Decades ago, your family came to the Reach from the Magistracy of Canopus.
Mommy's little monster -2
Rockwellawan 3007
It was Mother's Day for nine year old Harriette Ramey, and she'd gone to great lengths to make sure it was a memorable one. For the last week she had painstakingly researched the perfect breakfast in bed for her parents. For the last week she had gathered up all the utensils she'd need as discreetly as possible. The plan this morning was for her mothers to feast on only the freshest of scrambled eggs and sides. At the crack of dawn, she'd awoken and snuck out to the shed where her gear had been stashed. The plastic plate armored jacket was far too large for her, but the extra long sleeves worked equally well as gloves to protect her delicate hands. The hog prod was fully charged and discharged with a bright snap of blue sparks and a most satisfying crackle. As she pulled the helmet visor down and clipped it to the jacket, she was ready. Those hens were mean, and the bastards had long ago learned to go for the face.
Half an hour later Harri staggered back into the kitchen, coughing as she set the basket of precious eggs down before she leaned heavily on the counter. The chickens had damn near taken her head off, the chin strap from the helmet the only thing that had kept them from her soft, tasty eyeballs. Unfortunately, that same strap had been pulled on so hard it had nearly choked her. Harri silently vowed that the next time she saw something flying at her out of the corner of her eye she'd shoot first and ask questions later. A tall glass of melon juice later Harri felt quite refreshed, the cold nectar soothing her throat. The hardest part of her planned menu was taken care of! That meant she could dispense with the armor and get to the rest of the ingredients. For almost all the other ingredients she'd have to settle for what was already in the pantry. Almost.
Behind the main house was a small pen, nestled up in the shadow of the mech barn. While porcuswine could grow to several hundred kilograms they don't start off that large, and it was rare for them to get their quills in before they were a year old. With enough effort they could be trained, somewhat. Trained to the point where they could be kept as pets certainly. Harri had some edamame in her pockets as she trotted out to the piglet pen, and the more alert of the piglets were already rousing to the gate as she approached. There were three in the pen at the moment, two of them nearly just weaned, pink little bundles of wiggle that swarmed to her when she entered the gate. But Harri had only eyes for Wilbur, her prize piglet that she'd been hand feeding for the last 2 months.
Wilbur walked up to Harri and nuzzled her gently, his warm noise at her waist making her giggle happily. She held out a few of the green soyghum beans in the palm of her hand for him to eat, scratching behind his velvety ears as he ate. The hardest part of getting Wilbur out of the pen was keeping the other two greedy little piggies in at the same time. Eventually she got the gate closed with all the piglets in the proper position and led Wilbur over to a watering trough. He didn't mind getting wet, quite the opposite. The sixty pound piglet oinked happily as Harri gave him a quick bath in the sun warmed water, a soft brush and her own hands making sure he was squeaky clean.
Wilbur didn't need much coaxing to come inside, the kitchen was close enough to the pen that the smell of dinner and lunch often brought the piglets to the fence. His oinks and snorting as he explored the kitchen were amusing to Harri, but she had a breakfast to make. This Mother's Day it was only the best, and for that sacrifices must be made. Harri slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out the small pistol she'd borrowed from the lock box under her parent's bed. Like every native of Rockwellawan she'd learned to shoot at school, but she wasn't very familiar with this particular holdout gyroslug pistol. She took a moment to make sure it was loaded, checked the safety and the cocking indicator, and then carefully lined up a shot at the back of Wilbur's head.
Gyrojet weapons were at one point in time the cutting edge of small arms technology. Instead of bullets the ammunition for them was more akin to miniature missiles, with minimal recoil despite the heavy explosive projectiles. Legend has it that at one point in time they even made smart bullets that could hit people around corners. Rockwellawan centuries ago had been host to the 1st Brinton Defenders, and small arms factories to support them and the Department of Mega Engineering facilities they were guarding had been setup. Those factories had long since worn down, to the point where they best they could produce were the far more primitive and "quirky" gyroslug weapons.
The anti-hog slug Harri fired at Wilbur was designed to achieve maximum velocity roughly two meters away from the muzzle, the stubby barrel only really being used to give the mini rocket enough spin to travel straight and keep hot rocket gasses from blowing back at the shooter. Harri shot her fattened piglet from less than a decimeter away, her grip was a mess, and on top of all that she flinched when she pulled the trigger. She was lucky to hit Wilbur at all given the circumstances. Wilbur was not at all lucky, as the gyroslug creased his shoulder, lodged in his shank, burned there for a split second, and only then exploded.
Sufficient to say at this point that the plan for breakfast was well and truly shot to hell.
Danielle Tempest-Ramey often had regrets over the choices she'd made in life. She'd been young and easily impressed by shallow things, and as far as possessions go entire worlds were hard to beat for being impressive. When she'd married, she'd been blinded by wealth, sly words, and the tingle of danger that came with the handsome noblewoman who was courting her. Back then the Ramey Cartel had operated on the simple and efficient principle of "We have guns." vis-à-vis "They don't." She'd tried her best to fix her spouse, to polish some of those rough edges on what she knew in her heart to be a diamond beyond compare. To some degree it had worked, and House Ramey had become a legitimate mercantile operation.
But it hadn't worked enough. Danielle had given House Ramey what it had wanted the most, a female heir. Danielle had doted and fussed over her adorable blond baby to her hearts content, but it didn't take her long to begin to worry. Little Harriette had three older half brothers, and they had picked on her mercilessly when they could. Any normal little six year old girl would have gone running to her mothers when her favorite doll was torn in half in front of her by her eldest brother. Harri had waited until her brother was asleep, and then started beating him with a lamp. It had taken poor Donald a week to see straight again.
Danielle knew her spouse was prone to violent rages if pushed, and after years with her she'd mapped out all the buttons that lead to those outbursts. It wasn't right for Danielle to feel that same thrill of terror when she held her own daughter in her arms. She'd tried her best to show Harriette the right path, to teach her how love could be stronger than hate and violence. Harri even seemed to be picking up some of it. It wasn't until that horrid Mother's Day breakfast that Danielle realized just how badly she'd been wrong.
Danielle's eyes flew open as a raw, shrill screaming echoed up from the ground floor. It chilled her to the bone to hear such pain from a child, and she hurriedly threw on a robe as she rushed downstairs. Her worst fears were realized when she saw a trail of splattered fresh blood and tiny footprints in it leading from the kitchen. Danielle's heart nearly stopped when there was a loud BANG! of a gunshot from the den. The screaming stopped, and in the resulting silence she could hear laughter.
The den had the coppery offal smell of a slaughter house, a porcuswine piglet messily dead on the floor from a bullet to the neck. The poor beast was missing a leg as well, only a tattered, mangled stump remaining. Standing over it was Harri, her pajamas sprinkled with bits of flesh and blood. She had a steak knife in one hand, and an absolutely miserable expression on her doll like face.
"Dani! Dani guess what?" Donna laughed as she gestured at the mess of pork with one hand, a derringer in the other. "Harri," Donna wheezed, her laughter too hard for her to continue for a moment. "Harri was making us breakfast in bed! She was trying to make bacon!"
Danielle was speechless for long minutes, just watching her daughter becoming so frustrated and ashamed she started crying. When the words came to her, they seemed the only ones possible. "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," Danielle started praying.
Rockwellawan 3010
No one ever accused Lady Donna Ramey of having good taste in decor. Embezzlement, perjury, corruption, cover ups, and having small hands? Yes, all those crimes and more. Her personal study made it pretty clear that crimes against style should be added to the list, as it looked like a cross between Caligula's bathroom and Louis the XIV's bordello. Marble tile and columns were everywhere, but pride of place and opulence went to a gold and silver starmap inlaid on the far wall. It covered not only the Frontier and the Reach, but significant portions of the Concordat, Magistracy, League, and Confederation. Looking at that map, the ignorant might be forgiven for thinking that Rockwellawan was the center of the known universe. Donna liked to say that it helped her keep perspective.
Donna just wished her wife would get some. In almost every way, Danielle Tempest-Ramey was Donna's polar opposite. Decades of high speed cargo runs had left Lady Donna with the countenance of a bulldog wearing a wad of yellow cotton candy, her jowls usually emphasized by a perpetual scowl. Danielle was a full seventeen years younger than her spouse and still had a face that had launched rather more than 1000 ships. She'd been a famous, or perhaps infamous if you didn't share Canopian morals, star of a renowned pleasure circus before settling down. Fourteen years ago, when Danielle and Donna had first met, Danielle had been the most desired sex symbol in the rimward Inner Sphere.
And right now, Danielle was coldly furious as she slammed a folio of photographs down on the desk. "Have you seen this! Have you seen what she did this time!" She panted, a moment away from hyperventilating. "I… I mean… That poor woman, literally shot to bits!" She collapsed into one of the overstuffed chairs, pulling up her knees and rocking herself back and forth. "Why… Why is Harriette like this? She's just twelve, a little girl! Not some god damned Spartan, sneaking out to kill peasants." Her soft slate gray eyes began to tear up, and she smeared them across her smooth cheeks with a careless wipe of her hand. "Why can't she be normal! She should be playing with makeup, or teasing boys."
Donna calmly flipped through the photos, though she'd already seen them before. The House guards had gotten involved very quickly, and Donna had personally inspected the scene. "This one wasn't a peasant." She said, pulling out a picture of the man her daughter had lung shot. "No one's ever seen him before around here. He never came through the spaceport either. That helmet he wore had sat comm capability, along with optics built in that border on losttech. He's probably a bounty hunter, or maybe an assassin. They're the ones who bribed Li to sabotage our aircar, although I have my own staff asking him some pointed questions to confirm his story. I also have someone looking into which dropship he might have been working with."
Donna flipped the picture around to show it to Danielle, a photo of the unknown man with his helmet off, his face slack in death. "Regardless of how… rough her methods were, she wasn't wrong. Harri saw a threat and she acted on it. We're all safer now for her actions. That makes her a Knight, not a Spartan."
Danielle took one look at the dead man and began to sob, hiding her face in her hands. "She's graduated from piglets… She's killed people! PEOPLE DONNA! Gunned them down with that damned laser! My god, what might she do to her brothers now? To US!" Her sobs came so fast she began to hiccup and cough, sure signs of an incipient hysterical fit.
Donna hated to see her wife crying like that, and she rose from her seat to brush her hair from her tear streaked face and rub her back gently. "There there," she said gently. While Danielle may have been the loveliest of the Tempest sisters, she was far from the most resilient of her lineage. She was a spectacular hot house flower, a beautiful orchid that captivated every eye in the room. It was just a pity she was so damn needy sometimes. Those tears couldn't be doing anything good for her crow's feet... "She needs help, obviously. She needs some structure and discipline in her life. We can hire someone to put her energies towards more productive tasks."
Donna's little black book had a number of hardened killers that she could call to teach little Harri how professionals handled traitors. Not everyone from the old days had been willing to trade in a gun for a suit.