Part 2
Omarus scanned Ronald Herman's contract offer, disguised as a personal letter. It was only unusual in that Omarus, owner and founder of the Hell Striders mercenaries, hadn't received one in two years. Otherwise, it was typical. Turbine Pascal was a new company in the Inner Sphere, the area of the galaxy colonized by humans in the last 1,000 years. The company had developed a powerful energy weapon in the year 3079 called the Particle Beam Cannon 250. Herman gave Omarus some facts about the PBC, but what he wanted was clear. Omarus was accustomed to it, and had learned to put up with it, until he retired. After all, graying hair, which is the reason he gave the press, wasn't quite the full story of why he quit. Herman's letter went on.
To come to the point, fourteen years ago I came under the employment of the company Allied Armaments, which is one of the larger manufacturers of long-range energy weapons in the Inner Sphere. I have been assigned with the task of acquiring the technology for producing the PBC's. Most IS governments agree that Pascal's control over the market must end, and so Allied has been enlisted as the official . . .
Omarus felt no surprise. His suspicions were confirmed. Like usual, mercenaries were the tools "respectable companies" invariably turned to when they couldn't get ahead on their own. Companies like Allied Armaments kept the Hell Striders in business. The letter went on, but the contract itself wasn't what Omarus was thinking about. It was merely part of the bigger question: was it time to go back?
From the beginning, he had wondered if it was the right thing to do. He had a passion for fighting, for piloting the mechs, for being in that metal cockpit, up above the world, looking down on everything. He loved the mechs, and getting into the electronics and rewiring them. But he also had a conscience. He'd murdered people by the dozens in exchange for money. And it was wrong, and he couldn't live with it anymore.
Omarus stood at the window of his room, looking out at the wind and remembering. The dust called to mind patrols in deserts, or snowy mountains on nameless distant planets. Planet Beberk, where he was hired to patrol and defend a city and once tapped the jump jets sending the mech 40 meters up in almost nonexistent gravity. The storm he once rode out on the same planet, fierce enough to kill an unprotected human being, with different colored lightning flashing all around the mech—green, blue, and red miraculously created in the torrent of ions brought with the storm.
And then he reminded himself of the things he had done. He had killed people. He had destroyed entire villages, entire towns, all for the sake of the C-bill, money of the 31st century. But why should he care? Most mechwarriors had lost any sign of a conscience years before. A conscience wasn't good business.
Omarus did care. And at the same time, he couldn't turn his back on what just felt so right. The rush of adrenaline as he sat back in the seat he'd been away from for so long; the computerized female voice speaking to him as he turned the mech on—"Reactor: online. Weapons: online. Sensors: online. All systems nominal." It was all so right. The sounds, the freshness of battle, the smell of steel . . .
Was it right to be mechwarrior again, or to stop killing people? Was it possible that both were right? For that was what it felt like, and it was impossible to decide when right and wrong weren't quite clear. He wondered what his father would have to say.