Chapter 10
1500 hours Local Time, April 20, 3025
Excellence Electronics, North Brache Boulevard
Mach 'Beh, continent of Alshayra
Suk II
What remained of the crowds that didn't immediately seek shelter gathered around the holovids on display at a local electronics store. Numerous people shouted to change to SNN, and shortly the screens flickered over to Wes Johnson and his impeccable hair as he talked about the breaking story.
"—take you live to Alberto Ramirez, at one of the plants now. Roberto?"
The camera cut to a short, grave-looking man, also with hair that didn't seem phased by the crisis behind it. He was standing in front of a small inferno being doused with water from various vehicles nearby. "Thanks Wes. Behind me is one of approximately seven water treatment plants that was attacked in the last two hours. That number continues to climb as we get more reports from across the planet. This one is on the corner of Cameron and 13th, slightly south of the center of the city. Traffic is obviously a mess for blocks in all directions, and several dozen people have been killed or injured in the blast. Local fire and rescue have taken the victims of this scene to Golden Leaf Hospital."
"Alberto, have you had a chance to talk to any authorities as to what might have caused this explosion?" The camera split to show both newscasters. Across the bottom of the screen, tickers said phrases like "Death toll 1,500 and rising," "Citizens urged to stay indoors," "Several areas of Alshayra without power," along with contact numbers of hospitals treating victims.
"Based on the timing of all the explosions being so close together, there's no doubt this was a planned attack. From what everyone else in the field is telling me, the pattern was almost the same. They went for either whatever is powering the plant, or where some of the more flammable chemicals used in the water treatment process were stored, presumably for maximum damage. Nearby buildings were protected from the blast with the safety walls in place, but it also caused it to concentrate the damage within the plants for an even more devastating effect." Despite all this, the newscaster kept things in the past tense. Was, were, etc. It helped imply that their planet wasn't currently on fire and everyone's head was going to fall off next. Given the hostilities over the years on Suk II, people in the media were trained this way to prevent panic.
"Given the lack of hostile military around the cities, do you think this was the work of someone else?" Wes asked, palms open with a half-shrug.
"No doubt about it, Wes. The timetable was just too close. Seven plants within two hours, all across the planet. We just don't know who caused all this tragedy yet, other than they were well-organized and well-funded.
"Alberto, was anything else hit besides treatment plants?"
"Not that we can tell at this time. We'll keep you posted the second we know anything else."
"Thank you very much, Alberto. We take you live now to Alshayra University Trauma Center, where Kylie Dumont has an update for us on the number of total civilians injured or killed by these attacks. Kylie, thanks for joining us."
Firebase Yankee
0800 Hours, April 22, 3025
South Continent of Alshayra
Suk II
The two small moons were almost in line with each other as they sank below the horizon, as if to surrender to the power of their nearby sun coming up the other side. At least for now. The small white circles combined to create a lopsided figure eight, or a tiny, two-tiered snowman slowly melting into the planet. At least that's what most kids on Suk II called it. The moons were almost always in-line with each other, like a pair of dancers forever spinning around this rock.
I'd really rather just be a kid right now. I take back everything I ever said about how awesome being a grownup is, Emily thought to herself as she sat on a rigid folding chair inside the temporary mech bay of the RoughRiders firebase, designated "Yankee." It wasn't too far north of the now-smoldering treatment plant. We were screwed anyway, doing this mission, she thought. More than a company of medium and heavy battlemechs were on standby in and around here, with VTOL and infantry support. We would have been overrun with RoughRiders within a half-hour if that explosion hadn't gone off.
And I was too caught up in the fighting to notice how deep we had gone in. The trees were just too damn thick to get anyone's attention for long enough without going hip-deep into the fighting. Which more often than not made getting out of the firefight even more difficult. Especially without casualties.
She thought of Rhys Kang again, and how she needed a new XO and pronto. But any serious thoughts about either Clothesline or Mother Hen taking his place were typically garbled by her own guilt beating her senseless, until her mind became another pile of fuzz in her head. She couldn't concentrate on that right now.
As if conjured by that thought, Clothesline, with his usual nervous head scratch in one hand along with a hot paper cup of coffee in the other, walked up and handed it to Emily. Two Sugareasies, one synth creamer. Just how she liked it. "Hey," was all he could say, softly.
"Hey." She took the cup and cradled her hands around it, despite the already sweat-inducing heat of the morning, destined to get more uncomfortable as the day went on. She somehow managed to shiver despite all that with the coffee, under her blanket given to her by a RoughRider tech. "Gonna send the rest of the triplets back to base to pass the word along once I talk to this whoever's in there." They had already sent Romeo and his mostly-untouched Fire Jav back to their bivouac to relay what had already happened, and the state of who had survived.
They were both sitting outside the central command tent with "Captain JJ," who remained mostly silent during the trip up here. At the moment, he spent most of his time looking at the ground in front of him, arms crossed, trying to meditate or something. The general murmer of high-level hubbub went on on behind them in the tent with too-many-antennas-to-count sticking out of the top of it. People came and went, some giving them looks of mixed opinions, though most were just moving along trying to get one task out of one dozen accomplished. And that was before lunch.
Well they probably won't have to worry about us anymore. With the exception of Mother Hen's lance being close to full strength, and three-fourths of the late Chrome's lance intact, the rest of her company was at fifty percent or less. The list of damages to the surviving force she took with her that went off the page, and off the proceeding five pages after that. Her Shadow Hawk alone was a mess, the girder still sticking out of its chest during the entire walk. Her comms went in and out repeatedly the entire time. Half her heat sinks were busted internally, making the march feel like standing in a simmering pot of water just from movement.
Even JJ, who's Panther was charred black on his entire left side, and suffered a gyro hit from getting knocked back so fiercely by the explosion, was on the list of casualties. He had some difficulty walking with everyone else but insisted on staying in his 'mech until the gyro finally seized up halfway and had to be carried by VTOL.
Two of the survivors, Nymph and her trash can of an Urbie, and McIntock's Falcon took a ride on the back of flatbeds to get here. Both pilots were concussed pretty badly. McIntock had the halo-ring of yellow around the blood coming out of his nose, indicating possible brain or spinal damage. Emily had silently applauded his performance. How he was able to give a full report yesterday and remain standing in his 'mech while doing so after that debacle was anyone's guess. People started calling him Granite after last night, but Emily doubted he wanted a callsign so closely related to losing comrades. Still, it was a compliment, anyway.
Several were able to walk alongside the RoughRiders to their base, weapons powered down, but everyone needed to have their electronics looked at, because the gun-cams were still offline even now. The RoughRiders didn't need to know that, though. Not yet.
A flap on the tent behind them went open. Several people, including Leutnant Topeni, who Emily exchanged nods with, walked out and down the opposite direction, towards the medical tents. Gazing at the crude structures put up in record times, it made her think for a second. Thousands of years later and we're still taking whatever we can and sticking it up in the air high enough to make a tent out of it. Some things never change.
Someone else exited the tent, looking towards the two of them. "The LC is expecting you next.," said the clipboard-clutching aide, and hustled back inside.
Leutnant-Colonel. Basically, a Colonel. One meager rank shy. Depending on who you were with, people either called them just a Colonel or an LC, but some people kept the stick pretty far up there and insisted on the full name. He probably ran the show while Hansen was off-planet, she thought to nobody but herself. But chances are as soon as he saw the HPG transmissions coming off-planet by now, he would be hauling ass back.
The hubbub went from a light drone to a dull roar as several hundred square meters of circuitry, tables, monitors, pick-me-up drinks, chatter, and sweat enveloped them inside the tent.
"Not here. Come to my tent," said a voice to their left, standing next to the aide. Aides. Many aides. Holy crap this is a lot of help, she thought, exchanging a similar expression with Danek. The man immediately walked out, slightly taller than her but shorter than Danek, and everyone followed. She didn't really get a good look at him other than the slight hunch in his posture, making him appear more sinister than he probably was. Probably just the cockpits of his youth doing that, Emily thought. Everyone was looking at them now as they passed a row of tents. He lifted the flap of a smaller one and nodded at everyone in his staff which included one oddly-dressed…priest looking fellow.
The monk-like fellow waited outside as all the military types went in.
Far more cozy looking than the electric boogaloo in the other tent, several small books were arranged on the very-temporary-looking shelves, next to his MechWarrior gear. Neurohelmet, Cooling vest, holster with a needler that shaved long thin pieces of plastic off a solid block as it's ammunition. Something any MechWarrior pilot prays he or she never has to resort to. Wonder what he drove? She wondered.
He turned and sat on his cot and nodded at the other man. "This is my XO, Hauptmann-Kommandant Steven Dusselhoff. I'm Leutnant-Colonel Franklin LaPointe. You can just call us HP and LC, respectively. They all exchanged handshakes.
"Major Emily Wright of the 1st Iron Coyotes. This is Lieutenant Martin Danek, and our contract liaison, Sho-sa Jin Jonnusuke. You can just call us Dirk and Clothesline, respectively. He goes by Kaze." That got a laugh from both of the RoughRiders.
"Like…Kamikaze? Divine wind? I like it. I go by Whisper. Got it in my old scout lance days." said LaPointe. The wrinkles in his leather-looking face made him look older than he probably was, and greying hair with a gravelly voice gave him an air of a wise old grandpa about him. He waved a casual hand to Dusselhoff. "He has a lot of names, but generally answers to Sphinx. Taking a longer glance and noticing the front part of the tall Dusselhoff's nose no longer there, she might have had an idea where he got it. Ouch.
Their initial friendliness had relaxed both Coyotes a little bit, but Emily was wondering what his intentions were. "So you two are responsible for all the problems we've had down south? Sent many a good man and woman home in a casket, along with their personal effects." Hoo boy, here we go, she thought, bristling.
"Just working a contract, LC. You know how it is." She offered no response out of her face for that one. "Based on what happened at the Langley plant down south we have reason to believe our employers might have committed a war crime and caught us with it as well. Now it's happening all over the planet. We both lost people in the last seven weeks of fighting. Losing people to crazy bombings that have nothing to do with our contract without any warning, however…" she just trailed off at that for effect. "I was told your contract lawyer is on-planet. I don't know enough about MRB law, and this seems like a gray area, so I wanted your advice on this during the cease-fire."
He paused for a moment, staring at the floor in thought. Finally, he returned her gaze. "Lawyers, plural. We take our contracts very seriously, Major. Our reputation is everything. You're nuts to be asking for legal advice from the opposite side of the conflict, by the way. And yes, one of them is on-planet and outside this tent. We brought him here to talk to you. Please bring him in, Sphinx."
With a nod and a few words spoken through the lifted tent flap, another man came through. This one wasn't exactly dressed for battle but wasn't dressed for the courtroom either. With what could be considered business-casual for the planet, including some form a brown...toga? He stepped in with an air of prudence about him.
"Mr. Caine, if you would," said the HP, gesturing towards the man who looked more like he belonged in a monastery of ancient Terra than in a courtroom.
"Yes, well, first my condolences on what happened." His voice was a bit haughty, but nonetheless commanded the room. "From what we could tell from the gun-cams until they went conveniently offline, there were your proverbial men-in-black rushing across the street towards the storage tank building for the various chemicals used to treat the water. Highly volatile stuff, I'm told. I'm sure the companies building this will be facing their own class-action suits later today. If not, I'd be happy to start them. We lost some good people as well. Anyway, within three minutes of them entering, the gun cams go dark, infantry report they leave, and whaboom, global crisis on our hands." The LC looked off to the side, slightly annoyed at what was said. Like the lawyer had said something he shouldn't have.
Their cams went silent too? At the same time? What the hell kind of crazy black ops shit is going on around here?
"Now, with regards to your contract, the Mercenary Review Board generally views things that qualify as a war crime as grounds for ending the contract prematurely without tarnishing your record. There were extenuating circumstances, in this case the fact that your unit was way too close to the explosion. Based on your performance in the last two months or so, anyone would argue in your favor that had you actually known what was about to happen, there's no way you would have let yourself be put in that position. Do you agree?"
Emily nodded. "The general rule was we didn't commit to something that didn't result in capturing something of yours. We couldn't exactly afford to slug it out with your men. They're good shots and good pilots."
Dusselhoff nodded. "Most of the ones you fought down south on Gimli were at least somewhat experienced, with some veterans in the mix to show how it's done. And some of our very best sprinkled in.
Emily immediately remembered. "The Otscout pilot," she said, involuntarily.
LaPointe nodded, grinning. "Goes by Rapier. Fancies himself as a swashbuckling pirate. He's my son. Leutnant Jean LaPointe. He's a card, all-right. One hundred twenty-four recorded jumps in a row without losing his balance. It's an Inner-Sphere record, I'm told. Old Sarna Interstellar Record was One hundred fifteen. There's a pool going on when that streak ends and becomes an official record in the RoughRiders. Personally, I'd rather it just keeps going forever." Might be his only son, she thought.
Emily blinked twice, then smiled, deciding to sheathe her pride. "I recall two of those jumps when he helped gut my Jenner. In and out before we could even get a weapons lock." LaPointe laughed aloud at that one, slapping his knee like and old country boy recounting a fishing story that included a fish that got bigger with every telling.
J.J. joined in, bowing slightly to the older men. "I apologize for butting in, but we were talking about the state of the contract between the Combine and the Coyotes." Everyone's face dropped a hair, being pulled away from swapping war stories, but got back on topic. J.J. Continued. "From what I can summarize from six-and-a-half-dozen pages of their contract, as well as a five-page addendum for general instructions for myself as their liaison, I can confirm they acted in accordance with the entire contract, up until the cease-fire. They were not aware of the impending bombing raid, nor was I given any instruction or warning of the raid.
"The sheer number of raids with the possibility of more to come make it seem like a form of planetary hostage-taking, with the risk of genocide on a scale of up to a billion, if all water supplies were cut." He held up a hand before the two senior Coyotes could protest. "That being said, the phrase you use… 'extenuating circumstances?' definitely applies, as the objective had technically been completed before the cease-fire. In this case the destruction of the plant. The responsibility of so many plants being at risk does not fall on your shoulders, Major Wright-san."
The priest-lawyer nodded. "There are plenty of MRB clauses for general common-sense cases and humanitarian action, assuming the contract itself is fulfilled prior to that. Even if they didn't actually destroy it themselves, they helped put events in motion that lead to its destruction. So they get credit for it."
Emily scowled at nothing in particular, thinking to herself. "You said another force, small and on-foot, went into the storage building. They were not my people, obviously. They used us like meat shields and then didn't care whether we lived or died to provide the distraction. I believe my liaison when he says he didn't know about them either." Then after a split-second, decided to cough it up. "And our own gun cams went dark about the same time as yours, apparently. Right about when they showed up."
That got the other half of the tent's attention. Everyone's eyes involuntarily flickered or widened or blinked in some shape or form to indicate they didn't know.
"Oooooo…..kay…." said their lawyer slowly. That thickens the soup…a lot. That means whatever 3rd party is involved here would benefit from both sides' problems." A pause while he looked up at the light at the top of the tent. "Things are about to get reeeeeally political."
