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Hayden let the air slowly out of her lungs as she tried to come to terms with the battle she’d just fought and the Jade Falcon she’d just beaten. Well that’s a hell of a thought i wouldn’t have had a month ago. Her comms chirped to life and she was pulled out of that moment by the radio.
“This is Leo…”
“Uhm...lieutenant, we’re going to need you to come see this.” It was one of the infantry officers that had been assigned to the APC.
“What’s wrong? Did they sabotage the facility?”
“This is a you need to see it with your own eyes sort of a thing, Ma’am.”
“All right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She turned the frequencies to catch Melia and Rampart, “Converge on the facility, evidently we need to see something.”
“Roger that.” Melia answered.
“Hopefully we can find a tech to work on my mech, that Locust did a number on my radiation shielding…” Rampart responded.
She climbed back into the cockpit of her new Thunderbolt and proceeded at full speed towards the facility. Fergus and Clarissa remained in the field to watch over the three mechs they’d disabled while the Gambler moved to send out repair and recovery crews.
The three heavy mechs stepped inside the command facility and were taken aback by the appearance of a pair of assault mechs standing guard around a dropship. In an isolated part of the compound, someone had landed a dropship in the facility, and there was a perimeter fence around it, marking it off from the larger facility. Neither of the assault mechs had moved, but that wasn’t the curious part.
Inside the perimeter fence Hayden could see a variety of people engaging in R & R. There were people watching a movie on a large projection screen set into one of the walls, while others were participating in some kind of game. One of the people had a radio uplink and was channeling it through the external speakers on the larger of the two assault Mechs. Hayden’s targeting computer identified one as a King Crab but couldn’t place the other one.
“Nicely done, Commander of the Inner Sphere unit who forgot to issue a proper Trial of Possession for this facility and its contents. We are willing to assume that you were so surprised by the speed of your assault that you failed to access the Jade Falcon comm network to issue that challenge.” He was sitting in a folding chair that vaguely triggered a memory in the back of Hayden’s mind. He was wearing what could be charitably described as a swimsuit, and his feet were sitting in a large plastic pool of water.
“And since we won that challenge, we’ll be taking you and all of your people as Isorla.”
“Well i am glad you are learning the lingo, but you are both right and wrong. The perimeter fence denotes an area that is not in fact Jade Falcon territory and is in fact ours. We will defend that area if you insist on coming over the fence, but we would prefer not to. We have no quarrel with you and yours, and would prefer to avoid any hostilities.”
“Are you high?” Rampart barked over the radio.
“Hey, I’m talking to your boss, you can pipe down, or the dropship over my shoulder can turn that Catapult into a coffin.” The enemy commander hadn’t moved from his seat, but all of the nose mounted weapons on the dropship rotated in their turret housings.
“What about the Falcon personnel and equipment?”
“You are correct, they are yours for the taking. Well, minus a scientist who caught an unfortunate case of laser poisoning.”
“Why did you shoot the scientist?”
“He had an overly enthusiastic sense of duty to his clan and tried to get the technicians to overload the facility’s reactor to critical to turn you and your companions into a mushroom cloud.”
“What?”
“Yeah, that would have interfered with our mission, so we had to step in and take care of that problem. You’ll find the rest of the Falcon civilians to be quite amenable to your orders and requests. They are good people.”
“And their equipment?”
“You’ll want to talk to a merchant named Jorja, she has a complete inventory of the facility and its contents, and i assume you want to get the hell out of here, so they are packing everything in shipping containers.”
“Thanks, i guess?”
“No problem, don’t pick a fight with us, and i won’t have to bury you.”
“And who precisely are you?”
“Oh, right, i’d come shake your hand but you’re in a Thunderbolt and i’m in a kiddie pool. Star Commander Andrew Kirov, 4th Crateran Cluster, Delta Galaxy.”
“Kirov?” Melia asked over the comm.
“Delta Galaxy of Clan Jade Falcon?” Leo asked him.
“Does my Dropship or my battlemechs appear to be covered in the most obnoxious shade of green available? Does it have the name of a hallucinatory bird fever dream painted on the side?”
“No, and while the sarcasm is just great, if you could answer my questions with a straight answer, that would be fucking super.”
“Nice, you have a hot temper.”
“Look it’s been a long fucking day.” Leo started.
“Are you related to Ivan Kirov?” Melia asked the Star Commander. That actually got a response. The enemy commander sat up in his chair and pulled the sunglasses down off of his face.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“We’re with the Deadman’s Hand.” Leo answered him.
“Oh...Oh…..OH…..Uh Oh.” He smiled. “Nice to meet you Hayden, Sanders, i heard good things about you. Do you guys know you have a bounty on you?”
“Wait...what?” Melia answered.
“Yeah, the Old Man put a price on you guys. I got super lucky. Tell you what, you guys want to come over and i’ll do my best to explain some things, and maybe we all end up in a drunken stupor.”
Leo closed comms to the enemy commander and pulled up Rampart and Melia on their private channels.
“What the Actual Fuck is going on?” Rampart almost yelled into the comms.
“If he’s related to Ivan, then he’s got a family connection to two of the captured mechwarriors from the Dead Man’s Hand. Ivan’s the one who got us the intel on the Falcon machines and gave us a rough explanation of how the clans fight a war.” Melia answered his friend.
“Who the hell would have put a bounty on us?” Leo asked the both of them.
“We need some more information, maybe we break bread with these people and see what they are willing to share?” Melia asked with a hint of curiosity.
“Agreed…” Leo opened the comms again “We’ll meet you in fifteen minutes.”
“Good, Good. I’ll await you in my command center on the fourth deck.”
“Rampart, you’re with us; Fergis, Clarissa, supervise the rest of our people and make sure that we get the Falcon personnel and gear secured. We’ll try and sort this out.”
“These people don’t make any god damned sense!” Rampart felt very much out of his depth.
“We’ll see you soon, Star Commander.” Leo said over the radio.
“Welcome to the field headquarters of the 149th Battlemech Division, Lieutenant, we’ll happily receive you.”
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Hayden ,Quinn, and Julian didn’t quite know what to expect when they stepped up to the security checkpoint. The Elemental who was standing inside paid them barely any attention.
“Don’t you need to verify who we are?” Julian asked the giant.
“You are not the Falcons, and i was told to expect three of you. I see three of you, there are in fact not four of you, with two of you being tiny and standing on each other’s shoulders, quiaff?”
“That is correct, Point Commander?” Hayden was trying to acquaint herself with the clan ranking system.
“Not a Point Commander, Ma’am, just a warrior.” He flipped the switch and the swing arm flipped up, giving them entry into the field base. The warrior saluted, and they moved quickly past the checkpoint towards the dropship. Hayden still had no idea what kind of dropship it was. If Julian knew, he was keeping that to himself.
Julian tilted his head slowly as he tried to take in what he was seeing. A pair of presumably Mechwarriors were standing back to back in a circle of targets. Arrayed around the targets were a variety of mirrors and other photoreceptors. One warrior would call out a particularly bizarre shot combination, and then fire a laser pistol. The low powered target laser would bounce from mirror to mirror, tagging Photoreceptors along the way until the shot either hit the target, or it missed.
“I think they’re playing Horse, with pistols.” Julian said to no one in particular.
“They what?”
“It’s a game i played when i was kid. We played it with basketballs, not pistols, but the concept is the same.”
“These people are crazy, right?” Hayden asked him.
“Crazy is a matter of perspective, and we don’t have a complete profile of these people. This feels like they aren’t the Jade Falcons, but a different clan. You know that we heard about multiple clans on this front, this could be one of their units.”
“Keep your eyes open, Julian.”
“Roger that.”
As they got closer, they realized that neither of the Battlemechs that were sitting perimeter watch were currently piloted. They were set at Ready 5, which meant anyone could walk up to one and get it moving. That wasn’t typical for an inner sphere command, Mechs were a precious resource and keeping them secure was a fundamental part of military life.
They stepped up the ramp into the spheroid dropship and took in the sights of the Mechbay. There were four other Battlemechs in various stages of repair. The lightest one was a medium mech she couldn’t identify specifically, but she also saw an unusual configuration on an assault mech that was currently down to its endoskeleton. The entire mech had its armor and myomers removed and was currently being rebuilt from the ground up. They were currently fitting a new fusion engine into the housing, and there was a large container that probably had a gyro sitting in it.
“Star Commander’s looking for you two in his command center.” one of the technicians said quickly.
“Where’s that?”
“Two decks up, turn left at the still.”
“The Still?”
“Look, it’s been a long year.” The technician shrugged at the two of them and went back to spooling myomer cables. The two of them made their way up to the command center. The same mechwarrior who’d been talking to them outside was waiting for them, in slightly more clothing than before.
“Nice to meet the both of you in person.” He said with an easy smile.
“It’s a pleasure.” Hayden said with a forced smile.
“Nice raid on this firebase. The PGC didn’t see you coming.”
“Thanks, i guess?” Julian said with a hint of confusion.
“You should net a couple of battlemechs, the parts to reconfigure a couple of Omnimechs, and a wealth of technical data and the technicians to make sense of that data. With Jorja’s help, you should have that loaded in the next couple of hours.”
“Why didn’t you attack us?” Hayden asked him quickly. Her eyes were scanning the room, taking in the pictures on the walls, the papers and the general level of clutter.
“Not in my mission briefing. My star is down a mech, and the other star we were riding with was almost completely destroyed. To be honest, our recall orders were a blessing.”
“Recall orders?”
“The Old Man sent out orders last month. Finish up what we’re doing and then haul ass for the OZ.”
“OZ?”
“Sorry, the Occupation Zone. The territory the Falcons, Wolves, Bears and Jaguars have claimed as their own. I suspect they are going to get bigger the longer this conflict goes on.”
“What were you doing before that?” Julian asked him. They had all taken seats around the large holotable that dominated the room. He’d seen these before but they were usually in regimental command centers.
“Chasing down a lead on a lost Star League Defense Force transport, the SLS Glory Ridge. It was lost during the and you don’t really care. We found what we were looking for but it had also been found by some pirates who were using it as a base. Our ten mechs against an entire battalion was turning into a pretty sucky year. We lost half our mechs destroying them, but we couldn’t salvage the dropship. We grabbed what we could and burned out of there on our way here. The Falcons were nice enough to offer shelter and supplies while we rebuilt our strength. And then you showed up, and put holes in them.”
“So you are not Clan Jade Falcon?”
“Oh, heavens no.”
Julian stared at him incredulously for a second.
“Sorry, I am still coming down off of my Necrosia...It tends to alter my perceptions. I am a Seeker, with clan Goliath Scorpion.”
“Necrosia?” Julian asked him.
“It’s an artificial mind altering chemical derived from the venom of the real goliath scorpion. It alters perceptions and mental states for the seekers, and tends to help us find the things we’re looking for.”
“Like Peyote?” Hayden asked.
“Kind of, it’s a little stronger from my personal experiences.”
“So what precisely are your orders?”
“Recall to the OZ, wait for transport back to home.”
“Home being the Clan Homeworlds?”
“They said you were a sharp one, Sanders.”
“Who sent those orders?”
“Ivan did. From his HQ on Tharkad.”
“And you follow those orders?”
“He’s my Galaxy Commander, and the current head of the Seeker movement. Besides that, i’ve heard the story about how he lost his arm, and i don’t want that man pissed off at me.”
“What?”
“So, back on Misery in ‘28, if the stories are true, the Combine dropped a DEST unit onworld as part of the Ryuken deployment. Their orders as i understand it were to kill Jamie Wolf and make an example of the Dragoons. They did not expect a point of elementals to be running bodyguard for the Colonel at the time.”
“Wolf’s Dragoons? Why would they have Elementals?” Julian asked him.
“So, the story goes Ivan grabs one of those DEST commandos and snaps him in half with his big giant hands. The next one comes at him with a sword and in one of those perfect moments, cuts his arm off at the elbow. I don’t know how, the muscle and bone of an elemental makes that improbable. Ivan barely bats an eye, picks up his own arm and uses it as a club to beat the assassin to death. The recovery team found him standing in the middle of a pile of dead elementals and assassins, and credit his survival to a combination of Harjel spray and insanity. The damage done was extensive, and he waited for treatment until the rest of the field units were good. They couldn’t save his arm, and he refused a cybernetic.”
Julian’s mouth moved slowly, and he finally managed to get the words to come out “So, Ivan’s a Goliath Scorpion, and presumably the Old Man?”
“Yep.”
“And he put out a bounty on us?”
“Not that kind of a bounty, but any of us that found you were to give you any assistance we could without compromising our mission.”
“Why?” Hayden asked him quietly.
“Because, the Sokolov kids are as close to family as he has in this world, and by extension their friends are equally important.”
“Have you seen Jaxun?”
“I heard he rotated offworld when the 8th regulars moved on. I know for a fact that Mason and Mackenzie are alive and well on Anywhere, but i don’t think they’ll be staying for long.”
“Why?”
“Because the 8th’s next target is Steelton, and i suspect Brikai Buhalin will take his two prizes with him.”
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Quinn let out a long slow sigh and pulled the pistol from its holster. “This is a load of crap.”
“Ooh...I didn’t see gunplay getting involved.” The Star Commander smiled and watched the reaction from the other two.
“Quinn, put the gun away.” Hayden’s voice was rising.
“Sorry, you may have had operational command of the battlefield, but you aren’t my boss. I work for the Federated Commonwealth.”
“Quinn, this is an opportunity to learn more about the invasion and see if we can’t get ahead of this thing.”
“How about we just throw his ass in a holding cell and drag him back to a military prison?”
“Because i suspect that would be a harder task than you think, and keeping me in a cell would not be advisable. Currently, the relations our two peoples have are cordial, if distant. Kidnapping a warrior, even one as unlikely as me would cause those reactions to sour. I doubt you want a souring of relations between the Federated Commonwealth and the Goliath Scorpions.”
“Why?”
“Because, we don’t have an issue with you or the remarkably backwards way you run your government. We chose not to participate in the invasion for a reason.”
“What information can you provide?” Julian put his hand over the top of Quinn’s, and lowered the pistol.
“What would you like to know?”
“Operational details for the Invasion?”
“I can give you the current second wave targets for the Wolves and the Falcons. I don’t know what the Ghost Bears or the Smoke Jaguars are up to.”
“Troop details?” Hayden’s brain kicked in and she started to think critically, a process aided by the lack of gunplay in the vicinity.
“You know that as part of the Batchall process you will receive details of the commands coming to visit you.”
“I was thinking on a larger scale, like how many regiments are committed to the battlefield...what sort of numbers we can expect.” Hayden replied.
“Oh, i can give you the details on the Galaxies and their attendant fleets, but in any given situation those are best guesses. The bidding system means there’s always a chance that something unexpected occurs.”
“Technical Data and briefs on your weapon systems and technological differences.” Quinn finally managed to add.
“Ivan gave that to you while you were on Anywhere, and you just captured a bunch of personnel and equipment.”
“How about the Falcons on world?”
“The Provisional Garrison Cluster will regroup at one of their firebases and rearm, repair and probably attempt to kill every last one of you.”
“That’s not honorable by your traditions.” Hayden said quietly.
“And if you had declared a proper Batchall and trialed for the planet, those traditions would be upheld. You however hot dropped onto their positions and started shooting.”
“With the technological capabilities at our disposal, it was the only way to guarantee a chance at victory.” Quinn’s nostrils flared.
“That’s quite the pickle you’ve found yourself in, isn’t it?”
“Where are these Firebases, and how many units are left?”
“There’s a mountain range...northwest of here, they set in extra supplies and resources there in a string of small facilities. As to their remaining resources, hang on.”
“What?”
Andrew put his finger up to his mouth, shushing them. The ever present radio kicked on, and they could hear shouting from the other end of the radio.
“Star Colonel Chenkov, how is your day going?”
“Damn it, Scorpion, now you answer your comm?”
“Sorry, i had to deal with the invaders, they were persistent.”
“Did you destroy any of them?”
“Neg, they rolled in quickly, overran the facility and took all of your material and personnel before moving on.”
“Those bloody surats….”
“I know at least one of your Battlemechs managed to withdraw in good order, but we lost track of her during the maneuver. My repair crews are working over time, and i believe i can have at least three of my battlemechs operational within the next day. Give us coordinates and we’ll link up with you.”
“You would help us drive off these invaders?”
“I will fulfill the mandates of my orders, to assist where i can.”
“Good, rally point is flagged, and we’ll see you sooner, rather than later, Star Commander.”
He clicked off the radio and finished “And a proper go fuck yourself to you too.”
“You just lied to him.” Quinn stared at him incredulously.
“I spoke in a manner that he may have misunderstood. My mission orders are to assist you in any way i can theoretically do so. The sooner you deal with the PGC and get the hell out of the OZ, the safer you will be.”
“So you’re a traitor to your own people?”
“The Jade Falcons are not my people, anymore than the Free Worlds Leaguers are your people. The Clans represent a host of smaller nations working together in a mostly functional confederation.”
“So you don’t have any emotional investment in the Falcons?” Hayden asked slowly.
“Fuck those guys, they’re a bunch of Crusader assholes who would rather shoot than think.”
“I’ve heard the word Crusader used a lot, what exactly does that mean?” Julian asked him.
“It’s a political affiliation within the Clans. It crosses Clan boundaries, and represents one perspective on the role the Clans are supposed to have regarding the Inner Sphere.”
“And they believe what precisely?”
“That you are a bunch of inbred, feudal morons who’ve managed to burn down the garden of eden to build your dungheaps of successor states and somehow have managed to forgot how to use a variety of functional technologies. Given that, they see themselves as righteous avengers who are bringing the flame of civilization and are more than happy to set your reality on fire with it.”
“They sound great. Let’s get some more of those.” Quinn rolled his eyes.
“And the other perspective?” Hayden asked.
“The Wardens believe that you meant well, and somehow managed to screw up the Star League. That said, you need a little bit of help and encouragement to find what you’ve forgotten, and like small children need to be protected from your own ineptitude.”
“Oh, i want one of those.”
“Quinn, you aren’t helping.”
“My personal belief, and one echoed by most of my clan is that the Star League existed within the Inner Sphere, and to an extent, the Periphery. In order to study that history, we would like to preserve as much of the Inner Sphere as possible.”
“So you’re historians?”
“Most of us, but we need to cut this visit short. You need to get your equipment repaired and on the move if you’re going to take out the PGC before any reinforcements arrive.”
“Are they expected?”
“Well, the Star Colonel managed to get a distress call out before you took the facilities, so i would expect a response at some point. You want to get this done before something wicked drops on you and the 2nd NIC.”
“All right.” Hayden turned her head to the side, talking into the comms, “Fergis, Clarissa get those people ready to move out. We need to get rearmed and re-equipped, fast.”
“Aye, Lass, we’ll have the wee bastards loaded soon.”
“Percival...we have an opportunity.”
“Oh, i think i would quite like to hear about this. Brief me aboard the Gambler while we refit.”
“Roger that.”
“Now, don’t be strangers, if you have a question and can’t find the old man, you can usually find me or one of my associates here.” The Star Commander smiled and slid the command console across the table to them.
“What’s that?”
“It’s an uplink to the Chatterweb, it’s a social media platform that we use to communicate unofficially, You’ll need an HPG to link it into, but once you do, you can send all sorts of messages to all sorts of people.”
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