d wanted to save his command inside the facility it would make sense? The Star League could be harsh in its application of ‘justice’ at times. But from the sound of it, Keeler had just been intent on saving himself inside the facility and letting the world burn around him and stranding himself on a dead planet.

Major Hawkins acidic account of the man didn’t mesh with what Grayson had learned of him. He’d read a lengthy monologue in Keeler’s journals that argued against such a harsh portrayal. Keeler had lamented that the League was disintegrating, the foundations of civilization crumbling, and the Great Houses descending into brutal, planet-destroying open warfare. His own words didn’t sound like those of a madman.

Piled on top of her odd acceptance of the situation, her different account of Keeler was beginning to form a serious discrepancy that had him nervous about the recently-awakened woman.

As the shuttle noiselessly made its way through the mountain, Grayson let Lori handle speaking with the ‘Major’. His attention was preoccupied trying to figure out what exactly it was the woman was lying to them about. It was obvious she wasn’t telling them the whole truth, and she’d subtly pushed aside any questions about her own history by instead telling them more about the facility. She was avoiding something, but he couldn’t put a finger on what. Was she a deserter? Desperate to paint her former commander in as dirty a light as she could before her own behavior was exposed? That seemed the logical explanation, but once again he sensed something much deeper at work. Something he couldn’t put a finger on with logical explanations for her behavior.

He forcefully told the whispering voices in the back of his mind that she wasn’t a ghost. That wasn’t possible.

“So Keeler stored weapons here?” Lori asked, from behind Mariah, eyes focused on the holster at the Star League survivor’s hip. Lori’s pistol probably would have been jammed into the woman’s back as well if he hadn’t made a point of telling her not to.

“No. The League did. Keeler would have loved to get this much further in so he could portion out ‘Mechs and weapons to his coconspirators and play them off against each other. But he was restricted to Alpha-level access.” Mariah said. She pointed to an electronic board displaying the image of a locker that extended from the side of the cavern’s walls. “This walkway will take us to the Main Depot on the west side of the mountain with a half-dozen stops in-between to bisect other passageways that lead to living facilities and the like. It is there that the weapons were stored.”

Mariah paused, “These three upper levels alone could have held the entire population of Freeport, with no crowding. Even more easily if we took advantage of all the stasis-pods.”

“But how did you get air? Power? Water? Food?” Lori pressed, either not noticing or not caring about the way Mariah’s voice had begun to descend into melancholy.

“Recirculators and scrubbers handle the upper levels airflow. In the lower areas there’s some of that supplemented by culture-production from the hydroponics sections. Fusion plant and geothermal for power, and there’s an aquifer below us that provides—provided—would have provided water.” Mariah hesitated, then a very subdued, sad smile spread on her face. “The Star League called it ‘Ragnarok-proofing’. Providing its units, their families and necessary support staff with safe-haven in case of a world-destroying event so that they could emerge afterwards to fight whatever Chaos ensued. They seem to have been less successful than they wished.”

Grayson stared at the back of the jumpsuit Mariah had changed into. She’d grown oddly distant-sounding in her final words. Once again, she wasn’t telling them everything. That last sentence had made her sound less like a part of the Star League and more like another observer.

“Fascinating. It’s…Magic.” Lori muttered.

“No. It’s not ‘magic’. It’s ingenuity mated to the technology to make it possible. Survival in the face of world-destroying events? It’s a testament to humanity!” Mariah snapped, twisting around to give Lori a harsh stare. It was the first strong emotion the woman had shown since almost puking after being woken up, and it was easily the most frightening. Grayson felt as if she were about to throttle Lori for the simple exclamation.

Lori looked like she was about to respond with something biting and sarcastic. Probably about the lack of surviving people inside the structure besides the Major. Lori could be a bit too confrontational sometimes.

“Let’s just say our ancestors knew a thing or two that seems to have been forgotten.” Grayson interrupted, trying to get in before the spat could escalate.

When both women rounded on him with unsatisfied looks, he tried changing the topic. “What fascinates me is what’s been stored inside that memory core. A lot of what’s been forgotten might be just sitting in there, waiting for us to dig it out.”

“And just what fascinates you about that? Formulas for higher-yield explosives? Focusing diagrams to make more efficient lasers? All that wonderful information is undoubtedly going to fetch quite a price if things in the Inner Sphere are as backwards as you claim.” Mariah spat, still sounding as if she were on the verge of hurting someone.

Grayson shrugged, “The terraforming-science portions are actually what caught my eye.”

Lori looked at him as if he’d gone insane. Mariah just tilted her head at him as if she couldn’t quite believe what he was saying.

“What? Lori, you’ve seen Trell and Sirius. The places are nightmare-worlds that are only getting worse. God knows I hated serving on them. I can only imagine how much worse it is to actually try and live there. But that library might just hold the knowledge they need—construction techniques, weather manipulation, materials science, whatever—to make real, livable planets. Or at the very least keep the people from constantly facing the threat of freezing to death or getting baked by cosmic radiation.”

“Desperation to survive does make people pay more, I suppose.” Mariah turned back away from him, making it impossible for him to read her reaction. Her voice still contained a biting note to it, though.

“I was kind of planning on giving all of it away for free, actually.” Grayson said, laughing “Safer that way. Whoever wanted this? They were willing and able to kill millions for it. I’d like to keep them from hunting me down and slitting my throat before I can sell it. And give them a firm kick in the teeth at the same time. In fact, I think I like that idea even more.”

He offered a smile at the Star League major’s back. “Businessman who fights for money. Not ‘psychopathic murderer’ or greedy over good-sense. I thought we’d settled all that already?”

She didn’t respond.

“So. What about BattleMechs, major? How’s this facility set for them” Lori asked after the silence began to grow somewhat awkward.

Mariah seemed to have settled down with the question, but sounded almost disappointed. “The main depot contains two BattleMech brigades with another scout lance split between the two outpost-entrances in the north and south pass. All in cold-storage, so they’ll be fully functional once you reactivate them. If you came looking for ‘Mechs, you will not leave unhappy.”

It was sunset by the time they emerged into daylight again. The cargo-shuttle had taken them to another camouflaged doorway that, when opened, let them look out across the Vermillion Plains. Before they had opened it, however, they had been treated to the vision of rank upon silent rank of Star League BattleMechs in the Main Storage Area. There were arms and ammunition, missiles, and League communications equipment. Vehicles, most of them elegent fusion-powered beauties who had long since been cannibalized for their engines by House militaries, lined the space around and outside the ‘Mech gantries.

Grayson was already picturing how the Legion’s techs could move the bounty out of the facility and into the dropships. A broad, ferrocrete road half-hidden underneath centuries of foliage wound its way directly past the exit of the facility and dropped off to a broad plateau about a kilometer downhill. A good place for the dropships to land and an easy trip to make from the entrance to the cache.

“Gray! We’ve got the Phobos on the TacNet! You’re going to want to talk to them!” Lori called from behind him, waving from her place behind a cobbled-together mass of Star League comm equipment that was already coming in handy. Mariah sat in front of the other woman, fiddling with the dials and seeming to ignore everything around her.

It seemed to be the way she was handling being tossed into the future. It probably wasn’t healthy, but he didn’t have the time or education to try and help her through it. He wasn’t sure if anybody did. That was something it would be pretty hard to relate to. Not to mention he wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t a cover for something else.

He had probably run faster before in his life, but never with quite as much hopeful excitement. If the dropships were already on the way in they could start loading them that night. By the time Ricol arrived the next day, his Legion could pull back to safety! No more of his people were going to die and Ricol would get the treasure Gray had promised.

Though he still had to decide on whether to mention Major Hawkins to the man.

Grayson snatched a pair of headphones from Lori when he reached the table. “Use you bastard, it’s good to hear from you.”

“Well, it’s good to finally be free of our friendly local authorities. What took the cavalry so long, boss?” Came the reply.

Gray marveled at the lack of static or distortion in the transmission. He could understand why Lori would call any of the tech the League had produced magic. Even the best gear he’d used would have dropped Use’s voice an octave or missed a syllable or two in his speech transmitting over such a distance. The Star League equipment did none of that, and it had been sitting unused and without maintenance for centuries!

“Unavoidable delay, I’m afraid. Just be glad they finally did arrive. You’ve got coordinates to get to us?”

“Sure do, but you’ve got a bigger problem. We sailed over it a few minutes ago…You got two companies of Free Worlds League ‘Mechs with some infantry and armor support starting to set up shop at the entrance to that facility ya’all dropped into. They could have ‘Mechs through those passes and coming on to you by morning.”

Grayson made sure his finger was off the ‘transmit’ key so that the string of curses Lori began to weave wouldn’t be sent over the airwaves. She could really be quite inventive in her use of metaphor when she wanted to be. He counted a half-dozen ways she declared the enemies should have physically-impossible relations with themselves without her needing to use any single word twice.

Much as he might want to join in on the profanity, it would do his unit no good to see him quite that panicked. Even if he was more panicked. If that many ‘Mechs came through the passes while the dropships were loading…Well, none of them would live long enough to enjoy the fruits of their bounty.

“Calm yourself. The time doesn’t yet call for such language.” Mariah said softly, voice still echoing with some kind of disappointment as she reached one hand out to rest against Lori’s shoulder.

“No, this is the perfect time for such language. See, when regular people find themselves in situations they don’t wish to be in, they sometimes show a little emotion about that situation instead of dull acceptance!” Lori screamed, rounding on the other woman and swatting the hand away.

The major, quite uncharacteristically, visibly flinched at that statement. She leaned backwards and her eyes went wide as both hands dropped to her side in a neutral stance that might be complete dismissal or might be the opening movement to a fistfight.

Grayson suddenly got the image of a lost puppy that had been kicked one too many times rounding on its assailant with small teeth and forcing them to back off from irrational fear. A few moments later, he realized that Mariah was completely right in telling Lori to calm down. Because there was still something they could do to slow the League force down. Though he resented the way his own analogy forced him to view himself as a puppy.

If he lived through this, he was getting a dog. A big one.

“So don’t tell me to calm down. It doesn’t make sense coming from—”

“Lori, calm down.” Grayson almost whispered.

Lori quit ranting but fixed a very unhappy glare on him.

“I think I’ve got an idea to slow them down. But we’ll need the Major’s help once again to do it. So…Try to be on your best behavior with her for a little while longer, hon?” Grayson continued in the same whisper. He realized what he’d ended his words with only after he’d said it.

Lori had never been as comfortable as he was with public expression of affection. That was quite obvious by the way her eyes darted around to the other members of the Legion who were within earshot. All of whom had somehow found all manner of other things to do.

“Alright. Fine. But what do we need her help for? We’re not going to get any of these ‘Mechs fired up in time for her to use it—for all the good a League sailor would do in one, anyways.” Lori muttered, shifting her head as if trying to decide whether she wanted to glare at Grayson or Mariah.

“We don’t need her in a ‘Mech. We need her to keep helping us use the facility’s transportation network. The Free Worlders are going to have to go through the passes to reach us, right? It looks to me like if we play our cards right we can show up uninvited somewhere really inconvenient for them and hand them an ass-whupping.”

“The sage Changqing said ‘Take advantage of others’ failure to catch-up. Go by routes they do not expect. Attack where they are not on guard.” Mariah said slowly, eyes focused on the horizon. Her lips quirked slightly, “And if you die in battle do not despair for with death comes hope and rebirth.”

“Well. That’s inspiring. Personally, I think I’ll stick with my present plan of not dying at all.” Lori growled, rolling her eyes and rotating on the back of one foot to stalk away. “I’ll go get the other officers. Just try to keep the font of positivity there from saying anything else helpful around them.”

Mariah offered a wordless nod to the other woman’s departing back.

“I promise she’s very nice once you get to know her.” Grayson said with a chuckle.

“Most people are.” Mariah agreed tonelessly, still staring after Lori.

Grayson took a long breath at the cryptic answer and let his eyes close for a moment. How long had it been since he’d had a solid night’s sleep? ‘Too long’ was all the answer he could come up with. He was tired. He was sore. He felt like he’d been in a constant, hectic motion since he’d landed on Helm. Going from one crisis to another with no chance in-between to recover.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, but a faint glow against his eyelids brought him back to reality. Blinking a few times, he stared at the source of the offending light. The Phobos and the Deimos were coming in for a landing, blazing-white tails of fusion-powered flame shooting from their undersides as they slowed their descent. Maybe, just maybe, his men and him would make it off of Helm alive after all.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Mankind could have given up on the stars centuries ago, but instead constantly fights to rise-up to their level. As much as things might have changed, it’s comforting to see that, at least, stays the same.” Mariah said, head swaying lightly side-to-side in rhythm with the gentle movement of the flame underneath the dropship as it descended.

Grayson was somewhat surprised the woman was still there, but she seemed intent on staying seated where she was until the ships came down. She seemed to be utterly transfixed by the dropships, tracing them repeatedly with her eyes as they came closer. Besides her words, she didn’t even seem to acknowledge Grayson’s existence.

Once again, he was struck by the feeling there was much more to her than she was telling.

“When this is over, no more of the cute sidestepping you’ve been doing all day, alright? I’m going to get some real answers from you if I live through this.” Grayson said, feeling an enormous weight lift off his shoulders as the first dropship touched down.

“You will.” Mariah said slowly, eyes still focused on the spear of fire coming from the one dropship still on the last leg of its approach.

Grayson nodded and turned away before the other dropship had set down. He didn’t know why, but he actually believed the woman when she said that—on both points. He rubbed his eyes with one hand, and then held it out before him to the sky.

He was twenty-four. Still remarkably young. The best years of his life ahead of him, according to many.

He was too old for this shit.

 

[prinCZess]

Star League Castle Brian
Inside Nagayan Mountain, Helm
17 June 3028

Reactivating the other underground passageways had proven just as easy as reactivating the first, and Grayson had spent much of the travel-time once again marveling at Star League technology. He had always unconsciously recognized that the ‘Mechs in service throughout the Inner Sphere and beyond were largely the relics of a bygone age only occasionally supplemented by new production, but that kind of long-lived technology was much more obvious in this underground chamber completely untouched by the centuries of warfare that had plagued the Inner Sphere.

What time he didn’t spend in wonder he had to devote to trying to keep Lori from tearing Mariah’s head off. Much as he shared her curiosity about, and even distrust of, the Star League officer, he didn’t want to give her any reason to quit helping them. They needed her.

Hopefully, she needed them just as badly. Because he’d seen the horror tri-vid where a strange person took unsuspecting mercenaries into her underground lair on the excuse of helping them.

Sitting at the foot of his Marauder, Grayson fought against eyelids that wanted to close. He could tell that it was a losing proposition if he remained seated, and quickly stood so that he could try and fight-off the fatigue. The room shifted more than it should have from the small movement, and he couldn’t fight down a long and very loud yawn.

He’d caught a few hours of sleep in the cockpit the previous evening, waiting for the first elements of the Marik forces to arrive. But the firefight that had ensued had sapped him of whatever recuperation the nap might have provided. He and the other Mechwarriors of the Gray Death had fought a running retreat through the Vermillion Pass, leapfrogging between the hidden entrances and exits of the Star League facility. Hitting them where they least expected it and then vanishing back underground. Sleep had been an idea he approved of that never got put into practice.

Even fought by his bunch of fatigued shellshocked survivors, it had been like something out of an Immortal Warrior trivid. Grayson could only remember the events in brief snippets that managed to distinguish themselves from an otherwise jumbled mess of action and near-panic. McCall screaming insults in Gaelic as his Rifleman sheared a Wasp in half mid-jump, sending the torso to the ground and the legs into the mountainside beyond. Charles Bear ramming his Crusader into an enemy ‘Mech and sending it sliding down the mountain on its side, rolling over a pair of troop carriers in the process. The autocannon of his own Marauder clicking empty during the last major push the Marik forces had made, which had robbed him of any response to the salvo of medium lasers that had clawed every ounce of armor off his ‘Mech’s back. Through it all, none of his men had died.

But now they had to do it again, and every ‘Mech in the unit had suffered significant battle-damage of some sort or another. Grayson had never tended to put much stock in the calculation, but the combat loss grouping weight was pretty heavily in favor of the enemy.

The worst of it was, they hadn’t been able to slow them down enough. Men and women he’d evacuated were still loading onto the dropships, and he hadn’t yet received word from his techs that the memory core had been copied. Until both of those were done, he couldn’t leave. Particularly since it would leave Ricol’s freshly-arrived dropships completely exposed to attack, and that was something he’d given his word he wouldn’t do.

No. Grayson knew he had to fight. As did the rest of his Gray Death Legion. What remained of it.

“He can’t make us do this. He can’t make us do this. He can’t make us do this.”

The voice drew Grayson out of his reverie and he realized his eyes had snuck their way closed. He popped them open in time to see Jason, the newest Mechwarrior in the unit, stagger his way past with his eyes locked firmly on the ground. Both his arms were wrapped around his chest, and he seemed to shudder with every step. Apparently, the man hadn’t seen him though. Which was probably for the best, considering who his complaint was undoubtedly referring to.

Grayson began to speak up, but whatever he’d been about to say died in his throat. There wasn’t exactly anything that could be said and maintaining discipline at this late hour was an exercise in pointlessness. Besides, he kind of wanted Jason to disappear. The Stinger the young man—a boy, really—was piloting would be little more than a momentary target in the upcoming scrap. With its fused-together knee joint, the speed which served the light ‘Mech as its only real asset was completely gone.

Desertion might be contemptible, but Grayson thought it would be nice to know at least one man had made it out alive. Did it really matter how that happened?

“This is it, isn’t it Gray?” Lori said from beside him. When had she snuck up on him? Probably when his eyes were closed. Shit, had he been sleeping?

Lori nodded after Jason, when Grayson was silent for too long. “He knows it. You know it. The rest of us know it. Nobody wants to say it though.”

“Because that would break the spell that’s kept us all alive so far.” Gray said, trying but failing to smile. “Though the idea did occur to me that three or four of us might be able to hold them off long enough for the rest to escape. I would have floated the idea to the others, but I don’t think anybody would have volunteered to be the one who tried to knock you unconscious, tie you up, and drag you onto one of the dropships.”

“Damn right they wouldn’t have. I’m in this with you, idiot!”

“You always did show terrible judgement, hon.”

They both shared a comfortable silence with that, staring together after Jason. The man had made his way to his ‘Mech and begun inspecting the fused leg-joint as if he might be able to do something about it. Mariah, in a surprisingly human gesture for the usually stolid and almost-emotionless woman, showed up beside the man and offered him a mug.

“What are you going to do with her?”

Grayson shrugged, “I’m probably not going to be involved much longer, but she’s kept up her end of the bargain. If she wants off the planet so badly, she can hitch a ride on one of the dropships. Lieutenant Use already knows she’s free to come on-board no questions asked. We wouldn’t have made it this long without her. Only fair she lives through this.”

“I don’t know. Seems to me if I were in her position I wouldn’t be too interested in living.” Lori bit her lip, “Two centuries from anything she knows? Her country gone, her family dead, everyone she served with dead? Her home has probably been taken-over by one of the Successor States…If it wasn’t decimated beyond supporting life in one of the first two Succession Wars. Doesn’t sound like a happy life to me, living in the shadow of all that death. I think I’d almost prefer dying somewhere with people I knew.”

There was a slight pause, “Grayson,” Lori said, staring at what had to be the oldest person in the universe and quite obviously avoiding any eye-contact with him. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He didn’t know how long they stood there in quiet agreement.

Grayson shook, and slowly turned in a full circle so he could take-in the few ‘Mechs that remained of his command. McCall’s one-armed Rifleman. The Phoenix Hawk that Tracy Kent had inherited from her father and now had a trio of holes in its chest that penetrated all the way down to the engine. He still had then damnable feeling that he was going to live. But now it was paired with a dark question in the back of his mind that asked which of them he would never see again.

Perhaps Lori was right? Maybe it would be better to die with people you knew. But that was just too cut-and-dry for Grayson. There was more to life than dying.

Grayson’s comm squawked lightly and he heard the constant white-noise of an active transmission. “Boss? Lieutenant Dan is reporting movement in the pass up above. Nineteen ‘Mechs with some hovertank support. He estimates ten minutes, fifteen at the most, before they’re rolling right over our present location. We’re bugging out…Godspeed, sir.”

A feeling very much like peace found its way into Grayson, and he realized he was no longer tired. The memory core was worth dying for. He didn’t know how many of those following him believed that. He wasn’t even sure Lori did. But he did. That was enough.

“Gray Death! Mount up!”

The words echoed across the underground chamber as he began to climb his way back into his Marauder. Around him, he was surprised to see, every one of his men responded to the call. Out of the corner of one eye, Gray even caught the hatch of Jason’s Stinger swing closed as he wormed his way into his own ‘Mech’s cockpit. If that wasn’t testament to the boy’s honor, Gray didn’t know what was.

God he loved his men! If anybody could do the impossible that he was asking of them, it was those following him today.

And now, he had to see which of them would die. Unfortunate. But knowledge? The chance for a better future? Hope? That wasn’t such a bad thing to die for, was it?

His dad would’ve called him out for being a damn-fool romantic by now, thinking those kinds of thoughts. But damned if he could help himself. Maybe that would prove to be an interesting discussion if he reached whatever afterlife there might be. Even if he failed, at least he had the chance of dying for something more than just a contract.

And that felt surprisingly good for a change.

Grayson settled himself into the piloting couch, finding the spot where years of repeated, sweaty use had worn the padding into an almost perfect shape. With his hands, he reached behind him and lowered the neurohelmet down over his head. In his youth training to be a Mechwarrior he had once made the mistake of not connecting the helmet before activating the ‘Mech, dropping it face-first onto the ground the instant he did. The memory of replacing every panel on the front of that LoaderMech had kept him from ever repeating the mistake.

Grayson smiled as he settled the neurohelmet over his head and began the abbreviated start-up procedure for his ‘Mech. He endured the momentary vertigo as the helmet synched with him, then checked over his status display.

“Master’s on. Brakes are set. Contact!” Grayson said to himself as he flipped the Marauder from ‘standby’ to ‘active’. It was a traditional pre-start mantra his father had passed on to him, and once more he kicked himself for not finding the time to track down just what it came from.

“Input password.” said the ‘Mech’s artificially-generated voice.

Grayson punched in his code.

“Reactor, online. Sensors, online. Weapons, online. Insufficient ammo, AC-ten. Two heat-sinks inoperable. HiRez targeting system out of alignment. AC linkage—”

Grayson flicked an override that let the computer know that he didn’t need the list of damaged and inoperable systems read out to him. He would be here too long if he waited for the halting, vaguely condescending voice to go through the entire list of failure points and malfunctions. Was it so hard to program a simple ‘No systems nominal’ message into the damned thing to let him know when it was beat to shit?

On the bright side, his external speakers were still functioning. “Major Hawkins, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. If you would be so kind as to activate the lift to the surface? Then feel free to return to the dropships and they will take you wherever you wish to go.”

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

Mariah had accompanied Grayson’s men to the surface only once the entire night.

Curious about the other Mechwarriors in the blonde-haired commander’s unit, she had taken the opportunity of the slow approach to the surface to be introduced to them. Thinking one of them might be responsible for the odd aura that had seemed to be slowly building among the Gray Death Legion, she had also quietly kept a close eye on them via their ‘Mech’s subsystems even when they thought they were alone.

But none of them had shown any indication of being of…questionable…soul. The closest, Hassan Ali Khaled, had radiated a dangerous vibe in the way he had made what preparations he could to his ‘Mech. Even in his relaxed moments he moved with the stealthy step-step-pause of a predator. But his vagaries seemed to be echoes from a previous life he had put behind him rather than anything Darker.

Everything became much clearer when she accompanied them aboveground. Unfortunately, it also became much more complicated.

The Free Worlds League ‘Mechs were moving up the mountain underneath a curtain of negative energy. A massive column of dark clouds seeming to shift and warp to accompany every movement of the machines underneath them. It was something very much like the outflow boundary that went ahead of a storm. Or, perhaps more appropriately considering it was invisible to Grayson and his men, it was like the K-F field that formed when a Jumpship used its drive.

It was the only evidence she had needed to cement in her mind that the Gray Death Legion was in the right. Human authorities could be so easily manipulated, after all. These Free Worlders, General Kerensky, the Star League itself…There were uncountable instances. But usually the Dark Chaos that attempted such things was more subtle. Acting through agents rather than directly moving pieces around. Even Stefan Amaris had been generations removed from the Dark that was partially responsible for his family’s corruption.

Where it became complicated was devising a way of assisting the Gray Death without exposing herself completely. Partially was acceptable. The Star League could be held responsible for its experiments this far into the future without any complications. But the best protection any prospective Others had was in the Dark’s continued ignorance of the existence of the other part of her.

Plus, the other part of her was a blank, emotionless bitch.

Which was why instead of marching out alongside the Gray Death with nothing but a glaive, she had played the friendly idiot routine and brought a cup of ‘coffee’ to Jason.

Drugs were Bad. But sometimes, drugs could be good! Especially their effects. Most especially when she was the one using them on someone else. That was always a preferable situation to drugs being used on her. She hadn’t even needed to use needles to knock him out. Needles were too mean.

Mariah flexed her hands over the control-sticks of the Stinger, and absently rearranged a few of the panels around her so she didn’t have to crane her head as much to see them. Neither actually did much to make her feel more comfortable in the cramped cockpit, but she had to try anyways. It had been a very long time since she had last piloted a ‘Mech.

But the odd sensations she’d been receiving from the Gray Death Legion almost required it. Their times had been changing far too much over the course of the last few hours. By decades in the case of the one she had drugged.

The problem was that she was most definitely not the one that should be confronting the Dark Silence that was closing-in on the Gray Death Legion. It wasn’t her duty. It wasn’t within her purview.

But she was the only one here to do it. Letting the Gray Death die because of the interference of forces which should not be interfering wasn’t an option. She liked it much more when there were options. Since she didn’t know any that she could do immediately that wouldn’t be…problematic…for the entire planet of Helm, commandeering one of the Legion’s ‘Mechs was a simple way of possibly creating a few more.

Besides, the best way of getting someone to do something was to give them something they wanted. She could tell the Mechwarriors of the Gray Death wanted to live. They had simply accepted dying as a necessity. She could correct that mistaken assumption and then, as thanks, be given transport off-planet.

It was completely logical and necessary and had nothing to do with the fact that she kind of liked them. Helping them was just the best course of action for accomplishing her duty. She was being responsible by getting in her own ‘Mech to assist them.

Mariah moved the master switch from ‘standby’ to ‘active’.

“Input password.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t ‘her own’ ‘Mech. It might technically still belong to someone else. But if he didn’t want her to use it in his place he would have said something. Even if saying something would have been difficult for someone who was knocked out.

Now that she thought about it, she probably should have gotten the password from the pilot. But he’d been very thirsty and drained the drugged mug of coffee she’d brought him rather more quickly than she’d thought he would. She’d had to drag him away before his slumping form attracted the attention of any of the other Mechwarriors. It was his fault for being so gluttonous that she hadn’t gotten the password and had to resort to more…morally questionable…methods to pilot his ‘Mech.

Ignoring the absolutely barbaric neurohelmet that was perched behind the piloting couch, Mariah did take the opportunity to shrug into the cooling vest that Jason had spread across the side of the cockpit. It was still moist and sweaty from use, and she had to fight down a shudder of disgust as she strapped it on. Unlike the neurohelmet, the vest was important.

That simple preparation done, Mariah closed her eyes and hoped that everything would still work.

Activating Neural Network Secondary Systems…Connection established.

Mariah sighed. One hurdle down. But more concerning than the interface were the passphrases. If technology had stagnated as much as Grayson said, then maybe this would work. Maybe. If it didn’t, at least a light scout ‘Mech wasn’t a lot of firepower for the Gray Death to go without.

“Duchess Saturn requests this unit run the Kincaid program.” Mariah said, annunciating every word carefully. Her tongue felt like lead in her mouth, and there was a pulsating buzz in the center of her head.

Working…

The buzzing in her head grew more insistent, crashing its way forward until it felt like it was directly behind her eyes then reversing direction and running down her spine.

Working…

It had been so long. Would the program still work? Perhaps Grayson had been lying? Exaggerating? Perhaps ‘Mech designers had made changes that would—

Authorized.

“Pilot approved. This unit awaits your demands, Duchess.”

Mariah nodded in slight satisfaction before her face returned to passivity. Sometimes the noble titles she and the Others had been granted could be useful, but hindsight let her see how much the things had divided them amongst themselves. How much titles and political influence had become a barrier to doing their duty.

It was amazing how one simple word could make the cockpit feel so uncomfortable.

Screens in front of her buzzed to life, the cavern around her slowly fading into focus on the display-screens that surrounded her piloting-couch. The start-up fuzz and blur on the screens was typical for the economy-minded House-trash ‘Mechs that didn’t use proper organic light-emitting diodes, but she was slightly surprised to see it so far into the future. Obviously, Grayson hadn’t been lying about the stagnation of technology.

Security systems disengaged. Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons online. Left-leg actuator malfunctioning. Estimated top-speed: Twenty-nine kilometers-per-hour. Additionally…

A fountain of information blossomed in Mariah’s mind. Myomers in the right arm were performing at only ninety-three percent efficiency due to a minute dead spot in the fiber-bundle. Armor that had melted from a medium laser hit had coalesced at a point that actually provided a slight degree of additional protection to the lower-torso. External air pressure and temperature at her current location was estimated to provide a four percent increase in heat dissipation efficiency until it dropped to zero in the next two to three minutes from slowly-rising temperatures inside the cavern caused by the start-up bloom of the dozen Gray Death Legion ‘Mechs. The focus on the right arm’s medium laser was one-sixteenth of a degree out of alignment, so the beam would begin to lose coherence at two-hundred sixty-two meters instead of two-seventy. Air currents flowing over the barrel of the laser system when she wasn’t in motion would carry heat away from it at a rate of—

Mariah shook her head against the tidal wave of information that was battering at her consciousness. She always managed to forget how disorienting the initial connection could be. Forcing her eyes open, she began to identify items in the cockpit to fight back the readouts and infographic displays that insisted on clouding her attention. At her lower-left were the controls for the weapons. The manual systems readout was mounted above that—not that she’d be using it. Sitting beside the two panels was the pilot’s hand.

No. Resting beside the two panels was her hand.

She concentrated on the physical side of herself as much as she could. With a concentration that was beginning to bead sweat on her forehead, she told myomer bundles in her own body—not the ‘Mech’s—to tighten. The fingers of her left hand curled downwards into a fist, and the ‘Mech didn’t shift from its position. She’d been trying to just touch her fingertips to her palm, but a fist was close enough. Just so long as there was a distinction between her movement as a biomechanical body and her movement as a biologically-driven machine.

Which one of those was she again? The former? The latter? Both? Neither? The Others had never had to put up with this when they piloted a ‘Mech! But then, that was because they had solid answers to the question…

Grayson’s voice put a thankful end to that line of questioning. “Major Hawkins, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. If you would be so kind as to activate the lift to the surface? Then, feel free to return to the dropships and they will take you wherever you wish to go once everyone else is aboard.”

He didn’t sound like a man who believed he was going to live.

With a thought—sent through her ‘Mech—Mariah started the lift.

The last half-dozen times the Gray Death Legion’s Mechwarriors had ascended upwards on similar lifts, Mariah had picked up snippets of chatter between them as they left. They had thrown lighthearted jokes at one another, or given the occasional admonition to be careful. On the first trip up, a few had even indulged in bets over who would deal more damage or rack up more kills. There was none of that this time. They all seemed to have agreed to let each other alone this time. Even Lori and Grayson, who had tended to strategize and bounce ideas off one another, were quiet.

Normally, Mariah would have been comfortable with such silence. It was her patron as much as she was its, and the silence of those committed to their goals was one she could always respect. But there was an undercurrent in this Silence that was distinctly not as it should be. Something was warping it to be less profound and more disparaging than it was supposed to.

That feeling only became worse as the lift brought them closer to the surface of the planet. Every passing moment inflated the pressure in her soul that warned of some dark presence nearby. She was half-tempted to open a channel and ask if anybody else felt it, but that would inspire too many questions.

Shuddering slightly and repositioning herself on the pilot’s couch, Mariah focused on manually checking the ‘Mech’s various subsystems. It was a decent distraction from the slowly building aura of Dark Silence that was forming, much more quickly and with much more ferocity this time than the first time she’d taken a lift to the surface the previous night.

They emerged only a few minutes later to the sun-baked rock of the Vermillion Pass. A few small patches of snow that stubbornly clung to life at these high altitudes throughout the summer broke-up the monotony of the otherwise dull grey and brown mountainside. A little below them, the pass widened significantly to the point it could fit easily fit a dozen ‘Mechs side-by-side. But where they stood, it was still slightly more narrow.

The dropships weren’t quite visible from where they were, but that was only because the mountain itself still got in the way. By air, they were only a few tens of kilometers away. Once someone got through the pass, it would take them only minutes to get to the dropships. Which was undoubtedly why Grayson was so intent on stopping the Free Worlds League forces here.

She would do what she could to make sure that happened. Because either the Marik commander or this ‘ComStar Precentor’ Grayson had told him about were the cause of the troubles.

In either case, it didn’t change what she needed to do. Find them. Silence them. Using only the ‘Mech. The last one was what made it so hard.

All pilot safeties disabled. All electronic and engine safety interlocks disabled. Automatic shutdown priorities overridden. Datacom device bus shifted from one-hundred thirty-three megahertz to one-hundred sixty-eight and clock multiplier increased by seven.

The temperature in the cockpit almost immediately spiked, and she felt the beginnings of discomfort at the heat. The physical readout at her bottom-left crackled with static for a moment from the heat, but recovered quickly. In her mind, Mariah had already run down the glitch that was responsible and corrected it. For now, anyways. It might cause trouble again when heat became a problem.

The ‘Mech was as ready as it would ever be. What about herself?

Mariah settled herself into the piloting couch of the ‘Mech and leaned her head back. Careful to only move her own hand, she ran it through shoulder-length black hair and made sure it was free of any obstructions.

Myomer waste-heat disposal increased to one-hundred percent.

Bodily thermoregulation mechanisms set to maximum.

Goose-bumps spiked to life on her arms, and Mariah’s teeth began to absently chatter against each other as her entire body began shaking to combat the sudden chill. She was glad she’d fiddled with the ‘Mech’s systems first, otherwise it would have been even worse.

Protein-filament insulator analog deactivated—stranded heat-sinks activated.

Her head went absolutely freezing as the heat-sinks did their job a little too well. Mariah curled her arms to her sides as tightly as she could and tried to focus on something else. She was tempted to remove the power from the vest that kept its fluid circulating, but decided against it. Soon enough the cockpit would be warmer again.

Twenty-three percent power remaining for Tertiary Neural Network. Estimate five minutes of open combat at current consumption rates before dormancy levels are reached and coma is induced.

Mariah sighed. That rate of consumption would be going up, so the time available to her would be dropping. She’d just have to make her point in a few minutes. Which shouldn’t be too difficult up against House-trash units. If she couldn’t make a decent showing of herself against typical Mechwarriors it would be…embarrassing. Doctor Atlas would probably rise from his grave just to die of embarrassment again if they beat her. Even if she was in a scout ‘Mech armed with a piddling pair of medium lasers.

In fact, the lightly-armed and even more lightly-armored ‘Mech might just help her make the point. These barbarians who fancied themselves the lords of the battlefield in their cute, hand-me-down BattleMechs wouldn’t take notice if she was too subtle.

Besides, she’d long ago learned she enjoyed indulging in overdramatic idiocy so long as it was only her doing it. It was probably something she’d picked up from the last incarnation of Serenity.

Mariah shook aside the small, sad smile that had formed at that thought as the Free Worlders ‘Mechs came into view. Four full lances—sixteen ‘Mechs in total—marched up the pass toward her and the other eleven badly-damaged members of the Gray Death. The tickle of transmissions coming from them started behind her eyes, and she was tempted to detail a small bit of her mind to working on breaking their codes. From how it felt, they had to be talking amongst themselves a lot. She resisted the urge, though. She had more productive uses of the processing power, and brute-force codebreaking ate power like very little else.

The Gray Death, in contrast, remained completely silent on their comms. It was like the silence of the dead. Or, perhaps, more like the silence of the gray dead!

Following the advice of long-dead friends, Mariah physically removed one hand from the piloting stick and slapped it against her own cheek. She just barely stopped her Stinger from mimicking the action, and its Riese compound-100 armored fist stopped only a few meters from the fragile sensor-housing that served as its ‘head’.

She needed to be more careful.

“Jason? Ye’ alright over there?” The thickly-accented voice of Davis McCall spoke through her com. His voice seemed to break whatever spell had been over the other members of the Gray Death and they started transmitting between themselves.

Mariah experienced a very unpleasant sensation of…something…up her spine, and slowly moved her ‘Mech into a more standard position. She offered a pair of clicks on the intercom in answer.

“Tha’s a good lad. Just be sure to save the fisting for tha’ poor bastards over there, eh?” McCall continued, his voice lilting up and down as if he’d said something funny. Which he hadn’t.

Ohhh. It was a double entendre. How quaint and unfunny.

Shaking aside the distractions, Mariah turned her attention back to the opposition. One of the Marik BattleMechs had hung back from the others and took up a position on a small rise, a coterie of smaller vehicles flanking it. Judging from its position and transmission patterns, the ‘Mech was probably the Marik forces’ commander. Her suspicion was confirmed by her magnified view as she watched the cockpit of the Warhammer open and a uniformed man with the shoulder-boards of a Colonel remove himself from the ‘Mech.

Mariah took more interest in one of the open-topped hovercraft at the Warhammer’s feet. A half-dozen robed individuals were the only occupants, and Mariah might easily have dismissed them as irrelevant. A bizarrely dressed group with no bearing on the battle. But at their head was a man who radiated a sense of wrongness she had last felt in Edwin Keeler, the genocidal maniac who had blown up Freeport.

Mariah had listened with half an ear to Grayson’s complaints about the business come techno-cult ‘ComStar’ setting him up, largely certain the matter was none of her concern. Minor conflicts over resources were little real concern for her, even if she did like some of those participating in it.

But feeling the waves of malicious energy coming from the man and shrouding the entire Marik force in its wake, she realized who was channeling the Dark onto the planet. That thing which cloaked itself in the skin of a man was intent on destroying the Library. She could feel its glee at the idea. Sense in her very soul that it thought quite highly of itself for manipulating humans to kill each other over what would amount to little more than shiny baubles. It was responsible for the Dark Silence that seemed to hang over all of them.

Mariah scanned the Marik formation as she mentally calculated how far her jump jets could take her towards the hovercraft. It wasn’t going to be enough. She would need to fight her way there. And then…She would have to think of what to do then. She wasn’t exactly capable of purifying the thing. If that was even possible.

Hell, without calling upon the other part of her she wouldn’t even be capable of confronting the thing. But perhaps she could surprise it enough to make it run. The opposing force might be more open to reason without the thing’s presence clouding their judgement.

“Range is five-hundred meters.” Grayson said over the coms. He paused a moment, then continued in a more broken voice. “Gray Death! Home is the regiment. Up weapons! Prepare to charge.”

Mariah wasn’t quite sure what the middle statement meant. But she had to admit, it certainly sounded profound. Grayson seemed to have chosen the route of the doomed knight. Charging out from a besieged city so that its occupants might be spared the horrors of the battle. It was very noble, in the most old-fashioned sense.

She wasn’t willing to put up with something so pointless and wasteful. In a walled-off and perpetually silent portion of herself, she could even feel the agreement of the other part of her.

Not bothering to wait for Grayson’s order, Mariah pushed her Stinger forward on its one good leg and activated its jump-jets. The cockpit shuddered around her and spiked in temperature as the fusion engine below her funneled its power into concentrated jets of plasma at the ‘Mech’s feet.

For one terribly long second, nothing seemed to happen. But moments later the air rushing over her body and the telltale sinking feeling in her stomach told her she was rising—the ‘Mech was rising with her inside. Mariah shook her head to clear it of the sensory illusion.

A trilling alarm that drilled its way into her head in the next moment let her know that shooting into the air had attracted the attention of at least one targeting system. An instant later the insistent warning beeps shifted in tone to a much more concerning solid tone that warned of incoming missiles. It was actually an impressive lock-on time. Whoever had her in their sights was good at their job.

But skill could only get one so far.

Mariah reached out with the small portion of her mind that remained distant and unconnected to the ‘Mech, gritting her teeth she even went hat-in-hand to the Other inside her to request help. The request was granted. ‘It would be rude to refuse the vessel’ or something was probably how She would put it.

Twisting her consciousness into the realm of physical laws, Mariah momentarily watched as radar waves impacted against the armored hull of her Stinger. As it blazed in the infrared spectrum against the much cooler backdrop of the ground behind it. As a cloud of energy output and emissions signatures outlined it in existence.

“Silence.” The woman in the cockpit spoke, the single word seeming to disappear into the air around her.

The beeping died instantaneously as she vanished from sensors. In the sudden quiet of the cockpit, Mariah closed her eyes, and for one moment reveled in the sensory input coming directly from her Stinger. Jump-jets still burning and pushing air over the rest of her body, she rose further into the air. Unable to track their targets themselves, the missiles that had been approaching her chased after the last position she had been seen. They passed a dozen meters under her feet, the flares from their engines slightly warming her toes.

She probably could have played that particular card earlier, but this way might inspire whatever analog of fear the Dark thing she was trying to reach might be able to feel. It was so much more dramatic.

Feathering the power into the jets, Mariah let herself begin to drop back down towards the ground. A blue-tinted beam of charged particles illuminated an area a few meters above her right-shoulder. It was like a miniature bolt of lightning, and like lightning it sent tingles through her body. She could only imagine what kind of confused frustration the pilot responsible for the PPC shot felt at his targeting computer’s failure to lock on her.

“Gray Death! Charge! Jason, what the hell are you doing?”

Mariah dragged her senses apart from the Stinger’s and smirked. Grayson’s command, and his questioning of her actions, was a full six seconds slower than she’d expected. If someone who seemed as cool under pressure as he did was that shaken, it suggested the Marik forces would be hit even worse by the sensation. Perhaps even the Dark thing would feel it. She could only hoppe.

“I apologize Colonel. Should I have waited for the order to charge? Your futuristic orders were confusing to me.” Mariah answered flatly, slightly distracted as she carefully brought her ‘Mech back down to the ground. The process was complicated by the frozen actuator, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

As if to greet her as she landed, a Rifleman blasted at her with the twin autocannons it mounted on each ‘arm’. The shells impacted all around her—her ‘Mech’s—feet, but the only damage they did was to the ground as their impact sent mounds of dirt flying into the sky and onto the paper-thin armor of her ‘Mech’s legs.

“M—Major Hawkins?” Grayson stammered. He seemed to take refuge in using the rank she’d given him, perhaps as a way of reminding himself of something he knew about her. In which case the falsity of the rank and name as her own was an ironic twist. It might be too confusing for the poor man if she brought that particular wrinkle up at the moment, though. He probably wouldn’t appreciate the humor at a time like this.

“More or less Colonel Carlyle. I apologize, but I had to…borrow…one of your men’s BattleMech’s,” Mariah said, limping her Stinger forward. She fired one of her lasers at the Rifleman that had been trying to hit her a moment earlier, pushing the cockpit from feeling somewhat cool into almost comfortable.

Revised estimate. Three minutes forty-five seconds to Tertiary Network dormancy.

She was much more successful in her shot than the other Mechwarrior had been in their own. The pulsating, scarlet beam impacted against the housing that contained the large laser on the right ‘arm’ of the Rifleman. The molten slag that resulted oozed downwards and blocked the autocannon below.

In response to the attack, what would have been a terrifying amount of firepower impacted around her as even more of the Free Worlders tried to hit her. Lasers blasted dirt and gravel into flat, almost-glasslike surfaces. Missiles of all varieties and sizes pockmarked the ground with blast craters, one batch even spewing a trail of flame out across the rock as they struck. Some nutjob had actually mounted inferno missiles in their ‘Mech!

While it was impressive none of them had figured out the counter to her simple deception, it wouldn’t last forever. But it didn’t have to. It just had to last until she reached the thing which cloaked itself in a man.

“I am sorry to say I do not believe I will be able to return it in one piece, either.” Mariah continued to Grayson as if nothing had happened.

She calculated distances again and reached the worst possible conclusion. It wasn’t going to be enough. Even with the Marik’s panicked and so-far failed reactions to her disappearing from their sensors, there were too many of them for her to be able to bypass them all. In her lightly-armed ‘Mech, fighting her way through wouldn’t be possible, and she didn’t have enough leeway in her power to use the jump jets as heavily as she needed to.

She hit the jump-jets again anyways, hoping for something to fall in her favor as another blast of heat spread through the cockpit and the ‘Mech blasted into the air. The first rivers of sweat began to flow down her sides and through the heat-sinks in her hair as the cockpit soared past the relatively comfortable temperature it had reached. It was rather uncomfortable.

From past experience, Mariah knew that when she was beginning to get uncomfortable the ‘Mech was reaching the point where the safeties would typically kick in and automatically shut it down. But turning them off spared her any such worries. For the moment, at least.

Of course, as she kept using the weapons things would get unbearably hot even for her. After that as she kept using the weapons, things would start to explode.

She had some distance to go before she could explode. The meters disappeared surprisingly fast while she was in the air. Hopefully it would be enough.

At the very least, she knew it was distracting at least. The continued blasts of energy weapons at her told her she was the main focus for many of the Marik pilots. Though they seemed to have quit using as much regular ordinance against her. Probably frustrated at wasting ammo for no benefit.

At the apex of her jump, Mariah twisted her targeting reticule so it sat above a small cluster of the Free Worlders who had concentrated themselves too closely together and stabbed the firing button. Trying to keep it on the right location would have been nearly impossible even for her. Instead, she simply held the button down.

An uninterrupted stream of ruby-red concentrated light flowed from the sides of her Stinger downwards. As she dropped the beam fell with her and intersected the trio that had grouped together. The shots didn’t seem to do anything more than melt armor off of them, but it sent them scattering apart rather than trying to fire at her again. Mariah counted that as a success since it cleared the way for her to land without interference from them.

Revised estimate. Two minutes twenty-seven seconds to Tertiary Network dormancy.

This time she had to put a lot more of her attention into successfully landing. The engine was considerably less pleased to funnel its energy into jump-jets than it had been at the beginning of her rush forward. The jets sputtered worryingly as Mariah descended, kicking in for a few moments and then going silent or fluctuating their power wildly. She was forced to absorb most of the landing with the one good leg of her ‘Mech, and could feel the wear and damage inflicted on the actuators. She was getting careless with the engine’s safety mechanisms disengaged.

Absently, Mariah spared a glance for her heat indicator. The typical bar reading for the fusion engine had been replaced by a numerical cockpit reading outlined by the word ‘critical’ in red, a situation that only happened when the engine was pushing dangerously high levels of heat. Mariah had always assumed it was so whatever idiot was baking themselves alive could appreciate their own stupidity properly. If they were conscious.

Rivers of sweat pouring down her body and hair letting out a small halo of steam with every breath she took, Mariah knew the cockpit was hot but she could have sworn the cockpit didn’t feel like 80’! She had been wondering why Grayson hadn’t said anything more. More likely than not her communications system had overheated and slagged itself. The longer-ranged communications equipment was usually some of the most fragile pieces of equipment on a scout ‘Mech.

Limping the Stinger on, Mariah had finally reached the Marik line. Another group of missiles flew past the cockpit lengthwise, so close she swore she might have been able to reach out and touch them. But humorously enough they ended up spending their energy against the side of a massive Warhammer that was making its way towards her. Friendly fire didn’t deter the massive enemy ‘Mech. Apparently convinced of the uselessness of using ranged weapons against her, it was instead charging straight-in, the extended barrel of one of its PPCs swinging menacingly towards the torso of her ‘Mech.

Mariah growled in frustration. If she was the pilot in the other machine, she would have just turned off the targeting computer and eyeballed shots until she scored a hit. It was much more elegant that way. But this kind of brute-force method would probably work as well. Barbarians.

With a minute adjustment to her arms—her ‘Mech’s arms—Mariah focused both medium lasers on the approaching target. Gritting her teeth against the coming wave of heat, she depressed the firing stud.

Revised estimate. One minute fifteen seconds to Tertiary Network dormancy.

It wasn’t just hot, it was boiling, and Mariah had to wheeze against the sudden burning pain all across her body. Two of the readout displays flickered off, gamely fought themselves back to life, and then surrendered to the insane operating temperature and exploded in a shower of sparks and electricity, sending glass into the side of her cooling vest.

Mariah herself closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look through the steam that was now rising out of them. One of the heat-sinks below her had apparently taken the easy route out and killed itself rather than even try to deal with the bullshit she was putting it through. That had ruined the razor-thin margin of safety she had been dealing with.

The ‘Mech was Not Happy and rapidly approaching the zone where it would explode to demonstrate how Not Happy it was.

The good news was that both of her lasers found their mark. Each one dug into the thinner armor just below the leftmost shoulder-pauldron of the Warhammer. Had the Warhammer been hit in the location before by something much heavier, or had she focused both lasers on one point and then been able to ram her entire ‘Mech into the same point, it might have had the desired effect and sheared the particle projection cannons off. But the front-line ‘Mech was too heavily-armored for what little she had done to even cause it to falter.

Mariah tried to move out of the way, but the locked actuator on her ‘Mech’s leg interfered with the attempt. She wouldn’t be able to move fast enough on the ground to get clear!

Growling, she tried to trigger the jump jets again when instincts told her to eject. But she couldn’t. Ejecting would have been admitting defeat, and she still wasn’t close enough to the thing to reach it on foot to try and…choke it or something.

Revised estimate. Thirty-two seconds to Tertiary Network dormancy.

Mariah was completely unsurprised when instead of lifting her into the air, the jump jets sputtered a few times and then went completely dead as they melted themselves shut. She’d run things too hot for too long, and even disabling safeties couldn’t disable fundamental physical limitations.

The attempted jump finally pushed her engine past the breaking point of those limits.

—Neural Network Secondary Systems connection lost—

One instant she had power, the next every display in the cockpit that was still functioning died and her controls were entirely unresponsive. The cockpit descended into almost-total darkness, the only illumination offered by small strips of luminescent tape that had been strung along the corners.

Perhaps worse than the physical loss, was the mental one. Mariah’s mind staggered with the sudden absence of sensory input from the Stinger’s computer-systems, its gyrostabilizer, and the countless sensors that spotted it. In a single instant she was no longer the brain at the center of a twenty-ton mass of myomer and metal, she was just the brain at the top of a thirty-four kilogram mass of myomer and blood that was surrounded by twenty-tons of salvage who’s heart was slowly consuming itself.

Her hand absently tugged on the ejection lever. But with all the power relays to the complicated system long-since burned out, it would have been a futile gesture even if she’d had power.

She pulled the lever again, more deliberately this time. When it again did nothing, she jerked it out of place with all her strength. Not even ripping the lever out of its track could make it do anything, though.

“Why do you humans insist on dragging these things out? Always with your fighting and interminable struggle against the inevitable? Why do you not just give up? Now, child, despair at your inability to save anything! You are defeated! RECOGNIZE IT!”

The voice was booming and insistent, clawing at reality with every syllable. But at the same time it was muffled, as if it were being growled by someone at the depths of an ocean. The thing which cloaked itself in the skin of a ComStar Precentor had to be expending a lot of energy to have her mentally hear its words, and that willingness to so openly violate the Laws of the Universe sent a toe-curling chill down her spine. She tried to ignore it as much as she could. Such was the only way of dealing with the Dark Silence when it did something as unnatural as speak.

Then the Warhammer’s PPC slammed into her ‘Mech’s chest, and it was much easier not to pay attention to anything. Ripping aside already-damaged chunks of armor, the barrel stabbed through the underframe of her machine. It scored through tightly-wound cords of myomer muscle and electrical wiring, and pushed through the thin layer of metal that separated the cockpit from the rest of the inner workings.

Mariah only had enough time to read ‘Rand 1200’ emblazoned in decorative script on the side of the particle projection cannon’s outer casing before it began to glow and hum with the telltale buildup of protons within the mangled field inhibitor.

She had honestly expected to be skewered by the cannon. Blowing her up alongside of it just seemed like a needless waste of a perfectly good PPC, particularly since the fusion engine going critical in a few seconds would have done almost the same thing as a PPC shot at point-blank range. Apparently she had really, really angered the pilot of the Free World’s ‘Mech. Either that or the Dark Silence was extraordinarily petty and exercising its influence.

“Die, stubborn human! Die, dIe, diE, DIE!”

The Dark Silence was extraordinarily petty. Who would have thought?

Revised estimate. Thirteen seconds to Tertiary Network dormancy.

So much for keeping the Dark ignorant, then. She'd just have to hope She didn't destroy the planet out of spite for being called when it wasn't her time.

The Stackpole-120 engine at the heart of Mariah’s Stinger began to shoot superheated gusts of aerated plasma in every direction as one portion of the containment wall was finally breached. An uncountable instant later, the entire sphere shattered and the miniature sun at the heart of the ‘Mech began to rabidly expand outwards, consuming metal and myomer both in its mad desire for release.

The PPC’s field inhibitor failed to contain the nascent charge building within, starting a feedback loop in the ionization mechanisms of the weapon. Three microseconds after failing, almost at the same instant as the engine’s containment failed, a blue-tinged explosion began to expand outwards from the weapon.

In-between the two competing explosions, the woman known to Grayson Carlyle and the Gray Death Legion as Major Mariah Hawkins, of the Star League Defense Force Navy, stretched one arm out above her. The explosions washed over and under her, boiling and twisting at her sides, futilely spending their energy against a small violet sphere of inviolable space that had manifested around her.

Her words were completely lost in the wave of destruction, but they didn’t need to be heard to be effective. They, in fact, did not need to be spoken at all by her. But she spoke them anyways, in loving memory of the Others who had needed them.

“Saturn Planet Power, make up!”

“WHAT!?”

The sound of pure horror in the Dark Silence’s unnatural voice was an unexpected bonus to physically stating the words.

***************************
A/N:
Partial credit for inspiring this story goes to a kid I went to grade school with many years ago who insisted Power Rangers was cooler than Sailor Moon 'because the Power Rangers have a Megazord'. As a young girl, I had no counter to such inarguable logic. Giant robots were cool. Sailor Moon was lacking in giant robots. Ergo, my 'girl' show was less cool than his 'boy' show because of the absence of giant, stomping robots locked in combat with other giant, stomping robots or giant beasts.

Well screw the Power Rangers and screw the Megazord, and screw the lack of giant robots in magical girl stories! I'll make-up my own Sailor Moon! With blackjack BattleMechs and hookers political intrigue! Take THAT Matthew!
*cough*
Anyways, because I have no idea how long it might take to get to a place where it may be more contextually appropriate: Sailor Jupiter is best Sailor Scout.

 

[prinCZess]

Vermilion Pass
Nagayan Mountain Range, Helm, Free Worlds League
17 June 3028

Staring down on Helm and the Sentient Things that occupied it, She absently tightened Her grip on the Glaive. The Things’ fabricated carapaces were squared off against one another below, a badly damaged one the Vessel insisted was called a Warhammer recoiling back from where She floated, most of the armor on its chest melting off from the enormous heat of the explosion.

Had She been summoned for a single Sentient Thing? That was needless and wasteful in the extreme. Besides, it was not yet that one’s Time. So She had been summoned for something else.

But no matter where She looked, the story was the same. It was too soon for the planet and too soon for the Sentient Things. Far too soon, in some of their cases.

She tried looking towards the system’s star, seeking a potential answer there. But that possibility was dashed quite quickly. It was also too early for the star. It had at least a billion more cycles before it changed in a suitable enough manner that She need bother do anything with it.

She could always expand the planet’s sun early, but interfering with the appropriate Times of major celestial objects made correspondingly major problems for the one who watched time and space. She had no desire to make that job any harder than it already was. Reconciling such massive disruptions as the absence of entire planets or suns in space-time was more trouble than it was worth. The one who watched time and space would get mad at Her.

The one who watched time and space could be very frightening when angry.

So. Alternatives?

Bringing ruin to the weak, artificially-produced suns the Sentient Things had assembled around Her within their fabricated carapaces would not cause any disruptions of note. They were mechanical constructs of little major importance in the grand scheme of things. She was always disappointed at the way the Sentient Things bottled the beauty of fundamental forces up to try and make them endure longer than proper, anyways. Bringing them to their appropriate end was not very satisfying, but it would sate the need to do something for the moment.

The Vessel said something, drawing Her attention to a lesser one that had wormed its way into one of the Sentient Things. It wasn’t proper, but neither was it forbidden.

That had been what She was called for? How trite.

She granted the lesser one a glare. It was pushing outwards at the minds of the Sentient Things around it, trying to push them back into conflict with one another rather than focusing on Her. Unlike Her, it was not powerful or disciplined enough to accomplish the task. But the very task was something it should not have been attempting. It was too easy to drive the Sentient Things into madness through such direct influence. Even Her own presence was not safe for their fragile minds.

That just would not do at all. She would have to deal with him.

The Vessel should have dealt with such an interloper already, really. She had more important concerns. But the Vessel, much like this lesser one, was rather useless and incompetent at anything beyond Its own limited scope of knowledge. It knew how to interact with the Sentient Things and call upon Her, but little else. The most It could do was the simple trickery that hid portions of reality from one another and occasionally reversing the impact of that reality. Hardly even worth mentioning.

It still did better than previous Vessels, however. Those tended to react poorly psychologically. This Vessel’s mind was not quite as fragile.

The other Darkness spoke through its vessel, screaming words out at a volume that must be damaging to its vessel’s biological parts. The screams were audible even in the physical realm the Sentient Things occupied, though still warped and twisted in their sound thanks to the Dark that birthed them.

“No. You should not be here! You should not be preventing this! You do not understand! Those Things have what We want—are trying to spread it. They cannot understand the true import of what they hold and are trying to merely prolong their miserable existence with it! It is imperative that We destroy that library! It is Our duty to destroy it!”

A lesser one which spoke to Her? Insulting.

A lesser one which sought to tell Her of duty? Annoying.

Why did the lesser ones always seem to enjoy speaking so much? Offering so many words when none were actually needed. Arguing with Her as if they were one of the Sentient Things. It was as if they needed to convince themselves of their actions. As if they thought they could convince Her!

She quieted the whispering part of her that agreed with the other Darkness’ sentiments.

But one could not fault thoughtless entropy for being foolish. It might even be tempting were She incapable of remembering the appropriate practice of her powers.

“Tiantan?” She said, careful to pronounce the word just as the Vessel insist She pronounce it. The Vessel was begging Her to speak with the lesser one rather than merely settle the issue immediately. It pleaded with her to use the name—apparently one of the Sentient Things concentrated colonies that had been destroyed recently and had somehow lead to the current conflict between the Sentient Things—against the lesser one. The Vessel seemed to consider it valuable that words be exchanged for the benefit of the other Sentient Things. Though why, She could not begin to fathom. They would not be capable of understanding!

One of the other robed Sentient Things near the one the lesser one had made common cause with drew back in horror. Horror She was well-acquainted with. Though it was interesting to see it focused on the lesser one instead of Her. Apparently ‘Tiantan’ was a focus of anger and disgust for them even beyond Herself. She could understand that sentiment, if not the relative scale.

It was quite annoying when Things were rendered lifeless before their Times.

“Precentor you were on Tiantan—” the robed one began, only to be silenced by a cuff on the side of the head by the other Darkness’ vessel. The move ripped the Being’s head off entirely, and the other occupants fled.

It had not yet been that Sentient Thing’s Time. The lesser one had been involved with the deaths on the concentrated colony of Sentient Things.

The lesser one had insulted Her. It had annoyed Her. Usurping Her would not be tolerated.

“Be quiet! What does it matter? A handful of the worthless ‘lives’ of these parasitic beings? There are so many of them they were expendable. They are all expendable!” The fear that had tinged the voice of the lesser one was replaced by something else that was much less properly respectful.

Her Vessel seemed to consider the outburst enough. Which was good, because She was unwilling to put up with any further delays for more pointless, extended speechmaking as She already had. She was not here to make grandiose statements from on-high. That was for the lesser ones to partake in.

She ended Things.

A shadowy black presence extended itself out from the robed one, dark and twisted coils extending from the other vessel’s body until they had almost obscured the entire vehicle they originated from. After a moment’s pause, the shadow curled its way outward to bury itself in the nearest armored carapace. As if that might protect it from Her.

Why were the lesser ones always so foolish and impudent? Always interfering in reality where they should not. Always expanding themselves madly rather than forging a stable connection to their Vessel. Always disobeying Her.

The last one was the worst.

She weaved Herself past the fabricated carapaces that towered around Her, approaching the multi-ton amalgamation of armor and weaponry that the lesser one had taken possession of. She leveled the Glaive at its torso, faintly amused by the way the Dark that surrounded the machine drew back from the purely physical threat. It was pathetic for a creature of the Dark to be afraid. What was the worst that could be done? A temporary return to nonexistence?

The armored carapace turned towards Her, its armor seeming to ooze out the dark shadows that belied who its true controller was. On such a massive machine, the corruption would be visible even to the Sentient Beings limited senses. How gauche. One should at least have the decency to limit themselves a little. That was what made Things interesting. They, at least, tended to restrict themselves by some kind of system.

Lesser ones never did.

A small hatch slid open on the armored carapace’s middle region, revealing a staggered pattern of holes in the armor. Apparently, it was a conscious decision by its creators as the machine released a small cloud of cylindrical flying tubes of explosive pushed by burning propellant from the various holes.

She wasted a moment trying to get the Vessel to tell Her the appropriate word for the things. She knew there was one. But it had been a long time since She had last required its use. The Vessel refused to answer, though. Apparently, it was an ‘unnecessary distraction’. The Vessel insisted She pay attention to the items.

Sentient Things could be so rude. She never refused to answer when the Vessel called upon Her! It wasn’t fair that Her questions never got answered!

Oh! ‘Missiles’, was it? That was a much easier descriptor.

She didn’t bother dodging the flurry of explosions the missiles produced around Her. Such minor exothermic reactions were of little concern, reduced to nonexistence before they even touched Her Vessel’s outer covering. She pushed through them with little regard. The head of the Glaive before Her to prevent anything more potent the lesser one might decide to attempt.

Rather unhappily, one of the exothermic bursts was augmented by the lesser one. The outer covering of the Vessel’s arm bubbled and oozed in sympathetic reaction as She passed too close to it, and the covering quickly dropped away entirely. As if drawn to the exposed tissue, coiled worms of black shadow reached out and wrapped themselves around the arm.

Perhaps the Vessel had not been entirely childish in telling Her to focus on the Sentient Things weapons. Perhaps the Vessel had even been correct. Perhaps She owed the Vessel an…admission of partial guilt.

Perhaps.

She brought the damaged arm off the Glaive and gave it a shake. The tendril of Darkness that was coiling around the uncovered section could not be shaken off so easily, but its forced interaction with the Sentient Things reality meant it suffered from the same boring physics of that reality. It moved in-time with the shaking, and She was able to curl the Vessel’s hand around a small section when it whipped upwards.

Out.

The coil of darkness faded from existence, leaving only the exposed poly-acetylene tubes and titanium-steel reinforced underparts of the Vessel’s arm in its place. But that had only been a small part of the Lesser One. A part that had not even achieved the limited self-awareness of its creator.

Tightening Her hands on the Glaive, She refocused on the machine that had been possessed. In the next moment, She slammed into its outer shell, thrusting the weapon forwards as She did.

The carapace of titanium and steel peeled open in front of the Glaive, alloyed segments of armor that could withstand some of the most powerful battlefield weapons the Sentient Things fielded utterly incapable of even slowing it down. She continued driving the weapon deeper inside the machine, burying one of the Vessel’s arms up to the elbow so She could push the weapon in the final short distance needed. With that final push, She broke through the containment vessel of the machine’s inner sun and connected the blade of the polearm with the reaction within.

Stop.

It did, of course.

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

[Location unknown]

June 17, 3028

Time and Space were funny things. More easily passed through than over, they tended to remain constant in their effects, if not their impacts. Things had become more complicated when humanity developed the Kearny-Fuchida drive, but the essentials remained unchanged.

Space kept its enormous distances.

Time went by.

She waited.

It was just that time went by so slowly. Especially for those, like her, who had to wait.

What classical composer had that been? Fitzgerald? Turner? Madonna? She couldn’t remember…

Absently fanning herself with one hand, the woman absently stared at the vid-player she’d set up and threw the question aside before it began to really bother her. The Immortal Warrior was about to bring down a Phoenix Hawk Land-Air ‘Mech using nothing but an outdated hovertank and his delicious oiled pecs, and she didn’t want anything to distract her from those beauties.

It was one of the more ridiculous portions of part three to the series. But the actor was a total hunk. She could excuse a lot of sins for that.

There was a thunderclap, either in her head or a natural byproduct of the dimension she was in she didn’t know. All she knew was that it demanded her attention. She jerked upright, listening to the Silence that echoed through her guard station for a very long moment, relief mixing with aggravation in proportions even she couldn’t properly estimate.

That Silence was supposed to have happened much sooner. Had been required to happen much sooner, in fact. Almost three hundred rotations of Terra about the sun sooner. Because it hadn’t the Star League hadn’t died as it was supposed to, and instead descended into a state of perpetual civil war. It would be a mess correcting an error of that magnitude.

A very small grin touched her lips. That correction would require her presence and participation. Which meant leaving the nearly perpetual boredom of her post.

The grin wavered slightly. It also meant leaving behind the chance to look back on Thomas anytime she liked.

She had a good memory, though.

“Well. It is about time, Saturn. I thought you’d never get around to it. Maybe now I can actually get out of here for a change.”

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

Again, aGain, agAin, agaIn, agaiN! AGAIN! The planet this time! This solar system after that! Keep going! KEEP going! KEEP GOING!

She shook aside the screaming temptation within and withdrew the Glaive as the armored carapace She was on began to topple backwards towards the ground. The Darkness from the lesser one had abandoned the husk the instant it lost its power, recoiling away from Her attack in furious effort to save itself. It had only had one place to go. Back into its original vessel.

Such self-preservation was rather unseemly for one such as it. She found it insulting when they didn’t accept the same fates they brought Sentient Beings. It was…hypocritical. One of the Beings’ concepts that was very useful in contexts like this.

Of course, considering Her own Vessel’s refusal to accept the fate of Sentient Beings—even if forced into such position—the criticism might also be hypocritical coming from Her. But She could not be hypocritical even if She was.

She turned towards the robed vessel, and it immediately began to slither its way backwards. Speaking through its vessel was one thing, but the Darkness and its vessel were very closely connected if it could control even physical movements. It was unlikely separating the two would let the Sentient Being who might be within continue living.

Not that She could separate the two anyways. She would settle for ruining them both.

The lesser one spoke more as She approached its vessel. Vacillating between promises of fealty and threats of destruction. Offering cooperation in one breath and damnation in the next. It was like listening to one of the Sentient Beings young—Very annoying.

Unlike with the annoyance of Sentient Beings young, this one was best dealt with by sending it into the nonexistence it had sprung from.

She used one of Her Vessel’s arms to physically lift the other. The occasional desperate string of Darkness tried to push it away away or stab at the exposed portions of Her Vessel’s body, but there was virtually no strength behind the movements. The lesser one was flailing pointlessly and without any real goal, both with its vessel as well as its incorporeal self.

It couldn’t even die with dignity! At least the Sentient Things were more interesting in their final moments. The son of Gray that the Vessel had spoken with was downright fascinating in what it considered its final moments. Those Sentient Things that fashioned themselves or their servants as embodying death always were, it seemed.

She glared through Her Vessel’s eyes at the lesser one. It squirmed and slithered, bulging and inflating the body as it moved about trying to avoid Her gaze. Even to Her it was disgusting. A clear violation of What Should Be.

You do not belong here, invader. Get. Out.

Manipulating the Glaive with one hand was slightly awkward for Her Vessel, but it accomplished the task required of it with suitable-enough speed. She severed the connection between the opposing vessel and the dark. As well as that between the vessel and its nervous system. The resulting overflow speckled Her Vessel’s face, but such was unavoidable.

She dropped the unattached piece of the body to the ground. Not cleansed or healed, certainly. But annihilation was the only option She had in its case.

Barely worth Her awakening. The only event that made it bearable was the end of the Thing-made sun that had been inside the armored carapace.

The Vessel really needed to be taught not to summon Her for such trivial pursuits.

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

Grayson Carlyle was relatively young by the standards of most Mechwarriors. He liked to think he made up for it in experience. Few people his age could boast of being involved in the number of engagements he had, and even fewer had benefited from the training he’d had as a child. He had experienced combat and knew what kind of oddities the madcap realm of the battlefield could produce.

Fusion engines going critical, for instance? He’d seen it a couple of times. The odds against it were truly ridiculous, but the combination of heat build-up, ballistic impacts, high-energy laser weapons and good old operator error could produce the necessary conditions for even the ‘safe’ reactors at the heart of ‘Mechs to explode in truly spectacular ways on rare occasion.

Much more common was seeing PPCs overload. The energy weapons were powerful, but excessively finicky and prone to malfunction even on their best days. Those on his Marauder were a constant struggle to keep in service without risking a failed inhibitor. Using them at point-blank range as the enemy ‘Mech had was practically guaranteed to result in an explosion.

Grayson had even seen suicidal charges like the one Mariah had embarked on before. He’d engaged in one of them at the start of his career armed with nothing but a missile launcher, and that had ended up netting him Lori and the Locust she’d been piloting at the time. Hell, he’d been in the process of engaging in one when Mariah had one-upped him. So it wasn’t like he could condemn or be aggravated about that at all.

He had even heard the barroom rumors of the ‘Phantom ‘Mech’. Some of the stories specified Morgan Kell and Yorinaga Kurita, but all of them shared the common elements. ‘Mechs that disappeared from every sensor focused on them.‘Mech’s fighting on even after their pilot was dead. ‘Mechs that didn’t overheat or fired more rounds of ammunition than they could carry. The variations were endless. Grayson had always dismissed the stories as mere hearsay and exaggeration. Mechwarriors were a notoriously superstitious lot. But he was less certain of that judgement now.

The point was that even something as unlikely or ridiculous as all of that was at least familiar to him. Something he could grasp. Engines going critical? Ridiculous, but something he could grasp. A ‘Mech somehow ‘disappearing’? Ridiculous, but something he could grasp. Finding a living Star League officer locked inside of a Castle Brian? Ridiculous. But something he could grasp. All of them were things that at least had the ghost of plausible explanation among them.

The woman floating in the middle of the explosion that had moments before been Mariah’s Stinger? That was new. Worse than being new, it was utterly unexplainable. She not only shouldn’t be there. She couldn’t. Surrounded by a violet-tinged bubble, she didn’t seem to be affected by the superheated air of the exploding ‘Mech at all.

Perhaps even weirder than her mere presence, however, was her appearance. She was dressed like the Draconis Combine’s idea of a slutty schoolgirl. Beyond that, she had an honest-to-God spear at her side. Not even the most hardline of the Combine’s Mustered Soldiery—the samurai-worshipping nuts who wore swords in the cockpit!—would stoop to carrying a pointy stick. They’d think it was ‘beneath their dignity’.

The sheer novelty of the sight forced Grayson to stop piloting his ‘Mech and just stare at the floating woman. The hesitation might have left him painfully open to attack, but thankfully he didn’t seem to be the only one pushed into inaction by her appearance. Even the Free Worlders stopped in their tracks and ceased combatting his men. Air that had roared with autocannon-fire and the whisper-snap of lasers burning through went abruptly silent as both sides turned their attention on the miraculously living, floating woman.

Grayson couldn’t help but wonder if part of it wasn’t the ridiculous skirt attracting their attention more than anything else. Mechwarriors were superstitious, but they were also perpetual horndogs, and even the female pilots had to be wondering just what the hell a Combine fuku-wearing girl was doing appearing in the righteous, Marik-supporting skies of Helm.

Grayson came to the conclusion that he was hallucinating. That was the only explanation that made sense. Because what he was seeing simply made no sense.

The writhing, arm-like shadows that had burst out from behind the enemy lines and wrapped themselves around the Awesome providing fire-support had to have been the product of some nightmarish portion of his mind. Some primal fear that was cropping up only now when he was so close to dying.

The words that had been spoken also had to be inventions of his mind. He wouldn’t be able to hear someone speaking inside the ‘Mech unless they were on his comm frequency, and nobody could possibly speak in such a grating, twisting, unnatural voice.

On top of it all, the floating woman had charged at the Awesome, the spear in her hands extended out before her. A person flying without any visible jump gear was silly enough. A flying person attacking a BattleMech with a melee weapon? His mind wouldn’t show something that silly to him unless he was dying.

Grayson had been raised on a very simple, and easily observable, fact of life on the battlefield. The ‘Mech was the undisputed master of any engagement. Tanks might, in sufficient number and in prepared defenses, hold ground. Aerial forces were valuable for support and interdiction, but lacked the staying power to be truly viable as a tool of unrestricted offense or reliable defense. Infantry were necessary to secure logistical routes and provide various other support roles, but too vulnerable to accomplish much themselves. The ‘Mech was the way that ground was taken and enemy forces defeated.

The only thing that could defeat a ‘Mech in straight combat was another, more heavily-armed or better-piloted ‘Mech. That might as well have been something as true as two plus two equaling four.

Women in skirts wielding pointy sticks—even flying women in skirts wielding pointy sticks—were not BattleMechs. They were, in fact, ‘crunchies’. Things that a ‘Mech might accidentally step-on in the process of fighting targets that were actually a threat. They were utterly and completely incapable of stopping a ‘Mech.

The Awesome, no longer dripping with the black, oily substance that had wept from every joint of the thing a few moments earlier, was lying on its back, an almost scalpel-like hole in its torso armor and its engine shut-down entirely.

It was a little emasculating, really. He’d never defeated a ‘Mech in a few seconds. He’d certainly never done so with a pointy stick. Or in a skirt, for that matter. Though that might just be confusing the issue.

He’d also never decapitated someone.

Grayson zoomed in on the spectacle, partly out of morbid fascination with the scythe-like spear but mostly because something about the woman struck him as…familiar.

Now that he looked closely, the woman wielding the spear looked a lot like Mariah.

She had popped up in about the same place that Mariah would have died as well.

She wasn’t of course. That was impossible. But she certainly looked like her.

Grayson bit his lip, feeling as if he was missing something. As if something was teasing at the edge of his mind just out of his grasp.

“Boss! Boss! They’re retreating! We won!”

He jerked with the exclamation, trying to force his attention back onto the enemy ‘Mechs. Sure enough, they were all moving backwards with the stuttering, mechanical precision the machines always had when they backtracked. They hadn’t turned around to offer shots at the vulnerable rear armor of their machines, but that seemed to be more as a result of them keeping their weapons trained on the solitary woman on the ground. Not on him or his men, but on the single woman in a skirt at the center of their line.

Grayson was a little insulted by that, but simultaneously had a moment of absolute understanding and sympathy for the Marik commander. His own weapons were pointed at the same place, after all. It still didn’t make him feel any better.

How much good would they do if the woman decided to come after him? They hadn’t helped the Awesome at all.

The woman turned her head as if the thought had summoned her attention, and Grayson swallowed heavily as her eyes locked with his through the monitors in his cockpit. She twisted around to completely face him, the jerking motions of her movements making it look much more unnatural than it should. As if the simple change of position was something she was unfamiliar with. As if moving around on the ground itself rather than floating about was something she was unfamiliar with.

She never blinked. Grayson watched her for a full thirty seconds, avoiding looking into those eyes as he did, and not once did she blink. Just stared with a blank expression that seemed to say more than any sneer Grayson had ever gotten in his life.

As she began to jerkily move towards him, he realized she was looking down on him. She had the same look on her face that a Free Worlds League nobleman would have when he showed up to a fancy dinner-party in his utility jumpsuit. He was in a seventy-five ton weapon of destruction that towered over her, and she was looking down on him like he’d just mispronounced hors d’oeuvres. Maybe it was justified since she’d just taken down a heavier opponent with nothing but her magic ‘Mech-poking stick…

It had to be some kind of close-range disruption weapon that forced a ‘Mech to shut-down when it was discharged. It was rather useless itself, since any infantryman armed with such a thing would be rather unlikely to live to get into close enough contact with a ‘Mech to actually use it. But combined with the unseen jump pack the woman obviously had for quickly flying around the battlefield? Then it could work.

The explanation sounded forced and stupid even in Grayson’s mind. Not least because of how the woman was dressed. There was quite simply nowhere for her to strap a jump pack that wouldn’t be visible. The frilly microskirt and leotard she wore weren’t exactly conducive to concealing…anything.

Dammit, he wasn’t supposed to feel like a dirty old man when he was performing a threat assessment!

“Gray? That woman is getting awfully close. What do we want to do?” Lori asked. The particular emphasis she placed on the last word told him she had a solid idea what she wanted to do about it. Even without seeing inside her cockpit he could picture the woman tightening her fingers on the firing-studs of her ‘Mech’s weapons.

Somehow, Grayson didn’t think shooting at the woman was going to help matters. It certainly hadn’t worked out for the Free Worlders.

Maybe she was some kind of Star League illusion? A defense program for the Castle Brian that used a holographic projection as an intimidation tactic? Even the most battle-hardened of Mechwarriors would probably rethink their course of action if a woman in a skirt destroyed one of their number with a spear and suffered little notable damage in return.

That explanation was also forced and stupid, but Grayson didn’t have any other real alternatives. Mariah might have been able to tell him what the hell was going on, but she’d gone and gotten herself killed.

Again, that tickling feeling he was missing something. But he was frustratingly unable to track down what.

“Pull back for now. If nothing else she’s bought us some time.” Grayson said into the comm as he settled the ‘Mech into a stationary position and began to remove the neurohelmet from his head.

He took a moment to sigh and roll his shoulders as the heavy piece of equipment came off, and ran one hand through hair that was caked with dried sweat. The first chance he got, he was cannibalizing one of the helmets from the Star League cache. They were much more comfortable.

Grayson snorted slightly. That was still assuming he lived. He really had to quit doing that. Eventually, the miraculous breaks that had brought him this far would stop coming.

Cycling the reactor to standby and disengaging the cockpit seals, Grayson leaned forwards and gave an experimental push. The hatch was supposed to open entirely on its own with just a modicum of effort, but it didn’t even budge. One of the hydraulic struts had probably been tweaked during the battle. Likely from the laser that had scored across his right side. It had been close enough to his cockpit for him to feel the heat transfer through the metal, it wouldn’t surprise him if it had gotten hot enough to distort the ‘Mech’s profile enough to cause difficulties in opening the hatch.

Sliding down in his seat and cocking one leg up, Grayson slammed his heel onto the upper portion of the cockpit. As if it had been waiting for just such a thing—or, more likely, as if the impact had encouraged the stubborn strut to actually do its job—the hatch slowly popped out of its fasteners and slid forward on the nose-cone of the Marauder with a grinding, crackling stutter that spoke of warped metal and distorted tracks.

The techs were going to be mad at him. Again. Maybe they’d be mollified because of all the new toys he’d found for them? He could certainly hope.

“Gray? Gray! Grayson Carlyle, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He could hear the transmission from the neurohelmet even with it set on the storage plate behind the piloting couch. Lori was using that tone of voice again. The one that reminded him of his father when he’d done something incredibly stupid. It was that subtly way she emphasized his name and ticked her voice up a notch.

Standing up and basking in the slight breeze coming over the top of the ‘Mech, Grayson turned towards Lori’s Shadow Hawk and offered a jaunty wave in answer of her question. Shoving the coiled emergency-ladder over the side of the ‘Mech, he ignored the stream of invective coming from his neurohelmet as best he could.

He was being stupid. But after spending the last—God, had it only been fifteen minutes?—absolutely certain he was going to die, he figured he was entitled to a little stupidity. What was the worst that happened? He died being decapitated by some spear-wielding nutjob in a miniskirt? There were worse ways of going out, and that way at least didn’t risk anyone else following him into the afterlife. Besides, he was curious. It only seemed proper to meet the target of his curiosity on equal ground.

Grayson crawled over the side of the ‘Mech and began to pick his way down the thin strands of the rope-ladder. He tried not to think about the fact that ‘equal ground’ probably didn’t exist with someone who could bring down a ‘Mech by hand.

He failed. The clammy sweat on his fingertips from that failure made getting down the ladder even more difficult than it should have been.

When he reached the bottom, he undid the cooling vest wrapped around his chest and left it hanging on the ladder. The light breeze that had been hinted at when he was standing in the cockpit now pressed against his entire body, occasionally catching a strand of sweat-matted hair or playing at the slightly-loose collar of his undershirt. Barring a shower, it was undoubtedly the most sublime feeling he could have asked for.

If he was going to get decapitated by some nut carrying around a ‘Mech-destroying spear, at least he’d be more comfortable as it happened.

Grayson turned.

She was right there behind him. Flat, unblinking eyes looking up at him as if he were a peculiar bug of some kind. She was about the same height as Mariah had been. Same shoulder-length black hair too. The stare was definitely different though.

Having stared death itself in the eye on a number of previous occasions, Grayson limited his reaction to a single whole-body spasm of surprise and fear that almost sent him tumbling backwards onto his ass. The ladder, thankfully, broke his fall when he wrapped an arm through one of its loops. Though that left him stumbling about like a half-drunken idiot trying to keep his feet underneath him and his shoulder from getting dislocated.

Smooth.

As he recovered his senses, the first thing he noticed was how much the woman looked like Mariah in even smaller features. Same cheekbones, and the same dark-almost purple-blue eyes. Besides the goofy outfit, the spear, and the completely-exposed muscles on one of her arms, it could almost have been the dead Star League Major’s twin.

It wasn’t of course. Because it wasn’t. But it could have been.

Grayson had to glance at the ‘muscles’ once again. Instead of the red, bloody masses he would have expected, they were bundles of green-tinged fibers that he’d seen countless times before under different circumstances. Replacing and splicing the bundles of myomer that provided a ‘Mech with its strength was a basic maintenance procedure he’d been schooled in as a child. Though he’d heard of highly-developed hospitals like that attached to the New Avalon Institute of Science grafting the odd strand of myomer into people to serve as replacement muscles, he’d never seen an entire limb apparently made out of the stuff! The woman’s right arm looked like one from a ‘Mech that had lost all of its protective armor.

Following the arm up, Grayson had to face the fact that, while her spear was not quite a spear, it was not any more technologically advanced than a spear. Instead of ending in a single point, her weapon dovetailed at the beginning of the blade into an upper and lower portion that he could only assume served some kind of purpose, but couldn’t even begin to guess as to what that was. Regardless, the weapon looked just as obsolete up close as it had when he was further away. There were no power lines or other telltale indicators of it being anything more than a pair of sharp things mounted on the end of a pole. So much for his theory of her being a Star League defense mechanism wielding a high-tech wonderweapon from the past.

He took some comfort in the knowledge that his theory wasn’t entirely disproven, though. The woman was clearly, like Mariah, a denizen of the Star League. Either that or she had decided on very strange jewelry to complement her very strange outfit. As pinned atop the blood-red bow that adorned the top of her blouse was a decorative star with its upper and righter points extended further than the others. The Cameron Star. Symbol of the Star League’s ruling family.

So he had a Star League woman dressed like a Draconis Combine schoolgirl with an arm that looked like it was state-of-the-art from some black Federated Suns R&D site. Standing less than a meter away from him on a Free Worlds League planet. Holding a ‘Mech-killing melee weapon a Lyran would sell their soul for. Staring at his mercenary ass the same way the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation probably stared at pictures of Hanse Davion.

It was frightening to a truly interstellar degree.

“Can I help you?” Gray offered dumbly, desperately trying to recover some amount of the initiative as he regained his balance. It certainly was not his best introduction, but there had been worse ones. Lori still didn’t like talking about how they’d met. At least he wasn’t threatening this woman with being cooked alive in the cockpit of a ‘Mech.

Who said talking to women was hard? Because they were right.

Maybe he just wasn’t meeting the right women?

Her eyes seemed to actually focus on him instead of just staring through him. He immediately wished they hadn’t.

“This Vessel is damaged. It believes you trustworthy. You will assist it for Me.” Even hesitating over every word as she was, Grayson could hear the importance she placed on the last one. He’d heard that kind of self-reverential tone only once before. It demanded immediate obedience and didn’t leave any room for questions.

Grayson opened his mouth to ask a question.

“It will require the application of large quantities of stored positive and negative electromagnetic charges. As only available at your ‘HPG’ generators.” The woman continued before he could speak, eyes going distant once again and staring through him without actually seeming to notice his presence.

She visibly shook after a long moment. “This Vessel assures Me you are able to provide such.”

Grayson began to form the first word of his question.

In a whip-like movement he couldn’t even begin to track, the weapon in her hands moved from nonthreateningly at her side to braced forward at him. The blade only a few centimeters from his neck.

The image of the ComStar acolyte being beheaded wormed its way into his head immediately. Deciding he didn’t really need to ask his question, Grayson shut his mouth with a sharp clack.

“Should any harm come to the Vessel be assured that all life on this planet will cease.” She continued, the blades of her spear creeping even closer to his neck.

Well that made him feel much better. No pressure at all. Why was it that every time he met new women, his life got more complicated or more dangerous?

“But who are—“ Grayson finally began.

The Cameron Star on her chest glowed for a moment with a violet-white sheen that seemed to slowly radiate out from its center. When it reached the furthest point on the ‘east’ of the star, there was a flash of blinding light. Grayson shied away, automatically throwing one of his arms up to try and block some of the harsh glare.

When it faded, the question he’d been about to ask was answered. Unfortunately, Mariah’s familiar form in front him, crumpled into a ball and with no sign of the spear or the strange clothing she had been in a moment earlier raised many, many more.

 

[prinCZess]

Vermilion Plains
Helm, Free Worlds League
17 June 3028

Grayson grunted almost as loud as Hassan and Davis did as they all strained to lift the body between them. Hassan was lucky. He had positioned it so he only had to life the legs. Grayson and the burly Caledonian were stuck trying to haul up a torso that weighed, in his humble estimate, about as much as a small hovercraft. Which was perhaps a little ironic, since they were loading it into a small hovercraft.

“Now. Over.” He growled between breaths as the body slowly rose. They all shuffled to the side and pushed, sending the body into the open-topped rear-seat of the small civilian hovercraft the Legion had snagged during its multi-day retreat. The cushion sagged onto the ground an extra centimeter or so as the weight settled into the vehicle, and he could have sworn the front-end had raised up as well.

The Gray Death Legion overcoat he’d wrapped over the body to hide the nakedness and, more-so, the green mass of exposed myomer that made up one of her—its?—hands slid halfway off, revealing the right side of the body. Grayson stiffened at the sight, head swimming with images of the same wounds shining with the crimson-red of human blood.

On a person, having the skin peeled off like that would have led to them slowly bleeding to death unless something could stem the loss. But it seemed to have no impact on Mariah. Still had a pulse the last he’d checked. The body wasn’t bleeding at all. He wasn’t certain whether that made him feel better or worse. A little bit of red blood might have almost been comforting to see from her. It would have made it more certain what she was at least. Or, at least, he thought it might have.

After a moment’s hesitation, he stretched over the side of the hovercraft and pulled the coat back into place.

“Ye’ certain you know what y’er doin’, Boss?” Davis asked as Grayson pushed himself back off the vehicle. The big man was rolling one shoulder that he’d apparently strained picking up the… Star League woman-mech that had gone by ‘Mariah’.

“No, I’m pretty much piloting by the seat of my pants on this one. But somebody has to see if our friendly dead Precentor left anything revealing behind. Besides, since we’re still part of the life on this planet our friendly, living, breathing piece of Lostech in there threatened to destroy, I’d rather not take any chances.” Grayson replied immediately, giving the man a jaunty smile he didn’t really feel as he propped his ass up against the rear of the hovercraft.

McCall was always prone to worrying anyways, so it was best to let him know that he wasn’t the only one who recognized a stupid idea when he saw it. It helped him feel less like the only sane man in Grayson’s band of nutjobs. Even if, for all intents and purposes, he was. Which, considering how batshit the scot could be, really said bad things about the Legion.

Grayson’s mind wandered back to the body in the rear-seat of the hovercraft, and he made a mental note that he needed to have a serious discussion about human resources with Lori. In particular, she needed to take over recruitment and public relations duties. Because he seemed to have some strange curse on his person that prevented him from encountering anyone normal.

Though, now that he thought of it, it had been Lori who had stumbled into Mariah, not him. Scratch her for that job.

McCall started to say something, but apparently thought better of it after giving the hovercraft a brief once-over. After an instant he shrugged, smiled, mouthed a well-wishing of some kind or another, and turned around to start back towards the dropship. It wasn’t like him to let Grayson off the hook that easy, but he could appreciate small miracles when he received them.

Hassan didn’t go as easily. Instead, he crossed his arms and gave a dark stare at the body in the rear of the hovercraft. Grayson couldn’t tell what exactly the thoughts behind his dark-brown eyes were, but he knew enough about the man to guess they weren’t all that friendly. Grayson had never—and would never—press about the former-assassin’s past. It was one of those Drac honor things he didn’t understand anyways.

Grayson shuddered slightly as the other man continued to scan over ‘Mariah’ and him. Hassan was another example of just how far normal was from the daily operations of the Gray Death Legion. Though at least his oddity was tempered by a no-nonsense attitude that had served Grayson well. But even years of friendship couldn’t eliminate the odd rumbling in Grayson’s stomach whenever the man was drawing on memories from his days before the Legion. It always turned him serious.

Well, more serious. Hassan was always serious.

“May I ask something personal?” Hassan finally asked, folding both arms over his chest.

Grayson nodded his assent, curiosity piqued. Hassan wasn’t one to ask questions. Sweeping statements and those annoying, philosophical reflections in poem-form every single person from the Combine seemed to be in love with? Certainly. Questions? Only to clarify how to properly execute an order.

“Why take her with you at all?”

Grayson had to laugh slightly at that, because it was a very good question. His excuse to McCall was exactly that, and in his own head he could admit it. But he didn’t have any alternative explanation. Answering Hassan with ‘I have no idea, I’m flying by the seat of my pants on that one as well’ didn’t seem appropriate, though.

“Well, we got through the tunnels and found all that stuff mainly thanks to—” Grayson fluttered a hand in Mariah’s direction instead of trying to puzzle out a pronoun. “But primarily I’m thinking of how useful those anti-Mech spears might be for our poor bloody infantry company. Talk about a force multiplier. If we can get some of those, we’ll be able to charge out the nose for our services. I’m talking Kell Hounds and Wolf’s Dragoons kind of prices.”

Hassan seemed to consider that for a long time.

“You are a poor excuse for a mercenary, Kolarasi.” He finally said.

In all the time he’d known Hassan, Grayson had never heard him use that particular stress of the word ‘mercenary’. The one that was popular in the Combine where it served as a stand-in insult for ‘dishonorable coward’. Grayson was about to take issue with the statement. But the other man moved on before he could.

“You should be very careful, though. She is djinniri.”

That sentence took precedence over a minor insult. Because Hassan couldn’t have said it. Because it was stupid. Silly. Childish. Hassan could not be serious. Grayson must have misheard.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“She is djinniri. Genie. They lie and deceive. It is a requirement of their nature. Be careful.” Hassan repeated, as if it wasn’t the silliest thing he’d ever said in his life.

“She’s a genie?” Grayson said one more time, just to be certain he was hearing right. “Hassan, don’t take this the wrong way, but did you ever get that knock to your head checked out?”

Hassan’s glare answered that question solidly enough. “Have you got a better explanation? It is the only thing that makes sense with all the—” Hassan gestured with his hand over his body, then wrapped up the movement by stabbing it outwards, spear-like.

Grayson had to admit, to himself at least, that he did not have a better explanation. But there was no sense in admitting that to anyone. It was hard enough admitting it to himself. Giving voice to that fear would shatter the illusion of confidence that was letting him try this harebrained stunt. To admit he had nothing to go on except a vague obligation he’d stupidly made would send him running back to the dropships and abandoning Helm, Mariah Hawkins, and whatever treasures might still be hidden in the cache that his men hadn’t had time to loot.

But he couldn’t let himself do that. Because…Because he was a mercenary and he’d made a verbal contract with the woman—thing?—in the back of the hovercraft. Mercenaries kept contracts.

“Of course I have a better explanation. A couple, in fact. I’m just waiting for all the evidence before committing to any one of them.” It was a true statement. Technically. ‘Star League techno-magic bullshit’ and its various iterations were a different explanation than ‘genie’, after all. Though looking back, ‘genie’ might not be inappropriate either. His people were alive and the Legion was inheriting a cache of Star League equipment. That was two wishes granted largely because of her—its?—intervention.

For his third wish, Grayson just wanted to know what the hell was going on. Why had a Precentor turned into some shadowy, black morass straight out of a kroner-store datapad novel? Had it only been the one Precentor involved in all this? Only him who had set up his unit to take the fall for the destruction of an entire city, or was there more to it?

Perhaps most importantly: Who—What?—actually was ‘Mariah Hawkins’? And were verbal contracts void if they were made with Star League weapons that happened to resemble people?

Then again, breaking promises made to genies never went well in all the stories he’d ever heard. And he had promised her voyage offworld…

Grayson shook himself out of his mental reverie when Hassan extended a hand. Clasping the other man’s wrist in the Azami fashion, Grayson couldn’t bring himself to meet Hassan’s eyes.

“Make sure McCall doesn’t try anything stupid before I make it back.”

“As you command.”

Grayson shared a brief moment of quiet with the other man before they both turned, almost at the same time, back to their jobs. Grayson let one hand float along the edge of the hovercraft as he crossed around it, the heat of the paint almost uncomfortably warm in the midday sun. He was being an idiot. But he didn’t see much choice.

When he looked into the vehicle itself to get in, he had to take a moment to try and come up with something suitable irate to say.

Lori didn’t wait.

“We can argue and fight over this, up to and including fisticuffs if that’s how you want it Grayson Death Carlyle. After which I will be coming along anyways but the trip will be much more awkward and you’ll have to apologize for the things you said in the heat of the moment.” Lori said, not even gracing him with a sideways glance from her position in the passenger seat.

“Or, you can get in, start the vehicle, and quit being a whiny, overprotective baby. Because I. Am. Coming.” She continued, finally turning her head to look at him. There were a very few instances where Grayson had seen Lori with that look in her eyes.

Grayson got in, performed a quick double-check on the diagnostic system for the hovercraft’s main engine, and then punched it to life. Perhaps one day, if he got enough firepower behind him and a high enough rank, maybe he’d actually get Lori to listen to him and do what he wanted.

But it was clearly not today. Maybe a title would help? Surely she’d listen to him if he was a baron or something?

The hovercraft glided into motion, shooting from a standstill to a comfortable hundred kilometers an hour in a few seconds. He’d have to slow down to preserve the somewhat-fragile skirt underneath soon enough once he got closer to the rocky, mountainous paths the Free Worlds League forces were still camped in. But for now the smooth grassland of the plateau made for easy traveling.

“So, besides annoying me, is there any particular reason you insist on coming with?” Grayson half-screamed. The wind that shot over the canopy of the hovercraft carried his words away almost instantly, but from the deepening frown on her face Lori must have heard him.

He had all but given up on getting an answer when she shifted position to look into the occupant of the back seat. She began to say something, but stopped with her mouth halfway open. Turning back to the front, she crossed her arms over her chest and became very interested in the dashboard. The blush that developed was adorable, if confusing.

“It’s stupid.”

Grayson tried not to laugh. He failed. “Hon, two hours ago I was certain you, me and everybody else were going to die. Then we got saved by a three-hundred year old woman in a leotard who killed a ‘Mech with a spear and that Hassan—who I have previously considered a fountain of stable, rational thought—thinks is a magical genie. I’ll take ‘stupid’ if it actually answers a question.”

Lori snorted slightly, obviously tried to fight down the reaction, and then burst into honest giggles. It was the cutest damned thing Grayson had ever seen and he found himself thankful the hovercraft mostly steered itself over the terrain they were on. It was a shame she always fought down her laughter in public. It was one of the most beautiful things about her.

Though, he had to admit, this sounded a little more unhinged than any he’d ever heard before.

“Alright. Fine. Idiot.” She muttered as the laughter subsided. She twisted around in her seat to once again look back on their unconscious passenger—cargo?—and shook her head.

“Mom and dad grew up on Sigurd.” Lori paused, narrowed one eye to fight back a collection of moisture that grew there, “Their parents grew up on Sigurd. All the way back to when the planet was colonized. And mom and dad would always tell this story, a ‘family legacy’ they called it…You said she threatened to destroy the planet?”

Grayson started slightly at the sudden transition, “Yeah. ‘All life shall cease’ or something to that affect.”

Lori nodded, and her voice took on the half-lilting tenor of someone reciting something they’d heard too many times. “In time will come the saturnine woman the League ordained to be in charge of terraforming. As the ships alit from Home, so too did she. And when our labors grow enough, Sigurd will be blessed by her…And the scythe she wields that can end this alien life and herald a life as humans were meant to live. Warm, on open ground, under the sun. We need just wait and work.”

Grayson wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. The spear Mariah had been throwing around could, maybe, be called a ‘scythe’. But that meant…He wasn’t really sure what it meant, but it certainly didn’t mean anything that actually helped explain things. Silence settled over the hovercraft, the only noise the whining drone of the hovercraft’s engine as it pushed them forward.

“Lori. Don’t tell me your siding with Hassan’s ‘she’s magic’ stuff? Please? I am not prepared to be the reasonable and down-to-earth one in this relationship.”

Lori coughed lightly. “I said it was stupid. Besides, I don’t actually believe it. Obviously it’s a fairy tale. But…Maybe she inspired it or something? It makes me curious.”

Grayson couldn’t argue with that. If there was one thing Mariah had him, it was ‘curious’. He just hoped that curiosity wasn’t going to get him killed. She—it?—Was going to owe him if they lived and this worked.

What was he supposed to do once they reached the HPG?

The grassland slowly turned to the rock-covered brown of the mountain pass, and soon enough Grayson was passing by the point he and the others had made their stand earlier. The virtually-intact Awesome that Mariah had stabbed with the spear that morning still sat where it had slumped on the battlefield. He had to fight down a shudder as they passed in front of it, utterly and completely vulnerable to any of the weapons that were still operational on it.

Despite the rocky ground, Grayson pushed the hovercraft to a higher speed.

The Free Worlds League force had made camp much further away than he would have thought. They had abandoned three of the tight passes that Grayson and the rest of the Legion had fought them from the preceding evening, apparently only stopping their rout when they’d reconnected with their infantry and ground support elements. More surprisingly, they’d also started the process of making fortifications. Grayson might have pleased, and perhaps even amused, if he didn’t completely understand the sentiment.

To his immense relief, the white flag they hung out served its purpose in gaining them a peaceful audience with the FWL commander. At least initially.

“Major! Arrest this man immediately! This is Grayson Carlyle himself! The man who ordered the destruction of Tiantan!”

The shriek originated from a rather portly man in a medal-bedecked uniform who stood just outside a small knot of Free Worlds League officers. From prior experience, Grayson could peg the man as ‘Lord Garth’ of Irian. The incompetent who had largely been responsible for the Gray Death Legion surviving to enter the Star League cache.

The Major who the League nobleman was screaming to was leaning over a map surrounded by other, lower-ranking officers. He straightened, and Grayson’s eyes were met by a big man, at least 200 centimeters tall and seemingly just as wide. Grayson had to wonder how he even fit inside anything lighter than an Assault ‘Mech, and reached the uncomfortable conclusion he probably didn’t. Unlike Garth, his uniform was absent of any ornaments or medals. It, in fact, bore distinctive crease-marks from where it had been unfolded and still hadn’t contoured to his body.

Grayson hoped that meant something that at least resembled a fair hearing from a fellow warrior, but he wasn’t about to bet on it. Just as possible it was a newly-promoted idiot who’d had a uniform flown out to him. Some Free Worlders took cues from the Lyrans in how much to value being ‘dressed for success’.

“Is it?” The gigantic man said, bringing one hand to his chin and tilting his head slightly. There was undisguised contempt in his eyes as he locked gazes with the nobleman, and Grayson felt a splurge of hope. Infighting among the enemy at this stage could only be good for him. Well. So long as the right side was superior at the moment.

From the way the guardsman who flanked the hovercraft exchanged looks and brought their hands onto their rifles, the Major might be in command at the moment, but it wasn’t a firm command. In the Free Worlds League, the chain of command could be somewhat…Fluid.

“Of course it is! And he must be executed immediately! You four! Get him out of that vehicle!”

That brought the guards to a much firmer attention, and they actively latched onto their rifles. Two of them began to approach the hovercraft, while the other two desperately looked towards the Major for direction. That direction actually ended up coming from another source entirely.

“The League will be put under a ComStar Interdiction if any one of you so much as touches this man or his associates!”

Grayson had thought he’d never feel anything but intense and deep hatred for Comstar and its members. The robed man who pushed his way past a few of the guardsman to shield the hovercraft with his body disproved him. In that instant, he could have kissed the acolyte and agreed to a multi-year contract protecting the man with no salvage rights.

As was to be expected, the mere mention of ‘ComStar interdiction’ brought all movement to a halt and inspired an eerie quiet to fall over the encampement. Even the guardsman who’d been about to fulfill Lord Garth’s orders stepped back and brought their laser-rifles back to port-arms. They balked, heads twisting so they could alternate looking at the acolyte, the Major, and Lord Garth in turn, but they remained where they were.

“What do you think you’re doing boy—” Lord Garth began, only to be interrupted.

“As the ranking local representative of ComStar and its interests, I am exercising ComStar’s authority as a neutral third party to extend a guarantee of safe passage to this man and those with him in the interests of negotiating a ceasefire and performing a more thorough investigation of the events on Tiantan.” The robed man—more of a boy now that Grayson looked closely—took on a very smug tone. “Should you take issue with my handling of this affair, you may contact our complaint department on Atrius.”

Grayson had to mentally remind himself that laughing would probably inspire Garth to order him shot whatever the consequences.

“Major, you cannot let this go!”

The Major had already returned to examining the map on the table. “A ComStar edict has been declared, milord. My hands are tied. I am just as disappointed as you are and shall surely urge my superiors to bring this matter to Precentor Atreus.”

He did not sound at all disappointed.

*********************************************
ComStar HPG Compound
Helmsdown, Helm, Free Worlds League
17 June 3028

HPG Network Available – Password protected

“—nutty tech-worshippers insist she’ll be up any moment now…”

The voice was distant and muffled, seeming to fade and flow in intensity at random intervals. Hard to judge, but it almost sounded worried.

Power levels – nominal. Stable supply available.

Primary Systems available - Not enough ports for positive feedback control of nearby (x3) BattleMech units.

“No.”

A strange word to say on its own. Whoever the voice was, they must be speaking to someone on a com unit.

Secondary Systems available upon request. Multiple individual connections possible.

“No! I’ll handle it…I’ll handle it. I said I’ll—Gray? Gray? Oh come on, again? I swear I am going to put you in a wheelchair. Maybe then you’ll have to actually listen to me for a change.”

Not worried anymore. Now the voice was starting to get angry, and that was making it sound much more familiar.

Tertiary Systems – Nominal. Thermal regulation systems returned to human default. System fully recharged. Significant agonist introduction to open μ-opioid receptors. Current excess of provided energy being routed to self-repair processes. Would you like to know more?

Ho—Mariah shoved aside the question in her half-dazed bliss. The mental brutality seemed to surprise the portion of her thoughts that were computerized, and they dutifully retreated to their own duties.

Computers didn’t handle the messy realm of human emotion very well. Usually, they drove the human crazy. But Mariah had found a way to beat that. She’d driven the computer crazy! Much better that way.

The withdrawal of the mechanized input left her alone with the image of a decapitated head that was seared into her biological mind. Perhaps worse was the sensation of thrusting the glaive through the neck below that she could still feel. It had been laughably easy to do, physically. Just like the last times, hardly any effort had been required to push the blade through skin and inside.

That was when she had quite paying much attention to anything.

There had been no choice. No other way. Not that she could accomplish. It hadn’t really even been her doing it!

One of the Others would have found another way. But she never did. She never could. She just had to be happy the bitch hadn’t taken the entire planet. At least She hadn’t killed allies this time.

“Feeling alright?”

Mariah opened her eyes, not quite able to reconcile the gentle, almost friendly, voice she was hearing with who she associated that voice with. Her doubts about who the speaker could be were misplaced though. It was, indeed, Lori Kalmar.

Sitting at the edge of the bed, the woman had a book-reader lying half-forgotten at her waist. She was smiling. It was ridiculous. The woman had been practically holding a gun against Mariah’s back a few—a little while ago.

Five hours and thirty-seven minutes have passed since this body entered a comatose recovery state.

“I am not in physical pain.” Mariah said, forcing her neck to move so she could look at her arm. Someone had taken the time to wrap it in bandages. An unnecessary expenditure, but somehow comforting at the same time. Triage protocols said one didn’t use bandages on those who were going to die—or be killed.

Though whether triage protocols applied or not, she couldn’t be sure. She, thankfully, didn’t seem to be in a hospital. The room lacked the nose-defiling bite of antiseptics, the pristine-but-disgusting over-sanitation and cleanliness of a typical hospital-room, and the bedframe lacked the disturbing aura they took on after supporting too many deaths.

“Which is why I asked if you were feeling alright rather than just if you were in any pain.” Lori said, shaking her head. “So let’s try again. Are you feeling alright?”

Mariah stared, trying to gauge what the woman wanted from her. The best way of making it through interrogation was to establish the relationship very early and stick to revealing a limited and utterly irrelevant group of details to the interviewer. The kid-gloves Lori seemed to have put on were throwing off that advice, though.

“I am confused.” Mariah finally settled on responding, drawing out each word as much as she could as she glanced around the room.

It definitely wasn’t a hospital, that much she could be sure of. The pictures on the wall were of people in various locations around Helm instead of the more generalized landscapes hospitals resorted to. In a nearby closet there were racks of clothes, mostly robes and formal male attire but with the occasional piece of leisure-wear mixed in, all of which would definitely not fit her. On the desk was a small tri-vid display, endlessly repeating a short loop of an elderly couple waving. The only vaguely ceremonial or generalized decoration in the entire room was a banner on the door that depicted a series of differently-colored circles shining light downwards.

Lori snorted lightly and her tone took on a slight bite that made it much more familiar, “Join the regiment. We’re all confused. You seem to be making a habit of doing that to us. I’d say something like ‘turnabout is fair play’, but I think we’re a little more confused than you.”

Mariah couldn’t think of any way to respond to that, so she didn’t.

“You’ve got the rumor mill buzzing. Half the Legion thinks you’re Morgan Kell’s long-lost ancestor. The other half is quite convinced you’re some kind of Star League special weapons project. You even managed to crack Hassan. He insists you’re a genie. Would you care to alleviate any of that confusion?” Lori asked, folding her lips over one another.

It must be a variant of the ‘good interrogator’, ‘bad interrogator’ strategy. Lori was acting as the ‘good’ one, for some inexplicable reason. But if she refused to divulge anything, then the ‘bad’ one would come out. Though that situation did ignore the obvious help they’d already given her when she was unconscious.

She hated people sometimes. They were too confusing. At least Darkness and Chaos was straightforward and easy to deal with one way or another.

“What does Carlyle believe?” Mariah muttered. The question didn’t matter, but the longer she distracted Lori the more time she’d have to plan some kind of escape. That was definitely what she was asking for.

“I couldn’t tell you. He’s in one of his moods. Hard to talk to when he gets into those. He’s been diving through ComStar records for the last bit, though. I can guess that ‘anti-Mech infantry weapons’ were high-up on his priority list. Just below ‘living shadow monsters’ and ‘combat skirts’.”

Mariah winced at the reference to Saturn’s attire. One would think that an ancient, magical kingdom might have come up with more practical attire for its protectors to wear into battle. It would have been nice if they at least covered a little more skin.

“And you?” She heard herself ask, continuing the reversal of the interrogation.

Lori slowly pushed herself back into the chair, and one hand crossed over her chest to prop itself below her jaw. Her eyes narrowed after few seconds, the momentary trace of confusion banished in an instant.

“I’m just as confused as Hassan but less prone to suddenly putting undue stock in the stories I heard as a child. You’re trying to dodge my question. Again. Why don’t you just explain to me what the hell you are and what the hell happened out there? I can guarantee I’m taking this better than Gray is and you don’t have much longer before he takes over.”

Ah. So it was a ‘good-cop, bad-cop’ strategy. That wasn’t surprising. But that didn’t change how utterly unprepared she was to explain anything. What was she supposed to do? Say ‘I’m the last of a team of superpowered reincarnated women from the distant past who protected the Star League from capital-E Evil?’

That was liable to get her a short trip from the room she was in to one with much more padding. If she wasn’t already headed there.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Mariah finally said, feeling somewhat awkward saying something so true. Even before, she had never been the one who had to explain things to people.

“The beginning?” Lori prompted, almost automatically.

That was a rather amusing suggestion.

“Well, James McKenna staged a coup against the Terran Alliance’s incompetent government with the help of Uranus and Neptune-” Mariah hesitated for a moment, realizing she was going to have to explain that as well.

Explaining things was hard. Now she could clearly remember why she’d always left it to the Others.

Lori scoffed loud enough for it to be physically felt. “Alright, maybe not the beginning of the entire Star League, alright? Stars above, you are without a doubt the most infuriating person to talk to in the entire Inner Sphere.”

A loud series of incomprehensible yells suddenly beat their way through the walls from outside the room. They were followed a few moments later by a wall-echoing thunk. The yells rose in pitch, some of them finally getting loud enough to be recognizable as curse words and their speaker identified by the tone of his voice.

“Second most infuriating person to talk to in the entire Sphere.” Lori corrected with a deep sigh as the door opened.

Grayson Carlyle stood in the frame for a moment, chest heaving up and down in a shirt that was half-soaked in sweat. There was a wide brown spot where he had quite evidently spilled something very recently. Mariah suspected the reason he looked so angry had nothing to do with the spill.

“We. Need. To talk.” Grayson said, the words coming in harsh bites in-between heaving gasps of air. He took a few steps inside the room, tossing the door closed behind him. It slapped against the hand of a robed man behind him with a sharp crack, but the other man ignored what had to be an extraordinarily painful hit to almost gently close the door.

Grayson wasn’t all that big, but when his entire attention was on something he could accomplish ‘intimidating’ very easily. Being in a bed, more than even meeting him entirely naked the first time, only made that feeling worse. There was something about being comfortable while someone was angry at you that felt very wrong.

Being high on drugs probably didn’t help either. She was getting really tired of the machine in her head screwing with her perception all the time with such things. Eventually it had to run out of material to synthesize drugs with, right?

“Gray, calm down.” Lori said, rising from her seat.

“Oh, I am calm. Calmest I’ve been in days. Being surrounded by the folks who were trying to kill me and everyone I know this morning is just a recipe for making me calm.” Grayson said, his eyes not even shifting from Mariah’s.

He didn’t look very calm.

“And calm waters run deep, Lori. Deep enough to start asking the big, important questions.”

Lori raised one eyebrow, “Like what?”

“Like ‘What the hell are you’, for starters!” Grayson snapped, the words growled so loudly that they shook some of the smaller knick-knacks on the desk.

Even through the drug-induced haze, Mariah winced at that. The sentiment at least still recognized her as a person, but the tone certainly didn’t. Grayson spoke the words in the same cold way that generations of Star League scientists had discussed ‘its status’ and ‘what the hell is wrong with it’ when they gathered around her after a particularly damaging ‘event’.

Lori was about to say something, likely something insulting and angry judging by the furrow that developed in between her eyes. But the robed man behind Grayson interrupted before she could begin.

“She is a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.”

The room went very quiet. So quiet that when Grayson turned to the man, the fabric of his shirt could be clearly heard rustling together. Lori’s jaw worked for a moment in an attempt to say something, but she didn’t manage to actually produce any words. Everyone stared at the young ComStar acolyte. He seemed to be about to go on, but withered underneath their eyes.

Unlike the other two, Mariah wasn’t all that surprised. If anything Grayson had told her when she’d been ‘Mariah’ held up, then ComStar and its members were the closest thing to an intellectual class the Inner Sphere had left. The man might have recognized her arm for what it was, or noticed the self-repair mechanism doing its job on it and put two-and-two together. Or maybe, she could hope, he’d been able to track her connection to the HPGs artificial jump point once she’d come into close enough proximity by the resulting disturbances! It would be so nice to have someone intelligent to explain things to! It would make things so much easier!

The robed man laughed nervously. He seemed to physically force himself not to retreat under the three pairs of eyes that were leveled at him. Planting his feet in the carpet of the floor, one hand unconsciously started to flex into a fist. A nervous habit if she’d ever seen one. Intellectuals tended to develop them as a way of dealing with social situations they were uncomfortable with.

“You could have mentioned this before, Eli.” Lori said.

“I wasn’t certain until I saw some of the scans! Besides. I actually—uh—saw it in an old action vid. It seems to fit.”

Then again, idiots could also develop nervous habits. She couldn’t rely on an idiot to explain things. Perhaps…Perhaps it was time she actually participated in a conversation. If for no other reason than to keep Grayson from recategorizing her as an ‘it’.

“I am not a ‘cybernetic organism’. They just gave me cybernetic parts. And myomer replacements for my muscles. And whatever else the best and brightest of the Hegemony could come up with, ‘to make me more efficient at carrying out my duties and more compliant in obeying the orders given me in the course thereof’.”

Mariah crossed her arms in a futile attempt to relieve the soreness that had developed below her abdomen as she spoke. “And they removed anything that got in the way.”

Mariah couldn’t figure out if the dryness in her mouth was a result of the drugs or the words. She decided she would blame the drugs. It made for a convenient excuse, at least. She did her best to scowl towards the ComStar acolyte, but the inability to really feel her face made her unsure how successful the attempt was.

“I am Mariah Hawkins. Duchess Saturn and, on those occasions She uses my body, Sailor Saturn.” Another partial lie, but at least this time it was mostly true instead of fabricated wholly. She was, after all, Duchess Saturn and Sailor Saturn.

The room once again went quiet as the grave with her words. Which was perfectly fine with her. Even through the detachment provided by the drugs, she hurt. The awkward silence gave her time to fight aside that old pain.

Everyone else decided on the same instant to speak their mind.

“So multiple personalities, then?” Grayson said, one hand rising to shoulder-level with the palm upraised.

“Duchess Saturn? Sailor Saturn?” Lori repeated, almost whispering.

“You’re one of the Guardians?” The ComStar acolyte asked, eyes just about popping out of his head. He looked to be on the verge of bowing.

It figured that it would be the dumbest of the three with the best question. And it was truly saying something that he could be the dumbest, because Lori and Grayson were—kindhearted and commendable as they were—exceptionally stupid. Though that might just be the poor state of education in the Inner Sphere. God, one of their men thought she was a genie!

This was not going to be easy. She was going to have to use short words. Perhaps a diagram was called for? Perhaps if she just went in order it would be easier? Work her way to the more confusing parts?

“Multiple personalities might not be the worst way of putting it...” Mariah trailed off as she realized she didn’t know how to continue and gave a slight shrug. She moved her eyes to Lori.

“Yes, ‘Sailor Saturn’ and ‘Duchess Saturn’. Ever since the Cameron edict of 2351 in the latter case, anyways. He reserved the nine planets of the solar system as titles for us.” Mariah ignored the stab of pain the final words evoked from below her abdomen and focused on moving on. The entire family was dead. That was about as much revenge as could be expected for what he and his descendants had done. Not that she should desire something so petty. But it was very hard not to.

“Nine planets?” Grayson began, only to shake aside the question. “No, never mind that. I think you were just getting to the part where you explained what ‘Guardians’ were and how it relates to you beating up shadowy, darkness-covered ‘Mechs in a frilly skirt…And what the hell ComStar Precentor’s are doing turning into black goo-creatures…And why the hell you’d threaten to blow up the planet if I don’t help you when you’re done and, and, and—” Grayson faltered, suddenly snapping his attention back to her. He still sounded like he wanted to throttle her, but it was at least tempered somewhat by confusion.

Or could that be fear?

“Wait. Wait. No. Slow down and let’s refill the helium tanks on this jumpship to crazy.” Grayson said. In Mariah’s opinion he was the only one who needed to slow down. “There’s more of you?”

Mariah took a deep breath. Eli seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but she spoke up before he could. It would be best to try and answer something herself. No matter how painful it was undoubtedly going to be.

“There were.”

Mariah pushed herself up and scooted to the edge of the bed. She took another deep breath. She could do this. From…Not the beginning. That would take too long, be too complicated and require more honesty than she cared for. But from a suitable midpoint.

She caught a corner of her lip ticking upwards as she began and forced it back to its regular place. “I’m the last of nine superpowered women from the distant past that were reincarnated in the latter part of the twentieth century and charged with protecting Earth, and later on the Hegemony and the League in general from the forces of Evil—as possessed the ComStar Precentor I killed—by the Moon Princess. Who also served as Sailor Moon. She and her husband would have ruled over a new golden age of mankind had the Cameron's not been allowed to usurp the position in the interest of keeping peace.”

Quiet.

“You know, I think I might have preferred 'genie' as an explanation. Made more sense.” Grayson finally said, resting back against the wall of the room.

Eli seemed to have crossed from awe to outright hero-worship. His knees were visibly shaking and before he propped himself on the edge of the desk he looked to be on the verge of dropping to his knees and proclaiming some kind of divine revelation. It made Mariah distinctly uncomfortable since she didn't deserve it.

Lori was the most well-prepared, being already seated, and merely leaned backwards. "So what do you--or is it Saturn?--do besides take out 'Mechs and decapitate evil Precentors?"

Mariah hadn't expected such a coherent question and shrugged, "I mainly just survive. That's the point of the cybernetic parts. Saturn? She is Death. The Grim Reaper. Change and entropy incarnated. She kills--or changes--planets. Bringing down the Glaive can cause all kinds of variations that can make planets more habitable as Old is cleared away for New. For centuries the Star League's use for her was as a primary step in new terraforming efforts."

Grayson snorted and rubbed his face with a hand. "You're saying you were some kind of wish-granting superwoman that the Star League's Department of Mega-Engineering used to change planets?"

"Yes. Or destroy them." She didn't need to elaborate on how they'd gotten Her to do that. Such explanation would only lead to questions that would be even more awkward.

Eli thunked against the floor, apparently unable to stand any longer. Grayson went very pale. Lori blinked in the slow, deliberate manner of someone attempting to come to terms with finding out a childhood friend was a mass-murderer. Which was perhaps the most sensible reaction Mariah could imagine.

HPG Station accessed. Retrieving personal mail for all aliases...

1 New Message. Access Y/N? Y.

Mariah couldn't conceal her surprise at the contents of the message and the total lack of condemnation within. She couldn't have forgotten. So why?

 

[prinCZess]

HPG Message-collection Center—Private, Noncommercial
Geneva, Terra
17 June 3028

“Will that be all, Missus Meiou?”

It took her a moment to respond to the comment. It had been a long time since she’d heard her maiden name spoken. A long time, even, since she’d thought of herself using it.

“Oh yes, of course. All finished up, now. Thank you so much for your help, I’m afraid it’s just been so long since I had to send a message and all this new technology can be so confusing sometimes.” Setsuna said, nodding enthusiastically and waving one hand up-and-down in time with her head to add to the effect.

The robed girl who’d shown her how to use the hilariously jerry-rigged and dilapidated equipment for composing and sending a message almost visibly inflated with the thanks. Or perhaps it was pride in her Order? Either way it wasn’t very proper. But she was only in her teens. Teenagers could be a handful to teach proper etiquette and decorum. At least she was appropriately courteous.

“ComStar does its best to preserve and advance what remains of human technology.” She said. A hand emerged from the folds of the robe to flutter towards the exit, “May the peace of Blake be upon you in the remainder of your day.”

“Thank you.” Setsuna repeated again, unsure how else to respond.

It was a little funny, really. Jerome Blake would have been mortified at becoming a religious icon. Or at the very least would have spent a few hours in discussion with the girl to try and draw out whether she had an honest belief that could be beneficial or if it was just the result of slavish devotion to her Order’s code because it was all she knew. Setsuna suspected she knew the answer already, but she didn’t have time to concern herself with such a minor matter at the moment. There were larger players in ComStar she needed to be concerned with.

Which was a first. After so long without any need to concern herself with the passage of time or the efficient usage of it at all, it was very odd to suddenly be back in the realm where it mattered. Where what she decided to do with every moment had that pressing feeling of weight and importance that was missing from the limbo she’d occupied for so many years. She’d actually had to buy a datapad just so she had something that would help her keep track of ‘time’ as a measurement rather than just a concept.

She was still embarrassed by that. But she’d get used to it again. In time.

Stepping onto the crowded streets, Setsuna effortlessly slid herself into the stream of foot-traffic on the nearest automated walkway. She only had a half-hour to reach the University to make her appointment. Centuries before it would have been plenty of time to cross the city. But ComStar’s efforts at preserving the decaying transportation infrastructure in Geneva had not been as successful as they might like. On her way to the HPG facility, there had been multiple sections where the automatic walkway had been completely inoperable. She suspected the route to the University would be similar.

Perhaps she didn’t have to worry about it too much. She couldn’t be certain that anyone would meet her at the University. Or, for that matter, if there was any point to it if they did. The program Ami had coded into the HPG network might not have worked properly, and after so long she doubted that what she needed would still be there. For all she knew, all she’d done was send a message out to an office that no longer existed.

A communicator would’ve made things much easier, but she wasn’t entirely confident in using that network anymore. Amaris and his minions had compromised it before. Having to use the HPG to contact Saturn was risky enough.

All she could do was cross her fingers and hope that fate delivered what was needed.

Surprisingly, the trip to the university was free of any maintenance delays. What it wasn’t free of was other pedestrians. Some mid-level FedSun noble was apparently visiting the campus to give a presentation on some of the provisions of the FedCom Accords that had, until recently, remained classified. There were scores of students and others flocking onto the university grounds to attend, many of them with ribbons or pins that signaled their opposition or support for the move.

The signage some of them carried proclaiming Hanse Davion as a new Amaris or painting Maximillian Liao as Satan with epicanthic folds was a bit much, in her opinion. As were the screaming arguments and near-riots the folks carrying those signs got into as she tried to make her way to the Archives building. ComStar’s police forces, looking very regal and authoritative on their horses at the edges of the protests, were not present in either enough number or with enough force to control the unruly mobs on both sides. Fistfights seemed to be the primary method by which their disagreements were settled.

“Re-sist! Re-sist! Resist the Steiner Fist!” One group of protestors bellowed.

Setsuna moved around the outside of them, trying to stick to the small bit of walkway that seemed to be neutral ground between them and their opposition. That opposition, many of whom sported mailed fists on their lapels, responded to the chant with their own suggestion that those screaming it do something anatomically impossible in front of Takashi Kurita. Setsuna had to push her way through the end of the crowd to avoid being caught-up in the ensuing fight that broke out. Apparently, the Kuritan solution to the Steiner Fist was to hit the ones bearing it with their own fists.

A real Japanese would have more self-control.

“Hanse, Hanse, you big ba-by, you can keep your Aris-toc-ra-cy!”

She winced as she was forced into another portion of the near-riot. That chant was rather painful to even listen to. It didn’t flow very well and the ones chanting it clearly ran out of breath halfway through, so it lost virtually all of its impact. The fact it came from a group rallying around the clutched-sword flag of the Capellan Confederation only made it worse. There was little in the universe worse than a self-righteous protestor who didn’t recognize their own hypocrisy.

Setsuna managed to make it past the Capellans without incident. There seemed to be a few more of the ComStar police stationed near that crowd, so they were apparently forced into being more low-profile.

At first, she thought that she was through it. Her pace picked up as the number of people thinned, and the sounds of the other protestors slowly began to fade behind her as she put some distance between them and herself. However, she realized her mistake when one of the people walking beside her withdrew a small megaphone from their backpack and directed it to the sky.

“What do we want?” The girl yelled through the device, lending her voice a half-muffled and tinny quality that was especially painful on the ears.

The crowd’s responses were not as uniform as the girl had apparently expected.

“Subsidized HPG traffic?”

“A New Captain-General?”

“Lower taxes?”

“Free Andurien!”

“Elections?”

As she walked, the loose gathering of people disintegrated into small—sometimes individual on individual—pockets of bickering and disagreement over how they should respond to the question. Which pretty much cemented the crowd as being made of people from the Free Worlds League. Did they even know where they were or why they had come, or had someone just promised them free food?

At least it made them easy to get around.

Luckily for her, the Archives building itself was much less busy. Aside from an offhand glance from a young man at the front desk, she might as well have had the building to herself. Annoying as the political side-show might be, it did make for a useful distraction.

Particularly when the man proved much more concerned with that side of things as opposed to little things like letting non-students or non-teachers into the records-basement. He never even asked for an identification. Which made the forged teacher credentials she’d spent a solid ten hours making—granted, most of them coming from her having to figure out how to use the clunky software ComStar had made standard in the 31st century—utterly pointless. But she told herself not to be too angry about it. The man had, after all, tried to ask her out.

Still had it.

The solitude and quiet of the lift, and the records basement after, were an immense relief after the screaming hellhole she’d had to thread her way through above. The musty, paper-and-stale-air smell almost exactly matched that of the limbo she’d been forced into for the past years, but somehow it was calming anyways.

Setsuna had to fight down a smirk at the thought of whether or not they had any copies of the Immortal Warrior in any of the rooms. Probably not. Such wouldn’t be high-culture enough unless the College’s perspectives had changed since she’d last been here…Which was, admittedly, possible.

She idly fiddled with the nearby boxes and computer storage towers as she waited, running a finger over faded labels and occasionally pausing to squint at one that had been sitting so long it had collected too much dust to be easily read. On a whim, she opened a box labeled ‘Misc’.

The box held manila envelopes stacked with primary documents from a rather frighteningly wide set of dates. There didn’t seem to be any order to them, either. Which might have been insulting to her inner professor if it wasn’t for the fact they were such an eclectic mix of documents anyways. On top was what she hoped was a copy of the blueprints for the University’s ‘Cameron Hall’, built in 2400 AD. But the very next item in the stack was a booklet of mimeographed sheets that detailed the specifications of a fusion-powered all-terrain vehicle the Archaeological Department had purchased in 3010.

She closed the box and set it back in its place on the shelf. It was possible that whoever organized the things, if anyone, had their own system for keeping track of what was what. Thomas had been terrible about leaving his notes spread out all over the place in seemingly random piles that had only made sense to him. One time he’d even—

The lift made a slight buzzing sound, jerking her back to the present. With a practiced walk that wasn’t hurried but still managed to move her quicker than a more relaxed speed would have, Setsuna took up a position on the far side of the shelving from the lift’s exit. Close enough that she could see through the spaces in the shelving and tell who it was, but far enough away that it would give her a minor advantage over her pursuer if she needed to make a break for it.

The man who exited the lift did not look like the kind even a mouse would think of running away from. He, in fact, looked more like a university professor than a good number of actual university professors Setsuna had seen. White was streaked through his hair, and his face was more wrinkles than smooth lines. But there was an indescribable air of knowledge about him. As if he would have a valuable insight into something even if he didn’t know the actual answer.

The only thing that spoiled the appearance was the way his head twisted left-and-right and his eyes bounced around the room, scanning for threats. That was decidedly not the appearance of a professor. At least, it wasn’t the typical appearance of a professor. She imagined the protest-riots going on outside were causing no small number of teachers to adopt similar mannerisms for the day in the interest of mere survival.

He was exactly who she was waiting for. The fact he had shown up at all said good things. But the obvious fear he was in counteracted it completely.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“Hello. Can I help you find something?” Setsuna said. She allowed a trace of an accent to enter into the German words and peeked out from behind the shelf she was at.

“Ah. Yes. I suppose.” The man said after a slight jump where he clutched the bag at his side. The move looked out of place on a man his age. It might have been more believable on someone forty or fifty years his junior, and even then she would have giggled at it.

“I’m trying to find the records on the…uh…Sailor Wars?”

Well hurray for the 31st century's communications. Sometimes they did work.

“I think I can help with that. Would you follow me?” Setsuna said, trying to tamp down the flutter of excitement his words had brought. It was so nice when things went right for a change, and even better when she got to actually take part in them! Watching shit repeatedly go wrong for centuries was not her idea of a good time.

“No. No. No. I need to go. Just…Just here. I don’t want to know any more than I have to.” He said, sliding the shoulder-strap of the bag off and practically throwing it into her hands. She barely had a hold of it before he was retreating back to the lift and slammed the call button.

“He also wanted me to tell you ‘the clergy isn’t reliable’.” The man continued, now holding both hands up as he backed into the lift. The doors were closing almost before she had a chance to get a single word in.

“Wait, I need—” She began, only for the doors to close before she could finish the sentence.

She wasn’t quite sure how to take any of that. Worse, now she had to question whether or not her message hadn’t gotten garbled in transmission somehow. What possible explanation existed for that kind of behavior?

Perhaps the larger question was whether things had even gone right.

Setsuna tore open the bag. The top was filled with miscellaneous odds and ends that anyone might carry in a hanbag, and for a moment her throat was parched in the absolute fear that they wouldn’t be there. But tucked away underneath a semi-hidden flap in the bag were what she had been looking for.

Setsuna collapsed against the rack behind her and let the bag dangle at her feet. Confusing as it might have been, at least she’d gotten what she needed. She brought her head up towards the ceiling, and let herself just calm down and breathe in the relaxing, stale air.

Now, she just had to hope the message to Saturn had made it.




ComStar HPG Compound
Helmsdown, Helm, Free Worlds League
17 June 3028

Mariah mentally cast aside the HPG message and shot off the bed, both because it was the right thing to do and because it was the first step in carrying out the message’s directions. If she was to make an interstellar trip with anything resembling subtlety, she would need Grayson Carlyle and his Gray Death Legion to help her do it.

She dropped almost immediately to one knee beside the fallen ComStar acolyte. She wasted a single heartbeat wondering if he deserved the worry, but cast the second-guessing aside. She’d have been able to tell if he didn’t. Besides, she wasn’t really doing this for him. Appearances could be more convincing and useful than complete honesty.

Carefully, and ignoring the stab of self-hatred the thought elicited in her stomach, she rolled Eli onto his back. There was nothing on his robes she could see that might constrict bloodflow, but they also concealed most of his body. Perhaps ComStar required its members to wear constricting clothing underneath the robes? It wouldn’t be the weirdest religious command she’d ever heard of.

She ripped the robes aside. There were no garments underneath, which meant no constriction of blood vessels.

Mariah scooted forward slightly to lean over the acolyte’s face. He was breathing, but his eyes were unresponsive. Which was probably better for him. Her presence wouldn’t help, since she was the one who’d caused the whole episode in the first place.

But when did her presence ever help? Best to do what she could anyways. Now that she could.

Mariah ripped off the bandages that were over her arm, wincing slightly at the feedback the newly-grown synthskin covering the appendage sent. Ignoring the questioning head-tilts from both Gray and Lori, she used the free hand to force Eli’s legs up slightly. She could explain later.

She let her left hand—the one whose covering she was more used to now—rest on Eli’s chest, letting it rise and fall in rhythm with his breathing. Focusing on the prickling hairs that rubbed against the palm of her left hand and the smooth fabric of his robe in her right, she let Herself push outwards towards him. His eyes fluttered open just as she began to feel Her reach through the left-hand, and she reflexively clenched her right to slow the process.

“You experienced a syncope.” She said, disliking the feel of so many words. But that was Her thinking, not her.

With a heave, She pushed past the barrier of the Vessel’s hand and into the other Sentient Thing.

No medical danger. The pressure of the fluids inside were returning to what would be typical of other Sentient Things its age. The beat of its vascular muscle was also proceeding at an even pace. There was no indication of an internal fluid shortage or faulty glucose-regulation mechanisms. Its involuntary loss of consciousness had been reflexive, not symptomatic. A few minor corrections to speed things along and all would be well.

The Vessel pulled Her back. She hadn’t done much while inside except nudge the body towards where it was supposed to be. Such a minor matter would have even been accomplished by the Sentient Things’ primitive caretaking. Eventually.

She blinked. Shook her head slightly to clear it of the...whatever-it-was aftereffects that she still had no name for. Eli would be fine.

“I what?” Eli asked dumbly.

“Fainted.” Mariah provided, through a yawn. It was once again quite bemusing to see just how little someone who was supposed to be intelligent seemed to actually know.

“No I didn’t.” Eli said immediately, beginning to rise. Or, at least, to try and rise. Mariah’s hand on his chest still kept him from doing much more than breathing. Even if he was fine, there was no sense in testing the issue so quickly.

“Yeah, you did kiddo. Can’t say as I blame you, either. I’d be right down there with you if I wasn’t lucky enough to have a wall rather than the edge of a table to keep me up. Just stick right there and take a few breaths—God knows we all need them—before you explain why you recognize any of this.” Grayson said, kneeling down on the opposite side of the acolyte.

His eyes fell on Mariah, and it was definitely fear in them now. Which was disappointing, but to be expected. She’d have to question the sanity of anyone who wasn’t frightened of Her. Even if they might only be frightened by the sheer volume of crazy they assumed when someone claimed to be Her.

Mariah fought down another yawn, and considered getting to her feet before deciding that the floor was comfortable enough. No matter how much she practiced explaining things, she doubted the reactions people had were going to get any better. This would all be much easier if they’d made their existence known a millennium before.

Heck. ‘Easier’? None of this would be happening if Usagi had done that. But no. Too stubborn and insistent that mankind had to be ignorant from the Dark to be protected from it. As if that had ever helped. Stupid.

Though, now that she thought about it, that did raise the question of how Eli had recognized who she was.

Mariah gave the young man a closer once-over even as Grayson continued his own search for answers.

“So you can blow up planets? I guess it wasn’t an idle threat yo—” Grayson paused for a moment to stare into her eyes. “—your ‘Sailor Saturn’ side was making?”

He visibly swallowed and shook himself out of whatever thoughts staring into her eyes had inspired. It was almost amusing the way she could see him drag his mind away from anything involving panic to instead focus on the problem at hand.

She could understand why he would be a successful military commander. All the best had possessed that ability to enforce calm on themselves even in the face of the unknown or incomprehensible. Kerensky himself had been able to bury panic in rational thought as well. At least until near the end when he’d apparently succumbed to the insanity alongside everyone else.

Not that she was in a position to judge. Perhaps if she’d been able to—

She mentally buried the thought before it could be finished. Focus on what she had to do, not what was already done.

“I wouldn’t say ‘blow up’. Even ‘destroy’ is probably a bit too loose, though She probably could if She wanted. Either way? No. Not an idle threat. She doesn’t make those.”

Gray’s head shook, and one hand came up to rub across his brow. But it seemed to be more of a reflexive reaction than anything more telling about whether he believed anything she was saying. Oddly, the mercenary followed-up the display with a short chuckle.

“The universe must hate me. It just doesn’t want me to be happy.” He muttered. Mariah wasn’t quite sure if he meant it to be out-loud or not, but fought down the mad laughter she was tempted to indulge in. He thought the universe hated him? How cute.

She took a long breath. Forced herself to calm down. That wouldn’t help. The man was visibly frayed as it was. The last thing she wanted to do was give him a solid reason to doubt her even more or take that last step over the cliff into madness. There should only be one crazy in a room at a time, after all, and she was already violating that rule since she qualified as two or three crazies.

“Hate you, Mister Carlyle? You stumbled over a Castle Brian and Guardian Saturn just in time to be saved from a Daimon. The universe clearly loves you.” Eli said, bringing his head up and using one hand to close his robes back over his chest. He sounded slightly less dazed and confused than he had earlier, and when he looked at Mariah his eyes were focused and intent in a way they hadn’t been.

There was also entirely too much kindness in those eyes when he looked at her. Which settled the question of just how much the man knew. However much it was, it wasn’t the truth. Otherwise he wouldn’t have looked at her like that. None of them would have.

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t jump for joy. I haven’t been feeling very loved lately. ” Gray shot back. He grunted, “But hey, now that you’re feeling better, perhaps you’d care to explain this ‘Guardian’ business? And why you didn’t mention it sooner? Seems like it could’ve come up while we were wasting time in Rachan’s office. ‘By the way, Grayson, old buddy, the girl in there is a centuries-old supersoldier that can pop-off planets.’ Kind of important information there, don’t you think?”

Rachan, Emilio. Precentor of ComStar. Deceased approximately six hours ago due to our action. Further details would require active acquisition measures on an HPG-wide network.

She hated when the computerized portion of her thoughts butted in like that. She especially hated when it used ‘our’. She hated it even more when it was so aggravatingly useful.

Trying to ignore the source of the information, she took note of what Gray’s words combined with it told her. Or rather, what the words he didn’t say told her. It didn’t sound like he’d found anything that cleared his name in Rachan’s office. Exploiting that would be an easy route into getting his help. A common flaw among military commanders was growing overly-attached to their units and excessively hateful of their enemies. That could only be worse in the case of mercenaries.

Another pang of guilt at what she was doing. Once again throttled under the knowledge she had to do it. It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to help Grayson! She would just make certain he helped her first. Her duty was more important than his reputation.

“You’re not supposed to know about her at all.” Eli hissed. He seemed to be on the verge of getting up, perhaps even taking a swing at Grayson. But the anger drained out of him in a wave that left him looking almost as fragile as he had when he’d fainted.

“We were supposed to be the ones to find her.”

Eli shakily got to his feet. The way he reverently stared up at her as she helped only made her feel worse. Who did this man think she was? More importantly, who did ComStar think she was? ‘Guardian’ had been the term the Cameron dynasty and League had preferred for her and the others. That wasn’t a legacy she felt comfortable trusting.

“Colonel, ComStar has a holy mission to protect this woman. Including from the prying eyes and minds of certain disgraced mercenaries.” The words came out with all the force of the physical attack Eli had seemed about to engage in earlier, and both Grayson and Lori recoiled at the insult to their status.

Mariah was just confused by it. Grayson hadn’t mentioned ComStar doing anything beyond keeping the HPG network running—and conspiring to get him and his unit killed so they could steal the Star League technology they’d found. Certainly nothing involving protecting her.

ComStar claims itself to be a peaceful order dedicated to ‘the unity and prosperity of mankind’.

Publicly available sources of repute cite ComStar as a neutral party dedicated to maintaining the operation of the HPG network and other minutiae of Star League technology which they come across.

Eli’s tone softened as he continued, “I will try to find any evidence that might exonerate you of wrongdoing, if for no other reason than to thank you for doing our job, but you should step away from this while you can. Leave it to us.”

Some indication of distrust or disbelief of ComStar’s neutrality from less-reputable sources. Many of these allege connections to unlikely-to-impossible conspiracies tied to secret societies or ethnic heritages. There are repeated allegations of a ‘doomsday philosophy’, though multiple different conspiracy sites seem to push their own version of the particulars.

One of these alleges Jerome Blake was a velociraptor.

Was that disbelief? Was she hearing disbelief in the commentary of a machine?

No indication in freely-available sources ComStar has any ‘holy mission’ to protect the Guardians of the Star League. Look further into this matter, Y/N?

Y

Mariah bit down on the inside of her lip as she was bombarded by a slew of messages, reports, status updates, and correspondence. She mentally flittered through scores of transmissions from Helm’s HPG, occasionally delayed by a few microseconds as she had to force her way through some cobbled-together security software of some kind or another.

It would have been quite draining if she weren’t wirelessly drawing power from the HPGs fusion plant. Mentally, she had to cede most of the sorting to the superior raw processing power of the machine. Trying to scan and understand so much information accomplished little but give her a headache.

Outside her head, Grayson was turning his attention to the ComStar acolyte. She had to admit, Eli’s pitch sounded convincing. He clearly believed what he was saying. Whether it was anything she wanted to have any part in was another question entirely. Based on what she’d heard from Grayson about the quasi-religious order and the fact that one of their members had been possessed, she was tempted to put more trust in Gray’s mercenary company. At least greed was predictable.

Still, it might just give her an alternative to using Grayson. The only question was how viable that alternative was. From what little she’d sorted through, that answer was looking like ‘not very’. ComStar seemed to be nothing more than a message-handling service. Perhaps if she focused on Rachan’s messages she’d find something more interesting?

They were more heavily secured anyways. She actually had to focus on them for a brief moment to pound through their encryption.

“Oh yes, leave it to you. Remind me again who it was that actually completed this ‘holy mission’ of yours? Oh, that’s right. Me and my men. The ones your order was doing its level-best to get killed a few hours ago. I’ll ‘step away’ from this,” Grayson waved his hand at Mariah, “As soon as ComStar steps-back its declaration of the Legion as an outlaw regiment!”

Mariah was rather offended by the offhand dismissal, but she was too preoccupied to raise an immediate objection. Rachan’s communications made for a much more interesting study than the disorganized mess of random traffic she had started out by going through. His messages were certainly more interesting than the dick-measuring contest Grayson and Eli were engaged in.

Rachan’s messages started out with a trace of innocence and naivety she couldn’t help but envy. He’d sent a series of long messages to his mother on Lipton, in one of them going so far as to apologize for missing her birthday for the third year in a row. He’d explained away his absence by claiming to be ‘on important ComStar business’. Weekly messages between the same station and Rachan followed for almost three months, all filled with loving exchanges that seemed like a mockery considering what the Precentor had become.

The memory of the blade at the end of Glaive sliding into his neck tried to butt its way into her thoughts. She swallowed and refocused on mentally sorting-through the messages the HPG had handled.

Rachan’s communications to his mother grew shorter and less warm as time went on. They were little things, really. He quit signing them ‘Love’ at the end. He became less open about what he was doing. He quit reacting to the stories she shared, or offering any acknowledgement of the rest of his family when they were mentioned. Eventually, he quit replying to his mother entirely a few months prior.

But he’d sent one message to someone else in late-January? Text-only, but using a rather bizarre security-coding that was magnitudes more complex than what had encrypted his personal traffic. More tellingly, it was sent on to the New Earth HPG station for rebroadcast to an unnamed source rather than to Lipton.

It took her a full second of concentrated effort to get through the encryption. Even then, the reward was only a trio of words. But they at least made it clear that whatever ComStar’s mission was, it didn’t only consist of keeping technology running.

“I will see to it, as soon as I can, that a more fair inquiry is taken into your company’s actions, Colonel. But there are more important things at play here than you can even imagine.” Eli growled, raising a fist slightly.

Rachan had been looking for Her. He never said as much in any of the traffic to his mother, but it was the only explanation for what he alluded to his mission being. That single message at the end—retransmitted from Terra to who-knew-where—sealed it. Though who he’d sent ‘I’ve found her.’ to was a mystery worth looking into.

Eli had no idea how true his words were. Or perhaps he did. She wasn’t quite sure which of the possibilities about the ComStar acolyte was more frightening. Idealism could be more frightening than the opposite, sometimes. Especially when it drove people to serving as hosts for an agent of the Dark. Rachan had apparently found that out the hard way.

Once someone was that far gone, there were only two ways of helping them.

“I am going for a walk.” Mariah said quietly, slipping the words in before Grayson had a chance to continue the argument. Both him and Eli started slightly at the words, as if they’d temporarily forgotten who they were arguing about. Which shouldn’t surprise her any more, but was aggravating all the same. Centuries went by, some mystical order rose-up dedicated to finding her, and when they did she was still talked around instead of to. As if she wasn’t even present.

It was far too similar to conversations the scientists and the Intelligence folks had played out. Or even discussions Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna had engaged in. Always talking about her—or, more often, about Her—instead of having a conversation with her.

Eli raised a hand and began to say something. She wasn’t willing to listen.

“Is that a problem?” She asked, stressing the last word just enough to make it obvious the only acceptable answer was ‘no’.

“I was just going to offer to come with you.” He flushed, and the hand dropped.

An escort. Exactly what she didn’t want or need. No doubt he’d talk at her the entire time if he came along. Either that or he’d continue accosting her with that damned puppy-dog look of absolute adoration and worship. She was in no mood to suffer either.

“I am going for a walk alone, then, thank you. Is that a problem?”

“The place is a bit confusing.” Grayson, to his credit, looked even more embarrassed than Eli.

Mariah tilted her head a precise amount that decades of experience dealing with scientists had taught her communicated the perfect mixture of arrogant amusement and condescension. She despised seeing the gesture. It was one of the most infuriating things she could think of witnessing. From the looks on Gray and Eli’s faces, her own version was just as effective. Though both were too polite to mention it.

“Colonel Carlyle, I have a supercomputer inside my head. I think I’ll be able to keep myself from getting lost.”

She didn’t have any trouble shouldering her way past the two men and out the door.

Stepping into the dull, gray hallway outside the room felt more like stepping into a glacial lake. A knot that had been slowly tying at the center of her head as Lori, Eli and Grayson had interrogated her in turn unraveled in a glorious instant. Her shoulders dropped as minutes of hard-coiled stress melted away. She blinked, and let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding almost since she’d woken up.

Contacting New Earth HPG…

…

Tracing routing information, outgoing message C*-1R1988O2239M

In the background of her thoughts, just below conscious awareness, she let the computer do its job. Trying to trace an outgoing message through stations that had rebroadcast it was a time-consuming process. First she had to establish a connection to the HPG on New Earth, and that meant drawing a lot of power, both processing and physical, from the station she was at.

She might have been able to speed the process up by directly interfacing with the Generator, but she enjoyed the slightly slower pace that wireless interaction forced on her. It was too easy to lose herself when she linked directly. Too much like when She took over. At least in a ‘Mech, she retained some sense of self. It was just a broader, larger-than-life, sense. Like she was the only person floating above an ocean. Being hooked into the HPG network was more like being drowned in that ocean.

Unsure which direction to go, and entirely unwilling to find out where the hallway lead by looking into the station’s schematics, Mariah randomly turned to the left and began walking.

The lack of guards outside the room she’d been in was more revealing than anything else she could imagine. When she spared a moment to look for it, she couldn’t even find anything besides passive security systems recording her passage through the hall. Unless ComStar was much better than she could possibly imagine, they were willingly giving her the chance to freely travel the building.

Connected: New Earth HPG…

Message C*-1R1988O2239M received April 12, 3028. Rebroadcast to Capolla station B.

Contacting Capolla station B…

She had to wonder whether Grayson would be so accommodating on the way to Terra if she used him to get there instead of whatever resources Eli and ComStar might have for such a trip. Or, perhaps more importantly, she had to wonder if the mercenary would be as accommodating after they reached the planet as it seemed the mysterious ‘technology-cult’ would be. The last thing she needed, for his sake, was the man butting his nose into business it did not belong in. At least Eli seemed to have some understanding of what it was She faced and the dangers involved.

Things would have been so much easier if there were still an SLDF fleet she could commandeer. Perhaps a fleet was being too greedy, even. If there were just a jumpship she could use, it would make things so much quicker and simpler. But needs must when the devil drove.

“Can I ask you a question for a change?”

Mariah started slightly at the unexpected voice, and couldn’t help but be embarrassed as she had to physically whip her head around to get a glimpse of Lori behind her. She should have been keeping half a mind on the security feeds of the ComStar facility, but tracing Rachan’s last message and her own navel-gazing had made her disregard such a simple precaution. She had to slow down. There weren’t time for mistakes like that.

“Does the concept of ‘alone’ not exist in the year 3028?” Mariah snapped, hating the petulant tone of her voice as she spoke but utterly incapable of doing anything about it. She couldn’t even quite identify where it came from, but it felt gloriously satisfying to let out.

Lori was very still. The other woman visibly fought back her first response and instead nodded with a harsh movement of her head that spoke of a withdrawn rage.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ for the moment then. Excuse me.” Lori said, coming to a stop and beginning to turn back towards the room Mariah and she had come out of.

This behavior is nontypical and warrants further scrutiny to identify potential—

Mariah closed her eyes and mentally threw the machine’s thoughts into the corner of her head with a scolding to stick to their real job. No shit it was ‘nontypical’. She didn’t need—or want—that kind of obvious observation from the thing. It had more important things to do and it was utterly incompetent at social interaction.

Which, counting Her, made for three of them in the same body with the same problem. Fun. For her next trick, she’d question the honor of the woman who had conceived Grayson and call Eli’s mother a fat whore. That was sure to win her just as many points as what she was doing.

“Wait.” The word was surprisingly hard to get out, but she managed.

“Just wait. I was—am—distracted. I should have heard you coming.” Mariah said, trying to explain away her surprise. She sighed, “What was the question?”

Lori didn’t turn around. Instead, the woman tossed her hair over one shoulder and twisted her neck so she could look at Mariah through the corners of thin-slit eyes. The computerized portion of Mariah’s thoughts were quick to offer assurances that the hall hadn’t actually decreased in temperature, the chill she felt was just a physiological reaction. A completely irrational one, since there was no legitimate reason for her to be afraid of a real human anymore.

But that very irrationality made it all the more valuable. Proof she wasn’t entirely removed from real people. Not yet, anyways.

“Simple. What do you plan on doing, and does that involve Grayson or the Legion at all?” Lori asked with a studious politeness that Mariah didn’t buy for a second. The courtesy never actually reached her eyes. Somehow, it felt more dangerous than it had when Lori had been behind her in the Castle Brian ready to draw a pistol if she made the wrong move.

“What makes you think I have any plans at all? I barely know what year it is.” Mariah said after a moment’s hesitation. The eyes narrowed further, and she instantly regretted the attempt at deflection.

“You have a Star League supercomputer in your head and a goddess of death with a timeshare on your body. I think by now you have multiple contingency plans for every scenario you’ve thought up since we woke you and you found out what year it was.”

Mariah didn’t swallow at how accurate the accusation was. But she did have to fight down the impulse.

“Terra. I’m going back to Terra. On a ComStar jumpship or on your Legion’s. Whichever is available first to get there most directly. After that…” Mariah trailed off with a shrug that suggested she didn’t have any idea of what to do after that herself and that it wouldn’t involve Lori or the Legion. Which, if things went right, she fully intended it would not. In fact, if there was any way to get them out of the way sooner, she’d take it.

The people around her had a tendency not to last.

Lori nodded, seemingly accepting the partial answer as all she was getting. “That means you’re coming with us and we’re going to take a hiatus on contracts until we get you to Terra. Gray believes in paying his debts, and he considers you the savior of the Legion…I suppose he’s even right on that count.”

“But I want to make something clear.” The mercenary-woman continued, finally twisting around to fully face Mariah. “Hurt him, and I don’t care if you are the mutant offspring of technology and a god, I will find a way to hurt you back. Understood?”

Connected: Capolla station B HPG…

Message C*-1R1988O2239M received April 13, 3028. Rebroadcast to—

Trace overridden.

Disconnected from HPG Network.

“I understand.” Mariah said, the words coming out automatically as her attention was absorbed by the spinning confusion and barely-contained sickness that slammed through her mind. Bile built in the back of her throat and her stomach flipped end-for-end as she was instantly kicked out of the HPG Network. The breakers built into her own mind were probably the only things that kept the sudden removal from causing serious injury—or even her death. The apocalyptic headache that slammed into her forehead was bad enough that she temporarily wished they hadn’t worked.

What was that? Nobody in the net should know she existed! Much less how to try and interrupt any of her activities! So what was going on? Ami might have been able to explain it, but—

Lori was saying something. Mariah didn’t have any attention to spare for it. Mentally waving away a series of safety warnings, she slammed herself through a quick reconnect process. The headache somehow got even worse in the process, spiraling into the back of her forehead like a drill bit and escalating from ‘apocalyptic’ to something no language had extreme enough words for.

But she would have to deal with it anyways so she might as well try to get something useful out of it. Perhaps if she was quicker this time? Maybe she needed to punch her way through whatever was hiding the messages next destination from her.

Connected: Capolla station B HPG…

Message C*-1R1988O2239M received April 13, 3028. Rebroadcast to—

Trace overridden.

Disconnected from HPG Network.

The ceiling of the hallway was an interesting shade of off-grey.

It took Mariah a moment to realize why she was noticing the color of the ceiling.

“You know, there are more healthy ways of exiting a conversation than passing out.” Lori said, the woman’s face appeared in-place of the ceiling a moment later. Though her voice was light and airy, she wasn’t smiling.

"What?" It was, perhaps, the dumbest question she could have asked. But it was the only one Mariah could think of.

"You experienced a syncope." Lori's lips finally moved upwards in an imitation of a smile, but it was empty of actual cheer. It looked more like that of a predator.

“I overexerted myself.”

“Right. Of course you did. Can you stand? Walk?” Lori clearly didn’t believe the explanation, but apparently had either quit caring or was making a mental tally of suspicious behavior to be brought up later. Mariah suspected the latter.

It was, however, a good question. Mariah tried to raise a leg. Something immediately cramped in her thigh. If she had been standing, it would’ve dropped her to her knees. The leg hadn’t moved more than a few centimeters. Were she not used to worse, the pain would have been worthy of a scream.

“I do not believe so.” Mariah said, repeating the process with her other leg only to encounter the same pain.

Lori’s sigh could have melted the paint off the walls. “I’ll go get Gray. And Eli. And two or three other acolytes then. No sense in someone throwing their back out lifting you. Gray almost did when he and the others loaded you into the hovercraft.”

“Just give me a moment. They won’t be necessary.” Mariah snapped, feeling a surge of white-hot anger at the other woman’s comments that she couldn’t quite identify the exact source of. It wasn’t the way she had said it, that had been friendly enough. But what she’d said seemed rather insulting.

The mercenary shrugged. Stepping almost out of Mariah’s vision, she leaned against the wall of the hallway with one leg propped behind her. She stared down, chewing on one corner of her lip. After a few silent seconds, she snorted out a very harsh, very short laugh.

“Amused?” Mariah asked, rolling her eyes up to challenge Lori’s.

“Not every day a god overexerts themselves from taking a few steps and has to lay on the floor breathing with a human standing over them.” Lori answered immediately.

She should not have asked. The mockery in Lori’s voice was almost worse than the pounding in her head.

Mariah shook aside the…embarrassment? And tried to concentrate on what actually mattered. She had to wonder what could possibly force a complete disconnection for her. None of the potential explanations she came up with survived a moment of close scrutiny, but every attempt only solidified how worrying it was. Someone was hiding things from her. That alone might not have been so worrying, but if they were hiding things from her it meant they knew she existed. That was much more terrifying.

She needed to get to Terra as quickly as possible. If that meant taking advantage of the Gray Death Legion instead of ComStar—and dealing with Lori and Grayson’s incessant idiocy—she would just have to hope for an uneventful trip.

 

[prinCZess]

ComStar HPG Compound
Helmsdown, Helm, Free Worlds League
17 June 3028

After slowly rising to her feet, Mariah forced herself to stagger through the hallway of the ComStar building. The last thing on the planet she wanted to do was move, but it would raise too many questions to immediately go back to the room she’d left. Besides, she needed to think.

She didn’t end up getting any thinking done. Every step sent a river of pain out from her forehead that rushed through the rest of her body and interfered with the process. The only accomplishment she could list was finding out that ComStar relied on commercial Jumpships to travel to and from Helm, and that the next scheduled ship wouldn’t arrive for at least three weeks. Which she only managed to find out because she could delegate the process involved to the computerized portion of her mind.

It didn’t help any that Lori insisted on walking right behind her, hands propped on her hips and clearly forcing herself back to the position every time she began to say something. From the way she seemed to hesitate before setting down her feet with each step, she could either have been scared of following or deliberately trying to remain quiet as she did. The former would be unsurprising. The latter ultimately pointless. Though Lori might not realize it.

“Was there something else you wished to speak with me concerning?” Mariah asked.

Lori twitched, and the arms fell from her side only to rise and cross her chest a moment later. She took a long step forward, just enough to become half-obscured in the security-camera Mariah was watching her on by the angle of the hallway and the position of the camera. Mariah turned her head towards Lori so she could maintain an accurate threat assessment of the woman.

“It’s really creepy when you do shit like that, y’know?” Lori said, clearly stalling for time with the words.

Mariah nodded. She’d heard practically the exact same sentiment before. Hundreds of years in suspended animation did nothing to soften the words, but at least this time they didn’t come from someone she really knew lo—didn’t come from mom.

Not that she could blame anyone for the sentiment. Michael Cameron, Gregory Atlas, and a few other long-dead individuals for their responsibility in building the reason for it, of course. But the sentiment itself? Not something she could hold against anyone. It was true, after all. She was creepy.

Mariah tried to speak, but found herself oddly unable to get anything past a painful lump that had developed in the middle of her throat. Another side-effect of being ejected from the HPG system, no doubt.

“What’s so important about getting to Terra, anyways? Eli trying to convince you to go back there I could understand. ComStar apparently has some real attachment to you they haven’t bothered to tell anyone about. But the Star League’s gone. Kerensky’s gone. Everything that might have been there for you years ago isn’t there anymore. The only thing on the planet is ComStar’s headquarters. So why?” Lori asked.

“Grayson mentioned a wedding. One whose guest-list includes the rulers of every nation in the Inner Sphere worthy of the name.” Mariah answered, surprising even herself with the honesty of the partial-answer. She still only admitted to herself that another part of it was that the last person in the universe she loved who was still alive was on Earth.

“Let’s just leave it at ‘they might be necessary’. Eli was not wrong when he said there is more at play here than you can imagine.” She continued, turning around and starting back towards her room.

Lori clearly didn’t recognize the end of a conversation when she was shown one. “Is this about that black, shadow-stuff that came out of the Precentor? The ‘Evil’ that ‘possessed’ him and your nine-woman superhero team that fights it and all that dreck?”

Mariah paused, two different sides of her mind trying to convince the other of how much—or how little—Lori needed to know. Just as in previous instances of the same question coming up, she didn’t reach a solid conclusion. Telling them too little seemed to be aggravating them towards refusing to help her. Telling them too much, though, would lose her any help they might be willing to offer. They already didn’t want to be tarnished with the image of outlaws for supposedly destroying a city. She could be certain they wouldn’t be interested in helping someone who was going to destroy a planet.

“Well. It sounds silly when you say it like that.” She said finally, continuing on her way. The headache was slowly getting better, and even the soreness and physical pain that had cropped up after the disconnection was receding. But now there was a heavy, burning sensation in the back of her throat that felt like she was about to puke. She didn’t like explaining what was necessary. It made her feel too guilty.

“Yeah? Well imagine how much sillier it sounds to those of us who aren’t you.” Lori spat back almost immediately. She stepped in front of Mariah, slamming one hand against the wall at chest-level to block her movement.

“I’m done with this. I’m not going to let you string Gray along with it, either. Because he’s a good enough person you could, and he damn-sure deserves better than this half-answer, cryptic bullshit you’ve been giving us ever since you popped out of that tube.” Lori said, her hand clenching into a fist.

“So. I’ll give you one more chance—As thanks for saving Grayson’s life out there yesterday—to answer the question with less bullshit this time.”

It wasn’t a very real threat considering just how outmatched Lori was. Her fist was utterly inconsequential. Drawing the needler at her hip would take the mercenary longer than it would for Mariah to render her permanently immobilized. The needler itself was of insufficient caliber to cause anything beyond temporary inconvenience unless fired directly into one of her exposed orifices or an eyeball. What Lori said or did, in a very literal sense, didn’t matter.

But something more than the words poked at a familiar feeling and ginned up an understanding Mariah couldn’t even express properly. The last time she had been threatened, Stephan Amaris had known exactly what to focus his words on and been intent on ensuring his own power. Amaris, though, had already possessed the means to carry out his threat. It had been braggadocio more than anything that had driven him to speak to her. Lori was completely incapable of threatening her, physically or emotionally. The mercenary woman was at a massive disadvantage. But she was trying anyways. Because she didn’t want to see someone else hurt.

“Do you know why the Succession Wars have been going on for the last two and a half centuries? Why every time there seemed to be a lull in the conflict, or someone seemed to gain an advantage, it collapsed in on them? Why all this petty squabbling over the decaying ruins of the Star League has amounted to little more than constant death and destruction?” Mariah asked, forcing herself to look the other woman straight in the eyes.

Lori seemed to be surprised at getting any kind of answer, much less a question turned back on her. She blinked.

“It is because We—because I—failed. Amaris’ coup should never have been successful. I should have made sure of that. It was this ve—my duty. We were supposed to be the Protectors of the Cameron line. Supposed to keep the Dark away from Terra. Two-hundred and sixty years ago-” Mariah looked away and pushed the other intruder in her own mind to retreat. Saturn was not talkative enough—or accomplished enough in telling lies—to explain things the way they needed to be explained.

“I could not stop Amaris,” Mariah almost whispered, a burning in her heart at just how much of an understatement the words were. Not only had she been unable to stop him, she had become his hatchet-woman. “I could barely even stop the Dark that tried to use his coup as a chance to plunge the galaxy into chaos.”

By the time she had been free of the damned machine in her head, it had been too late. Amaris’ coup had been successful. The Cameron’s had been killed. So had—

She clenched a fist as the sensation of decapitating someone with the Glaive came back into her mind.

After failing, she had been alone. Setsuna had disappeared, and Haruka and Michiru had made it clear they were going to side with Kerensky. They hadn’t even responded to the distress beacon!

Mariah growled slightly to clear her throat. She was being overdramatic. The beacon hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate the mountain of rock above the Castle Brian.

Beacon had an excess of energy available to it and transmitted through a series of relays which—

The beacon hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate the mountain of rock. It couldn’t have been. They would have come for her if they’d known.

“That’s why you were so intent on getting to Kerensky?” Lori asked slowly.

“Yes. I needed his help to stop Amaris and track down the Dark that had driven him.” Mariah lied with a nod and a tight smile.

What she had needed were pawns. Soldiers that could retake the command and control facilities in Unity City from Amaris so she could do what had to be done. Even if they had died, so long as they had succeeded…She wouldn’t have needed to feel bad about them. She wouldn’t have! If they’d succeeded, she could have temporarily destroyed Terra, restarted the Cycle, and everything could have been set right. Their deaths would have been necessary, but temporary!

It might have worked. If only she hadn’t killed—If only she hadn’t been locked in that damn mountain. Now that she had failed, her choices were much more limited. Setsuna would understand. Setsuna undoubtedly understood already, in fact. But Lori and Gray? They wouldn’t.

They would call it genocide. But it was the only way for her to make up for what she had been forced to do. The only way for the one who needed to come back to actually come back. More than that, it was the only way there would be any hope of combatting the Dark for the rest of humanity.

She’d often disagreed with how Neptune and Uranus combatted Daimons. But she’d always understood it. The edges of solar systems were not safe places, and oft under assault by things that life’s inherent goodness—and the vigil her second parents subjected themselves to—kept out.

Now, she could more than understand it. She could sympathize with it.

“I needed help then. I still do, now. More help than you and Gray could provide and more than I could live with asking of you even if you could.” Mariah admitted finally, trying to force her mind onto the present. “And I need to find out if any of the Great Houses have been suborned by Daimons or servants of the Dark.”

She took a breath, in preparation for her next words. She was entirely certain that now the sick feeling in her chest wasn’t from the sudden disconnection she’d suffered from the HPG, but from feeding Lori such an inaccurate and self-serving story. But it was the only choice she had. She really did need their help.

Mariah dragged her eyes back to Lori’s and let a hint of moisture enter them. It was easier than it should have been.

“Please just get me to Terra?”

Lori rolled her eyes, but the fist she had been holding against the wall dropped. Twisting around, the mercenary waved Mariah forwards.

“Come on, lets get your heavy ass back into something that can support it. You still look like you’re two steps from collapsing and I am damn-sure not going to carry you the rest of the way to the room.”

Mariah wasn’t certain, but she suspected the response was as close as Lori would come to saying yes.


Lake Geneva
Near Geneva, Terra
20 June 3028

Rachel Schutz had spent most of the boat ride so far staring at the coastline as it passed by. She’d worked at the HPG message-collection facility in Geneva for only a few months. The prestigious station and her new ranking as an Adept a reward for scoring in the top ten percent on a skills test distributed to thousands of other III-level and above Acolytes in near-earth systems. Consequently, she’d had little time for sightseeing or other ‘tourist’ activities in the region as she’d thrown herself into her new duties.

The coast was certainly more interesting than the pair of mutes who had shown up outside her apartment that morning to escort her!

She forced down the surge of nervousness that thought brought on and focused on the landscape that was growing further away with every lick of water against the bow of the boat.

Once the site of some of the fiercest fighting outside of Unity City, centuries of ComStar reclamation and repair efforts had reformed the shore of Lake Geneva into something more natural and beautiful. Something that resembled what it had looked like before the Amaris Coup. Carefully tended evergreens were beginning to reach the age where they could be properly described as ‘old growth’, and the pockmarked scars of battle-damaged soil she’d seen in snippets of ComStar ‘before-after’ advertising touting the accomplishment were entirely invisible.

The only real evidence of the battle that could still be seen from the lake itself were the handful of mounds of dull earthen works that had once been castles. When the Republican lines had been broken by the SLDF, the defenders had retreated into the centuries-old fortifications to keep fighting. Local rumor insisted that Kerensky himself had ordered the orbital bombardments that had leveled them and scraped the shoreline of all its vegetation, though how historically accurate that was remained a question. Either way, now the piles of dirt were the only legacy of the massive conflict that could be seen. Preserved by ComStar as a memorial to the folly of man.

It was too bad more of the rulers of the Inner Sphere never took the time to see them. Davions, Kuritas, Mariks…They could all stand to recognize how little their perpetual search for personal power accomplished. It was only their own populations and the past achievements of man that suffered. That may have slowed in recent years as the different Houses slowly withdrew from total war as a strategy and settled into their constant state of raid and smash-and-grab, but the trend remained the same. In some ways, it was even more pathetic.

There was a loud series of whumps, and Rachel was pulled out of her thoughts by one of the mutes placing a hand on her shoulder. They’d pulled up against the side of the yacht, and a small rope-and-board ladder had been extended out for them. Her other silent escort was already shimmying his way up, but the one still in the boat with her seemed to be insisting she go first.

Shrugging off the hand, she stepped to the ladder. After a moment of hesitation, she reached down to gather her robes tight around her legs, keeping the bundle of excess material held in one hand. Slowly ascending the ladder, she was careful not to let the bundle drop or her legs to stretch out the bottom of the robe too far. She hadn’t exactly been prepared to leave when the two mutes had shown up, and she hadn’t been able to put on anything decent with them standing in her apartment staring at her and refusing to leave for even the few moments it would have taken to put on some undergarments.

But one didn’t argue when their presence was requested by Precentor ROM. Particularly not when they had found out about the existence of that position only a few months before. She didn’t know why she could possibly have attracted such attention, but she wasn’t about to argue with it. There was good reason for everything the Order—particularly those members in its military and intelligence arm—did.

She carefully swung herself over the side of the yacht.

“Ah, Adept Rachel Schutz. We are pleased you are here with Us. Apologies for any inconvenience or discomfort you have had on the way out here to meet. Romulus and Remus are not well-known for their courtesy. They can be rude and uncouth at times, but they are exceptional field agents. We needed to be certain you were not followed. Thank you for coming so quickly and without causing a scene.”

Rachel’s first thought was that the man sitting in front of her did not look like the mental conception of Nicholas Cassnew, head of ROM and general-spy extraordinaire, that she had been told existed. In the short while she had even known of his existence, she had envisioned him in only one of two ways: The hard-jawed military commander in similar vein to the ones the Federated Suns liked to portray the Davions as, or failing that, as the blank-faced gentlemanly-looking man that decades of trivids told her was the mark of a spy.

What she hadn’t expected of the head of ROM was someone who looked closer to one of her grandparents. With a broad, though somewhat empty smile plastered onto a grey-bearded face, and old-school eyeglasses of all things hanging halfway down the bridge of his nose, he radiated a friendliness and openness that conflicted terribly with the silence of the bodyguards who now flanked him. She’d heard he refused laser eye surgery, but like any of the dozens of rumors about the virtually unseen man she had always dismissed such an absurd notion. It appeared that in one instance, the rumors had been correct.

Cassnew almost jumped, shuddering slightly in his chair. He shook his head as if he’d just woken up and refocused on Rachel. The formal but semi-lifeless smile he’d worn a moment earlier was replaced by a much brighter one.

“Oh! I’m sorry to leave you standing. Please, take a seat, take a seat. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just been such a hectic morning, I’m afraid. I’ve been running every which direction trying to manage things, and I’m easily distracted at the best of times.” He said, waving at a lounge-chair opposite of him.

Rachel wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the self-deprecation beyond taking the offered seat. The mere fact she was being apologized to by the second highest-ranking member of ComStar was too overwhelming. That she’d been dragged to see him at all was stunning enough in its own right, but the casual, almost familial, way he spoke conflicted with her mental image too much for her thoughts to keep up. Her annoyance and discomfort over the mute pair’s virtual abduction of her disappeared in an instant as she settled into the luxuriously thick padding of the chair.

“No apology needed, Precentor.” Rachel heard herself say.

“Nonsense. Of course an apology is needed! And actions count for much more than words, yes? The least I can do for a guest is make them comfortable.” Cassnew said, removing the glasses and setting aside the datapad he had been reading. A twinkle entered his eyes, and another small shake went through him as if he was having trouble containing himself to the chair.

He looked towards one of the mutes, “Remus, would you kindly drop down to the galley and make us some coffee—Tea?” Cassnew faltered and looked back to Rachel.

“Tea.” Rachel confirmed with a small nod. She wasn’t quite sure whether the butterfly-filled knot her stomach twisted itself into was from anxiousness or giddiness at the thought of having tea with the head of ROM.

“Tea.” Cassnew repeated to Remus. He looked at his watch, “And biscuits. And…In fact, just make a light breakfast for two if you would. I do not believe Adept Schutz has had a meal as of yet this morning and I know I haven’t.”

The mute nodded and began towards the interior of the yacht.

She was having tea and breakfast with the head of ROM, who now not only looked like one of her grandparents but was behaving like one of them. Nobody was going to believe it. She probably wouldn’t even be able to tell anybody about it. But even if she could nobody would believe it!

She couldn’t quite believe it, herself. If she blinked too hard she might just wake up in her apartment, the whole day so far the result of little more than an overactive imagination. She might be stationed on Terra, but she wasn’t that important.

She blinked. Cassnew remained exactly where he was and didn’t mysteriously transform into the ceiling of her apartment.

“Um.” Rachel said, disbelief warring with her desire to ask every question that had been bouncing around in her head since she’d been hurried out of her room by Romulus and Remus—now with the additional question of what ‘Romulus’ and ‘Remus’ were. They sounded vaguely familiar, and she was certain they were codenames of some kind, but she couldn’t quite place whether they were historical, mythological, or literary.

She made a mental note to check the names later. There were bigger concerns at the moment. Like not sticking her foot in her mouth front of a man who still outranked her by entire orders of magnitude. Judging by the patient look he was giving her, she’d already managed to do that.

“I’m sure you have questions.” Cassnew said, leaning forwards in his chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “And perhaps fears?”

Rachel tried not to, but jumped halfway out of her seat anyways. The charge was too accurate for her not to react to it. She blushed and began to offer an apology.

“I see ROM still has the same reputation it did when I was your age.” He said with a slight chuckle, waving one hand towards the side of the boat. “Please, relax. You’re not under suspicion of anything. We’re merely trying to investigate a matter you might have knowledge of.”

“H-However I can help, Precentor.” Rachel said, some of the butterflies leaving her stomach alongside the words. A few of the more persistent ones remained behind. Even having knowledge of others consorting with Daimons could be a capital offense to ROM if unreported. She wracked her mind, but couldn’t identify anyone she knew who might be of interest to ROM.

“Thank you. In that case, let’s get right into it! I’ve always hated trying to work while a meal was in front of me, and this shouldn’t take long.” He said, shifting his weight left and right in his chair and crossing one leg over a knee.

“That datapad has a security video on it. Would you mind taking a look at it?” Cassnew asked in the next instant, pointing towards the pad he’d dropped when she’d first staggered her way onto the boat.

Rachel nodded and grabbed the device. It was lighter than any of the ones she’d ever used before, and when she tapped it to life it was immediately ready to use instead of delaying her by going through a half-dozen loading and standby screens. It seemed that rank did have some benefits!

The video that was already queued on the pad didn’t seem like it deserved the attention of a ROM operative, much less Precentor ROM himself. The scroll of numbers in the corner told her it was from a mere two days prior, and the sight of herself manning the desk settled where the video was taken quite easily. The only mystery was why she was being questioned about it at all.

“Do you recognize the woman who shows up at timestamp three?”

Rachel slid the video forward to the appropriate spot. She was clearly speaking to a middle-aged woman with long, dark hair in the video. Which didn’t narrow it down much at all. What was a bit less common was how she had to show the woman into a private booth and then a few moments later direct her through its use—something she only needed to do a few times a day on Terra. Using ComStar was second-nature for most people on the planet, so the handful of tourists and travelers who didn’t know exactly what to do and how to do it always stood out.

“Missus…What was her name?” Rachel mumbled, tilting her head and trying to remember the specifics of the pointless conversation from two days before. Cassnew motioned for her to go on from his seat, but not even his urging could spur her brain into remembering any more clearly.

“I do recognize her.” Rachel continued, stalling for time. Was it Moreau? It had been close to that, but less FedSunish. Something like ‘Mino’? It had been alliterative, she remembered that much. ‘Missus Me-something’?

“Meiou.” Rachel finally settled on, after mentally running through a half-dozen combinations. “Her name was Meiou.”

“And did you notice anything odd about her? Did she say what she was doing? Any details you can provide would be helpful, no matter how pointless they might seem” Cassnew prodded, leaning forward once again.

Rachel pushed herself into the backrest of her chair, once again embarrassingly aware of how much she was outranked by the man opposite of her. The slight snap that had entered his words didn’t help matters. Though the smile and friendliness were still there, she could suddenly understand why Cassnew would be in his position. Any similarity between him and a grandfatherly figure melted away when he started into active questioning.

“Ah, she mentioned the Free Worlds League?” Rachel said, latching onto the first part of the conversation she could remember. “She said she needed to send a message to a sister there, but she didn’t recognize our equipment and needed me to point out how our screens and software worked.”

“Did you see where in the League she was sending the message? What it said? Who the listed recipient was?”

“I—No. She asked almost right after she sat down and hadn’t entered anything into the system yet. I didn’t think to spy on her like that.” Rachel said, panic rising once again as she tried to defend what seemed like perfectly reasonable acts on her part.

“No reason you should have.” Cassnew said, though the words were contradicted by a growl of anger underneath them.

“Precentor, couldn’t you just pull the message logs?” Rachel added, willing to reach for any possible lifeline that made sense. She didn’t care if it sounded like she was questioning a superior, it removed the microscopic focus of responsibility from herself.

“We already have. The listing we have in the system for the time she was there has no final destination listed, a nonsensical paragraph of Latin as the body of the message, and was supposedly sent from one Ricardo Hunt, originally of Tharkad.” Cassnew said, shaking his head sadly. Thankfully, the disappointment drove him back into his chair and calmed the fire in his eyes he had focused on her a moment earlier.

“Oh. The Immortal Warrior actor.” Rachel said, mimicking the older man’s disappointment but feeling a deep sense of wrongness as she did. People sending HPG messages under pseudonyms was nothing new, but ComStar not knowing who it actually was behind the message was entirely unprecedented. She would never have even guessed it was possible a few moments before.

No wonder Cassnew was so concerned. Even if it was an inconsequential matter in detail, the mere fact that someone had managed to one-up ComStar’s intelligence arm was a threat. What if Daimons or other servants of the Dark used those kinds of insecurities in the system to communicate or coordinate? What if they already were?

What if that woman had been a vessel for them?

Cassnew waved over the other mute—Romulus—and whispered something in the man’s ear before shooing him away. The Precentor of ROM pushed himself back in his chair, and in moments seemed to age decades and once again take on the appearance of a friendly grandfather. He didn’t say anything, but Rachel could almost feel a sense of frustration radiating off of him.

“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, Precentor. There just didn’t seem to be anything strange about her.” She said, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence that was beginning to develop.

Cassnew brushed aside the apology, “No need to be sorry, child. It’s not your fault. Much as I’d like to have every adept who serves on Terra and the surrounding systems trained in the basics of counterintelligence work, it would be thoroughly impractical. Besides, we know more now than we did before meeting with you. This gives us something to go off of, even if it is just another alias. That’s more than my dedicated agents have been able to track down about this ‘Meiou’ character. Thank you.”

Rachel, despite her best efforts in fighting it down, blushed at the thanks. It didn’t matter that it was roundabout and it didn’t matter that it was preceded by a backhanded insult directed at her and every other adept she worked alongside. It was a sincere moment of appreciation from the second most powerful man in ComStar—and thus the Inner Sphere—for her entire life.

She provided a few more even more minor details after that, but the bulk of the questioning seemed to be done. Even Cassnew seemed to realize that halfway through the rest of the conversation, as he began to inquire more about much more minor and utterly unrelated matters at the facility she worked at.

She was half-surprised when he took a bit of an interest to the technical glitches she’d been tracking down at the facility. As it turned out, Cassnew had once been on the technical track through the Order, before like her, transitioning into the administrative side of things. The shared experience and the much less important topic made their conversation much lighter, even after Romulus returned with a tray of food and set about with his usual creepy hovering.

“You have not asked what any of this is about.” Cassnew said, taking a sip of his tea.

Rachel froze mid-bite, and carefully set the toast down. She found herself unable to meet the older man’s eyes, and instead distracted herself by looking over the waters of Lake Geneva.

How was she supposed to respond to that? How would she be expected to respond to it? The platitudes she’d memorized didn’t seem appropriately personal as an answer, especially to someone who knew what all those platitudes were already.

“And I won’t.” She finally said, draining the last remaining bit of her own tea to emphasize the words.

Cassnew nodded, “A good answer. It is precisely the one that is expected of a proper ComStar official. Unfortunately, Adept Schutz, some of your superiors are not as devoted to your orders structures as you are. We are sorry.”

Something squeezed around her throat. Pushed against her esophagus. Squirmed its way downwards and probed in different directions. She heard as much as felt her spine pop as whatever-it-was began to push in the other direction.

“Well. My Vessel is sorry. If I were capable of the feeling, I may be as well.”

Rachel twisted her head around so she could puke against the deck rather than into the air. When had she fallen? She was on the deck of the ship now, reaching for the table, for Cassnew, for the edge of the boat, for anything that she might be able to latch onto. Nothing was close enough and everything hurt.

It hurt so much.

It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it—

The dual being that was known as Nicholas Cassnew by most flinched as ‘Romulus’ executed the hapless Sentient One mid-transformation. The shackled lesser one wasted no time in lifting the body and throwing it overboard, and then turned its attention to cleaning up.

His vessel's lips twisted into a frown. He was displeased seeing even lesser ones put to such menial and degrading purpose, especially when they were doing so in front of Him solely so one of the Sentient Ones could demonstrate its authority over Him. It would have been better if the shackled lesser one didn’t exist at all. Its existence itself was wrong.

“That was an unnecessary usage of a seed.” He said. He assumed that the woman who had been observing from below would be walking onto the deck now that the consequences of her handiwork were removed. It might be incorrect to do so, and if so he would find out very soon. But it was just like her to indulge in such a—dramatic? Was that the word? Yes. Dramatic—display. She took after His master far too much.

A moment later, His assumption was proven correct.

“When I desire to hear your opinion, I shall ask for it.” The Sentient One female snapped as she walked by him and dropped into the seat which moments before had been occupied by Rachel Schutz. “No seed was wasted at all. The Mistress was curious if the young adept would be able to merge with it.”

“She knows it would not work. You should know such as well.” He said, feeling a bubble of…Was it anger? After so long interacting with the vessel, He was beginning to get minor reflections of the Sentient One’s emotions. But he still had difficulty attaching the feelings to the esoteric definitions of them that the Sentient Ones produced.

“I assumed it would not work. But unlike your kind, we humans are willing to put assumptions to the test. The Mistress wanted me to specifically point out that she's also willing to put her assumptions about who—and what—remains useful to the test as well. Shall I inform her that you understand, ‘Nicholas Cassnew’?” The Sentient One female said.

He bowed slightly in his seat. After numerous explanations, he was able to discern when his master or her puppets were making use of the veiled threats and 'innuendo' she so liked to use to make her point.

“I understand.”

Even after the puppet's departure He was inexplicably…angry…for the rest of the day.

 

[prinCZess]

Vermillion Pass
Helm, Free Worlds League
18 June, 3028

Mariah stared at the contrail of flame and smoke the dropship Phobos left in the air as it rose.

A thousand years before and millions of miles away, in a posh penthouse apartment in downtown Tokyo, she had watched on television as a much smaller, much more delicate craft called the Columbia performed the same maneuver. If not for the light wind fluttering into her hair, she almost could have imagined she was still there. Could almost regain that sense of serenity that had graced her when the universe itself was opening to humanity and she knew her place within it.

A thousand years. There hadn't been much serenity for her or any of the Others in any of them. Perhaps if she had ever had just a few months to step back and see what was going on, she might have been able to do something to prevent the eventual breakdown. Or at least been able to recognize what Amaris was setting up before he pulled the rug out from underneath them all. But she'd never had time to do such a thing. She had needed to run from one crisis to another as humanity exploded across the stars and uncovered new horrors that had to be dealt with. Horrors that Usagi insisted people didn't have to know about. That she insisted they weren't ready to know about.

None of them had considered that Usagi might have been wrong. Or that the handful of humans she had graced with knowledge of the Dark to help them fight it would end up corrupted by it. There was a dark kind of humor to it, really. Usagi's Star League had fallen the same way Selene's Moon Kingdom had. For eerily similar reasons.

Were they all condemned to just play out the same charade forever? Had anything she'd done actually mattered?

Mariah shook her head and refocused on the dropship fading into the sky. At least humanity could answer that question in the affirmative. She had seen countless variations on the same design of massive ship rise and fall in atmosphere, dock with space-stations, and venture through the void alone. She had seen the interiors of ships that had been fed on by Daimons, the twisted chassis' of those that Youma left behind, and ones that had suffered every calamity in-between. But through it all, the mysterious disappearances and 'misjumps', humanity kept flying the vulnerable transports into space. That hardheadedness and desire to build had won them a universe that rightly belonged to them instead of to Her kind.

She shifted the Vessel's center of gravity so She could incline the head further back and watch through 'enhanced imaging' as the dropship exited the atmosphere. She had still not grown tired of seeing the Sentient Ones spacefaring constructs work. There was just something about them. An unspeakable and undefinable poetry to their rise as they fought off gravity and freed themselves from the worlds they lived on. Those constructs, more than anything else, were the symbols of the Sentient Ones stretching themselves out. They saw the dangers and horrors of the universe arrayed against them and, instead of retreating into obscurity as so many other Sentient races had, leapt into it with both eyes open and dared something bad to happen.

She could not determine whether their infighting and bickering amongst themselves made that fact more impressive or simply exasperating. It wasn't enough that they courted disaster from Her kind, they heaped it on each other. Constant warfare had transformed their spacefaring vessels from typical sights to rarefied gems that proved the Sentient Ones still had a grip on the stars. Back in the day of the Central Authority from Terra, a pair of dropships would have been exceedingly unimpressive. Now, the 'Gray Death Legion' was considered a prospering 'business' to have such a wealth at their disposal.

She was still trying to come to understand the latter detail. She had thought She had understood the idea of 'business', but conflict as a commodity seemed dreadfully confusing. The Vessel was of little help explaining it to Her though, as even the Vessel was discomfited and disturbed by it. So perhaps it was an excusable byproduct of the Central Authority's collapse. Without Guardians, the Sentient Ones would need some other group willing to die to protect them. It was just another oddity that members of the species would apparently volunteer for such duty, much less make it into a money-making enterprise.

"Supergirl! Hey, supergirl? Base to supergirl, do you read me?"

She blinked and realized that the One called Lori was waving a hand in front of Her.

"Yes?"

Lori huffed, as if she'd expected more of a reply. When she spoke, it was with the bored cadence of someone who was repeating themselves. Perhaps even for the third or fourth time, judging by the heavy sighs she used to punctuate the words. That was usually what such melodramatically rehearsed actions represented with Sentient Ones, anyways.

"We're departing. Like, right now. Before the Free Worlders get any ideas of overwhelming Deimos when it's the only one on the ground. Are you going to come, or have you decided to stick around and stare at the air?"

She had the vessel turn and focus on the One called Lori. Specifically on the jumpsuit the Sentient One had changed into when they'd arrived back at the dropship. There was something oddly comforting about the skulls-head emblem the 'Gray Death Legion' used as its heraldry on all its official clothing. If nothing else, these Sentient Ones embraced their status!

Mariah jerked her mind back and frowned. There were times she seriously questioned the sanity of the universe she lived in, when the rambling and only half-coherent thoughts of Saturn made as much sense as reality itself.

Mariah blinked away the enhanced imaging she had been watching the other dropship rise with and nodded.

"My apologies. Please, lead on." She said, gesturing back towards the ramp into the belly of the dropship. She fell into step behind Lori, following the mercenary into the ship and up a utility ladder.

"I did not see any of your subordinates outside. Have those that wanted to already left?" She asked, not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was an attempt to be friendly?

Lori paused on the ladder, and glanced over one shoulder at her for a moment before continuing up it. She didn't respond immediately. Instead preferring to put it off until they both reached the top.

"Nobody took him up on it, actually." She said, offering Mariah a hand. It was unnecessary, but the gesture was appreciated. Not wanting to be rude, Mariah let herself take advantage of the hand and pull herself onto the gangplank at the edge of the dropship's 'Mech bay.

"Oh." Mariah said. It contributed nothing, but she wasn't sure how else to respond. She would have expected a host of mercenaries to jump at the chance Eli had offered of a full pardon from ComStar if they joined the order.

"Helm was where Gray was going to permanently station the unit. Some of us lost families and loved ones that they'd brought here before any of...this. There's nothing left for them here now. Of course they'll stick with us. When you lose your family, you'll reach out for any source of familiarity you can find for comfort. However stupid or destructive it might be."

Something about Lori's voice took on an intensely personal tone as she ended. Mariah shifted her weight and was suddenly very glad the woman wasn't looking at her. She had a point, after all.

"All any of us have left is the Legion. And each other, I suppose. 'Home is the regiment'." Lori finished, tossing hair over one shoulder with a shake of her head.

Her entire demeanor returned to the typical gruff and dangerous vibe she typically radiated as if a switch had been flipped. She waved Mariah forward and, without checking to see if she was following, ducked through the hatch that led to quarters.

"We can't complain though. 'Stupid' and 'destructive' are just different words for 'mercenary', don't'cha'know. Once we drop you off on Terra, we can go pirate and set up some nice fief for ourselves in the Periphery. If I can convince Gray to go for it, anyways. I always thought I'd look good in a bunch of leather."

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

Warrior House Lu Sann training temple
Saint Loris, Capellan Confederation
20 June 3028

Thunder. Thunder. Thunder!

Standing on the edge of an abyss, thunder and lightning responded to her every whim and command. Holding her arms that way brought a crashing boom in the sky. Throwing them the other direction inspired a another boom, but this time accompanied by the telltale flash of lightning. She was bending the force of the storm itself to her will! Channeling the blue-white energies of nature down to her hands from a coal-black sky.

It was liberating, being at the center of the storm. No. Not only that, it was comfortable. Because she knew it was exactly where she wanted to be. Where she needed to be. She held both arms up to the sky and rejoiced as the energies coalesced around her fists. After an instants appreciation of the coursing power it represented, she released it on her target.

Even in her dreams, she was careful to try and avoid taking any notice of who exactly that target was. The Maskirovka could not intrude on dreams, but even subconscious musings might arise at inopportune moments in more conscious displays that would be harder to hide. The target certainly wasn’t the ‘approved’ Davion or Free Worlds League individual that dreams of this nature were supposed to contain, she could tell that much by unclipped fingernails and the elaborate jiasha he wore—

Darn. She’d noticed exactly who the target was. Again.

The crackling explosion from the energies she’d controlled slowly morphed itself into the steady drumbeat of rain against stone as the dream faded away. A few breaths later, just as she was beginning to feel sleep coming back on, a brilliant flash of light imprinted itself onto her eyelids. It was almost immediately followed by the sharp crack of thunder.

It was storming. Again.

It never seemed to stop storming on Saint Loris. Not this far north of the equator, anyways. There were still occasionally meteorologists from the nearby Philotechnique Institute that insisted the constant flux of thunderstorms and rain shouldn’t be possible, but everyone had long-since learned to ignore them in the face of the cold and wet reality. Whether it was some trick of the planet’s rotation, some oddity in its terraforming that had been forgotten or lost during the Succession Wars, or some change that had occurred over time, the hard truth was that it never stopped storming on Saint Loris.

There was another flash of lightning, and Makoto groaned at the false shadow the bolt formed on the insides of her eyelids. Why was it that every day she just wanted to catch a few more moments of sleep, nature refused to cooperate?

Eyes shooting open, Makoto rolled slightly in the mound of blankets she had cocooned herself in on top of the kang so she could bring the clock at the edge of the concrete block into view. If she really wanted to she could go to sleep for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Or, more accurately, she could try to go to sleep for another fifteen or twenty minutes and be constantly interrupted by the booming trumpets and lightshow being played by the angry god in the sky.

She fought down a small sigh. She was already awake.

Despite the energetic thought, she stared at the holographic display of the time instead of actually getting up. It had been an odd dream. Somewhat similar to ones she’d had before. But at the same time much more visceral.

She had a reasonable expectation of what had brought it on, besides just the typical weather. Constantly having to watch the temple’s sole Thunderbolt piloted by a succession of pilots less competent than her was bad enough. Having to be their target practice in the prototype Raven the temple had been burdened with was driving her to near-madness.

It might have been tolerable if the perpetually-active ‘ECM’ on the light ‘Mech was worth anything. Or if it didn’t have as much effect on her own targeting systems as her opponents. Or if she didn’t have to contort herself into a ball to fit 170 centimeters into a cockpit designed for less than that. Or if it was forty or fifty tons heavier, more well-armed and armored, and not produced by incompetent boobs.

As it was, over the last two-dozen sparring matches between herself and the newest inductees into the House’s Mechwarrior training cadre, she hadn’t won a single one. Primarily because she hadn’t been able to hit them. It was no wonder she was fantasizing about controlling lightning and thunder! She could think of nothing she wanted more than the chance to operate the Thunderbolt for a change. Something with weapons that might work and a cockpit she might fit inside and something to attack with that wasn’t the ‘Mech sized equivelant of a popgun!

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She could think of a number of things she wanted more than that. But a chance to pilot the Thunderbolt was the semi-attainable one. They’d already said her memory wasn’t coming back, and nobody ever came back from misjumps so her parents were—

She nuzzled herself deeper into the warmth and comfort of the blankets for a few more seconds, then threw them off in one swift motion to be rid of the temptation once and for all. Her room was, unsurprisingly, very brisk and the heavy, humid air that floated in unhindered through the opening in the stone that served as a window only made it worse. It was almost enough to make her wish for a pair of the Warrior House’s undergarments. But she’d take temporary cold in the morning over perpetual itchiness and discomfort any day.

Besides, she had trouble fitting into any of the ones meant to go over her chest. Stupid flat-chested Capellan women who made the House’s garb had no idea how to measure or cut for anyone with a bust. Even when they were explicitly asked to. She always ended up with cup sizes that were painfully small or bands that were too short. She wasn’t entirely convinced they weren’t doing it on purpose either. Possibly out of spite. Or possibly because of orders from Samsonov. It would be the kind of petty vengeance he’d heap upon her.

Throwing herself to her feet with one leg, Makoto danced across the freezing-cold stone floor. Pausing in front of the clothing-rack on the other side of the small room, she kept her feet moving while her hands plucked the necessary items off of it. The jiasha off the top hook came first, followed by the cloth boxers and socks that hung below it. The illicit, FedSun-made bra she kept hidden underneath all of it was the last article of clothing to be grabbed, and old habit made her eyes scan around the room.

It was a somewhat paranoid and unnecessary measure now that she had a private room. But when she’d been bunked alongside a mass of other Initiates it had been a vital security measure. There would have been plenty of them who would have turned her in merely for the reward. Even more who would have lost what little respect—fear, really—they had for her at the sight of the floral patterns that swirled and dived around the fabric that covered the cups.

Still keeping each feet on the ground for only a few seconds at a time, Makoto floated back to the warmth of the kang and the safety from prying-eyes of the covers to dress. The entire process took only a few seconds, but she still developed a slight chill from it.

She shrugged into the technically-illegal bra first. Though the smugglers hadn’t bothered cutting off the ‘Made on Mentasta, Federated Suns’ tag that once hung on the side, she had. But the fabric itself was damning enough evidence, obviously not made on Saint Loris as the Chancellor’s Declaration of Total War required. Whether it ‘profited the Davion enemy’ or ‘consumed strategic transportation space on Capellan shipping’ was irrelevant in terms of the punishment she’d face if caught with it. Both were the acts of enemies of the State.

It wasn’t that she enjoyed being an enemy of the State. She had tried wearing the Saint Loris-made chest-compressing wraps the Warrior House had, reluctantly, provided her. Maybe she hadn’t gotten it right, but there had been chafing. A world of chafing she had no desire to risk again. She would replace the bra with one she made herself, eventually. When she had mastered the thrice-cursed French seams and the infinitely more difficult art of keeping an underwire in place. But for now it was necessary.

It also helped that, unlike the drab monotones the rest of her clothing was in, the bra was wonderfully cute. Perhaps best of all, the red rose-petal pattern that the fabric had on it matched her earrings. She still hadn’t found any cloth like it that she could use in her own, and she’d been looking forever. Making it would take forever and a day. In the end, did it really matter that its source was across the border?

But that wasn’t a thought she was supposed to have. Or, at least, not one she was supposed to admit to. It was too ‘wasteful’ and unnecessary. Which was silly.

Hooking the back together, Makoto began the process of folding herself into the much more House and Confederation-approved clothing she had. The boxers and the socks came first, followed by the jiasha. The robes were rough-spun, prone to unraveling, and itchy, made by hand by initiates in their youngest years when they were rotated through a brief course on self-sufficiency. But they had the upside of being extremely thick. Not even the chill winds that springtime on Saint Loris brought to the air could penetrate the thick layers of cloth.

For not the first time, she missed the robes that she had made years before. She had poured her heart and soul into that jiasha, intent on proving with every thread that the confidence the Confederation showed in her by allowing her into a Warrior House was not ill-placed. Intent on making something she could be proud of. It had been thrown into a pile alongside the rest and eventually handed-out to another initiate three years her senior to replace one he had damaged beyond repair. That, she knew, had not been the beginning of her indulgence in thoughts and items the Maskirovka wouldn’t be pleased by. But it had inflamed them beyond the quiet and obscure acts she’d practiced before.

She used the next few moments checking the plants around her room and pushing the old anger aside. Most of the flowers were still suitably watered and situated from her time rearranging them the previous evening, but it never hurt to check.

Most didn’t require any special attention on her part. But the hibiscus on the mantle had gotten a lot of water from the rains during the night. So much that her thumb came up coated in black dirt after she pushed it in. The storm had probably been a bit too much. She rotated it out of the exposed position. It would undoubtedly need to be watered again by the early-afternoon, but for now it was on the verge of being waterlogged. She would check it again after she had breakfast and performed the morning exercises.

Makoto hugged her robes closer around her as she slipped into her sandals and took the first steps out of the relative sanctuary of the alcove that served as her ‘room’. The hallway was a terrible funnel for the wind, steering it around the edges of the massive stone training grounds and through a number of spillways in an elaborate but utterly unnecessary manner. Sure enough, the moment she stepped out there was a whole-body press of cool air against her that caught loose hair and sent it waving to her side. Eyes closed to appreciate the breeze, Makoto curled the runaway hair into a manageable ponytail and secured it.

Sifu Clark insisted that the arrangement of the temple ‘in harmony’ with the wind instead of ‘opposing’ it was a demonstration of feng shui that she ought to dwell on and apply to her own life. She had heeded the advice and devoted some time during meditation to thinking about the phenomenon. She had come to the conclusion that a much better way to situate buildings was so that they blocked the wind from their occupants. She enjoyed it, even found excuses to spend time in the perpetual winds the mountaintop was beset by, but none of the other initiates did. The point of shelter was to provide comfort for those protected by it, not to purposefully discomfort them.

As for applying it to her own life? She had come to the conclusion that if she had been the one who built the temple, she’d have made it so it actually protected those within from the elements.

She’d kept that thought to herself, though. Sifu Clark would’ve been disappointed with her lack of spiritual understanding, and she hated to disappoint the cheerful middle-aged man. He always got this lip-pursed frown on his face and clearly took it as a personal failing whenever she disappointed him.

The trip through the hallway and into the main hall of the temple was short and uneventful.

Breakfast was also a blessedly dull affair. Something she wished could be said of every morning meal. Sometimes, usually when the newest Initiates had arrived, the new arrivals were challenged to steal food from her or ‘accidentally’ knock food off of her plate. It was a juvenile idea of a prank, but one she’d learned to largely avoid. If they had to cross a wide-open, empty space to get to her, they always chickened out before trying anything. Which spared her their ‘pranks’ even on days when any of them would try it. Today, there wasn’t even any who tried to approach her.

Which was fine by her. Just fine. It made for less trouble.

Makoto stabbed a fork into the sausage on her plate, wincing slightly as the tine skittered against the porcelain and scraped off the top layer of the enamel. Ignoring the handful of stares the screech attracted from nearby tables, she moved her attention to the bowl of porridge and fruit she’d used to disguise a second helping of sausage she had sneaked out of its tray when no one else had been looking. Portions weren’t restricted at all inside the temple, but there was still an unspoken expectation for how much was ‘proper’ to take.

She had learned quickly that the ‘proper’ amount left her hungry. After an extended period of limiting herself to it that had ended with a trip to the infirmary and a lecture from Sifu Clark, she had also learned that it was outright not enough for her. But there was no reason to flaunt that difference. Or even let it be noticeable. That typically lead to arguments about how proper her even being a member of the House was. Arguments that escalated to fights. Fights that she didn’t lose, but that only won her a more fearsome reputation and the disappointment of Sifu Clark.

Makoto took a sip of tea to calm her thoughts, and tried not to wince. It was dull and flavorless. Whoever had been in charge of making it hadn’t let it steep long enough. Or maybe just let it boil continuously. It hung in the back of her throat with an acidic aftertaste that was more painful than pleasant.

With a sigh to try and calm her thoughts, she set to eating her food as quickly as she comfortably could. The food, at least, she was used to tasting dull and flavorless whenever any of the other initiates cooked. Unlike her, they disdained the ‘peasant work’ the House insisted they participate in. Something as simple as cooking a piece of meat to a level below ‘charbroiled’ was far beyond most of them.

Ignoring the taste as much as she could, she emptied the plate. With that necessary chore accomplished, she used the tea for the only thing it was good for. It washed the crumbs from her mouth so they wouldn’t bother her the remainder of the day.

When she returned her utensils, she declined the insincere offers from a half-dozen members of the kitchen help to rinse them for her. Letting them do it would only invite a poorly-done job, disease, and attract more unnecessary attention for the ‘foreign girl’. Besides, it was the polite thing to do. They had cooked for her, no matter how poorly.

Makoto exited the breakfast-hall with as little fanfare as she had entered, and a frown came to her face at the conversation and laughter she left behind. It would have been nice, but it was unnecessary. The Confederation was all about giving up unnecessary luxuries in service of the greater good of the state, wasn’t it?

Of course, the Confederation also insisted that the cloth around her chest underneath the jiasha was an ‘unnecessary luxury’ as well that she should go without for no good reason. So…

Makoto paused, frowned, and brought one hand to rub at her tummy as she again felt the familiar tug at its center. She couldn’t tell if the discomfort was actually physical, or just a product of her own mind. Perhaps her stomach was rebelling at the sight and taste of the food she’d gulped down? Or perhaps she really was coming down with something? Perhaps it was all in her head?

She stomped forwards, forcing her hand to her side and trying to ignore the pangs of something that wasn’t hunger or sickness in her gut. She was frustrated more than anything, that’s what it was. The last few days she’d been uncomfortable, confused, and she couldn’t even place why. Of course piling nasty food on top of that was going to cause trouble. But it was nothing some willpower couldn’t fix.

By the time she reached the windswept expanse of dirt sparring circles arrayed on the north side of the Temple her palms were almost bleeding where her nails had been digging into them. From the way the other initiates avoided catching her eye, her frown had not improved much either. None intruded on her when she claimed one of the circles as her own.

It meant she didn’t have to contend with any of the newer entrants into the House challenging her to a match so they could prove themselves. Any other day, she might have taken that as a blessing. But today? Today she rather wanted to try and silence her confusion underneath the rapid decision-making a sparring match required.

A form would have to do.

Facing against the wind, she ignored the droplets of rain that pelted into her face and the boom-crack of thunder receding in the distance that tried to distract her attention every few moments. She dropped into a horseriding stance. Her feet sank a short ways into the still-moist ground, sending small blobs of mountain mud onto the edges of her toes the sandals left uncovered. She would have to keep her footwork in mind. Otherwise she could fall and turn an ankle.

She hadn’t even made it four moves into the practice-set before she was interrupted.

“Too forced, Initiate Kino. You are telegraphing every move you make, spending too long thinking about the movements rather than engaged in them. Think less about the mere act of punching or kicking and more about the goal you are fighting towards with them.”

She didn’t bother to hide the eye roll the comment brought on. Much as she liked Sifu Clark, she couldn’t stand it when he started preaching the Zen bullshit. Which was an unpopular-enough perspective it probably gave every other member of the House a good reason to avoid her. But hell with it. Mystical mumbo-jumbo hadn’t saved her parents and it hadn’t saved the Confederation. They could keep it. She would focus on things that actually worked.

“And what would that be?” She growled through clenched teeth, intent on trying to put the man off-balance and leave him the one without an answer for a change. She continued the form and pushed herself into a snapping high-kick and the leg-break that followed it up.

Clark finally came into view, and the blank stare on his face was as revealing as a fit of giggles would have been for anyone else. Much as she’d expected, her question didn’t even faze him. He looked like he’d been expecting it.

“I cannot answer for you.” He whispered, the friendly cant of his face softening the harsh-sounding words to the point that she wasn’t certain whether or not they were an insult.

His voice picked up a level, clearly meant to carry to the other initiates now. “Remember, initiates! One’s goal in any martial endeavor is specific to the mission the Confederation sees fit to send you on. That goal should be what every movement of your body, every thought in your mind, every breath itself, is in service towards accomplishing!”

“Yes, sifu!”

Makoto didn’t join the chorus of voices in agreeing with the statement, even as she moved her mouth in time with everyone else. She was growing increasingly certain that she had no need to be concerned with any missions the Confederacy would send her on. She was obviously never going to leave the temple grounds.

It felt like she’d been there forever! Spinning her wheels, watching over plants, and assisting Clark and the other sifus in training new initiates instead of doing anything more productive or valuable. It felt like she was wasting time when she should be doing something more.

She didn’t know what, but there had to be something.

“Initiate Kino will oversee your morning exercises!” Clark yelled.

Makoto jerked at the familiar announcement, and immediately straightened her shoulders.

“Initiate Kino? The students are yours.” Clark said formally, offering her a slight bow. “When the morning routine is finished, come see myself and Master Samsonov.”

She furiously stomped down the flutter of excitement those words caused in her stomach, and nodded her understanding to Sifu Clark. Leading the morning exercises was an honor typically reserved for the last day an initiate who was being forwarded to actual service remained at the temple.

Beyond that, she could recall going before Samsonov only once before. That he wanted to see her with Clark and she was being given the honor of leading could only mean that this was her last session with the other initiates. The House was going to assign her to an actual duty! Maybe she could even hope for a position in a ‘Mech unit? Perhaps not as an actual Mechwarrior, but even to be assigned to the role of an infantryman in one of the House’s battalions would be an honor.

For the first time she could remember, she felt as if that wasn’t what she wanted. But she could not reason why.

“Initiates! On the ground!” Makoto screamed, turning in place so she could look over the training field for an instant. It was a strangely surreal experience, looking down on them from in front. She wasn’t entirely sure she liked it.

She buried whatever personal feeling she might have on the matter and did as she had been trained, calling out exercises for the other trainees to carry out and counting them through the forms of a taolu. All the while ignoring the sinking feeling in her breast.

This was her last day at the temple. Where would she be going? What would she be doing? They would expect her to fight—to kill.

She ended the morning exercises five minutes early.

**************************
“Initiate Kino? Kneel.”

The voice, male and unquestionably old, came from one of a half-dozen hidden alcoves somewhere in front of her, and Makoto obeyed. In the dimly-lit bowels of the temple, the way the stone columns and pillars around her distorted the sound made it almost impossible to judge the distance the words were being spoken from. Their source might be in the dark alcove only a few meters before her or on the other side of the room. They may even be in an entirely separate room.

But that was part of the final initiation. Another symbol in a temple steeped in such things, as endlessly explained to her by Sifu Clark. Not seeing the master of the temple reflected the uncertainties of her future as a warrior. Obedience here, despite that lack of knowledge, reflected a future dedicated to the protection of the Celestial Majesty, the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation—and the one who would succeed them. House Lu Sann, whatever the hypocrites of House Imarra might claim, was the only House so dedicated. Those who had joined the order found their happiness and joy in the protection of the Celestial Majesty. Such had been drilled into her since the first day she could remember.

So why didn’t she feel particularly happy or joyous?

“Makoto Kino, you have rendered great service to the Confederation in your time at this monastery. Sifu Clark has taken a number of opportunities to inform me of the dedication with which you have pursued your studies and piloted the training ‘Mech assigned to you.” The voice continued.

Makoto strained to hear any trace of the displeasure she was sure Master Samsonov felt. It must tear the old man up to admit the service of a woman—a woman who was blatantly a child of non-Capellan mercenaries instead of a Citizen—had been commendable. Candace Liao’s example may have succeeded in chasing some of the conservative elements out of the Armed Forces themselves, but the Warrior Houses were an entirely different story.

Contrary to her expectations, she heard no such thing. If anything, Master Samsonov sounded genuinely complimentary.

Clark didn’t quite jostle her with an elbow, but when he looked over at her from his spot at her side she got the message well enough. A response was expected.

“I live to serve.” Makoto said, letting none of her thoughts enter her words. She touched her forehead to the cold stone in front of her, thankful that the fabric of her own robes protected her chest from coming into contact with the freezing-cold material.

When she brought her head back up, Clark had taken up position beside the nearest stone pillar. Master Samsonov was probably concealed behind the next pillar closer to the center of the room. More of the aggravating symbolism Clark had insisted she learn instead of spend the same time in much more productive ways.

“As do we all, Initiate. But service does not guarantee citizenship. Someone of your background should know this better than others.” Samsonov’s voice rumbled through the central hall of the temple.

Makoto clenched her teeth together and responded to the veiled jab with a growl. She should have expected some reference to her origins outside the Confederacy, especially from an old-school adherent like Samsonov. But even expecting it wouldn’t have changed how aggravating it was to hear.

“Master?” Clark said, the word falling into the darkness of the stone around them.

The only person in the entire temple who’d never disparaged her foreign status was Clark.

Samsonov appeared, his elaborate jiasha immediately making him obvious among the boring greys and off-whites of the stone supports and pillars spaced around them.

Makoto jerked slightly, realizing he had emerged from an alcove that was furthest-away from her and Clark’s own position at the very entrance of the temple’s heart. The only more authoritative position he could have taken up would have been at the center of the room itself, but that was reserved for those cases where the Chancellor himself passed-on orders directly.

As it was, Master Samsonov’s position meant he spoke with the same authority. He was merely acting as a messenger for orders he had received from the Celestial Throne on Sian itself!

The buzzing nervousness she’d felt but refused to recognize coalesced into an ice-cold ball of terror and anticipation in her chest. After a brief, pleading look at Clark hoping for some kind of explanation to materialize, she dropped her forehead to the floor once again. Any member or prospective member of a Warrior House was expected to kowtow before the Chancellor or his messengers.

“Makoto Kino, born of those with no lineage in the Confederation, and Initiate of Warrior House Lu Sann, the Chancellor speaks through me.” Samsonov said, slowly unfolding a sheet of paper.

Makoto kept her head where it was, and tried not to puke.

“By order and command of I, the Celestial Wisdom, the Light of the Universe, Lord of Ten Thousand Years, and Director of the Galaxy’s Turn, Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation and Master of the Warrior Houses Maximillian Liao, you are deployed to a new station more befitting the skills and talents you may offer the Confederation. You will proceed with all haste to the coordinates listed, where you will take duty in the personal entourage and security detail of the Duchess of Saint Ives, the Exalted ‘Mechwarrior of the Confederation and Heroine of Spica, and Chosen Successor to the Bearer of the Mantle of Heaven, Candace Laio. You shall accompany and assist her in any manner she deems fit as she attends the marriage of the deceitful and traitorous Davion Enemy on Terra. This will be done.”

Samsonov had walked as he spoke, and now stood just in front of her head as he finished reading the message. Recognizing the cue, Makoto raised her head from the floor just enough to look up at Samsonov and take the paper with one hand.

“This will be done.” She affirmed, the words coming out in a gravelly croak that disappeared into the air almost as quickly as she spoke. Despite everything, underneath the surge of pride at her accomplishment it felt wrong.

Personal detail for one of the Chancellor’s family members! It was almost unheard of for initiates to even be considered for such a position. Even more so because Warrior House Imarra had tended to have a lock on the duty thanks to their close position to the capitol. For her own name to have come up, Master Samsonov must have recommended her himself!

She’d always been under the impression the old man merely tolerated her presence. Perhaps that was why it felt so incorrect to be receiving such an assignment. She could not imagine why he would have recommended her for anything. Particularly not something which would require she be promoted and finally completely and formally accepted into House Lu Sann.

“You shall need to retrieve whatever items you require from your quarters and prepare them for the next occupant, Initiate Kino. You shall temporarily be granted leave from your station to obey the Supreme One’s commands.” Samsonov said.

What.

What?

“What!” Makoto snapped, unable to hold the word back.

Clark was visibly shocked as well, but his own reaction was limited to a slightly more dignified head-snap. Samsonov merely stared at her as if she had just piloted a ‘Mech into the side of a hill.

“Need I repeat myself, Initiate Kino? Retrieve whatever items you require from your quarters and prepare them for the next initiate.” Samsonov repeated.

Except he couldn’t have said that. Because those were the last words the Master of a temple uttered to a departing member of the House. They were never said to an Initiate! Because Initiates were never released from the temple until they were accepted into the House!

Makoto rose, having to jerk her body into motion past a wall of shock and incomprehension and rage. She wasn’t being accepted into the House. She was only leaving the temple. But no one ever left the temple without being accepted into the House! Certainly no one ever took service in such close proximity to the Chancellor without it!

She was angry enough to crush him! Destroy the stone pillars that stood around her as supports and let the temple bury them all like the Jewish hero Initiate Grigor liked to compare himself to! She wanted to fulfill the dream she’d had and throw the force of an entire storm into the smug, uncaring face of Elder Samsonov! Nothing but a swirling pit of anger existed in her for a split-second, and she took a deep breath in preparation for assaulting the man.

Instead of doing any of that, she grabbed the orders he held and ripped them from his hand. She meant to snort some kind of derisive comment, but it came out as a half-choked sob instead, and she was angry at that as well.

"Fine." She said on her second attempt at speaking.

Makoto refused to perform the traditional retreat from the temple's center. Instead of taking careful steps back and bowing after each one, she marched her way backwards out of the room. She didn't break eye contact with Samsonov until she was at the exit. Even then, she only took her eyes off of him so she could bore them into Sifu Clark.

Traitor.

By the time she reached her room, she already had a mental list of everything she needed to take with her, a list of who she could trust the plants to, and a much longer list of names for Elder Samsonov. The written orders would ensure her lodging and transport, so she need not worry about that. She really had no need to worry about anything but leaving the entire life she'd known behind with nothing to show for it.

Now she was just more confused.

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

“You’ve made her mad, Master.” Clark whispered.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Not even close. I seem to have developed a talent for setting her off over the years. We should just be thankful she doesn't remember all the other times. Though in this case was it me? Or was it the Chancellor?” Samsonov said. He cast one tired eye at Clark, “Or have you? I was not the one who revealed her to Sian, after all.”

Clark winced in recognition of the rebuke, but opened his mouth to defend himself from it all the same. It was an unfair criticism. It’s not like he had known who she was when he’d forwarded her name to Sian upon the request for ‘female warriors of great skill’. He'd thought Samsonov had been intentionally holding her back. He'd been right, but not for the reasons he'd thought.

His protest was stopped when Samsonov raised one hand and shook his head.

“I know. I should have told you sooner. You need not remind me that it wasn’t your fault. I remember. I’m not that old. Not yet.” Samsonov said, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his jiasha and shivering despite the relative warmth of the temple’s center.

“She will be fine.” Clark reassured. His defensiveness vanished into nothing as he noticed just how frail the old man looked. When Samsonov didn’t stand straight and allowed himself to move with the slow, tired movements of his actual age he looked like he was on the verge of death. Ninety years on the same mountain had worn him down. Spending many of those years keeping the real purpose of the grounds hidden after Warrior House Lu Sann had appropriated the site as a training facility had surely done him no favors either.

Clark tried for a sense of levity.

“She has been trained for hundreds of years.”

The words actually drew a chuckle from Samsonov, though not for the reason Clark had hoped.

“Ha! What use is hundreds of years of training when she can’t remember any but the most recent ones?” Samsonov shook his head, “Doubly so when she still can’t actually harness her powers.”

“I’m sure she won’t need them. It’s a formal political event on Terra she’s attending as a decoration for the Chancellor’s daughter, not mysterious disturbances in the Periphery or planet’s suddenly going dark that she must investigate.” Clark said.

“You underestimate how much evil a formal political event is capable of. Especially one on Terra surrounded by the snakes that lead the Successor States.” Samsonov cracked, apparently taking his own turn at levity.

“And you’re always assuming the worst of the Great Houses. Don’t attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity.”

Samsonov nodded a small, tight nod. His typical response when they began to retread arguments they’d had before and had agreed to disagree with one another.

“This feels different. Something in the wind—the thunder?—Something tells me I will not see her again.” Samsonov finally said, hobbling towards the exit.

Clark wasn’t sure how to argue with that. How could he argue with the wind?

"Perhaps I'm just getting old. It's well-known you get sentimental when you get old. With her leaving, there will truly be nothing I recognize in these old stone halls. Changes. Always changes."
*******************************************************************************
A/N:
You may go ahead and mentally add ominous cracks of thunder and a trombone going 'Bum-bom-baaaaaaaa' to the latter bits wherever you find it appropriate.

I also have to say that writing about the economics of bra production (or lack thereof) in the Capellan Confederation is one of those moments I had to lean back and wonder to myself 'What the hell am I doing?' But I found it slightly amusing and half-plausible considering the cluster of failure the nation is always portrayed as economically and anecdotes I've heard of the value Western-produced lingerie had in former Soviet bloc countries.
Which just goes to demonstrate: Any country that can't provide proper support to its female population doesn't deserve theirs. (I will admit to thinking this is a much more clever and hilarious statement than it probably is)

(Also: Sailor Jupiter is the best Sailor, and I'll fight anybody who claims differently)

 

[prinCZess]

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.

 

[prinCZess]

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.

 

[prinCZess]

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!

 

[prinCZess]

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 result—were 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.

 

[prinCZess]

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.

 

[prinCZess]

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.

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

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.

 

[prinCZess]

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

Earlier...

“You look cute. A little too much like you-know-who on Helm, but who am I to question fashion trends?” Grayson said as he finished hanging the earring on her and she finished burying the microphone inside the massive ribbon on her chest.

She couldn’t quite understand how a bow that was so big still somehow left so much exposed.

Lori Kalmar fidgeted in the ridiculous, ribbon-bound blouse, telling herself firmly that it was not okay to feel anything positive at the compliment when she was dressed like a Christmas gift. If she did, it might be too easy to talk her into doing this sort of thing again, and that was unacceptable. She didn’t have any room for a holster in the upper portion of the form-fitting skirt-and-blouse combination that ComStar had pawed off on her as ‘appropriate attire’ for the gala, and the skirt certainly wasn’t long enough for her to strap anything to a thigh!

“I feel like I’m about to spill out of both the top and bottom of this stupid thing. ‘Cute’ is not my concern.” Lori said, trying to resist the urge to pull the skirt further down over her legs.

If she pulled it lower, the only thing she’d do was expose her bare waist--or her underwear. A rational clothing designer would have at least extended the blouse’s length enough that it could be depended on to cover something if anything on the outfit moved out-of-place. But apparently that wouldn’t have fit the designers ‘vision’ or something--just like normal and necessary things like pockets. Instead, she was just supposed to rely on the bows of fabric at her chest and lower-back to keep herself decent.

“Remind me again why we aren’t just dolling you up in enough makeup to make a horse look decent and throwing you in this dress to go chat-up these other Guardians and all those fun nobles out there? You have more experience with this ‘being social’ shit than I do.” Lori growled as Grayson put a comforting arm on one of her mostly-exposed shoulders.

The jerk was at least nice enough to look suitably chastised, “Because folks would still probably recognize my ugly mug from all that experience, and I don’t fill out a dress nearly as well as you do...Plus, I’d have to shave my legs and that idea just scares me. I could die from blood loss.”

Despite the way it undermined her anger, Lori couldn’t help but snort at the comment. Grayson and razors had an antagonistic relationship she was starting to be impressed by. No other man she’d ever met had his propensity to cut himself with the things, even after years of practice. Now he’d given up entirely, and she couldn’t say the resulting fuzz wasn’t distinguishing at the very least.

“Lori?” Grayson asked, voice turning serious as he brought his head forward to lean on her shoulder just over his hand, “If it comes down to it, we can pull out of this contract. Don’t put yourself in front of something like we saw on Helm.”

Lori’s eyebrows shot up. Grayson had slowly built a reputation for not backing out of contracts once he’d entered them. Then again, it wasn’t like this one was anything close to their normal contract. How could it be when the offerrer in this case was literally a witch from the Star League and the job was corralling other witches into contact with her?

“Right.” Lori answered seriously, before tilting her head to hit against Grayson’s and then pushing away from him, “Same goes for you. And no letting yourself get seduced by the witch. ‘Magic’ won’t be an acceptable excuse.”

Gray frowned with more feeling than he probably felt, “Me? Seduced? Never. I should probably be the worried one, anyways. All the most noble and respected men of the Inner Sphere around you in a ballroom just before a wedding? I’ve heard how you women get just before normal weddings, and when it’s the biggest one in centuries, well...”

Lori’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide which of multiple scathing remarks she wanted to match that one with.

“Grayson?”

“Yes, honey?” Grayson laughed, smiling that damned innocent smile of his.

Lori sighed as even the mock-anger disappeared, “Nevermind. Let’s just see what the boss wants now that I’m...” She wrapped up the sentence by simply running a hand in front of herself, not quite sure which of many words to use to describe the outfit.

“I thought I was the boss?” Grayson protested good-naturedly as he opened the door for her. The attempt at distracting her from the uncomfortable dress was a little obvious, but she couldn’t help but appreciate it anyways.

Lori patted the man’s stubble-covered cheek as she went by, taking an immense guilty pleasure in the blush the motion drew from him, “Only when we’re not on contract.”

Grayson muttered something at that, but it sounded like it was more to himself than anything and by then she was already out of the changing room and into the short service-hallway of the ComStar building. From there it was a short jaunt to the small security substation that Setsuna had set herself up in.

Banks of monitors filled one side of the room, casting a dull blue sheen over the air of the entire room. In the center, an actual, fully-functioning holovid-table was arranged in a half-circle around a control mat where a redhead stood flipping through screens faster than she could possibly understand them, apparently looking for something. The far wall was filled by rather old-fashioned row of gray steel lockers that wouldn’t look out of place on a dropship or military base as stowage points for ‘Mechwarrior gear. From prior experience, Lori knew the lockers were full of small arms, body armor, and explosives, up to and including a pair of light SRM launchers.

At one point, ComStar having such weapons and having a significant number of members who not only knew how to use them but were kept in good training as to how to use the weapons would have surprised her. Now, that was one of the less surprising things about the interstellar communications business. A few rifles and SRMs paled in comparison to the row after row of Star League ‘Mechs the company had buried underneath Hilton Head Island, and as they’d found out on Helm, ‘Mechs themselves couldn’t compete with the secret of the Guardians that ComStar had been keeping since its inception.

“Good, you’re here.” Setsuna said, turning in her chair as she absently fiddled with a pen. She obviously gave both her and Grayson a once-over, “And you don’t seem to have noticed who else is with us? Good.”

Lori snapped her eyes to the redhead, who had temporarily stopped scrolling through screens on the holovid-table to give them both a listless raise of her hand in greeting.

“Hello.” Mariah said in that flat tone she seemed to use for almost everything when it didn’t really interest her.

The girl’s cheeks were highlighted heavily, making them seem to jut out and break-up the usual soft curves of her face. Her eyes looked less sunken-in than they were naturally, her lips wider, and her chin less prominent. Combined with the red-dyed hair and green eyes she looked like a completely different person. The only thing that really looked familiar was her dress, which mimicked Lori’s own style but with a darker color scheme to it and a less ridiculous pair of bows.

Lori found herself jealous of the last one the most. It wasn’t like the bow had to be as big as it was to hide the microphone!

On the other hand, her own bow covered more of her chest.

Maybe that was an acceptable trade off for looking like a present.

“I think I did a rather good job considering the only one I’ve been able to practice on for the last few years was myself. I styled her after the bandit-queen from the fourth season of Immortal Warrior. Minus the high-top briefs over leotard outfit, obviously. Even if it is halfway-sensible for piloting a ‘Mech, I don’t think it would blend in very well. But...” Setsuna paused, opened her mouth as if she were about to go on, then gave her head a slight shake.

“Is this the part where I find out I don’t actually have to go out in this because Mariah volunteered to take my place?” Lori said, already knowing the answer.

Setsuna gave her a half-appreciative, half-sympathetic smile, “No, I’m afraid it’s not. I convinced her to go to help try and feel out any bad actors firsthand, but we still need you.”

The woman rotated back-and-forth on her chair as if she were distracted by the monitors. But they never focused on any of the monitors, instead staring ahead and simply moving with her on the chair. Lori’d seen the same look on the woman’s face before, and had quickly come to realize that like the faraway look Mariah took on, it was the woman’s expression when she was deciding how much to say.

“Still trying to decide whether or not you can trust us?” Lori pressed, deciding to get the matter out into the open now rather than have it hanging over their heads during an actual operation.

Setsuna surprised her by shaking her head. “It’s...difficult...for us to trust anyone, but I can promise you we’re trying. No. I’m trying to think of the easiest way of answering your inevitable questions before you have to ask them.”

The woman reached down to the bag at her side and withdrew another pen, this one much more ornate than that in her hand, “You remember I told you the other Guardians had lost their memories?”

“Except the other two ‘outer’ Guardians that were named after real planets but who left with Kerensky, yeah.” Gray chimed in, beaming with pride. “See? I know to listen when magicians talk.”

Lori had to fight down a giggle, and even Mariah blinked in the slow fashion she usually reserved for amusement. Setsuna didn’t twitch.

“First, and most importantly, Colonel, I do not care what backwards classification styles the Successor States and yourself adhere to, Pluto is a planet. Second, I am not a ‘magician’, that’s a title for someone who does card tricks and waves around a magic wand. Finally, while I appreciate the sentiment of your attempt at lightening the mood, I would appreciate being able to explain without your commentary. Not every situation calls for a joke.”

“Does too.” Grayson grumbled. But his words did nothing to make his point and he took a step back to lean against the wall of the security room, both arms crossed in front of his chest and head lowered.

He was so cute when he sulked!

Lori shook her head. No time to appreciate Grayson, there was a job to do. With deliberate calm, Lori settled her eyes back on Setsuna catching a momentary peek at a concealed smile on the other woman’s lips.

Eyes meeting Lori’s, Setsuna winked. Even on a centuries-old witch--or perhaps ‘Guardian’ was what she should use--the expression carried the same meaning it might have from any other woman on the planet.

Grayson was just too fun to tease sometimes, and for a man who dished out so much he was rather bad at taking it.

“Returning to my point,” Setsuna said, her voice more harsh than her expression as she held up the fancy, golden pen she’d withdrawn from her bag. “One of these being in close proximity to them should gradually counteract that loss of memory. So if you find a good opportunity, I want you to give this one to Miss ‘Mina Centrella’, or place it in any of her belongings, if necessary. I’m informed you have some degree of experience with such maneuvers?”

Lori jerked at the offhand reference to a life she’d thought long behind her, and immediately turned an accusing glance on Grayson. He looked just as shocked however. The rest of the Legion were still on the dropships and hadn’t had much of any time to speak with Setsuna so that only left…

Mariah shifted uncomfortably and seemed to find something very interesting in the middle of the ribbon at her chest.

“I’m sorry, I probably should have assumed it was a sensitive issue but…” Setsuna said. Words failing her temporarily, she held one hand out, palm upraised before continuing, “It’s hard to trust anyone. Knowing your background helps.”

Lori couldn’t actually fault the woman for that.

“So, just to sate my curiosity, why do you need Lori for this? Couldn’t you just give them these wands yourselves?” Grayson asked, finally emerging out of his sulk to reengage in the conversation. His timing avoided what Lori feared was about to become an extended stretch of silence.

Setsuna closed her eyes for a breath at the mention of ‘wands’.

“Pens, Colonel. The term for them is ‘pens’. And we could try if we had to. But there is a process to this. A process complicated by the particular situation we’re in thanks to...prior events.” Setsuna paused, and the way she very deliberately avoided looking at Mariah made the connection almost more obvious than if she had, “Mariah, would you like to go check the security cameras in the hall physically, just to be sure they’re working right?”

The now-redheaded girl practically bounced away from the holovid-table. Slipping past Lori and Grayson, she disappeared out the door in an instant. The click of the door behind her seemed abnormally loud.

Grayson clicked his tongue and nodded, “Well that isn’t ominous at all.”

“Colonel Grayson, you woke up one of the most powerful people in the galaxy and then gave her a ride to Terra. After spending so much time with her, I would think you prepared for the ‘ominous’ by now.” Setsuna said, one eyebrow cocking upwards.

Grayson blinked, “Was that a joke?”

“An amused observation only, I assure you.” Setsuna answered, leaning back in her chair. The woman took a long breath, and brought one arm up to rest against the console at her side and prop against the side of her head.

“The reason we can’t give these pens to the other Guardians ourselves is because it could break them. Our powers are related, and on an instinctual level they probably don’t even recognize, they still use small portions of theirs. Me or Mariah giving them the pen? Our own abilities would enhance whatever echoes of their own they’re using and their lack of experience and knowledge of how to control that power could mean Rather Bad Things.”

Even without the particular turn her voice took with her last three words, the emphasis was obvious.

“So the pen-wands give them a focus for their magical powers that lets them better control it, otherwise they could start some kind of chain-reaction? Seems a silly way for it to work.” Grayson said before cocking his head, “And here I am questioning the logic of no-bullshit magical power. I suppose not making sense is part of it?”

Setsuna’s scowl at his mention of wands actually slowly transformed into a slight smile as Grayson continued, “You get used to it not making much sense with enough time, trust me. But it’s not as silly as you might think. It’s part of the way it’s supposed to work. Individually distinct people and powers coming together to accomplish a greater end than they might be able to individually. Somewhat like your mercenary Legion, I would say. In this case? One of us giving them the pen would be like you cold-starting the fusion engine in one of your ‘Mechs without any of the safeties engaged or powering-up the vacuum chamber first, using another of your ‘Mech’s to provide the initial jump. While you’re working in as a lance it’s helpful to have another ‘Mech at your side. On startup? Not so much. The same principle applies here.”

“Of course, that ignoring the mental aspect they’d face as well. At best, they’d be confronted with thousands of years of life they’ve lived in the span of seconds if we gave it to them. The last few hundred years of endless recursion would be bad enough for them I’m sure, but they’d also have the memories of the League’s fall and our own failures to deal with, completely unprepared.” Setsuna shrugged, eyes dropping to the floor.

Lori jumped at the potential chance for background, though she felt half-scummy doing it. “Was the collapse of the Star League really that bad for you?”

“Worse. Amaris’ Coup was more successful than you or anyone else could know. Beyond just toppling the Star League and killing the Camerons, Amaris’ found a way to kill P--...Guardian Moon. Or, judging by the way there’s still life, to remove her from this reality somehow. Since her successor was also killed by Amaris,” Setsuna herself didn’t seem to notice how her head turned towards the door Mariah had left out of moments earlier, “Well, that should have been when Mariah scoured the planet. A necessary evil to prevent something worse from happening.”

“But she didn’t?” Lori offered when the woman’s silence extended too long.

Setsuna shook her head, though whether it was in answer or to clear it Lori couldn’t tell, “She didn’t. Or perhaps ‘couldn’t’. And then she disappeared. Without her to restart things...Well, it forced me and Jerome Blake to do whatever we could to make things work with what we had, because we couldn’t actually end the problems. We could barely manage them. So that’s what we did. That’s why the HPG Network is still up, and most of the Guardians still around, but the network isn’t functioning as quickly or as consistently as it should and the Guardians still in the Inner Sphere have been stuck with memories that spin them around and around doing nothing.”

The woman tried to laugh, but failed. “ComStar was supposed to track her down. We all thought she’d run off to the Periphery trying to find--well, trying to find Kerensky’s fleet and the two who left with him. Precentor Rachan was the only one who thought to look within the Sphere itself, and you know how well that turned out firsthand.”

The dull buzz of the monitors and occasional whirring of a fan were the only sounds in the room for a very long, very awkward few seconds. Lori idly wondered what the woman had been about to say before she’d corrected herself, but was certain asking wouldn’t do her any good. Setsuna was more open about things than Mariah had been--as difficult as they were to believe. But on much of everything related to Mariah, she still either remained quiet or referred her and Grayson to Mariah herself--and Mariah had already explicitly refused to answer questions about her past. It was aggravating, but they’d dealt with similar clients before.

Lori only just barely managed not to choke herself holding down a laugh at that thought.

Setsuna started in her chair as if she’d just realized how long the silence had gone on, or how much she’d said before it. Shaking her head, she stood and held out the pen.

“As I was saying, beyond just being a,” Setsuna took a long breath, glared at Grayson, and finally rolled her eyes as she sighed, “focus they can use, the pens should help them gradually remember their pasts on their own terms. This one belongs to Guardian Venus, the one currently going by ‘Mina Centrella’. Get it to her however you can and then...we’ll see what to do next when the time comes.”

“Why not I just give them all out tonight? I might not have a better opportunity to approach people from three different states without attracting more attention than you might want.” Lori asked, taking the single pen and unable to help but be surprised at how heavy the small cylinder was.

“Because this is the process that is supposed to happen. Or the closest we can get without Guardian Moon. You awakened Saturn on Helm and whatever she did there was enough to allow me this opportunity. I can only hope the other two outer Guardians are awake, because the next to be awoken is Venus, and judging by how the Centrella’s seem to have actually done a good job taking care of her these past centuries, she should be the easiest. I’m trying to recreate a process that goes back millenia, Captain Kalmar.” Setsuna took a deep breath and shook her head, “This is the best I know to do with the resources available to me.”

Grayson raised his hand like a schoolchild, “Might I suggest ‘the magic ritual I am performing requires it that way’ as the better answer to my beautiful Captain’s question? Makes the people working for you less nervous if you don’t admit you’re playing things by the seat of your pants.”

Setsuna’s eye twitched, and she deliberately focused on Lori to the exclusion of everything else in the room, “Did you have any other questions?”

Yes!

“Nothing that can’t wait.” Lori answered instead of voicing her actual thought. Perhaps if she were alone with the other woman. But Setsuna was rather clearly beginning to step-away from ‘amused’ by Grayson’s constant reduction of things to ‘angry’.

“Good. Because the ball should be starting soon.”

Lori sighed, wondering if perhaps the end of the world wouldn’t be preferable to going out in public dressed like she was. With a bizarre contortion of her arm, she slipped the pen into the folds of the bow at her back, double-checking it with a few exaggerated movements to be sure it was secure.

Grayson was entirely too appreciative of the movements.

At least McCall was back on the dropship and couldn’t collaborate with the man. Grayson’s teasing compliments and appreciation were bad enough. McCall would have given him the idea of taking pictures.

********************************************************************************
Now...

Lori stared alongside the other occupants of the room, thankful that something had come along to finally draw people’s eyes away from her. It could have been worse, of course. There were a surprising number of dresses in the place that looked similar. But any distraction that obviously drew peoples’ eyes away from even the possibility of seeing her in the ridiculous getup, however many other people might think wearing it wasn’t an exercise in silliness, was a welcome relief. That the distraction was as exciting as a confrontation between Takashi Kurita and Jamie Wolf only made it that much more effective as a distraction, not to mention of some interest to her as well.

Judging by the excited chatter between Setsuna and Grayson that she could just make out coming through her earpiece, she was not the only one excited to see Jamie Wolf and his associates’ confrontation with Takashi Kurita and the Combine’s retinue. The pair were obviously having a spirited discussion on the other end of the line before it faded away—probably from one of them covering the voice input with a hand. Lori couldn’t help but feel a bit amused. Had Wolf even been invite to the wedding? Judging by his monofocus on Takashi Kurita, she was reasonably sure he was just using it as an excuse to vent his grievances at the House Lord.

He evidently had an extensive list of them. Just below the stairs that led into the entranceway, the commander of Wolf’s Dragoons was continuing to snap words in Japanese at the Combine’s leader without so much as pausing for a breath. Perhaps if anyone else in the hall had dared speak, the words might have gotten lost even over that short distance as Wolf didn’t scream so much as speak with an insistent beat that overpowered any potential opposition or resistance. But the effect was almost the same as screaming, everyone in the room turning their full attention on the man and his confrontation. Lori didn’t know what had led to the Dragoons being so hostile to the Combine, but it sounded like much more than a simple contractual dispute.

“What is he saying?” Lori whispered, hoping her words got through to the small mike underneath the ribbon on the front of her blouse. Her knowledge of Japanese was serviceable for ordering something from a vendor or challenging the ancestry of an enemy pilot, but it faded fast in anything more intelligent. Complicating things further, as far as she could tell, Wolf was using the older, much more formal and stylized version of the language that dominated the Combine’s court procedure, and she had virtually no knowledge of that archaic form.

Neither Grayson or Setsuna responded. Lori couldn’t say for sure whether that was because they hadn’t caught her whispered words or because they were still in the middle of whatever conversation Wolf’s presence had inspired, but it annoyed her all the same. The entire point of rigging up a microphone and bringing the earpiece with her was so they could advise her when crap like this happened!

She might have been too quiet for the microphone to pick up, but she wasn’t quiet enough not to attract the attention of the woman beside her. Mariah, red wig and elaborate makeup making her practically disappear into the crowd of nobility as being neither particularly striking nor out-of-place enough to catch the eye, took a few steps closer. Sliding into Lori’s six, the woman almost hid herself in Lori’s back. When she spoke, her voice was in an even more careful whisper than Lori had used.

“Colonel Wolf says those swords are all that is left of a good man. That Takashi—he does not use honorifics or a title—was wrong and that though he and his Dragoons have fled Combine space, they remain ready and more-than willing to confront his forces in battle if necessary for the sake of the honor of those he ordered to their ruin.”

Mariah wasn’t paying any attention to the commander of the Dragoons even as she translated his words. From what Lori could tell out of the very edges of her vision, the girl was entirely concentrating on the two other Dragoons that were with the Colonel. Mariah looked like she was about to go on, but visibly held back and directed Lori’s own attention back towards the unfolding drama with a small nod of her head.

It was still creepy how she could tell when she was being watched.

Chastised again for keeping her attention on Mariah by the girl raising one of her eyebrows in silent question, Lori turned her eyes back to the scene between the mercenary commander and the Coordinator. One of the other Dragoons had put a hand to Wolf’s shoulder and forced the man to slow down as he continued to spit words into the Coordinator’s face. Lori recognized the gesture as one she might try on Grayson when he was being too zealous or enthusiastic over a particular battlefield idea he had, but she’d never considered that anything similar could be done in social engagements. Hell, perhaps if she’d shaken her head like the other Dragoon did when this whole plan was cooked up Grayson would be the one stuck here hobnobbing with the socialites and the magical death-god machine-girl while she got to enjoy coffee and donuts in the security station!

Still, it was an odd image for one of the mercenary commander’s subordinates to so brazenly restrain his superior in public. Particularly for a unit like the Dragoons that prided itself on a high level of military discipline. Lori never would have done it to Gray in view of the men, much less in front of a crowd of civilians, and the Legion didn’t place even half the emphasis on that kind of formal respect for the rank structure as the Dragoons were known to. Perhaps if he was being stopped by the Black Widow herself or the Red Vest it would have made more sense. But Lori didn’t recognize the man who was holding Jamie Wolf back.

“Colonel Wolf said that if Takashi was an honorable man he would have challenged Wolf directly instead of twisting righteous men into despicable deeds for his goals. That the House of Kurita is and always had been backbiting scum and that he should watch his borders. That’s when Ha—his comrade stopped him.” Mariah continued in the listless, inattentive voice she always took on whenever she was thinking about something else.

“Picking up anything strange from them?” Lori finally remembered to ask, something she’d been much better about with the previous guests who’d had less dramatic entrances. As she spoke, Wolf finally turned and stalked away from Takashi Kurita with a resolute finality, the edges of his uniform-cape making the movement look much more grandiose than it actually was.

Mariah frowned, “There’s nothing you need worry about from them. The two with Colonel Wolf are…We know both of them.”

Despite being the one Mariah was talking to, Lori immediately understood that the other woman was referencing her and Setsuna when she used ‘we’. Growling, Lori forced herself to avoid tapping her foot at those words not having come sooner and of just not being informed that the Dragoons were apparently hosting more of the Guardians than Setsuna had bothered to mention. No doubt that little doozy of information was what had inspired Grayson and Setsuna’s apparently still-ongoing conversation that prevented them from translating or providing any kind of commentary!

There were two things you needed to win a fight, and the right information was just as important as the right ammunition. Sometimes it really felt like Setsuna and Mariah were feeding them with information that might as well have been hot-loaded inferno missiles that had been recovered from some moldy storehouse and whose accelerant had gone bad! Sure it looked like it would work, but it just kept exploding in the launch tube!

“More of your friends from way-back-when?” Lori said, tilting her head slightly down towards Mariah so the words wouldn’t travel quite so far.

It was awfully coincidental that two would arrive with Wolf’s Dragoons. That the Confederation, the Combine and the Magistracy all hosted one of the mythical figures was odd enough, but with the Dragoons it pushed the limits of coincidence too far. Did Colonel Wolf know who he was with? He had to, that had to be why he paid such mind to them. Did the entirety of the Dragoons? Lori hoped not. Sometimes it felt like everyone in the damn universe was in on the joke of long-running magical wars between the forces of good and evil except her and Grayson. It would be nice to find out there was at least one batch of people who were kindred spirits. Besides the House Lords that had been too absorbed in their own wars to care about a larger, more important one going on.

“More than that. We were family. Once.” Mariah whispered, voice breaking midway through the words. “They weren’t supposed to be here. They aren’t supposed to be here.”

Lori took a long breath and forced herself not to fiddle with the center-section of her blouse to try and goad Grayson or Setsuna into giving some kind of advice. If Mariah hadn’t expected them perhaps that excused Setsuna omitting their existence from her talks.

Still...Lori fought against a bubbling resentment. She had once prided herself on a practical understanding of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery’s major players. She’d always tried to keep up an up-to-date track of the political groups and factions that might be interested in hiring mercenaries to fight their battles for them, and kept a half-eye on the units like Wolf’s Dragoons and the Kell Hounds that the Legion would want to avoid any entanglements against. It was impossible to negotiate a contract otherwise, not with any degree of finesse at least. But all this magic and mysticism made that very difficult.

What was she supposed to do when one of those ‘major players’ turned out to be the girl right beside her? Beyond that, what was she supposed to say when the girl suddenly looked like someone had killed her puppy right in front of her? She was a Periphery-pirate turned ‘Mechwarrior not a...not a mother!

Lori winced at the familiar thought, and shoved it and the accompanying bubble of feelings and worries down to where they wouldn’t bother her again for a good while. Mission first, then she could worry about personal qualities--personal failings.

Her earpiece clicked as Grayson finally came back onto the line. Lori let herself relax into a nearby circle of people that looked unthreatening and could only hope that Mariah had followed.

“Lori? The two with Colonel Wolf are—“

“I know, mercenaries just have no tact!” Lori said, disguising her reply to Gray with a mindless expression of agreement with the inane conversation going on around her.

“No, you don’t. The two with Wolf are Guardians Uranus and Neptune--the ones who went off with Kerensky. And they just weren’t supposed to be here. The client didn’t even know. Unlike the others, she says they probably will recognize Mariah, though. They have their memories and there’s some bad blood there. But, here’s the kicker, she also thinks because of that they might be able to recognize a problem before we or Tiepolo’s men can. So the client wants you to extend yourself to keeping an eye on them as well as handing off that magic-wand business.”

Despite the now-flowering aggravation she felt with Setsuna, Lori couldn’t help but snort out in surprise and half-amusement. It took some extremely bitter pills before Grayson started referring to the ones buying the services of the Legion as ‘the client’. Then again, leaving something as basic as this out of the briefing ranked pretty high up there in the ‘shit to avoid’ category. Lori could only imagine why Setsuna had thought her disappeared Guardians wouldn’t show back up. She was the one who had attributed most of the success in getting the Guardians to Terra as ‘the work of fate’, why wouldn’t she think that all of them would be included?

After a moment’s token resistance, Lori gave in and let her teeth grind against each other. This just was not the way you were supposed to run an operation, magic or no-magic. Setsuna seemed to just be making things up as she went. She hadn’t been shy about admitting her other fault either. She’d all but admitted that just like the other Guardians--the ones she’d thought would be present at least--she didn’t know for sure what form any potential opposition would take. Tiepolo, Grayson and herself were looking for threats, but the Primus’ list of suspects apparently consisted of ‘everyone not me’, Grayson didn’t know what to look for, and she had the same problem as Grayson but also had to babysit. Mariah was supposed to make things easier for her by picking up on anything or anyone weird firsthand, but either hadn’t or just hadn’t mentioned it.

So now they were relying on two complete unknowns to sniff out a problem for them. ComStar might have some amazing technology squirreled away in storage and Setsuna might have an eye for the basics of clandestine operation, but Lori was growing convinced that the woman didn’t have much real-world experience with it and anyone with a brain in ComStar for operational planning was long dead. At least, hopefully they were long-dead. Because the only alternative Setsuna and Tiepolo’s suspicions presented was that the competent members of ComStar were possessed by demons or had sold their souls to them.

That was certainly a thought that had a positive impact on her morale!

Lori held back a sigh at the familiar aggravation the lack of concrete threat assessment left her with. Competent enemies were bad enough. Competent enemies with magic on their side? That just wasn’t fair. This magical bullshit needed more clearly-defined rules.

Lori tapped at her chest twice to signal she’d gotten Grayson’s warning message, disguising the motion as exaggeratedly fanning herself in agreement at one nearby women’s description of how handsome Wolf’s male subordinate was.

It wasn’t even an expression that took that much work to perform or exaggerate, because he was a looker. He was even blonde. She’d always had a thing for blondes. Unlike Gray, though, he trended pretty far into the style of a clean-shaven pretty-boy rather than the grizzled mercenary appearance her man was already taking on after a brief stint of not shaving. But clean-shaven pretty-boys were still quite popular in the League, Commonwealth, and Magistracy. Or so she assumed from the starstruck reactions of some of the women around her who were too young to look at Jamie Wolf himself as anything but an aging warhorse.

Lori kept a small portion of her mind on the other womens’ inane conversation from there—a thankfully very small portion of it since the gaggle around her had taken to criticizing the Dragoons’ uniform itself on its ‘stylistic’ merits, some of them seemed far too invested in the matter. Most of her attention Lori turned on keeping track of Wolf and his accomplices, happy to distract herself from a wealth of knowledge she’d never wanted about how full-length cloaks were definitely ‘last season’, the synth-cotton material of the Dragoons’ dress was just too boringly functional for a ‘proper’ formal uniform, and that the faux-fur trimming was an ‘appropriately mercenary’ touch that ‘badassed it up’.

Jamie Wolf, meanwhile, by sheer force of personality the women around Lori would never be able to achieve, had parted much of the crowd before him as he stalked away from the Coordinator. He made it almost to the entrance of the grand ballroom itself before being intercepted by none other than Morgan Kell and some young man who was with him. At the beginning of the parted sea of bodies, Takashi Kurita was manically whispering to his retainers, eyes never leaving the mercenary’s backside. Shifting her weight so she could see behind the head of one of the other women in her circle, Lori spotted the priestess of the Order of the Five Pillars, ‘Guardian Mars’, fading back into the rest of the Combine’s delegation.

Things almost settled down for a brief while. With Mariah in tow, Lori floated between moderately-sized groups in the massive entranceway she could drop in and out of without any long-winded introduction needed and where she could just nod along with the going topic of discussion. All the while glossing over the person who was speaking in favor of watching the two Dragoons Wolf had entered in front of, Guardian Mars, or Guardian Venus.

Lori could just make-out the last of those on the far side of the entranceway already drinking, scandalously flirting with the robed acolytes who walked around with platters of drinks, and otherwise being a very merry Canopian. The lack of gambling, go-go girls, and recreational hallucinogens undoubtedly made the reception very uptight and tame by Canopian standards, but Mina Centrella was clearly trying to make up for that lack of Canopian entertainment in whatever ways she could, even if that meant supplying it herself.

It was only two-dozen or so bodies separating her from the Canopian delegation, now. Lori still wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was for what she’d do once she reached them, but getting within spitting distance was a bigger priority. Before something else like Wolf’s dramatic entrance came along to freeze the crowd in place and leave her stuck wherever she was in the sea of bodies.

Lori mentally cursed as a visibly confused ComStar acolyte stepped out at the top of the stairs that Wolf had entered from minutes before, clearly operating off of some unseen cue that he was very uncomfortable with. He stopped as many of the occupants of the entranceway that weren’t already making their way into the grand ballroom beyond shifted their attention to him, and he awkwardly tried to shuffle away, speak, and glance back at whoever had sent him out in the same movement.

Lori had a feeling she was about to get stuck again.

“P-Presenting his Celestial Wisdom, the Light of the Universe, Lord—“

At a hurried cutting motion from another acolyte in the room, the man stopped speaking. Visibly blushing even underneath the concealing ComStar robes, he quickly descended the stairs and scurried away into the safety of the wings where whoever had sent him out to perform the introduction wouldn’t be able to reach him.

Stepping out onto the top of the stairs only an instant later was Chancellor Maximilian Liao and his wife, both beaming behind ornate formalwear that Lori would have typically thought of as ‘costumes’. At the sudden shift in the room’s attention towards their entrance, both smiled at almost the same time, undisturbed by the way their elaborate introduction had been cut-off prematurely, or acting as if they were. Both of their faces faded slightly into less congenial expressions as they noticed the arrangement of banners on the wall of the room and the way most of the other occupants had been in the process of filing into the grand ballroom already. But after an instant’s hesitation the couple descended the stairs arm-in-arm, as if the entire reception was meant for their benefit more than anyone else’s.

Like gophers coming out of their holes, the crowd of nobles and influence-peddlers firmly set itself into position at the entrance of another House Lord. Everyone at once bandying for the best view of the procession, either to cast their disgusted eyes upon the pair or to try and catch the eye of one for whatever reason. Whichever, the effect was that Lori’s slow progress towards the Canopian delegation was halted. She was forced, like those around her, to turn her eyes onto the procession of House Liao’s notables. A procession only notable for how small it was.

Lori scanned the handful of people who followed Maximillian and Elizabeth Liao, quickly passing over the large men with emotionless eyes wearing Death Commando uniforms. The exclusion of the Chancellor’s disgraced son from things wasn’t that surprising, but his youngest daughter seemed to be missing as well. Only the middle daughter, Candace, followed in the wake of the ‘Celestial Majesty’, wearing a surprisingly simple black bodystocking-turned-dress, in contrast to her father’s ornate and complex attire, spoke to what was hopefully a much more reasonable personality--though with anything Capellan it was important to remember that looks could be deceiving.

Drawing more eyes than her dress and its potential promises of restrained egomania was the man at Candace Liao’s arm who was outfitted in a more masculine shirt-and-slacks version of the same attire. Apparently not feeling the need to give off the same sense of superiority and aplomb as the Chancellor he served, Justin Xiang openly scowled when he saw the layout of the room’s decorative banners, his frown threatening to grow so large it extended off of his face entirely. His eyes scanned the rest of the room with regularity very similar to that practiced by the bodyguards behind him. In contrast to the guards, Lori could see a certain flame in the edge of the man’s eyes that revealed he was looking for targets instead of simple threats.

Considering the fraught path the man had taken to end up in his current position, Lori doubted there’d be any shortage of either for him at the wedding. One of Hanse Davion’s faults, known across the Sphere, was his immense pride. A pride that even supporters sometimes admitted bordered on arrogance. Bringing the turncoat son of his intelligence chief to Hanse Davion’s wedding, especially as his heir’s date, was a surprisingly deft insult on the part of Maximilian Liao.

Despite the delay their entrance was putting her through Lori smiled at the way Candace softly pulled the bigger man at her side out of his thoughts and into descending the stairwell alongside her. The movement was insistent, but with a degree of amused placating more than stern command. It wasn’t something you’d see among a superior dragging-along a flunkie, and If that was any indication, perhaps it was more Candace than Maximilian who had arranged her date for the evening?

Lori frowned. That left only the question of why Maximilian’s other daughter, Romano, hadn’t attended. The Capellan Chancellor could merely be in a fit of rage from some perceived slight or another, but even then he likely would have presented her at the wedding--if only to hold it over Takashi Kurita’s head that he had multiple direct heirs in-line for his throne while the Combine faced the threat of a power-struggle because of Theodore Kurita’s disgrace.

“We know one of Candace’s guards,” Mariah whispered, nodding her head in the direction of Candace and Justin, “The tall one on the right that isn’t in the Death Commando uniform.”

“Second guard on the left behind Candace.” Gray spoke in her ear, “Setsuna says that’s Jupiter.”

Lori rolled with the almost-simultaneous statements as best she could. With virtually everyone else except the Combine delegation and Colonel Wolf still focused on the entering Capellans, she didn’t even have to disguise taking a closer look at them. Instead of ending her examination on the notable personalities within, however, she looked past them.

The girl they had to be referring to was back among the guards, conspicuous more in being the only one not from among the ranks of the Death Commandos than the only female thanks to the unflattering cut of Capellan uniforms. But unlike the Magestrix’s ‘daughter’, who’d immediately flitted into comfortable conversation and mingling with other guests, and the priestess from the Combine who still kept a dignified façade over what her thoughts were, the Guardian from the Confederation was rather obviously trying, and failing, to hide an amazement with the splendor around her.

It was the little things. The moment of hesitation at the top of the stairs she took to admire the room instead of scan it for threats. The way her eyes paused every couple of seconds when she did begin to scan the room just to appreciate a dress or look past the party-goers to one of the pieces of artwork on the wall. The way she—probably unconsciously—copied the reel-and-sway descent of the stairs that Candace Liao made in front of her. In a dress, the movement would have made it look like she belonged among the other guests. In the flat, dull-brown color of her Warrior House uniform, it just made her look out of place.

Lori turned to ask Mariah if she felt anything from this group, but the other woman had already begun to walk away. The red hair of her wig bobbing slightly with the enthusiasm of her steps, Mariah snaked through the throngs of people still milling about the entranceway and disappeared into the grand ballroom itself.

Hopefully it was safe to take that as an expression of nobody in the Capellan delegation presenting a threat. Not any kind of supernatural threat, anyways. Maximilian Liao had not come to the throne by refusing any opportunity to advance himself and his nation that came his way. Lori wouldn’t be surprised if he tried something at the wedding, despite all the diplomatic protocol and ComStar’s demands for neutrality and good behavior. But if Mariah didn’t think he posed a larger danger then she had little choice but to take her word for it...Though it might be a good idea to see if the Guardians accompanying Wolf paid any special mind to the Capellans?

Lori brought one hand up to the side of her head, absently sliding an index finger along the titanium pin that bisected the hoop earring there. Honestly more worrying than Maximilian was Mariah being off on her own. But Grayson and Setsuna would be able to tell her if the girl somehow got into trouble—or, more likely, if she somehow caused some trouble. Maybe Mariah was just going to calmly leave and let Lori handle the rest of the evening? She had already done everything she needed to be present for. Now it was just a matter of Lori finding the right timing to bump into Mina Centrella.

Right. But first she needed to convince herself of that and get rid of the stomach-churning certainty that something was going to go wrong. Sometimes things did go according to plan after all! Right now the only complication in things was the unexpected presence of Colonel Wolf and the two other Guardians with him that Mariah and Setsuna were uncomfortable with.

She just wished that particular unknown wasn’t headed by the best mercenary commander in the Inner Sphere.

Lori sighed. The most infuriating part about it all to her was just how slow Setsuna demanded they be, whatever her reasoning. If these really were the girls she was looking for, if they really were the missing Guardians she and Mariah made so much out of, then Lori’s first inclination was to gather them all together and one-by-one present them with that fact! After that they could hold hands and sacrifice a chicken or whatever they wanted to do. But at least they’d be moving things along. The important thing was to do something. Instead, Lori was limited to just handing off a magic pen to Mina Centrella after which everyone would just sit and wait.

The only thing that came to those who waited was pirates. But Setsuna was insistent, and Grayson had done the proper thing and conceded to her demands. She was their employer, so she had the right to demand inaction from them, however aggravating that was to Lori’s own senses of what should be done. Setsuna was the client. A client unlike any other they’d had before, but she wouldn’t have questioned a duke giving her orders to only take limited action and then evaluate its effect as much as she did Setsuna’s plan to do the same thing.

Politely excusing herself from the group she was in without interrupting the long-running diatribe a young Lyran noblewoman was in the middle of, Lori stepped out into the slowly-flowing crowd. Both the Combine and Capellan delegations had, much like Jamie Wolf, parted the crowds before them to make their way into the grand ballroom. Unlike the mercenary Colonel, none in either group had stopped to speak with anyone. But the Canopian delegation was just beginning to move onward.

With careful timing and the judicious use of subtle shoves to move the more lackadaisical members of the crowd out of her way, Lori managed to slip into the rear of the Canopian procession without anyone taking any particular notice of her. She was just another partygoer following the House Lords example and abandoning the aperitifs and greetings of the entrance for the dining and dancing of the grand ballroom itself. Perhaps there she could better engineer some reason to present the supposed youngest-daughter of the Magestrix with the pen Setsuna had given her.

Lori actually had to struggle not to miss a step as she passed through a tall, wooden archway that separated the two rooms. The grand ballroom looked much like the entranceway, albeit without the subduing effect of banners hiding the more gaudy sections of the upper wall. Instead, the elaborately designed pillars and arches set into the wall could be witnessed in their entirety, seemingly stretching on forever across the edges of the massive, open hall. Carvings inlaid with gold paint--or perhaps it was actual gold gilding!--wrapped their way around and over the arches. According to Tiepolo, the designs recounted the entirety of the history of Terra if one took the time to walk the entire length of the grand ballroom. Though he had admitted certain historical items that weren’t common knowledge even within ComStar’s ranks had been left out.

Lori continued on, not wanting to slow and give up her prime position near the Canopian delegation but finding it difficult to keep up a complete understanding of what was going on around her without slowing down. The room was just too large, with too much busy architectural-work, too many people, and too many noises to be easily digested!

On the west end of the room, doors underneath the decorative arches of the wall had been opened and the rays of the setting sun poured in, illuminating multilayered chandeliers and sending prisms of light out to hurriedly dance in the middle of the hall around slower, more human dancers. The well-dressed nobles, usually appearing to be from the same nation but with occasional forays by those more adventurous into the arms of individuals from allied or aligned powers, followed the light’s example and swirled in time with a classical string orchestra that had taken a central position against the east wall. Judging by the lack of electrical equipment anywhere near them, Lori had a brooding fear that the dull music they were producing was going to be typical for the evening.

“Grayson? Please tell me ComStar’s itinerary for this bullshit includes a different band for later in the evening.” Lori whispered.

“You’re in luck! There’s actually three different bands.” Grayson said in her ear, “This one specializes in Terran Baroque, the next will specialize in Terran Classical, and at the end of the evening everybody has the chance to let their hair down with some Terran Romantic music.”

She could hear the smirk in his voice.

“If this ‘strings and piano’ crap keeps up I’m going to let my hair down by murdering a violinist. Violently.” Lori spat, slightly louder than she’d actually intended.

She did her best to ignore both Grayson’s laughter at her unintentional bad joke and the bearded man in a Magistracy Armed Forces uniform that turned to stare at her for the comment. Instead, she did her best to look past the people directly surrounding her to note where Mina Centrella was.

Lori was unsurprised to find the blonde girl already at the edge of the dance-floor, her entire body almost vibrating with the desire to join the other couples moving around it. But there was something very manufactured about the display. Something that struck Lori as simply off until she finally put a finger on what it was. The girl presented herself as if she were simply waiting for some man or woman to come along and drag her to the floor, but her eyes were scanning the entirety of the ballroom just the same as Justin Xiang’s had been--and they had the same predatory glare underneath them.

Lori shifted her attention before the girl noticed her stare, and instead tried to note where Setsuna’s other friends were. ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Mars’ were easy to find, still closely-attached to the delegations from Capella and the Draconis Combine. The only ones she couldn’t track down were, unfortunately, the ones she was more concerned about. The pair of Dragoons were somewhere in the ballroom. But while distinctive, they just weren’t numerous enough to make spotting them amidst the crowd an easy feat.

But, if she asked Mina Centrella to dance she might be able to get a line on where they were during the circuit of the floor. It might just be the perfect time to present the pen to her as well. She could pass it off as some kind of custom from her world for the first dance of an evening!

Glancing down at herself, Lori brought her hands up and adjusted the bow that held the upper portion of her blouse together, trying to convince herself to actually carry out the ingenious plan she’d come up with. Settling the bow back into place a little higher than it had been, she cocked it slightly so it at least began to cover part of her décolletage. It would undoubtedly be a new and heretofore undiscovered level of hell trying to dance in the hilariously impractical thing. She’d rather be in zero-gee with coveralls on. Or maybe in zero-gee with the dress and Grayson. There were some possibilities in privacy that weren’t there in public...

Pasting her lips into a dull smile and reaching out to snatch a flute of something that looked vaguely alcoholic off a passing attendant’s serving-tray, Lori forced herself legs into motion. Considering the limited intelligence and enemy force estimates she was working off of, she had a solid plan of action. Very little for reinforcements or support, and a number of ways things could go sideways without her even knowing, but a solid plan of action nonetheless. Now all that remained was to carry it out.
***********************************************************************************

A/N: Huh. Today I learned there's an 85000 character limit.

 

[prinCZess]

As she walked, Lori slugged back a healthy portion of the glass’ contents just as she would a PPC or whiskey. She regretted the move almost instantly, and had to roughly swallow an aggravated cough at the heavy carbonation and sickly-sweetness of the drink. Lori immediately turned and hurriedly returned the drink to the try she’d removed it from.

ComStar was serving their guests carbonated apple juice? What kind of masochistic assholes--

As if spurred on by the thought itself, the orchestra crescendoed from light background accompaniment to a swelling chord of strings that battered at Lori’s ears with all the force of a Highlander at full-speed. Instead of coming down from that swell, however, they only got louder.

Lori sighed, briefly entertaining the thought of demanding Grayson play some real music through the bud in her ear. It would make dancing a lot easier, but probably get her too much attention from being off-beat with the orchestra’s music. She’d just have to put up with it. For the dance with Mina at least.

Wiping away the bit of sweat that had collected on her palms, Lori turned past the second-to-last person in between her and Mina Centrella. If she got the girl the pen soon enough, it could well end up being the fastest-done job in the Legion’s history--excluding the mock contract McCall had taken out on April first years before that nobody liked to talk about.

She was close now! All she had to do was ask the girl to dance. Even if she wasn’t as ditzy as she acted, she’d have to give-in to a request like that or it’d break her cover. Lori couldn’t help but appreciate the irony.

“Lori? Lori something’s interf—“ Grayson interrupted suddenly. His voice slowly faded in her ear until it disappeared entirely into a flat hum of nothing.

Lori automatically brought one hand up towards her ear. Maybe something had broken on the ComStar device? Was her microphone still transmitting?

A breeze from the open doors curled through her hair and forced her to drop the other hand down to hold her skirt in place. Trying to get something, even if it was just feedback through the equipment, Lori patted her earpiece with one finger of the hand she could use. She was met by total silence. The only possible thing that could cause that was a complete failure or...

Or some kind of jamming device.

“It’s always interesting to see pretty young girls at these kinds of things who aren’t enjoying themselves.”

Oh bad words.

Lori froze. The voice was higher-pitched but still somewhat rough, as if the person it belonged to had grown up on an oxygen-thin world or been a smoker for a long enough period to have it start affecting them. The sudden attention forced Lori to shift the hand at her ear from fiddling with the earbud to her earring, using a thumb to curl some of her hair over the ear as best she could.

She could think of only a few coincidental explanations for why her mike would cut out immediately before someone approached her. But none of them seemed very plausible. Most likely was that whoever this was somehow knew. Twisting her head in the same way a self-absorbed idiot would when responding to a mouthy waiter, Lori turned towards the voice.

Only long-dormant memories of how to handle pirates kept her from going completely silent in shock at the blonde-haired man who stood at her side as she realized that none of the coincidental explanations would be enough to explain his presence. A cocky smile she’d seen a thousand times on ‘Mech jocks across the Sphere played at his lips, but it faded the further up his face she went. His eyes were blank and unrevealing, with almost the same faraway look to them as Mariah had when she was avoiding a question. His brows curled down in what might have been good humor if not for the eyes. With them, it looked much more like suspicion.

The Dragoon uniform sealed what little doubt she had about the man’s attitude. It was definitely ‘suspicion’. The awful trouble was that it was likely completely justified suspicion. Lori had always preferred it when she actually hadn’t done anything she was suspected of. Being guilty made it much harder to keep up appearances!

“And I suppose you think the grace of some mercenary Mech-jock’s presence will make my evening suddenly that much more enjoyable?” Lori shot back, already certain that even if her act was perfect it wasn’t going to work. But she still had to try.

“Well, I do like to think my company is enjoyable, but I meant it as more a compliment, actually. There are so many of these galas over the course of a year in every Successor State. I’ve found the people with brains or who have seen the elephant tend not to enjoy them for the same reason everyone else does.” The man continued, giving a slight nod.

Lori forced her face to scrunch together in mock confusion, “Seen the elephant?”

“I’m sorry, it’s something of an old slang term. We ‘Mechwarriors use it to mean people who have seen combat before.” The blonde explained.

“So, by your words, if I haven’t ‘seen the elephant’, I must be one of the ‘people with brains’?” Lori said, raising her eyebrow in what she hoped was mild playfulness, “You’re very good at giving compliments, mister...”

“Colonel, actually.” He corrected easily, flashing that smile again, “Colonel Haruka Tenoh of Wolf’s Dragoons, and I admit I’ve had a lot of practice complimenting beautiful girls.”

“Well consider me flattered, Colonel.” Lori said unsure what else to say. Extending her hand, Lori raised her eyebrows at the rank. “Lorinette Kalkenny of New Earth.”

She tried not to jerk in surprise when instead of shaking her hand, the Dragoon officer and, more worryingly, Guardian, brought it up slightly and bent down to brush his lips against the knuckles. It was an outdated custom even among the ‘Mechwarriors who still believed themselves ‘knights of the modern battlefield’. But, if he was another of the Guardians of the Star League she couldn’t well be surprised if he was old-fashioned, could she?

Terrified of why he’d singled her out in the first place, oh yes. But not surprised at his being old-fashioned in the way he did it.

Still, Lori bit the rear of her lip as the man released her hand, running his fingers against piloting calluses only barely concealed by a thin layer of lotion and moisturizer that was supposed to imitate the feel of soft hands. She wished Grayson was present to cause a scene over the annoying custom. But hiding behind her fake name she had to act as if she found it at least a little charming.

She hated acting almost as much as she hated the ridiculous act the Dragoon was putting on for her benefit. It was embarrassing for both of them!

Lori tried but couldn’t shutup a stupid voice in her head that said it was only embarrassing because it wasn’t Grayson doing it.

“I suppose you have much practice with doing that as well, Colonel?” Lori asked, once again forcing her voice to take on a soft lilt that bordered on flirtatious.

“Some, I admit.” Haruka continued, “But I honestly prefer not to stand on theatrics so much and just come out and ask pretty girls to dance with me. It makes things go so much quicker.”

The mercenary turned towards the dancefloor, cocking one arm on his hip so his elbow extended almost into Lori’s abdomen. The act might almost have been friendly, with the same quaint outdatedness as his earlier kiss of her hand. Even the steady, ever-present smile didn’t leave his face. But something in his eyes hardened to the point where they could have melted durasteel just as effectively as a large laser.

“So, would you care to join me for this dance?”

Oh bad words, bad words, bad words…

Lori froze, feeling as if she were a small creature caught between different predators. She had no support from Gray and Setsuna had merely warned her to be careful of the Dragoon pair while also looking to them for direction. Clearly the man had some reason to approach her, but his timing couldn’t possibly have been worse.

The pen suddenly felt much more conspicuous than it had the whole evening.

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good dancer, Colonel. I’m also not exceptionally interested. The Dragoons may consider themselves an exception, but I have plenty of stories about mercenaries.” Lori said, twisting her voice into a deliberately harsh tone that might chase the man away if it were, somehow, just a massive coincidence.

It was too much to hope for.

“Oh, undoubtedly you do. That’s why I can promise only a single dance.” Haruka said, a smirk came back to his face, but it still didn’t look genuine, “Don’t make me beg, ‘Miss Kalkenny’, was it? Because I can assure you I will and it will attract a great deal of attention and be quite awkward for both of us, I’m sure.”

Lori swallowed and stepped forward to cross her own arm through his, “Please lead on, Colonel. Though I must warn you I am a terrible dancer.”

Something twitched in his cheek, perhaps the beginning of a real smile rather than the almost-mocking one he’d worn thus far, “I’ve found it’s very much like piloting a ‘Mech, Captain Kalmar. The less you think about it consciously, the better you tend to do.”

Lori caught herself nodding before the rank-and-name he’d used struck, and she couldn’t help but almost stumble as every muscle in her body decided to tense at that exact moment. It was only the firm support from his arm that kept her from falling straight-away, and he slowed his stride just enough for her to regain her footing without obviously stumbling.

“As I said, I prefer not to stand on theatrics, Captain.”

Lori could only glare at him as they stepped onto the floor and a handful of other pairs briefly closed-in around them. With a flourish from his free hand and a half-step rotation, Haruka led her into a slow, plodding dance that mimicked that being performed by a small sea of others in the center of the ballroom. Somehow, he managed not to step on her feet, obviously repositioning himself before completing every step to avoid it as she bumbled through her own movements.

Okay, so he definitely knew who she was. How much else did he know? And where the hell was one of the damned acolytes when you needed them? Her microphone might have cut out, but the cameras in the ballroom should still work. Now would be a very good time for an extraction.

“Of course, I could understand someone from the Gray Death Legion being less inclined to the same attitude. Some of your operations have been quite theatrical.” Haruka continued as they danced.

Oh, you don’t know the half of it, asshole…

Lori coughed, “Mind telling me just how you know who I am?”

It was a longshot of a question, meant more to interrupt him, buy Grayson and ComStar time to notice and act, and give her a moment to recover rather than to actually discover anything. But he answered it all the same.

“The Dragoons make a habit of keeping tabs on the leading members of any mercenary commands that catch our eye. And, for that matter, what activities Periphery bandits and pirates are getting up to. Since you’ve fallen under both those categories in your career thus far, Miss Kalmar? Well. To be frank, that fits a profile of people who we’ve made that often end up employed by ComStar,” His eyes narrowed even further and what slight humor might once have been on his face disappeared, “And here you are.”

“That only leaves a few mysteries,” Haruka continued, voice softening minutely, “The largest of them being what Tiepolo and ComStar are using you for, and where Grayson Carlyle himself is.”

Something that had been coiled tight inside Lori’s stomach sprung open in an instant, and she felt the sudden urge to laugh in Haruka’s face. The questions were all firmly rooted on basic facts, without any of the supernatural connection or implication behind them that Lori knew their honest answers had. It made the point almost by itself. She was the one in control of more information--and therefore the entire conversation--not the Dragoon colonel.

He took her silence in the wrong way, “If they are holding your commander hostage, we may be able to help you solve that problem. Depending on how much you can tell us about what ComStar is using you for. What’s their interest in Mina Centrella?”

Lori couldn’t keep her grin down any longer, and the way it made his eyebrows jump only gave her another reason to make it even wider.

“You may want to reevaluate how good you think your intelligence is, Colonel. The Gray Death Legion is on retainer by ComStar of its own free will.” Lori said, taking a perverse degree of pleasure in the sudden flash of uncertainty and confusion in Haruka’s expression, “Grayson Carlyle himself isn’t attending because we all agreed he’d be too recognizable at an event like this to properly do the job. The mystery you should be asking about, though, is why so many Guardians of the Star League are here at the same time.”

A foot came down hard on top of Lori’s, and she found herself having to force her hand open as Haruka’s clamped down around her own. The blonde quickly recovered, sliding her foot to the side again and continuing the slow, steady dance. But it was obviously only a physical recovery, and her hand continued it’s death grip.

More concerning was the sudden blankness in her eyes.

“You are going to tell me everything you know, now.” Haruka said, the words coming out in a flat statement without even a breath between words.

Lori had been enjoying the sudden reversal in feeling the conversation had taken, but she’d heard that tone before when she was part of a pirate-band that styled itself a ‘Special Expeditionary Force’. There, that same tone had usually preceded really unpleasant things for whoever was being spoken to. Still, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to get some of her own back.

“Oh am I? I am part of the Legion. And as you said yourself, we do so love theatrics Colon-naaagh.” Lori cut off her words with the strained groan as the man’s hand clamped down even harder on her own, popping her knuckles and squeezing the fingers together against the palm so tight she could swear it felt like bones were an instant away from breaking.

Haruka pulled her in very close, the hand at her waist mimicking the other and steadily tightening until it felt as if it were going to tear through the skin. To an observer they would only look like a couple that had moved-on from the initial distance of the dance to a more intimate arrangement.

“Everything. Now.” Haruka growled in her ear.

Lori came to two realizations in one instant as they continued to move across the dance floor. The first, relatively unimportant but difficult to draw her focus away from with three pieces of evidence literally rubbing against her with every movement of their bodies--or, more accurately, two pieces which rubbed against her and one that was conspicuously lacking--was that Colonel Haruka Tenoh was definitely not a man.

That would have been awkward enough even without the second realization: the other woman was definitely still the one in control of the conversation.

“Now what kind of mercenary would I be if I gave you all that for free?” Lori choked out, refusing to show any other indication that might suggest she was uncomfortable.

The grip tightened even further, and Lori could no longer hold back the wince of pain.

“I’ll let you live. How’s that for payment? Now what is Tiepolo planning?”

Lori thought about spitting in her face but it would have caused too much of a scene, “Tiepolo? He’s only planning a wedding. Only thing he’s doing for us is paying our bill and putting in a good word with the Mercenary Review Board. The planning is out of his hands entirely.”

The flash of confusion in Haruka’s eyes was almost as pleasing as the sudden softening of her death-grip. Lori was pretty sure she was going to have bruises, and her hand throbbed with a dull ache even after it had been released, but at least it was an improvement from the vice-like hold it had been in before.

“Then who--”

Haruka stopped. Not just speaking, but dancing as well. Lori almost tripped over her own feet at the sudden end, and a trio of couples who had been following in their wake scowled as they had to slip past them and between another lane of dancers closer to the center of the floor. The blonde paid them no mind, her stare not budging from Lori despite a series of soft curses being thrown her direction.

“What did you want with the Centrella girl?” Haruka finally whispered, eyes slowly widening and her tone suddenly doing another one-eighty from cold and threatening to simply curious.

Lori hesitated, unsure if she should give in to her own selfish desire to humble the woman by telling the truth or if she should avoid any such thing. It wasn’t like Setsuna had given her much direction for how to handle the pair or what to do if she ran into them. Not when they weren’t even supposed to be present.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

“I was going to present her with a gift.” Lori explained as she dragged the other woman off the dance-floor. She reached behind her to the bow and withdrew the pen, holding it up at her side so Haruka could get a good look at it.

She didn’t expect the extended silence the movement bought her from Haruka.

“Your heart might be in the right place, but that isn’t always enough.” Haruka finally said, “You should think very carefully about your next move. One mistake, one false move on your part, could upset a balance that’s held for two-and-a-half centuries.”

Lori shrugged, inviting a look from Haruka, “In case you haven’t noticed, ‘the balance’ sucks. Besides, Grayson’s in one of his white-knighting moods. I can’t argue with him when he gets like that. He gets all emotional and idealistic. Makes me pukey.”

The look softened, and Haruka raised an eyebrow, “So this is his idea?”

“Damn-straight it is. I wanted to burn for the Periphery and take-up a life of crime and stay far away from all this.”

“No you didn’t.” Haruka said simply.

Before Lori could get a clarification or offer a correction, the Dragoon turned away. Boots snapping against the floor with each step, Haruka marched off without another word.

Grayson’s voice gradually returned to her ear.

“--on’t care if I can see her, I want to hear her. Now let me out of this damned room!”

Lori coughed, and fanned herself with one hand so it might look like she was somehow overcome from her dance with the Dragoon, “Well that was certainly interesting.”

Her earpiece was silent again, and for an instant she worried that it hadn’t come back after all.

“Lori? Oh thank God. Are you alright?”

“Fine.” Lori answered quietly, unsure what else to say with other people beginning to crowd around her again. How was she supposed to say she was nervous, seconds away from slipping out of her clothes in some way thanks to all the movement of dancing, and ready to strangle Setsuna with one hand?

“Good. Tiepolo’s being cagey and refuses to have his men intervene, but say the word and I can still have Hassan bring his ride over to that ballroom to step on the Dragoons and pick you up.” Grayson said.

Lori couldn’t actually tell if the words were a joke, which were a rarity for Grayson--usually he was much easier to read. But the image they conjured of a Warhammer busting through the building around her was rather fantastic to think about. Maybe the threat of 70-ton war machine would finally shut-up the orchestra, and they could direct its guns on the Dragoons and frog-march them all to Setsuna for an explanation of what the hell they were doing.

Turning herself, Lori reoriented herself in the massive ballroom. In the course of dancing she’d wound up almost directly opposite of where she had started. Trying to get back to the delegation from Canopus and Mina Centrella would require her to skirt the floor and wade through the crowd.

Maybe she could find another server with a tray of actual beverages on her way across the room. She really needed an actual drink or something to distract her from the dawning realization: If two of the Dragoons were Guardians who had left the inner sphere with Kerensky...Then were the Dragoons themselves also related to the SLDF?

It did explain how they’d emerged out of nowhere twenty years before with an entire regiment of BattleMechs in nearly-mint condition…

Lori snorted. So much for finding other poor schlubs who didn’t know what all this magic was that we could sympathize with.

************************************************************************************
Hilton Head Island Compound
North America, Terra
August 18, 3028 - 0145 Hours

Jonah Moore was a little put-out. He’d made plans to get off the island and go fishing during all the insanity of the Davion-Steiner marriage. He’d even scoped out the perfect spot on the upper end of the Savannah River, far-removed from any of the bustle of a highway or spaceport. While everyone else would have needed to scramble to scrape and bow before the nobles of the Inner Sphere while they hurried to hide ComStar’s secrets, he would have been relaxing on the side of the water trying to decide if he wanted to go through all the effort of actually baiting a worm and risk catching a fish and making himself work.

Instead, by order of the Primus, even pre-approved vacations and leave had been suspended for everyone with duties on Hilton Head. Worse, even with all the personnel brought in from other duty-stations, they’d started assigning those available back to security duties. Dragged away from his vacation, they’d instead issued him the chafingly familiar body-armor and Mauser & Gray flechette rifle and stationed him and an entire extra squad at the HPG traffic facility on Hilton Head.

For the first time in years, he was explicitly ordered to keep as close an eye on the acolytes going about their business and the other security personnel as he did on any civilians who tried to use the place. That particular order had been ingrained in the security forces so long he couldn’t recall the last time it had actually been included in his orders. It was just supposed to be a given. Perhaps it was something the idiots who didn’t know anything in one of the regional offices might need to be told, but he and his men were professionals. Professional cutthroats, perhaps, but that just made the reminder that they needed to be prepared to watch, or even kill, innocents or each other even more glaring.

It could have been worse, he supposed. They could have included ‘at all costs’ and ‘do not be taken alive’ in the orders. That would have constituted the trifecta of stupidly-obvious shit included in orders for no reason. He’d seen what the kill-switches ROM implanted in them did to one of the other former-pirates ComStar had recruited. He wanted no part of that for himself.

Stepping away from his position at the edge of the building looking out over the small concrete parking lot and kill-zone on the north, Jonah let another of his men replace him. Absently fingering the safety on his M&G, he turned and moved through some of the same footprints as the other guard had made in the gravel walking along the front of the building.

In the distance, he could hear the ancient ‘string’ music one of the others had called ‘classical’ still cutting through the air. The grand ball that was being held looked like it was going to continue all the way until sunrise. It certainly showed no signs of stopping, and the clock going past midnight had only intensified the noise and bustle they’d seen on the other end of the compound.

He wasn’t about to complain. The longer the small army of people spent partying the fewer who would want to access the place to record a message. Some of the lesser nobles and Periphery-state officials still lacked datapads that could wirelessly upload messages into the system and had to be hard-wired into an access terminal.

Jonah didn’t know who was responsible for putting the only publicly-accessible HPG terminal on the island inside the same facility that collated the general planetary traffic, but slitting the man’s throat in would have been too quick an end for him. All night he’d needed to accompany half-drunk partygoers back-and-forth into the building to make sure they didn’t try to go anywhere they weren’t supposed to in the process of making their drunken interstellar messages.

The only high point had been the emerald-haired Dragoon officer who’d come through earlier. Walking behind her as an escort had actually been a treat. Underneath the cloak and those form-fitting slacks the mercenary outfit had as its uniform she’d had the perfect ass. Wide enough to fill out any slack in her pants, but blending perfectly into her legs, while at the same time bouncing just that little bit with every step she took...

Jonah shook himself out of the memory just as the radio on his chest squawked to life.

“North watch. Got a guy coming up.”

Jonah sighed as he turned back the way he’d come, mentally bidding farewell to the cup of coffee he’d been planning on grabbing when his circuit of the building took him inside. A drunken idiot sending a message in the middle of the night would take up enough time that the other patrolling members of his ‘team’ would undoubtedly drink the entire pot, and perhaps the biggest crimes of the other ‘reformed’ murderers, rapists and pirates he worked with was that they weren’t courteous enough to bother making a fresh pot if they emptied it.

“On my way back.” Jonah growled into his radio.

Thoughts of coffee and an idle wish that the Dragoon with the odd-colored hair would return disappeared when he turned the corner. There, beside the man who’d replaced him and only partially obscured by the blazing floodlight on the top of the entrance, stood Nicholas Cassnew--Precentor ROM.

Jonah swallowed and immediately played-back every even slightly-suspicious incident of the evening inside his head. The list of things that occurred to him wasn’t long, but ROM didn’t need much excuse to dispose of him for failure or on mere suspicion of corruption.

“May I help you, Precentor? Is there something you need?” Jonah heard himself say, amazed at his own ability to keep a steady voice in the face of a man who could kill him with only a few words.

The elderly man offered a surprisingly friendly smile, “No. No. I am alright. All the commotion woke me up and once I was awake I couldn’t manage to calm down again. Simply wandering about, mulling over some things. Would you mind opening the door for me? It wouldn’t be fair for me to subject you and your men to a surprise inspection if I didn’t include the acolytes on night-shift, would it?”

Jonah wasn’t sure how to answer since the man very well could do whatever he wanted, fair or not, but leaning over to open the door for him with the keycard around his neck seemed to be the only answer the man needed. The door breezed open with a soft breath of air escaping, and the Precentor shuffled his way in. Hesitating only a moment, Jonah followed.

Cassnew slowly raised an eyebrow at him, “I do know my way around our own facilities, young man.”

It was a good thing he hadn’t gotten any coffee. Just the mildly irritated tone of the Precentor’s voice probably would have brought it back up. Searching for something to do that would appear useful, Jonah stepped forward so the inner door of the building would slide open.

“Of course, sir. But I’m supposed to accompany everyone tonight. My handler was very specific in his orders this evening.” Jonah explained, somewhat proud of how the explanation shifted responsibility for his behavior.

Cassnew’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that, and Jonah could hear his heart pounding in his ears. After a moment’s thought, the older man gave a small nod and continued on his way into the facility. He visibly frowned when Jonah took up a spot beside him, but at least it didn’t seem like the Precentor was going to make him suffer more extreme consequences for the requirement.

The short trip into the facility and past the public HPG access terminals passed in comfortable silence. The Precentor passed-over the single secretary worker at the front with only a few words between them before entering the elevator that would take him to the bundling and collating facility underneath. Jonah offered a nod to the trio of terrified men who stood around the elevator, certain that the Precentor’s passage was responsible for their sudden serious demeanor and equally certain it was interrupting a conversation about the female secretary they were there to ‘guard’ and ‘watch’--a pair of orders they certainly exercised more towards the latter than the former activity.

Jonah had feared another awkward exchange with the Precentor when he followed him onto the elevator, but Cassnew merely shook his head. Leaning forward again, he passed his keycard over the scanner, following up the motion by pressing his hand to the palm-reader attached to the security on the elevator. At the count of five, he punched-in his operating number, smug in the knowledge that when his handler asked him why he’d accessed the lower level of the facility at two in the morning he could tell him it was at the behest of Precentor ROM himself. That would shut the sanctimonious bastard up!

The elevator’s short journey also went by in silence. When the doors opened, Jonah’s eyes glossed over at the multiple rows of equipment that flanked the thin catwalk extending out from the elevator. Cabinets wrapped in coolant-tubes and banks of blinking lights and status indicators assaulted his perceptions from both sides as he and the Precentor took the dozen steps between the elevator and the managing office, and as far as he knew the banks of cabinets wrapped entirely around the entire floor.

Were he a braver man, he might have asked the Precentor what the place was for. His handler had dismissed the question when he’d asked as being unnecessary. ‘This equipment bundles HPG traffic for the planet. That’s all you need to know.’ had been the answer. Jonah hadn’t wanted to push the issue by following-up the poorly received question with another about what it meant to bundle HPG traffic.

The half-dozen guards inside the office reacted identically to their compatriots on the upper floor, backs straightening and arms more carefully taking-hold of the rifles in their hands. The acolytes who were working had a somewhat different reaction, however.

“Precentor! Good to see you! What brings you to this corner of the world at this hour of the night?” The eldest of them asked as he rose from his seat, his voice painfully upbeat for someone locked in such a dreary place.

“The Mistress wishes to attend the festivities later today.” Cassnew said.

The Change was almost instantaneous. Where a moment before there had been a jovial older acolyte beginning to put on a few extra kilograms in his age reaching out to shake Cassnew’s hand, there was suddenly instead a squirming black mass of concentrated shadows that ended on both top and bottom with repeating rows of shining white fangs.

It was moving before Jonah could fully settle with the knowledge that Acolyte Hansinmen had been a demon this entire time and nobody had noticed.

It latched on to two guards, one on each of its ends with teeth, by the time he’d managed to flick off the safety off his M&G. Raising the rifle and trying to ignore the screaming he squeezed the trigger even before he’d lined it up on the target. Anything, or anyone, he hit was acceptable collateral damage at this point. A handful of computers and one acolyte just beginning to stand up in shock found that out in a very messy way. The flechettes, optimized for use against demons in a manner he wasn’t even cleared to know, were just as effective against people as they would be otherwise.

Jonah only got a few shots into the demon rapidly consuming the guards before something tore the rifle out of his hand, breaking a finger in the process, and then slammed into his chest. Air rushing past his ears, Jonah had just enough time to realize he had been knocked off his feet and speared through entirely by a sharp, black mass before he slammed into the wall of the office a few meters behind him.

He had forgotten about the Precentor beside him! Assumed the man would flee the room. The mass of shadowy tendrils that writhed around Cassnew’s head, and the one coming off the elderly man’s arm that was speared through him suggested that had been a major mistake.

The worst part about it was that he had to listen to the one that had been Acolyte Hansinmen eating while all he could see was the once-genial face of Nicholas Cassnew drawing closer to him.

No. Cassnew wasn’t drawing closer to him. The opposite. The Precentor was pulling him closer. Reeling him in. Like a fish.

Was that ironic or just an amusing coincidence? He could never remember how to actually use that word.

Jonah tried to laugh, felt something wet come out of his mouth, and fluid begin to fill his lungs. He was pretty sure laughter wasn’t supposed to cause that.

He was also pretty sure that this wasn’t how the evening was supposed to end. If he could reach the top of the tube on his belt with his left hand, it wouldn’t be. He could at the very least take others with him! Cassnew would know about it, but perhaps…

Trying to raise his left arm high enough to press down the switch, Jonah struggled to speak.

Cassnew shook his head, “Why must your kind always do this? Always struggling. Always fighting. Better to not be here at all, don’t you think?”

Jonah’s thumb scraped against the top side of the cylinder. He almost had it! One more long stretch and he could trigger the explosive! It might take the entire building with it, but his handler had assured him that it would work against the things.

Jonah moved his mouth, too tired to try and push words out. Hopefully it was enough to distract the Precentor.

Would they know it was him?

He tried to walk his hand upwards, shifting the weight between the three fingers he could still vaguely feel. They flopped out of his control before he could get any onto the top of the cylinder.

Was it really possible to make-up for past evils?

He stretched his thumb upwards again, fighting to tear it past it’s natural endpoint to go just that little distance further he needed. It felt like the heaviest thing he’d ever moved.

“Lauren Hayes requires your services,” Cassnew began, the code-phrase coming out with ritualistic finality.

Jonah imagined he could actually hear and feel the fluctuating hum of the control device inside his neck arming itself. Struggling even harder, he tried to force his shoulder upwards and stretch out his thumb in the same motion.

It was still only high enough to scrape against the side of the cylinder instead of depressing the button in the center.

I’d rather be fishing.

“Immediately.” Cassnew finished.

Jonah was certain he heard the beep of recognition just before the explosives in his neck activated.

He felt nothing.

 

[prinCZess]

Mina jerked as a freezing bolt of lightning shot up her back and flowered out to her shoulder-blades, warming in the process into something that felt more like hot coals rolling against her skin. It was a familiar feeling. The same feeling that had risen on Andurien and in the Magistracy whenever she had begun to close-in on a band of pirates. An inflated and exaggerated version of the feeling that had been slowly stalking her ever since the ball had ended hours before.

Something was very wrong. The worst was that it was familiar. This wasn’t just another batch of raiders or pirates.

Uncrossing her legs and refocusing eyes that had grown distant and glazed staring at the…transformation pen…thing one of the Sphere’s noblewomen had gifted her, Mina forced herself to instead examine the screen at the desk before her. Cycling through the security-cameras that ComStar had given her access to took only moments, but showed little to explain the dread in her stomach. She recognized the faces of the three guards making rounds in the floor’s hallway, no other presences stood out, and there was no sign of forced entry into the windows of any room on the floor.

She might almost have been tempted to chalk it up to her imagination. But she was never wrong about things like this. There was something, she just had to find it.

Mina brought the radio on the table beside her up. Hesitating only a moment, she tapped the code into it that would set Commander Holly’s own device to beeping. In the unlikely event she was overreacting to a momentary impulse, she could pass it off as an exercise testing the Royal Guards’ alertness.

She had done the same thing during Amaris’ coup and it hadn’t mattered. This time would be different.

“Holly here, milady.” The woman said, a waver in the background of the words the only indication that she had been asleep moments before.

Maybe she was going nuts. Thinking she’d been alive for the Fall of the Star League was pretty out there, wasn’t it?

It was probably just persistent after-effects from her earlier drug-trip.

“Wake the rest of your girls, commander. Sweep the floor, ensure the security of the exits and ready an alternative. Prepare for a potentially contested exfil. Quietly, if you can. I will be looking-in on my mother and sister.”

To her credit, there was only an instant of hesitation on the other end of the line as the commander of the guard digested the instructions, “As you order, milady.”

She could only wish men were so easy to direct!

Pinning the radio to the neckline of her top and connecting an earpiece to it, Mina stood. Twisting around on the balls of her feet, she stalked off the plush carpet of the bedroom and onto the cool wooden decking that extended out of the edge of the room onto the small balcony. She slowed only long enough to bend down and grab the ‘whip’ she’d been able to sneak into the compound from its deliberate spot at the foot of the bed where it would only invite the right kind of assumptions being made about its use if ComStar searched her room.

She did her best to ignore the pen that sat beside it, not wanting to be distracted by it or so much as touch it again after what she’d seen at the ball when it had been given to her. Apparently, New Earth had a very Canopian approach to the use of psychedelics at public parties. Even in the Magistracy, though, it would have been courtesy to warn her before passing off something coated in a hallucinogen!

It was the first time in many years she’d had to excuse herself from a party to recover from something. The memory—hallucination—had been frighteningly realistic. It made her somewhat leery of even touching the bizarre, pen-thing again. Though maybe it was the soul-crushing despair she’d felt while she held it that had her afraid.

Shaking away the distraction, Mina exited her room and scanned the horizon and the shoreline of the ocean below for any reasonable explanation of her sudden chill, the half-full moon providing enough light to distinguish basic shapes even in the distance. The late-summer weather of Terra was quite comfortable even at night, and when she performed a basic series of yoga stretches across the balcony, she found no sneaksuit-wearing assassin on it poised for a kill. There was nothing that explained her worry.

“Floor is clear. Ad-hoc exit available from room four-three-four in addition to traditional. Ready to evac on your go-ahead.” Holly’s gruff voice spoke in Mina’s ear.

“Thank you, commander. Standby.” Mina responded, bringing both her hands up to wrap around the railing and leaning over so she could scan the side of building below.

Still nothing.

Mina backed away from her place at the edge, letting her hands slowly drop back down to her sides as if she were giving-up and simply deciding to enjoy the moonlight morning-hours. But she wasn’t. There was something wrong. She knew it with a certainty she knew very little else, really.

And there was a final place she needed to check.

She began to turn back towards the entrance back into her room, but changed the movement midway-through into a mad dash for the edge of the balcony. Throwing one leg up in front of her, she settled it on the railing. Leveraging the rest of herself into the precarious position, she shoved off with both legs and dived towards the similarly-built veranda of the next room over.

Crashing onto the wooden floor with one leg extended and both arms splayed outwards to intercept anyone who might be in a sneak-suit wasn’t the most comfortable thing she’d ever done. It certainly wasn’t the most effective, either, as instead of knocking a would-be assassin out with a kick or body-tackling them, she went rolling into the railing on the far side of the balcony and hit her head. But it did at least have the benefit of assuring her that it was clear.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Emma Centrella, her ‘half-sister’, stared down at her from the doorway, still tying a loop in the belt of her robe. The chill in Mina’s spine lessened slightly at the obvious evidence Em was alright, but didn’t go away.

Mina grinned and threw herself back onto her feet, leaping on the potential chance to draw her sister into talking despite the situation, “Checking for assassins in sneak-suits…Also, I had to come over here anyways.”

Em seemed to be on the verge of responding to that with something significant. She could tell. The girl’s cheek twitched with restrained amusement, and her nostrils flared in the very beginnings of a laugh. But just as soon as it had come the friendliness was gone, replaced by the bizarre and cold distance Emma had treated her with since Andurien.

“Most people would use the hallway.” Emma said flatly.

“Assassins like to defy expectations. I’ll not let any succeed while I live.”

Not again.

Mina blinked. Now where had that thought come from?

Emma’s eyes narrowed at her first words, before the glare faded into an unreadable confusion that contorted the girl’s face in amusing ways. Emma always had trouble hiding her reactions. She was just too honest and trusting.

Mina had to swallow down a sense of painful déjà vu that she could almost taste, the feeling so bad it almost hazed-over her vision with tears for no conceivable reason. She’d not been this out-of-sorts for…years. Perhaps not since her first memory in the Crimson Palace having to fight down the constant feeling of having failed at something very, very important.

“Better come in. Explain to mother why you’ve interrupted her necessary beauty sleep.” Emma said.

Mina latched onto the words with desperation. They weren’t quite friendly. Said with more harshness than they really deserved, they could easily have been confused for insulting or dismissive. But it was the first, threadbare show of humor Emma had graced her with since they landed. She’d take what she could get until the girl opened up about whatever was eating at her, and focusing outwards was infinitely better than confronting the well of dark that she could feel waiting at the edge of her thoughts.

“I heard that, young lady.”

With those five words from deeper in the room, the Magestrix managed to almost make Emma turn pale in fear—quite an accomplishment with the girl’s dark skin. All Mina could do was offer a sympathetic smile.

“Now get in here, both of you. Mina? You can tell me why you’ve interrupted my completely superfluous beauty sleep.”

The march into the kitchen was short but silent. Whether out of guilt or awkwardness, Mina wasn’t sure.

‘Mom’ somehow managed to be embarrassingly racy even in the full-size, Combine-style kimono she had taken to wearing in place of her usual nudity ever since Emma had pointed out both of them sharing a room would make security easier. Bizarrely, the flat-edged cut of the fabric and oversized sleeves managed to emphasize her figure more than hide it, and Mina was awkwardly reminded of just how much the woman liked…using…that figure.

Mina shuddered, suddenly glad that she had been able to enjoy her own room even if she kind of missed BSing with Em. She could only imagine just how hard her sister had needed to put her foot down to prevent ‘mom’ from bringing someone up. She probably wouldn’t even have the decency to put a sock on the door as a warning.

...And she didn’t really want to think about her mom’s still-active sex life anymore. Bleagh-heagh-heagh.

“I understand you’re the reason Holly and Jenny burst in here a moment ago?” Her ‘mom’ asked, obviously already knowing the answer to her own question and instead asking why.

“Bad feeling.” Mina answered simply, folding her hands meekly in front of her stomach but matching the Magestrix’s eyes.

Em cocked her head to the side as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Kyalla limited her own reaction to biting down on one side of her lips before leaning forwards.

“Still have it?”

Mina nodded.

The Magestrix didn’t hesitate, “Alright then, let’s get packing. Mina, I assume you want to check with…our people…about potential jumpship arrivals?”

Mina nodded again, feeling a bit silly as Emma stared, a croak in the back of her throat evidence of her trying to verbally express her confusion but being unable to get any words out.

“Alright. In that case, why don’t you get my bag from—”

“Wait. We’re leaving? Just like that?” Emma interrupted, whipping her head back-and-forth as if she thought they were joking.

Kyalla didn’t quite laugh, but there was a waver of humor in her voice when she spoke, “Just like that. I thought you weren’t excited about being here anyways, dearie?”

Emma flushed, and looked to Mina for support, “I’m not. But…I mean…”

Unsure how to address the confusion, Mina bounced her eyes back towards the Magestrix.

“The bag, Mina? It’s in my closet. Go, fetch. Please.” Kyalla said, making a shooing gesture with one hand as she lounged back in her chair.

Mina slowly tiptoed away from what looked to be a brewing argument. Reaching the edge of the kitchen after a few steps, she twisted and rushed over to the closet. Stepping in, and ignoring as best she could the more risqué items, it took her only a few seconds to find the old-fashioned attaché case on one of the shelves with enough security-systems on it to probably make even ComStar have trouble opening it.

She tried not to eavesdrop as she crossed back to the kitchen, but it was difficult not to.

“—some things I can’t explain because it is not the place or time. So to be brief? Yes. When your sister has a bad feeling, you listen to it.”

“Jesus.” Emma sounded more terrified than Mina had ever heard, “Mom? Did you actually let crackpots experiment on one of your own children to try and make a psychic?”

“What? No. It’s—”

Instead of stopping to listen longer, Mina stepped into the kitchen, entirely unsure if she should have. Judging by the look on her mother’s face, she was more relieved than anything. Emma was surprisingly more difficult to read, but her usual attempt at affecting a distant stare now looked surprisingly strained. In a way it was kind of relieving, really.

“It’s complicated, Em.” Mina explained for her ‘mother’ as she passed off the case and moved her eyes in a significant circle around the walls of the kitchen, hoping her sister would get the warning abut bugs, “We can explain later, ‘kay?”

“Yeah? You’d better.” Emma complained, crossing her arms in front of her and actually pouting. She did her best to make the words sound tough, but there was no way of denying what it actually was.

Kyalla set the case on the table and held her face up to the scanner on its front. The sequence of movements she then ran through next were so practiced and automatic for her as to be almost impossible to keep track of, but the result was the case opening without destroying the contents inside. Scooping the oldest device out of it, she handed off the computer-pad to Mina before pulling Emma along with her to pack, bringing the secure case with her.

Mina ran her hand on along the edge of the ancient pad, fingers tracing out the well-worn ‘Nirasaki’ etched onto its rear. She didn’t like the idea of accessing The Blazing World or her machine from inside ComStar’s compound, but didn’t see much choice. She certainly wasn’t about to believe some acolyte’s assurances that everything was alright if they contacted traffic control. Not after how many times ComStar had been implicated third-hand in bizarre things in the Periphery.

It would be alright. She’d come to understand the computer-assistant in her ‘Mech had a surprisingly sophisticated capability for electronic warfare and communications security.

Mina tapped the recessed tab on the side of the pad that brought the system instantly to life, feeling a slight relief at how quickly the system responded to her commands in comparison to the much less efficient modern versions. She rested her palm on top of the screen until it emitted a bright chirp, then began to type through the series of commands she needed.

Perhaps the chill she’d felt had been the result of something happening at the dropship or an inbound jumpship. It wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing had happened.

Blazing.World.SubSys-CPN-1V1. 1991—direct-NetConnct: AdvResponsive.TacEvaluation-Monitoring.InfSys.cat—.
Pass: ****s

Mina hesitated. She’d not consciously paid it any mind for years, but something about the password…It had always confused her why it would be the second planet of the Terran solar system.

Now, instead of being confusing, it was…haunting?

—Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, I am—

Mina tightened her hands around the pad as the thought ended before it was supposed to. She’d come to accept not knowing who she had been. Come to understand and even accept that she’d lose her memory again in a few short years.

Now, when she needed it to be focused on a potential crisis her mind was dredging up things that were coated in the familiar that she could recognize but still didn’t remember. It wasn’t fair.

[Connecting…]

[Connecting…]

[Connected]

[Securing]…DONE.

GREETINGS, MINA
HOW MAY I BE OF SERVICE?

Search for incoming dropship tracks or jumpship
signatures from all possible sources.

…THAT WILL REQUIRE I ACCESS COMSTAR’S
SECURE SYSTEMS AS WELL. THERE IS A SMALL
POSSIBILITY THEY WILL DETECT SOMETHING
IF I DO SO. DO YOU WISH ME TO PROCEED?

Yes.

VERY WELL. PLEASE WAIT...
…
…
NO INBOUND DROPSHIP TRACKS DETECTED
-MANUAL OBSERVATION OR REPORTED-
NO JUMPSHIP ARRIVALS DETECTED
-VISIBLE JUMPSHIPS ARE IDENTIFIED AS
IN SERVICE OF WEDDING DELEGATIONS-


Status of The Blazing World?

ALL IS WELL ON-BOARD.
IT IS A VERY DOWN-TO-EARTH SHIP.

Despite lingering concern over what had caused her bad feeling and whatever else it was that kept gnawing in the back of her mind, Mina had to laugh at the choice of phrase. She could almost hear the machine saying it in the almost catty tone that had been programmed into it and that came through whenever it made one of the odd comments.

And people thought Bitching Betty was bad! At least Bitching Betty didn’t have bad jokes baked-in to its programming,

Not programming. Thought. Harnessed and focused towards a specific goal, and restricted in its knowledge until fully-revived by a Guardian, but thought…

Report on the status of The Blazing World and systems?

CURRENT WATCH:

LT. O’CONNOR COMMANDING.
SECURITY: NO REPORTED CONCERNS
TACTICAL: NO REPORTED CONCERNS
ENGINEERING: IDLE MAINTANANCE-NONPRIORITY
ENVIRONMENTAL: NO REPORTED CONCERNS
…
NO SYSTEM CONCERNS DETECTED. ENGINEERING IS
TRACKING A FAULT THAT IS IN THEIR OWN EQUIPMENT.

THERE IS AN UNAUTHORIZED AND UNREPORTED
GATHERING IN THE ‘MECH BAY.
CARDS AND THE REMOVAL OF
PERSONAL CLOTHING ARE INVOLVED.

SHALL I INVESTIGATE FURTHER?


No.


Investigate other dropships on-planet for
reported concerns or other anomalies

WILL-DO, MINA.
THAT WILL REQUIRE I ACCE—


[Connection interrupted]

[Connecting…]

[Connecting…]

[Connecting…]

[Connection has been lost. ]

-----Your planetary datanet may be experiencing technical difficulties, or there may be a problem within your connection software. Please check your equipment, and try again, or contact a service-center for assistance. This is an automated response message number eight-seven-eight-nine-two-----

Mina jerked. That should not have happened. Places where communications were much older and less reliable than Terra’s was had always let her piggy-back off their signals without any interruptions. The only other time she’d ever lost connection…

Palming the pad, Mina pivoted on her foot and marched out of the kitchen. They had to go. If she was going to protect them, they needed to go now. That much perhaps she could do.

She wouldn’t fail again.

“Leave what’s left. I don’t think we have time.” She said, nodding towards the cases and clothes that Emma and Kyalla were packing as she made her way towards the door.

Her ‘mother’ raised an eyebrow and spared a moment’s glance towards her closet. Clothes had always been her weakness. Em twitched, visibly trying to decide between being frustrated or just growing further confused.

“What did you find out?”

Nothing good.

“Not much. Something cut the signal. The dropship is still on the pad, though, and as of right now not in any trouble.” Mina answered automatically, bringing her hand towards the door to lead her charges out of the room.

Pretending calm and control of the situation would help them not to panic, Emma especially. Others could falter or fail themselves if they saw her frightened or defeated. The consequences of that could be disastrous and long-lasting. As everything in the Inner Sphere demonstrated.

She slammed her hand down on the door’s handle, pushing it open for the real Centrellas behind her and the pair of cases both carried with them. She owed the family an inexpressible debt of gratitude for caring for her the past centuries, even if she had been an enforcer and bodyguard for them over those years.

Minako Aino, as much as she wished otherwise, wanted to swear she would protect them. But she was beginning to remember a past promise she had made of the exact same thing to two others, even if she didn’t want to.

A promise she hadn’t kept.

Mina closed her eyes a moment and shoved away the memories—hallucination!—that had greeted her when she’d taken the transformation pen. It was in the past. It didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t want to think about it.

This would turn out differently than that had! Then, when the Centrellas were safe…Then she could do something about her previous failure. Find the woman who’d given her the pen, find Setsuna, and try again. Alone if she had to.

There was always a way. No matter how hopeless things seemed. The only defeat would be in not getting it up!

No. Not growing up?

Giving up! The only defeat would be in giving up. That was it.

“Holly? I’ve got Libertine and Fencer moving. Where should we be heading?”

The guardswoman’s reply came quickly and confidently, though through such a haze of static and distortion it was hard to make out, “West stairwell’s closest to you.”

Mina acknowledged the words bluntly and began to lead the two women beside her down the hall. At least their short-range gear worked, however half-heartedly.

“Scratch that. I’ve got at least a half-dozen people coming up the west stairwell now. They look like ComStar. Hold a moment.” There was a pause that made Mina want to strangle someone, and she inwardly cursed, “Getting nothing from our folks the bottom of the east. Think it’s safe to assume our visitors are there as well. Seems like that intuition of yours was right again, m’lady.”

“I’d rather it had been proven wrong.” Mina said, stopping to think and paying no mind as the Magestrix bumped into her back, “How ad-hoc is the exit you made?”

“Very, m’lady. It’s basically a controlled fall. But we’ve still got contact with the motorcade down below, so if you can make it they should be available to take you on the next leg.”

“And you?” Mina asked, unable to stop herself. The Royal Guard was well-trained, but not having firearms was a major disadvantage—especially if ComStar’s intruding minions weren’t so restricted in their choice of arms.

“We’ll chide our guests for their nighttime adventures. Perhaps the irony of being told such a thing by a Daughter of Canopus will be deadly to them.” Holly said, headshake coming through her words, “I wish I had my service pistol right about now. Always makes me feel better to hold ‘neutrals’ at gunpoint until they decide where they really stand.”

“Them trying a nighttime raid against us is evidence enough of where ComStar stands, I think.” Mina said, only slightly surprised at the heat in her own words.

“I suppose you’re right. Too bad, some of their adepts were kind’a cute. They seemed so friendly, too. Good luck, m’lady.”

“You too, commander.”

She hated the words even as she spoke them. They shouldn’t sound so final. Not when they were on Terra under promise of safe passage. Yet they did.

“Where are we going now? What’s going on?” Emma asked as Mina turned them around and dragged both her ‘sister’ and ‘mother’ back the way they had come. She had to give the girl credit, she sounded more frustrated at lack of information than the whining she might have expected. Em did know when to buckle down and get serious.

“ComStar’s got people coming up the stairwells and I don’t trust the elevator to take us where we want to. We’re going to try to get around the problem.” Mina explained, passing by doors until she reached 434 and could throw herself into the room.

Emma, thankfully, went silent with that answer. Mina supposed there was the possibility that none of the intruders were actually with ComStar. That, however, only seemed like it would make their presence more worrisome and raising that specter seemed completely unnecessary. One problem at a time…

Scanning the room as she crossed, Mina tried not to be overly concerned that she’d not had the chance to clear it herself before bringing Kyalla and Emma in behind her. Even if Holly and the other members of the Guard had looked already, it never hurt to be paranoid. Something about Terra made it a place very prone to friends betraying her.

The room was largely similar to the one she’d started the evening in, though a pair of smaller, separate beds took the place of the single her own had. Combined with the unfolded cot in the corner, they eliminated most of the free space. If anyone was to be in the place without being immediately noticed, they’d have to tuck themselves into a closet or underneath a bed.

Waving her charges along after her, she crossed the room and exited onto its balcony. On the right side of the door was a basic anchoring system stabbed into the concrete of the building. Circled around the bolt-and-trunnion was a bundle of line that looked thick enough to reach the ground, with a set of carabiners clipped into the ends of the rope. Holly hadn’t been lying when she’d said it was crude. But as long as it worked, it was enough.

Mina’s heart sank as she leaned over the railing at the edge. Four stories below, breaking-up the darkness, were circular splashes of light centered around almost a dozen men in robes.

Too slow.

Too slow, again.

“Dammit.”

She instantly hated using the word for the fallen look it inspired on the faces of both women with her.

Mina stared down at the men for a breath, trying to come up with another viable escape route but drawing a blank. The stairwells were covered. The elevator wasn’t to be trusted. This was being watched. What was left?

The elevator shaft itself? The elder Centrella might have some trouble with the amount of physical effort it involved and more than likely its exit was already covered by ComStar’s men. But it was the only option she could come up with. Hopefully all of Kyalla’s…nighttime exercise…Would have her in good enough shape to do some climbing.

Bleagh-heagh-heagh. It was worse when she remembered the girl had been her sister once as well…And had been just as flamboyant and open about her activities then as she was now.

“New plan. Back out into the hallway, we’ll drop down the elevator shaft into the garage.” She said with as much confidence as she could manage, shooing her mother and sister back towards the door.

The muffled shouting and scuffling that grew in intensity as they backtracked through the small room was worrying. The way the Magestrix froze after taking a single step into the hallway more-so.

Mina knew she should have forced her way into the lead.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Kyalla Centrella could sound positively ice-cold at times. Mina had already known that intellectually from hearing her talk about Emma’s late father, and the Magestrix had oft ordered mass execution of pirates and bandits who had preyed on her people. But it was always more striking in-the-moment than in her memory. A reminder that the woman before her who she’d known since her birth, had once called ‘sister’ just like Emma, had risen into the position of a national leader.

The voice that greeted the Magestrix managed to compete with her in its degree of icy detachment. Though it was close, it didn’t sound quite human enough. Mina knew with a cold certainty that the man could not be trusted.

“Lady Centrella, a thousand pardons. I know this is incredibly unorthodox, but we are here to ensure the safety of you and your delegation while we sweep the building and reexamine your personnel.”

Mina stretched a hand onto Emma’s shoulder as her latest sister of the Centrella line began to step forward to join her mother. Emma’s head whipped instantly around to face her, and the flaming rage in her eyes contrasted sharply with her mother’s cold countenance.

Mina shook her head very slowly.

“My Royal Guards were doing that job quite adequately, adept, and you appear to be holding them hostage.”

“Once again, I apologize, Lady Centrella. But circumstances require ComStar take a more proactive role in your and your family’s protection. There was an attempt on the Coordinator’s life just moments ago by an unknown party thought to be in service of one of the other House Lords. As such, we are taking over protection duties for all the House Lords and gathering everyone back in the main hall until we can reexamine all personnel records and documentation we were supplied. ComStar is not about to let Holy Terra be used to kick off another Succession War.”

It was a very convincing series of statements the thing probably didn’t believe. It couldn’t even if it wanted to. It was too…twisted and wrong inside.

Mina pulled on Emma’s shoulder, trying to draw her back further into the relative safety of the room. But her sister planted her feet and refused to be moved, turning her eyes back on her mother and obviously coiling to do something really stupid.

“I see. This is not the end of the conversation, adept, but if such is the case then lead on. I can assure you the Magistracy shall extract suitable compensation from your organization for this breach of its word.” Kyalla said, chin cocking upwards and to the side so she could look back into the room and silently urge her daughter down.

Emma took a shaky step backwards. Despite the slight retreat, her shoulder was still tensed, moments from throwing a punch.

“Your daughters, Lady Centrella?”

Kyalla smirked, “As Commander Holly can tell you, the special circumstances of the marriage and the unique opportunities it provided had me encourage them both to venture out and…personally…try to secure better relationships between the Magistracy and other countries, adept. Because of the…sensitivity…of the job, I trusted them to look after themselves except for one minder on my heir. I’m sure they’ll both show up in the main hall. Hopefully with a nice person or persons with them from one of the Successor States. I’m sure you understand.”

She could almost feel the awkward silence that emanated out of the hallway with those words. Awkward silence from everyone but the adept Kyalla was speaking directly to.

“Very well, Magestrix. If you would accompany my associates, they will direct you and yours to the main hall.”

Mina managed to drag Emma back another pair of steps as their mother disappeared from view in the doorway. The process began, she grabbed hold of her sister with another hand and pulled her to the side into the small closet cut into the wall. It wasn’t much as far as cover went, but beds would require they drop onto their stomachs. It was really difficult to wind up a punch or kick from lying down prone on her chest.

Moving slowly to ensure the door’s hinges didn’t squeak, Mina pulled the door of the closet closed in front of them.

She managed not a moment too soon. The sounds of the crowd in the hallway began to recede, but there was still a presence just outside the room. Mina wasn’t sure if it was the sound of footsteps she made out, the subtle croak and shift of floorboards underneath her that shifted with its movement, or something else entirely, but whatever the case she could feel the thing slowly stalk its way into the room.

Mina silently handed-off the computer to her sister, taking the chance to withdraw the whip from her side and force Emma to the very edge of the small space. This time the threat would have to get through her first!

The thing approached slowly, and Mina had an instant’s temptation to try and burst out and surprise it as it passed the closet by. Perhaps she should have. But after walking past the closet it performed a small circuit of the room, poking into the kitchen, stepping out on the balcony, and then coming back in.

By the sounds it was making, it seemed to repeat the move a couple of times. It would move into the kitchen, come back, step onto the patio, and then repeat the circuit in reverse.

She couldn’t help but wonder if it was looking underneath the beds.

The closet was already beginning to get stuffy and awkward. She was mostly alright, except for a awkwardly-placed coat hangar that insisted on digging into her lower back no matter how she tried to slide it away. Emma was worse off, and had to keep awkwardly shifting her weight to properly breathe, pressed as she was into the corner where racks of coats got in her way.

Neither one of them could risk the noise it would make trying to scoot into more comfortable positions now, though. They just had to wait for the thing outside to leave the room.

As if it were spurred on by the thought, the floorboards creaked once again as it started back from the kitchen towards the hallway. Holding her breath, Mina brought one foot as far back as she could and curled the handle of the whip to the side so she would have an unobstructed swing at the door.

She was thankful she had when the knob began to twist.

Bringing a leg forward, Mina slammed her heel into the door and sent it flying open. The robed thing in the shape of a ComStar adept on the other side didn’t look overly surprised. It’s right arm wrenched at an angle that was physically uncomfortable just to look at, the only reaction it had to her was a cock of its head.

Driving the butt of her whip and the side of her fist into the corner of that inhuman head a moment later was satisfying in a way she wasn’t sure it was supposed to be. But she wasn’t going to let it have Emma.

The monster staggered backwards a few steps until it hit the wall. A human would have been stunned or outright unconscious—she’d punched-out a fair share of pirates, vagabonds and tramps in two-and-a-half centuries protecting the Magistracy. But the monster before her was only human in shape, and was charging back towards her in an instant.

“Emma, run.” Mina managed to growl, just before stepping forward to meet the monster’s attack with her own.

The adept-shaped monster didn’t avoid her strike. She drove the densely-cored pommel of the whip into the edge of his neck, feeling something underneath shift and then crack. But it had little effect, and she was struck full-force by the thing’s charge.

She was forced to buckle her knees to keep herself from sliding backwards. Not quite having enough motion in her right arm to strike again with the whip thanks to the monster wrapping one arm over her elbow, she instead drove her left into its stomach a half-dozen times in rapid succession.

The thing countered with its own series of clumsy but powerful strikes into her midsection, and the fight devolved into an almost-alternating exchange of blows between them. It was painful, and she knew that if she were brave enough to face what taking hold of the pen would bring her it would be over more quickly. But she still found herself satisfied. The monster might have inhuman endurance, but she’d bank on her own coming out in the end.

Even if it didn’t, she was buying more time for Emma to get clear.

“Enough.”

The word came as a surprise from the creature. The way it took hold of her and then bit into her left shoulder came as an even bigger one.

Mina screamed, forced to stop her own punches as a streak of pain shot through her entire side. It only worsened as the thing before her rippled and shook, shuddering as the robes it was in and the skin underneath them both began to split open to reveal a red-and-black mass in only vaguely human shape underneath. The head bulged, and horns began to extend themselves around its crown. The arms seemed to almost burst into new shape, impossibly large for a human. Inside of her shoulder, Mina could feel the monster’s teeth elongate and twist.

A stuttering series of gunshots pounded into her ears. On the monster’s rear, furthest from her, a small line of wounds burst into being, leaking the black ooze that served the thing for blood.

Mina didn’t waste time looking for the origin of the shots. Fighting through the pain, she curled both her arms over the surprised monster’s and grabbed onto opposite sides of its still-growing mouth. While it was still partially-dazed, she dug her nails into thick, leather-like skin, and forced the creature’s mouth to slowly creak open. She accompanied a sigh of relief at removing the teeth with an energetic knee into the monster’s side, sending it into the air, through the closet-door at their side, and halfway to the balcony exit before it finally crashed onto the room’s floor.

Free of the thing, Mina stepped away from the closet and back towards the door. Her eyes took a moment to drag away from the monster, though, morbidly fascinated by the way it seemed to be trapped midway between the shape of a human and a much larger, blood-red colored beast that was its more typical form. As she drew even with an auto-pistol in a surprisingly dainty pair of hands, it resumed its blasting, making her wince as the noise of the gunshots seemed to bore into and then through the side of her skull.

She wasn’t overly surprised to find her sister standing behind the New Earth noblewoman from the night before at the doorway.

Lorinette Kalkenny looked only a little more threatening with a gun in her hand and in flat-black slacks-and-jacket than she had the previous evening unarmed and in fancy dress. But she was still undeniably attractive. More attractive than anything was the auto-pistol in her hand and her willingness to use it.

“This is where you come in with your bullshit!” Lorinette growled, punctuating the words with another series of shots, “That thing isn’t going to stay down long from just this!”

Mina frowned, then realized exactly what the woman was referencing.

“I uh…I don’t have it on me at the moment!” She said, almost having to yell the words over the bursting gunfire.

Lorinette turned her head, eyes dropping into a thin-slitted rage that probably made it difficult to even see let alone shoot. Even without using the sights her next series of shots managed to hit the half-beast still writhing on the floor, inhuman screams almost deafened by the ringing in her ears from the sound of the pistol.

“You should go get it then.” The woman said flatly, before beginning to back up and shooing Mina through the door. “Right. Now.”

With Emma right there, Mina couldn’t object to the idea, much as she didn’t want to think about the transformation pen. Grabbing onto her sister’s hand, she almost dragged her up the hallway back towards her own room and away from the monster she’d been fighting. It was a good first step. Once she got there was when the more difficult part would start.

“Mina…Mina what the hell was that?”

Mina glanced behind her, looking past the visibly-shaken but visibly getting-a-grip-on-herself Emma to the pistol-wielding blonde behind her. Lorinette was just getting into the hallway as the pistol locked-back in visual display it was empty.

It wasn’t a bad question, though it was kind of a bad time for it.

“That was a ‘youma’. Or ‘monster’. Whichever you prefer. They eat people. Then pretend to be people so they can eat more people.” Mina explained.

“What?”

“Yeah, that’s about the proper reaction.” Mina growled as she pounded open the door to her room and sprinted into it.

She almost dived onto the bed, swiping up the pen at its foot in one hand and then rolling off of the mattress in a single motion. The move was only partially complicated by her sister still getting dragged along behind her throughout it. It was a minor miracle they both landed on their feet and steady.

Mina raised the pen over her head.

Protected by Venus, the planet of beauty, Guardian of Love, I am Sailor Venus!

“Venus Crystal Power, Make-up!”

Nothing happened.

“What?” Emma asked again, staring.

There were gunshots in the hallway.

She refused to let her sister be hurt. Not by that thing. Not by anything.

Mina squashed the urge to panic the lack of change and chased through memories only starting to fully come back to her for an explanation. It took a surprisingly long amount of time from where she was, though Emma still staring at her in uncomprehending shock assured her that was a trick of her own mind more than reality.

The explanation struck her as she heard Lorinette scream, her body thrown past the doorway.

Mina tried again as the red-skinned monster entered the room, now standing so tall it had to burst through the doorway and hunch-over to keep from scraping the ceiling with every step it took. Now that she remembered just how limited the ancient pen in her hand was she knew it would work. She couldn’t ask so much of it—or herself—just yet. If she did she was more likely to break it. Or, worse, lose control of the power it gave her.

And if it didn’t work again, she’d just have to beat the damned thing to death herself without any magic!

“Venus Power, Make-up!”

This time she had just enough time to see the pen flare with a light from within before she felt the change.

She was no longer in a room with her sister and the beast, no longer trapped within the confines of man-made structures at all. She was flying—floating—through an endless stream of stars that curled around her in the glowing welcome of family. From each and every one of them there radiated a blooming warmth that shot through her, curling and embracing in what she could only compare to a wandering hug that traveled from her extremities inward.

Mina extended the pen above her head, dipping into the endless bound of Love the stars obscured and letting it draw out what was necessary from it.

Just like that, she was back in the room. The youma was growling out something that might or might-not have been words. She was more concerned with the confused, uncomprehending stare coming from her sister.

This was going to be a challenge to explain.

Mina blinked, spots dancing in front of her eyes from where the light of the pen had struck them. The pen itself had disappeared, converted into another portion of the energy she’d needed to complete the ritual. It was a useful conversion. It left one hand free to use. Not that she would probably need it for the joke she was facing.

Mina jumped towards the monster, twisting her shoulders into the flying side-kick she aimed squarely at its bulging neck. It had just enough time to try and swipe at her with one of its clawed arms, but missed as it underestimated just how quickly she’d cover the distance.

The creature’s snarling growls morphed into pained howls as it was launched into a dresser and then through wall it was set against. Destroyed drawers and pieces of pressed-wood exploded outwards, followed by a light dusting of plaster and poufy bits of insulation. Mina wasted no time and ducked through the new hole in the wall into the next room over…And then repeated the process when she found the creature had kept going through the next room.

“You are not supposed to be here.” The beast growled, shoving its way back onto its massive feet and scraping splinters and dust off of its face.

“Oh? And who told you that?”

Instead of answering, the monster bull-rushed towards her, extending its arms to the side and splaying its claws out to catch her if she tried to dodge. But she didn’t want to. No more messing around. It was time to take the bull by the throat and run with it!

Letting the whip in her left hand unfurl, Mina flicked her wrist upwards and sent it into the air in front of her. The thong snapped around the beast’s neck, swirling dangerously before snapping tight. Taking a tight hold of the handle, Mina threw herself forward between the beast’s legs and jerked the whip forwards and upwards as she emerged behind it.

Exposing a back to an enemy was never a good idea. In this instance she could excuse it only because it let her lay the bastard out with a minimum amount of fuss. The floor itself rattled as behind her the beast slammed down into it face-first.

Mina turned around, closed the distance, and slammed her heel into the center of the youma’s back. Combined with pulling the whip taught, she kept it shoved into the splinter-strewn carpet below. A half-dozen different ways of using the excess thong of the whip to further restrict the beast’s movement ran through her mind, but she was confident enough in her control as it was.

Now call me Queen!

“I asked a question.” Mina said instead, painfully aware of how awkward it was to fight down a blush in the immediate aftermath of an actual fight.

The red-skinned monster writhed underneath her, twisting its head around so it could stare up with one of its beady, black eyes. It offered her a smirk that exposed a fang-studded mouth before twisting one of its arms around to swipe at her more exposed leg with its claws.

Mina easily sidestepped the blind swipe. She would have preferred interrogating it further, but there was only so much she could try and she refused to risk it getting loose long enough to harm her sister. No more.

Swinging herself off the monster’s back and bringing both hands onto the handle of the whip, Mina threw her full body into another jerk that pulled the beast into the air behind her. With careful timing of another wrist-flick, she let the whip loosen from around the youma’s neck. It screamed as it went flying, burst through another wall, crashed over the steel railing on the balcony, and spun into the open air beyond.

It didn’t take long to retrace the course of the fight back to her own room. Emma was still there, peeking through the hole in the wall, mouth half-open and eyes wildly tracking every errant noise and every scrap of wood or plaster that dropped to the ground from the broken walls. At some point during the fight Lorinette had joined her in the room. Leaning up against the far wall favoring her right side, the blonde woman held a rag up to a cut across her head with one hand while the other was still wrapped around the auto-pistol she’d entered the fray with.

“Huh. That magic bullshit really does armor you all up in a blouse-and-mini? I would’ve sworn Mariah was lying and it was just her own weird eccentricities coming through.” The blonde growled, letting her pistol-hand drop to her side.

Mina stared as she slowly unpacked everything the comment suggested. She’d already suspected Lorinette of knowing more than she let-on ever since she’d given her the pen in the first place. Her showing up minutes before only reinforced that. But she had seen a transformation before?

Who was Mariah?

“You two know each other? Who are you, and what did you do with Mina?” Emma spoke up, shaking out of her shock and stepping back into a lower stance that left her equally open to fight as to flee.

It had been so long since Mina had last faced that question—and even longer since she’d last been able to answer it truthfully. At the same time, she would prefer not to risk the easiest and most thorough way of answering. She was pretty sure the pen would rematerialize when she abandoned the energy of Sailor Venus, but she wasn’t sure it would. Until Emma and her mother were safe, she wasn’t going to risk it.

“Em, this is Lorinette Kalkenny, she’s—“

“Lori Kalmar, your Grace…I work for a portion of ComStar that doesn’t want anyone getting eaten by big red bastards.” The woman explained, very obviously being careful with her words. “This is ‘Sailor Venus’. She’s a centuries-old ‘Guardian of the Star League’ that the Magistracy has been sheltering. It’s a very long story that we can discuss while we move.”

Mina didn’t have a chance to challenge the woman on any of that before her sister’s eyes turned to her. She could almost see the question behind them. The one that had appeared when she’d called her ‘Em’.

“I am Mina.” She admitted.

Emma Centrella didn’t quite faint. But her knees buckled and she wobbled much more than a person should after a simple introduction.

“What? But how—“

“It’s a very long story.”

Lorinette—Lori, rather—shoved herself off the wall, “And not one we can afford to stand around for you to explain. I hate to cut the twenty questions short because believe me Lady Centrella, I can sympathize with how you’re feeling. But we really need to get moving, link up with a few friends of mine. You can ask on the way.”

“She’s mostly right.” Mina agreed, stepping closer to her sister and relieved when the woman winced but didn’t move away from the hand she put on her shoulder, “We need to rescue mom—the Magestrix.”

Lori started slightly at that and winced, “Not…Quite what we had in mind.”

“It’s what I had in mind, though.” Mina pivoted on the back of one heel and brought her head down slightly so she could stare up at the woman through her brows, “We save the Magestrix, or I don’t come with you.”

It was a height of selfish arrogance she hadn’t extended herself to for centuries. She didn’t care. She was curious which of the others had survived and apparently set this up. But it wasn’t the all-consuming drive she knew it probably should be. She had a lifetime of memories slowly coming back to her of Kyalla Centrella and her mother, and her grandmother, for generations. ‘Mariah’, whichever of them it was, would understand…

“We’ll see.” Was all the woman said, turning away and speaking into a portable radio of her own.

Mina didn’t even have enough time to offer an apology or partial explanation to Em before Lori spat a string of curses out underneath her breath.

“Problems?” Emma asked, sounding like she was testing out her voice for the first time.

“Comms are jammed.” The blonde sighed, and bit one side of her lips for a moment.

Mina resisted the temptation to say ‘I could have told you that’.

“I could have told you that.” She said after managing to resist for a whole second. “I lost a datanet connection to the Magistracy’s dropship just a little while ago.”

Lori acknowledged the words with a nod, but her eyes remained unfocused as she thought.

“The top floor is supposed to be some kind of communications center.” Emma offered, glancing between them. “If we got to it you could talk to your people and Mina could call for…reinforcements.”

By the way Emma emphasized the last word and flashed the Nirasaki computer she still had in her hands, Mina immediately knew what she was talking about. It wasn’t a bad idea, either.

“Could work. Could get us killed.” Lori snapped, though the words lacked any real fire. “It’s better than staying here, I guess. Come on. We can iron out the rest on the way.”

The rush back to the elevators was surreal after the evening Mina already had. Emma took the opportunity to probe both of them with questions—one of her first an attempt at spycraft trying to reveal Mina as a fraud by mistaking what they’d done for her eighteenth birthday. It was actually rather well-done by the girl. Unnecessary, but well done.

“They’ll be able to track us on security cameras if we take the elevator itself.” Lori explained as they reached the doors and she set to prying them open. She managed to pull them apart and stuck her head in to look up the shaft. “We’ll have to climb.”

“I’ll go first.” Mina said, stepping forward.

Lori raised one finger in quiet objection, “Maybe second?”

Emma was more final, “Third. Definitely third.”

Mina was about to demand why when the identical stare both had fixed on her skirt answered the question.

Prudes.

 

[prinCZess]

The room resembled one that might be found in the Combine, in form if not actuality. ComStar had erected false shoji-panel walls over sections of the otherwise open floor, and lined that floor with tatami mats. But there was an obvious ignorance—or perhaps deliberate insult?—to the attempted effort at creating a familiar setting. The shoji doors had not been lined up properly with the world around them, and the half-dozen mats—instead of the proper four-and-a-half for a meeting-room—were laid out in a simple, side-by-side pattern that maximized their coverage rather than lend the room a properly auspicious air to its arrangement. In trying to make their guests more comfortable, ComStar only demonstrated superficiality.

On the other hand, when she boiled it down, what were the intricate rituals and symbolism she dealt with but superficial? There might be significance to the tea ceremony, the arrangement of the room, and any other piece of minutiae. But it was a symbolism attached only by people to deeds which held no real significance. It was her more practical duties dispelling spirits and curses which were of real importance.

She understood that was somewhat cynical of her and contradicted the Order’s official line. Since the death of Keeper Florimel Kurita years before, the Order had begun to emphasize its physical traditions over those spiritual ones. But she had grown up in a different time. A time that had respected and valued the real traditions and purpose of the Order just as much as the ones built around mere ceremony and presentation.

Some level of understanding in that respect was necessary if the Combine was to improve. There had not always been such a strict and soulless adherence to ancient codes across the whole of the Combine. Not always been Coordinators on the throne who used the traditions and customs so self-servingly as Takashi and his even worse father had. It had been Urizen Kurita II’s crediting ancient Japanese customs with his survival of an assassination attempt which had formalized them so strictly, nothing more.

She felt an odd sense of familiar disdain for that name, though she couldn’t quite say why. He had been otherwise unremarkable, both as a ruler and a man, in all respects. Lacking even the cultured wall Takashi Kurita had the decency to erect between his own flaws and the outside world.

Rei Hino swallowed a sigh and hopelessly wished she were back on Sendai, even as she mentally slapped herself for the feeling and the errant thoughts. At least there she would have access to a proper means of making tea, a hearth and chashitsu, to calm her mind’s endless raging against unchangeable realities. Somehow, Terra was bringing to the fore the most petulant thoughts she’d ever had and she couldn’t bring herself to feel any guilt over them.

Propriety and respectability could be maintained without slavishly adhering to traditions which had become outdated alongside the steam engine. The Coordinators of the Combine had warped and twisted customs to suit themselves, and simultaneously robbed them of any meaning or worth.

Yet here she was serving stovetop-brewed tea to the highest officials in the Combine in the earliest hours of the morning, but otherwise keeping to her place as a dutiful member of the modern Order of Five Pillars. She’d poured herself into the simple act of brewing and tried to ignore her disappointment and disgust with the conversation around her. But it grew increasingly difficult as the Coordinator continued to set himself on a path to even more pointless death and slaughter in his own name.

Rei poured a small bit out of the pot into her own cup before she returned to the table. Taking the disposable cup, she threw the scalding-hot tea into her mouth. Proper tea, could calm the mind and paper-over a great number of other sins.

“They must be destroyed.” Takashi Kurita growled.

There was no tea that could make better a man’s folly, however.

Rei tried to criticize herself for the thought as the Coordinator continued to explain why the Dragoons would have to be destroyed, but found herself surprisingly unable to. Over the past months she’d come to know the sovereign—

Her sovereign?

—The sovereign of the Combine she was a member of?

—She’d come to realize he was, in some ways, a respectable man. He was dedicated to the nation he led, and his dedication to its traditions was well-known. He attempted to live a full life as befit a samurai—he practiced calligraphy and kendo regularly. He upheld the honor of the Combine in his public life. But it was all so…surface.

Acknowledgement of his own flaws and forgiveness of others for pointing them out were, unfortunately, twin virtues he possessed only in extreme moderation if at all. He was ever an aggrieved party, the embodiment of the nation who need be defended from even the hint of personal criticism or embarrassment by the impersonal regiments under his command. Utterly incapable of recognizing it was his own failings which brought those grievances upon him.

Such was the case with his son. Such was the case with Wolf’s Dragoons.

“The Genyosha are prepared to serve your will, Coordinator-sama.” Akira Brahe said, fulfilling his usual role of speaking for his very reserved father despite his inferior position compared to the others at the low-slung chabudai table, “On your command we may crash over this latest batch of mercenary dogs to voice challenge and drown them beneath us.”

Rei had to credit him for making an attempt at subtlety. But unlike his father Akira still had a more blunt and unreserved speaking style. His reference to the Genyosha’s traditional target—the Kell Hounds—was almost insultingly obvious. But his lack of unreserved endorsement of the aggressive stance against the Dragoons was matched by a slight downward turn to his father’s lips.

Yorinaga Kurita did not look excited at a potential distraction from his potential rematch with Morgan Kell, and had already shown veiled disapproval of the Coordinator’s handling of Jamie Wolf. If anyone were to talk sense into Takashi Kurita, it would have to be his distant cousin.

Yorinaga was silent.

Rei tried not to despair.

“The Galedon District will require some time to reorganize and adjust to a new Warlord to be truly prepared for an offensive against the Suns or the Dragoons. Tai-sho Parkinson may be a serviceable ‘general’ for the Regulars, but her service under Samsonov and obsession with sullying her forces in combat with mere bandits is ill-suited to overseeing an actual Military District on a permanent basis.” One of the other advisors at the table spoke-up, tone making clear it wasn’t the woman’s service history or experience he objected to so much as her existence itself.

Unsurprisingly, he was one of the oldest men in the room. Rei rolled her eyes. Only old men thought that men were better than women these days!

“Galedon will require a firmer hand, hai. Warlord Chi, however, has long served the Dragon’s security in Pesht. When Samsonov’s head is brought to the Imperial Palace, perhaps Chi shall be rewarded the chance to demonstrate his capabilities further.”

Rei kept her face studiously neutral at the automatic dismissal of Parkison that Takashi Kurita engaged in as she turned back to the table and refilled the Coordinator’s teacup in the polite two dips of the pot. The Coordinator was pushing sixty. She should not be surprised he fell under the same opinions as the old men he kept around him—Yorinaga mostly excepted—about women’s role in the service of the Combine. Only old men might think that men were better than women, but Akira was one of the few at the table who didn’t fall under the label of ‘old man’.

Rei dutifully scanned the table to be certain none of their cups were empty, and then made her way to her familiar place at the distant end with the fresh-brewed pot of tea. It was the same place she’d taken up on previous such meetings in the jumpship, and was unsurprised to see the tradition continue on Terra. Nominally, the Order of Five Pillars representative in the Coordinator’s delegation was supposed to sit at his side, but that was usually in the case of a more senior priestess. The Dragon was still blowing smoke over the insult he felt the Order had dealt him by sending her in the only way he formally could—assigning his entire entourage’s seating based on seniority instead of position.

Akira Brahe offered her a sympathetic smile and small dip of his teacup as she sat. Letting a tight nod be the only acknowledgement she gave him despite the relief it gave to have someone in the room who at least noticed her, Rei placed the pot down on the insulating pad laid out in the center of the table.

She dutifully kept her quiet as the discussion continued. It wasn’t protocol for priestesses to become overly involved with the affairs of governance around them unless they touched upon Matters of the House Honor and Righteousness or the Ivory trade, but she desperately wanted someone to inform Takashi Kurita how absurd he was being. He was discussing turning an entire Military District or more against the Dragoons. Because they’d made him a spectacle at the wedding after chewing through seven regiments Samsonov had sent after them on Misery!

Rei began to reach for her tea so she could use it to occupy her mouth, but froze with her hand halfway there. Something was wrong. She couldn’t pin down anything beyond that, but there was something close by that wasn’t…wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Appointing Chi to a position in Galedon would require someone take his place as Warlord Pesht, Lord.”

Rei forced herself to take her tea and pull it back to her as the Coordinator’s eyes sparkled in the manner they did whenever he meant to smile. Turning despite the insult such might be perceived to be, she focused her eyes on the shoji door at the south end of the room.

If there were to be any interruptions, they would have to come from the men stationed there entering the room. But it would have to be something exceedingly serious. The guards of the Otomo would be disinclined to interrupt the meeting for anything they did not judge worthy of the Coordinator’s attention.

Somehow, she knew there would be an interruption coming. There was some thing in the hallway.

“Indeed it would. But that position may—”

Takashi stopped and tilted his head towards Yorinaga as the military-man held up his hand and gestured for silence.

The almost fifty year-old distant cousin to the ruler of the Combine calmly repositioned himself on the floor, rotating his entire body around using his fists so his knees were directed towards the doorway and away from his ruler, a most disrespectful attitude. But the commander’s eyes were eerily calm as he stared at the doorway, the message obvious to any who could see him: be watchful.

“Coordinator?”

Rei wasn’t sure how Yorinaga managed to work a request for forgiveness and permission both into the single word, but he did. Equally mysterious was how the man detected the tiny nod the Coordinator gave to his back—perhaps Yorinaga didn’t even care about it and was set on doing as he pleased. What she was sure of was that the way the older man motioned Akira upwards and began to rise to his own feet was troubling at the least.

The bizarre interruption itself was cut into by the front door of the room being thrown open, its impact against the end of its tracks sending a wave of air down the entire rest of the wall. Stepping through in a single, sharp motion, the battle-plate covered Otomo guard responsible dropped to his knees a step aside from the entrance. Through the doorway, the other guard was clearly preventing a pair of men from entering.

One of them seemed like he could be easily ignored. Blonde, peach fuzz growing thick around his face and decked out in a simple uniform with a skull-insignia on the right breast, he almost looked like a boy dressing up in his father’s mercenary outfit. For all that, Rei felt something about him…something on him—calling out to her...

The man beside the mercenary was more immediately commanding despite his more humble clothing—he was taller and clean-shaven. But he managed to make the nondescript, black-and-white serving-outfit ComStar had provided all of those too low to even merit acolyte robes look commanding.

But unlike the mercenary, who was a tightly-wound ball of anxiety and worries, the server felt utterly and completely empty inside.

Rei stared. The mercenary was making some inane comment and the man in the server’s uniform was silently staring back into the room, past her and Yorinaga and to the other side entirely. His eyes were wrong. He showed no reaction to anything. He was wrong.

The Otomo guardsman who’d opened the door began to apologize, verging on the overly dramatic as he implied his willingness to give up his life for the intrusion.

The server burst into motion in the middle of the apology. Through some combination of physical contortion and enough force to toss one of the Otomo out of the way, he forced his way past the guards and into the room. Throwing himself up and onto the table, he charged with single-minded determination towards the Coordinator in utter silence.

Only a few in the room managed to retain their calm in the face of the sudden intrusion and the chaos it brought on. Takashi Kurita was one of them, watching the man approaching him with a head-tilted interest that hovered between dismissal and complete confusion.

Rei jerked into motion. The bagginess of her hakama and haori not as limiting as she would have thought they’d be. Jumping to her feet, she snatched up the teapot in front of her and swung it around into the man’s path. She was an instant behind Yorinaga.

From his side of the table a small cloud of steaming-hot tea splashed into the server’s face, followed an instant later by the porcelain teacup that it had been in and then the palm that had held it. The cup fractured over the man’s face as Yorinaga pulled his hand up and out-of-the-way of the splintering porcelain and began to wind it up for another strike. While most of the shards fell uselessly to the ground, a good half-dozen of the porcelain slivers stabbed their way into the sensitive skin of the face, one visibly extending out from an eyeball.

The man, if that’s what he was, didn’t even pause. He didn’t even scream. Just waved his arms before him to clear the way and continued towards the Coordinator. The teapot Rei had swung at him bounced off the front his head hard enough she could see his skin collapse inward and he stumbled for an instant in his advance, yet still he ran.

“Stop him!” Rei screamed at the advisors and hangars-on further up the table.

None seemed to be competent enough to do much, many hesitating too long until the man had already passed them by or simply not fast enough to do anything. The pair that managed to rise to their feet and block the assassin’s path were furiously thrown out of the way by the crazed man, flying into the shoji walls and ripping through them without being slowed down a bit.

What use were the sycophants the Coordinator gathered around himself if they were so completely useless?

One of the ceiling-panels burst open, an armored and cat-masked figure dropping into the room foot-first, with both knees curled upwards to just in front of their chest. Arcs of excess electrical current ran across the figure’s arms and torso as the sneak-suit he had on decloaked, the wheeze-and-crack snapping of the small bolts of discharge audible even over the other sounds of chaos in the room. Rotating their torso in mid-air, the armored figure withdrew a blade from a sheath on their back and brought one leg forward to swing downwards into the back of the ComStar server’s neck.

Even that strong hit only managed to break the server’s stride, and it was only the rest of the sneak-suited figure landing atop his back that managed to bring him down entirely. The crunch of impact from the server’s porcelain-studded face dropping onto the table was followed by another splintering, cracking sound as the table collapsed under the strain of supporting both bodies.

Effortlessly shifting their weight during the collapse to keep from falling off the table or the server’s body, the cat-masked figure brought one foot off to support them. Smoothly reversing their hold on the blade in their hand, they dropped to one knee in a single, sharp motion, stabbing the weapon through the crazed server and the table both.

The room went quiet, except for the clattering and clunking produced as the server on the table still struggled to continue his charge towards Takashi Kurita.

“Ho-ly shit! Ninjas? Hey, just so it’s clear? I am not with that gu—“ The mercenary outside started, only to be enthusiastically battered to the ground by the Otomo guardsmen before they rushed into the room and to the Coordinator’s side.

Yorinaga twisted on a heel and prowled his way up the table to stand opposite the ninja as the guardsmen rushed past him, still looking remarkably unperturbed with everything that had happened. Akira had the more natural reaction, in her opinion. Leaping up, the man brought his legs wide apart, and one hand dropped to a nonexistent holster at his waist. A flash of anger and frustration crossing his brow, he then transitioned the movement almost-seamlessly into a long step forward over the table so he could stand between the intruding figure and Rei, bringing both his hands up to cover his chest and his knees settling into kokutsu-dachi.

“Get the Coordinator to safety!”

It was one of few things to be said by Takashi Kurita’s retainers that Rei found herself in agreement with.

The room once again became a miniature piece of chaos as the Dragon was finally pushed into standing and retreating from his attacker and mysterious-savior both. The Coordinator crossed to the room’s exit, forced to give wide berth to the table, and his guards closed around him as he left to cast suspicious glares even at the other Combine personnel in the room.

The only one who didn’t join them was the one who had opened the door for the assassin. He remained on his knees at the entrance, head bowed as his liege passed. Rei growled as she noticed his eyes staring at the sword in the center of the table.

There was no honor where he looked, only cowardice and the abandonment of a lifetime’s duty with an early, easy death.

Rei directed her focus to the ‘ninja’ who had burst from the ceiling. The mask over their face made it impossible to tell for sure, but she could feel them focused on her as well—probably an illusion, the sneak-suits mask allowed for a 360-degree view. Still she knew he was looking at her, and as she got a closer look at the front of the mask, she realized exactly what the figure was.

“He has been stopped.” The nekakami said, voice a buzzing, modulated whir that eliminated any distinctiveness or trace of gender. Words spoken, the figure bowed slightly and used one hand to present the still-struggling man on the table to the room like a prize, “Though it may have been easier for you to exorcise him…”

On the surface the words were confusing and almost meaningless. A statement she might have performed a superstitious rite that was entirely form over any kind of function in order to stop an assassination. The mere idea was ludicrous on its face. Beyond that, she had no twigs, no harae, no salt, what was she supposed to do as an exorcism, yell harsh words at the man?

Somewhere within her, somewhere she felt a confusion at even recognizing, she knew that was exactly the right thing to do. That it was one of the few things she did as a member of the Order that had meaning, and it was exact thing the situation required. But they needed to be the right words. Something familiar, but different. Something she’d done before, but couldn’t quite recall…

Part of her balked at the prospect still, and attached itself to the first words of the nekakami instead of their later ones. Who was this ‘Guardian’? Why did it sound so right when it made so little sense?

“I think we should start with asking who you are.” Akira said, not taking his eyes off the nekakami before him.

“Servant.” The masked figure said in that same electronic voice, holding one hand out towards Rei.

Akira looked at her, his fighting stance becoming more of an elaborate shrug for an instant as he quietly sought an answer from her. Since she didn’t have one herself, she couldn’t give him one.

The nekakami, for his part, took the chance to leap into motion. Jumping up and off the shoji panels, they disappeared in moments back into the ceiling he had dropped from before a half-dozen attempts to stop him could do any more than raise their hands. The only evidence of their having existed at all was the quickly-settling ceiling-panel they had passed through, and the sword they had left buried in the server.

“Dammit. He’s getting away!” Akira snapped, twisting halfway around and beginning into his own rush of motion before he was stopped by an upraised hand from Yorinaga.

The older man was shifting his eyes between Rei and the man on the table, expression a calm neutrality that made it nearly impossible to figure out his thoughts.

Yorinaga shook his head, meeting Rei’s eyes for a heartbeat and then focusing on the table-bound assassin. Having to dart his hand in quickly to avoid the man’s continued struggles, he grabbed something they had around their neck and yanked it off, extending it in the next breath towards Akira.

The younger of the pair didn’t look entirely satisfied by the words, still glaring at the ceiling as if merely focusing his anger would make the nekakami reappear. Yorinaga clearing his throat and shaking the amulet he’d gotten off the captive finally managed to snap the younger man out of it and focus on the immediate concern, but Rei could tell the matter of the ninja would come up again—and he’d undoubtedly focus his questions on her. The nekakami had claimed to be her bodyguard. Her servant, even?

A million questions boiled up in Rei’s throat to shout at the ceiling in hope the nekakami might return and answer. Who her parents were. Where she belonged outside the Order. When she’d lost her memory...Why nobody had ever come for her.

She managed to hold them down only by force of will and habitual reservation. Now she should be focusing on more immediate concerns.

But they made no sense!

“This makes no sense.” Akira said, echoing Rei’s thoughts so well she couldn’t help but jump slightly and lean forward to see what had caused his nearly-identical reaction.

She didn’t recognize the significance of the red-and-black flower symbol on the amulet. Their identical expressions said Yorinaga and Akira both did.

“It’s Kali’s rose of death. A thugee symbol. A sect of death cultists that Romano Liao heads.” Akira began, nodding towards the man on the table who was still struggling to free himself from the sword impaled through him, “He’s probably on some sort of drug that lets him continue to function even with his injuries.”

Rei frowned, certain that the man’s theory was incorrect but unable to pinpoint how, “The Confederation is part of the Concord. Why would they try to assassinate the Coordinator?”

She would at least give the Liao’s and their plotting some credit. They would not be so careless as to leave such blatant evidence behind to implicate themselves—if for no other reason than to avoid a ComStar boycott on their realm.

Unless they wanted to?

“I do not know. Perhaps this is an attempt to distract from the real culprit?” Akira said, more to himself than anything. His voice grew more certain “Or House Liao wishes to make us think they are being set-up by another party.”

It was somewhat awkward how much the man’s thoughts matched her own.

Yorinaga making some kind of procession of symbols with his fingers distracted her from the embarrassment of that realization. The elder man muttered something indecipherable under his breath before pushing both hands out and holding them against the back of the would-be assassin’s head.

“Akuryo Taisan.”

Rei felt one of her hands spasm at the words. The muscle-clenching shock of recognition shot up from there until it pounded into her head with the strength of a hammerblow. They were exactly what had been needed to ‘exorcise him’ as the nekakami had suggested. They were familiar. They were her’s.

But they were being spoken by Yorinaga. Why hadn’t she thought of them? Why hadn’t she remembered them…

But what was there to remember?

Rei clenched her fists together until her palms protested, gladly watching as the pinned assassin became less frantic in his movements, arms and legs seeming to lose strength before finally dropping flat onto the table. Rei locked eyes with the thing she knew, somehow, hadn’t really been alive for a good while. Beneath the physical injuries and the cold, emotionless act the thing put on, there was a deep-seated fear in those eyes that brought her a bone deep, burning satisfaction.

Burning…

“Tai-sa Kurita? What was that?” Rei asked, years of discipline failing her as she heard her voice waver over the words.

Yorinaga cocked his head to the side at her, but his eyes traveled down to the still body. He looked…sad and far away.

“It’s a prayer for a lost soul.” Akira offered in his place, “My mother believed in it.”

The two men locked gazes, and Rei felt like a true intruder in the room. Not just out of place or ignored as she had, but truly like she was intervening in something she shouldn’t be.

“Hey.” The mercenary’s voice had a waver to it that hadn’t been present before, and when Rei turned her head she could see him wince as he waved a hand in the doorway to attract attention, “Don’t mean to interrupt the whole conversation about magical, bushido, Shinto-zen bullshit, but I can’t help but notice more physical matters like ComStar’s security—and the medics that would come with them—don't seem to have shown up.”

It was as disrespectful a comment as could be made, and both Akira and Yorinaga frowned at the mercenary’s interruption. Still, he had a point. There should have been blue-uniformed ComStar personnel rushing into the room less than a minute after everything had started. It was the entire point of allowing ComStar such close cooperation with the Otomo—the Blakists could be backup for more reliable security in the event of something exactly like this happening.

That they still hadn’t arrived was worrisome. Every second they didn’t show up was another second that suggested they’d been defeated and would never come…Or they were involved and had no reason to, not when they would be better served focusing on—

“The Coordinator.” Rei said, suspicion forming in her mind over the purpose of the ‘assassination attempt’. ComStar had been informed of exactly what the Otomo would do if there were an attempt on Takashi Kurita’s life.

Either they’d reached a similar conclusion themselves or her voice had been more commanding than she’d meant it to. Akira was the first out the door, leaping up-and-over the mercenary, with Yorinaga not far behind. It somehow felt right for her to bring up the rear guard…

“Miss Hino?”

The mercenary’s use of her name stopped her in her tracks halfway through the door.

He was holding one hand up to stop her in case she’d kept going. A small, red-and-gold tube clutched in his fingers and held out to her.

Rei was hammered by the sensation that it was her’s. Like the words Yorinaga had spoken seconds earlier, but even more viscerally. It was more than simply being her’s or being familiar, she had the feeling that the odd, pen-like thing held an inescapable part of herself within it. It wasn’t just something that belonged to her, it was who she was.

“I was—“ He began.

Rei stretched forward and grabbed onto the end of the pen. It was more important than his words. It was more important than almost anything.

The vision was very much like those she’d occasionally get performing her ceremonial duties. Yet so much more.

Fire played across the skyline around her and explosions rocked the ground around them all. Soot and death hung heavy in the air, consequence of the enemy’s attempt at razing everything to the ground that the automated fire-suppression system was only partially keeping in-check. Even the best of city-management computers with access to all the resources of Unity City could only do so much against the constant barrage of inferno missiles and incendiary weapons that the enemy’s forces had put to use.

She couldn’t help but be slightly thankful the screaming that had gone on through the night was mostly gone. Most anyone in the city now who was still alive was either in one of the shelters or doing what they could to assist the Watch in its final stand.

She didn’t want to remember that the reason the screaming was gone was because the people who had been making it were as well.

If—when—she got her hands on Amaris or The Traitor, she would lock them into a burning pit for eternity. Usagi could—

No she couldn’t.

A trio of loud whumps shook everything. The shots were quickly followed by an even deeper explosion that seemed to suck the very air around her towards it. Either a ‘Mech had lost containment or an ammo-bin had gone up. She pointlessly hoped for the latter. The Watch had long since used all of their ammunition and been limited to energy weapons. The Rimjobs were the only ones who’d have enough ammo in their stocks to make for an explosion that impressive.

The Watch was all going to die, of course. Amaris’ forces had help that made many of them much more difficult to kill. But so long as they bought just enough time...

Time at the cost of death. It would be familiar to them all, but it was Pluto's realm, really.

The vision shifted in the way dreams or distant memories did. Rei was left with the impression of having traveled a distance, and some indefinable amount of time having passed, but could not narrow it beyond that.

“Mars!”

Pluto looking worried. She’d not seen that in a long time.

“Take their hands!”

She obeyed, grabbing onto the blonde on her right and the…blue-haired girl…on her left—Venus and Mercury. They’d finally all made it. All except The Traitor, her parents—and wasn’t their venture into the Concordat with Kerensky a well-timed coincidence?—and, of course, the two The Traitor had murdered.

The Queen and the Princess both. Gone.

The vision swam, torn out of focus by Rei’s own pounding heart and a scream of emotions and resistance inside her. She didn’t want to believe it.

She didn’t want to remember it!

It had happened. She had to. It was all she could do anymore.

Or was it? Maybe if she found Pluto they could try again?

The vision—memory!—faded back into focus exactly where it had left off.

“Now.” Pluto said simply, raising her staff aloft over her head. A sparkling, dust-like energy from five women and one man danced its way around in a circle before coalescing over the Guardian of Time’s head. The fabric of reality before the woman began to waver, questioning its place and whether it really belonged there.

Was it enough?

Mars’ had a distant appreciation for the fact that the nuclear explosion that carried her away was not what Pluto had intended. Then she felt herself forget what Pluto had intended. Then who Pluto was.

Then who she was.

In a snap, she was back in the present.

I am…Guardian of War?

Rei blinked as the flame and fire of battle and loss were fully replaced by the blonde mercenary’s half-dazed grin and the concerns of the present.

“—pposed to get that to you. One way or another. Didn’t know the job would be so easy.” The mercenary grumbled, slowly bringing one hand up to massage across his abdomen as he struggled to his feet.

She ignored the mercenary’s mistaken bravado and Akira calling out to her to move from further up the hall.

“Who are you?” Rei demanded, clutching the transformation pen in both hands.

“Must have slipped my mind in all the excitement of getting beat-up. I’m Gray. We have a mutual friend at ComStar’s headquarters who wanted me to get that to you. Wonderful reception, by the by. Real Combine hospitality.” The mercenary said after a brief hesitation, affecting a casual cockiness that she supposed he meant to be humorous or charismatic.

She didn’t find it very funny or very endearing. The man needed some self-control and sense of decorum. Most of all, he needed to be more informative. He wasn’t telling her everything. If there was one thing which had always frustrated her in her…centuries…It was being kept out of the loop on things.

But she could tell he was reliable—or reliable enough. At least he didn’t feel empty like the crazed server had.

More important than his name was how he’d come across the pen in the first place and how much else he could tell her.

“You were late. Judging by performance, you would have been ineffective even if you hadn’t been.” Rei said, looking the man over and withdrawing the auto-pistol he had holstered at his side—to the considerable awkward and almost-adorable discomfort of the baby-faced mercenary. She waggled the pen to attract his attention back to it, “Did this supposed mutual friend of ours tell you anything else about this?”

The auto-pistol’s presence at his side was a little surprising. It meant either he was another assassin—which she should have been able to feel—or ComStar had trusted him enough to carry such a weapon. Or he was enterprising enough to have snuck it in past their security. She couldn’t say for sure. Considering the nekakami’s presence, the lack of security around her now, and Akira’s own hidden sword back in his own room, she was beginning to grow less and less impressed by ComStar’s security, so perhaps him just being resourceful wasn’t as much of an outlier as it seemed?

“Only that you're not supposed to use it unless it's an emergency.” The mercenary said. His eyes traveled to the barrel of his pistol, “If you don’t mind, could you put that back? Please?”

Rei ignored Gray’s protests and held onto the pistol as she turned and started down the hall, certain he would follow behind her and not suddenly decide to find a knife he could sink into her back. The only ones who would know how the pen worked would be…She didn’t know if she could call them friends after so many years—she wasn’t even certain they still had been during the Coup. But they wouldn’t be anyone who wished to see her dead.

It had to be one of the Others. One of them had survived or lasted through Pluto’s attempt at manipulating things and now…

She almost stopped cold when she realized who it was. It wasn’t one of the Inners at all. It was one of the Traitors parents! They’d been with Jamie Wolf the evening before! It was almost painfully obvious.

But why would they seek her out after so long? Two-hundred fifty years…

Seeking something to do with her hands and suddenly less confident in the man behind her despite the way he felt good, Rei released the magazine on the pistol, having to juggle it and the pen in her hand as she checked its round-count. She hesitated briefly at the sparkling red tips, before the memory of what they were came back to her. They could still kill someone, but they’d be much more effective against Daemons or monsters.

She slammed the magazine back home and double-checked to be sure there was a one in the pistol’s chamber.

It was an action she’d never done in all her time in the Order these last few years. But there had been occasions before that where she had. The specifics were only starting to come back to her, but she could remember years at a time where she had regularly used such weapons and worn the aging sneak-suits of the nekakami instead of the haori of the O5P. Whichever organization had been safer in the ever-shifting political winds of the Combine.

Still, her most recent memories included being taught that firearms were certainly not the remit of a priestess. They were too loud and uncivilized.

Rei smirked. Uncivilized or not, they were less dangerous than some other things she could do, and they were undeniably useful. Appreciation and disdain for the same thing were a strange pair of feelings to have together.

“Why do you think you need to be armed in my presence?” Rei asked over her shoulder as she hurried to catch back up with Akira and Yorinaga.

“Miss Hino, I have seen what you’re supposed to deal with. Not having my ‘Mech around me or being burning for the jumpoint at this exact moment is making me more worried than I’d like to admit. But, to be honest? A large part of why I’d like to have it is that you certainly don’t need the thing. Not with the ceiling-ninja and what that pen can let you do.” Gray answered.

He did have a point there.

Perhaps appreciation and disdain for the same thing weren’t all that strange to have? She decided she appreciated Gray’s bluntness, even as she couldn’t help but be unimpressed by his apparent need to try and be funny.

Rei ducked into the security-station that Akira and Yorinaga had been headed for. The former stared at her and then Gray with questions obvious in his eyes, the latter gave the mercenary a critical once-over before turning his attention back to the monitors on the wall, manipulating the controls on one to rewind the video and try to follow the retreating image of Takashi Kurita through the twists and turns his security took him through.

Just as the Coordinator and his guards stepped out of the building, they were surrounded by a dozen armed men in ComStar security uniforms. Far from having to force the Coordinator to come with them, the Otomo clearly let them take up positions on the outskirts of the detail as they piled into a small procession of vehicles, Takashi’s wife emerging a few moments later from another portion of the sprawling building they had been in and loaded into one of the other vehicles just before they all burst into motion.

It almost didn’t look suspicious. But instead of making the right that would lead them to the bridge off the island and eventually the Combine dropship hesitantly established as a safehouse, they made a left. It would take them closer to the center of the island and ComStar’s facilities there. She doubted it was a coincidence.

“They’re taking him to the main hall of that cathedral-thing they were going to hold the wedding in.” Gray whispered.

Akira turned, not looking like he was in the mood to deal with the man, “Oh?”

“If the coms were still up I’d offer to let you talk to Tiepolo for yourself to confirm it. ComStar’s dealing with some…internal difficulties over who should hold the position of Primus at the moment. These jokers are involved in it—maybe not even intentionally on their part. Just trust me on this one, alright?”

“Tiepolo is who you’re working for then, mercenary?” Akira asked, voice the same polite level of friendly despite his eyebrows dropping darkly as he finished them.

Gray once again hesitated in his answer, buying time with a dramatic sigh and a roll of his eyes, “He’s paying the bills, yeah. But there’s a hell of a lot more going on than you could possibly understand, samurai.”

Rei wanted to sigh, but that would have been too dramatic and put both the men off. She was going to have to step in before Akira decided he needed to go get his sword or the uncouth merc decided to drop his trousers to prove his manhood physically rather than trying to do it verbally in his grating, gaijin way.

“Perhaps I don’t need this.” she said, giving the pistol a shake and the mercenary a brief second to hope before casually handing the weapon off to Akio. The spike of humor she had at the stricken look on the mercenary’s face probably wasn’t mature of her, but she couldn’t help it.

“Now, if you both would restrain yourselves? There are more important concerns.” She said, pushing past Gray to exit the room, “It would seem we need to find a vehicle.”

She wasn’t entirely certain if the goal she had in mind for the vehicle was to rescue the Coordinator or simply find out which of the Traitor’s Parents it was that Gray worked for. She suspected it was a little of both.

“That I can help with.” Gray said, “I had to get out her somehow, right?”

The mercenary’s voice dropped, low enough she was certain it wasn’t supposed to be heard, “’Go save the Drac’. ‘It’ll be good for you’. Dammit Lori. I should’ve put my foot down and gone to the Canopians. At least they would’ve established a safe-word before beating me up.”

Letting the man have his complaint, Rei padded down the hall towards the exit, awkward at every step as her knee spasmed and shook underneath her. More than just about anything else she wanted to sit down. Needed a moment to process everything that had already happened and everything she was beginning to remember. But they didn’t have that moment.

“Mister Gray? Is there a reason I shouldn’t just shoot you right now to spare myself the worry of having you behind my back?” Akira asked from behind her opposite shoulder. She hoped he wasn’t being so blatant as to point the pistol at the mercenary, but from the soft rattling in his hand she could tell he was at least gesturing with it.

“Is this some kind of trick question? Because I’m helping you. I’m one of the good guys. You don’t shoot the good guys. It’s...It’s bad.”

Rei was almost tempted to stand aside and let the drama play out as an indulgence in schadenfreude. But Gray’s struggling commentary was as liable to be painful to her as it was to himself, even assuming it didn’t turn deadly. She butted in again to spare herself the work of putting up with it—his commentary or the death it might end in.

She had centuries of perspective Akira lacked. She also wanted to be the one to—violently, if necessary—extract any further information out of Gray about the ones he worked for. But she could tell the truth for now.

“He’s not lying.”

Akira quirked an eyebrow, “That is relieving to hear from a woman who acts as an agent of the nekakami.”

Rei breathed through her nose and inwardly counted to three. She probably should have seen that criticism coming. Subhash Indrahar had branded the cat-masked, ninja-like nekakami as little more than thieves and assassins—enemies of the state for their operation outside the oversight of the Dragon. At the same time, it seemed like such a minor thing for her to be condemned for or need to explain in comparison to everything else that it couldn’t help but annoy her.

But Akira didn’t know about everything else yet. How was he supposed to? How was she supposed to tell him she was a millennium-old that wouldn’t end in him dismissing everything she said from that point onward?

“It’s more the opposite, actually. They are agents for us—for me.” Rei growled, trying to come up with an easy way of explaining things she was only beginning to remember herself in a limited amount of time.

“What a relief.” Akira said flatly, not sounding the slightest bit relieved.

“It is.” Yorinaga said, speaking up for the first time since exorcising the mindless drone in the main room. Rei could sense the man’s arm move onto Akira’s shoulder, “The Spirit Cats acknowledge only a very few individuals as ‘Guardian’.”

As if he had planned it, Yorinaga finished speaking just as Rei pushed through the doors to the outside.

Five figures dressed in the same form-concealing and face-shrouding sneak-suits as she’d seen on one of them minutes earlier were waiting for them on the steps. Seated on their knees in a half-circle at the bottom of the steps, swords balanced in their laps, they still almost looked like they would disappear in an instant if the light from the half-full moon above was interrupted.

The one at the center rose to his feet. The sword in his lap looking like it flowed to his side more than being directed by any kind of human will. She couldn’t even track the nekakami’s hands, only see the end result. It spoke to a lifetime of sword-handling.

The gunshot from behind her interrupted any further appreciation.

Rei froze as the auto-pistol’s report echoed in her ear.

Behind her, she could tell Yorinaga was already grabbing the weapon from his son before Akira could repeat the panicked shot at what he’d thought was a threat. Gray stumbled another step into her peripheral vision, hands moving towards his ears and a scream of surprise beginning to come from his throat.

She found herself largely unconcerned for all of it. Below her, the nekakami moved. Most scattered, but the one at their head instead brought their sword up to in front of their chest and began to step back, twisting their body as they did.

Something clicked, and the figure spun around to the left, dropping to one knee. Their sword-arm curled around their body to clutch at their side. After an instant Rei couldn’t properly estimate the length of, they rose back to their feet. The sword returned to their side, and the nekakami bowed as if nothing had happened. As if they hadn't just--mostly--stopped a bullet with a sword.

“Ho-ly shit. Ninjas.” Gray said again, his voice flat before he dropped into a long sigh and rubbed at his eyes with one hand, “I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore.”