Chapter 33
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
A/N: Merry Christmas. After 5 months of failing to finish the second scene here, I blew through the rest of the update in an afternoon.
LCN Samanth Malik En route to Zenith Point, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 21st, 3016
Tom resisted the urge to curse as he made his way through the Union’s tight corridors back to his bunk.
He’d had way too damn much practice to give his new CO the satisfaction, starting with his tenure in the LCAF.
When he’d earned a position with the 26th Lyran Guards fresh out of the ‘Ring, he’d thought he’d spend his career as a member. Then the first Drac raid hit Tamar and his battalion had nearly been surrounded and destroyed when Selvin Fucking Kelswa had decided to hare off with the Militia in pursuit of a couple companies of Drac scouts instead of moving to support the Guards who actually knew what the hell they were doing.
As a result, a trap intended to surround and destroy one to two battalions of attacking snakes had to be abandoned to keep the blocking force from being overrun. Instead of encircling and destroying most of a Regulars regiment, the Dracs were able to break out of the forming pocket and escape with little more than armor damage.
Convinced that there was nothing productive to be done in Tamar with that imbecile in charge, he’d taken a transfer to the 20th Arcturan Guards when he was promoted, only to find that Skye was somehow even worse than Arch-Fuckhead Kelswa.
The morons seemed to genuinely think that they’d be better off surrounded by hostile nations than they were with the full industrial might of the Commonwealth behind them. The Skye Rangers might be Billy Badasses, but there were also only four regiments of them.
The Boys of Summer might have run off the Gold Dragon, but without the Mud Wrestlers and all the other LCAF regiments backing them up, they’d have been outnumbered, outgunned, and run to ground.
And yet, somehow, Separatists insisted on claiming that Skye would be better off free from the Commonwealth.
He’d toughed out the last of his last couple years with the White Bears on Skye and gotten out while the getting was good, fully intending to head to Galatea to sign up with one of the Commonwealth-aligned Merc regiments, continue doing his duty even if it was outside the usual channels.
He’d been headhunted by Weber’s Warriors before he made it offworld. Drawn in by the promise of work with a small but elite unit, he’d signed up.
And this crap seemed to be going well, too, he bitched to himself.
Except now he was seeing the same excrement play out on a small scale that he’d seen in the LCAF: people being promoted for their family connections rather than competence.
For fuck’s sake, neither of the new ‘Captains’ being sent offworld had ever even been inside a military academy! And it wasn’t like they had institutional memory to draw on either. The ink on their family’s noble titles wasn’t even dry yet! Protecting one of two factories in the whole Inner Sphere capable of making Lostech Mechs was worth the aggravation.
Yeah, he was pissed about the situation. But, even more than that, he was pissed that he’d given his new Captain an excuse to read him the riot act. He knew better than to do what he did, but he’d gotten used to the conveniences of having a near-pristine Star League era base to work out of and forgotten that the Union wouldn’t have them. Bad luck and an inattentive crew had done the rest.
Trying to think ahead was all well and good, but he needed to live in the present to even have a chance at making future plans come true.
And keeping a young officer from getting in over his head is important, he reminded himself. It certainly looked like the family was actually loyal. Couldn’t fake the sort of injuries the kid’s dad had gotten. He shook that old paranoid thought off. They’d have been vetted by LIC and vetted thoroughly.
But there was no doubt that at this point he’d definitely made a Sergeant’s traditional job with an overpromoted officer harder.
Still, nothing to be done except grin and bear it. He’d made the mistake, and now he had to work with the consequences.
LCN Alexander Nelson En route to Zenith Point, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 21st, 3016
Marsha wasn’t enjoying the consequences of her indulgence the night before. The physical symptoms might have faded, but she could tell by the way her sister was holding herself that she was furious.
It didn’t take long to get the veterans of Second Battalion settled in even with their organization disrupted by transfers and promotions from standing up Third Battalion. That was good news for the company, but Marsha would almost have preferred the opposite. More time might have given her sister a chance to cool down.
With its absence, she resigned herself to a lecture. Worse, she couldn’t even tell herself she didn’t deserve one. She’d known getting shit-faced was a bad idea and done it anyway. Better to own up to it and move on.
That in mind, she propped up a section of dropship hull and waited for Melody to finish talking to Jared Osterhaus, the other lieutenant in charge of the company fire support lance. The man might have been a Blackjack graduate, but he knew what he was about. Melody smiled lightly and slapped him on the shoulder and he turned away.
The smile vanished off her twin’s face as their eyes met, then Melody inclined her head towards the Union’s closet-sized senior-officer’s quarters. She led the way; better her sister glaring knives at her back than stomping on in front building up a head of steam the whole way.
Professionalism was maintained to the extent that the door got closed before Melody blew up.
“What the actual hell was that today, Marsha?” she demanded. “You left the bar before I did! How the hell did you almost miss Movement? Do you realize what a Charlie Foxtrot that would have been?”
Marsha wasn’t sure whether or not she was grateful that this was being treated as a sisterly interrogation instead of a formal counseling or not. She knew what to do about formal counseling. An angry and embarrassed sister was worse.
“Look, I’m sorry. I forgot to set an alarm. Just slept until the sun woke me up,” she said
“I guessed that much. I mean I tried to call you but your comm just rang and rang. You slept through that too?” Melody snapped back at her.
“Had the ringer silenced for the ceremony and didn’t remember to turn it back on after we left,” Marsha confessed. And she hadn’t bothered to get a landline phone for her quarters because anyone that needed to talk to her had her com number.
“It was just a perfect storm for fuckups. Won’t happen again, I promise,” she continued, and even upset her sister could read her honest contrition.
“Ugh,” Melody groaned out disgustedly, “You’re so lucky you made it on time. We’ve already got a reputation and ‘work hard, play hard’ is the sort of thing that skilled Mechwarriors can respect. But seriously, no more close calls like that, alright. I’ve already got pink and blonde, I don’t need gray hairs too!”
Marsha couldn’t help the snort that escaped her.
“I dunno, I think they’d go great with the little wrinkles at the corners of your eyes,” she joked. When Melody squawked at her, she just turned up her nose in faux superiority. “All the responsibilities and stresses of high rank. Such a tragedy. Whereas I sti-”
Her soliloquy was forcefully interrupted by a flung pillow, and for the next little bit relative ranks were quite thoroughly ignored.
Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 30th, 3016
“So this is what you’ve settled on, then?” I asked, looking at the extremely detailed mockup of a Warhammer’s upper body.
“Aye,” Baron Jones responded with a nod, before running the thumb and forefinger of his right hand down either side of his mustache. “Since this is a refit rather than a rebuild, we didn’t want to make any radical changes to the weapon mix,” he continued.
“PPCs are changed out for extended range versions, of course. We also switched the smaller 3cm lasers in the sides of the torso for more effective 5cm weapons. The machine guns have also been swapped out for flamers. That allowed us to pull the ammunition magazine in the center of the torso and install CASE for the missile launcher’s magazine.”
“Good,” I commented. I could understand wanting to put the magazine in the most protected part of the mech, but Warhammers just didn’t have enough armor to make it a viable option as far as I was concerned. And you were basically never going to empty the machine gun ammo bins under normal operational conditions, so it was just a bomb sitting next to your gyro and engine waiting for an unlucky hit to turn an expensive Mech into scrap metal.
“There’s quite a bit of cutting needed for the CASE installation. We’re still trying to fine-tune the procedure to match up better with the armor installation to minimize man-hours.”
“I’ll leave it to you. What about total armor mass?” I inquired.
“Only increased by half a ton, but with Ferro-type armor, the effective increase is better than a ton and a half. The arms were already well-armored, so they don’t see any real improvement, but the torso armor is notably tougher, and the legs, which were badly underarmored, have seen effective coverage bolstered by nearly forty-seven percent. Numbers there aren’t quite final yet. We didn’t touch the rear armor, and there’s some debate that it should be improved, given the Combine fields so many light Battlemechs.”
I was already shaking my head before he finished.
“Not when Olivetti already has the Thunderbolt in production. It’s much more a brawler than the Warhammer is.” Baron Jones nodded at my statement. I hoped that simplified things for him at least a bit.
Besides, it wasn’t that the Warhammer couldn’t brawl with this new refit. Arguably, the ERPPCs made it an excellent brawler, with their improved minimum range. It just didn’t have the armor coverage that the Thud had, so it was better off dwelling at medium range rather than engaging in slugfests.
“And the heat management system?” I asked, bringing up the last of the major systems the refit was due to address.
“Total heat sinks have been reduced by two, but the switch to freezers means that total capability is nearly doubled. Of course, demand is also higher due to the weapon upgrades. Bracket firing should allow for either the use of both PPCs with maneuvering, or one PPC and secondary armament. There will probably be some minor heat buildup with the latter, but all that should be required is occasionally dropping one weapon out of the circuit to cool.
“Of course, if they’re also using the flamers they’ll build heat quickly, but they shouldn’t be using the PPCs to engage infantry anyway,” the Baron opined.
I did some quick heat calculations in my head and decided he was right about both the brackets and the improved usability of the armament mix.
“Sounds like your team has done a bang-up job,” I congratulated. “It’s still clearly a Warhammer, just better at what it already did and with improved survivability. Downsides?”
Without showing any discomfort, the Baron answered.
“The heat sinks no longer fit into the legs, and some man-hours are required to remove the existing heat sinks. Of course since the new armor has to be installed there anyway, it’s only half the trouble it would be otherwise. Only other difficulty is finding places to install the heat sinks that don’t fit in the engine.
“We were able to install one in each arm right around the PPC to help check the initial thermal blast from firing the weapon. With the larger magazine and CASE in the right torso, we were only able to fit a single heat sink there, but the other two can be made to fit in the left side of the torso. Again, there is still an effort being made to streamline the installation process.”
“That’s just fiddly bits,” I assured the Baron. We had to do our due diligence, but no matter how much we tried to streamline things, there’d still be some tech in the field actually doing the installs that would come up with something that worked better.
“How much time do you think you’ll need to turn this into an SOP and be ready for the roll out?” I inquired after a moment.
“Three, perhaps four months if it turns out a major change needs to be made in the procedure. Not likely at this point, but possible,” he admitted.
Which was two or three months ahead of schedule.
“Damn good progress,” I said, “Seriously, let your team know that they’ve done really solid work on this,” I repeated.
“What-” I began before an alarm I’d set on my comm as a reminder started going off. I quickly made my excuses and departed.
I felt like I’d been putting my current task off for too long. To be fair, interstellar transport just took longer than anything I had experience with back in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Either way, lift and transport for a proper memorial hadn’t been something we’d been able to spare. Neither did we have anyone on the planet with the requisite skills. Besides, for all that granite was good stone for building, I was both an American and a traditionalist. Memorials should be built of marble.
The original grave and cairn we’d made in the wake of Catachan’s resettlement had been respectfully cleared and the dead disinterred. The body bags we’d originally buried them in had been replaced by wooden coffins and the remains of the SLIC landing party reinterred, the piled stones replaced with marble cover stones with the Star League crest and SLIC coat of arms engraved on them.
For yards around, the bedrock had been clad in cut slabs of light granite, polished to a sheen. It was almost t-shaped and created a clearly delineated path for observers to pass by without needing a fence or other barrier as well as created the platform for the raised marble monument bare feet from the end of the terrace the spaceport was on.
I’d taken inspiration from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, except that we were on top of a mountain. The view down over the cloud forest and jungle was majestic, and I hoped it would help give this place the same air as the original.
The mausoleum was just short of seven feet tall, a bit more than ten long, and interred within were the only remains of Catachan’s lost population that we could put names to. The sides of the memorial bore emblems of both the Star League and the SLDF, and at the foot was an inscription:
Flanking it on either side were flagpoles with the Star League’s banners hung at half-mast. The wind through the pass kept them fluttering more or less constantly.
I’d asked Colonel Padilla to provide guards for the memorial. My people were willing enough, but they lacked the polish of the Panzergrenadiers. I had a few working to remedy that, but I also liked having combat veterans doing the guarding. I wasn’t sure which way I’d end up jumping for that in the end.
Either way, as I stood there with Julia’s arm in mine, it … felt peaceful, for all that there was an aerodyne runway barely two hundred yards away.
Compared to the pictures I’d seen of the memorial at Kentares, it was small and quaint, but I think it was exactly what was needed. Either way, it felt like I’d paid a debt to those who’d left Catachan for us to find.
“So, what do you think?” I asked quietly.
“I think this time you were right,” Julia said as she stood next to me. Any other time, I’d have made a joke.
Today, I released her arm to wrap my arm around her shoulder. For several long moments we stood there together in silence. Before we turned to head back to my car, I made a mental note, and added an item to my to-do list.
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.
Chapter 33
LCN Samanth Malik En route to Zenith Point, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 21st, 3016
Tom resisted the urge to curse as he made his way through the Union’s tight corridors back to his bunk.
He’d had way too damn much practice to give his new CO the satisfaction, starting with his tenure in the LCAF.
When he’d earned a position with the 26th Lyran Guards fresh out of the ‘Ring, he’d thought he’d spend his career as a member. Then the first Drac raid hit Tamar and his battalion had nearly been surrounded and destroyed when Selvin Fucking Kelswa had decided to hare off with the Militia in pursuit of a couple companies of Drac scouts instead of moving to support the Guards who actually knew what the hell they were doing.
As a result, a trap intended to surround and destroy one to two battalions of attacking snakes had to be abandoned to keep the blocking force from being overrun. Instead of encircling and destroying most of a Regulars regiment, the Dracs were able to break out of the forming pocket and escape with little more than armor damage.
Convinced that there was nothing productive to be done in Tamar with that imbecile in charge, he’d taken a transfer to the 20th Arcturan Guards when he was promoted, only to find that Skye was somehow even worse than Arch-Fuckhead Kelswa.
The morons seemed to genuinely think that they’d be better off surrounded by hostile nations than they were with the full industrial might of the Commonwealth behind them. The Skye Rangers might be Billy Badasses, but there were also only four regiments of them.
The Boys of Summer might have run off the Gold Dragon, but without the Mud Wrestlers and all the other LCAF regiments backing them up, they’d have been outnumbered, outgunned, and run to ground.
And yet, somehow, Separatists insisted on claiming that Skye would be better off free from the Commonwealth.
He’d toughed out the last of his last couple years with the White Bears on Skye and gotten out while the getting was good, fully intending to head to Galatea to sign up with one of the Commonwealth-aligned Merc regiments, continue doing his duty even if it was outside the usual channels.
He’d been headhunted by Weber’s Warriors before he made it offworld. Drawn in by the promise of work with a small but elite unit, he’d signed up.
And this crap seemed to be going well, too, he bitched to himself.
Except now he was seeing the same excrement play out on a small scale that he’d seen in the LCAF: people being promoted for their family connections rather than competence.
For fuck’s sake, neither of the new ‘Captains’ being sent offworld had ever even been inside a military academy! And it wasn’t like they had institutional memory to draw on either. The ink on their family’s noble titles wasn’t even dry yet! Protecting one of two factories in the whole Inner Sphere capable of making Lostech Mechs was worth the aggravation.
Yeah, he was pissed about the situation. But, even more than that, he was pissed that he’d given his new Captain an excuse to read him the riot act. He knew better than to do what he did, but he’d gotten used to the conveniences of having a near-pristine Star League era base to work out of and forgotten that the Union wouldn’t have them. Bad luck and an inattentive crew had done the rest.
Trying to think ahead was all well and good, but he needed to live in the present to even have a chance at making future plans come true.
And keeping a young officer from getting in over his head is important, he reminded himself. It certainly looked like the family was actually loyal. Couldn’t fake the sort of injuries the kid’s dad had gotten. He shook that old paranoid thought off. They’d have been vetted by LIC and vetted thoroughly.
But there was no doubt that at this point he’d definitely made a Sergeant’s traditional job with an overpromoted officer harder.
Still, nothing to be done except grin and bear it. He’d made the mistake, and now he had to work with the consequences.
XXXXX
LCN Alexander Nelson En route to Zenith Point, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 21st, 3016
Marsha wasn’t enjoying the consequences of her indulgence the night before. The physical symptoms might have faded, but she could tell by the way her sister was holding herself that she was furious.
It didn’t take long to get the veterans of Second Battalion settled in even with their organization disrupted by transfers and promotions from standing up Third Battalion. That was good news for the company, but Marsha would almost have preferred the opposite. More time might have given her sister a chance to cool down.
With its absence, she resigned herself to a lecture. Worse, she couldn’t even tell herself she didn’t deserve one. She’d known getting shit-faced was a bad idea and done it anyway. Better to own up to it and move on.
That in mind, she propped up a section of dropship hull and waited for Melody to finish talking to Jared Osterhaus, the other lieutenant in charge of the company fire support lance. The man might have been a Blackjack graduate, but he knew what he was about. Melody smiled lightly and slapped him on the shoulder and he turned away.
The smile vanished off her twin’s face as their eyes met, then Melody inclined her head towards the Union’s closet-sized senior-officer’s quarters. She led the way; better her sister glaring knives at her back than stomping on in front building up a head of steam the whole way.
Professionalism was maintained to the extent that the door got closed before Melody blew up.
“What the actual hell was that today, Marsha?” she demanded. “You left the bar before I did! How the hell did you almost miss Movement? Do you realize what a Charlie Foxtrot that would have been?”
Marsha wasn’t sure whether or not she was grateful that this was being treated as a sisterly interrogation instead of a formal counseling or not. She knew what to do about formal counseling. An angry and embarrassed sister was worse.
“Look, I’m sorry. I forgot to set an alarm. Just slept until the sun woke me up,” she said
“I guessed that much. I mean I tried to call you but your comm just rang and rang. You slept through that too?” Melody snapped back at her.
“Had the ringer silenced for the ceremony and didn’t remember to turn it back on after we left,” Marsha confessed. And she hadn’t bothered to get a landline phone for her quarters because anyone that needed to talk to her had her com number.
“It was just a perfect storm for fuckups. Won’t happen again, I promise,” she continued, and even upset her sister could read her honest contrition.
“Ugh,” Melody groaned out disgustedly, “You’re so lucky you made it on time. We’ve already got a reputation and ‘work hard, play hard’ is the sort of thing that skilled Mechwarriors can respect. But seriously, no more close calls like that, alright. I’ve already got pink and blonde, I don’t need gray hairs too!”
Marsha couldn’t help the snort that escaped her.
“I dunno, I think they’d go great with the little wrinkles at the corners of your eyes,” she joked. When Melody squawked at her, she just turned up her nose in faux superiority. “All the responsibilities and stresses of high rank. Such a tragedy. Whereas I sti-”
Her soliloquy was forcefully interrupted by a flung pillow, and for the next little bit relative ranks were quite thoroughly ignored.
XXXXX
Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
October 30th, 3016
“So this is what you’ve settled on, then?” I asked, looking at the extremely detailed mockup of a Warhammer’s upper body.
“Aye,” Baron Jones responded with a nod, before running the thumb and forefinger of his right hand down either side of his mustache. “Since this is a refit rather than a rebuild, we didn’t want to make any radical changes to the weapon mix,” he continued.
“PPCs are changed out for extended range versions, of course. We also switched the smaller 3cm lasers in the sides of the torso for more effective 5cm weapons. The machine guns have also been swapped out for flamers. That allowed us to pull the ammunition magazine in the center of the torso and install CASE for the missile launcher’s magazine.”
“Good,” I commented. I could understand wanting to put the magazine in the most protected part of the mech, but Warhammers just didn’t have enough armor to make it a viable option as far as I was concerned. And you were basically never going to empty the machine gun ammo bins under normal operational conditions, so it was just a bomb sitting next to your gyro and engine waiting for an unlucky hit to turn an expensive Mech into scrap metal.
“There’s quite a bit of cutting needed for the CASE installation. We’re still trying to fine-tune the procedure to match up better with the armor installation to minimize man-hours.”
“I’ll leave it to you. What about total armor mass?” I inquired.
“Only increased by half a ton, but with Ferro-type armor, the effective increase is better than a ton and a half. The arms were already well-armored, so they don’t see any real improvement, but the torso armor is notably tougher, and the legs, which were badly underarmored, have seen effective coverage bolstered by nearly forty-seven percent. Numbers there aren’t quite final yet. We didn’t touch the rear armor, and there’s some debate that it should be improved, given the Combine fields so many light Battlemechs.”
I was already shaking my head before he finished.
“Not when Olivetti already has the Thunderbolt in production. It’s much more a brawler than the Warhammer is.” Baron Jones nodded at my statement. I hoped that simplified things for him at least a bit.
Besides, it wasn’t that the Warhammer couldn’t brawl with this new refit. Arguably, the ERPPCs made it an excellent brawler, with their improved minimum range. It just didn’t have the armor coverage that the Thud had, so it was better off dwelling at medium range rather than engaging in slugfests.
“And the heat management system?” I asked, bringing up the last of the major systems the refit was due to address.
“Total heat sinks have been reduced by two, but the switch to freezers means that total capability is nearly doubled. Of course, demand is also higher due to the weapon upgrades. Bracket firing should allow for either the use of both PPCs with maneuvering, or one PPC and secondary armament. There will probably be some minor heat buildup with the latter, but all that should be required is occasionally dropping one weapon out of the circuit to cool.
“Of course, if they’re also using the flamers they’ll build heat quickly, but they shouldn’t be using the PPCs to engage infantry anyway,” the Baron opined.
I did some quick heat calculations in my head and decided he was right about both the brackets and the improved usability of the armament mix.
“Sounds like your team has done a bang-up job,” I congratulated. “It’s still clearly a Warhammer, just better at what it already did and with improved survivability. Downsides?”
Without showing any discomfort, the Baron answered.
“The heat sinks no longer fit into the legs, and some man-hours are required to remove the existing heat sinks. Of course since the new armor has to be installed there anyway, it’s only half the trouble it would be otherwise. Only other difficulty is finding places to install the heat sinks that don’t fit in the engine.
“We were able to install one in each arm right around the PPC to help check the initial thermal blast from firing the weapon. With the larger magazine and CASE in the right torso, we were only able to fit a single heat sink there, but the other two can be made to fit in the left side of the torso. Again, there is still an effort being made to streamline the installation process.”
“That’s just fiddly bits,” I assured the Baron. We had to do our due diligence, but no matter how much we tried to streamline things, there’d still be some tech in the field actually doing the installs that would come up with something that worked better.
“How much time do you think you’ll need to turn this into an SOP and be ready for the roll out?” I inquired after a moment.
“Three, perhaps four months if it turns out a major change needs to be made in the procedure. Not likely at this point, but possible,” he admitted.
Which was two or three months ahead of schedule.
“Damn good progress,” I said, “Seriously, let your team know that they’ve done really solid work on this,” I repeated.
“What-” I began before an alarm I’d set on my comm as a reminder started going off. I quickly made my excuses and departed.
XXXXX
I felt like I’d been putting my current task off for too long. To be fair, interstellar transport just took longer than anything I had experience with back in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Either way, lift and transport for a proper memorial hadn’t been something we’d been able to spare. Neither did we have anyone on the planet with the requisite skills. Besides, for all that granite was good stone for building, I was both an American and a traditionalist. Memorials should be built of marble.
The original grave and cairn we’d made in the wake of Catachan’s resettlement had been respectfully cleared and the dead disinterred. The body bags we’d originally buried them in had been replaced by wooden coffins and the remains of the SLIC landing party reinterred, the piled stones replaced with marble cover stones with the Star League crest and SLIC coat of arms engraved on them.
For yards around, the bedrock had been clad in cut slabs of light granite, polished to a sheen. It was almost t-shaped and created a clearly delineated path for observers to pass by without needing a fence or other barrier as well as created the platform for the raised marble monument bare feet from the end of the terrace the spaceport was on.
I’d taken inspiration from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, except that we were on top of a mountain. The view down over the cloud forest and jungle was majestic, and I hoped it would help give this place the same air as the original.
The mausoleum was just short of seven feet tall, a bit more than ten long, and interred within were the only remains of Catachan’s lost population that we could put names to. The sides of the memorial bore emblems of both the Star League and the SLDF, and at the foot was an inscription:
Jason Maxwell and Anne Thompson
We know you only by the works of your last hours.
May you and all those who refused to let evil triumph
Rest here in honored glory.
May you and all those who refused to let evil triumph
Rest here in honored glory.
Flanking it on either side were flagpoles with the Star League’s banners hung at half-mast. The wind through the pass kept them fluttering more or less constantly.
I’d asked Colonel Padilla to provide guards for the memorial. My people were willing enough, but they lacked the polish of the Panzergrenadiers. I had a few working to remedy that, but I also liked having combat veterans doing the guarding. I wasn’t sure which way I’d end up jumping for that in the end.
Either way, as I stood there with Julia’s arm in mine, it … felt peaceful, for all that there was an aerodyne runway barely two hundred yards away.
Compared to the pictures I’d seen of the memorial at Kentares, it was small and quaint, but I think it was exactly what was needed. Either way, it felt like I’d paid a debt to those who’d left Catachan for us to find.
“So, what do you think?” I asked quietly.
“I think this time you were right,” Julia said as she stood next to me. Any other time, I’d have made a joke.
Today, I released her arm to wrap my arm around her shoulder. For several long moments we stood there together in silence. Before we turned to head back to my car, I made a mental note, and added an item to my to-do list.
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.
