Prologue
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
Crossposting from SB.
AN: Why should you read this? After all, there are several BT SIs out there right now. The short answer? The SI is clueless, since he is based on me before I got into Bruce Quest. Helm. What's that? New Dallas. Where? Never heard of it. BattleTech. Isn't that a tabletop game that wants to be Robotech?
If you want the longer version, well I hope this prologue will make my case.
Repair Depot Gamma, Sh-&$*#[Data corruption detected, location unrecoverable.]
Apollo Province, Rim Worlds Republic
4th J%$*&&[Data corruption detected, date unrecoverable.]
Jason Maxwell cursed as he carefully extracted himself from the left side-torso of the Mackie his crew had been working on for the past week. It was the first of the Assault-weight Militia Battlemechs that they’d worked on, and the theoretical refit their engineers had designed was proving somewhat problematic in practice. The primitive machine with its unfamiliar structure and clunky internals might have been a mainstay of the Hegemony, but the Mechs the Rim Worlds Republic had obtained for its Militia second- or third-hand were some of the first production models. And at more than two centuries old, they were showing their age.
“So what’s the verdict boss?” The inquiring voice that greeted him as he emerged belonged to brown-haired Anne Thompson. She served as his second for their shift, was well liked by the rest of the crew, and was probably his most intuitive tech. Part of that was sheer talent, but the rest was the fact that she’d been working on or around Battlemechs since she was a preteen, and she had the scars on her lithe frame to prove it. When he’d first met her, he’d assumed the angry-looking burn mark that covered most of her left cheek was just one more of those. He’d learned better.
House Amaris’s less-than-gentle touch had affected all of them, or they wouldn’t be where they were now.
“There’s a damn strut in there that isn’t on any of the plans,” Jason replied after his moment’s thought. “I think it was a support for that hunk of junk Fusion Engine they pulled to put the modern 300 in, which means it should already be out of there. It’s no wonder the ammo feed for the LRM launcher doesn’t fit. I’ll have to check with the engineers to be sure, though, so by the time they’ve double-checked, we’re probably going to lose a day of work.”
“Shit,” Anne replied succinctly, a disgusted expression flashing across her face momentarily. After the slow buildup and then the last few months of frantic activity everyone was ready to kick things off and finally take their pound of flesh from Amaris’s government.
Jason shrugged and pulled himself to his feet as he responded, “We knew these old heaps were going to be a pain in the ass to upgrade. It’s why we left the Mackies so late.”
“Well, that and the Administrator is more likely to notice one of the big boys missing or with new gear than an old Commando.” Anne shot back with a lopsided smile, the less mobile skin on her left side only sufficing to give that edge of her lips the faintest hint of a curl.
Just like the curl in her hair. Jason grunted in the affirmative before starting to descend from the maintenance gantry. “See if you can start on the ammo bins for the autocannon while I try to wrangle some eggheads,” he called back up as he descended.
A called, “Yes, Boss!” chased him down before less distinctly-heard commands got his crew up and moving again.
The quickly vanishing island of calm around the opened-up Mackie was the exception to the rule for the rest of the shop. Two Phoenixes were getting worked on in the next set of bays down the line while the last pair of Wasps were being sealed up, their familiar updates complete, in the last two bays on the end.
SLDF’s coming. Jason considered with a deep breath before he set off at a jog. If Amaris’s goons are still in charge when they show up, who knows how much damage they’ll do rooting them out? It barely even bore considering. He’d seen the news imagery from the other Periphery powers back during the war, with Taurian and Canopian cities in ruins after heavy fighting. On another world that might be survivable, but here? Where the planet itself seemed to be out to kill the trespassers that had come to colonize it or been dumped on it? It would be a death sentence. We’ve got to push the Administrator and his people out. We’ve got to.
Two weeks later.
A pair of gunshots spilled a torrent of adrenaline into Jason’s system and he jumped from ‘fast asleep’ to ‘wide awake’ without bothering to occupy any of the usual intermediate steps. He was out of bed and scrambling for his discarded pants before his brain had caught up. As soon as he had them on, he dashed out into the hallway bare-chested in the cool underground air. He paused, listening as a couple other doors around him slowly began to open before darting left in response to the sound of raised voices.
Then he accelerated when he recognized one of the voices. Damn it, Anne, what the hell did you get into now?
Jason burst into the corridor outside the communications room in time to hear, “-didn’t manage to send it, but she had the damn message typed up. If she hadn’t had to wait for the terminal to encode it …”
Jason made the turn into the little annex where the base’s radio and network communications systems were set up and froze as a sea of red caught his vision, pooling around a trio of bodies on the floor. Holy shit, those are-. Two were in the uniforms of site security. One’s throat was cut and the other was missing his face and much of his skull, probably a wound from a subsonic flechette gun like the one laying on the first guard’s corpse. The last was a woman in unfamiliar body armor who’d presumably been shot in the back of the head, because she didn’t have much of a face left anymore. A few years ago, that alone would have been enough to make him throw up. Nowadays, he was pretty sure the scene was still in the top ten, but it wasn’t top five material.
“Geoffrey?” A familiar voice asked and Jason finally dragged his eyes away from the bodies on the floor to take in-
Yeah, his voice would be familiar, Jason acknowledged. Major Ryan McCaulley had retired from the RWR’s armed forces to take care of his youngest daughter after his wife and his other two children were killed in a traffic accident. And then gone underground after the drunken bastard that did it got off because he was a favorite of one of Amaris’s deputies.
According to rumor, McCaulley had seen the writing on the wall and vanished before the final verdict was read, and a good thing too. His apartment was targeted by “outraged citizens” who were “enraged by his false accusations against a member of the Amaris government.” He’d spent the last decade covertly suborning the local militia and recruiting civilians, like Jason, similarly disaffected with the Republic’s government until finally his network of contacts expanded enough to move into his endgame.
“Not sure what to tell you, Sir,” the technician at the terminal, apparently Geoffrey, replied. “What I can see here fits her story, but I can’t confirm anything. Somebody monkeyed with this thing to cover their tracks, but...” he trailed off.
Finally Jason’s eyes made it to Anne, wearing a long red shirt and shorts with no shoes. She was being held at gunpoint by another member of site security and her right hand was covered in flecks of blood. She was also looking at him with an eyebrow raised. “You in a bit of a hurry there, Boss?” She asked, and Jason realized he was without shoes or even a shirt himself as the Major turned away from the terminal to look at him.
Hoping his face wasn’t glowing too badly from embarrassment, he tried to explain. “I heard the shots, and …” he trailed off. He’d been reacting, not thinking.
“I take it you’re a Tech, then?” Major McCaulley inquired. “If we didn’t need every competent technician we could lay hands on, I’d suggest joining the combat arm. You’ve got the instincts for it,” then the Major shook his head and turned back to Anne.
“And you said you followed her here?” He continued with what seemed to be a pre-existing line of questioning.
“Yes, Sir,” Anne replied. “She woke me up when she shut our door.” At McCaulley’s raised eyebrow she explained, “We’re … we were roommates. Sharilla was pretty new and I was helping her settle in.”
McCaulley cursed at the name which drew surprised looks from everyone but the tech working on the electronics. The Major almost never lost his composure. “This would be Sharilla Moore?” When Anne nodded her confirmation he continued, “I remember her name. Sought us out after she lost her son and husband to Amaris’s thugs. We were able to confirm her son’s death, but not her husband’s.” He shook his head, “Thought if they were trying to insert a plant that they’d have done it the other way around.”
He took a deep breath and waved off the guard. “If Miss Thompson were the responsible party, she’d be wearing combat gear like Miss Moore was.” When the guard closed the door behind him as he exited, the Major lifted his off hand and Jason realized he was holding a short-barreled revolver by the cylinder. “Though I really ought to confiscate this. You know the rules about keeping weapons in barracks …”
Anne stiffened before she answered. “It was my father’s, Sir,” she replied tensely and met McCaulley’s eyes with a stubborn expression.
Some understanding passed between them in that moment and the Major nodded. “Well, you’ve certainly proved that you know how to use it. Congratulations, Miss Thompson, the traditional reward for a job well done is a harder job. You are retroactively being promoted to counterintelligence, which means you can and should keep a firearm even in quarters. I’ll have the accountants update your records,” he stated with a faint smile for Anne’s expression. Jason, too, found himself grinning as the Major turned to leave with one final remark.
“Better try to get some sleep, Agent, Foreman. It’s already tomorrow and there’ll be more than enough work to go around.”
As the two of them walked dazedly back to the technician’s barracks, past the small crowd that had gathered, a thought occurred to Jason, “So, Agent, does this mean you outrank me now?”
“Shut up, Boss,” she said and elbowed him in the ribs. But she smiled when she did it.
Sixteen Days Later.
“Ammo bins are filled!” Anne yelled up at Jason from the ground as he and his assistants finished applying the last of the armor patches the Mackie had needed to its center torso. Getting the big bastards ready in time had been a copper-plated bitch, but imagining the looks on the 31st Amaris Dragoons Rampage pilots’ faces when the Militia’s old Mackies turned out to have not just heavier armor but also better weapon loadouts than them? That was enough to warm the cockles of his heart.
“All done here too!” Jason called as he and the two less experienced techs working with him abandoned their position and the field gantry was pulled away from Assault ‘Mech’s torso. The Mackies were the first priority for servicing; they needed the extra time to compensate for their low top speed. On the other hand, their relatively small engine meant that they could pack in a lot of weapons in space that would otherwise be taken up by, say, a Rampage’s 380 engine.
“Got some scuttlebut from the front,” Anne bragged, interrupting his thoughts as the field repair unit pulled up to the next unit in line, a Phoenix that looked to have been absolutely hammered by missiles. They were going to have to replace three fourths of the armor panels on its torso and at least half of the ones on its left arm. The pilot was lucky he hadn’t lost any of the lasers there.
“Oh?” Jason responded, trying not to sound too interested. By Anne’s there-and-gone grin he’d failed.
“The Major guessed right about how Amaris’s commanders would respond to ‘terrorists in industrial Mechs’ taking out the ASFs at Landing’s starport,” she began, using the original name for the field. No one in the resistance cared to remember which reeking asshole among the Amaris dynasty it had been renamed for. “The Dragoons sent in a lance each of Rampages and Warhammers …”
She trailed off. She was baiting him, and he knew it, but everyone was on tenterhooks hoping for success. “Well?” He finally demanded after a long moment.
“Whooped their asses!” Anne’s expression which had been remarkably grave melted into a grin. “That Mackie we were just working on? That was the only damage we took. A lance of them baited the Dragoons out onto the runway and then called in artillery. Pounded both enemy lances to scrap!”
Jason felt a vicarious thrill. That was good news. Trading about an hour’s worth of repairs and some ammo for eight enemy mechs? The 31st Dragoons couldn’t afford many disasters like that. “I take it from the bait they used that we got the ASF’s at Landing on the ground. Have we heard anything about the rest of their air wing?” he asked. That was probably the one question on everybody’s minds, because while they’d managed to refit almost all of the Militia’s Mechs, their ASFs were a different story. They had too few of those for any of them to go missing long enough to get any useful update.
“Good news there too,” Anne responded quickly as they observed their crew stripping damaged armor plates off of the Phoenix cradled in the mobile repair bay, “That Wasp pilot who got his ride’s arm blown off? He said he’d heard from the Captain of his Scout company that the Dragoons only got four fighters in the air before they had a Company of Phoenixes hit them at Fort Amaris. Wrecked everything they had there too, and our ASFs cleaned up.”
“What about-”
Anne knew him too well. “Haven’t heard anything about the Sausage-Maker’s space station yet,” she answered before he could even complete the question.
Jason knew his own expression had congealed just thinking about the bastard. Amaris’s governor made sure to never so much as come within the planetary atmosphere. Might as well call him Warden, it’s what he is. Half prison Warden and half industrial-level Butcher, the Sausage-Maker fed human beings into the meat grinder of the planet’s ecology. Who cared if more than 100 people died a day in the Germanium mines as long as they produced their quota of ore? Who cared if a worker was executed whenever a factory’s shift failed to meet their quota?
Well, we care, bastard! And you’re about to get what’s coming to you. It seemed entirely fitting to Jason that the very abuse and neglect that had created so much hatred for the Governor was also what had allowed them to build up the reserves of the new materials they’d needed. As long as the quota was met, no one bothered to inspect the factories, not even to see if there was extra product being smuggled out. If only we’d gotten more of the kinks in Gauss Rifle production worked out. They had been able to appropriate unfortunately few of the weapons. They were just too difficult to produce.
“Well, all we can do is do our jobs and trust that the flyboys will do theirs. That means I need to go check to make sure nobody tries to cut corners on the armor replacement.” Jason shot Anne as fierce a look as he could muster.
“Since you seem to be so good at talking to Mechwarriors, you can go remind this one that the Phoenix is meant to bully lighter Mechs and flank heavier ones, not get into fair fights with Mechs carrying enough missile tubes to do that to it.” He waved his hand at the injured Medium which now looked even worse than before with a couple of armor segments removed for replacement.
“And if I should just so happen to gather some intelligence at the same time …” Anne met his eyes with a commendably severe expression.
“You have your mission, Agent,” he ordered with mock severity even as the grin was turning up the corners of his lips.
“Yes Boss!” Anne’s own smile broke free as she bounced away.
Twenty days later.
Their intelligence apparatus had screwed them. Or, not exactly, but Jason wasn’t in a fair-minded sort of mood as he coughed. The system kept us safe from Amaris for years. Did the job it was built to do. It had still doomed them in the end; the system had been built with an eye toward secrecy and keeping messages from being intercepted or traced. That meant it had sacrificed speed for security.
It also meant that they’d had no idea a Warship and a small convoy of Jumpships had finally showed up to transport the backlog of components that had built up on the planet over the last year. Six and a half hours before they’d launched their rebellion. Their ASFs had still managed to kill the Corvette, but it had done a number on the old birds, and they hadn’t quite been enough to also take out the orbital station as well. Hurt, yes. Kill? No.
And the Sausage-Maker had taken his revenge.
Jason took the handkerchief away from his mouth and folded it again to keep the blood on the inside. He’d need a new one soon. The crew, about half the size a proper crew ought to be, had just about got the last Mackie prepped for storage. Wouldn’t do for the SLDF to have to waste time pulling bad seals and then fixing all the problems that would result from them instead of just being able to plug new ones in and go. The XLFEs were supposed to be even worse about that and a standard Fusion Engine. He waved to Anne as he walked past, but the crew weren’t his responsibility anymore.
He was one of the few people they had cross-trained on Amaris’s shitty database software. The only one, now. He and a few assistants had spent the last week getting the maintenance manuals and careful technical drawings the engineers had put together over a decade of careful studies and experiments scanned into the computer and written into the indexing system. It wasn’t what the program was intended to be used for, they didn’t have the best writer head, and the memory core was third-hand, but the kludge seemed to be holding up. At least when the SLDF arrived, they’d be able to field and repair the ‘Mechs. None of our people would get to see it, though.
We knew if we lost we were dead anyway. It’s just … it hurts to have come so damn close. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Jason opened the door to the little office off of the depot’s storage floor. He didn’t have that much left to do anyway.
The next hour passed largely in a haze of irritation occasionally interrupted by bouts of coughing. The handkerchief was pretty thoroughly used up by the end, too. He’d just finally managed to hunt down the single missing keystroke that had made a hash of the Thunderbolt’s entry in the database when the door into the little office space opened and Anne walked in looking as bad as he felt.
“All done?” he asked, then grimaced and cleared his throat. His voice had come out too high and a touch distorted.
At least the adolescent squeak drew a giggle from his second, though her smile was short-lived and wan. “That was the last of the intact Mechs. They’re all configured for long-term storage now. Even the ones we didn’t have time to refit,” she explained.
Her voice was hoarse, probably from yelling orders in addition to the coughing. “What about …” Jason trailed off, not quite sure how to continue.
Like always, Anne seemed to be a step ahead of him. “Sent everybody home. For values of home,” she said and shrugged.
Those with families or even close friends had mostly departed. Not that it had helped anyone who left. The hospitals didn’t have anything that could cure what Amaris’s bastard had dumped on them, and they’d run out of cough syrup quickly.
Most of the people who had stayed had done so because they’d been given orders and they believed in the mission. Now the mission was over. The Mechs and spares were safely stored away for the SLDF.
Jason expected most of them would probably walk out to the lip of the terrace and watch the sun set. Then step off the edge. Better than waiting for your lungs to fill up with fluid and drown you or to just bleed to death from tissue lysis.
At least I won’t have to clean up any more self-inflicted gunshot wounds. There had been a reason they’d saved a flamer-equipped Mackie refit for last. Several people had chosen that way out at first. Nobody who’d had to clean one up had followed suit.
“Almost done here. Had to fix a mistake Harrison made on the Thunderbolt or I’d probably be finished already,” He informed his loyal second. There was only the Wasp to finish up and it shouldn’t take long. Even with an XLFE, there wasn’t much to the light Mech.
“Isn’t as if I’ve got anything pressing to do,” Anne admitted and sat down on the couch Jason had been sleeping on.
That statement, though; it bothered Jason. Finally, after trying to correct the same entry three times between bouts of coughing he stopped and finally admitted what had been bothering him. “I wish I’d asked you out.”
There was a long pause as he stared unseeing at the terminal screen before Anne responded, “Don’t know that I would have said yes.”
Well, that was pretty def-
“At the time,” she continued, unknowingly interrupting his thought, “I … wanted to wait. Until things were settled, one way or the other.” He turned in time to watch her swallow, moisture in the corners of her eyes.
“I’d already outlived one family. Didn’t want to risk outliving another,” a tear beaded and fell, passing over her scarred cheek, and Jason was out of his seat and kneeling in front of her, hands clasped with hers. He released her right hand so she could wipe away tears and brought the knuckles of the left up to his lips.
“Seems I’m a day late and a dollar short as usual,” he said with the best smile he could manage under the circumstances, “but would you mind spending the rest of the day with me, once I’ve polished off the last of this?” He waved his hand to indicate the work terminal he’d been laboring over. She gave a watery giggle that turned into a cough, but nodded her consent.
With a weight off of his shoulders, despite the growing one in his chest, Jason set to work with better concentration. Amaris’s software was a pain, but it was workable. Enough anyway. It took him an hour to finish off the last of the stuff for the Wasp. Really ought to go over everything again, but-
It could wait for a few hours at least. Jason turned in his swivel chair and was glad he hadn’t done anything dramatic. Anne, it seemed, had fallen asleep waiting for him to finish up. Almost hate to wake her, he thought as he stood and approached the couch. She’d looked so tired when she’d come in the door …
He stopped and sank down on his knees. His left hand took hold of hers. “Oh, Anne,” he whispered and his right came up across his forehead as tears finally began to fall. “You go on ahead, now,” he told her and carefully laid her hand back on her lap. “Let me just finish this, and I’ll come sit with you.”
Jason turned back to his desk and ran the last checks on the database through blurry eyes.
“-has confirmed it. It’s anthrax, and it’s been weaponized.” Johan Weber hammered his right fist down on his station chair’s armrest as he listened to the message from the surface, “We assumed any bioweapon would have burned itself out by now, but Bacillus Anthracis sporulates. All it did was retreat into spores until we got here and started poking around.” Mercer broke into a coughing fit, and took a long moment to compose himself.
When he regained control over himself, he glared into the lens, “Doc also says nothing we’ve got will touch this. Don’t risk coming for us. SLIC can’t afford to lose a prowler over a dozen scouts. Just let the General know that it’ll be centuries before this hellhole is habitable again, if it ever is.”
The recording reached its conclusion, and Johan let out a long breath through his teeth. He’d worked with Max for years. Leaving him down on the surface of that God-forsaken planet to rot sat poorly with him, but his fellow SLIC agent was correct. They were in for a long damned war before they could reasonably expect to restore the rightful government of the Hegemony and there were never enough ships to go around anyway. Risking one on a forlorn hope would be incredibly irresponsible. Even so, he uncurled his fingers.
He’d already been unprofessional once, no need to compound that. “Astrogation, plot a course for our extraction jump point. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Johan stood up and left the Prowler’s cramped bridge; the Bug-Eye class ship was small and aging, but it had served SLIC well long before the recent unpleasantness with Amaris. But he was going to send a last message to the people they were abandoning, and it was going to take several attempts before he got it right. They deserved that much from him, at least.
He thought of his journal as he sat down at his desk and activated the recording software on his secure terminal. He’d promised his children to keep a record of what happened while he was away. That his deployment had been unexpectedly extended by events was …
It would be years before he could return to the Commonwealth. Technically, the journal was a violation of SLIC policy, but he had a child he’d never seen with his own eyes, and two more that had been so small they wouldn’t remember him when he returned home. If he returned home.
He owed his children an explanation for why he had been gone so long, and in that one case regulations could go hang. Updating it before he went to bed was sometimes the only thing that let him sleep.
The recording software finally finished loading and he put other thought out of his mind. “We received your message. As-”
AN: Why should you read this? After all, there are several BT SIs out there right now. The short answer? The SI is clueless, since he is based on me before I got into Bruce Quest. Helm. What's that? New Dallas. Where? Never heard of it. BattleTech. Isn't that a tabletop game that wants to be Robotech?
If you want the longer version, well I hope this prologue will make my case.
Prologue
Repair Depot Gamma, Sh-&$*#[Data corruption detected, location unrecoverable.]
Apollo Province, Rim Worlds Republic
4th J%$*&&[Data corruption detected, date unrecoverable.]
Jason Maxwell cursed as he carefully extracted himself from the left side-torso of the Mackie his crew had been working on for the past week. It was the first of the Assault-weight Militia Battlemechs that they’d worked on, and the theoretical refit their engineers had designed was proving somewhat problematic in practice. The primitive machine with its unfamiliar structure and clunky internals might have been a mainstay of the Hegemony, but the Mechs the Rim Worlds Republic had obtained for its Militia second- or third-hand were some of the first production models. And at more than two centuries old, they were showing their age.
“So what’s the verdict boss?” The inquiring voice that greeted him as he emerged belonged to brown-haired Anne Thompson. She served as his second for their shift, was well liked by the rest of the crew, and was probably his most intuitive tech. Part of that was sheer talent, but the rest was the fact that she’d been working on or around Battlemechs since she was a preteen, and she had the scars on her lithe frame to prove it. When he’d first met her, he’d assumed the angry-looking burn mark that covered most of her left cheek was just one more of those. He’d learned better.
House Amaris’s less-than-gentle touch had affected all of them, or they wouldn’t be where they were now.
“There’s a damn strut in there that isn’t on any of the plans,” Jason replied after his moment’s thought. “I think it was a support for that hunk of junk Fusion Engine they pulled to put the modern 300 in, which means it should already be out of there. It’s no wonder the ammo feed for the LRM launcher doesn’t fit. I’ll have to check with the engineers to be sure, though, so by the time they’ve double-checked, we’re probably going to lose a day of work.”
“Shit,” Anne replied succinctly, a disgusted expression flashing across her face momentarily. After the slow buildup and then the last few months of frantic activity everyone was ready to kick things off and finally take their pound of flesh from Amaris’s government.
Jason shrugged and pulled himself to his feet as he responded, “We knew these old heaps were going to be a pain in the ass to upgrade. It’s why we left the Mackies so late.”
“Well, that and the Administrator is more likely to notice one of the big boys missing or with new gear than an old Commando.” Anne shot back with a lopsided smile, the less mobile skin on her left side only sufficing to give that edge of her lips the faintest hint of a curl.
Just like the curl in her hair. Jason grunted in the affirmative before starting to descend from the maintenance gantry. “See if you can start on the ammo bins for the autocannon while I try to wrangle some eggheads,” he called back up as he descended.
A called, “Yes, Boss!” chased him down before less distinctly-heard commands got his crew up and moving again.
The quickly vanishing island of calm around the opened-up Mackie was the exception to the rule for the rest of the shop. Two Phoenixes were getting worked on in the next set of bays down the line while the last pair of Wasps were being sealed up, their familiar updates complete, in the last two bays on the end.
SLDF’s coming. Jason considered with a deep breath before he set off at a jog. If Amaris’s goons are still in charge when they show up, who knows how much damage they’ll do rooting them out? It barely even bore considering. He’d seen the news imagery from the other Periphery powers back during the war, with Taurian and Canopian cities in ruins after heavy fighting. On another world that might be survivable, but here? Where the planet itself seemed to be out to kill the trespassers that had come to colonize it or been dumped on it? It would be a death sentence. We’ve got to push the Administrator and his people out. We’ve got to.
XXXXX
Two weeks later.
A pair of gunshots spilled a torrent of adrenaline into Jason’s system and he jumped from ‘fast asleep’ to ‘wide awake’ without bothering to occupy any of the usual intermediate steps. He was out of bed and scrambling for his discarded pants before his brain had caught up. As soon as he had them on, he dashed out into the hallway bare-chested in the cool underground air. He paused, listening as a couple other doors around him slowly began to open before darting left in response to the sound of raised voices.
Then he accelerated when he recognized one of the voices. Damn it, Anne, what the hell did you get into now?
Jason burst into the corridor outside the communications room in time to hear, “-didn’t manage to send it, but she had the damn message typed up. If she hadn’t had to wait for the terminal to encode it …”
Jason made the turn into the little annex where the base’s radio and network communications systems were set up and froze as a sea of red caught his vision, pooling around a trio of bodies on the floor. Holy shit, those are-. Two were in the uniforms of site security. One’s throat was cut and the other was missing his face and much of his skull, probably a wound from a subsonic flechette gun like the one laying on the first guard’s corpse. The last was a woman in unfamiliar body armor who’d presumably been shot in the back of the head, because she didn’t have much of a face left anymore. A few years ago, that alone would have been enough to make him throw up. Nowadays, he was pretty sure the scene was still in the top ten, but it wasn’t top five material.
“Geoffrey?” A familiar voice asked and Jason finally dragged his eyes away from the bodies on the floor to take in-
Yeah, his voice would be familiar, Jason acknowledged. Major Ryan McCaulley had retired from the RWR’s armed forces to take care of his youngest daughter after his wife and his other two children were killed in a traffic accident. And then gone underground after the drunken bastard that did it got off because he was a favorite of one of Amaris’s deputies.
According to rumor, McCaulley had seen the writing on the wall and vanished before the final verdict was read, and a good thing too. His apartment was targeted by “outraged citizens” who were “enraged by his false accusations against a member of the Amaris government.” He’d spent the last decade covertly suborning the local militia and recruiting civilians, like Jason, similarly disaffected with the Republic’s government until finally his network of contacts expanded enough to move into his endgame.
“Not sure what to tell you, Sir,” the technician at the terminal, apparently Geoffrey, replied. “What I can see here fits her story, but I can’t confirm anything. Somebody monkeyed with this thing to cover their tracks, but...” he trailed off.
Finally Jason’s eyes made it to Anne, wearing a long red shirt and shorts with no shoes. She was being held at gunpoint by another member of site security and her right hand was covered in flecks of blood. She was also looking at him with an eyebrow raised. “You in a bit of a hurry there, Boss?” She asked, and Jason realized he was without shoes or even a shirt himself as the Major turned away from the terminal to look at him.
Hoping his face wasn’t glowing too badly from embarrassment, he tried to explain. “I heard the shots, and …” he trailed off. He’d been reacting, not thinking.
“I take it you’re a Tech, then?” Major McCaulley inquired. “If we didn’t need every competent technician we could lay hands on, I’d suggest joining the combat arm. You’ve got the instincts for it,” then the Major shook his head and turned back to Anne.
“And you said you followed her here?” He continued with what seemed to be a pre-existing line of questioning.
“Yes, Sir,” Anne replied. “She woke me up when she shut our door.” At McCaulley’s raised eyebrow she explained, “We’re … we were roommates. Sharilla was pretty new and I was helping her settle in.”
McCaulley cursed at the name which drew surprised looks from everyone but the tech working on the electronics. The Major almost never lost his composure. “This would be Sharilla Moore?” When Anne nodded her confirmation he continued, “I remember her name. Sought us out after she lost her son and husband to Amaris’s thugs. We were able to confirm her son’s death, but not her husband’s.” He shook his head, “Thought if they were trying to insert a plant that they’d have done it the other way around.”
He took a deep breath and waved off the guard. “If Miss Thompson were the responsible party, she’d be wearing combat gear like Miss Moore was.” When the guard closed the door behind him as he exited, the Major lifted his off hand and Jason realized he was holding a short-barreled revolver by the cylinder. “Though I really ought to confiscate this. You know the rules about keeping weapons in barracks …”
Anne stiffened before she answered. “It was my father’s, Sir,” she replied tensely and met McCaulley’s eyes with a stubborn expression.
Some understanding passed between them in that moment and the Major nodded. “Well, you’ve certainly proved that you know how to use it. Congratulations, Miss Thompson, the traditional reward for a job well done is a harder job. You are retroactively being promoted to counterintelligence, which means you can and should keep a firearm even in quarters. I’ll have the accountants update your records,” he stated with a faint smile for Anne’s expression. Jason, too, found himself grinning as the Major turned to leave with one final remark.
“Better try to get some sleep, Agent, Foreman. It’s already tomorrow and there’ll be more than enough work to go around.”
As the two of them walked dazedly back to the technician’s barracks, past the small crowd that had gathered, a thought occurred to Jason, “So, Agent, does this mean you outrank me now?”
“Shut up, Boss,” she said and elbowed him in the ribs. But she smiled when she did it.
XXXXX
Sixteen Days Later.
“Ammo bins are filled!” Anne yelled up at Jason from the ground as he and his assistants finished applying the last of the armor patches the Mackie had needed to its center torso. Getting the big bastards ready in time had been a copper-plated bitch, but imagining the looks on the 31st Amaris Dragoons Rampage pilots’ faces when the Militia’s old Mackies turned out to have not just heavier armor but also better weapon loadouts than them? That was enough to warm the cockles of his heart.
“All done here too!” Jason called as he and the two less experienced techs working with him abandoned their position and the field gantry was pulled away from Assault ‘Mech’s torso. The Mackies were the first priority for servicing; they needed the extra time to compensate for their low top speed. On the other hand, their relatively small engine meant that they could pack in a lot of weapons in space that would otherwise be taken up by, say, a Rampage’s 380 engine.
“Got some scuttlebut from the front,” Anne bragged, interrupting his thoughts as the field repair unit pulled up to the next unit in line, a Phoenix that looked to have been absolutely hammered by missiles. They were going to have to replace three fourths of the armor panels on its torso and at least half of the ones on its left arm. The pilot was lucky he hadn’t lost any of the lasers there.
“Oh?” Jason responded, trying not to sound too interested. By Anne’s there-and-gone grin he’d failed.
“The Major guessed right about how Amaris’s commanders would respond to ‘terrorists in industrial Mechs’ taking out the ASFs at Landing’s starport,” she began, using the original name for the field. No one in the resistance cared to remember which reeking asshole among the Amaris dynasty it had been renamed for. “The Dragoons sent in a lance each of Rampages and Warhammers …”
She trailed off. She was baiting him, and he knew it, but everyone was on tenterhooks hoping for success. “Well?” He finally demanded after a long moment.
“Whooped their asses!” Anne’s expression which had been remarkably grave melted into a grin. “That Mackie we were just working on? That was the only damage we took. A lance of them baited the Dragoons out onto the runway and then called in artillery. Pounded both enemy lances to scrap!”
Jason felt a vicarious thrill. That was good news. Trading about an hour’s worth of repairs and some ammo for eight enemy mechs? The 31st Dragoons couldn’t afford many disasters like that. “I take it from the bait they used that we got the ASF’s at Landing on the ground. Have we heard anything about the rest of their air wing?” he asked. That was probably the one question on everybody’s minds, because while they’d managed to refit almost all of the Militia’s Mechs, their ASFs were a different story. They had too few of those for any of them to go missing long enough to get any useful update.
“Good news there too,” Anne responded quickly as they observed their crew stripping damaged armor plates off of the Phoenix cradled in the mobile repair bay, “That Wasp pilot who got his ride’s arm blown off? He said he’d heard from the Captain of his Scout company that the Dragoons only got four fighters in the air before they had a Company of Phoenixes hit them at Fort Amaris. Wrecked everything they had there too, and our ASFs cleaned up.”
“What about-”
Anne knew him too well. “Haven’t heard anything about the Sausage-Maker’s space station yet,” she answered before he could even complete the question.
Jason knew his own expression had congealed just thinking about the bastard. Amaris’s governor made sure to never so much as come within the planetary atmosphere. Might as well call him Warden, it’s what he is. Half prison Warden and half industrial-level Butcher, the Sausage-Maker fed human beings into the meat grinder of the planet’s ecology. Who cared if more than 100 people died a day in the Germanium mines as long as they produced their quota of ore? Who cared if a worker was executed whenever a factory’s shift failed to meet their quota?
Well, we care, bastard! And you’re about to get what’s coming to you. It seemed entirely fitting to Jason that the very abuse and neglect that had created so much hatred for the Governor was also what had allowed them to build up the reserves of the new materials they’d needed. As long as the quota was met, no one bothered to inspect the factories, not even to see if there was extra product being smuggled out. If only we’d gotten more of the kinks in Gauss Rifle production worked out. They had been able to appropriate unfortunately few of the weapons. They were just too difficult to produce.
“Well, all we can do is do our jobs and trust that the flyboys will do theirs. That means I need to go check to make sure nobody tries to cut corners on the armor replacement.” Jason shot Anne as fierce a look as he could muster.
“Since you seem to be so good at talking to Mechwarriors, you can go remind this one that the Phoenix is meant to bully lighter Mechs and flank heavier ones, not get into fair fights with Mechs carrying enough missile tubes to do that to it.” He waved his hand at the injured Medium which now looked even worse than before with a couple of armor segments removed for replacement.
“And if I should just so happen to gather some intelligence at the same time …” Anne met his eyes with a commendably severe expression.
“You have your mission, Agent,” he ordered with mock severity even as the grin was turning up the corners of his lips.
“Yes Boss!” Anne’s own smile broke free as she bounced away.
XXXXX
Twenty days later.
Their intelligence apparatus had screwed them. Or, not exactly, but Jason wasn’t in a fair-minded sort of mood as he coughed. The system kept us safe from Amaris for years. Did the job it was built to do. It had still doomed them in the end; the system had been built with an eye toward secrecy and keeping messages from being intercepted or traced. That meant it had sacrificed speed for security.
It also meant that they’d had no idea a Warship and a small convoy of Jumpships had finally showed up to transport the backlog of components that had built up on the planet over the last year. Six and a half hours before they’d launched their rebellion. Their ASFs had still managed to kill the Corvette, but it had done a number on the old birds, and they hadn’t quite been enough to also take out the orbital station as well. Hurt, yes. Kill? No.
And the Sausage-Maker had taken his revenge.
Jason took the handkerchief away from his mouth and folded it again to keep the blood on the inside. He’d need a new one soon. The crew, about half the size a proper crew ought to be, had just about got the last Mackie prepped for storage. Wouldn’t do for the SLDF to have to waste time pulling bad seals and then fixing all the problems that would result from them instead of just being able to plug new ones in and go. The XLFEs were supposed to be even worse about that and a standard Fusion Engine. He waved to Anne as he walked past, but the crew weren’t his responsibility anymore.
He was one of the few people they had cross-trained on Amaris’s shitty database software. The only one, now. He and a few assistants had spent the last week getting the maintenance manuals and careful technical drawings the engineers had put together over a decade of careful studies and experiments scanned into the computer and written into the indexing system. It wasn’t what the program was intended to be used for, they didn’t have the best writer head, and the memory core was third-hand, but the kludge seemed to be holding up. At least when the SLDF arrived, they’d be able to field and repair the ‘Mechs. None of our people would get to see it, though.
We knew if we lost we were dead anyway. It’s just … it hurts to have come so damn close. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Jason opened the door to the little office off of the depot’s storage floor. He didn’t have that much left to do anyway.
The next hour passed largely in a haze of irritation occasionally interrupted by bouts of coughing. The handkerchief was pretty thoroughly used up by the end, too. He’d just finally managed to hunt down the single missing keystroke that had made a hash of the Thunderbolt’s entry in the database when the door into the little office space opened and Anne walked in looking as bad as he felt.
“All done?” he asked, then grimaced and cleared his throat. His voice had come out too high and a touch distorted.
At least the adolescent squeak drew a giggle from his second, though her smile was short-lived and wan. “That was the last of the intact Mechs. They’re all configured for long-term storage now. Even the ones we didn’t have time to refit,” she explained.
Her voice was hoarse, probably from yelling orders in addition to the coughing. “What about …” Jason trailed off, not quite sure how to continue.
Like always, Anne seemed to be a step ahead of him. “Sent everybody home. For values of home,” she said and shrugged.
Those with families or even close friends had mostly departed. Not that it had helped anyone who left. The hospitals didn’t have anything that could cure what Amaris’s bastard had dumped on them, and they’d run out of cough syrup quickly.
Most of the people who had stayed had done so because they’d been given orders and they believed in the mission. Now the mission was over. The Mechs and spares were safely stored away for the SLDF.
Jason expected most of them would probably walk out to the lip of the terrace and watch the sun set. Then step off the edge. Better than waiting for your lungs to fill up with fluid and drown you or to just bleed to death from tissue lysis.
At least I won’t have to clean up any more self-inflicted gunshot wounds. There had been a reason they’d saved a flamer-equipped Mackie refit for last. Several people had chosen that way out at first. Nobody who’d had to clean one up had followed suit.
“Almost done here. Had to fix a mistake Harrison made on the Thunderbolt or I’d probably be finished already,” He informed his loyal second. There was only the Wasp to finish up and it shouldn’t take long. Even with an XLFE, there wasn’t much to the light Mech.
“Isn’t as if I’ve got anything pressing to do,” Anne admitted and sat down on the couch Jason had been sleeping on.
That statement, though; it bothered Jason. Finally, after trying to correct the same entry three times between bouts of coughing he stopped and finally admitted what had been bothering him. “I wish I’d asked you out.”
There was a long pause as he stared unseeing at the terminal screen before Anne responded, “Don’t know that I would have said yes.”
Well, that was pretty def-
“At the time,” she continued, unknowingly interrupting his thought, “I … wanted to wait. Until things were settled, one way or the other.” He turned in time to watch her swallow, moisture in the corners of her eyes.
“I’d already outlived one family. Didn’t want to risk outliving another,” a tear beaded and fell, passing over her scarred cheek, and Jason was out of his seat and kneeling in front of her, hands clasped with hers. He released her right hand so she could wipe away tears and brought the knuckles of the left up to his lips.
“Seems I’m a day late and a dollar short as usual,” he said with the best smile he could manage under the circumstances, “but would you mind spending the rest of the day with me, once I’ve polished off the last of this?” He waved his hand to indicate the work terminal he’d been laboring over. She gave a watery giggle that turned into a cough, but nodded her consent.
With a weight off of his shoulders, despite the growing one in his chest, Jason set to work with better concentration. Amaris’s software was a pain, but it was workable. Enough anyway. It took him an hour to finish off the last of the stuff for the Wasp. Really ought to go over everything again, but-
It could wait for a few hours at least. Jason turned in his swivel chair and was glad he hadn’t done anything dramatic. Anne, it seemed, had fallen asleep waiting for him to finish up. Almost hate to wake her, he thought as he stood and approached the couch. She’d looked so tired when she’d come in the door …
He stopped and sank down on his knees. His left hand took hold of hers. “Oh, Anne,” he whispered and his right came up across his forehead as tears finally began to fall. “You go on ahead, now,” he told her and carefully laid her hand back on her lap. “Let me just finish this, and I’ll come sit with you.”
Jason turned back to his desk and ran the last checks on the database through blurry eyes.
XXXXX
“-has confirmed it. It’s anthrax, and it’s been weaponized.” Johan Weber hammered his right fist down on his station chair’s armrest as he listened to the message from the surface, “We assumed any bioweapon would have burned itself out by now, but Bacillus Anthracis sporulates. All it did was retreat into spores until we got here and started poking around.” Mercer broke into a coughing fit, and took a long moment to compose himself.
When he regained control over himself, he glared into the lens, “Doc also says nothing we’ve got will touch this. Don’t risk coming for us. SLIC can’t afford to lose a prowler over a dozen scouts. Just let the General know that it’ll be centuries before this hellhole is habitable again, if it ever is.”
The recording reached its conclusion, and Johan let out a long breath through his teeth. He’d worked with Max for years. Leaving him down on the surface of that God-forsaken planet to rot sat poorly with him, but his fellow SLIC agent was correct. They were in for a long damned war before they could reasonably expect to restore the rightful government of the Hegemony and there were never enough ships to go around anyway. Risking one on a forlorn hope would be incredibly irresponsible. Even so, he uncurled his fingers.
He’d already been unprofessional once, no need to compound that. “Astrogation, plot a course for our extraction jump point. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Johan stood up and left the Prowler’s cramped bridge; the Bug-Eye class ship was small and aging, but it had served SLIC well long before the recent unpleasantness with Amaris. But he was going to send a last message to the people they were abandoning, and it was going to take several attempts before he got it right. They deserved that much from him, at least.
He thought of his journal as he sat down at his desk and activated the recording software on his secure terminal. He’d promised his children to keep a record of what happened while he was away. That his deployment had been unexpectedly extended by events was …
It would be years before he could return to the Commonwealth. Technically, the journal was a violation of SLIC policy, but he had a child he’d never seen with his own eyes, and two more that had been so small they wouldn’t remember him when he returned home. If he returned home.
He owed his children an explanation for why he had been gone so long, and in that one case regulations could go hang. Updating it before he went to bed was sometimes the only thing that let him sleep.
The recording software finally finished loading and he put other thought out of his mind. “We received your message. As-”
