"MechWarriors, sound off."
"Weiss Schnee, cavalry, all systems green."
"Blake Belladonna, electronic warfare and skirmisher, all systems green."
"Yang Xiao Long, brawler, ready to kick butt and take names."
"And this is Ruby Rose, sniper and command, all systems green." Ruby's hands rested comfortably on her Battlemech's controls, like she'd been born for it, like it was an extension of herself, like she'd done this a thousand times before.
All of which was true, she supposed.
Her Sentinel was a forty-ton, ten-meter tall, armed and armored Battlemech. Mechs were the pinnacle of weapons design and construction, humanoid robots that could lay waste to any vehicle, air or ground, mustered against them. Ruby's Sentinel was less humanoid than most, with a massive ballistic weapon in place of its left arm and a torso that bulged forward over its slight-seeming pelvis. It was below-average in size for a Battlemech, but the thought that she might be outclassed never occurred to Ruby. That was an alien notion at times like this, when her fusion reactor was freshly powered on, her systems were reporting green, there was no trace of damage to her armor, and every part of her felt the prickle of excitement.
The Sentinel responded to Ruby's every touch, like there was no distinction between her arm and its, between her thoughts and its actions. This moment was always the best—the moment just before a mission began, when everything was anticipation, when she could feel the power of the machine beneath her and imagine the vast possibilities that power opened up.
It felt like she and her mech could do anything together.
"Rose's Rowdies, mission start," Ruby declared as she hit the throttle and felt her machine surge beneath her. She couldn't help the smile that bloomed on her face. "Let's get 'em, ladies."
Cardin Winchester didn't think he asked for much, in the grand scheme of things. Some MechWarriors despised garrison duty; Cardin kinda liked it. Some MechWarriors craved command, responsibility, and glory; Cardin was fine leading one lance of four pilots. Some MechWarriors wanted to be a part of the big moments in galactic history; Cardin loved being the big fish in a small pond.
With his Warhammer mech, a seventy-ton beast of a war machine bristling with guns and laden with armor, he was a very big fish for a pond this size.
And now someone was encroaching on his garrison? Looking to make a mess in his backyard?
Oh, hell no.
His Warhammer was well into its power-on sequence when his communications came online. "Sir," said the garrison watch officer, "sensors suggest the unidentified dropship touched down within the past five minutes. Reconnaissance aircraft got close enough to report Battlemechs launching before covering fire drove them off. Probably not more than a lance."
"Piece of cake," said Cardin as the Warhammer came to life all around him. A single lance of four enemies matched his garrison force, except he was sure to have the biggest, baddest machine on either side. Advantage: Cardin.
To both flanks he saw the other pilots under his command launching their own mechs. They probably wouldn't be needed. Most pirates and bandits turned tail just seeing a Warhammer take the field, without Cardin even needing to fire.
Still. Enemy Battlemechs were coming. That was rougher than what he usually saw.
Cardin hoped the recon report was right. He wanted to break something.
"Where are they now?" he said over the radio.
"We don't… wait. I have something at the edge of our perimeter sensors, maybe fifteen klicks out. Just one, I think?"
If it was just one, it was very brave, very foolish, or very much a trap. Either way… at fifteen klicks, and only some gently sloping hills between him and the enemy, they'd make contact in under eight minutes.
"Team Cardinal, we're going in," said Cardin as his Warhammer set off at a walk, cleared the hangar, and built up to a run. "Drive 'em off or put 'em in the ground—I don't care which."
"I've got the garrison's sensors on my scope," said Blake.
Ruby nodded, though in her cockpit none of her fellow pilots could see. Out of her lance, only one mech, Weiss' Griffin, had its active sensors up. The rest were set to passive mode to make them harder to detect. Normally, this would have affected their detection ranges, too, but Blake's Phoenix Hawk was an uncommon model that had a full electronic countermeasures suite installed. She could detect and classify sensors at much further ranges.
It had a lot of utility, that ECM suite, especially for creative troublemakers like Blake.
"It's the full lance," Blake went on. "Four incoming. All along the same bearing—probably in formation."
Blake's report was folded into the map Ruby had in her head, the one that displayed not where everyone was now, but where they'd be in the next few minutes. Weiss was running along the top of a ridge while the other Rowdies paced her below it on the side away from the garrison, using the ridge's bulk to hide them.
They could ascend the ridge there, get into weapons range there… good.
"Weiss, keep it up, stay evasive, start jumping if they get itchy. Yang, Blake, we'll climb the next hill, thirty seconds. Standard two-shot opener. I'll get their attention, Blake messes with their heads. On my second shot, we break off. Yang, don't forget to call your target this time."
"Just assume I'm going after the big one."
"Riiight." Ruby looked again. "Ten seconds."
"It looks alone," said one of Cardin's lancemates, trotting along at the end of the line in his Assassin.
"Sure," said Cardin, regarding the Griffin just in visual range. The Griffin was running full-tilt on a ridge perpendicular to Cardin's course—faster than Cardin's Warhammer could run, but only if it was trying to get away, not at right angles like this. Cardin would be in weapons range in moments. "But if he's not alone, then what better way to flush out his buddies than by lighting him up a little? Give him a round of LRMs."
Two of Cardin's lancemates—the Assassin and the Shadow Hawk—had small Long Range Missile racks on their mechs, and the Shadow Hawk's shoulder-mounted light autocannon had great range, too. At Cardin's command, both of those mechs lined up shots and let fly.
The Griffin must have seen it coming, because it fired a burst from its jump jets. Cardin swore. Most mechs didn't carry those, and most pilots weren't skilled enough to make the best use of them, but the ones that did were notoriously difficult to pin down.
This was born out once again: when Cardin's lancemates fired a total of ten LRMs and a burst of AC/5 rounds at the distant Griffin, a noticeable if not lethal barrage, only two or three of the missiles actually connected, bursting unimpressively against the Griffin's armor. Everything else went wide.
"New contact, bearing zero-four-zero!"
Cardin had been lining up a shot with his Warhammer's long-range weaponry when his Cicada lancemate's warning caught his attention. There—a distant, vaguely humanoid red shape coming over the ridge. Before Cardin could consider firing, it shot first.
"Augh!"
The sound of the impact, even not hitting Cardin, was tremendous, a thunderclap of tortured metal. Cardin glanced towards his lancemate and saw to his horror that the Cicada's leg had been all but torn off in a single shot—the one blast tearing through all its armor, pulverizing its internal structure, and knocking out its leg actuators.
Cardin could tell that last because the leg froze in place, and the Cicada—which had been traveling at a brisk sixty kilometers per hour—stumbled like a toddler and slammed face-first into the turf.
What was that?!
The only weapon that could take a leg off in one shot like that was the very heaviest of autocannon, and the AC/20 was notoriously short-ranged—this enemy was damn near a kilometer away!
Cardin tore his attention away from his stricken comrade and targeted the enemy mech that had taken the shot. Cardin had to answer, and he would. "Shoot that sucker!" he called to his lance as he brought his own weapons to bear.
His targeting reticle settled on the distant, elusive foe, even as his sensors vomited up increasingly confused information. At first it identified the target as a Sentinel Battlemech, but then updated its assessment to "Unknown".
"It's a damn Sentinel, I can see that," growled Cardin… except then, as the head of a second mech appeared over the ridge, his targeting system screeched and went to static.
"I lost lock!" called his Assassin, clearly suffering the same interference as Cardin.
"Eyeball it," said Cardin as he ignored the software alarms and squeezed his triggers.
The Warhammer's main battery was a pair of particle projection cannons, huge weapons that dominated its lower arms. At Cardin's command, the PPCs spat forth bolts of artificial lightning strong enough to ruin the armor of most mechs and burn up the structure of the lightest ones.
One coruscating azure bolt sent up a fountain of dirt where it impacted the hill; the other sailed off into the distance over the Sentinel's head.
Cardin swore at his miss even as the temperature rose in his cockpit. PPCs generated extreme amounts of heat, and the Warhammer's cooling system—though robust—wouldn't let him fire both PPCs all day. He only had so many double salvoes like that before he'd need to hold fire and cool down… or risk the mech's automatic safeties cutting in and forcing that outcome.
Uncaring of Cardin's heat situation, the Sentinel fired again.
The Shadow Hawk to Cardin's right took a terrific impact powerful enough to swing its whole torso to the side, although its pilot was somehow able to keep it from falling and stay in formation.
Cardin's brain broke as assuredly as his target acquisition software. Sentinels carried light autocannon, usually an AC/5, sometimes an AC/2… and neither of those weapons made a third of the impact he'd just witnessed.
"Light up the Sentinel!" he ordered.
"I got their attention," said Ruby as scattered LRMs fell around her. She ducked her Sentinel back under the ridge. "Weiss, Blake, Yang, go get 'em."
"I call dibs on the big guy!" said Yang as her Dragon kicked into gear and crested the hill. Although a heavy mech at sixty tons, and built squat and stubby, the Dragon moved like a smaller, lighter machine, and Yang was abusing that speed to close range on the distant Warhammer.
Weiss' voice crackled over the radio as her Griffin jumped again—not to evade this time, but to engage. "Blake, Shadow Hawk primary, Assassin secondary."
"Roger," Blake answered, firing the jump jets of her Phoenix Hawk to join Weiss.
Ruby took a peek over the ridge and saw the dance beginning. Weiss had jumped clean over both Assassin and Shadow Hawk and was scorching the Shadow Hawk's rear armor with Medium Laser fire. Blake jumped in front of the two enemies, but the combination of her extreme maneuvers and her ECM suite's jamming messed with her victims' targeting and their shots went wide. In return, one of Blake's Medium Lasers scored a hit on the Shadow Hawk's torso. Combined with Ruby's earlier Gauss rifle shot, that torso's armor was compromised; bits of internal structure were visible now.
Ruby ducked down again. She knew Blake and Weiss' routine well. Both their machines were built for close-in skirmishing, between their mixed Large and Medium Lasers and their impressive jump radii, and both pilots were quite proficient at that style. They'd circle their target, or alternate jumps to ensure one of them could always be behind the target, and chew through them, laser blast by laser blast.
For her part, Ruby would stay out of sight another fifteen seconds or so, long enough for everyone to completely forget she was there… until she fired her Gauss rifle again.
Grinning to herself, Ruby counted down the seconds, and watched the armor indicators of her lance as they danced.
"We're tied up!"
"Ugh," said Cardin, swiveling his PPCs over to shoot at the jumping menaces that were all over his lancemates—but as his sights traversed, he saw a new arrival powering down the ridge.
A Dragon—a mean machine, but not quite in his Warhammer's weight class. It was coming right for him as if it didn't believe that, though, and the light autocannon on its right arm was peppering him with shells.
The impacts were minor enough Cardin's armor indicators barely acknowledged them. Cardin snarled savagely as he redirected his aim at the Dragon—and, miraculously, his targeting software reengaged. Laughing, Cardin fired again.
One of his PPCs struck home, sending scorched armor cascading down the Dragon's right flank and, Cardin knew from experience, playing absolute hell with its electronics. The Dragon didn't stop, though; if its pilot noticed the hit, they didn't show it.
The heat level in Cardin's cockpit was bothersome now, but Cardin didn't dare stop shooting. The Dragon was closing fast, and his PPCs weren't ready to fire again. He swapped to his secondary battery, letting loose with a pair of Medium Lasers and a six-pack of Short Range Missiles.
To his shock, the Dragon answered with a similar salvo—stock Dragons carried an LRM rack in their center torso, but this abomination had swapped it out for an SRM-6.
Lasers and missiles crossed each other in mid-air. Cardin paid no mind to his own damage indicators, knowing his armor was thicker than the Dragon's, and instead noted how his missiles scattered light damage across the whole left side, arm, and leg of the Dragon. With the PPC hit on its right and the missile damage on the left, it couldn't show him an undamaged side…
Then a wave of heat flooded Cardin's cockpit, so oppressive it left him gasping. Thoughts of tactics melted away.
Warning klaxons blared all around him, and not damage warnings—overheat warnings. The truth hit Cardin like a heatwave. The Dragon's missiles weren't the standard explosive ones like Cardin loaded, and that had torn chunks out of the Dragon's armor. This Dragon used Inferno rounds. Inferno rounds lacked the punch to damage Battlemech armor, but the firestorm they created was crippling Cardin's ability to vent waste heat.
His mech could barely move, and he didn't dare fire another salvo—and that meant he could neither shoot the Dragon nor get away from it.
Through heat haze and sweat, he saw the Dragon wade through the fire into melee range, cock an arm back, and swing.
Yang whooped as her left fist went crashing into the Warhammer's right torso, causing the stricken machine to stagger. Yang followed immediately with a right hook, the casing of her autocannon specially reinforced so it could be used as a bludgeon at times like this.
Her second punch landed, too, causing the Warhammer to tip like a drunkard. It caught itself—Yang felt the slightest appreciation for the pilot's ability, there—and laboriously it swung back at Yang, the pipe-like PPC arms of the Warhammer heavy enough to cause her real damage.
Yang dipped and turned the Dragon's torso. The Dragon was built like a trapezoid with the narrow end towards the enemy, and Yang angled herself so the incoming blow failed to hit dead-on, merely glancing off her slanted side torso. Yang could take hits like that all day.
In return, she stepped in, fired another point-blank salvo of Inferno Missiles to keep the Warhammer pinned in place, and kicked at the bigger machine's shins.
Once more it almost fell; once more the pilot barely caught it, but was so off-balance as to struggle to fight back.
"Yeah, eat it!" cried Yang, caught up in the rush of close combat. Most pilots only ever practiced their gunnery skills. Most pilots viewed melee strikes as a last resort or desperation tactic. Most pilots never practiced avoiding or mitigating melee damage.
Yang was not most pilots. She lived for this.
Firing off her torso-mounted Medium Laser as an afterthought, Yang pressed her advantage, taking on a larger machine with nothing but guile and guts and loving every second of it.
Blake felt vaguely bad for the Shadow Hawk pilot.
It tried to turn towards her, but she jumped away, and for its trouble, Weiss slid to its left and hammered its ragged-looking side with laser fire. Smoke billowed from somewhere in the luckless mech's left torso; its structure was deeply compromised from the ladies' harsh attentions.
The Shadow Hawk was a tough machine for its fifty-five tons, but it was one-on-two and outmaneuvered. If its Assassin lancemate had been up to protecting its flank, that would have been a different matter, but…
…well…
The Assassin saw Blake jumping in its general direction and panicked, sprinting away and firing SRMs haphazardly over Blake's head.
Blake encouraged its flight by amping up her jamming in its direction and firing a Medium Laser. It ran away harder.
Assassins were designed to hunt light mechs… which was more or less the same mission as Blake's Phoenix Hawk, except the Phoenix Hawk, while slower than the Assassin, was heavier, better armored, and more heavily armed. Plus there was the edge she got from the ECM, equipment that was rarely employed, and even more rarely employed competently.
Few things caused more panic than trying to get a target lock and failing.
With the Assassin running for cover, Blake turned her attention back to the Shadow Hawk and circle-strafed around, angling for its left side again. The Shadow Hawk was busy trading shots with Weiss, and to its credit landed almost a full salvo of missiles and autocannon shots. Weiss' Griffin would need some patching up to its armor, for sure.
The Shadow Hawk would need a lot more than that.
Blake, knowing the move would badly overheat her, nevertheless saw the opportunity to go for the kill and took it. Coming up alongside the preoccupied Shadow Hawk, she dropped her targeting reticle over its left torso and squeezed her triggers.
One Medium Laser missed completely; the second hit the Shadow Hawk's relatively intact arm, a waste of a shot. Her Large Laser, though, blazed into the exposed left torso of the mech, and—
-and said mech vanished as a fireball consumed Blake's vision.
Blake looked away, the harsh glare of the explosion almost as rough as the scorching heat that filled her cockpit. She must have hit the magazine for the Shadow Hawk's autocannon, cooking off all the rounds it still carried. Ammo explosions were the bane of MechWarriors everywhere; they were lethal to the mechs that suffered them almost without fail.
This was no exception. As the glare died down, and Blake looked through her sweat-filled helmet to where the Shadow Hawk had been, she saw only the burned-out skeleton of a mech. What had been a mighty war machine collapsed like it was made of toasted toothpicks.
Struggling to steer her overheated and sluggish Phoenix Hawk back into the fight, she noticed, to her surprise, that the Assassin had come to a complete stop, as if the sight of its lancemate's immolation had frozen it in place.
Blake heard Weiss call out over her mech's loudspeaker, "You should probably eject."
After a pregnant pause, the cockpit of the Assassin burst open, and the Assassin pilot was launched into the air, their parachute deploying at the apex of their launch.
"I can't believe that worked," said Blake over the radio.
"Occasionally, people realize when they're outclassed," said Weiss. "Let's go help Yang."
Blake looked to their lancemate, and what she saw made her smile. "I think she's got it."
"Sir, we have a new contact, another dropship touching down…"
"Track it and tell me later," growled Cardin, almost swimming in sweat inside his pilot suit. He took another swing with his heavy arms, knowing if he could just connect, he could beat that Dragon to death—his Warhammer outweighed it by ten tons, and in physical combat sheer size usually dictated the winner.
Usually.
Cardin's overheating mech moved so slothfully that the Dragon wasn't there to get punched; it bobbed back like a boxer, making Cardin feel stupider than ever.
Screaming in frustration, Cardin fell back to his guns. Two Medium Lasers, another salvo from his SRM-6, the anti-infantry machine guns—and even a PPC shot, he had to do something to this Dragon, shake it off…
The PPC never had a chance; it was too clumsy at this range. The other weapons fared better, missiles hammering the Dragon's form and one of the lasers stripping armor from its left arm. He had to be close to hitting structure there…
But even as Cardin's weapons hit, the Dragon fired another round of Inferno missiles, and all six burst against Cardin's armor.
It was impossible to breathe; his lungs were being scorched with every gasp. He wrestled with the controls, begging the Warhammer to respond… and it didn't.
Instead, lights started blinking out.
"Reactor shutdown initiated," said a computerized voice.
"No—no!" screamed Cardin. He reached for the override, but it was far too late; the automatic safeties designed to keep his mech's fusion engine from turning into a small star had scrammed his machine to Hell until some of this heat was dumped. Until then, he was sitting in an immobile metal coffin-slash-furnace.
Motion outside his cockpit grabbed Cardin's attention. He looked up and saw the Dragon slowly, calmly, infuriatingly stepping close. It reached out with one arm and, almost without effort, nudged the Warhammer backwards.
With every system powered down and no motive controls at all, Cardin had no way to catch the fall.
Slamming against the ground bounced him around in his cockpit; his helmeted head smacked against his command chair and he was pretty sure he cracked a tooth.
"Sit there and chill a minute, 'kay?" a female voice mocked him from the Dragon looming over him. It fired one more salvo of Infernos to keep him in Hell… and then it turned and started running.
Oh come on. She wasn't even going to kill him! She was just going to let him sit there and cook until his mech powered up again, and a Dragon was fast enough that he'd never, ever catch her.
"Come on, move!" he shouted, slamming the power-on controls again and again to no avail. Roaring in frustration, he crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. That let him notice something new.
Oh, no.
The Cicada, in an admirable display of piloting, had managed to get back on its feet, despite one totally busted leg and the design lacking any arms to use for leverage. It started moving, limping badly, but game to fight—
-and a final shot with the same stupendous violence as the first slammed into the Cicada's good leg, punched clean through the knee joint, and burst against the ground behind the Cicada, leaving the leg in at least two pieces.
The pod-like torso of the Cicada fell straight to the ground.
Moaning in defeat, Cardin went limp in his cockpit. Out of all the many questions swirling in his head—about the Sentinel-that-wasn't, about the second dropship that'd been reported, about whatever these people were after, about what the hell had just happened to his lance—one stood out and overrode the others.
"Who the hell was that?!"
"What a workout, am I right?"
The Leopard-class dropship Huntress rang with the sounds of four Battlemechs being secured, powered down, and popped open for repairs and rearming. The pilots of those four mechs were congregating in the common space in the mech bay's centerline.
The first to speak as she stepped away from her Dragon heavy mech was also the tallest and the most muscled. As she doffed her neurohelmet, it became clear she'd modified it to accommodate a magnificent mane of golden hair that fell to her shoulderblades. There were things Yang Xiao Long didn't compromise on, and her hair was one of them.
A cocky smirk sprang to her face as she took in her lancemates. "Talk about working up a sweat!"
"You work up a sweat no matter how easy or hard the mission is," said the pilot of the Phoenix Hawk. Blake Belladonna was nearly as tall as Yang, and also had a heavily modified neurohelmet—in her case, to account for a pair of black cat ears atop her head. She was a living testament to the wild body modification culture of the Magistracy of Canopus, though, as with many such specimens, she hadn't had much choice in the matter.
With amber eyes and a cool demeanor, Blake looked evenly back at Yang. "Your whole schtick is riding your heat index. If our mission was just to take a walk, you'd somehow come out drenched in sweat."
"Pfft, your Phoenix Hawk runs waaaay hotter than my Dragon," said Yang, somehow obnoxiously correct. "But hey, that's fine by me. After all… some like it hot!" And she shot finger-guns at Blake.
Blake gave the slow blink of the terminally unimpressed.
"I don't know what's worse: that you made that joke, or that you thought it was good." The third member of the lance had joined them, having debarked her Griffin. Weiss Schnee had already doffed her neurohelmet and was freeing her snowy hair from its packed-in bun; when loosed, it hung to her left in an off-center ponytail. Her build was petite, her features were striking, and her beauty was not diminished by a scar that ran down the left side of her face, narrowly glossing over a pale blue eye.
Weiss looked up at Yang, the near foot of difference in their heights not intimidating her one bit. "You could at least have the decency to look embarrassed when your jokes bomb."
"You're saying you like it when I blush?" said Yang incorrigibly. "Aw, princess, if you wanted that you just had to—"
She'd been in the motion of reaching an arm towards Weiss, but was met halfway by the hiss of a spray-can. Weiss kept the can spraying for a full seven seconds until she'd coated all of Yang's available surface area.
Blake sniffed, and recoiled. "'Mountain Fresh' body spray?"
Weiss looked up at Yang as she holstered the spray can. "You smell like oil and ash under the best of circumstances, and when you've spent an entire mission in that sauna you call a Battlemech, your funk is almost unbearable. Now, what were you saying?"
"Too late, the moment's gone, you murdered it," said Yang, staggering back theatrically. "Rest in peace, moment. You never had a chance."
"You're so dramatic," Weiss tutted at Yang.
"Dramatic?" repeated Blake unbelievingly. "You're calling someone else dramatic? If I remember right, your way of saying 'no' to your last suitor involved half a dozen Large Laser shots."
"That was not overly dramatic," said Weiss, hands on hips. "That was a perfectly appropriate and proportional amount of dramatic."
"Glad to see we're all okay," said Ruby Rose.
"Hey, sis," said Yang.
Ruby was walking away from her Sentinel, its color matching her namesake, with a light expression of relief. She was a touch taller than Weiss, with messy hair cropped short and dark colored with red highlights. There was a subtle energy to her, a pep in her step, that seemed contagious to all around her. Bright silver eyes took in her team with pride and affection both.
She was clearly the youngest of the four, but their hierarchy could not have been more clear.
"I just got word that Clover's team accomplished their mission and they're extracting," said Ruby, "so we're lifting off ourselves as soon as the mechs are tucked in. Anything we need to go over right now? Or can it wait until debrief?"
"I think we're good," said Blake.
"Alright," said Ruby. "Usual routine. Go get cleaned up. Once you're refreshed, we'll debrief and write our report for our employer."
The other women nodded and made for the exit from the mech bay. Ruby watched them go fondly, then turned her eyes back to her mech. It stood there, humanoid yet clearly inhuman, its entire left arm replaced with the barrel of a gun. This was a weapon of war, an instrument of destruction, and yet Ruby looked as warmly at it as you would a close friend.
"You did good, Crescent Rose," she said.
The war machine stood in silence.
She gave it a smile and set off.
"Your diversion was successful," said their contact, a man they knew only as Clover. He was speaking to them over in-system holo, point-to-point between his ship and the Huntress. "Our extraction team got in, recovered the package, and got out without incident."
"This was a pretty elaborate operation," said Ruby. "Multiple dropships, multiple teams, mercenary support… You said you were retrieving a ruined mech, but what kind of ruined mech deserves this kind of effort?"
Clover pulled up an image that made Ruby sit up in her seat. "One of my General's ancestors recorded the loss of a Nightstar in this area eighty-something years ago."
"A Nightstar?" said Ruby in excitement. "That mech's been extinct for decades! If there's a reasonably-intact one…"
"It's not 'reasonably-intact'," said Clover; the words poured cold water on Ruby, who drooped in her seat. Yang gave her some comforting shoulder-pats. "It's almost completely destroyed, actually. Cored out, but not before losing its left arm and whole right torso."
"Which means all the weapons went poof, too," said Yang. "Sounds like a piece of junk."
"Not quite. The legs were mostly intact. The Nightstar may be extinct, but its leg actuators are compatible with some other very old, nearly-extinct Battlemechs out there. Including those of the General's personal Battlemech. With as much action as he sees, the General can always use spare parts."
"So a Steiner general launched an op in Kurita territory to retrieve spares for his own ride?" said Blake.
"Hence why we needed mercenaries," said Clover. "Both sides of the border launch raids all the time, but the General has higher priorities for his forces. By employing you, he can keep his garrisons in place."
"And he gets deniability for his chain of command," Weiss said keenly. "If he sent his own troops and the mission failed, he'd be in trouble with his superiors for wasting Steiner units on his own vanity. If we'd failed, he'd just be out the C-bills he paid us."
"I won't say you're right," said Clover, "but I won't say you're wrong, either. Speaking of payment, now that the mission is complete and we've verified the package, we're remitting your fee to the Mercenary Review Board. Pleasure doing business with you, ladies."
"We're happy to help," said Ruby.
"Stay lucky." The man's image vanished.
"Are we actually happy to help?" said Blake. "House Steiner is notorious for churning out more and bigger mechs than anyone else. That 'General' could get a new ride just by asking for one, without starting trouble along the border."
"There's already trouble along the border," said Weiss. "Or, to put it another way, there's always trouble along the border. I was born on the Steiner side, I'd know. The back-and-forth never really stops, it just gets more or less violent."
"And the Third Succession War grinds on for another day," Blake said dryly.
"Well, now the General doesn't have a reason to come back to this system," said Ruby. "If we hadn't done the job, he probably would have invented some excuse to invade the place in force. Instead, the people here can have less violence in their lives. Good enough for me."
No one argued with her. Good enough for Ruby was good enough for everyone.
"Alright!" said Ruby, clapping her hands. "The usual after-mission stuff, team. Yang works with Smith to start repairs for our mechs. Weiss hits our financials. Blake digs for new work."
"What about you?" said Weiss.
Ruby grimaced. "I have to get in touch with the Mercenary Review Board."
"Again?"
"Again."
"Miss Rose, the Mercenary Review Board is pleased to contact you once more."
Glynda Goodwitch's face did not look 'pleased' by any definition of the word. Ruby didn't have to resist the urge to say that. Glynda had recorded and sent this message one-way, like most interstellar message traffic. A two-way conversation would have been ludicrously expensive.
She had splurged for full holo, though, which struck Ruby as overkill. Glynda's voice was severe enough. Adding in her stern, schoolteacher-like appearance was just unfair.
"I will preface the official business by saying, once more, how frustrating your lance continues to be. You cause more Board reviews than the Northwind Highlanders, and they're a mercenary brigade that also plays bagpipes. Forty percent of the Inner Sphere classifies bagpipe music as a crime against humanity."
Ruby winced. Glynda had made this point before, and Ruby never had a defense against it.
Glynda unnecessarily adjusted her glasses. Ruby felt like she was taking a quiz she hadn't studied for.
"The Board has completed its review of your contract on Vacuo," Glynda said formally. "The Board rules that Rose's Rowdies was not in breach of contract. Your escape clause permitted you to disengage when you did. Your record with the Board is intact."
Ruby sagged back in her chair. That was a relief, a weight taken from her shoulders. She was sure she was in the right, but it felt better for someone else to say so.
"That said, while the Board will take no permanent notice of this incident, future employers might. This is hardly the first time you've exercised an escape clause with… shall we say, inconvenient timing for your employers."
"Inconvenient!" Ruby blurted, uncaring that Glynda was light-years away. "They ordered us to fire on a civilian convoy because they thought a spy might be somewhere in there. There were two thousand people in that convoy!"
She'd put all of that in her report to the Board, of course, and had cited that order as why she'd terminated the contract for cause. Still felt good to say it.
When she'd cooled down enough, she resumed the playback.
"On that note," Glynda went on, "I received your suggestion that ethics clauses be made standard in mercenary contracts and 'Rules of War' be enforced by the Board. I regret to inform you that this won't happen. You are not the first person to make suggestions along these lines, and the MRB has done studies on the matter.
"We concluded that, if the MRB were to implement such standards, anywhere from a third to a half of all mercenary outfits would abandon MRB certification, and that far more contracts would go to uncertified outfits. There would be, if anything, a net rise in war crimes.
"It's for your outfit as it is for the industry as a whole. Your… moral rigidity closes many doors. As a businesswoman, I am required to inform you that there are fewer jobs for mercenaries with your self-imposed restrictions."
Glynda put down whatever she'd been reading, and her face inexplicably softened. Ruby had never seen Glynda look wistful, but there was a first time for everything.
"As a human being, I wish more mercenaries were like you," she said, quietly, as if embarrassed to be saying it. "The galaxy would be a better place if more people were as ethical as you. Employers and mercenaries both. You know… I envy you, sometimes."
Ruby's jaw dropped.
"You're still in a place where you're okay with going hungry for your principles," said Glynda. "I admire that. I left that part of me behind, at some point… I'm not quite sure when. But I miss it."
Ruby's mind broke as she tried to square what Glynda had just said with the hardass she knew Glynda to be. Maybe there was a reason the MRB hadn't decertified Rose's Rowdies yet despite all the trouble they caused.
"Which begs the question," Glynda said more intimately still. "Why are you a mercenary, Miss Rose? I don't make a habit of asking this. We all have our own reasons, and it's bad business to judge people for those reasons. You are the exception that proves the rule. For someone who's in the business of selling violence, you seem awfully reluctant to hurt people.
"You could be something else. You could be a mech engineer, a civilian pilot, really any job in the piloting or mech industries. None of those jobs, I'd wager, would weigh on your conscience half as much as being a mercenary seems to.
"I don't require an answer, but I can't deny my curiosity."
Ruby smiled wryly. Glynda wasn't the first person to ask Ruby that question. Ruby's answer was always the same: she couldn't see herself as anything else. She was a MechWarrior. That was how things were. Gravity pulled, Battlemechs generated heat, and Ruby Rose was a MechWarrior. It was a fundamental part of reality.
Glynda had only given a few examples of jobs Ruby could do. Ruby knew more, had considered more in idle times. Scientist. Weapons designer. Test pilot. Agromech pilot. Shipping, logistics, mech tech, support technician to any number of industries…
And not a single one of those jobs had ever made Ruby's heart move.
The hologram of Glynda regained her professionalism as smoothly as putting on a mask. "On that note, our business is concluded. Rose's Rowdies is clear to continue operations with the MRB's recommendation. The MRB wishes you a good day and happy hunting."
The message ended. Ruby looked up at the ceiling. She'd gotten everything she could reasonably expect out of that report, and it was still somehow a disappointment.
Almost as disappointing as the knowledge that she'd have to submit another round of paperwork to the MRB for the contract she'd just completed.
Well, she thought glumly as she got to work, at least she'd have a grand feast of instant ramen waiting for her when she finished.
"I'm looking forward to some good food," said Yang, prodding a plastic insta-heat cup with chopsticks. "Like, actual steak, so rare it's barely stopped mooing."
From behind Yang, Weiss rolled her eyes. Yang somehow knew without looking. "Don't tell me you aren't sick of this stuff. Not after all the hoity-toity food you ate in those rich-bitch circles."
"Believe it or not, it is possible to get sick of foie gras," Weiss riposted. "I'll admit, the novelty of peasant food has worn off, but I don't long to go back."
"It's not like we save that much money by running on 'peasant food'," said Blake, looking through the condiment drawer for something, anything that might salvage the steaming cup in her off-hand.
"You think that, but I did the math," said Weiss, puffing up in her seat. "By only buying food with the best calorie-to-C-bill conversion rates, aside from after we complete a mission and indulge, we save enough every year for one extra ton of AC/5 ammo."
"I would totally give up a ton of AC/5 ammo to not see another cup of this garbage for a year," said Yang.
"You haven't seen our ammo stockpiles," Weiss said darkly.
"The mech techs and ship's company eat better than this in their galley," Blake said, giving up on the cabinets and joining the others at the table.
"Sure, but that's because they'll leave if we don't give them more creature comforts," said Weiss, "whereas we four are stuck here."
"Hear, hear," said Ruby.
Quiet settled amongst the pilots as they all tucked in, but it wasn't an unkind or hostile silence. It was the silence of quiet comradery.
The pilots' mess where they ate was their private space. By custom, no member of the crew could enter without permission, and few asked for that permission. It was a small mess, its table large enough to seat six if those six had small elbows, and with not quite enough space between chairs and bulkhead to get in and out comfortably. A large screen sat above and behind the foot of the table, so that someone eating there would block the bottom of the screen with their head. For that reason, no one sat at the foot, while by unspoken but real agreement only Ruby ever sat at the head. The screen was rolling through its screensaver of vistas from random planets. The Rowdies had only bought so many images; every one that came up was one they'd seen at least thirty times before.
The walls were decorated with trinkets and tokens from a dozen different planets and employers, all with more sentimental than material value: sashes, medals, a tapestry depicting what you could convince yourself was a Sentinel and which had clearly been made with as much haste as sincerity.
In the corner, with some space to itself, was a long plaque with the header, "LINEAGE OF THE FAMILY ROSE". It had twenty rows but only four columns, as it tracked the primary descendants rather than all the branches of the family tree. The last entry, with four open slots available beneath for future generations, said, "RUBY – CRESCENT ROSE".
The mess was connected, via a door the pilots kept open, to an even smaller space allegedly for cooking, and which the pilots seldom used to full potential.
It was, all in all, a cozy place, a combined workspace, meal area, and lounge. The pilots slept in their bunks, but they lived here.
A new voice crackled across an overhead speaker. "Hear ye, hear ye, this is your captain speaking…"
Blake cringed. "Those are idioms from different centuries, Maria."
"When you're my age, what's the difference?" the voice snapped back. "Anyway, we're on-course to rendezvous with the next JumpShip, but I don't have coordinates for where we're going next, so I can't even say if we should take the next JumpShip."
"Permission to talk work during the meal?" said Blake.
"Prrm—mmph," said Ruby through a mouthful of cardboard masquerading as noodles. "Permission granted."
"Pickings are pretty slim," said Blake, and she reached to the controls for a screen at the end of their pilots' mess. Up came what looked like job listings, most already crossed off or colored red. "I started off by crossing out any jobs that looked like a one-way ticket to war crimes, which was a disappointingly large portion of the list. Then I tossed out any from the galactic south."
"What's wrong with those?" said Ruby. "We just not want to get too close to Canopus?"
"That's part of it," Blake admitted, "but the bigger part is how long it'd take. We're weeks or months away from getting down there. Most of the jobs would have expired before we arrived."
"And we can't go months without another paycheck," Weiss said warningly.
"Right. So, that doesn't leave much, at least not without getting too deep in Steiner space," Blake said with a nod at Weiss, who reciprocated. "Anti-pirate patrols, short-term dust-ups, mostly local stuff."
"I'll always take on some pirates," said Ruby.
"I know, but take this job listing as an example," said Blake, pointing. "It doesn't offer much more than food, ammo, and fuel. We can go broke taking that kind of mission."
Ruby scrunched up her face in frustration. "Well, keep your ears open. We've got two more days until rendezvous. Maybe something will pop up by then."
"Will do. You hear that, Maria?"
"Make no decision until forced to make a decision, aye," sassed Maria.
The speaker cut out. Before the conversation could resume, an Incoming Transmission alert appeared on-screen. "Wild timing," Blake mumbled as she accepted and the ComStar logo appeared.
"Hey, kiddo," drawled a gravelly baritone voice.
"Uncle Qrow!" said Ruby excitedly, though of course he couldn't hear her. Qrow was too cheap to send full holo messages; him springing for a two-way connection was unthinkable.
"How's it going up along the Kurita-Steiner border?"
Weiss pouted—something along the lines of 'how did he know that'—but Ruby grinned.
"You're probably saying something like, 'You can join us any time', but I'm not available. I can't even tell you where I am right now. Super hush-hush."
"It wouldn't be someone else's bed, now would it?" said Yang keenly.
"Anyway, I sent this to let you know that you really want to rendezvous with the next JumpShip that comes in-system."
Rose's Rowdies glanced at each other, finding each other equally bewildered.
"There's someone onboard who wants to meet you," continued Qrow. "Big honkin' deal. You don't want to miss it."
"Why isn't he telling us who it is?" said Ruby, wracking her brains for what kind of 'big deal' would want to meet her little group.
"Like I said, super hush-hush. Just… try to keep an open mind, alright?"
"That is totally not spooky at all," said Yang.
"See you around, kids."
The message terminated; the ComStar logo faded to nothing. Three sets of eyes looked to Ruby. "What do you think that's all about?" said Weiss.
"No way to know," said Ruby, picking at her ramen. "But Uncle Qrow's never steered me wrong before."
"There's a first time for everything," Weiss mumbled.
"What have we got to lose?" said Blake. "If someone wants to meet us, it's probably for a job, and we don't have anything better going on."
"We'll meet… whoever this is," Ruby agreed. "And then we'll see." Ruby reached up to the overhead speaker, thumbed its station select, and called out, "Hey, Maria? We'll be docking with that JumpShip first thing after all."
"Oh, now you tell me?"
Coming through the doorway was a shriveled old woman who looked easily thrice the age of the mech pilots. She put her hands on her hips and somehow managed to scowl despite her goggle-like prosthetic eyes. "You waited until I got all the way down here, and now I have to go all the way back? I swear, you brats will be the death of me."
"Peace offering?" said Yang, extending a cup of noodles towards Maria.
She took one look at it and one sniff before recoiling. "I'd rather starve. I'll go input coordinates and schedule our docking request. Hopefully I survive the round trip."
When she was done hobbling out of the ready room, the other pilots looked at Weiss, who shrank in her seat.
"We can probably spend a little more on food."
Faster-than-light travel had long been thought impossible. Its discovery made galactic civilization a reality. With it, humanity spread to an ever-increasing number of systems in all directions from its ancient homeworld of Terra.
The engines that could accomplish these feats were large, terribly complex, and crushingly expensive. The JumpShips containing those engines, even moreso. Few military organizations besides the Great Houses owned and operated their own JumpShips. Rose's Rowdies absolutely did not; the Huntress was perfect for scooting around a solar system, but would have been helpless trying to leave it.
Instead, the Huntress, like the great majority of interstellar traffic, rented docking space on transiting JumpShips. They rode along with those JumpShips as they made their rounds, system to system, on well-travelled routes that only occasionally resulted in catastrophe.
Ruby watched the vast, empty cosmos. Her mind struggled to latch on to anything particular. Out there, somewhere, was the Jump Point that JumpShips used to leap from system to system. It existed in dimensions beyond human eyesight; to Ruby, it was just another patch of empty space.
Until it wasn't.
In the time of a blink, a long, skeletal ship burst into reality and filled her vision. The JumpShip's needle-like fuselage was studded with docking ports to accommodate smaller ships like the Huntress. A counter-rotational ring gave the JumpShip crew access to a normal-g environment for their health, and also separated the passenger areas from the priceless engine block at the stern. The whole ship was painted bright white for maximum visibility, as any collision between spacecraft was disastrous for both parties.
The Huntress maneuvered, ripping Ruby's vision away from the JumpShip as Maria eased into docking position. Maria had executed the maneuver hundreds of times, maybe thousands; Ruby honestly didn't know how old the woman was. She could be anywhere from sixty to six hundred and Ruby'd believe it.
As the Huntress approached the docking point, the bulk of the JumpShip started to come into view again. The Huntress was one of the first ships to make dock, which was good. Ruby wasn't sure when the next JumpShip was scheduled to come by, and the last thing she wanted was to be stuck in this backwater waiting.
At the corner of her vision she saw another Leopard-class dropship, the Huntress' distant cousin, docking at another port. Ruby would have bet good money that Clover and the corpse of the Nightstar were onboard that one.
Not that anyone would ask nor tell. JumpShips were neutral territory. They were too important to civilization to risk starting a battle around them.
Kind of like interstellar communications, now that Ruby thought of it. ComStar was a genuinely strange organization, part phone company, part techno-cult, but it was indispensable. Only ComStar's acolytes knew how to maintain the Hyper Pulse Generators that allowed galaxy-spanning communications, and that made ComStar's monopoly untouchable. If you had to wait for JumpShips to come by just to send a message…
Ruby shivered. Better not to think of that.
There was a gentle shake as the Huntress mated to the JumpShip's docking port. "Showtime, ladies," said Ruby. She led Blake and Yang towards the docking port, which usually wasn't (but occasionally was) used to transfer people and goods between JumpShip and dropship. All three were in full space suits; the situation was too fraught to take fewer than full precautions.
Which was also why Ruby wasn't going alone. Yang was a devastating hand-to-hand fighter, while Blake had at least two guns and three knives on her person, only one of which Ruby could see. Ruby herself was virtually helpless outside of a BattleMech, so having her lancemates backing her up was a huge comfort.
"We are docked and secured," Maria reported over the short-range. "I've got an incoming call from the JumpShip."
"Put it through."
"This is your JumpShip captain. I'm talking to the Huntress, right?"
"Yes, sir," said Ruby.
"I've got a visitor requesting access to your ship."
Ruby and Blake exchanged looks; Blake nodded meaningfully. If the captain hadn't already told them the visitor's name or ID, it meant he'd been paid not to, so asking would be pointless.
"Access granted," said Ruby, taking position at the Huntress' lower docking hatch. Said hatch, based on its position on the bottom of the Huntress, was below deck level and had a ladder leading down to it. "Send 'em over."
"Roger."
Almost immediately there was a hiss as the docking collar opened an airlock fitted into its interior. Yang limbered up, while Blake's hand (probably) tightened on a weapon. Ruby couldn't do anything but stand and wait, and she did so with little grace.
The hissing subsided. A light to the hatch's side turned from red to green—good seal. Ruby flipped a switch, and the hatch swung open.
There was no hit team or stormtrooper squad on the other side. It was only a boy, younger than the mercenaries, barely out of his teens, with a brown complexion and freckles framing green-olive eyes. He wasn't even wearing a spacesuit, just a backpack and, from the fact that he wasn't drifting, magnetic boots.
"Uh… request permission to come aboard?" he said, like he was trying to repeat something rehearsed from memory.
"Permission granted," said Ruby numbly.
"Thanks," he said, and haltingly started to climb the ladder. He was clumsy at it, apparently not used to operating in near-zero gravity, and one of his feet got away from him halfway up.
"Easy, there, Tarzan," said Yang, reaching down and hauling him up the last stretch with minimal effort.
"Th-thanks, I appreciate it," he said. "Um… I'm Acolyte Oscar Pine. The peace of Blake be with you all, MechWarriors."
Staring was his only response.
"Did I do something wrong?" he said bashfully.
Ruby exchanged looks of astonishment with Yang and Blake, because Oscar was wearing more than a backpack. He was wearing white robes.
ComStar had taken notice of Rose's Rowdies.
To be continued...
Mech nerdness: on the tabletop, ECM is only good for countering certain advanced technologies (C3, Artemis) unless you're willing to add a whole pile of extra rules to your game. This is the opposite of how ECM works in real life: ECM is best against search and tracking radars, while specialized fire-control radars (like, say, Artemis!) can burn through. For this story, I'll be using a portrayal closer to real life. Partly this helps match Blake's canonical fighting style, which is heavy on misdirection and avoidance, and partly this keeps the PXH-2 from outright wasting two tons.