"That doesn't look like they're shooting turrets," said Oscar.
"If you can tell that, you can tell better than ninety percent of the galaxy!" said Yang, and Oscar honestly couldn't tell if she was mocking him or the galaxy. She gestured around at the simulator control room. "But you know, this shack doesn't look like a kitchen, either."
"I did some planning," said Oscar, "but it didn't make sense for me to start cooking until it's closer to dinner time."
"Fair enough. Same thing here. Weiss and Blake spent a couple of hours doing target practice at turrets in different arrangements, and they burned out on it a little, so they're taking a break by wailing on each other."
Yang looked at the screens again. Oscar peered in close, trying to see what she saw, and couldn't make heads or tails of the battle. Even though he had multiple screens and position references to watch from, it made little sense to him.
As he watched, both mechs jumped again, trying to circle each other and failing, while blasting lasers at each other and also failing.
"Who's winning?" Oscar said to Yang.
"No one for now."
"They've been at it for a while, though," said Oscar.
"Yeah, well, that's what happens when you get two evenly matched pilots in evenly matched machines trying to execute the same tactics against an opponent they know well," said Yang. "Blake's Phoenix Hawk is faster, but Weiss' Griffin is tougher. They both jump really well, and they both have this close-in skirmisher thing going. They even have about the same weaponry. Weiss' Griffin has an extra missile rack and better heat sinking, so she can fire more shots, but Blake's ECM comes close to shutting that down, so it's just a midrange laser fight. They can't even go too heavy on that because they're jumping all the time and they'll overheat if they spam lasers. So they can usually only take a couple shots per jump.
"And no," she added before he could ask, "they're not gonna stop jumping. Either one of them can eat someone alive if they get behind them, and they both have way too much respect for each other to just let that happen. So they'll both keep jumping, which means they'll probably both keep missing for a while."
Yang smiled. "Usually it doesn't end until someone makes a mistake, like jumping onto some unsteady ground and falling down. If that doesn't happen, they just chip away at each other until they're both ground to dust."
"That sounds…" Oscar frowned; finding the right word was proving tricky. "…exhausting?"
Yang laughed. "Yeah, it's that too. Honestly, for people who are different in just about every way, they have pretty similar styles when it comes to combat."
"I was wondering about that," said Oscar. "Blake is from Canopus, right?"
"Could you tell?"
"I know there's the ears thing," said Oscar with a flush, "but I didn't want to assume."
"Good for you. Yeah, she's from Canopus."
"And Weiss Schnee… that's a Steiner name if ever I heard one."
"You're two for two."
"And I know Ruby was raised on this dropship, so she's not really from anywhere."
"You're on a roll."
"How did you all end up here together? You're from opposite ends of the Inner Sphere, but somehow you ended up as part of the same unit? How does that happen?"
"I'm not gonna speak for my teammates," said Yang. "They can speak for themselves if they want to. But I can tell you my story, if it's not too boring."
"I didn't mean to say you're boring!" squeaked Oscar.
"I know you didn't, you're just fun to tease. My motivation isn't anything profound. I'm just here for the fun of it. Piloting mechs is a blast, and fighting and winning is a thrill. I'm a good enough tech that I could do that for a living if I wanted—I customized the hell out of my Dragon, for starters—but I just don't want to. This is more fun. I think I'd get restless if I tried to settle down.
"Plus, someone's gotta look after my little sister, and someone might as well be me. Like I'd trust anyone else with that job!"
"I'd been meaning to ask about that," said Oscar. "You two call each other sisters, but you look nothing alike."
"Half-sisters, technically," said Yang. "My dad is from a small planet called Patch in the eastern periphery. Runs his own depot. One of his steadiest customers was a chick named Raven who kept finding reasons to drop by, and eventually they were going steady, and that's how you get a Yang. Unfortunately, it turned out that the reason Raven's machines kept getting shot up was because she was part of a pirate outfit. After she had me, she grew powerful enough in her tribe to take control, and then she didn't need to hang around Patch anymore. So she dumped me with dad and took off for the deep Periphery.
"But the Roses came by Patch often enough, too. Even while taking care of me, dad fell head over heels for the leader of Rose's Rowdies, Summer Rose. So he sold his depot and tagged along with her on a trip to the stars. And that's how you get a Ruby.
"Then one day, mom went out to have some kind of meeting, or something… I never knew the details, and dad either never knew or won't tell me. Point is, mom never came back. She left behind her mercenary license, this dropship, her Sentinel, and all the Rose family baggage that goes with it.
"Dad hated all of it. He didn't want any part of this business that took his wife away from him. But he felt like he had to keep things going in case Ruby ever wanted to take it over, and Ruby... well, you talked to her."
"Yeah, I talked to her. She never considered being anything else."
"Nope. So dad kept it going until she was ready, and then we dropped him off on Patch, and that was that. We still send him messages from time to time so she knows we're not carbon dust out there somewhere."
"I'm sure that makes him feel better."
Yang was about to say more, but she noticed something on the screens that Oscar hadn't. "We have a winner," she said. "Looks like Weissicle managed to scrape it out. I'm sure they'll be in to let us know any second now."
It took a minute or two for the pilots to exit the simulator and make their way to the control room, but they were talking rapid fire when they arrived.
"You took a big gamble there at the end," Blake was saying. "Those extra shots from your LRMs inside their minimum range almost cost you."
"'Almost' doesn't cut it," said Weiss. "It was a calculated risk. I knew your armor was in tatters, and I thought a little extra push would do it."
"You mean you got frustrated and lost patience," Blake said with a smirk.
"I'd say I know my mind better than you," said Weiss defensively, but she sounded to Oscar like Blake's jab was closer to home than Weiss would admit.
"That brings you two's lifetime series to…" Yang used a marker to add a tally by Weiss' name on a chart in the back of the room. "…51 to 50, looks like."
"That is close," said Oscar. "You weren't kidding when you said they were evenly matched."
"They don't ever get that far apart, either," said Yang.
"I was up three at one point," said Weiss.
"And at another time I was up four," said Blake, "but it didn't last, and here we are."
"I was actually asking about how you got here," said Oscar. "Ruby told me about herself, and Yang just finished her story. What about you two?"
"Some people would call that nosy," said Weiss.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," said Oscar, backpedaling as hard as he could. "I just thought, if we're working together, and I'm going to be stuck aboard your dropship, maybe I could learn a little more about you."
"I get that," said Blake. "Curiosity is natural."
"And no one knows more about curiosity than you," said Yang with a big dumb grin on her face.
Weiss and Blake reflexively sighed.
"Because curiosity killed the—"
"We know, Yang," said Weiss, and she hid her face in her palm.
"Just so you know," said Blake to Oscar, "as unbearable as Yang's jokes might be, she and only she is allowed to make them. We've fought side by side, and she's bailed me out of some jams."
"Five and a half jams," said Yang. "The half was kinda my fault, so I don't count it as a full bailout."
"The point is, I know she's making the jokes from a place of affection," Blake said without quite acknowledging Yang's words. "If someone else tried to make those jokes, I'd take it more personally."
"I'll consider myself warned," said Oscar, and his Adam's apple bobbed with a nervous swallow.
"My story is no secret, anyway," said Weiss. "Most of it is a matter of public record. My father married into the Schnee family, which operates mines throughout Steiner space."
"That's right," said Yang brightly. "Weiss was a regular old merchant princess!"
"Yes, well, in that sector of Steiner space there are many, many merchant princes and princesses. The whole territory was originally incorporated as an alliance of merchant conglomerates. Now you can't jump to a Steiner system that isn't owned by one old-money family or another.
"My father was trying very hard to climb the social ladder of the merchant nobility. He only ever saw my older sister and I as bargaining chips to cement alliances with other families. He dangled us like prizes in negotiations with them. We were never people to him, not really family, just assets.
"I was supposed to have been married four times in the first couple of years after I reached adulthood. The first two times, negotiations broke off at the last moments and the deals fell through. The third time, the other family suffered a huge financial setback, and it was no longer worth my father's time to make an alliance with them, so he broke it off."
"And the fourth time?" said Oscar.
"The fourth time, I politely told my father that I disapproved of the match."
Yang and Blake started snickering at that. "She means," Blake said, "that she politely stole the family's Griffin, which she'd been quietly training on for years, bartered her wedding dress and jewelry for passage on board a dropship, and ran off, never to return."
"I thought all of that was implied," said Weiss. The others snickered some more.
"You also used the Griffin to blow up the family garage and a statue of your dad."
"If I hadn't blocked the garage, the family security detail would have followed me," Weiss said as if it were only natural.
"They would have followed you in your father's hover car?"
"I always hated that car," said Weiss. "He didn't even use it. He just bought it to say he had one."
"And the statue?" said Yang.
"I hated its stupid ugly face," said Weiss.
Blake laughed; Yang raised a hand for a high five with a holler of, "You go, girl!"
Weiss very calmly pressed her hand to Yang's, but she did look awfully pleased with herself.
"All of which is why we try not to go too deep into Steiner territory," said Blake. "We'll do jobs along the border region, even for Steiner clients, but we won't go very far into their turf. Jacques Schnee is still a bit upset with our ice queen here, and we'd rather not give him the opportunity to take her back."
"I'd like to see him try," said Yang, and the dangerous look on her face told Oscar that this, at least, was no joke.
"That's very gallant of you, Yang, but it's not prudent to tempt fate." Weiss looked down. "I did all this to get my freedom. I'd rather not risk it, or put you in the position of having to defend it."
"We would," said Blake quietly.
"I know, and that's what makes it all worth it," said Weiss, still not meeting anyone's eyes. "I spent twenty years as a rich man's possession. As a pet. Never again."
"Aren't most of your clients rich men?" said Oscar. "It's not like poor people can usually afford mercenaries, right?"
"But it's my choice," said Weiss strongly, her eyes flashing up to meet Oscar's. "When we take a job, it's under a contract—an agreement between equals. They have to deal with me for what I am, not for where or how I was born. My whole childhood was devoured by people who demanded things of me, who said I owed them because of things I didn't control—where I was born, when, to whom. Joining up with Ruby was my choice. When she gives me an order, I obey it not because I have to, but because I choose to, because I gave her that power of my own volition.
"That difference means everything."
"Wow," breathed Oscar.
Weiss looked more worked up than Oscar had seen her, but as he watched, whatever aristocratic training she'd been raised with kicked back in. She smoothed her posture like making a bed, set her shoulders back, righted her head, and banished her passion from her expression. "Does that answer the question?"
"Y-yeah, totally, thanks, Weiss," said Oscar. Partly to avoid Weiss' suddenly fierce gaze, Oscar turned to the last pilot in the lance. "That leaves you, Blake. If I'm not prying," he added nervously.
"It's fine," said Blake. "It's not actually a secret. I mean, it kind of is, but it isn't."
Oscar's confusion must have showed on his face, because Yang burst out laughing. "You just fried his brain," she said.
"Do you know what a military attaché is?" said Blake.
"Not really," said Oscar.
"It means she's a legal spy," said Yang.
Oscar's confusion deepened. "I thought spying was illegal."
"It can be," said Weiss. "But all the different nations find it convenient sometimes to allow certain spies to operate in the open. They're still doing spy things, but the target nation knows what spy things they're doing and with whom. It also lets them have spy-to-spy talks in the open, which matters in certain diplomatic situations."
It still sounded crazy to Oscar, but if it was normal to all of them, then it must make sense to the people who mattered. "So Blake is an attaché, then?"
"For the Magistracy of Canopus," said Blake. "I'm attached to Rose's Rowdies and send back intel reports on what I see of the other nations. We travel lots, and we're far from Canopus territory, so what I send back is useful, and hard for the Magistracy to get otherwise."
"And you're okay with that?" said Oscar, looking at Yang. "She's kind of spying on you, too, isn't she?"
"We have an arrangement," said Yang. "We let her do her thing, but with rules. Like, she can't tell anyone where we are, only where we've been. We finished a contract in this system this week, but she's not allowed to send her report until after we've jumped to a new system."
A new connection sparked in Oscar's money. "When Ruby said my master's mission for you would be non-reportable, is that part of your arrangement?"
"That's right," said Blake. "There are some missions which we agree I can't report on, or which I can't report all the details. It's for the Rowdies' protection."
"And in exchange," said Yang, "we get a kick butt MechWarrior, a great fighter, and a good friend."
"As well as access to some of the most salacious and vulgar reading material in this sector of space," said Weiss.
"You know," said Yang, her face suddenly keen, "for someone who complains about Blake's books as much as you do, they seem to end up in your bunk an awful lot."
"It's okay," said Blake. "Weiss was born into repression. She's not able to acknowledge she likes that kind of thing yet. Maybe one day she'll get there, but in the meantime, I don't mind."
"I'm right here, you know," said Weiss, but her petulant tone was undercut by her fond expression.
"Thanks for talking to me," said Oscar. "I really was curious."
"But what about you, Ozzie?" said Yang. "We've told you all our stories, what's your deal?"
"It's nothing much," said Oscar. "I was born on an agro-world in a low-traffic subsector. I was raised by my aunt on her farm. I felt like I was being pulled towards something bigger, though, and after a while, I realized that I needed to serve a higher cause. Well, what higher cause is there than helping to hold the galaxy together?"
"Don't get me started on ComStar," said Blake in the voice of someone who dearly wants to get started.
The others knew this routine, apparently, because they both groaned. "Here we go again," said Weiss.
"My grievances are legitimate," said Blake stubbornly. "You don't get it, you grew up close to the center of the Inner Sphere, but communications in the Periphery are abysmal. ComStar's monopoly hurts small nations like the Magistracy, it really hurts us."
Oscar felt indignity and defensiveness welling up within him in equal measure. "The Periphery gets served, too," he said.
"With worse facilities on lower priority," Blake shot right back, "and with no ability to improve matters ourselves."
"If this is where the conversation has turned, I'm quite done with it," said Weiss. "I still need a shower after that last spar."
"Actually, I was hoping you'd be up for another round," said Yang. "Come on, don't tell me the ice queen doesn't want to put me in my place!"
Weiss put on a haughty expression, but there was a genuine smile in there, too. "I believe you already know your place, but if you need a reminder, perhaps I could provide one."
"Hell yeah," said Yang, grabbing her helmet. "Let's do it."
The two of them left the control room. Blake groaned her disappointment. "Which leaves me, by default, to run the simulator," she said to their old positions. "Thanks for asking me for my opinion, you two."
"Maybe you could teach me?" said Oscar.
Blake looked at Oscar sharply and seemed to measure him with her eyes. "You're not getting out of this discussion about ComStar," she said.
"You've got days to give it to me," said Oscar. "But if you're going to do that, maybe you can teach me something in return. Then I can help you with more than just the cooking."
She looked at him another moment, until the ghost of the smile tickled the corners of her mouth. "That's not bad negotiating. Alright. Here's the initial boot sequence…"
"Okay," said Maria, "our vector is set and I know how we're going to approach the site, even if you haven't decided on our landing spot yet. New course is plugged in and autopilot is on."
Maria didn't have to say that she'd be back at the controls before they hit atmosphere. Ruby had flown with Maria long enough that it was assumed.
Ruby had grown quiet. She was sitting with her arms crossed and her gaze out the dropship cockpit, distant and unfocused.
Maria sighed. "We're about to get all touchy-feely, aren't we?"
Ruby spent another few moments chewing over the thoughts in her head, before saying, "Maria, do I have any right to be doing this?"
"Given how many things you could mean by 'this', it's hard to say."
"Our employer is paying us in lostech," said Ruby. "Lostech for Crescent Rose. It's wonderful, almost a miracle."
"You don't sound very cheery for someone who's receiving a miracle," said Maria.
"This mission is good for me, sure. But it's dangerous. We don't know exactly how dangerous, but it's no cakewalk no matter what."
"You're not exactly in the galaxy's safest line of work," said Maria dryly.
"I keep thinking about our last op," said Ruby. "A Steiner general risking money and people just for his own vanity. Just to get back spare parts for his personal machine. And it makes me think to myself, Am I so different? What right do I have to put my friends at risk for the sake of my own machine?"
Maria gave Ruby an askance look. "There are people out there who'll say it's not about right at all. You can do it, can't you?"
"I feel sometimes that the galaxy is the mess it is today because too many people focus on what they can do and not what they should do," said Ruby.
"That's probably true. But the 'can do' people have this much of a point: have any of the other pilots raised an objection with the mission?"
"There've been some objections about the employer," said Ruby. "But that part is complicated enough that I think we're okay with it."
"There you go," said Maria. "If your other pilots had an issue with the mission, they'd tell you. If they haven't objected, they must be on board."
"But how could I be sure?" said Ruby, wringing her hands together. "How could you tell the difference between someone who's okay with something and someone who's not okay but doesn't want to speak up?"
"Have you met your own crew? Because I have. And the idea of Weiss or Yang not speaking up when they have a problem is laughable. Even Blake is pretty loudmouthed when she has a problem with something."
"I guess," said Ruby reluctantly. She curled her legs up in front of her body and wrapped her arms around them, a gesture that made her seem ten years younger than she was. "Maybe it's just that I wanted them to have problems with the mission."
"Now you've really lost me," said Maria.
"Because then I'd have a reason to call the mission off," said Ruby.
"Now hold on," said Maria, feelings of irritation welling up within her. "You just got done telling me that this mission will give you lostech to help you take care of Crescent Rose. Now you're saying you're looking for reasons not to take it?"
"Tech like that wouldn't be on offer if the mission wasn't a doozy," said Ruby. "You don't offer someone a Gauss rifle for an anti-pirate patrol. And being offered a Gauss rifle has just reminded me of how much of an oxymall… oxymorn…"
"Oxymoron?" said Maria.
"How stupid my life is," Ruby said more simply. "Let's say I go on this mission to try to get weapons for Crescent Rose. And let's say that I succeed, but Crescent Rose takes critical damage along the way that ruins the engine. No one can make engines like that anymore. If Crescent Rose took hits like that, she's dead for good, no matter how many Gauss rifles I stacked up for her.
"That's the killer part, isn't it? I have to risk Crescent Rose to save her."
She didn't just seem younger to Maria now, she seemed smaller. Like she was less, somehow. Maria snorted. "If that's how you feel, it's a wonder you can fight at all."
"It's a different when I'm in the cockpit," said Ruby. "When I'm actually at the controls, and I feel Crescent Rose beneath me, when the two of us are doing what we do best, there's no time to think about things like that. It's urgent, it's right in front of me, it's… simple. Who has time to let your mind wander when there's a Battlemech at your fingertips? Not me, that's for sure." She scrunched her head down further until her knees bracketed her face. "It's when we're up here that it all catches up to me. When I've got time to think, my mind goes places I don't like.
"I know I'm being dumb," she added, with a note of self-deprecation that seemed totally alien to her and left Maria feeling floored. "I know there are other reasons to take this mission, good reasons. I just…"
Maybe it was because Ruby seemed so young at that moment, but somehow, Maria was reminded of her own younger self, of the things she'd done once upon a time. The true value of experience, after all, wasn't that it kept you from making the same mistake. It was that it kept the next generation from making the same mistake.
Hopefully.
"I didn't always pilot dropships, you know," said Maria. Ruby looked over at Maria, and whatever reluctance Maria might have felt about sharing this story vanished at the sight of that gaze. Ruby's face was forlorn, like she felt as alone as a person surrounded by people could feel.
"I used to be a fighter pilot," Maria said. "One of the best. That's no brag, just facts. You can look it up in the annals of the Free Worlds League. They called me the Grim Reaper, and my squadron had the highest kill ratio anyone had seen in 50 years."
Ruby looked very impressed, and her look of admiration almost derailed Maria's story. Maria coughed to herself and unnecessarily messed with her prosthetic. "Of course, if you know anything about the Free Worlds League, you know that its only true enemy is the Free Worlds League. One of the other fighter squadrons thought our reputation was way too good, so they arranged for us to have an 'accident' when we returned to base after a sortie. It wasn't supposed to be that dangerous, even. Just a failure of the docking mechanisms to damage or maybe wreck some of our machines. But it all went wrong, far worse than they'd expected, and... well..."
She tapped the casing of her prosthetics.
"That's awful," said Ruby.
"It was pretty terrible," Maria agreed. "Even after I started getting better and we started working on replacement eyes, I had a hard time of it. It was difficult to get better when I wasn't even sure if I wanted to get better. After all, wasn't the only reason I'd lost my eyes that I was such a good fighter pilot? If I'd chosen to be something else, wouldn't I still have my sight?"
"Yes?" said Ruby.
"Of course, yes!" said Maria. "If I did something else, anything else, I would still have my eyes. For years, that knowledge messed with my head.
"But eventually I realized I had it backwards. It was because I was so good that I was someone worth attacking. No one is jealous of dirt farmers on a backwards agro-world."
(Somewhere, for no particular reason, Oscar sneezed.)
"And that's because anyone can be a farmer on a backwards agro-world. But no one else could be the Grim Reaper."
Ruby scratched her head in confusion. "Are you saying if I go out there in a week and get pulverized, I should feel better because I was worth pulverizing?"
Kids. How could Ruby really be so smart and yet so dumb? "I'm saying," said Maria, "that anything worth doing comes with some risk. Anyone can avoid risk. But what's the point of that? You can't become something worthwhile if you never stick your neck out.
"I'm not saying be like your sister," Maria added, a vision of Yang's devil-may-care face appearing in her mind's eye. "Your sister takes risks for no good reason, just because she likes the thrill that maybe she might lose, and she's been lucky enough to get away with not losing so far. I'm not saying, 'go be stupid'. I'm saying that every act that really means something, that really matters, happens because someone put something on the line to make it happen.
"Your experience with Crescent Rose isn't really that unusual. It's just how life goes."
"I hadn't thought about it that way," said Ruby thinly, and she looked out at the stars again. This time, she looked less desolate and more contemplative. It was an upgrade. Maria would take it.
Maria set about double checking their star charts. Nothing had changed in the past hour, and she didn't expect that anything would, but she needed something to do that didn't involve messing with whatever was in Ruby's head right now.
"I guess," Ruby said at last, "if I'm going to be running this kind of risk… I'd better make sure it's for a reason, you know? Something more meaningful than just getting by."
Maria scoffed. "Child, if you can look at your mission history and say what you've been doing isn't meaningful, you need your head checked."
"When I do," Ruby shot right back, "it'll be by someone who can see it right."
"You disrespectful little snot!" said Maria, to which Ruby stuck out her tongue.
Maria's heart lightened. If Ruby was feeling good enough to sass, she'd be okay.
To be continued...
Mech nerdness: although all factions use all mechs to some extent, the Griffin 1S is traditionally a Steiner variant, making it a great fit for Weiss. Fitting Weiss' canon backstory to the BattleTech milieu was effortless.