Forging a New Path

Hayden shook her head and pulled up the audio recorder again.  “My current assessment of the Jade Falcons is that they are a technologically superior foe that use an elaborate system of warfare that we have never seen before.  They are slavishly devoted to this tradition of warfare and I believe there are spaces within the confines of their traditions that are exploitable by a well prepared command. In a stand up fight, their technological advantage coupled with their training program gives these warriors a decidedly favorable advantage.”

She took a sip of water and continued.  “Further, their armored infantry are more than capable of bringing down a battlemech.  Even unarmored, they are an amazingly dangerous foe.  The scariest part of their method of warfare is their claiming of prisoners.  I have heard secondhand that they consider prisoners that comport themselves well on the battlefield to be potentially worthy of induction into the clan.”

She picked up the picture her sister had taken of Jaxun and her at the family estate on Radstadt the summer before graduation.  “The methods of induction vary, but they are capable of turning our loved ones and comrades against us.  They also have advanced medical technology capable of reshaping the human body into a more favorable one for their needs.  Some warriors are capable of shrugging off this conditioning, but it leaves psychological scars.” 

She clicked the recorder off and set it back down on the table.  She would spend today just like she had spent yesterday.  She’d eat breakfast in a few minutes, spend four hours in the simulator, eat lunch, spend four more hours in the simulator, and then she’d probably eat dinner with either Rampart or Melia. 

She sat in her bunk and thought about everything that had gone wrong since she’d signed her first contract with Hawkeye.  They’d lost Jaxun, the jokers, and the crazy eights.  Then it was Mackenzie and Mason.  Then they lost Hawkeye.  Now it was just her and Carter from the original Dead Man’s Hand.  They had gotten Mason back at Apollo, but he wasn’t quite the same.  Rampart was a good soldier, but he wasn’t really a merc.  Melia…where to start with Melia?

Ever since they had found out that Comstar was somehow actively aiding the clans by facilitating their communications, Melia had gotten even more strange than normal.  She would have called him paranoid before the ROM agents had shown up to kill them on Apollo.  Now with the vindication of ROM chasing them, he was going deeper down the rabbit hole. 

They had been on the dropship for over a month, but it had felt like a year.  Always doing the same things, going through the same routines.  She had hear that a couple of the aerospace pilots had gotten into a near brawl  over the last ketchup packet.  Rampart was handling the murmuring from the rest of the command, but something was going to have to give somewhere.  She heard the knock on the door and figured it was probably Carter coming to get her for the morning simulator.  She was right. 

Carter gave her the same smile he always did, but she had a feeling about him.  Carter’s mom worked for Comstar, he had been raised on Terra.  The idea that the Order would be working with the Clans voluntarily weighed on him.  His face was creased with worry, and he didn’t look like he had been sleeping well. 

“Ready to go, Captain?”  He saluted.

“Carter, I am not a Captain.”

“You are technically correct since we are aboard dropship, and naval tradition requires there to be only one captain of a ship, Major.” 

“Carter, you’re not helping.”

“I know it feels cray right now, but we will get through this.  My mother always said that hard times come and go, but hard people don’t.” 

“Go start the simulator mission, you can pick which one you want to run this morning.  I need to go chat with Percival for a minute, Lieutenant.” 

“Yes, ma’am.”  He snapped a quick salute and headed towards the Mechbay.  She turned the other direction and headed towards the bridge.  Percival was working in his improvised command center just off the bridge, and he was listening to Julian’s latest theory about something when she walked in.  He perked up visibly when she appeared. 

“Good morning, Major.”  He saluted.  Julian did the same.

“Good morning, gentlemen.  We need to have a chat.”

“Certainly, Julian and I were just discussing the next step of the mission plan…”

“I am not talking about the mission.  You have had us cooped up on this dropship for the better part of a month, and morale is suffering.”

“Until we know to what extent Comstar has details on our plans, it is not safe to disembark.”  Julian said firmly.

“If you attempt to keep this crew locked up on this ship for any more extended periods of time, then you are going to have a mutiny on your hands, and I don’t think Comstar will have to worry much about our plans because we will probably be all dead.”

“The Dead Man’s Hand would never….”

“There is no more Dead Man’s Hand, Percival.  They died, almost to a man fighting the Jade Falcons.  We are a shattered remnant of that unit, but we have to move past that legacy.  Jesus, we’re down to 3 mechwarriors out of the original command, one of whom you won’t let back into the simulators.” She pointed firmly at Julian.  “Hawk is gone, he might be dead for all we know.  It’s down to us.  You put me in command, and I am making a command decision.  The next jump to an inhabited system, I am giving everyone a week’s vacation, off the ship.”

“I don’t think that is a wise idea, Major.”  Julian started.

“We need supplies, the crew needs time to catch their breath.  Those are the orders the commander of this unit has decided upon.  Make it happen.” 

“Yes, Major.  I will see that we are ready when we arrive at Blue Hole.”  Percival nodded.  Julian was about to say something else, but Hayden’s decision was made. 

“We should probably get the new equipment colors on  and be ready for trouble when we arrive at Blue Hole."  Julian said as she was leaving. 

Mason was sitting in the Mechbay, watching the readouts. Julian wouldn’t let him actually get back into a cockpit yet, but he had been cleared to take part in activity by the doc.  He waved as she walked over. 

“What’s going on, boss?”  He was keeping an eye on the display, trying to relay orders back and forth from Carter to the Sausage Party.  They were simulating close air support missions so that the aerospace jocks could get used to working with the…Hayden still hadn’t really decided what to call the unit.  Sebastian and Carter were providing an Op/For while Mason drove the mechs the Fighters were supposed to be supporting. 

“Heartthrob, what the fuck are you doing?  You’re lining up a shot on one of the friendlies!”  Mason called out through the radio.

“Uh, Ground Control, I know what I am doing.”  The fighter simulated its attack run and dropped a cluster of smoke bombs around the friendly mech. 

“Ground Control, this is Major Tom.  General Disarray and I are continuing to lay down suppressive fire while Heartthrob and Wobbly provide cover to the three friendly mechs.  Skywarp and Thndercracker are about to drop their inferno payload on the hostiles.”

“Surpressing Fire!” came roaring through the headset from Major Tom’s wingman. 

The jungle terrain they had been fighting over was engulfed in inferno bombs, and the simulated battlefield lit up as flames went everywhere.  Two of the enemy mechs emerged from the flames and Mason smirked as the Jaegermech opened up on the fighters that had just dropped the inferno bombs.  The autocannons lit up the fighter.  The other mech, an Archer, bombarded Heartthrob’s aerospace fighter with both of its Missile racks. 

“Where the fuck did they come from?”  Skywarp called over the radio?

“Say again?”  Mason asked him quickly. 

“Hostile fighters, coming in hot and heavy.”

“Break contact, the mechs are evacuating the engagement zone, get out of there before you get yourselves introduced to the surface.”

“Ground Control, this is Major Tom.  Can’t do that, we can finish these guys if we give it another push.” 

“Major Tom, this is ground control.  I just gave you a direct order.  Get your god damn ass out of there now.” The Jaegermech and the Archer lit up Major Tom’s fighter and it’s wing started coming apart from the intense barrage. 

“What’s that Major Tom, you are about to crash because you were a dumbass that didn’t follow orders?”  Mason crumpled up a ball of paper in the mic of his headset.  “Say again, Major Tom?  Oh wait, are you dead now because you didn’t do what you were told?” Mason sat the headset down on the desk and looked up at Hayden.  “Too much?”

The simulator pods opened up after Mason turned off the simulation and the first person to emerge was Major Tom.  He was a little over six feet tall, and looked like he worked out a lot.  His white teeth flashed as he slammed the helmet onto the desk Mason was sitting at.

“Bro, what’s your problem?”  The aerospace squadron commander was in Mason’s face.

“My problem, bro, is that you can’t follow orders, bro.”  Mason remained calm, but Hayden thought this might get ugly. 

“Your orders sucked, bro.  We could take them.”  Skywarp and Thundercracker were stowing their helmets while General Disarray had stepped up next to his wingman. 

“Bro…”  Disarray said quietly to his friend.

“Bro!” Major Tom responded.

“Bro…”  Disarray looked back up at him.

“Broooo.”  Major Tom sad tensely. 

“You know, I think this might be a thing that the Clans could help us learn from.” 

The two Aerospace Pilots looked up at him at the same time and both said, “Bro?” 

Hayden also said, “Bro?”  but could not for the life of her figure out why. 

“The clans have a ritual to settle disputes like this, they call it a Trial of Grievance.”  The Aerospace squadron had gathered around the table.  “We put a circle, say 15 meters in diameter in the middle of the Mechbay.  You and I step into it.  The trial ends when one of us can’t move to the point where our opponent can drag us out of the circle.  After that, everything is forgiven.  Sound good?” 

All eyes in the room turned to Hayden.  “If you want to punch each other in the face until you can’t see straight, sure.  If you do so and are late to afternoon training because you are in the medbay, I’m cancelling your leave next week.”

“Leave?”  Wobbly asked hopefully.

“You guys have been working hard.  We are jumping into Blue Hole next, we are taking a week’s vacation when we get there.  Now do you boys want to punch each other in the face, or do you want to get back to work?” 

“Back to work, Ma’am.”  The Aerospace jocks snapped a quick salute and returned to their simulator pods. 

“Bargained Well, and Done.”  Mason nodded at Hayden.  Carter and Sebastian had reset the simulation and Hayden crawled into her simulator pod.  She let out a content sigh.  The aerospace pilots were attractive, but boy howdy were they annoying.    

The promise of peace and quiet with time off the ship seemed to do the trick for the flagging morale.  Everyone seemed to be working very hard to calm their collective shit down so that they could get to the next jump, and then the short ride in system to Blue Hole.  Hayden actually relaxed a little bit with the tension broken amongst the crew. 

Blue Hole was a tourist destination for the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth.  Oddly enough it was an entire planet covered in vast freshwater lakes.  Rivers cut lattice patterns into the surface between these lakes and by all accounts, it was a beautiful planet that people went to in order to get away from it all.  Hayden was looking forward to getting out of the ship and just being able to walk any direction more than a hundred steps without having to turn to avoid hitting the outside wall of the ship. 

She checked her financials and after depositing the money in her mom’s account and sending some to her sister, Hayden was pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t flat broke.  The first contract had mostly paid off her loans and taken care of a bunch of other little hiccups, but this was really the first time she had money of her own.  This financial freedom was a new thing for her, and she thought back to one of the things one of her instructors had told her.  “Spend it while you got it, you can always go make more.”  The thought amused her to no end right now. 

She had to give Percival credit, he knew how to run the financial side of a mercenary unit.  She’d taken classes on it while she was at Outreach, they all had, but Percival just seemed to have an instinctive grasp of all the little fiddly financial bits.  Wherever he had studied, he must have aced every question in front of him.  She made a short list of things to do while she was on Blue Hole and went to sleep that night.  They would be in the Blue Hole system tomorrow.

Blue Hole

Percival had never seen quite this many ships in the same place outside of New Avalon or Outreach.  The difference of course was that these were all carrying civilians to and from the world.  They had arrived just before the start of the incredibly busy summer tourist season and there were still three dozen jumpships scattered around the Zenith and Nadir points.  Their Dropships detached and disappeared into the commercial and civilian traffic over Blue Hole.  Four quiet days later they were touching down in the Lapiz spaceport.  The crews of the dropships went on their standard rotations for shore leave, but the mercs were effectively on their own for the first time. 

Hayden had dressed like a civilian for the first time in too long.  Mason and Carter were similarly dressed, but Percival had been the strangest of all, finding comfort in tropical shirt covered in surfboards and a pair of sunglasses.  He extended a hand to the three of them and quickly said “I’ll see you all back here in seven days.  I am turning my communicator off and will probably be impossible to find.  Have fun.”  The three of them stepped off the ramp and into the space port, unsure of what they were going to find.