Geri was putting the last finishing touches on the latest set of circuit boards. This fucking thing has to work this time… She’d spent months digging through the Nirasaki computer core they’d found and had finally gotten the two voidwasps up and running. She knew she was this close to making a breakthrough on the other project. They just needed to find a quiet piece of ground to give it a test run.
“How’s your pet project coming?” Dane asked her quietly.
“I think the core’s going to be stable enough this time to get him to move around.” She answered him, finally putting the core back together. The computer had to work this time.
“Is the receiving gear going to work?”
“I hope so.”
“We’ll find some nice quiet moon to give it a go. I have the Voyager’s bridge ready with the new specs for your transmission gear.”
“That’s good, were we able to get the rest of the parts?”
“Yeah, Henry was able to get us a good deal on some spares they had around their shop.”
“Of course Henry would have spare computer parts.”
“He’s almost as detail oriented as the Old Man.”
“Almost, but i don’t think anyone’s got quite a grasp on things like Ivan.”
“Well, yeah.” Dane answered her. He had come to the party later than the rest of Geri’s crew. He’d been a mechwarrior assigned to the Davion Brigade of Guards but had gotten into a little spot of trouble when his CO found him in bed with the CO’s wife. Geri had offered to take him off their hands and he became a merc that afternoon. They were the weirdest merc company ever…
“You think David’s going to be able to walk all by himself?” Dane ran his fingers along the armor plating around the foot of the Scorpion Battlemech in the maintenance bay. Their actual, working battlemechs were in the other side of the ship, this bay was for projects and tinkering. Dane was pretty sure they used this Bay more than the other one.
“Nirasaki was working on prototypes for drone battlemechs when they ran afoul of the Rim Worlds. Ivan was helpful in finding us a lead to one of their backup facilities, and we have all of their data. I think we can make a remote controlled battlemech.”
“Why the quad?”
“The computer brain overheats when we tried it with a biped. Something about the weight distribution and points of contact with the ground make the quad ideal.”
“We took the guns off of David, didn’t we?”
“We pulled out the SRM and the PPC. I had the techs put a pair of small lasers back in, just so we could test the guns to see if they can be fired remotely.”
“That makes sense. You going to ever tell me what exactly we’re doing?”
“We’re building a better battlemech.” Geri smiled back at her XO.
“Cut the crap, Geri. You and i both know that something’s going on, something bigger than just a couple of archeologists digging up old tech. We barely take combat missions and still manage to keep enough money in the coffers to keep everything full repaired, the crew happy and you rolling in parts.”
“Dane, i really don’t want to have this conversation with you right now.”
“Are we smugglers? Are you selling stuff on the side? Are we spies? Do you work for Comstar? Just give me a fucking clue, please.”
“We’re not smugglers, and we’re not exactly spies. We don’t work for Comstar.”
“Who do we work for then?”
“My immediate boss is a man named Harlan Meyers, and my overall boss in the Inner Sphere is Ivan Kirov.”
“The way you said that makes me think that we work for someone in the Periphery?”
“I am a Seeker, i look for lost relics and ideas from the Star League to guide me and my people to a brighter future.”
“Who are your people?”
“Well, that’s a longer conversation.”
“No time like the present.”
“I work for the descendants of the Star League Defense Force who left with Kerensky during the Exodus.”
“No Way.”
“Way, in fact.”
“Can they help us with these Clan jokers who are invading?”
She swallowed hard and finally managed a weak smile. “Oh, they already tried.”
No comments:
Post a Comment