The Fools Bargain 01
Declan II
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
"Hance Davion, I have come to bargain!"
Nathan Armstrong voice came from behind the door just moments before it slammed opened. The man inside jerked back in surprise, moved to hide what he was reading, reconsidered, then turned towards the door with a deeply unimpressed stare.
Therapist-bot entered the room, its chest a video screen showing Nathan Armstrong's face relayed real-time through HPG.
"Really? You could not do this with the actual Hanse Davion? You take advantage of my weakness, sir!" spoke the doppelganger.
"Salutations, Hans II Davion."
"In many ways, are you not better off than Hanse Davion? You are freer in many ways than the burden of rulership. Many would find that power and authority attractive and worth killing over, but you know that with Michael Hasek-Davion conspiring with Mad Max, you would have only lasted long enough to torpedo Steiner-Davion relations before being conveniently killed off so that Michael could assume rulership of the Federated Suns. We have bargained for your life, now it is up to you to do something with it instead of wasting it in obscurity."
Dupli Hanse threw the book at him. "And that is why you were having me read all these isekai reincarnation novels! To make me comfortable with having lost all my previous life and be comfortable inside someone's skin! What kind of blatant and deranged emotional manipulation is this?!"
Therapist-bot spoke: "You were violated in both body and mind. But even if you were a victim in the machinations of politics, victimhood is not your fate. Own it and make it your own power."
Dupli-Hanse cooly replied: "I am grateful enough that I was not just killed off for convenience, but now what does the Eridani Light Horse wish to do with me? A gilded cage is still a cage, and an unpaid prisoner of war is just a step removed from being a slave."
"You can do all the things that Hanse Davion can't get away with," said Armstrong. "Why don't we go for a run? Whoever loses must fulfill a minor request of the victor."
"Indeed. Physical activity helps break out of cycles of depression."
The doppelganger sighed. "Fine."
-.
The site upon which the Eridani Light Horse built their main base was in the middle of some idyllic green rolling hills. There were forests. There were cliffs. There were seas.
There was this giant country-sized beam lashing down from space reshaping the land.
The base itself looked normal enough, composed of ferrocrete and other prefab structures. For strength a lot of it was made of geodesic domes. The capital of Declan II would now be Mobius City. Dupli-Hance didn't take long to realize why.
The rocks were stained in a checkerboard pattern. Roads banked into the cliffsides. The loops on the horizon in this Green Hills Zone were just the most obvious symbols of how much of this was sculpted and not by human hands.
"It would be much safer for all of you if I never left this planet ever again," he sighed. "Why do you do this?"
"It would be a waste of potential," replied Armstrong. "You could just spend the rest of your life in safe obscurity, but will that fix the life stolen from you? Others can take vengeance for you, but will that be enough to bring you closure? Will you be happy just having your life continually be decided for you?"
"And what you are doing now, is not?! Being in the military is exactly having your life decided for you on all levels, you crazy horses!"
"You are now a Hanse Davion," replied Therapist-Bot. "Denying your own personhood would lead to life-long struggle and potentially unhealthy coping mechanisms."
"You don't even see me! You are the ones denying my personhood! What you want is Hanse Davion?"
"Do you even see *you* when you look into the mirror? Which would feel worse to you - just being some no-name lackey surgically altered into a death conspiracy, or being actually Hanse Davion in all the ways that Hanse Davion cannot Hanse? That twisty brainwashing in your head will keep insisting the rest of your life that you have to be Hanse Davion or you're nothing." Armstrong on the screen shrugged. "So why not be Hanse Davion *on your own terms* instead."
"You were programmed to act a Hanse Davion as far as Liao could imagine nobles to act - outwardly charming, but arrogant and narcissistic, demanding complete obedience. That is Worst Hanse, and instead of trying to fight against that programming, rebuke it by living a healthier, happier, more exciting and more fulfilling life than any other Hanse Davion. You deserve better than to be mediocre."
"This is insane. I can't - no. I don't even know anything about psychology but this has to be the worst way to deal with trauma that I can see." With a scowl he added "Apart from drugs and alcohol and things of that nature, I mean."
"Would you like to wear a white mask?" asked Therapist-Bot.
The robot played a strangely catchy tune.
"You may live in the shadow of his soul, but there's nothing that says you can be greater than some REMF sitting on his throne."
"... I am insulted on Hanse Davion's behalf."
They had by this time arrived at the hangars.
Therapist Bot stated: "Hanse Davion will never be allowed to be a test pilot."
Dupli Hanse looked up with narrowed unamused eyes at the experimental units. "They're all still Urbanmechs."
-.
Dupli Hanse secured the seatbelts and nodded. The Super Urbanmech had a blue and white paint scheme, with a line of white and red vertically down one side of the mech, much like Hanse Davion's own Battlemaster.
"Thank you, Charlie. I'll be fine on my own from here on. Maybe I'll see you later."
"W-whatever you wish, my Prince," the female engineer beamed as the platform retracted.
Armstrong spoke through the radio: "Hans Prince. Handsome Prince. Don't you go around breaking young girl's hearts."
"This is the face I was given and you all say I might as well accept all that it gives me," said the man with an eerie resemblance to a young James Tiberius Kirk.
The other Super Urbanmech was painted a flat wine red. The two mechs unlatched from their bays and began to walk out of the hangar. Therapist-Bot sat in the other cockpit, but only had a hardline connection to the DroneOS systems. With real-time HPG reciprocal connection, Nathan Armstrong could pilot remotely from an entirely different planet away just as easily as his Drone Command Console would control the virtual mech inside the simulation pod.
Dupli Hanse knew enough that this was supposed to be impossible.
Then again, as the two mechs began to run, so were many things.
The speedometer for an Urbanmech was calibrated to have a max speed of around 60 kph, and its actual top speed of 32kph halfway and highest point on that dial. "Slow" and "Less Slow". Even an Assault Mech which had a top speed of around 54 kph usually had more on the gauge. While the HUD of a neurohelmet had digital readouts, it was easiest for pilots to understand a proportional gauge that went up and down depending on their mech's movement.
The world began to blur past. Everything else started to fall away. There was no time to think, no room for hesitation. His problems just melted away. There was only speed.
Even most Light Mech scouts had gauges that topped out at 150 kph.
The Super Urbanmech's feet were a blur, chewing into the soil. They had passed that speed reading only 30 seconds after leaving the hangars.
The Super Urbanmech custom's speed readout did not top out at 150, or 200, or even 300.
Slamslamslamslam~
The Super Urbanmechs were traveling so fast that they had to run vertically on hardened walls just to turn. They had already passed 170 kph, which was a speed no sane BattleMech ever tried, much less an Urbanmech.
Extra ExtraLight engines. Extra Light Gyro. Endo Steel construction. An absolutely massive 390-rated Engine that ate up all room in the torso forcing the pilot to squeeze into a Small Cockpit.
Up ahead, the terrain inexplicably had turned into a huge loop like on a roller coaster, but on flat highway-grade land.
Dupli Hanse bared his teeth in a grin and accelerated. 200. 250 kph.
In complete defiance of gravity, the blue Super Urbanmech ran up the ramp, went completely upside down, and completed the loop out the other side - no sweat. Right now, in Declan, a Hanse Davion was the fastest thing alive.
Next were a series of three loops. He engaged the afterburners and MASC on the machine.
300. 350 kph.
Would Hanse Davion ever feel so alive?
Not even aircraft could compare to this, he mused. The neurohelmet fed back to him the sheer purposeful violence of his movement, every twitch of an artificial muscle myomers, the feel of air starting to thicken in front of him.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Now running at a quarter of the speed of sound.
He heard a muffled crunch. While upside down he glimpsed something failing to exit the loop cleanly, and had turned from something running into a disintegrating bullet scraping and tumbling across the countryside.
He kicked off, toggled his Jump Jets, and worked hard to bleed off momentum. Even so, the Urbanmech landed roughly and he had to keep running for a while longer into a broad turn just to head back the way he came.
He found the red Urbanmech as little more than a dented and torn egg, quadruply amputated.
"... What was I so worried about?!" he exhaled roughly and groused. "You were piloting this thing remotely. I had forgotten." A bit of lag was inexcusable when running at completely improbable speed for any Battlemech, much less an Urbanmech.
And yet, for the slightest mistake, this could have been his fate.
Hanse Davion would never be allowed to experience this.
"This unit is in distress. Help. Help." said Therapist Bot.
Dupli Hanse sighed. Even if it was just a robot, he did have some attachment to the oddly sassy counseling bot. "All right. Hang in there, my metal freud. I'm calling for recovery."
"Someone is making stupid dad jokes and this unit cannot make them stop. Help. Help. Save me."
-.
-.
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
Petersen thought that if the whole point of having Kerensky was to rob the mystique off Wolf's Dragoons and let the Eridani Light Horse have confidence they can beat the Dragoons the next time they meet, this was entirely the wrong way to go with it.
There was a duelist-sized hole in the Eridani Light Horse. Kerensky's presence has turned the horses from a cooperative herd into a bunch of feral wild tarpans.
Petersen set out to privately question Kerensky at a convenient time. Kerensky herself was standoffish and uncooperative, completely uninterested in making any attachment. Fair enough, Petersen thought, they would have to try to kill each other for real again after three months. However, through weeks of observation, one strange thing emerged.
He set out on a small militarized pickup truck towards the training fields and found there a group of Mechs still drilling. It was already night well past nine, and still they were training.
It was a black 70-ton Heavy Urbanmech being followed by six pea-green 30-ton Urbanmechs. Whatever Petersen had been expecting to find with Natasha Kerensky, it was not a mother goose leading her goslings.
As the large Urbanmech swiveled to turn its baleful cyclopean amber gaze towards the approaching car, Petersen realized that peace with Kerensky had never been an option.
-.
-.
"Smoke? Vodka?" Petersen held up one in each hand.
"Neither." Then, belatedly as if remembering that she was a human being and had to express politeness "Thank you. No need to butter me up. It's bright enough to see your bars, sir. I hope you don't expect me to salute." She leaned against a lamppost and crossed her arms. "Now what does the Regimental Commander of the 71st want from me?"
"Hmm." Petersen put down the bottle and broke open the pack of cigarettes. He took one out and lit one up. He noticed that Kerensky scowled at his choice. "You… look like you disapprove."
"Throat and lung cancer is not a warrior's death," said Natasha Kerensky. "I have forbidden that amongst all vices from my trainees."
"That's fair. A filthy habit that somehow even a thousand years away from Terra, we're still doing it. Soldiers do like to find ways of dying even faster. Or maybe this is just how we take comfort in our mortality?" He puffed out and then suddenly jammed the cigarette into the side of the truck. "So I suppose I just have to ask - is your way actually right? Has someone beaten you yet in training?"
Natasha Kerensky bared her teeth and laughed a hollow laugh. "Do not tell me you're also buying into all that publicity and rumor. Of course I have. Many times. Even in the Dragoons, I am hardly untouchable. That is what training is for! Get beaten down, and stand up again. Sweat on the training fields saves blood on the battlefield. There is no failure in training, only hints towards improvement. Perfection is the enemy! If you ever feel like there is no longer anything more you can do to improve, then that is the moment you assure your own death. Your general's demands for OPFOR requires that we all know both how to win and lose."
She shrugged. "In war, the only victory is survival, Colonel! You should know that much."
"Surely there isn't much difference though? The herd and the pack both require cooperative effort. In the end, aren't we all too old and stuck in our ways? All of this is just adding some more tricks and traps into our toolbox without refusing to move from our preferred doctrine."
Kerensky only tapped her boots impatiently. She looked off to the distance, just blanking out the officer's rambling.
Petersen let out a small 'heh'. "All right then. I'll get to the point. Even with High Command asking for you to show special dispensation to some utter rookies in their first year as cadets, you are spending too much of your own time trying to get them to soak up your teachings."
Kerensky looked up. She smirked. "So - it wasn't me that you were curious about after all."
Petersen gestured to the open field. "Perhaps it is true that only an empty vessel can be filled? Perhaps that is all you are looking for - a synthesis between your way and our way that can be tested in the future."
Then with a voice completely flat and devoid of emotion "Or… did you figure out yet why for some reason Eridani High Command is so biased towards Devlin Stone? You are also noticeably biased towards these children and I don't know why."
"Can't I just find these kids cute and want to play with them? No?" The woman shrugged. "The boy is odd and unnatural, but nothing all that special. These kids-"
Sploosh.
Sploosh.
The light of the lamppost was bright enough to show how Natasha Kerensky was covered in bright hot neon pink paint. In the gloom just right outside of the light cone, Devlin Stone and Bennet Brooklyn held empty paint cans. Tom Robinson stood by nervously.
"These kids are dead meat," Natasha said simply.
"Vengeance for Little Tom!" Devlin roared.
"Yeah, take that, you red witch!" Bennet yelled as well.
Devlin and Bennet grabbed Tom from either side and hauled him off.
"That little random gene mistake SON OF A BITCH!" Kerensky turned around.
"I never knew my motheeerrr-!" Devlin answered even as they skedaddled.
"I am an unwilling participaaant!" Tom wailed.
-.
-.
As a rule, drill instructors are not actually allowed to harmfully touch their recruits. It was an incompetent one that had to resort to brutality in order to enforce their authority. By the same token, cadets attacking their instructor were due for a court martial.
The rules were somewhat vague on pranks.
So when the doors to the infirmary were kicked open at just before midnight, the night shift saw a pink splattered Kerensky dragging three teenage boys all tied up and gagged like they were tires being dragged for physical training in old urban martial arts movies, the staff's only thought was 'Where did she find the tar and feathers?'
Kerensky coldly stopped by the reception desk and said "I need you to check these brats for lead poisoning."
"Uh. Yes. All right. But why?"
"Because they are being morons more than the usual."
"... Fair enough." The reception desk rang for an orderly. "Ma'am, we can prepare anodyne solvents for you too. We can set aside a private bath."
"I'm visiting," said Kerensky.
"It is past visiting hours, but…" the receptionist glanced towards the three teens, still silent and shaking with terror "I think we can make an exception."
Kerensky turned sharply at hearing a giggle from one of the medics on station. "What?" she asked. "You find this funny? Are you getting comfortable now?"
She turned back to the receptionist and spoke in a drill sergeant voice designed to carry without shouting. "Ponies, we are not friends. The next time we meet in battle, I will still do my best to kill the one in front of me. Do not let the mischief of these children make you forget that they are all still enemies." She reached out and pressed a fingernail to the fleshy part of the receptionist's chin and forced her to look up. "Do not make any mistake that I have developed any fondness that would have me grant you any mercy."
The receptionist stared into Kerensky's burning gaze and blushed. "Y-yes, my Queen," she breathed.
Natasha Kerensky squinted.
-.
-.
Colin MacLaren sat up as far as he could rise to attention when Natasha Kerensky entered the room. "My Lady!" he cried out in pleasant surprise. "Are you well? You are… pink?"
Keresky held up an open palm. He silenced immediately. "First - these ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here. Second - it is midnight. Why are you still awake?"
Colin MacLaren's look implied 'wait, so you were just going to come here and watch me sleep?' The injured mechwarrior then gestured to the papers and noteputers on the small lap desk. "It is only at night that it is silent enough to work. In some way, as you work upon the Light Horse, I too wish to earn my keep."
"Are those what I think they are?"
"Yes, My Lady. I have been grading essays, yes."
Natasha Kerensky went over to sit beside him, and sagged on the chair. "These ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here."
But, she supposed, even if Jaime Wolf tried to get ELH prisoners of his own too and did something like seize an entire regiment, she had already given her word and there were still two more months until her parole was done. She was a Wolf. She would never be a Horse. This was just a chore she had to endure until she could feel alive again on the battlefield.
McLaren stared at her and with a thin smile said gently "These ponies are dangerous."
-.
-.
Two days later, Wolf's Dragoons invaded Harrow's Sun with three regiments and the DCMS fell upon Galtor with six regiments in just the first wave.
The last great clash of powers that would close out the Third Succession Wars.