The Story Continues...

         From where he sat on the foot of his Excalibur, Geoff watched as an Excalibur Atlas dragged the wreck of the clan Thor into the Pendragon’s cargo bay.  Kelly Celeste stepped up beside him.

“The two Thors had completely different arsenals,” Geoff told her.

She nodded.  “They’re using some sort of modular weapon mounts.  A bit like the laser modules on a Mercury, but decades more advanced.  Weapons can be detached from the chassis and re-mounted in minutes, but they’re still fully protected by the ‘Mech’s armor when mounted.”

“Must make salvage easy, at least.”

“That’s right.  We’re stripping the total wrecks now; it shouldn’t take long.  But at least half the chassis look salvageable too.  God knows if we’ll ever be able to work on them, though.  I’ve worked with ferro-fibrous and endo steel, but these composites are denser and more compact.  Probably irreplaceable.”

“We can sell the chassis to the FedCom, or one of their military contractors.  They’ll want as big a sample of these materials as they can get.  It could turn out to be more lucrative than the bounty on the Rangers.”

            “Good on you for negotiating full salvage rights on this contract.”

            “It was easy,” said Geoff.  “They thought we’d be fighting Periphery trash.”

          The last of Taggart's companies boarded Lancelot, and Geoff gave the order to lift off.  They had rescued almost two companies of Ranger 'Mechs, along with more than a dozen newly dispossessed Ranger MechWarriors.

            The highest-ranking officer was Kommandant Forth Bagley, who made his way to Kenner's bridge immediately.  “I had to thank you, Colonel, as soon as I could.  I recognize the profit motive in what you did, but it took courage all the same.”

            “Thanks, Kommandant.”  Geoff absently accepted his handshake.  “We should probably take our seats.  I'm going to order full thrust, at least for this first stretch of the flight.”

            “Naturally,” said Bagley.  “Although I gather you've already overpowered their aerospace forces, from the decisive role of your own fighters in your last engagement.”

            Geoff strapped himself into a couch.  “They only sent four fighters to support their attack.  I can't imagine that's all they have.”

            “I suppose not.  They do seem to have a strange system of holding large bodies of troops in reserve while they attack with minimal force.  We weren't able to make much sense of it.”

            “It's bizarre.  If they'd attacked us with that whole reinforced battalion, rather than just half of it, even the fighters could never have saved us.”

            The acceleration warning lights came on, and thirty seconds later Geoff felt the full weight of 2.5 gees.

            Laboring just to walk, Taggart came on the bridge.  Geoff held up a hand, which took real effort.  “Here's your hero, Kommandant.  Magnificent, John.  Each of your companies won against a superior enemy.”

            Taggart lowered himself carefully into a couch.  “To be fair, we had luck and numbers.  Without those, we'd just as surely have lost.”

            “Sure.  But now we have the measure of the enemy, and we know at least one thing that works.  It seems air power will be crucial.  As soon as we get back to Black Earth, we should see about hiring more fighters.”

            The Clans didn't pursue the Excalibur DropShips, and after a few hours Lancelot slowed to its cruising acceleration of a gee and a half.  Avalon was waiting at the pirate point, and it was only a couple of days before the entire party, Excaliburs and rescued Rangers, jumped back to Black Earth.

            They shared the jump point with a small force of Rangers who'd escaped the earlier fighting.  Apparently a mutinous JumpShip commander had taken on a DropShip full of survivors from the gutted RCT, against the area commander's orders.  Before long the battered survivors of the Grave Walkers' first regiment, who'd fought Clan Jade Falcon on Bone-Norman, appeared in-system as well.  And then the waiting began.

            “Morale is at risk, I'm afraid,” said Taggart.  “Everyone's hungry for scuttlebutt on the Clans.  These Grave Walkers will hold forth to anyone who'll pay for their drinks, and they don't paint a pretty picture.”

            “We have to give them the other side of the story.  Make sure our people who hit Barcelona are just as talkative.  We may have to start talking shit about the Walkers, too.  Get a little rivalry going.  We won against the Clans, and they lost.”

            “They don't deserve that, Geoff.  They're a good unit.”

            “I know that.  But we have to do what we can to keep our people in fighting shape.  Maybe it'll even help the Walkers, if they feel like they have to prove something to us.”

            “Could also start a barroom scrap or two.”

            “Fine.  That's the kind of collateral damage we can fix.”

            Celeste’s team couldn’t make heads or tails of the Clan weapon modules, so the Excaliburs stored them away in hopes of future discoveries.  Meanwhile they opened negotiations with the Commonwealth for the sale of the OmniMech bodies they’d captured, stripped of weapons.

            “We’ll need long-ranged firepower to hold off these enemies,” Geoff insisted.  “Get our whole stockpile of Com Guard Gauss rifles into the field.  The Houses will be producing them soon.  We can buy more spare parts later, for now we need to survive the fight that’s coming.”

            Celeste agreed.  “I’ve been working on some custom blueprints for our hundred-tonners.  Replacing a class-twenty AC with a Gauss is a field refit.  A King Crab with two railguns, or an Atlas with one rifle plus twenty LRMs, will have a much longer reach and might surprise the Clanners.”

SKONDIA, FEDERATED COMMONWEALTH

APRIL 3050

            The new medical officer, Deirdre Lear, was painfully good-looking.  Dan hadn't officially met her yet, but he'd caught enough glimpses from a distance to know that the rumors were not exaggerated.

            “You should ask her out, Kenner,” said Kai's friend Bevan Pelosi.  “She hates nobles!”

            “I don't hate nobles,” said Dan.

            “But you hate the idea of nobles.  That's close enough to be a foot in the door.  And she's a pacifist.”

            “Bevan, I'm not a pacifist.”

            “My point is, you're both dangerous radicals.  You can commiserate.  Think of how lonely it feels to be you, in a regiment full of Steiner patriots.  She must feel the same way.  Right?”

            Dan rolled his eyes.  But in fact, it wasn't a bad angle, and he had every intention of getting to know Dr. Lear—once he managed to get introduced to her.

            Finally, he broke down and just scheduled a checkup.  Dan generally avoided trips to the doctor, so he told himself he had one coming anyway.

            Everything checked out, of course.  Deirdre Lear was intimidating, up close.  “I'll just send you downstairs to get some blood drawn, Leftenant,” she said.

            He caught sight of her diploma on the wall.  “You went to NAIS, Dr. Lear?”

            “Yes, I did,” she said.  “I take it you're a NAMA graduate?”

            “I am.  Took a lot of classes at the civilian university, though.  Did you ever take Professor Sekhar's ethics course?”

            She looked up from the sheet she was filling out.  “I actually did.”

            “Sekhar was sort of a mentor of mine.  I don't know how much of an impression Rawls’s book made on you, but for me it was huge. ”

            The doctor pursed her lips.  “I think I've heard about you.  Are you a republican, is that it?”

            He bowed his head in modest affirmation.  “Word gets around, I see.”

            “It's not the most common thing,” she said.  She began to turn back to her paper.

            “Word does get around,” said Dan.  “Someone told me you're no fan of the monarchy, yourself.”

            “I suppose I'm not,” she said, tearing away the slip of paper.  “It's been a pleasure, Leftenant Kenner.  Nice to meet an officer who actually thinks about this sort of thing.”

            Dan got up.  It was now or never.  “Like you say, it's not very common.  Around here I feel like there's no one I can even talk with, if I want to avoid a nasty argument.  I don't know if you feel the same way, but if you do, maybe we could get dinner sometime or something?”

            She cracked a smile, understanding what he was on about.  “I'm not really looking for a MechWarrior boyfriend, Leftenant.”

            That was disappointing.  But she seemed worth knowing, even in the face of romantic rejection.  “How about a MechWarrior regular friend?  We can get lunch instead, and split the check.”

            “That would be nice.”

            Deirdre turned out to be interesting, and friendly once she was reassured that Dan didn't intend to turn their lunch into a date.  Her father had apparently been a Solaris gladiator who died to Justin Allard’s Yen-Lo-Wang.

            “We've had very different reactions to our MechWarrior fathers,” said Dan.  “Although if my dad had died in his 'Mech, I might feel the same way you do.”

            “I'd like to think the reasons for my pacifism are more than just emotional, though,” she said.

            “Oh, they're good reasons.  It's really just a question of how idealistic you're willing to be.  If I could do anything to stop the Succession Wars, I would.  But it's impossible.  And as a MechWarrior, I have the chance to become someone who might influence that sort of decision.  I hate that I'll have to work through the nobility to do it, but there's no other way.”

            “The power really is in the hands of the people, ultimately,” said Deirdre.  “If they were to decide not to accept all this madness, no one could force them.”

            “It's true.  But I don't see any way to organize the population of an interstellar state.  Not when communication is so expensive—and controlled by ComStar, by the way.  An oligarchical institution, itself.”

            “It's sad,” she said.  “How did we get here?”

            Dan just shook his head.  He looked down at his pad, which had been beeping for a few minutes.  There was actually a working cellular RF network on Skondia--very high-tech, for the Successor States, although Dan dimly remembered such things being ubiquitous on Terra.

            “Mind if I just glance at my messages?” he said.  “I'm expecting something a bit important.”

            “Of course,” she said.  She turned her gaze to a picturesque gorge outside their restaurant.

            Dan turned on the pad.  COMSTAR RELAY, the message said.  “Yeah, it's what I thought.”

            “What's that?” said Deirdre.

            “Goodbye message from my father.  He sends one every time he goes into combat.  Kind of a ritual.  It's ironic, the guy hates ComStar, but he's one of their best customers.”

            “That's sweet.”

            “After fifteen years they’ve become a kind of white noise, I'm embarrassed to say.”  Dan read more closely.  “This one sounds more serious than usual, though.  Damn.  Have you heard anything about this raiding out near the Periphery?”

            “I don't really follow that sort of news.”

            “It sounds bad.”  Dan put the tablet down.  “Well.  Cross your fingers for me, OK?”

            She made the gesture, and he smiled.

BLACK EARTH

Jake Khumalo spent his free evenings in O’Shaughnessy’s, a downtown cop bar that had become a haunt for mercenaries as well in the Excaliburs’ time here.  By now Jake knew many of the cops.  Good people.  A few of them were closer to Jake’s own age than most of the other Excaliburs.

Tonight there was a guy doing card tricks at one of the tables.  The crowd around him was all Excaliburs.  As Jake came close, he realized why.  The playing cards in the guy’s deck had images of ‘Mechs instead of faces.

Clan ‘Mechs.

“Are those the OmniMech cards?” said Jake.

The guy looked up.  He was about Jake’s mom’s age.  “Sure, kid.  Not that I need them.  You fight one of these things, the image doesn’t exactly fade fast in your memory.”

“You’re a Grave Walker?” 

“Paul Grant.”  He held out a hand for Jake to shake.

“Jake Khumalo.”

“You got African heritage, kid?”  Grant was black.

“I was actually born in Kinshasa.”  When Grant didn’t recognize the name, Jake added, “Congo.  Africa.”

“Right.  Lots of you Excaliburs are former ComStar.  You’re a little young for that, though.”

“My mother was a Com Guard.”

“You ever been in a fight, Jake?”

“Not a real ‘Mech fight.”

            Grant shook his head and whistled amazement.  “It’ll be these fuckers who break your cherry, then.  Sorry, man.”

            Jake shrugged, trying to look nonchalant.  But the reality of it chilled his guts.

            “What’s your ride?” said Grant.

            “A Crab.”

            “Fancy.  You’ll do fine, kid.”  But it sounded like Grant was trying to be encouraging, more than honest.

            Grant shuffled the deck and passed it to Jake.  “Cut it, kid.”  Then he shuffled again and set the deck down.  Motioned for Jake to take the top card.

            Ace of spades.  The ‘Mech on the card was hunched forward, with a hood over its head.  The head looked like the nose of a transport plane, like a Planetlifter or something.  Each arm had five guns.

            “You see one of those,” said Grant, “you run.  Whether it’s two-on-one, whether it’s four-on-one, you run.”