Battletech Mechs and Monsters (BattleTech/Monstergirl SI)

[Bear Ribs]

Spoiler: A/N

Actually wrote this ages ago but I rarely post what I've written, I think I did throw the introduction up. Pretty much intended to be the most crack crossover I could imagine, played completely straight.

Spoiler: Dramatis Monsterae:

Bear Ribs (Wyvern): Trying to herd these idiots.
Pants (Succubus): Int 3, Cha 18/00
Friday (Cyclops): Only sane woman.
Blammo (Drow Elf): Mechwarrior, Obsessed with autocannons

Lanky (Wukong): Engineer, despairs of ever getting asked to do something reasonable.
Grizzly (Mermaid): Has never finished a sentence without profanity.
Waffles (Wukong): Ship Gunner, life is either very boring or way too exciting.
Sharpie (Golem): Flies a DropShip, wishes it was an ASF.

Slag (Wyvern): Ship Gunner, Egyptophile
Nails (Gargoyle): Does not know what facial expressions are.
Pickles (Wukong): Chief Engineer of the Canned Peaches
Pharaoh (Elf): Overachieving 'Mech, Vehicle, and Aerospace Technician

Screamer (Succubus): Aerospace Pilot in Training, hates loud noises.
Mild Child (Wyvern): Captains a DropShip, wishes the idiots didn't name it the Sweet Potato.
Robber (Gargoyle): Mechwarrior in training, notorious kill-stealer in sims.
Breaker (Wood Elf, Deceased): Loved artillery most of all.

Doctor Wow (Wukong): Head Surgeon, easily impressed.
Queen Baal (Succubus): Moral Officer, not treated like a queen.
Clam (Succubus): Has never been happy in her life.
Stampy (Gargoyle): Surprisingly clumsy.

Rabbit (Aquatic Elf): Why is every planet's water toxic?
Flexy (Mermaid): Chief Engineer of the Sweet Potato
Salsa (Wukong): Speaks Fluent Esperanto but not Spanish.
Dr. Moon (Mermaid, Deceased): EMT Specializing in underwater rescue.

Locust (Golem): (Rider of Famine) Constantly brags about not needing to eat.
Leper (Succubus): (Rider of Plague) Colors her skin to look like she's rotting.
Khopesh (Golem): (Rider of War) Notorious Egyptophile, sword collector
Harvest (Wukong): (Rider of Death) Least Chunni, goes along with her sisters' theme anyway.

Fish (Wyvern): Mechwarrior, possessed of a staggering alcohol capacity.
Wax On (Succubus): Huge fan of 80s Kung-Fu movies.
Reata (Wood Elf): Mech Tech, likes rope a little too much if you know what I mean.
Grass (Gargoyle): Seventy years of urban combat experience in a sixteen-year-old body.

Dr. Coolhands (Golem): Combat Medic, Zero Bedside Manner
BUGS (Cyclops): Improbably Busty Aerospace Pilot
Free Ride (Goblin): Aspiring Novelist, infamous for explicit Kerensky/Amaris crackfics.
Riptide (Wukong): Incredibly good swimmer, can keep up with an aquatic elf.

Nachos Nancy (Drow Elf): Has never actually eaten Nachos, aspires to try them someday.
Snowdrift (Goblin): Painter of minis.
Swan Song (Wyvern): Keeper of the antique Estevez.
Dr. Witch (Succubus): Creepy Genetic Engineering Specialist.

Atomic Lotus (Wood Elf): Forced everybody else to use that name through sheer stubborness.
Satin (Succubus): Unrepentant nudist, fakes wearing clothes with her ink.
Zippo (Wukong): Artillery specialist, advocates inferno gel first, last, and middle.
Strips (Wyvern): Never found without duct tape.

Prologue
Earth
The hospital room was clammy cold, smelled like disinfectant, and had all the other discomforts common to all medical establishments. I didn't like burying my nose in my phone, and the magazines on the end tables were months-old gossip rags I wasn't interested in even when they were new. After about two minutes looking at the boring beige walls and stale painting of a tree got old so I decided to people watch the other patients because nothing else was going on, you know?

And we did have a motley assortment of people in there. The most striking person was a little girl with porcelain white skin in an amazingly elegant gown. I had once taken care of an old woman who collected rare dolls and this girl reminded me of her collections. It was a frilly outfit with layers upon layers of velvet and a hat decked in lace and feathers that would fit right in at a fancy party in 1920, but I couldn't see how she could even breath in it, much less move or walk without spoiling it.

The other sour note was her aforementioned skin, which had so much makeup on it it looked like clown face to me. I mean, it was expertly done no doubt, but it was just so thick, and I've always hated makeup anyway and use the absolute minimum to get by. She noticed me looking at her and smiled at me. I smiled back.

The makeup around her mouth actually cracked a little. The older woman next to her frowned.

“Not so wide Grizelda,” she scolded, “You are not some common person acting like a tourist, keep your expressions elegant and refined, reserved. Remember, dignity at all times.”

“Yes mother,” the living doll answered, suddenly downcast and blank-faced. I tried to catch her eye again but she never looked up.

With that line of interest gone I looked at the others. There was a swarthy man, a shade darker than myself, with a whacking scar. Not a hot-looking anime scar but a clearly horrible wound that started on top of his head (a white streak of hair amidst the gray marked it's progress) and bisected his ear before continuing to the neck. It was jagged and curved, and I suspect caused by a broken bottle. He had a ramrod straight poster that screamed “ex military” to me. Ex because the guy was probably already in his seventies at the least, though he had the incredibly healthy well-preserved look of a man who'd stayed active, kind of the Sean Connery look. He'd taken up a position in the corner and watched the room calmly without reacting much, though I got his eye and he nodded gravely to me before looking away.

A college-age kid in a shirt with a logo I didn't recognize was immersed in his phone, lost to the world. I pitied him a bit, so lodged in electronics he missed his fellow humans.

A bit of an altercation arose when another little girl, this one black with short fluffy hair, tried to get Grizelda's attention and play with her but the living doll's mother harshly rebuked her, leading the other girl's mother to nearly intervene followed by a venomous glaring match until well after Grizelda was called away to the back. I wished I'd had popcorn.

A few minutes later my own turn came up and I followed the nurse into the rear of the clinic. If you're wondering, we were all here for an experimental trial, an attempt to use a new and improved micro-MRI machine to scan our brains and get the most accurate examination of human thought patterns to date. Even better it was a head-only unit so the titanium rods in my leg wouldn't prevent me from taking part in the experiment. Now granted, despite BS in the flier I'd responded to, I wasn't going to get a position in the history books. The Doctors involved might well but I was just one of a couple hundred patients, probably not even a footnote, just a statistic. I would, however, get paid about twice as much for a couple of hours as I normally got for a full day's work so I was totally good with that.

They strapped on the helmet after laying me down on a table, and began their scans, all while monitoring my various vital signs. A sort-of virtual reality helmet let them plug images in which I responded to as they monitored how I reacted to each image. They started with simple patterns, then with crude images of people and objects, them more complex images and then finished with a weird one where I was seeing some kind of monster like a Xenomorph/human hybrid through a foggy glass jar of yellowish water while a tube was stuck in my mouth, and this one was animated as the monster peered at me through the glass and then it began to drain, and I realized I was tiny and the monster was huge, and I struggled slightly as it pulled a cable from the back of my head and held me up, and it was cold and miserable and I couldn't stop myself from crying out. The giant monster wrapped me up in a blanket and I wrapped my tail around her wrist, and I probably should have been more worried about that part but I was suddenly just so tired I couldn't really do anything but drift off as she rocked me gently.


Chapter 1
16 Years Later. . .
Planet Mongkut 3.5, Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

Pink foam roiled around us and flowed off the viewing bubble as our bathyscaphe surfaced. The oceans around me were pink. It was night, and would be for another couple of months, so the sky was half yellowish purple and half black with stars only on the black half. The Caliban Nebula colored a vast area of space and we were right on the edge of it, far from home.

I coiled my tail under me into a noodle ball and enjoyed the view as the boat trundled along. Exoplanets were weird places. Beautiful indeed, but weird. This particular one was Mongkut 3.5, our current resting place, a world devoid of life with so much heavy metal, especially cobalt, in it's makeup that the dirt was purplish blue and the water was pink. Oceans covered 62% of the planet but which 62% depended on the hour. They were shallow, and the planet had a twin, Mongkut 3.0, which was 128% of this planet's size and closer than the moon was to Earth. Due to the immense tidal forces this generated, when low tide came the entire ocean drained away and left the seafloor a bare muddy mire. As a result, the ocean technically was this mobile blob that orbited along with the twin planet and rotated around the surface covering 62% at a time and leaving the rest a wide plain of mud the color of an eggplant. Only a few high blue mountains stuck up through the high tide and a handful of deep crevices held their water at low tide.

Currently it was ebb tide, the sea steadily lowering and in a day or so the surface would be revealed again at our location. That's why our little flotilla of tiny ships were on the move again, trying to solve a major problem before our seabed mining operation got beached.

A small volcano had up-welled a lava flow rich with valuable rare elements we needed. Cobalt in such absurd amounts we could practically use it to pave roads at this point, significant amounts of zinc we needed for industrial and health supplement purposes, copper in smaller amounts, trace but usable amounts of nickle, cadmium, and antimony. . . and significant amounts of germanium. The magic metal, germanium was what KF drives were made of and in this day and age, it was to gold what gold was to iron. By itself, the germanium was valuable enough to fund this entire operation. Oddly enough it wasn't what we were after because we really needed the zinc more than trade goods, but we were hardly going to pass up on a small fortune that happened to land in our laps. There would always be somebody to trade with eventually.

The problem was the extremely inevitable one that was so tiresome throughout human history. There are two ways to get a valuable resources, gather it yourself, or steal it from somebody who already did the work for you. We'd done the first, three guesses what happened as soon as we got supplies laid in, and the first two don't count.

There was a plume of fire high in the black sky, as a pirate DropShip came down to land on one of the few pieces of solid ground, a rocky mountaintop exposed only days earlier as the tide receded. We had a landing pad built there for our own use, along with a small fusion plant and storage tanks, it continuously took in seawater and extracted hydrogen to refuel our own DropShips.

I knew we could expect a second enemy dropship not far behind. One militarized ship to carry weapons and soldiers, a second hauler type to carry the stolen cargo away. We hadn't heard anything from our space forces in days, maybe jammed, maybe dead. I hoped they were jammed, and still alive. In the meantime we could only deal as best we could.

“Deploy a spotter drone,” I ordered and there was a thump and click as the ship launched a small camera rotodrone. “Pants, any chatter on their systems?”

My sister glanced back over her shoulder, wide eyed and innocent looking under her messy bangs, “Nothing doing, they're just, like, not talking right now,” she reported back.

I looked through the canopy bubble again into the distance. This was my first shot at command, a chance to show I could be a capable and responsible leader. It twisted my stomach in knots.

I'd been a manager in my previous life and I'd like to think I was good at it. But I knew now that some of my people were going to die. Maybe some of my sisters, maybe even me. If things went all wrong, maybe all of us. It was ever so much harder than knowing that if I screwed up, sales would be lower than expected this quarter. I swallowed down my own gizzard that kept trying to crawl up my throat, and looked again at the sensor scans. I didn't have enough information yet, but they weren't landed yet either.

I did a couple of calcs on the command console. We could be at the landing site about forty minutes before the enemy DropShip was able to do so.

“Move the transports in to close range and deploy Grizzly's Sappers,” I ordered finally, “Tell them to start planting minefields around the island, and deploy a spotter drone,” I decided aloud, and felt a thump as the hatch opened and a small rotodrone took off towards the descending plume of fire.

“Message sent,” Rabbit reported from the crew section of the sub. She sounded a little irritated and her ears were twitching. I didn't blame her. Rabbit was an elf, aquatic elf to be specific. Blue-Grey skin, webbed hands and feet, and a dorsal fin on her tailbone that lay flat when she wasn't using it made her a superb swimmer. Her hair was yellow and in a tight braid held together with some scrap wire threaded through her hair roach.

Seeing so much water and not being able to swim for so many weeks had to be hell for her. Grizzly and her crew would be swimming, but even they were going to have some nasty chelation therapy to get the hideous amounts of heavy metals they were going absorb out of their bodies. That was too expensive to use more than we had to and, well, Rabbit's crew knew how to drive a submarine.

“F*^#in' A!” came Grizzly's enthusiastic response, “We'll have so many F$%&in' mines around that S&#@ island they won't be able to F@^#in' P&%# without blowing their C&@#s off.”

I resisted the urge to “thank” Grizzly for that colorful image. I don't know where she got the idea that soldiers couldn't get through a single sentence without swearing, probably her previous life, but once she'd made LT of an irregular amphibious demolition team she'd never said another sentence without peppering it with profanity. The fact that nobody else talked that way, including the other soldiers, apparently eluded her.

“And stay under the surface,” I added quickly, “We've only got a limited window and they'll be able to see you if you hit the top.”

“Granny said thanks for the F*^#in' advice about the G#@$%!*& eggs,” Grizzly sent back acerbically before signing off.

“Rabbit,” I called to our pilot, “Move a couple of your ships closer and place sensors at these coordinates, not too close to the mines but I want to get some telemetry if we can.”

Rabbit twitched again but silently sent the order and on screen, I watched our forces close in.

Our assets were meager but I thought we had a decent chance. We'd built our own submarines, albeit on a tiny scale because our ancient oft-patched and repaired factory couldn't build anything at the usual scale of combat craft, we were limited to about ten tons and usually built lighter to save materials.

We had a dozen Sea Spider construction vehicles, if you ever watched SeaQuest DSV you probably have a decent idea what they looked like, a spherical pressure hull with five manipulator arms hanging underneath. They were unarmed and really couldn't mount weapons on them but each carried sensor equipment of various types for surveying potential build sites.

We also had six of Sea Pony class subs, more conventionally shaped than the Sea Spiders. Each weighed twenty tons. While we meant them for construction purposes, our engineers had wisely designed the craft to be easily up armed, it carried a small cargo bay that could be swapped in easily to hold a mine dispenser, sensor dispenser, or mount a few torpedo launchers.

I had Pants patch me through to our sister on one of the Sea Ponies. Friday was my rock. My particular family was called the Odd Quad, four different monster girl species from one iron womb, all four implanted with memories of a distant Earth before we'd been born. I was the manager and organizer, Pants was the pretty one, Blammo was the angry rebel girl; but Friday, ah she was the stable one. The reliable one. The only one with actual combat experience from the Old World, she led our space commando forces. Which would have to be underwater commando forces for now.

“Go ahead,” Friday told me calmly.

“Yeah, I want you to be our ace in the hole,” I told her. “Move your commandos to this position here, and wait for a good opportunity. I've marked the minefields on your map to avoid.”

She examined the track a moment. I think. Since she was wearing her armor, her face was basically a big mirrored blank space, kind of similar to old-school Cobra Commander's outfit. As a cyclops, she needed a wide field of vision.

“Better to position us here instead,” she finally told me, “This heavy outcropping will shield us from view and we should be hard to spot on their sensors.”

“'Kay, do that,” I agreed. I wasn't dumb enough to disagree with her on her own turf.

“Bear Ribs. . . what's your plan?” she asked softly before I could sign off.

It pained me to tell her the truth but I wasn't going to lie, “I haven't got much of one,” I admitted, “It's going to depend on what's in that DropShip. Hell, if I think we have a reasonable shot at it I'll give them our metals to make them go away. We don't have enough juice in the Sub's batteries for more than a week, we never planned them for a siege situation.”

Friday thought this over calmly for a moment, “Good,” she finally told me, “Don't over plan on too little information. And quit stressing, you've got bags under your eyes like Fester Addams,” she added.

I sputtered a little and Pants laughed at me. “I'm not-” I started but Pants interrupted.

“Oh you so are,” she countered, “You keep looking over the same map over and over again hoping for new information to appear and help you. It's the same reason you lose at poker so hard, when you have a bad hand you keep staring at your cards hoping the suits will change or something.”

I filed that tidbit away in hopes of fleecing Pants next time. I was actually halfway decent at poker, though I hated gambling for more than pennies. The problem was that Friday could see so well she'd pick up individual muscle twitches and gauge your heartbeat by the expansion of your blood vessels from twenty yards away, it was impossible to bluff her. Pants on the other hand was somehow so good at muscle control (not to mention using her ink and shape-shifting to change the way her face looked) that she could bluff Friday. The only way to actually play with those two monsters was a strictly mathematical style that ignored everything but the odds.

At least I usually beat Blammo. She couldn't bluff them and she wasn't good enough at math to play the odds.

I hoped Blammo was okay. My other sister was nominally in charge of our 'mech forces, nominally because we had one actual working 'mech, an ancient Spider, so she was in charge of. . . herself and a couple of understudies who would sub in if she was unavailable for some reason. She was somewhere in space along with our DropShips. I hadn't gotten any signal in days.

As the enemy dropship cleared the pale wispy cloud cover a couple of kilometers up, four of the Sea Spiders began to place mines at key locations while Grizzly's mermaids deployed from a pair of Sea Ponies and began placing their own charges, concentrating on the ramps we'd installed for easier deployment.

“Signal! We've totes got unencrypted message traffic!” Pants suddenly interrupted, very excited.

“What's the message?” I asked quickly, before Pants could start getting carried away.

“Patching it through!” Pants told me agreeably, and there was a brief burst of static.

A holographic image replaced my map, of a cold-looking man with iron-gray hair, cropped close to the skin. Veins protruded from his temples and his eyes were icy blue and bored into my own. His eyes dipped down a moment, and he smirked at me slightly. I felt dirt realizing he'd undoubtedly undressed me with his eyes. I could almost feel amused if I wasn't weirded out, the camera would only show me from the chest up so he didn't realize he was perving on somebody with wings and a fifteen-foot tail.

“I am Warlord Bryce of the Blood March Warriors,” He told me in a dull, gravelly voice, “We have come for our tribute. If you surrender now and turn over your cargo, I give you my personal guarantee none of you will be killed.”

Yeah, of course none of us would be skilled. Slaves were a valuable commodity, miners and sex slaves alike.

“Has anyone, ever, fallen for such a stupid offer?” I asked him, and his eyes narrowed at me, “We've been here for years, we know this planet and we know it's oceans. You're taking on a school of sharks in their own territory. Go away.”

“So be it,” He answered coldly, after taking a brief moment to control himself. I'd been hoping his overly Chuuni name and style meant he was a drama queen and I could make him angry enough to do something stupid but it looked like he had good self-discipline. Such men were dangerous. “Before a day's gone past, I'll have you on your knees before me and you will eat those boastful words.”

Pants chuckled as she cut the signal, “Joke's on him,” she chirped, “You don't have knees.”

“Yeah. . . that's the important thing,” I agreed as I pulled the map back up.

“Drone data incoming,” Rabbit sent back from her front console, “We've got ID on the dropship, it's a Lion class. Can't tell if it's Clan or not, moving the drone in closer-” Rabbit suddenly swore. “Drone lost, they're entering extreme weapons range,” she informed us, “Took them a couple of shots but that was still pretty impressive, these guys know what they're doing.”

“Alright, pull Grizzly out of there, we don't need them picking up the Sea Spiders at this point,” I ordered, scanning over the map one last time. I sent a few commands and the groups began to pull back, forming a skirmish line far enough away from the front to avoid easy hits.

The Lion came down on our landing pad on plumes of plasma, not quite centered and with a thump as it basically just fell the last meter. Steam rose off the waters and a few puddles boiled dry in an instant. The doors opened and I got a look at our enemy.

He deployed his 'mechs first. I wasn't quite sure why, when most of them wouldn't do much underwater. There was a Hunchback, looking menacing with it's gigantic cannon sweeping over the waves, and next to it was a Catapult. That was a bad combination, the Hunchback was murder at close range and the Catapult was murder at long range, they neatly covered each other's weaknesses. A smaller Clint emerged next. The rest were lightweights and mostly bugmechs, a Thorn, two Wasps, and a Flea.

Behind this line I saw a row of techs emerge and hook up to our hydrogen tanks, stealing our fuel supply for his dropship. Bastards.

Then the vehicles began to emerge and I felt my mouth go dry. Two heavy trucks pulled out a pair of Mantis attack subs. Each one weighing fifty tons, a single Mantis had more firepower than our entire fleet together.

I'd vainly hoped they'd not have any submarines, very few of the warlords bothered because most of the time what they wanted to attack was on the surface. Hovercraft were much more common. That would have given us a fighting chance to use our 3D mobility. Now? I was wondering if that surrender option was still on the table.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Chapter 2
Planet Mongkut 3.5, Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

I bit my lower lip as the trucks pulled our doom around and began to lower them. The Thorn and the Catapult Battlemechs moved towards the boat ramp as well. I paused at this oddity, and used one of the sensors floating on the surface to zoom in. Both 'mechs normally carried long range missile launchers, but the seals on them indicated they'd been replaced. . . with torpedo launchers. So we had more even problems than we thought. These guys knew how to fight underwater and brought the right equipment to do it.

“He's signaling us again,” Pants told me, way too cheerfully for the situation.

The holographic image of Warlord Bryce appeared again and gave me a smirk, “As you can see, you are hopelessly outmatched by my forces,” he told me just a touch pompously, “Out of the generosity of my heart, I will give you one last chance to survive. You can't hide forever, the ocean is receding and soon it will be dry. Surface all your vessels immediately and I will forgive your- What?”

“Booyah!” Pants cheered happily, and in the camera view the oceans suddenly boiled. Massive sprays of pink foam rose fifty yards into the air as the two submarines and battlemechs walked right into the densest part of the minefield. One Manta settled on the bottom, the streams of bubbles coming from it's holed structure slowly ceased and it died. The other was intact but made it only a little further before it, too, sank to the bottom. The Catapult lost a lower leg cleanly and fell on it's face, while the Thorn somehow managed to avoid touching any mines at all and slipped through.

“Well. . . that worked better than I expected,” I said, suddenly feeling like I could win. “Warlord Bryce, I'll extend your generosity back to you, leave here now and I won't lift a finger to stop you. You can even keep the hydrogen you stole”

I could see the warlord's temples pulse as he ground his teeth but he still managed to keep his self control. “Oh, you think you've won with single a petty trick, cunt?” he asked me, taking on a droll tone again. “I have every advantage and you know it.”

On the second image, a barrage of lasers lashed out from his Dropship and suddenly our hydrogen tanks and fusion generator exploded into a blaze of plasma. There was even a tiny mushroom cloud for a few moments. I felt a pang of loss, we really needed the fuel for our own ships and we couldn't replace that generator easily, it was going to be a real bitch to handle fueling in the future. Maybe we could use the Spider's power plant as a temporary power source, rebuild-

The Warlord spoke again, interrupting my thoughts, “I have many VTOLs at my disposal and in about ten hours the tide will expose your mining base. If you do not surrender I will simply bomb it to rubble and wait. You have no food supply, no fuel source, no backup. I wonder how many hours of supplies your tiny little tin cans hold?”

“We have a second signal on the same frequency,” Pants suddenly interrupted, “Still in space, probably their second DropShip.”

Pants did something to the communications gear and the image of the Warlord shrank down while a second appeared next to him. The newcomer was. . . probably the most evil looking man I've ever seen. Pencil mustache, goatee, devilish eyebrows, and twinkling eyes that suggested he found all our suffering deeply amusing. What I mean is, if this guy had appeared in a movie we'd all know he was the evil vizier planning to poison the king by the end of his first line.

“Really you two are a pair,” he said cheerfully. I wondered if he'd get along with Pants. “Destroying their infrastructure to force a surrender? Not nice at all. Of course I'm not a fan of a weapon as soulless as mines either, but one can't expect a group of civilian miners to obey the laws of Zelbringen in their little bath toys against an over sized star of 'mechs and vehicles, now can one? Hardly a fair match for any true warrior. Terrible to see the quality out here in the more uncivilized parts of space.”

Oh. Crap. Extra Crap. With a side order of 'We're all going to die.'

The Warlord had about the same reaction, his mouth opened in horror and he cut the channel instantly. The clanner's face filled my view.

“I am Star Captain Ulrich of Clan Nova Cat, who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked me, eyes twinkling madly.

On the other view screen the Lion immediately began to lift off. They didn't even bother to retrieve most of their units. The bug mechs all made a mad dash for the doors as they closed but the Hunchback was left standing impotently on the beach, alone, as the Lion fled before the real predator in the system.

I turned my attention back to the clanner who was waiting patiently, “My name is Bear Ribs, nominally in charge of this operation. You have my thanks for driving those pirates off.”

“Think nothing of it,” he answered magnanimously, “I followed the omens here and they have led me to exactly what I need. Your defense of your territory was quite impressive considering what you had to work with.”

I was immediately on guard. I didn't know why he was buttering me up but clan warriors didn't complement anybody else on their fighting prowess unless there was something afoot.

“Thank. . . you,” I said uncertainly, “And how can I help you in return?” might as well get the pain over with.

“Oh I demand no help, no, though as I said, I followed a most fortunate omen here. As it happens, the Nova Cats recently gained control of a mostly-water territory and we need a bit of expertise in mining it's resources.”

“I see. We weren't planning on traveling that direction, I'd be glad to make up some kind of manual and make a trade with you. . .” I started, wondering how to get out of this.

The problem is, clanners hate GeneCaste. They're raised on stories of how we'll come to eat them if they're not good in their little sibko creches. We're their literal boogeyman. I really, really didn't want Ulrich getting a look at my wings and loading up his guns for bear. . . ribs.

“Oh,” he said, seeming to find something deeply amusing in that, “You should have met a Diamond Shark for that. No, the expertise of a few practice bouts with you will help my warriors out as well. I challenge you to a Trial of Possession for your submarine blueprints and manufacturing secrets. Against them I wager, let us see, ah, a set of star maps acquired from a Goliath Scorpion Seeker, useful for navigating this region of space.”

Oh. Double crap.

I spent a moment concentrating. Fortunately I've lived through a great many emergencies and one thing I don't do is panic in a pinch. I usually fall apart after instead.

“I see, but I'm somewhat unfamiliar with your clan's policies and honor code. Would you consider sending me a few documents and giving me a little time to read them over, so that I don't accidentally violate your zelbringen?” I prevaricated.

He seemed to find this deeply amusing, nearly laughing before responding, “Certainly, my ship will be landed and unloaded in. . .” there was a pause as he spoke to somebody outside the holorecorder's range, “about an hour and a half. I trust by then you'll be prepared to make a reasonable bid?”

“Sure,” I answered with a certainty I didn't feel, “I'm sure we can manage.”

His face vanished with an evil-looking smile and we pinged receiving a file which I didn't bother to open.

“Okay, so, like, you totes know the clan customs just fine, we all do,” Pants began, “What was that all about?”

“Buying enough time to get the word out and make sure we're set up,” I answered, “And getting a chance to talk to the others so we all have a plan in mind and work together.”

“Um. . .” Pants started in.

“Just get Friday and Grizzly on the phone, please,” I interrupted while Pants was still doing whatever passed for thinking in her head, “And Rabbit, send a Sea Spider to this point,” I told her, marking the position.

While the Sea Spider was on the move I got the platoon heads on the line, Rabbit, Grizzly, and Friday split three ways on the holoview.

“Okay,” I began, “We've got maybe a touch over an hour before the clanners arrive and I have to answer their challenge,” I started. “I have a sort-of plan put together but I want your input before we move forward further.”

“We're the F*^#in' challenged party,” Grizzly's promptly spoke up, “We get the F$%&in' choice of contests under their stupid A$# rules, pick some B&*^S&#@ like a video game and we win.”

I paused just a moment to see who'd answer that staggeringly bad idea.

“I disagree,” I finally said when it was clear nobody else would, “Clanners can be notoriously sore losers and this guy's come an easy hundred light years outside his clan's normal stomping grounds, he won't want to do that and just walk away empty-handed. I don't want to antagonize him any more than we have to.”

“Good thinking,” Friday nodded thoughtfully, ”In addition, their star maps are of no real value to us so winning shouldn't be our primary goal. Our focus has to be on not getting caught, not winning a fight we don't need to.”

“Well F@^#, I hate losing,” Grizzly grumped.

“I don't really care myself,” Rabbit finally spoke up, “I just want us to get this done with as few casualties as possible, let's get all our sisters home alive.”

“Well said,” I agreed, and Friday nodded as well, “So here's my plan, first I need to know what troops we have available. Specifically, are there any mechwarrior trainees among us or are they all on the JumpShip?”

“Mostly because we need a 'mech, the clanners aren't going to be interested in fighting barely armed cargo subs, and they respect mechwarriors above all others.”

“Fish was one of Blammo's trainees, she's in one of the Sea Ponies,” Rabbit answered me, “She's halfway decent, good shot on missiles anyway.”

“But we don't have a 'mech for her to pilot, the Spider's back on the JumpShip. . . if it's still intact,” Pants interrupted rudely.

“I don't know what you're talking about, we've got two 'mechs.” I told her with a cheerfulness I didn't feel, “We just have to figure out how to get the current pilots out.”

Pants followed my eyes as I marked two positions on the map, ID'ing the Hunchback still sitting on the beach, and the Thorn just a bit further into the water looking lost and alone. Pants was mumbling something from the side, but I ignored her.

“So. . . how's that going to work?” Rabbit finally asked after a moment.

“Well, first that Sea Spider needs to surface over there and fire off some flares to draw it's attention,” I said, pointing to the one I'd sent away, “Then Friday's troops can ambush it from behind. A Hunchback doesn't have any anti-infantry gear. Friday, what are your odds of taking it from behind?”

“I'd say probably nine in ten we take it, maybe fifty/fifty we don't lose anybody doing it. Depends on if they eject or not, if they do we might not be able to get the cockpit restored fast enough to fight.” Friday answered stolidly.

“Okay, all your girls are humanoid enough that they won't raise eyebrows in their armor?” I was pretty sure since we used the same space suit armor for them all but I didn't want to find out the hard way I'd missed one.

“Right, okay then, as soon as the commandos are in position signal the Sea Spider to stage a distraction. Now, Rabbit,” I turned slightly, “The Thorn is going to be trickier, it's tricked out with long-range torpedoes and if a sub gets anywhere near it we're going to lose a lot of good girls. I'm thinking-”

“Okay done,” Pants interrupted again.

“What's done?” I asked dumbly.

“The Thorn, she's surrendered, I talked her into it,” Pants told me proudly.


“What the F%^&?” Grizzly asked, echoing the same thoughts we were all having.

“Okay. . . what terms did you offer?” I asked suspiciously, because I knew Pants. It was either going to be great or horrible, she never did anything by halves.

“I promised we wouldn't eat her.”

....

“What the hell did you say to her?” I asked.

“The F$%^& is wrong with her?” Grizzly spat while I was still speaking.

“I'm not sure how to respond to that,” Friday admitted at the same moment.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Chapter 3
Planet Mongkut 3.5, Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

Pants' attempt to duplicate her trick on the Hunchback failed so we defaulted back to my plan. The ambush against the Hunchback went well. Pretty much exactly as planned, the Sea Spider surfaced and started firing signal flares into the air a bit outside cannon range, while the Hunchback was still pacing the island. This got the pilot's attention and Friday led a charge across the beach to it while the Hunchback pilot was still looking at the surfaced sub. The space suits had a halfway decent stealth package, the best we could build, and within a few moments, the Space Commandos were swarming up the legs. By the time he reacted Friday's lead demo team was already up to the head. A burning bar to the cockpit hatch opened up a hole, and he suffocated in the poisonous atmosphere within a minute or two. No casualties, perfect strike.

I felt kind of bad for him. his last few minutes must have been hell, knowing his comrades had abandoned him, he was trapped on a tiny island surrounded by bombs and enemies, and there was absolutely no way out at all. I couldn't imagine a more stressful situation. Then I remembered he was a pirate and slaver, and got over it.

Twenty minutes of waiting later a Sea Spider beached itself and disgorged the best we had available for a 'mech astech. I had to really thank our parent's sense of preservation and care for how much it was saving my hide today, normal practice was to make sure every vital job had several apprentices or understudies and make sure they were separated during operations so that we couldn't lose everybody in a vital job position in one incident.

Thus I had a backup MechWarrior, and backup astechs available in a situation nobody could have seen coming. I would not have brought them on my own initiative, something to remember next time.

Pharaoh was an Elf with. . . actually she looked absolutely nothing like anything I'd associate with a Pharaoh. She was a wood elf with fluffy green hair in a pixie cut, green slit eyes, and walnut brown skin along with ears that stuck out six inches from the sides of her head. I got no idea where she got her name but there was a notable Egyptophile clique among us so probably an in-joke.

“We can get it,” she finally finished, “But the effort's going to be a pain and the system is locked down. We've got the neurohelmet off the dead pilot, but I don't have a proper code-breaker with me so we won't be able to make it fight until we can get some replacements,” she explained matter of factly.

“Alright. . . at least we have the Thorn. Can you see about rigging up some winches to get it away from the landing pad? We don't need it taking more damage from the thruster exhaust on that JumpShip.”

“Oh we can do better than that,” Pharaoh answered dismissively, “We can put it in maintenance mode and it'll walk, just not fire its weapons. Take a day or two to crack the neurohelmet security so we can use it like a real 'mech, though.”

“Ah, well great then. That's all we need,” I said, suddenly much more cheerful. That would be a great help.

“Uh, you realize without weapons it won't do a thing to the clanners?”

“Doesn't matter, I can bid it away which makes us look good,” I told her smugly.

The next half hour passed swiftly, for people who weren't me. Pants kept communications running and I coordinated movements as Grizzly disabled and recovered the mines from around the landing pad. Meanwhile, we got the terrified pilot out of the Thorn and Pharaoh reset its security systems so that Fish could pilot it.

With that covered, Pants and I decided to eat a bit, grabbing a couple of bricks of freeze-dried yeast and some water. It wasn't tasty but food was always scarce for us and yeast was easy to grow in abundance.



Fish was a brave monster girl. She knew full well she was going to die, that's just how clanners rolled. But she was going to die for the rest of us, to save her people and her sisters, so that nobody else would die today.

I hoped I'd be as accepting and calm when my time came. She spent about twenty minutes putting the Thorn through its paces, getting familiar with the systems, and then retreated to spend her last hour with her sisters.

Naturally, having things go right didn't sit well with the universe and that's when disaster struck.

“Signal from the mining base!” Pant's suddenly shouted, spraying yeast crumbs in my ear as she toggled the communications system. A scared gargoyle appeared.

“This is Treadmill, we're under attack, multiple torpedo impacts and we're taking on water! We've taken out the attacker but virtually every level is flooded and-”

“Signal lost,” Pants reported dully.

There'd been a second Manta, intact but sunk, we'd thought. Once we'd quit paying attention the attack sub had pulled away and headed for our mining base. And now the base was gone.

“Pants!” I snapped out immediately, “Dispatch the subs carrying Grizzly's Sappers at flank speed, there may still be survivors even if communications are down. Tell her the situation.”

Grizzly wasn't trained for SAR, at all, but she was what I had available and ready to go, and the mermaid sappers could hold their breath for thirty minutes straight, a valuable thing in a flooded base operation. But the hardware was probably all gone. . . along with 99% of our food and fresh water supplies, I suddenly realized. Suddenly feeling much hungrier since my biology can be quite spiteful to my brain, I carefully wrapped up what was left of my yeast bar and put it in the locker.

I didn't have a plan, couldn't really think of one now. I wasn't sure how to get out of this one. We needed food. We monstergirls needed more than baseline humans, a lot more. We couldn't survive the two weeks it would take the DropShips to get here (best time) on 1% rations. We'd starve in days.

In short we were in real trouble and there was just no way out.

“Bear Ribs, what are we going to do?” Pants asked me softly.

I steepled my fingers and concentrated a moment. “We're going to deal with the clanners first. Then I'll worry about food afterwards,” I told her. It's something I'm good at, ignoring distractions until the current emergency is dealt with.

“But. . .”

“No buts,” I told her firmly. “You can look into it, page the techs and see if we've got anybody who's got experience on the yeast vats, see if they have any ideas. And tell Grizzly to see what can be recovered, at least some of the rations should be in sealed containers that might have survived. And then leave me alone, I've got a more immediate problem right now.”

Pants looked taken aback by this, “Okay,” she said quietly.

It wasn't long after Pants got the word out that the various tech groups that the Nova Cat dropship landed, huge and impressive compared to the bandit Lion, which itself was several times larger than our own ancient ones. Within a few minutes of landing a group of suited technician caste had emerged and made things secure, and the clanners began to unload 'mechs.

They were impressive ones, too. Compared to the bandits these 'mechs were shiny, painted, cared for; lacking the ugly spot welds and obvious patch jobs holding the bandit 'mechs together. Three rows of 15 'mechs stood in a parade formation, ranging from a light 20 ton Jenner IIC to a massive 60 ton Mad Dog. Each one was painted in Nova Cat colors with a snarling cat face on the shoulder and they stood in a perfect formation next to the boat ramp.

It was intimidating to say the least, and it was with some trepidation that I had Pants open a channel to Star Captain Ulrich again.

“Well met,” he told me politely, “I trust you are prepared to respond to my Batchall now?” Straight to the point. Well then.

“I am,” I answered with more force and determination than I felt, “I, Bear Ribs, accept your Batchall. The condition will be augmented, the field of battle underwater at the base of this island's loading ramp. I bid the following forces: 1 Hunchback, 1 Thorn, and two points of ultralight submarines.”

This was too much for him and he actually giggled at me, “You captured those 'mechs less than an hour ago and already you are bidding them with green pilots. I salute your audacity, Bear Ribs. But. . . two points of submarines?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Pants, send the specs please,” I requested, “I'm of the opinion that one submarine can be taken as a rough equivalent of one elemental.”

He glanced offscreen to one of his own officers and the nodded. “I accept your assessment,” he said cheerfully, “But you have bid 4 points, 5 is standard.”

“Can't bid what I don't have,” I admitted.

“Ah, well then, I will defeat your forces with only a Fire Moth and a Viper, and no vehicles,” he countered.

“Then I shall bid away the Hunchback, and take you on with only the Thorn and the submarines,” I countered as planned.

“I have the utmost confidence in my mechwarriors. I need no Viper and will defeat you with only the Fire Moth,” he gave me a cheerful smile.

I raised an eyebrow at him, “I too believe my pilot to be skilled, Fish will take your Fire Moth without the assistance of any Submarines.”

At this point negotiations changed slightly. Since it was now one on one, our pilots would bid for themselves so Fish was patched in, along with the Fire Moth's MechWarrior, a gothic looking woman with pale skin, hair the color of charcoal, and a twisted burn mark on one cheek.

“I am Fish, mechwarrior of the Thorn,” Fish said. Kind of unnecessary but protocol.

“I am Samantha, mechwarrior of the Fire Moth, and I say your skills are trash to mine,” the goth girl opened up, “I bid away my lasers and will defeat you with only my missile launchers.”

There was a really long pause and I pinched the bridge of my nose. Ulrich looked like he was barely containing hysterical laughter.

“I'm almost tempted to allow that because I want to win,” I finally interjected, lying when I realized Fish was going to go for it, “But unless the clan's technology has changed dramatically, your missile launchers will not fire underwater. You're literally bidding away the only weapons you have. Unless you plan to punch the Thorn to death.”

Samantha managed to turn even paler, then blushed red. Striking in melee was considered gauche and a violation of normal clan behavior. On the other hand, she was acting like an idiot. I couldn't afford to be too meek and unwarriorlike.

“Then. . .”

“Let it stand,” I suggested, “You're already bidding away all your missiles just by walking into the water.”

There was a pause as both Ulrich and Samantha considered.

“Agreed, Bargained-” Samantha finally answered, but Ulrich interrupted before she could finish.

“There is one other slight matter before we begin,” he began, “You see, you chose an underwater venue as is your right. However, as I lack submarines, my warriors cannot join the circle of equals and observe the battle. Consequently, you are obligated to allow my warriors onto your non-combatants in order that the circle may be maintained. . .” the devilish grin he had suggested that somehow this was a win for him though I had no idea why.

“Ah, just a moment please,” I muted, then froze the video and for a brief moment, emulated Grizzly's normal speech patterns before getting myself under control.

“Pants, we need all the inhumanoid monsters-”

“Like, on it already!” Pants countered me. And she was, literally using one set of vocal cords to talk to me while her second set were issuing orders over the radio.

“Right, okay, good,” this was so not good. I was past playing with fire and deep into playing with lava here. I put Ulrich back on.

“Most of the submarines are full, I'll need a short amount of time to move around my people so that your warriors can have a seat, but your terms are acceptable,” I finally said with a big fake smile on my face.

“Certainly. Bargained well and done,” he told me.

“Bargained well and done,” I agreed dully.

A flurry of activity followed as we moved our people around. We actually had plenty of room, the problem was, y'know, species. Elves and succubi could pretend to be humans with a hat to cover their ears and horns, and cyclops could pull it off with an eye-concealing helmet. Golems were more of a problem, they looked like a suit of armor but the fact that they had human proportions would make any person with the slightest spatial recognition wonder how the heck a human being was fitted inside a suit that was. . . well, human-sized. The armor would have to be paper thin and the current state of battlefield technology didn't allow for that. They could wear a second suit but they had to keep their mechanical heads completely under wraps. Wyverns, gargoyles, and mermaids were right out, there was just plain no mistaking them for humans.

A whirlwind of docking and swapping people followed as the pilots ensured several Sea Spiders had adequate space and none of the more. . . monstrous looking monster girls on board.

Eventually, it was done, and time to bite the bullet. Half a dozen Sea Spiders pulled themselves onto the beach, the clanner representatives climbed in through the airlocks, and we formed a rough circle around the two 'mechs. There was a burst of whiteness as the Sea Spiders turned dozens of floodlights onto the surface, and the circle of equals was complete.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Interlude: Unhappy as Clam

Spoiler: Battle Music: Last Goodbye

Interlude: Unhappy as Clam

Clam wasn't happy. This wasn't usual at all, she was normally so cheerful and saw the good side in everything that her sisters had named her, (Happy as a) Clam.

The source of her unhappiness was the Nova Cat MechWarrior squeezed into the seat next to her, who was entirely too talkative and kept eating snacks in the cockpit, spreading crumbs on her clean instrument panel, and raising Clam's stress level.

“So,” munch munch, “You are an actual combat pilot quiaff?”

“Uh. . .” Clam struggled to remember the clan protocol. Never use a contraction unless you were a warrior caste and then only their approved contractions. Quiaff was. . . query-affirmative? Yeah that was it. “I am,” she answered. The approved response was 'Aff' but she wasn't sure if that was allowed for any warrior or only clan warrior caste.

“Excellent, so much better to be with a real warrior. I pity the others who are stuck with some technician or laborer to talk to instead. It must be torture for my sibko.” munch munch.

“Yeah. . .” Clam said weakly, wishing the MechWarrior would shut up, or at least only talk or eat at any given moment. “It looks like they're ready.”

“Indeed, this will be an interesting battle,” crumbs sprayed against the side of Clam's helmet. She wiped at it but it was futile without taking it off and she wasn't doing that.

Clam resolved to grow her horns out. Some succubi liked being a coat rack and let their horns grow long and pointed. Others felt it was good to be able to disguise themselves as a human, and filed their horns skin-close to be a hat rack instead. Clam had been of the latter opinion and look where it got her, the coat rack succubi all got to be away from the clanners and she had to put up with this.

The Thorn and the Fire Moth began to close in. . . at the speed of a woman pushing a stroller and window shopping. Clam was mildly amused at how they flailed in the water compared to a dedicated sub.

“Oh come on!” the clanner complained, “Is this a fight or a funeral? I have seen surats move faster than this-in their sleep!”

“Battlemechs that aren't made for underwater combat are no good at moving there,” Clam explained. The clanner gave her a dirty look and she realized belatedly she'd used a contraction. She wished she could just not have to talk to the Mechwarrior.

Clam decided to ignore the clanner and watch the fight. In the light of the many searchlights, Fish managed to clumsily get a foot stuck in the thick mud, then fell flat on her face. A big cloud of disturbed mud obscured the Thorn from view. It took nearly a minute for her to stand up again.

“But what is the point then? This is more boring than listening to a technician lecture about data transfer protocols,” the clanner complained, “It's going to take them an hour just to get into firing range.”

“No,” Clam disagreed, “The Thorn has a torpedo launcher. She'll be able to fire in just a few more moments.”

True to her words, a moment later there was a burst of bubbles as forced air shot a cluster of five torpedoes out of the Thorn's launcher that sped across the waters towards the Fire Moth. . . then passed by and exploded a larger cloud of mud.

“Yeah, I can feel the excitement,” the MechWarrior grumped, “Well, that is some nice ink you have. The mark of your point perhaps?” munch munch.

“Huh?” Clam asked, confused by the sudden change of conversation.

“Your tattoo, I'd love to know how you get it to glow like that. Is it like a UV ink?” the MechWarrior clarified, and reached over and ran his fingers over the geometric design on Clam's arm.

The succubus was slightly startled and pulled away from the touch, hoping the tattoo didn't move. Her control over her chromatophores wasn't as impressive as some succubi so she settled for a simple glowing geometric design instead of trying for something stupidly complex. And if she was surprised, such as by suddenly being grabbed by her worse enemy she was trying to ignore, the ink might move.

“Maybe you wish to see mine?” the MechWarrior asked with a broad grin before opening his shirt. Across his broad chest was a dog or wolf jumping out of a tornado of fire. Underneath was a row of numbers. “Part of the Blazeyot Star,” he said proudly. “These numbers show which Nova, Cluster and Galaxy I am part of. Yours does not have that, is it because your group is too small to need it?”

“Ah. . . yeah.”

“You have got some muscles on your girl, I like that,” the clanner continued, rubbing her arm and feeling where her ink covered her biceps. Clam tried hard not to flinch away, “You must train a lot. You know, you could actually make good warrior material. You could be more than a surat in a tiny float on the edge of nowhere.”

Clam had thought she was uncomfortable before. She was wrong, she now realized. Getting crumbs sprayed all over her face was heaven compared to having a horny clan MechWarrior courting her.

“Our Star Captain is very good,” he continued, “He respects all his warriors, freeborn and trueborn alike. All he asks is your best. You could really be somebody, at least not be a starving peasant cowering-”

“Ah, looks like there's some action again,” she said hastily, hoping to distract her would-be suitor.

In the window, the Thorn was back up and continued to close slowly with the Fire Moth. It let loose another barrage of torpedoes and a couple hit at the closer range, denting the Fire Moth's armor across one of its heavily upraised arms, but inflicted no serious damage.

The Fire Moth for its part continued to try to close in, hampered by the water. A sudden line of bubbles appeared as the Thorn tried a shot with it's lasers, instantly boiling the water out of its path. Ten seconds later Fish tried the torpedoes again and got three peppering hits across the Fire Moth's torso.

“Fish's doing really well,” Clam volunteered, hoping to change the uncomfortable subject.

“Neg,” the MechWarrior disagreed, “Samantha will take her down. Your pilot is actually barely passable considering her handicaps, but she has been in her 'mech for all of ten minutes and it shows in how clumsy she is and how badly she is moving. I would bet whatever trainer you used didn't use foot pedals in its control scheme-” oh, thought Clam, if you only knew the real problem, “-because she is clearly no good at using them. She has a huge range advantage with those torpedoes but she can barely control her movements and she wasted her advantage getting close. Samantha is going to take her apart as soon as she gets in range and considering she is using half her tonnage, it is a deeply impressive victory. Samantha will garner much honor from this”

True to his words, Fish managed to land a hit with her laser before the other 'mech could get close then slipped in the mud again. The Fire Moth closed in and raked. . . a patch of mud next to her rather than hitting the downed 'mech with her lasers, making the water boil. Plumes of hot water rose off its heat sinks and the mud swirled, making it almost impossible to see what was going on. But the Fire Moth backed off out of the cloud.

“What. . . why didn't she finish Fish off?” Clam asked, quite confused.

“Showoff,” the MechWarrior snorted, “She is drawing out the fight to show how superior she is, and not taking any easy shots when your pilot is down. Making sport out of it.”

Fish managed to right the Thorn and clamber out of the mud cloud but the Fire Moth was waiting, and raked her again and again with its lasers. The water boiled, bits of metal melted off only to freeze again as a rain of metal fragments drifting lazily through the muddy waters, and suddenly the Thorn's arm burst and released a cloud of steam as systems failed and water flooded the internal compartments. Fish landed a couple hits of her own but the Fire Moth was faster and far more maneuverable, and within a moment her other arm was cut off. A few more surgical strikes to the leg and Fish was down in the mud and struggling to rise with no arms and one leg.

“Enough!” Bear Ribs' authoritative voice came over the comm system, startling both of them. Clam was intensely grateful because it took the clanner's hand off her arm, “We concede the match, well fought, Mechwarriors.”

The face of Star Captain Ulrich appeared on the comms as well, where he was also eating some kind of ration bar, “Well met and well fought,” he agreed, “I will have my scientist caste contact your comms for a transmission channel. I believe that concludes our business here, so we will depart once we get our warriors back. . . unless you have anything to add?” he asked suddenly and intensely. Clam felt the hair on the back of her neck raise.

“Did you happen to see what happened to our JumpShips?” Bear Ribs asked, her face suggesting she was plotting something.

“As it happens, we were already in-system when those bandits jumped in. They damaged one of your DropShips, a Tramp, but it and the others docked with your JumpShips and fled. Not very brave of them.”

“Would you consider trading with us?” Bear Ribs asked hopefully.

Ulrich just smiled lightly and shook his head, “You keep mistaking me for a Diamond Shark,” he answered with some amusement, “I'm a warrior, not a merchant.”

“Well then. . . I propose a second batchall?” Bear Ribs suddenly asked, and Clam had a horrible feeling as the world dropped out from under her. They'd won everything, survived a nightmare situation, everything was fine and now Bear Ribs was ruining it like an idiot running a risk of getting caught out again for no reason.

“It is not protocol to simply challenge over and over again but it has been a long trip and a little more battle will not go amiss. Name your wager.”

“I wager 100 kilograms of germanium against 100 tons of your combat rations,” Bear Ribs told him firmly.

The Star Captain smirked at her and it felt to Clam like, somehow, he'd just won a major concession but she didn't know why. This entire situation made no sense, what was she missing? The MechWarrior next to her was tense.

“Very well. The contest shall be unaugmented, a test of strength alone! Arm wrestling,” he told her, “I bid myself alone, and I do hope you will do me the honor of bidding yourself as well, it would make me very happy to make it a test of one commander against another.”

“Well, this shall be interesting. I need to use your refresher,” the clanner said to Clam's horrified dropped jaw, before stepping into the head squeezed behind the seats. Clam took a moment to get control of herself now that the unwanted presence was temporarily gone.

It was a horrible day with one nightmare after another. Even after dropping her guest off on the beach and getting a small chance to relax, Clam was still stressed knowing that, for whatever stupid reason, Bear Ribs had decided to think with her stomach and risk all their lives for snacks.

Adding insult to injury, when Clam went to brush her hair in hopes of relaxing herself, her idiot sister had taken the hairbrush when she left, and Clam was left to do nothing but stew in her own annoyance.

Clam was not happy.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Chapter 4

I paused a moment. Pants was hyperventilating. Rabbit looked over her shoulder at me like I was insane.

I probably was. If our tribe had jumped out, they'd need a week to recharge their KF drives before they could return, and another week to fly the dropships to us, with at best a few days cut off. We needed two weeks of food to survive, minimum, and we had a day's worth. Seeing Ulrich eating made me realize there was only one source of food on the entire planet, their clanner combat rations.

Given that we had about a snowball's chance on Venus of actually raiding them, the crazy option of challenging them for it occurred to me.

That said now we had to win. Fish had lost the 'mech fight but I didn't care, she'd made a decent show and she was still alive so we were ahead of where I'd expected, it was a good loss. But now, we had to win. I'd hoped he'd pick something we could win at, show a little mercy towards the weak.

And he. . . kinda had. Of course, I hadn't expected he'd try to trap me into going in person, I'd been expecting maybe a footrace or fistfight I could send an elf for. One look at my tail and my wings and they'd go exterminatus on us faster than an Angry Marine at a Heretics of the Galaxy Convention.

“Will you guarantee our safety?” I asked, “Regardless of who I am, once the contest is finished, all of us are left in peace?”

He smiled widely, opening his mouth in a very thin grin, “I swear it upon my very bloodline, Lady. You need not have any worries on that front. I was already in this system earlier you know, I wish to test my strength against yours, against the very best.”

Well.

“I accept your terms. I trust you have a suitable. . . location at your DropShip? There isn't enough room here.”

“I do. I will supply a scientist who will inspect each of us for cybernetics to affirm that this is a test of muscle alone, and you may inspect the table before beginning if you wish.”

Okay, then, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I was going to do something completely, utterly, mad because it was a choice between rolling the dice and hoping for a natural 20, or not rolling and starving to death.

“No need, you have proven quite honorable in your dealings. I accept your conditions. Bargained well and done.”

He smiled brilliantly, “Bargained well and done.” He echoed.

Rabbit stared at me openmouthed as I pondered a moment, “Bear Ribs. . . what have you done?” she asked softly, “You can't possibly think they won't kill us all, why would you do this?”

“Be quiet, we don't have much time,” I told her. I glanced at Rabbit a moment. “Strip.”

“Pardon?” she asked, giving me the evil eye.

“Get your clothes off, you and your whole crew. You too Pants, you have a sewing kit in your pouch don't you?”

Pants was a bit of a packrat and usually had odds and ends like that.

“I like the way you think!” Pants said happily, “An orgy before we all die! Although you're my sister so that makes it weird.”

“Quit being an idiot,” I told her, “We're going to make a hoopskirt big enough for me to hide my tail in.”

Pants paused with her shirt halfway off, “The orgy totes had a better chance of success,” she decided.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said sourly

“You know,” Pants told me worriedly as as she pulled out a needle and thread and we began tearing the crew's clothes apart. “I could probably shift my face enough to look a lot like you. He's only seen you in a tridee hologram and only your face. You know all I need is a scarf and I'll look totes like you as a human.”

“I know you're good Pants,” I told my sister as she fidgeted, “And I really appreciate you offering to go. You're a good sister, and a good friend.”

She brightened a little, “Then-”

“But your hair is about two feet too short to be mine,” I pointed out. She looked down and blushed as her tail swished back and forth. “Plus if you start to struggle with him you might lose control over your morph and ink, you know that can happen. Yeah. I've got this, don't worry. Friday's going to be with me.”

Thirty minutes later we were close enough for me to take a dingy ashore. My back ached horribly, due to about half a pound of surgical tape strapping my wings to my ass tight enough they wouldn't move. My hoopskirt, put together quickly from scrap wire, flared a meter's radius in all directions from my body and still barely covered my tail. A bride-like train trailed a bit more behind in case my tailtip lagged. The need to “walk” without letting my tail slither behind me meant I was moving at the speed of an octogenarian. . . with arthritis. . . who'd suffered the long-term effects of foot-binding.

“It's fine,” Friday told me comfortingly, stolid behind her mirrored mask, “If you get caught out, I want you to fall flat on your face and cover your head. Don't try to draw and shoot in the ridiculous getup, just let my team handle it.”

“You can't really think you'll take an entire Union with one squad,” I muttered under my breath. Could she? Or was Friday really that good?

“We'll do a hell of a lot better than we would against those 'mechs outside, and we might as well take a few clanners with us,” she misquoted.

In truth, my gizzard was trying to climb up my throat and my stomach was tied in knots. I was so afraid of what was about to happen I made sure to empty my bladder in the head because. . . honestly if it got any worse I was going to have control issues. The clans hated my kind with the fiery hate of a thousand burning suns. If we weren't all about to starve to death I'd never have even considered it, but we were, so I was. At least I had Friday. Friday was always my rock.

The lifeboat ground onto the beach. I took a deep breath. This was it, now or never. I'd either die, with all of us, in the next minute or two, or we'd all be saved. There was no question I'd win if Ulrich played fair.

I clambered out of the lifeboat, looking carefully to keep the hoopskirt made of rags down to the ground so it would drag and cover my tail.

I had to ball up my tail to keep the airlock from closing on my tail and Friday and her troops had to cycle through afterward. I presented myself before the table and Ulrich gazed as I slid forward before him.

“Magnificent,” he finally said I came to a stop. “Finally somebody who understands. Though in the future, if you are to bid away your mobility by wearing a ridiculous dress, it's proper to mention that during the Batchall itself so your opponent has the chance to do the same.”

I inclined my head slightly and thanked the gods he apparently fell for it.

I inclined my head and tried to remember to be gracious to the people that could kill me in a second, while not being obsequious.

He inclined his head sardonically but said nothing. Next to me, two commandos carried in a chest and dropped it to the ground with a heavy clang, before opening the top and revealing ingots of half-melted germanium. A moment later a lab-coated scientist caste scanned the crate we'd brought. “Cobalt alloy container, contents are liquified germanium compounds, impurities sufficient to be safe for JumpShip operations, estimated 101.6 kilograms when purified. No explosives or electronics detected,” He said tonelessly.

They moved the chair provided for me away since I could not use it, and Ulrich sat down and presented his arm at the table. His mechwarriors and my commandos stepped forward and formed the circle of equals around us. I put my own arm on the table, and the scientist stepped forward and ran a scanner over my arm with what I felt was entirely too much attention considering all they really needed was a metal detector. Then it beeped a warning signal and I reconsidered.

“There is a cybernetic implant detected,” the scientist said, “Checking now.”

“I have a data interface in my neck, it does not affect my arms,” I countered.

“Interesting,” Ulrich said thoughtfully, as the scientist ran the scanner over my neck, “Some sort of replacement for a neurohelmet, Quiaff?”

“Similar,” I acknowledged.

“Unfortunate for me,” he said with a small smile, “Had I known you had such a thing, I would have asked for that instead of your submarines; but as we've agreed that this will be our last Batchall, I shall have to live knowing that I missed the mark this once. Perhaps the omens will smile and someday we shall meet again to Trial anew, who knows?”

Seriously was this guy a bard or something? For a moment I realized how utterly silly it was, that the survival of hundreds of my people were dependent on an arm wrestling contest. How droll, no wonder Ulrich found everything amusing. For me, though, this was life and death. I didn't understand why I wanted to laugh while my gizzard was trying to eat my throat and all my sisters were going to die if I misstepped.

“Perhaps, but a person who succeeded at everything, I think his life would be boring indeed,” I told him finally, channeling a bit of One Punch Man. “It's the challenge that gives life spice.”

“Confirmed,” the scientist said in his dull toneless way, “No cybernetics in the arm.”

He gave me a sardonic grin as the scientist ran the scanner over his own arm with way less attention than they'd paid to me, but I decided not to contest it. He had no implants.

Then his elbow was butted up to mine, his hand clenched in my fist, and the contest began.

I was stronger, I could tell at once. I outweighed him by a solid 300 kilos and even if arm wrestling wouldn't let me leverage that well, my tendons were thicker, my bones harder, and my muscles denser than his ever were. His wrist moved an inch, another.

Then he drove his nails deep into my hand and pain burst through my hands. I gasped and he gained a few inches over me. I was so startled he was even able to get his nails through my skin, it didn't cut nearly as easily as base human skin did but now blood was pouring down my wrist, making my grip slippery and letting him move my wrist closer to the table. I didn't bother to protest, I just clenched my own fist and felt the weaker bones of his hand creak under the power of mine, tore his skin with my own fingers, and went for brute force. He gritted his teeth in a rictus of pain and I snarled right back, and for a moment I looked into his eyes and saw things from his perspective, there was no GeneCaste, no Clans, nothing but two warriors, meeting, sweating, struggling, enduring. My warriors and his were shouting around us and I heard Friday's cheers, his Mechwarriors exhultation, but it didn't matter, we were a Viking and a Celt wrestling over too many beers, a Greek and a Barbarian establishing dominance, a Mongol and a Chinese warrior deciding who would prevail, the epitome of two brave fighters from different worlds, giving it their all, so different in outlook yet all the same when it came down to it. We struggled against each other. Blood flowed down our arms, our own, intermixed, and it was good as we both competed for glory.

Then the moment was gone. There was no glory here, and I remembered my perspective. I had a vision in my mind, the clearest I'd ever had. I saw Pants and Friday, my sisters starving to death before me. I saw them grow still and pale, felt their hands grow cold and slip out of my own, as their breath stopped from lack of food, and my resolve turned into iron. A power known only to the mad flowed from my core of strength down my arm like a cold chill, I saw recognition in Ulrich's face, and in that moment he could no more have pushed back my arm than he could have pushed over his DropShip. Cheers grew deafening from all sides and the back of his hand hit the table with a loud crack. I think I shattered some of the bones in his hand.

My mind came back to me and I let go of the death-grip on his hand, and slid back a step. His hand had pale fingermarks forced into the skin from the pressure and blood ran down his wrists. He looked at the table in disbelief for a moment, before gazing at me again. He smiled, and it turned into a bit of a grimace as he massaged his hand.

“Well met, Warrior,” He told me, “You have proven yourself worthy of victory. I, Star Captain Ulrich of the Nova Cats salute your bravery and strength.”

He gestured and a few rather huge fellows, washout elementals consigned to the laborer caste if I wasn't mistaken, began carrying crates out of the ship.

“One hundred and one, point six tons of combat rations,” he said with his eyes twinkling. “As soon as the unloading is complete, we shall be leaving. I shall, due to the. . . sensitivity of information concerning your presence, avoid any messaging via HPG. However such news will spread quickly once I reach Nova Cat territory. I suggest you leave as soon as you're able.” he paused as if thinking, “Oh, and one further matter, the pilot of the Thorn you captured indicated to my MechWarriors that she would prefer to be our prisoner rather than yours. For some reason the crazy woman believes you will eat her. I suppose there are fools everywhere, but I will retain her for clan justice if you do not need another mouth to feed.”

This offer came as a huge relief to me. I really hadn't wanted to execute somebody who'd surrendered, but we had zero ability to house prisoners and no resources to feed one either. We were always living on the ragged edge of resource exhaustion. Given that he'd already seen my wings I saw no reason to worry about the captured pilot spilling the beans.

“It is fine, and perhaps we will Trial again. Until then,” I told him formally, vowing that I was never going to do something as crazy and walk into a clan DropShip again.

The last Sea Spider pulled up to the beach and opened up its airlock. I saw the captured pilot emerge wearing a breathing mask. She was just a touch overweight, had dark skin with a surprising spray of freckles, glasses, red hair, and an impressive burning canine tattoo just peeking up over her collarbone. I knew I'd never see her again and forgot about her soon afterward.

So it was I gave up the pilot but not the 'mech and watched as the Clan Dropship lifted off with a palpable sense of weight lifting off my shoulders.

Against every odd, every possibility, we'd somehow come through simultaneous bandit and clan attacks with minimal losses. We'd made it.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Arc Epilogue
Two Weeks Later. . .
In orbit above Planet Mongkut 3.5, Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

The Odd Quad was reunited. Blammo had finally returned on the DropShip. The four of us stared intently at a tiny brown square in the center of the small galley table. Friday held a knife up a moment, and then brought it down. Pants flinched slightly.

None of us had ever eaten anything but yeast/algae rations before (ignoring memories from previous lifetimes). The need for food production that created a metric fuckton of calories in the smallest possible space, so as to fit on a DropShip, meant just one option: processed sewage was fed to algae which was fed to yeast which was fed to monstergirls. The combination gave us a complete diet that tasted like it could be cardboard if it was better seasoned.

Still, it kept us alive, and that was the important thing. In sixteen years none of us had access to any other food. Until now. The clan combat rations were, frankly, the most delicious thing any of us had eaten in the last sixteen years. More importantly, they weren't all the same thing.

Each pack had a dessert inside. The competition was fierce. Sixty two had vanished in the first fifteen minutes before I realized what was happening and confiscated them all before they were gone. I knew that if the DropShip came back, and the other four-thousand or so Monstergirls with our space forces found out we'd eaten it all, we'd be crucified. So Friday, Pants, and I had opened every last package and hid all the desserts in a container locked with three locks and each of us with the key to only one of them for temptation security reasons.

So here we were. My first taste of a brownie in 16 years, or about 900 years if you went subjective time (which only Pants did). Friday finished her careful tetrasection. I felt my lips press together.

Pants picked the first piece, inevitably, and carefully gathered up all the crumbs before stuffing the entire thing in her mouth. Blammo grabbed hers and did the same while I nibbled on my piece to make it last. Friday went last.

My mouth exploded with flavor as the dry, near-tasteless brownie slowly dissolved on my tongue. Pants was leaned back in her chair, tongue lolling out. I swallowed hard. It was unbelievably good.

“That was. . . alright I guess,” Blammo said in pretend-indifference, after taking nearly a minute to pull herself together while a trace of brownish drool ran out the corner of her mouth. Pants moaned. Friday was more restrained but, in fairness, a cyclops wouldn't get as much out of a brownie as the rest of us would. I hoped I didn't look as stupid as Pants and Blammo but, given the situation, I probably did.

Across our collective homes, the same dessert coma-fest was going on throughout. Monster girls everywhere were getting their first taste of real food, of the good life. This was what we were made for, what our goal was, to return to the inner sphere and get our people access to things like this. To get them all the time instead of once a decade.

From the perspective of us hundred or so survivors from the 21st century, that felt really really sad. A massive genetic engineering project spanning a century. . . to get at good food, soft toilet paper, and comfortable clothes.

And to get at not being killed on sight by the clans of course, couldn't forget that part. So in that sense maybe not so sad. Wars have been fought for stupider reasons, and we weren't planning on going to war. And honestly, is soft toilet paper and decent food really not worth fighting for?


The next day we got moving again. As the clanner had said, it was time to move on. We'd extracted the zinc we needed to replenish our nutrient supplies, laid in germanium to trade with in the unlikely event we ever met somebody friendly, and had a fine selection of rare-earth elements stashed for building stuff later.

All that was left was to salvage what we could of our construction projects and recycle the metal into new projects. Blammo and I stood on the shore of our landing pad while a set of winches whined and tugged. Flotation buoys a few hundred yards offshore began to move towards us.

“Hard to believe it worked out this well,” Blammo finally said, “I don't think we've ever met a clanner that willing to be fair.”

“Yeah, if they were all as honest as Ulrich we'd be able to live safely in this part of the universe,” I said softly. The buoys reached shore and a crane began to haul in our catch.

“It would only take one bad apple though, and there's always at least one,” Blammo disagreed, “But at least we made a great profit out of this situation,”

The water churned and the shape of the wrecked Catapult came out of the water, and we placed it next to the wrecked Thorn and intact Hunchback.

“Profit indeed,” I agreed, “We got what we came for and then some.”

 

[Bear Ribs]

Monkut Aftermath
En Route to Nadir Jump Point, Monkut System
Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

Two days later I was noddle-balled in our “senate” which served for the pathetic excuse for governance we Monster Girls had. Bear in mind, my quad (along with 71 others) were the oldest existing monster girls. And we were sixteen (going on sixty if you counted our previous lives).

Very technically we were self-governing though our parents actually did the heavy lifting still, both for reasons of maturity and reasons of not having enough monster girls to actually run things properly yet. We had 72 iron wombs that each could gestate 4 monster girls at a time producing our quad sister groups, which meant that each generation of 288 Monster girls was a year younger than the previous one. Most of us were painfully young (Only two generations were out of our equivalent of middle school), so while technically we ran ourselves our parents equally technically laid a smack down on our stupider ideas and kindly redirected us to better plans.

That left us a bit short of people even though our parents were doing all the heavy lifting of raising the 3000 or so monster girls who were still essentially schoolgirls. So whatever we decided would be looked over and approved by them before we moved forward. That said, I appreciated the veneer of self-governance and I appreciated that even if we were the junior varsity of organizations, the practice probably didn't hurt.

We had a “senate” of 16, 8 voting members representing 8 major blocks of operations, and their 8 aides who were there to assist and did not vote. Very technically I was chairmonster of the group and technically we used parliamentary procedure, but that was mostly an honorary process, and with only eight voting monsters (plus our Aides, mine was Pants) in the meeting we were more of an informal discussion than a serious parliament.

First off was the cool part, discussing the spoils of war.

“So, these 'mechs were trashed even before they landed,” Pharaoh began after I recognized her, “The armor is patches on top of patches, the structure is full of weak points and spot welds, and the ammo bins were nearly empty. I'd say those bandits were counting on intimidation more than actual combat power.”

“Well it sure worked,” Pants said cheerfully, and Blammo glowered at her.

“Will you be able to get them fixed up?” I asked, ignoring their usual three-stooges byplay.

“The Thorn, probably not. It's got massive water damage in all of its limbs and leakage into the torso means the electronics are fried throughout. It'll need months of overhaul and we don't have nearly enough electronics to replace the entire computer system. Instead, I plan to cannibalize it for the few parts that are still good and use them to repair that broken down Wasp we've had mothballed since forever.”

I nodded at that, “Well we might be able to get the parts for the Thorn later, we should mothball it once you're done,” I suggested. I realized I was being a bit stupid a moment later, Pharaoh was no idiot and of course she'd save it, we'd been saving the Wasp since before I was born.

“Agreed,” Pharaoh said, kindly ignoring my gaffe beyond a pointed look, “The Catapult is in usable shape, aside from a blown leg. The electronics in that leg took some water damage but it broke at the joint so if we can machine up a new knee joint and replace the chips we should be fine, and we have enough electronics available for a single Catapult leg. It'll take a while but we have the shop and a working left leg to use as a pattern so it's just a matter of putting in the machinist time. As for the Hunchback, it's good to go, all we had to do was clean out the cockpit and replace the seating and some explosive bolts.”

“That's a serious boost to our firepower,” I said happily, “Big step up for you Blammo, going from a Spider to a Catapult.”

“Like hell,” Blammo disagreed acerbically, “Fish is the one who loves missiles so much, she's going in the Catapult. I'm taking the Hunchback for myself. That is one sexy, sexy gun on it.”

I paused. Pants opened her mouth to say something and I shook my head at her.

“That bad boy is Three-hundred-twenty-five millimeters. . .” Blammo said dreamily. This was really, really weird seeing the normal tough punk-rocker Blammo spacing out like a schoolgirl having her first crush. . . on a giant gun. I started to wonder just what was going through her mind before I stopped myself.

There's places you just don't go and ideas you don't explore if you value your sanity.

“So how hard is it going to be to keep them maintained?” I asked, turning back to Pharaoh and keeping one eye on Blammo, who's glazed over eyes suggested she was off in some kind of weird gun-porn fantasy.

“Well we're going to be short on basic integrated circuits and electronic parts after fixing the Catapult,” she began, “We probably need to use most of our factory's output to build replacement parts for a few weeks just to get them running. We also don't have the ability to make munitions that large without stopping for a few months to deploy a factory, so we're going to have to find a trading partner to sell us ammo, not an easy task. But we're flush on metals for now, and we need to jump well away from this godforsaken place anyway, I think it'll be good as far as the bodywork goes.”

“What about the Endosteel manufacturing station?” I asked, “How long would it take to get it operational and replace the structure on the 'mechs?”

“A new skeleton would be great, I already asked Lanky about that,” Pharaoh agreed, referring to our Wukong chief engineer on the JumpShip, “And we should totally do that. . . when we have about five months to wait around getting the station in working order again.”

“Oh,” I answered, a bit dismayed at that time frame. We hadn't had five months to spend safely in one spot. . . ever. Even here at the edge of clan space a patrol ship would usually happen by every six months or so and we couldn't trust that we'd be at the outer edge of that time frame.. It was critical to keep moving and only stop to gather a few resources and run.

“And do you have anything else to add?” I asked, bringing Pharaoh's part to a close.

“Yes, the Astechs are going to need more people,” Pharaoh suggested, “I have enough folks under me to keep the Spider running. That's going to turn into four 'mechs over the next year, most of them bigger and more maintenance intensive than the Spider though looking at it, the Catapult is going to be a joy to work on. There aren't enough of us to maintain them all. I move that we close the questioning section in regards to 'mechs,”

“I second the motion,” I said agreeably, quivering just a touch inside as my turn got closer, “A show of hands in favor?”

Pretty much everybody raised their hand, it wasn't exactly a hard question. “Motion passed, okay Astechs then. The next batch of monsters graduating high school is in about three months. Probably most of them have already been snatched up by Lanky to work on the ships but you might be able to recruit a few, I say we should let her. The next class is a year behind that, we can absolutely get more of them on the 'mech tech track before graduation. You'll probably have to do some retraining though.”

“A year's a long time to wait, those 'mechs won't fix themselves,” Pharoah complained.

I shrugged, “We've only got two fully trained MechWarriors anyway,” I pointed out, “Blammo, there's an apprentice too isn't there?”

“Yeah,” my sister answered, snapping out of her gun-induced haze, “Stampy's just getting started but she's not ready for combat yet, maybe in another few months.”

At the farther point of the table, a gargoyle, normally quite quiet, raised one hand for attention. It was the most movement I'd seen out of Nails in the entire meeting.

“Ah, the chair recognizes Nails,” I belatedly said. At some level I recognized that our informal approach to parliamentary procedure would bite us in the ass when we expanded and there were dozens of us arguing but right now it was faster to just go through the motions.

“One of my pilots, Robber, was signed up as a Mechwarrior apprentice before she realized she had a better chance of getting in an actual machine in the aerospace corps and switched over to my forces. She is, however, also qualified on a 'mech. She'd probably need some refresher courses but she can do it.”

I paused, “Okay I'm wrong,” I admitted, “We do have more Mechwarriors. Friday, how much of an advantage will our ground forces have if we concentrate on getting the 'mechs running as soon as possible?” I could have asked Blammo, but she, being a Mechwarrior, was more likely prejudiced in favor of more 'mechs.

Friday pursed her lips and closed her eye as she considered, “Honestly it'd be light years ahead. My infantry can fight and win against a 'mech, just look at how Grizzly's Sappers took down the ones we have now, but that relies on having time to prepare, a bag of dirty tricks available, and a lot of luck. But 'mechs of our own can actually fight back even if we're the ones being ambushed. More than that, 'mechs command respect. Enemies that will attack us if they see infantry are more likely to back off if they see 'mechs.”

“Well then,” I said, “Based on Friday's analysis I think we need to get the 'mechs working sooner rather than later. All in favor?”

Pretty much every hand went up. I sighed, this was going to piss off Nails and I didn't really want that, “Okay then, we need more Astechs working on 'mechs. Nails, can you spare any from the Aerospace Astechs?”

Nails didn't move for a moment, then drummed her fingers once on the table as she thought it over. For the phlegmatic gargoyle, that was close to pacing the room in thought, “I have enough apprentices close to being full Astechs that. . . I could probably give up two without compromising maintenance on the fighters, as long as we don't run into combat before we get the next set of apprentices up to speed,” she decided reluctantly.

“Alright, that's a good start. Pharaoh you have three already, yes?”

“Me and Reata are the only full 'mech Astechs,” Pharaoh answered, “We've got one apprentice, Stripper, but she only just started her apprenticeship a month ago, she's nowhere near ready.”

“Hmm,” I hmmed, you typically needed two people to maintain a 'mech and about four times that to do repairs if you had a bay. “Okay, You can probably recruit one or two more from the current class. You can get with Lanky later and see if she has any apprentices to spare.”

“What about Khopesh's group?” Nails suggested, “They're off working on their big 'secret project' but there seems to be a lot of overlap with 'mechs given the supplies they've requisitioned. There's eight of them so that would give Pharaoh a big boost without looting Lanky or me of techs.”

“I'm not really in favor of that,” I argued, “We already gave them permission to move forward and I don't like yanking it back unless it's an emergency. Besides, they've been working on that project for almost a year, isn't their completion date estimate only two months away? I'd rather let them finish in hopes they really are building something useful, and then reassign them if it isn't.”

“I agree,” Friday said, “They've been requisitioning light hardware from my stores as well and I want to see if this new weapon is worth it.”

“Interesting, and they took some of our spare myomer cable a few months back,” Pharaoh noted. “I wonder if we could piece together what they're working on from their supplies?”

“Some ferro-fibrous we scavenged,” Friday began again, reading off her tablet, “Fuel Cell power plant, electronics, weapons and myomer. So they're building some kind of vehicle and it has a lot of moving parts and some small arms. Maybe a dune buggy, or a fast-track turret design?”

“Ahem,” I said as the discussion got underway, “Interesting as this is, that topic is not a part of today's meeting. Does anybody else have any suggestions for Astechs?"

"Swan Song?" Friday suggested hopefully.

Pharoah snorted, "Good luck prying her off that antique tank she takes care of. Swan Song's a hobbyist for old engines, she's happy where she is doing survey work as her day job."

Friday consulted her list, "Atomic Lotus?"

There was a brief moue of distaste from several of us. Monster Girls had weird naming conventions for sure. But though we all wound up using sort-of callsign type names, we'd didn't generally get cool ones. Except for Atomic Lotus, who had somehow managed to bull her way into demanding we call her that through sheer chuuni stubborness.

Nails didn't move but that didn't mean much, before finally raising her hand and speaking once recognized. "We can probably convince Atomic Lotus to work on 'mechs as long as we present it as something cool and amazing."

I nodded. "That will have to do then. As we have finished our discussion of Pharaoh's debriefing, it's time to discuss my own performance. As such I'm recusing myself as Chairmonster, and nominate Friday in my place.”

“I nominate Nails instead,” Pharaoh countered, “As a participant in that battle, Friday may have a skewed perspective. Additionally, she's your sister."

“Very well,” I said as calmly as I could. “All in favor of Friday? And Nails?”

Friday got only two votes (with me abstaining as I felt it was unfair) while Nails got four. Nails abstained as well.

“I stand recused,” I said more formally, “Please proceed Nails.”

This was the part I was dreading. Pharaoh had an easy task of listing her finds and the cool stuff we'd gained. I had the miserable task of having all my screwups and mistakes made pointed out. I knew it was necessary, but like having dental work done it sucked to actually do it.

Nails barely turned her head to look at me, and paused to think. I did the same and tried not to fidget, knowing it was a wasted effort. Nails could sit there motionless as a rock for longer than anybody I ever knew. She didn't even blink more than about once a minute normally. It was handy for an aerospace pilot, to be able to sit still for so long.

“Understood,” she finally began, “Then, I think we have all read Bear Rib's written after-action report?” Everybody but Pharaoh had. Which was understandable since she'd been working like crazy on her own report. “Very good. Now, you rejected the enemy's offer of complete surrender, I think we all agree that was the right choice?” a glance at the faces around the table showed it was so, “As to allocation of forces immediately after contact was made, why did you bring the unarmed submarines along with the armed models?”

“As a bluff,” I answered honestly, “I hoped they'd see only a large number of submarines and not realize most of them had no weapons.”

“Reasonable,” Nails said, “And in the initial confrontation you deployed mines at a critical choke point that proved highly effective, I see no reason for questioning on this matter as this is our normal combat doctrine and clearly the right choice given the results.”

So far so good.

“However shortly afterward a second DropShip, this one Clan, appeared. You contacted the commander yourself. Why?”

I startled slightly, the surprise kind of heavy on me. That wasn't something I'd seen coming at all. “Er, why not?” I asked, quite confused.

“You have an aide who's also an extremely proficient communications officer in the form of Pants. Communicating is literally her entire job and you decided to go ahead on your own instead. This was a failure to utilize your resources efficiently. One need only look at how Pants was able to talk the Thorn pilot into surrendering to see how effective she can be.”

I. . . had not thought of that at all. “I see your point,” I finally said. There really wasn't any response I could make.

“This led to further issues when you answered Ulrich's challenge directly yourself rather than sending a Proxy. Under the circumstances, I think this was likely the correct choice,” Nails said crisply, though the others clearly were mixed in opinion and not sure where this was going, “However circumstances could have gone very differently. Had you used Pants as an intermediary you could have sent another in your place pretending to be the commander instead of your ridiculous attempt to hide your tail under a jury-rigged bell dress. Very fortunately he was amused to learn you were GeneCaste and honorable enough to merely complete the challenge-”

“Wait what?” I interrupted.

Nails gave me a long-suffering look and blinked, which was the equivalent of a hysterical screaming fit from a normal person. “You didn't realize he knew? He was aware before you reached the beach. Did you fail to notice his comments about 'I know who you really are,' or 'testing his strength against the very best,' or 'news will spread quickly once I reach clan space?'” she asked acerbically.

I felt a leaden weight settle in my stomach and felt like a fool. I hadn't caught his blatant attempts at hinting at all. Now that Nails had laid it out for me, it was so obvious he might as well have been winking at me with each line and had subtitles saying “He Knows” at the bottom of the view screen but I honestly hadn't picked it up at the time.

“This leads to, again, using your forces more wisely. You are the commander, not the entire force. Command, and let your subordinates do the work.

“Lastly we have the issue of not moving to capture the Mantis class submarines when you had the chance. This failure cost us both the chance to salvage one of those submarines and our mining base along with thirteen Monster Girls who were killed in it's attack.”

It was a fair point. “Agreed.”

“Outside of this, I believe your performance was quite acceptable. Does anybody have any other issues to discuss in relation to Bear Rib's performance?”

“Well, I see it as a bit of issue that there was hardly any actual combat. A minefield did the heavy lifting in the first encounter with no shots fired back, and then there was a single 'mech duel. It seems weird to me that we're treating this as a combat situation at all,” Dr. Wow, proxy for our actual Minister of Medicine, protested.

It was her turn to get Nails' long-suffering look, it seemed. I had been wondering about her question myself a little. Friday raised a finger and Nails recognized her to speak.

“No,” Friday said firmly, “Combat is not about shooting the enemy, it is about accomplishing your goals when violence has become an option. In this case, Bear Ribs' goals were keeping her people alive and, secondarily, preserving the mining operation and it's yields. Bear Ribs' tactics involved keeping herself and her forces from being shot at as much as possible. The fact that few Monster Girls were shot means she mostly made good decisions. Even her extremely dubious choice to personally visit the enemy DropShip was entirely because that served her goal and, although I would have taken a different path, it was successful and thus hard to argue with.”

Nails paused and waited for anybody else to move. I wished we'd picked somebody else to chair, somebody who didn't think being motionless was a virtue. “Is there anything else?” she finally asked when it was blatantly obvious there was nothing else, “Very well, I believe Bear Ribs' initial action should be considered acceptable. The issues with her performance should be noted in the log but not taken as a demerit unless repeated in command situations. . .” Blammo seconded her, “. . . movement made and seconded. All in favor?” Most were in favor.

There were no further questions and I let the weight slide off my shoulders a little.

“Movement is passed. I move we proceed. Next on the agenda is a discussion of Friday's performance as lead of the infantry.” Nails continued. I seconded her. It was unanimous, I think we were all sick of it after so much time, and just wanted this over with.

Nails nodded and the next round of questions started up, this time putting my sister in the sights of Nails' statue-like stare.

I don't know how professional politicians do it, I hoped I'd never get there. I felt way more exhausted than after three days of combat command.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Interlude: What we came for.
En Route to Zenith Jump Point, Monkut System
Anti-Spinward and Coreward of Clan Space

Samantha strode through the meeting room with a datachip in one hand and an anger chip on one shoulder. The laborer caste who were painting over the obnoxious Nova Cat standard on the wall dashed hastily to one side as she snarled at them, knocking over a section of scaffold they'd been erecting.

Inside the medbay it was relatively quiet. Star Captain Ulrich sat on the bench while the inferior scientist caste worked on cleaning underneath the carbon-fiber razors attached to his fingernails, ignoring the bloody wounds in his palm for now. Next to him, several others were carefully using pipettes to get all the blood off the table and into specimen jars.

“My winnings. . . sir,” Samantha said, dropping the chip into his uninjured hand. Ulrich looked happily at it before dropping it into the waste bin next to him.

“Well done, MechWarrior,” he told her as if he hadn't just thrown her work and accomplishments in the trash, “This has been a most profitable trip.”

“I do not understand,” Samantha protested through clenched teeth, “We've flown hundreds of light years off course and repainted our entire force to get the plans for some rustbucket floats our techs could build in a day.”

“The plans are worthless,” he agreed as the scientist carefully wiped her forceps inside a test tube before sealing it, “I realize I have kept you and several others in the dark, but I assure you, your efforts have not been in vain, and be assured that due to your exceptional performance, the Blazeyots will have my recommendation to be removed from the ranks of the Dezgra.”

The scientist went on to begin disinfecting the nail marks in Ulrich's hand, as a line of clan warriors and techs walked in, and began delivering an array of hairbrushes, toothbrushes, and other simple grooming tools which were quickly labeled and bagged by the efficient scientists.

“Behold, the gains of your trial,” he told her. “I have already arranged for the records to reflect a much more difficult battle, you will gain a great deal of honor from this event although naturally you will need to keep quiet about the details. I suggest you examine the after-action report carefully so you can tell the same story when you are asked.”

“Hairbrushes?” she asked in disbelief, “Hand towels? Used tampons? You had me fight a battle so your snitches could steal sanitary supplies from some freebirth civilians on the edge of nowhere?”

She stood up formally, ready to challenge him to the circle of equals, for her own pride if nothing else, when he raised one hand and shushed her, and just like that she felt herself deflate from the force of his personality alone.

“The genetic material from dozens of their people, as far beyond us as our finest trueborns are beyond random pirate rabble. You just engaged in the first of what will likely be many battles against the newest generation of GeneCaste. Now we have a leg up on them, and they do not even know it.”

Samantha suddenly felt the need to wet her lips but her tongue had dried up like a stick in her mouth, “GeneCaste?” she asked weakly, remembering all the stories she'd heard in the sibko, all the tales of mutants and monsters with bizarre powers and impossible tricks, hiding in every corner. The comics and entertainment of heroes fighting and triumphing, the spirit of true men and the unquenchable human spirit winning over beasts that thought their inhuman twisting of their own flesh made them better. But hadn't those all been tales for children?

She looked at the array of items on the table. Labeled things like 'Shapeshifter,' or 'One Eye.' Ulrich's own test tube had 'Snakegirl' written on it.

Hand bandaged, Ulrich shrugged off his torn Nova Cat coat and a laborer brought his his proper Clan attire, and he pulled on the resplendent Clan Coyote uniform around his shoulders.

“Your efforts may have saved all the clans, Samantha. But certainly, the future of our people is safer now than it was a day ago.” With obvious satisfaction, Ulrich examined the tube of Snakegirl skin and blood a moment more. “Profit indeed, we got what we came for,” he said before handing it off to the head researcher.

“But... why did we not just kill them all?” Samantha asked, anger briefly forgotten and then suddenly remembered. “You just let GeneCaste get away! Stravag-”

“The GeneCaste have been sneaking around the edges of clan space since the glories of OPERATION: KLONDIKE,” Ulrich said, suddenly grown cold, “Historically they are feeble, honorless dogs stealing scraps and eating our garbage. They would never stand and fight us, they always ran away. Then, about twelve years ago, things changed. Never have they been willing to fight us in 'mechs, much less set foot on a clan DropShip, but now suddenly they are, as I predicted they even challenged us to a Batchall after their food supply was destroyed. If we just killed the ones on this planet, the survivors would scatter and we would not be able to predict where they are going. Right now, they are slowly moving around the edges of clan space, predicted to curl around us on the Coreward side and travel past the Veil of the Protector. We do not yet know where they will go past there/

“They have begun to migrate, and somehow are expertly flying to ancient battlefields, recovering wrecks, and zooming straight to caches we didn't even remember existing. They're doing something, going somewhere, they know something that we don't. We will not destroy them until we know whatever they have discovered and taken those secrets for ourselves.

Dr. Valien took the test tube of precious, precious genetic material from his Star Captain and smiled inwardly, keeping his face still as he worked. A veritable treasure trove of advanced genetic material, more than enough to both satisfy the chest-thumping idiots he supposedly worked for and still provide plenty of material to the Society's own operations.


“Profit indeed, we got what we came for and then some,” he echoed.

End Mongkut Arc​

Spoiler: Author's Note

Gotta give it to @The Whispering Monk, the sole person to figure out Ulrich's actual plan, though the blood was a target of opportunity compared to Clam's hairbrush which was the intended target. I was kinda surprised absolutely nobody batted an eye at the Nova Cats having dog tattoos, I honestly thought that was a much bigger clue.

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