Chapter 3
Randi looked out the window of the skiff intently as clouds, trees, and lake after lake, after lake all zoomed past. The flight hit a little turbulence every so often, but by and large, it was comfortable and quiet. She looked back over her shoulder quickly to see that Fred was still asleep in the seat beside her with an unfolded newspaper over his face. Decaffeinated coffee certainly did not have a placebo effect on him.
She hummed a little to herself, murmuring some old tune whose lyrics were long gone from her memory, and returned to watching the land-and-waterscape of Hyde rush past beneath her. They were fast approaching a patch of forest that spanned between a pair of lakes. Some birds scattered from the mixed evergreen and deciduous trees as the skiff approached, and took off over one of the lakes. Randi looked after them for a moment, until movement along the shoreline caught her eye. Glancing back to it, she thought that the thing was a biped. Before she could make any further determination, however, it slipped into the lake and was gone from sight.
Shortly, the skiff began to slow and finally came to a stop, hovering midair over a helipad. It descended smoothly, though the last few centimeters were somewhat jarring. The jostling of the ship roused Fred from his nap. He yawned a little and set the newspaper he had been using for a sun cover aside.
"Hey, what's goin' on?" he asked, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
Randi smirked and bit her lip, trying not to laugh. The newspaper ink had rubbed off into a greyish-black smear on Fred's forehead. "You, uh..." she said, still attempting a straight face, "There's some, er, ink on your face."
Fred turned and pawed at his face, trying to rub off the pigment. "So, I guess we're at the foundry, right?"
"Yeah." Randi glanced back out the window to the lake where she had spotted the bipedal thing. 'Probably just someone going for a swim,' she told herself, 'or an animal.'
Before she could ponder the subject further, the familiar creaking groan of DropShip bay doors caught her attention. She turned and smiled to see all four of the 'Mechs sitting in the bay, like sleeping golems.
"How do you feel about taking the Shadow Cat for a turn, Randi?" Fred asked her. "Until your Mad Cat is out of the shop again, anyway."
"Oh..." She looked up at her all-black heavy OmniMech and sighed a little. It was a little frustrating to see the 'Mech in disrepair yet again. After all those years she had been unable to get it serviced, it was torn up again and she had not the funds to repair it a second time while they were on Solaris. Randi snapped herself out of such discouraging thoughts and gave Fred a cheerful nod. "Yeah. That will be fine." 'How childish of me to sulk about that,' she thought, recalling that the Mad Cat had been her only means to help Fred. 'No machine is more important than my friend.'
He looked back at her and smiled. "Hey, how about I take the first patrol, and you can take your 'Mech to the repair bay?"
"Eh, no. No, I will go ahead and patrol first," she replied, trotting off towards the DropShip. "You can go ahead and unpack."
Without further conversation, she jogged across the asphalt to the bay. The Shadow Cat was still sporting the mottled ash-on-burnt-sienna that it retained from its use in the bloodpits, and despite a few nicks and scratches, was in very good condition after Ned and Harrison's repairs to it. The speed of the machine would definitely be something for her to get used to, as well as the tonnage. She had been assigned to an Ice Ferret for a short time after graduating from her sibko, but after that, the Clan had allotted her larger machines like Nyx.
She grabbed a cooling vest from a nearby shelf and quickly climbed up the ladder to the 45-tonner's cockpit. It took her a few moments to adjust to the interior of the 'Mech. Though the outside was pure blooded OmniMech, the interior was somewhat on the hackish side, and clearly InnerSphere work. Most of the components looked to be non-original, and the HUD displayed upon starting the 'Mech was distinctly Spheroid. The console had a few "scars" left from an arc-welding job, which was probably made to repair the damage Fred caused in hacking it open to steal the 'Mech from Prewitt. All-in-all, the machine certainly had personality.
'Well,' Randi mused, 'time to see how it handles.'
She pressed her foot down on the throttle lightly and carefully guided the Cat out of the DropShip and onto the tarmac. She could see Fred loitering around the skiff, watching her as she pushed the 'Mech into a little dance to test its agility. The 'Mech had a nice turning radius of two dimes and a nickel, and fairly light feet for its 45 tons. She pranced it over to the edge of the road surface, then gave a stomp to the throttle and tapped on the jumpjets. Her familiarity with jump-capable 'Mechs made it no trouble to land this one on its feet, but the soft ground made it a bit more of challenge than usual.
Though her real proficiency lay in the heavy-class, this nimble Shadow Cat was a treat to pilot. Randi twisted the Cat's torso back to face Fred, and tapped on the external speaker. "I think this will be just fine," she chimed, and then took off on her patrol route.
As the hot sun dipped closer to the horizon, Akela Kerensky sat outside on a low canyon ledge, pondering his situation. A small desert insect of some sort crawled onto his boot, and he promptly kicked it away, sending the thing tumbling down over the ledge. Looking back down to the canyon floor just a few meters below, he could see his subordinates milling around the abandoned campsite.
The findings at this location, as well as reports from the locals confirmed the Wolves' assumptions: Star Commander Mai Leroux and her forces were dead. Considering that she had made no contact with the Clan in months, this was to be expected. Akela took a swig of water from his canteen and stared down at the activity below. This was a very bad situation. The loss of Leroux's unit was more of a nuisance to the Clan than anything; the loss of the 'Mechs was just slightly more annoying. In any case, the real problem was not the men or machines, but the mission.
"Any luck, Lonan?" he called down as a MechWarrior approached him.
The man craned his neck to look up at the ledge, and saluted. "Star Captain! Our search has failed to locate anything of relevance."
"I thought as much," Akela muttered, as he climbed down from the rocks. He glanced back at Leroux's camp and then to MechWarrior Lonan. "I am giving temporary command of the Star to you, until I return. Our other leads have dried up, but I can think of one more source of information..."
"Sir?"
"One way or another, I am going to retrieve what was stolen from us." At that, the Star Captain turned and walked back to the camp, swiping a pair of jeans and a plain tee-shirt to pull on over his close-fitting uniform, along with a handful of C-Bills. He walked on through the sand, continuing his musings as he made his way towards the nearby town.
It was known that a mercenary unit called the Scimitars had attacked Leroux, and there were rumors that the mercenaries had also executed both her and her entire Star. The rumors that intrigued him most, however, were those of dissent within the Scimitars. While he wanted to avoid contact with the main body of the merc unit if possible, three different individuals were said to have split from the company in recent months. One was a man named Singer who had been fired; the second was a woman called Sanders, said to be a thief. Last, and most prominent to Akela, was a MechWarrior about whom little was known. The only confirmed facts were that this ex-Scimitar was a dark-haired female, and she piloted a black Mad Cat.
'Not too many Timber Wolves out in these parts,' Akela mused, 'and Jamar did visit this planet.' It could have been coincidence, but the Star Captain was disinclined to believe that this was chance. Even so, he did not discount any one of the three dissenters as the culprit. It was important to go about this search with an open mind, a sharp eye and a keen ear.
As the sun dipped still lower, he arrived at the edge of the town. His clothes were nondescript enough that he could hide in plain sight among the Spheroids, gaining nothing more than a curious but ultimately disinterested look from the natives. Unlike most Clansmen, Akela usually wore a fairly pleasant or at least unaggressive expression most of the time. He also made a careful effort not to imply an overly military bearing with his body language. It wasn't hard to blend in when a good majority of the people in this spaceport town were off-worlders or other transients.
Though he had expected it would be necessary to do a fair bit of digging, he was pleasantly surprised to find one piece of the puzzle staring him in the face as he approached a bar. On the wall just beside the door was tacked a reward poster with the image of a young woman of Eurasian descent. The name listed was Jen Sanders, and a rather large sum of C-Bills had been offered for her capture. The sum offered for her death was smaller, but hardly a paltry sum. Akela snatched the poster and folded it, tucking the paper into his back pocket as he walked into the bar.
"I hope you do not mind that I helped myself to the poster outside," he said to the bartender as he sat down.
The woman turned and smirked. "You've gotta be the most polite bounty hunter I've had in here for a long time. Yeah, go ahead. Ain't like there's a shortage of wanted posters for Sanders, anyway. The Scimitars practically wallpapered the town with 'em, after they took down the posters for that Mad Cat pilot." She jerked a thumb to a bulletin board on the wall to her left, where several more of the said posters were tacked, obscuring most of the other postings.
"With a sum like that, I'm surprised everyone in this town is not out looking for her," Akela remarked.
"You must be new around here, hon," the bartender said with a chuckle.
He returned it with a good natured chuckle of his own and nodded. "I look that much like a tourist, do I?" he joked. "While I'm here, though, I think I'll sample the local fare. A drink. Perhaps you could surprise me with something?" The use of contractions grated in his brain, but he kept his expression even.
The bartender nodded. "One shot of 'Mech coolant, coming right up."
Upon hearing the cocktail's name, Akela decided it would be prudent to kick back the shot in one gulp. During his sibko years, he had the misfortune of sampling real 'Mech coolant when a hose ruptured right in his face. While the Clans used a non-toxic chemical, it was still an extremely unpleasant taste, and he assumed that anything named after this vile substance must be equally unpleasant. The bartender turned and set a shot glass in front of him filled with green liquid that popped and fizzed with sparkling bubbles of carbonation.
The Clansman picked up his glass and emptied it quickly. Immediately, his throat, mouth, and nose burned with a dozen tiny stars. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and blinked repeatedly as his eyes started to water.
"The tequila burn getting' to ya?" asked the woman.
"No, but the carbonation is," he replied, setting the shot glass back on the bar. Now that the sparks on his tongue had died off, he could taste a peculiar citrus sort of flavor and the alcohol. "Certainly an...interesting drink," he said. "Earlier you indicated that no one is looking for Jen Sanders. Why, might I ask, is that?"
"Simple," she replied. "Sanders skipped out. Everyone was so busy chasing that black Mad Cat, that by the time the Scimitars changed their minds and set a bounty for Sanders, she'd already left. It's a pretty sure bet that she headed for Solaris."
"It would cost more to get there and back than the reward is worth," Akela mused. "I'm curious, though, why they switched the bounty."
The bartender shrugged. "Couldn't tell ya. Plenty of people are still gunning for the Cat pilot, if she ever shows up again. The crazy chick shot up a local gang before taking off with some lone merc. And during the firefight, a DropShip came online and pummeled the gang leader with its guns."
'Chaos, confusion, destruction—this has her fingerprints all over it,' he thought with a mental laugh. His sibkin always had been a troublemaker. He traced his finger around the rim of the shot glass in front of him and smiled a little. "That is most interesting."
