Chapter 30
Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 13th, 3016
The next day I finally gave up.
I’d been trying to figure out what I could get Julia as a ‘sorry I insinuated that you were an awful person’ gift, but I hadn’t come up with anything I thought was viable.
I remembered her mother saying something about some luxury from New Avalon that she liked when we had met in the Triad. Chocolates, maybe? Either way, I had not the first idea of how to go about securing some of them, even if I’d remembered precisely what they were. In the 21st Century, I’d have bought flowers, but that didn’t seem like enough given the woman that I was buying for and the level of rudeness I was trying to make up for.
The other option that came to mind was some Argentwood furniture, but that felt a bit over the top. I’d been rude, not gotten drunk and hit on her sister.
With no idea how to identify a middle ground on the matter, I decided to do what any intelligent man did in my position: find a woman and beg for assistance.
“You got a minute, Comet?” I called out, knocking on the open door in front of me.
Geraldine looked up from her paperwork and quirked an eyebrow before replying. Despite still being on the books as the XO, she was handling most of the paperwork for the Regiment these days. And with a bunch of government auditors incoming, she was dealing with even more work than normal ensuring that all the Is were dotted and Ts were crossed.
“You can have two, as long as you promise not to drop any more work on me,” she said, glancing back down long enough to sign off on the report she’d been reading. Setting it aside, she met my eyes again. I must have taken a heartbeat too long to answer, because her eyes narrowed.
I stepped inside and she let me close the door before she spoke.
“Alright, out with it,” she said, and I felt like a twelve-year-old called to account for breaking something all over again.
“I need an apology gift for Julia, and I have no idea what to get her,” I admitted, glumly.
Comet stared at me for a long moment, then closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands.
“I said
not to drop any more work on me.” The words came out a bit garbled, but still understandable.
“Sorry, but I’ve been trying to work out something by myself for most of the week, and I’ve got
nothing,” I confessed, shrugging with embarrassment. “Anything I come up with either seems like it’d be half-hearted or way over the top.”
Comet just kept her head in her hands for a long moment, clearly mourning the foolishness of the younger generation. After giving her a few more seconds, I broke down and continued.
“So can you help? Please? I’m not too proud to beg.”
“Fibe, juft ged oud ob ‘ere,” she commanded, face still buried in her hands, by all appearances a mass of suffering.
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Comet waited for her boss to leave before raising her head. The little shit was so unlike his father so much of the time, that when he
did do something that reminded her of Alistair Senior it was always a shock.
He never knew what he should get Maggie when he’d pissed her off either.
“God, why did your boy have to take after you in this, Al?” she asked, looking skyward before looking over at her phone. She had absolutely no idea what one of the Realm’s great nobles would accept as an apology gift; she’d barely said five words to the woman.
But she was a past master of the intra-unit networking system known as the grapevine. She grabbed her phone and dialed a number from memory, not because it was the most likely to work, but because she knew the person at the other end best.
“Hey, Sammy,” she said when the call was answered, “Anybody in your unit particularly close to our resident Steiner?”
There was a moment’s hesitation at the non sequitur.
“Uh, not that I can think of?” Sammy responded. “Certainly not among the Mechwarriors, but maybe some of the Techs or Astechs know something. I can ask around.”
“Please do so. Discreetly,” she instructed before hanging up. That had been a long shot, but it was best to get it out of the way first.
Now, she wondered,
the company commander nearest her age or the one in command of her ‘Mech’s weight class?
Ultimately, she remembered that Levy’s Medium Company had been along on the ride to Tharkad and figured she was the most likely to have seen something. Unfortunately …
“Sorry, Major, but Hauptmann Steiner spent most of the trip to Tharkad working with Captain Richthofen on ASF reports then, while we were on-world, she was dealing with meetings and politics while I was working with the Royal Guards, briefing them on the Phoenix. Later, on the trip out, she was chasing paperwork between switching branches again to House Troop Liaison and acting as a political sounding board in meetings with the boss …”
Levy trailed off, and Geraldine could hear the shrug in her voice.
“Not your fault. We’ve all been busy recently,” she reassured the younger woman. “Just ask around to see if any of your support staff have any connections to hers.”
“Shall do, Major,” she replied before the call disconnected. So of course it came down to Foehammer’s company.
She hated talking to Foehammer. It was always awkward. He’d been one of her COs back in the Old Days of the unit. Now she was
his boss.
With one last longing look at her bottle of sake, she picked up the phone and dialed. After a few rings, he picked up the phone.
“You’ve got Foehammer.”
“Eric, this is Geraldine. Bloodhound dropped a bit of a head-scratcher on me and I’m hoping you know someone who might know the answer.”
“Oh? Trouble in paradise, huh?”
Geralding took a deep breath. So either the old man already knew, or the Grapevine was being its usual efficient self.
“Yeah, he’s looking for an apology gift, and on this one the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Don’t suppose our liaison happened to make any friends among the other Thunderbolt drivers?”
“She hung out more with the Implacable’s crew and the members of the Command Lance, but several of the Techs and Astechs that came with her talk to their counterparts among my crews. I’ll see what the rumor mill spits out and get back to you in a couple hours.”
“Thanks, Eric, I appreciate it.”
“No problem, Comet. I’ll let you get back to the paperwork,” he said and hung up.
“Aggravating old…” she trailed off as she hung up her own handset.
She was
going to have her revenge. When they formally stood up the other two battalions, Major Eric Fischer was going to be her choice for one of them. See how he liked it when it was his desk buried all the damn time.
Still, that
was one item off her list …
If she couldn’t dot Is and cross Ts tipsy, then this job wasn’t worth doing. One good thing about all the trips to Toland and Steelton was that she never had to worry about running out of good sake anymore.
“To the one thing even the Combine can’t fuck up!” She toasted the far wall and took a long sip before taking a look at the next readiness report, frowning, and topping off her saucer.
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It only took Comet about five hours to get back to me with answers. Unfortunately …
“So Julia’s big indulgence is fancy coffee with a sideline in expensive chocolates?”
“Yep,” Geraldine confirmed, “and good luck getting any of either in this part of the Sphere.”
She wasn’t kidding. Steelton was recovering, but so far as I knew, they didn’t even grow coffee or chocolate there, and Toland was probably a year or two behind even Steelton’s curve.
“Well, thanks anyway, Comet. I appreciate the effort,” I said, preparing to hang up when my 2IC interjected.
“Not so fast, youngster,” she said, and I could hear the grin in her voice. “I said those were the quick and easy apology gifts she’d like. According to her aides, she’s a fan of sculptures, and in particular scale versions of ‘Mechs. And she hasn’t had a chance to commission one of her new baby yet.”
I blinked as my brain tried to catch up. I hadn’t been expecting that, but maybe I should have been.
“See, this is why you get paid the big bucks, Comet. Thanks a lot.”
“I accept thanks in the form of good sake,” she joked before hanging up.
With good intelligence now gathered, I finally had some idea of how to move forward.
“Now,” I muttered to myself, “To find an artsy type that’s used to working with Argent Maple…”
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Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 17th, 3016
Finding a sculptor turned out to be a lot harder than I expected, but that was my own fault. With our immigration policy, we’d been focusing on bringing in left-brained logical types like Engineers and Machinists for working in the factories, not right-brained artist types.
Fortunately, we’d been perfectly happy to bring family members of workers along, even if they didn’t have the skills we were looking for, and one of those had exactly the sort of skillset I was now hunting for.
Unfortunately…
“-our Grace, I’m so honored to have a chance to show you my work! W-with so much of the Argent Maple being shipped offworld, the price is quite high, so I’ve only got a few pieces, but-”
Ruby Gartrelle was a chatterbox.Worse, she was one of those people who was extremely impressed by my new title.
…Actually, the latter might be influencing the former in this case.
Still, I had to admit, the pieces she had for display were good. I wasn’t an expert on composition, but I wasn’t totally uncultured either. I’d taken an art history course in college and I generally had good if conservative tastes in art. I liked what I saw, even if I couldn’t tell just by looking if she worked in the Mannerist, Baroque, or Neoclassical schools, or if she was using some post-post-modern, Future-of-the-80’s school. Bottom line, she was definitely good enough to merit the commission.
Actually, isn’t supporting the Arts part and parcel of being a Duke? If she thought that she was interviewing for some sort of consistent paycheck as an artist, I could definitely understand the case of the nerves she seemed to be suffering.
I let her wind down her current explanation of the minutiae of working with Argent Maple before inserting myself into the conversation.
“I’m impressed with what I’ve seen,” I told Mrs Schafer who’d all but frozen as I spoke up, barely daring to breathe. “I’d like to commission three pieces to start, and we’ll see where we go from there. The first, should be a
Thunderbolt, the new Olivetti variant, at one sixtieth scale.”
I paused for a moment as the brunette scrambled for writing material to begin taking notes and let her catch up.
“For the second, I’d like my
Banshee. Same scale. As for the third …” I considered for a moment, but nothing particularly came to mind, “Surprise me.”
If anything, that last seemed to make her eyes all but pop out of her head. I had a feeling she was now certain that she was auditioning for my-
Oh, patronage! That’s the word for it. I decided on the spot that if she got me out of the doghouse with Julia and if her subject for the third sculpture wasn’t awful, I’d go ahead and make her my official Court Sculptor or whatever.
“Uh, yes, Your Grace, I can certainly-will! Will certainly make this my top priority, but for such a large project, I … that is, my current stocks aren’t sufficient for-”
I took pity on the poor woman and interrupted before she had a panic attack.
“Contact my staff up at Government House when you’ve worked out what you need, and I’ll let them know to prioritize your call. They’ll make sure you have enough for the materials and any tools you need,” I reassured her. “They’ll also have holos of both ‘Mechs. If you need to see them in person, they can arrange that as well.”
“Th-thank you, Your Grace! You won’t regret it!”
“I’ll be looking forward to seeing your work,” I told her, mind already working over the next item on my list. Now that I had a name and number that I could hand out for the person making my apology gift, I could actually, y’know, arrange to make the apology.
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There was a lack of Fine Dining options in the Holdfast. Again, that was partially my fault. Until recently, there simply wasn’t the lift required for hauling a bunch of specialty or niche items when I needed to worry about making sure everybody was fed and we had a stockpile that wasn’t the Soylent Green stuff.
We had gotten down to eating that
once when a minor mechanical issue had grounded the
Lunch Bucket for two weeks on a pad at Cregan's Bluff until repairs could be completed.
Never again.
The end result, however, was that the nicest level of eatery on the planet topped out at what my workers were willing to spend. That being ‘good chain place’ or ‘very good neighborhood place.’
Of those, the one that everybody talked about most was Broken Eggs Tavern. The proprietress had been a waitress on Sudeten before she married one of my people, and she’d imported some serious skill at beer brewing along with the rest of her luggage. It was supposedly the best alcohol brewed on Catachan, and the food was reported to be well made on top of that.
Hopefully, it would do for a date night.
I’d angsted for a while over what the procedure for asking a
Landgrafin out to dinner was before coming to the conclusion that I shouldn’t treat this like I was asking the
Landgrafin von Wilda out to dinner, but rather my friend Julia.
That had … well not so much made it easier as it had changed the source of my stress. On the up side, I was no longer worried about violating some obscure bit of procedure. On the down side, if I screwed up badly enough, I could seriously damage a friendship.
And I’d never really had much luck with relationships.
I had, in fact, worked myself into such a tizzy that I’d briefly considered asking Phillip, Rowdy himself, what he usually did on dates. As soon as the thought finished processing, I thought better of it, but the forty-five or fifty seconds I spent laughing at myself really helped me break the tension.
Rowdy still hasn’t realized that both Marsha and Melody were interested in him, and I was considering going to him
for advice?
That thought had made me giggle some more, and when I was done, I felt much better. Worrying wasn’t going to get me anywhere in this case, so I stopped bothering and picked up the phone.
“Hey, Julia! How would you feel about joining me for dinner tomorrow night?”
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Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 14th, 3016
My chauffeur had actually been earning his salary over the last few days. The car pulled up in front of Julia’s townhouse, and I had to stomp down on a reflex to get out to open the door for her. That wasn’t how things were done in the Commonwealth in my new social class.
Julia’s household staff got the door for her as she departed, and my chauffeur got the car door. I tried to think of something to say, and found myself tongue-tied. When in doubt …
“You look nice,” I said, and immediately started kicking myself. ‘Nice’ was not the word I should have used, but correcting myself would just make it worse.
Julia smirked. She appeared to be taking pleasure in my suffering.
She did look nice, though. In my previous life, I’d have considered the cream-colored dress and blue shawl she was wearing to be rather nicer than the ‘business casual’ she said that she’d wear, but I’d seen what the Steiners considered fancy. Thank god the sapphires were understated and tasteful: one on each earring, and a half-dozen on her matching gold necklace, none larger than a pencil’s eraser.
I suppose I was lucky; Julia didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, and decided to give me a hand up instead of more rope.
“You don’t look half bad, yourself,” she told me. I didn’t have the largest wardrobe in the world, but I’d picked up a few nice polo shirts. Combined with a nicer pair of khakis, and it hit pretty firmly in the range I had been shooting for.
Broken Eggs Tavern was what would probably have been pretentiously called a Gastropub back in the 21st Century. In the 31st Century, it was just a local bar that served great food without feeling the need to tell you how great they thought they were. I appreciated that; I just hoped it wasn’t going to be too far off of Julia’s expectations. The restaurant staff were also visibly excited to be hosting their new Duke. Honestly, the deference had been bad enough when I was just the planet’s major employer.
“Your-” the Hostess began before her eyes shot sideways and she corrected herself, “That is, Sir, Ma’am, welcome to Broken Eggs Tavern! Is it just the two of you tonight?”
Thank God she isn’t going to make a big deal of this! I was glad she’d caught herself before saying something that would have everyone in the building gawking.
“Just us,” I agreed with a polite smile. At my elbow, Julia nodded with a happy grin of her own.
“Then, if you’ll follow me?” she asked, picking up a pair of menus, what looked like a drinks list, and leading the way. The inside of the bar was set up like most any restaurant. Booths lined the walls while tables took up most of the floorspace. Televisions and holo sets showed a variety of shows from various games to what looked like a historical drama of some sort. Julia murmured something that sounded like ‘blasted Steinhearts’ when she saw it.
A bar took up one wall with what looked like mostly house brews on tap. They must have a successful brewing operation if they weren’t beholden to imports. Or maybe imports were more trouble than they were worth?
I honestly didn’t know the fine details except that if the dropship crews
weren’t smuggling at least some booze in on the sly, it would be the first time in the history of humanity.
I was distracted from my thoughts as we arrived at our table. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that when I’d made my reservation, they’d saved us a seat with a view.
The building the restaurant was located in was on the third terrace and thus above the wall that protected the first terrace from the wildlife or any invaders. The view was mostly down into the pass, but included a big section of the spaceport, and the windows were the sort that automatically polarized to protect fragile eyes from fusion thrusters.
Maybe someday, there’d be enough traffic in and out to make the view really impressive. As it was, it seemed sort of depressing to me. Most of what I could see was the sides of spheroid droppers that had been left open when the plague hit and had suffered the usual sort of problems over the last couple centuries. None of them would ever fly again.
Somewhere along the line, they’d get dragged off and repurposed, but for the moment it was actually cheaper to process the Argent Maple’s bark for what we needed.
“Someday, this will probably be one of the most expensive seats in the Holdfast,” Julia said, her smile still in place as she sat across from me. “It certainly is a nice view of the past and the future all wrapped up in one. Thank you for the invitation, Alistair.”
“Get out of my brain,” I told her with a snort, “And you’re welcome,” I added before pausing to consider a moment.
“Actually, the next time the big herbivores migrate through the pass, this would be a hell of a place to have a meal,” I said.
“Oh? Now that sounds like a story,” she remarked.
“Well, it’s something, anyway,” I agreed, then shrugged and set in to tell the story. It
was pretty funny.
“Okay. To start with, you need to understand that when we got here, the bridge over the pass was down, which just baffled everybody. I mean, we found a regiment of ‘Mechs still standing, all unconcerned, so it couldn’t have been an earthquake, and-”
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“- so the damn thing goes to use the brand new bridge deck as a frigging scratching post!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air.
“No!” Julia gasped in delighted shock. “What did you do?”
I shook my head.
“
I stared at it like an idiot. Luckily, Rowdy was accustomed to driving a Firestarter. He lifted his new Thunderbolt’s left arm and introduced the overgrown lizard to the paired flamers mounted there,” I paused and grinned in remembrance.
“It had this offended look on its face as it reared back, and it dashed back over to one of the adults like, ‘Mom, mom! It
bit me!’” I mimicked in a high-pitched voice like the world’s most offended four-year old. Julia burst into laughter, and I wasn’t but half a beat behind her.
“I’m pretty sure we kept a BattleROM of it. Want me to look it up?,” I admitted as I cleaned up the last of the spinach on my plate and dragged it through the dregs of the alfredo sauce. I hadn’t expected to find Tilapia Florentine on the menu, but I was pleased as punch when I did. Frankly, it had tasted divine, even if it wasn’t quite the recipe I was used to.
“Please do,” Julia responded while she hunted down and speared the final surviving bit of her schnitzel. “I’ll trade you a copy of the holos of my cadet company’s Nagelring Cup ice hockey championship season for that one.”
For the first time since our plates first appeared, the conversation drifted into a natural lull. On the one hand, I hated to risk ruining the mood, but on the other hand …
Well, the whole night had been planned as an apology. It would sort of be wasted if I didn’t actually apologize.
“At the risk of spoiling the mood,” I began, “I must admit to ulterior motives for asking you out tonight.” Then, realizing how that sounded, I hastened to add, “Not that it hasn’t been pleasant in its own right!”
Julia inclined an eyebrow, but permitted me to continue.
“I owe you an apology for both what I said and what I implied when you advised me about how to handle the situation with the Jaspers. Not only were you right, but even if you hadn’t been, I shouldn’t have assumed your motives the way I did.”
Julia considered me solemnly for a moment before she nodded.
“Apology accepted, Alistair. I know emotions were running high, and you were only trying to protect your people, but I won’t deny that I was hurt by what was said. And not said.”
“I can only promise to try to be better about that in the future,” I acknowledged, but all things being equal I was glad we were both able to be adults about the situation.
“But, in the end, you were right and you gave me good advice, so I wanted to do something nice for you in return,” I told her and extracted a piece of poster board the size of a business card from my pocket. It wasn’t terribly professional, but then again, starving artist: one each.
“A little bird told me that you enjoy scale sculptures of BattleMechs, but hadn’t arranged to have the new
Gungnir worked up yet,” I said and got to see Julia’s eyes widen in surprised pleasure. “Fortunately, I was able to track someone down here in the Holdfast. I hope you don’t mind that she works with Argent Maple rather than stone or metal?”
“Oh, Alistair! That’s so thoughtful! And of course I don’t mind! I look forward to seeing the results,” she said, gradually regaining her composure.
And then, because she was still a Steiner, she continued.
“You know, if this Ruby Gartrelle is so good, she’d be an excellent candidate for some patronage. It’s always good to encourage the arts.”
I grinned a little. For once, I was a step ahead of her on one of my duties as a noble.
“I’ve actually given her a three part commission of which your sculpture is the first. If she completes them to my satisfaction, then I’ll definitely be making sure she has the resources she needs to thrive.”
Julia smiled back at me and I got the impression that I’d both surprised and impressed her with this part of the evening. I’d take the win, but …
“You know, it occurs to me that I pretty thoroughly monopolized the conversation earlier with my story. If you saved room for desert, I’d love to hear about what it was like growing up on Furillo,” I suggested.
Julia’s happy smile morphed into a predatory smirk. “I’ll spill some prime family gossip for a taste test of their chocolate cheesecake and after-dinner coffee selections. Want to hear about my first time piloting a Battlemech? Or finding out who ‘Aunt Katrina’ really was during my seventh birthday party?”
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Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 15th, 3016
Two regiments required a hell of a lot of lift when you weren’t using purely battalion-size transports. Though, really, for a non-BattleMech force, the Arcturans were actually traveling in style: five
Triumphs, two converted for the Panzergrenadiers, and only a trio of smaller
Fury-class transports for the remainder.
Even so, this occasioned some issues. My spaceport personnel were accustomed to landing primarily spheroid droppers, like the
Mules full of supplies that had filled our free pads to near capacity. Landing eight aerodynes in quick succession turned out to be something of a trial by fire for the relatively inexperienced Aerospace Control crew.
“At least there weren’t any actual collisions,” Julia said quietly from beside me, looking relaxed in her LCAF uniform.
“Only because the
Fury’s crew were paying attention,” I murmured back. Poorly worded directions had left two Dropships trying to use the same taxiway at the same time, and what would have happened if the
Triumph and
Fury had collided even at relatively low speeds didn’t bear thinking on.
“Aerospace controllers are definitely going to need more and better training before the next convoy shows up,” I continued, mostly speaking aloud so I’d have a better chance of remembering the mental note in a timely manner.
“Now that you’re a Lyran Duke and not an unknown, you might be able to poach some personnel from Steelton or Toland,” Julia offered.
I blinked as my train of thought derailed.
“I … hadn’t considered that,” I admitted. “Okay, new plan: hire a couple professionals to manage the control tower and do training so it isn’t on my plate.” That was, after all, what NCOs were
for. I was falling back into bad habits again. This whole enterprise was getting big enough that I
couldn’t keep tabs on everything anymore.
I needed to delegate, not hover. That was easy when it came to the military side; it was much less so when it came to civilian affairs for whatever reason.
Actually, it’s probably the lack of an existing relationship, I decided after a moment’s thought.
“Well, that looks serious,” Julia said, and her comment drew my attention back to the offloading Dropships. Following her gaze, I noticed groups from two of the
Triumphs meeting up on the tarmac before heading our way. It was difficult to tell from this distance, but I thought I could make out fancier epaulettes on a couple of them.
“Indeed,” I agreed and as the group grew closer, that initial impression was born out.
“Your Grace,” the first of the Colonels, a distinguished looking man with greying blond hair in what I estimated to be his late forties spoke first, his hand rising in a salute. I recognized several of the badges on the left breast of his uniform as relating to combat vehicles. This, then, was Colonel Maier.
“Your Grace,” he was echoed almost immediately by a slightly older, more weathered-looking man with dark hair and a nose that had been broken either very badly once or several times near the same place. His hair was mostly silver with a few isolated black speckles. Honestly, he looked more like the image of a grizzled Sergeant than a Colonel. Of course, that made him Colonel Padilla, the commander of the Panzergrenadiers when being an infantryman was a damn chancy thing on the modern battlefield.
“Colonel Maier. Colonel Padilla,” I returned the salutes even though I was wearing my ‘Duke’ hat at the moment. “I’m glad you were able to make such good time on the trip.”
“When the Archon calls, we answer, Your Grace.” Colonel Padilla responded with very punctilious posture.
“Please, be at ease. We’re hopefully going to be working together for quite some time, and we’ve got a lot to do and what might be a rather short time to get it done in,” I said. That seemed to make a difference to Maier, but Padilla still stood like he’d had his spine surgically replaced with a steel rod. I mentally shrugged; I hadn’t dealt with the type before, but I was reliably informed that some soldiers just couldn’t unbend very far.
“We were informed that there had been an incursion, but the details were somewhat scant,” Maier said diplomatically.
I nodded.
“That’s mostly because they stayed out at the Jump Point and my people were busy pretending to be utterly unimportant. If they’d had a carrier Dropship, maybe they could have gone out to try to seize the Jumpship before they could recharge safely, but they didn’t. A handful of Interceptors couldn’t really do much about the situation, so they focused on preventing the enemy from getting any useful intelligence.”
“The downside, of course, is that we didn’t get much intelligence from the encounter either,” Julia spoke up beside me, and I finally remembered to introduce her.
“Colonel Maier, Colonel Padilla, this is Hauptmann Steiner with LCAF House Troop Liaison. She’ll be our primary point of mutual contact when I’m wearing my ‘Colonel Weber’ hat, but I’m the primary point of contact when it comes to things I should know as Duke Weber,” some days being at least three people who happened to share the same body was a pain in the ass.
“I propose worrying less about procedure in this case and more about what is most functional.”
That made both of them react, but they were good enough at maintaining their composure that I wasn’t really sure what I was seeing in the brief moment they were off balance. I’d have to check with Julia later and see if she’d caught it.
“But for the next few days, that will all have to wait. I don’t doubt that your troops are highly motivated, but no matter how gung-ho they are, they’ll need some time to acclimate to the gravity here on Catachan. We’ve also got a couple videos worked up -they were intended for IndustrialMech crews but they’ll serve well enough for this too- about the fauna here and why you should be very wary of it.”
I shot them both serious looks.
“No one, and I mean no one is allowed outside the walls without viewing it and passing the safety test that follows and, as will become clear once you’ve watched it, even then they aren’t to be wandering around casually. There are so many damn ways to die on this planet, we haven’t even gotten close to counting a tithe of them.
“For you, Colonel Padilla, that means your men are going to be stuck training either in the Holdfast or at heights above it. The big predators don’t seem to maintain territories at this altitude. Not enough food for them. Understood?”
“No, but I shall wait to inquire further until after I’ve reviewed the video you mentioned,” he barked.
I tried not to be taken aback at all, but I had the feeling that he thought I was underestimating his people because I was a Mechwarrior and they were Poor Bloody Infantry. He was going to be in for a surprise.
“Well, I won’t keep you any further at the moment. I can guess how complicated getting settled into a garrison posting is, so I’ll stay out of your hair for the afternoon. I would, however, like to extend an invitation to dine with me at Government House this evening. With the system having been potentially compromised, we’ve got a lot to do to prepare a reception for any uninvited guests and potentially a short time to get it all in order. I hope the old militia facilities work out well for you, but if they don’t please let me know as soon as you can and we’ll figure something out.
“Questions, comments, concerns?” I asked. There was a brief silence, so I continued. “Then I hope to see you this evening.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Would not miss it, Your Grace.”
Both men and their aides turned and departed. I stayed for a few more minutes to watch tanks roll off their dropships, but all too soon Julia cleared her throat beside me.
“We’ve only got a couple minutes before we need to greet the representatives from the MoF, and then we’ll need to get the bureaucrats settled in as well,” she reminded me. “And unlike you, I actually need to change clothes before it starts.”
“Gotcha,” I said apologetically. Julia was in a position of needing to change hats several times today. One of the few good things about being ‘Duke Weber’ today was that I didn’t have to do the same.
“At least we won’t have to worry about starting to load the Phoenixes until tomorrow,” I groused as I followed Julia towards one of the Spaceport’s conference rooms where we would be meeting the civilians. Even so, my heart wasn’t really in it. Loading those ‘Mechs and the spares that would be accompanying them would be a big damn payday once these bureaucrats signed off on the delivery. One that would let me turn around and pour the funds back into finishing the Sarissa line and getting every other damn thing up to speed around here.
We might have started out with a lead in this race, but Olivetti, Defiance, and even TharHes were already fighting to close the distance and grab a share of the market. And all of them were better established and with advantages of their own to compensate for CAC’s head start. Even if no invasion materialized, it was going to be a busy few months.
XXXXX
A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.
And good God did this update fight me. Wanted the interactions to feel real and this is finally in a state that I don’t actively hate. In any case, welcome to the end of Arc 3! There shall be at least one interlude before Arc 4 kicks off.
