Chapter 2
Weber’s Warriors Barracks, Uniontown, Icar
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
January 4th, 3010
The unit that had hit us was a company of the Fifteenth Rasalhague Regulars. All the Combine got back from that formation was their dropship, which lifted well before we could get into range to try and capture it on the ground.
The rest of their Battalion had better luck at Athena Magna. Two of the factories there had been badly damaged in the fighting on New Year’s Day, and three days later the news was reporting that surveys were suggesting that they would take at least two years to repair out of local resources. Maybe three. The Regulars also left two Lances of wrecked ‘Mechs behind in various levels of salvageability in exchange for destroying a company and a bit of the mixed 30th Lyran and local Militia ‘Mechs that had fought to repel them.
That was about typical for a Lyrans versus Dracs fight, especially when second line formations were involved. Hopefully the lopsided losses we’d managed to inflict would look even better to our employer as a result.
I’d fought back my instinctive revulsion for paperwork and desire to procrastinate to skim our contract with His Grace, Byron Ferguson, the Duke of Icar. I found the bits about compensation, and then I’d done some math. There was a standard agreed upon rate for a combat deployment in defense of the assets we were guarding. It was a fair amount, but nothing amazing. At least, not until you started looking at the small print.
We were supposed to be supported by both a small detachment of the planet’s garrison and some of the local landholders. Of course, the 30th Lyran was understrength and were likely to remain thus for some time even with the salvage from the Dracs, since they’d lost more than they’d gained out of their engagement. They also, notably, hadn’t been present at what local media was already calling the Battle of Uniontown as they wrung out the victory for all the propaganda value they could extract. There was a multiplier for that.
The local Baron had also kept his few tanks and single BattleMech back in defense of the city and its smelters. It made sense from a tactical perspective, but by the contract, he was obliged to support us in an engagement, even a mobile one like we’d fought. He hadn’t. There was a multiplier for that, too.
There was also a per head bounty on ‘Mechs from proven Combine line units. Rasalhague Regulars. The red ‘R’ in a square was distinctive and enough of the Dragon’s cockpit had survived that we had sufficient documentation if the Duke’s people tried to object. That was a not inconsiderable figure, times twelve.
There was more. We prevented any damage to Uniontown, the smelters, and the mine. That earned us another cash bonus. We defeated a superior foe, both numerically and by tonnage. There was a formula for that. There was a bit of a cut for the acreage of forest we’d burned in the process, but it had rained recently so the fire hadn’t gotten out of control. It was a paltry amount compared to the total. That total had quite a few zeros associated with it, and that was before we got to the salvage agreement.
Secure in the knowledge that we’d be earning a sizeable payday when it came time to settle accounts in a couple weeks, I fought down my disgust and filled out the forms to requisition the parts we needed to get Mechs back in working order. Most notably a GRF-1S cockpit and some of the associated electronics.
At least most of the stuff we needed I thought we could get from salvage. Jimmy’s Panther was repairable, assuming we could get one of the Combine Panthers as part of the salvage negotiations. I wouldn’t even push hard for one of the more intact ones. According to the Techs all
Flyin’ Fur needed was a hip actuator, though the upper thigh assembly would save them some time. Even with the least intact of the three Panther carcasses, that would leave us with a not insubstantial amount of spare parts in reserve against future need.
Likewise the enemy Wasp that had lost its leg in the jump jet incident would provide enough spares to get Slim’s
Wasps Up and Melody’s
Sting back in action. Hell, with the cash infusion we were going to get, it might be feasible to just order parts for all three and add the Drac machine to our roster rather than breaking it down, although one more Wasp wasn’t a huge addition to our combat power.
Especially since Comet’s Dervish was probably a write-off. Unless someone was sitting on a spare Core Tex 275 or another compatible FE, it wasn’t going to be seeing action again. Even then repairing all the damaged structural braces would be a non-trivial task. Adding a Wasp wouldn’t come close to offsetting the loss of the Dervish, but it would at least get us back up to two full lances.
The question, of course, was how to spend our money. The part of me that was a trained BattleMech pilot wanted to try to get Weber’s Warriors up to a company in truth. We had enough dispossessed Mechwarriors to make it an attractive proposition, even if they’d have to blow some rust off of their skills, and enough youngsters from the various family units that made up our ‘camp followers’ to slot in as apprentices to replace the veterans when or if they retired. There was also the element of duty there. Some of those men and women had lost privately owned Mechs in the unit’s service and they’d all been friends of my father and grandfather. Working as technicians and trainers was about the best a dispossessed Mechwarrior could hope for in this day and age unless a unit suddenly had a lucky break. It would be nice to reward their loyalty and friendship.
The older half of my memories had been very much a Scotsman, unwilling to pay someone else for something he could do himself. Even if that meant waiting for a few weeks until he got around to doing it instead of procrastinating or mulling the job over. That part of me wanted to go for a Panther and the enemy Wasps in the salvage negotiations, get our damaged machines back in service, let Comet drive a Wasp once her broken wrist healed, and (reluctantly) spend money on some ASFs and pilots for them. If we’d had decent air cover in the last battle, we might have been able to capture the enemy dropship or at least destroyed it for the bounty. That part of me was familiar enough with tactics and strategy for me to realize what an advantage air superiority could be even if he’d never heard of ASFs before the first.
I honestly didn’t know which way to jump, and the cost of the options would render them mutually exclusive. Purchasing a lance of mostly Medium Battlemechs, even used, was impossible even with the extravagant purse we’d won. Maybe if we could find a used Dervish in need of repair, we could use the remains of
Whirlwind to get it back in service to lead a lance of Lights.
The same was true for a squadron of ASFs. Based on my preliminary research, even just buying Light ASFs and hiring pilots would cost around 9 million C-bills to fill the six bays on our Overlord. Even with what we were guaranteed from the contract and the likely concessions we could get for letting the Duke have the heavier salvage, that would wipe us out. Four Seydlitz was a better figure and it would leave room to add in heavier fighters if the Company’s fortunes continued to improve.
Realizing that I was spinning my wheels, I set the notes I’d made for our options aside for the moment and looked at my list. Most of the items had lines drawn through them, which made for good feelings. The one at the top of the list, however, did not. I’d been putting off ‘Funeral Arrangements’ about as long as I thought I could get away with.
XXXXX
Like most of the shit I procrastinated about, Dad’s funeral arrangements ended up being pretty simple. There wasn’t a body, which was fine because his will requested that he be cremated anyway. I carefully hadn’t had anything to do with hauling
Talons First back to Uniontown after the battle. I didn’t want to know what the interior of the cockpit had looked like, so I had no idea if the ashes in the urn were actually his or if someone had gathered up the remnants of a fire so we’d have something to spread the next time we hit a Drac planet.
That was also in his will. I guess he wanted to be present the next time the unit took the fight to the enemy.
His will had been simple too, though I’d known what was in that for a couple years, just in case. Since mom had predeceased him, I got the family mech and the outfit, such as they were and what there was of them.
That left me at loose ends; I was out of things to keep my hands busy. Rather than sit and stare at a wall in what had once been dad’s small suite of rooms in the barracks, I took a walk.
Perhaps inevitably, I ended up in the ‘Mech bay. Three days on, there wasn’t the frantic activity there had been in the immediate aftermath of the raid. The techs were in a holding pattern waiting on the salvage negotiations, the arrival of a new cockpit, or something else unexpected. Armor had been replaced, ammunition refilled, and the damaged ‘Mechs had been locked into position ready for their repairs to start.
With no one present, there was a stillness to the place. I could almost imagine that I was a mouse looking at statues in a tomb, though the camouflage patterns painted on the mechs, both our own and the salvaged pieces we were storing until the negotiations, ruined that vibe a bit. Not that the blue and purple color of the Warriors parade ground paint or the white with green striping of the Regulars would have been an improvement.
I had a half-formed thought to take a look at my Griffin, but got derailed by a half-heard sound. Despite the Ferrocrete floor, between my moccasin-sandals and my own habitual light tread, I made approximately no noise when I moved. That was how I managed to sneak up on Geraldine where she was positioned looking up at her wrecked Dervish.
“Comet,” I began and she about jumped out of her skin. Practically levitating, she spun around and her right hand went for a weapon she wasn’t currently wearing. Then she winced, because her right wrist was in a cast from hitting the ground wrong after she ejected. There were also tears in her eyes, and I was pretty sure they weren’t from bumping her arm.
She spun away from me nearly as quickly as she’d turned in the first place. “Sneaking up on a person like that is a good way to get shot,” she commented gruffly.
Suddenly, I felt about three inches tall. I’d been distracting myself with work, but not everyone had that luxury. I glanced at
Whirlwind and had to suppress a grimace. Miss Kowalski had piloted that machine for more than ten years, and, company property or not, she must have considered it hers. There was a prevalence in the Inner Sphere to count BattleMechs as almost people in their own right.
And she had to have heard from the techs by now that he’ll never fight again. Normally the Inner Sphere’s customs seemed foreign enough to parts of me to be sources of conflict, but this was one I could understand.
I’d cried the first time I read about USS Enterprise, the World War Two era CV-6, being sent to the breakers for scrap. I didn’t remember what book it was in now, but it had seemed such a phenomenal betrayal to me to do that to her after her service. Part of being mildly autistic, I empathized better with a steel hull than I did a lot of people.
In this instance, it helped me empathize with Comet, and hell, she was my senior Mechwarrior now. I resolved not to mention that I hadn’t actually set out to ask her for advice. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve looked over the contract and run the numbers,” I paused, trying to find a way to phrase what I wanted to say without being a dick.
Geraldine interrupted me, “How bad’s it going to be?”
Clearly, she was familiar with my dad’s business acumen. “Actually? The way the contract is written, we’re in for a big payday. Not quite eight figures,” her head jerked around and she was visibly startled.
She’d somehow managed to get her eyes mostly clear in the few moments I’d given her as well.
Before she could find her voice, I continued, “I was kinda surprised too. I think the old Duke just pulled the file copy of the old contract he’d had with Grandpa, adjusted the pay down to reflect that we were a ‘short company’ instead of a Brigade with supports, and then just had dad sign it.” The idea made the most sense of anything I had managed to come up with. “It must’ve been written when the war was hotter and the Duke was figuring to fight against attempts to take the planet rather than raid it given some of the codicils, and dad never would have had the patience to negotiate all the fine points.” I grinned a bit at the last part, but rather than reciprocate, Comet turned away again.
What in the-
I’d have been utterly befuddled before I got dropped into the 31st century, but modern me
wasn’t autistic, even if he was an idiot teenager.
How long has she been carrying a torch for dad? Since mom died? Before? She hadn’t just lost a ‘Mech, she’d lost two people she’d cared for in the course of less than fifteen minutes. Neither half of me would have been able to come up with something to say alone. Together …
“Any kid who’s had a decent father can’t quite conceive of him as being mortal. Somewhere deep inside, they’re convinced that he can solve any problem in the end. I suppose it isn’t quite real to me yet.” It was even true, mostly. I had distance, since for half of me, he was someone I’d only met the once. My younger half had been content to not think about it, and older me still thought my dad was Superman even after he’d gotten cancer when I was a teenager.
“He was a good man. Did his best to do right by everyone.” Comet said tightly, and I could tell she’d prefer a change of subject.
I obliged her, “Well, with you being my senior Mechwarrior, I could use some advice. As I see it we’ve got two options. We can-”
XXXXX
In the end, much as she wanted to get back in a Dervish, Geraldine couldn’t ignore the advantages of having air support. I figured if two trained Mechwarriors were both seriously considering buying Aerospace Fighters instead of ‘Mechs, there was good cause to pick that option. It didn’t hurt that I discovered that I really liked one of our options.
The Seydlitz was a Lyran-produced design. Contrary to the stereotype, it was an extremely light ASF. The one concession that it made to Lyran size obsession was its gun. The weapon it had been built around wasn’t objectively huge, but it was a massive weapon for its size. The RAMTech 1200 Large Laser was a big beast for a twenty ton fighter to mount, especially considering that it was also speedy, with a maximum acceleration of eight and a half gravities of thrust.
In some ways it reminded me of the Warthog. Built around its gun and built for a specific mission. Where the A-10 was made to kill tanks, the Seydlitz was ideal for atmospheric dogfights. It could give a good account of itself against other light birds in the void, but in atmosphere was where it really came into its own. Other light ASFs didn’t mount much that could compete with its range, and hitting another light with its 8cm laser was like hitting an egg with a hammer. You were going to inflict crippling damage
fast, and you were going to be doing it from outside an opponent’s range.
Even heavier fighters weren’t necessarily spared. The Combine’s Slayer was a nasty customer. An 80 ton ASF, it was well-armored if a bit light on gun for its tonnage. But it only carried a single 5cm laser facing aft, and it couldn’t quite manage half the speed the Seydlitz could handle. Once a Seydlitz got into its rear arc, there wasn’t a damn thing the Drac could hit it with, and unless there was a notable skill imbalance, the Drac wasn’t going to be shaking the interceptor very easily either. Even some dropships were vulnerable to the tactic.
The downside was, of course, armor. The term was apparently ‘suicide sled’ though at least a Seydlitz didn’t have to close to knife-fighting range before it could do damage. Even so, two tons of armor was a notable weakness; just about anything that hit a Seydlitz was going to penetrate it. That meant spending enough C-Bills to hire good pilots, or at least two good ones and two rookies who were willing to learn. The cost wasn’t insubstantial, but it was less than buying Mechs and just having the ability to see off a bombing or scouting raid by enemy air assets was valuable. Add in scouting and the ability to threaten some varieties of Dropship, and both Comet and I concluded that they were well worth the expense.
We also discussed the ideas I’d had for salvage negotiations, and decided to only go after the Wasps and the one wrecked Panther. Comet was able to tell me about several tricks she’d seen used to get more C-Bills out of the other side, so I was planning on pretending to want the Blackjack and Vulcan, and letting myself get bargained down to the three lights and a bunch of cash. I was really antsy to get started now that I had a plan in mind. Unfortunately the Duke’ people appeared to have other priorities. I couldn’t even really go looking for ASF pilots or a used Dervish chassis and FE without giving away the game.
At that point, all there was left to do was wait until we got paid.
XXXXX
January 12th, 3015
We weren’t getting paid.
With things decided we’d gone back to ‘hurry up and wait’ mode. I hadn’t keyed on to the suspicions behavior right away. It was the sort of thing my older self might have noticed more readily without younger-me’s perspective getting in the way.
Younger-me, you see, saw the Lyrans as allies. His Dad and Grandfather had both been patriotic even if they were also Private Military Contractors. They hadn’t taken a contract against the Commonwealth in living memory.
So when the Duke decided to screw us, it took me more than a week to catch on. It was the lack of movement on the negotiations that finally clued me in that something was up, though in retrospect the way they were slow-walking the Griffin cockpit transfer should also have been a clue.
For a few days after the battle, it was entirely believable that the Duke’s diplomats might have all been frantically talking to Tharkad begging for reinforcements or trying to hire more mercenaries just in case another attack was imminent. A week later? When I knew that salvage could help patch up at least two of the militia’s BattleMechs? No.
Something was fishy in the state of Denmark.
Once I realized that, I pulled out our copy of the contract, and Comet and I went over it with a fine-toothed comb. Even once we found the section he was planning to use against us.
Turnabout is, after all, fair play. Didn’t hurt that I was by nature a vindictive bastard. The enemy knifing me in the back was one thing, they were the enemy. My own side doing it? That was the sort of thing that turned my heart into a spite-reactor of nuclear hate …
That metaphor may have gotten away from me. Thankfully, younger-me wasn’t autistic and did not get locked into the downward spiral of
Insensate Rage that older-me had been forced to stomp down. With cleats. It was much easier to plan when you weren’t resisting the urge to physically track down and strangle your boss to death.
What it came down to, was that the unit was required to maintain at least a Lance of BattleMechs at combat readiness at all times. There was a codicil giving a two week grace period for major actions, but that was it.
We didn’t have four functional Mechs. If I’d realized what was going on from the very beginning, we might have been able to Frankenstein our two damaged Wasps together, but transferring an arm and part of the side torso from
Wasps Up to
Sting would take at least seven days, and we only had six and a half when I got suspicious. By the time we figured out what the Duke was up to, we were down to five and a generous fraction.
On the other hand, Comet and I had discovered that the Duke had been either less than thorough in his own perusal of the contract, or he hadn’t expected a neophyte like me to notice that he was about to be betrayed.
When I called the 30th Lyran’s S4 shop, the quartermaster was rather shorter with me than he’d been the last time I called. Since this was now the third time I’d contacted him to pester him about the Griffin-compatible cockpit I’d put in an emergency requisition for, I almost felt for him.
“Sorry, ‘Captain,’” he responded to my inquiry. I could hear the air quotes around the technically unearned rank, though it was the one Dad had used when he was being formal. “Like I’ve told you, I need the Duke’s signature in order to release anything right now.”
“C’mon, Lieutenant,” I pretended to wheedle, “I’ve already paid for it! The money was withdrawn from my account six days ago, and we’re down to three effectives over here. If the Dracs
do have a follow-up raid incoming-”
“There’s nothing I can do, ‘Captain.’ Until the Duke approves the shipment, my hands are tied,” the Lieutenant informed me self-righteously, “and I do have other matters to deal with. Good day.” Then he hung up on me.
I turned the recorder off with a deeply satisfied grin. “Gotcha, you son of a bitch.” Step two was complete, though step one was still a work in progress. It required some subtlety, rather than letting a sanctimonious enemy hoist himself with his own petard.
That was why the twins were handling it. I’d say they were well known birdwatchers, but that would require that Icar have birds. Instead, it had these beautifully iridescent beetles the size of a clenched fist. Thankfully they were herbivores.
While the twins pretended to beetle-watch, they were actually trying to identify the watchers that I was sure the Duke had posted at our compound.
That was a bit awkward, because I also needed one of them to be ready to pilot a ‘Mech in a few hours, when Icar’s sun set.
Finally, Slim, who was playing courier, arrived. “Found ‘em, over in the west by where we’ve got old
Implacable parked.”
In retrospect, that made sense.
Implacable was the unit’s sole surviving Dropship and no small part of the unit’s chronic financial troubles despite the fairly generous payment for our garrison contract.
She was an Overlord, and she consumed a disagreeable amount of C-Bills each month just sitting on Ferrocrete. But dad had been sentimental and not a very good businessman. She’d survived the unit’s disastrous raid, and he couldn’t be convinced to replace her with a cheaper to maintain Union. Now, though, that could be made to work in our favor.
Next was Step Three: contacting the local MRB to inform them that …
Now was an awful time to remember that ComStar ran the Mercenary Review Board too wasn’t it. I mean, it’s not like that would be bad under normal circumstances, but one of the few things I knew for sure about BattleTech was that the phone company was a bad-guy faction. I’d been so incredulous upon being told that that I’d demanded a detailed explanation of how-the-fuck-that-works.
Outwardly ComStar was a peaceful religious organization that maintained sacred technology and totally weren’t Techpriests. In actuality, they combined the more objectionable aspects of the medieval Catholic Church in all its corrupt glory, and the modern Wahhabist movement in its murderous self-righteousness, because only ComStar and the Word of Blake were allowed to have nice things. The rest of us peons would surely accidentally the everything if permitted to play with them.
So for nearly three-hundred years, the phone company had been murdering anyone who tried to turn the shitter that was the Inner Sphere around.
And now I had to bring myself to their attention. Joy.
The call I’d made from
Implacable’s com system, which unlike our land lines couldn’t be tapped so easily, connected.
“This is Icar’s HPG facility, please listen to all the options before making your selection, as-”
I ignored the automated message and hit seven. Nothing in the system had changed in more than a decade, and I doubt if they were going to change at the last minute just for me.
“Mercenary Review Board, pre-”
“Representative,” I declared. Really, even if the organization hadn’t been run by murderous wack jobs and religious zealots, ensuring that automated phone trees like this survived was reason enough to exterminate them all.
“MRB, this is Adept Smith, how may I assist you?”
An actual person? Would wonders never cease! “Yes, this is Alistair Weber Junior, the Captain of Weber’s Warriors. I’m afraid there’s a problem I need to bring to your attention. You’ll probably want to get your supervisor for this.”
