Who Are These Steel Roses Anyway?
Nobody likes to think of Natasha Kerensky in one of her less calm periods. She is a warrior who has one of the shorter fuses around even for a Trueborn, which is as they say in the Inner Sphere, going some. The language may be appalling but sometimes it can be remarkably graphic.
Anyway, the report came in that a mercenary company were using stars not lances; and I think it would not be unreasonable to say that Hell broke loose amongst our revered commanders.
So to cut a long story short, I got told to go and investigate quietly. Find out what this mercenary unit – the Steel Roses they called themselves – were really about; and whether they were in reality a viper in the garden and were Steel somebody else. Without authorisation; or authorised without our knowledge, either of which would have been rather a problem.
Hanging about on backwater worlds in the Free Worlds League is about as much of a punishment duty as you can draw at the best of times; checking out potential Clan interference with overt Clan tactics is even worse. I surely was regretting succumbing to the temptation of using equipment in an unauthorised way.
Well I poked around and investigated these Steel Roses; and nothing about them except their battle discipline suggested that they might be Clansmen; one of them had to be bailed out of jail for a very strange kleptomaniac predilection which no Clansman would succumb to.
Even a Jade Falcon.
Well I managed to make contact; represented myself as a possible recruit; talked to their leader, a short female warrior with an Atlas who rejoiced under the soubriquet of Napoleon. I believe from the way it was used it was partly intended to be some irony that passed me by. The other mechs they had were predominantly Jenners; and I have to say they did use them with a degree of tactical expertise that made me look anew at the mech.
It turned out that the unit had started with just five members and had evolved tactics to cope with this; and when they had expanded to a ten mech unit had continued to use these rather than splitting into two and a half lances. None of the mercenaries though that being part of a half lance was a good idea.
Well I made my recommendation that they were worth watching and considering for use in the future.
And if anyone makes any comments that they got more out of me than I got out of them, I shall make it a matter for a Trial of Grievance. It is not true. I was never that drunk, whatever it was that the nasty little creature who collected underwear slipped in my drink. I still have the headache and it does not make me any more tolerant.