Crimson, Canopus IV, Magistracy of Canopus
17th July, 2975
Cian looked up from what he was typing and put on his glasses as the bells hanging on the front door jangled. Of course, only the lens over his right eye actually did any vision correction. His hair had gone prematurely grey, but blessedly had yet to really start thinning. Cian kept it tied back most of the time.
"Welcome in." He said to a man that was a few years younger than him escorting a youth of probably thirteen or so years. The teenager wore all black and had, rather unevenly, dyed their hair a bright blue.
"Mornin'", the man said, allowing the young teen to roam a room full of packed bookshelves.
The space had once been a hole-in-the-wall type of bar that went under thanks to the owner's overindulgence in his own supplies. When Cian had sold El Cid, he'd gotten the location at a steal. It had taken some fixing up, but that had been expected. Cian had modeled his shop on Second Flight, though it was only about half the size. There was one free-standing shelving unit down the middle of the room, with more shelves surrounding it on the walls.
"Looking for anything in particular?" Cian asked.
"Nah." The teenager said, her eyes not leaving the shelves.
"'No, thank you.'" The father corrected.
She just shrugged.
Cian suppressed a chuckle.
"Kids, eh?" The man said, turning his mustachioed face towards Cian.
"We all had our phases." Cian replied with his own shrug.
"True." The man replied. He idly looked over the shelves, but was clearly just passing time until the kid was done.
It didn't take long. The girl brought a half dozen books to the counter and set them in front of Cian. He started scanning through them.
"What happened to your face?" The girl asked him.
"Jeanette…", the father groaned.
"What?" The girl acted nonplussed. Clearly it was all to get a rise out of someone, either Cian or her father.
Cian just smiled. "Souvenir from my old job." He indicated the prosthetic hand he was holding one of the books with.
"What was it?" Jeanette pried further.
"MechWarrior." Cian said.
Jeanette scoffed. "Right. Sure."
Cian chortled.
The father paid for the books, handing the bag Cian put them in to his daughter, who immediately headed for the door.
"I'm so sorry…", the man insisted.
"It's all good. Hope to see you both again." Cian said, watching them both depart. Yawning, Cian sipped from a cold cup of coffee, then went back to typing.
So went his day, a few transactions and a lot of typing. When it was time to close up, he circled the shop, ensuring nothing had been moved from its appropriate section, turned off the lights and music, then locked up. It was getting dark outside early. That time of year on Canopus.
Outside, above the door, hung a sign depicting a cartoonish Black Knight seated in an armchair with a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other, under which were the words El Cid's Books.
Cian's commute home was a bus ride to a residential part of Crimson. While he was riding, he called a delivery service to bring Inaya some coffee at her mechanic shop. The bus brought him to a district where townhomes sat in several blocks near shops and a lovely public park. It was fully dark by the time Cian was putting his key in the lock and opening the door.
Two small, furry creatures began making their displeasure at being hungry known the moment Cian opened the door. Two cats, one tabby, the other tortoiseshell, were meowing at him and brushing against his pant legs. Their third compatriot, a black cat with orange eyes, loomed from the hallway to the kitchen that was straight ahead.
Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn were three strays Inaya had rescued from a cardboard box she'd found in an alley near her mechanic shop. The sound of three kittens quietly calling out had awakened every parental instinct in Inaya's primordial brain. At least, that's what Cian had assumed. It's what had happened to him when Inaya had brought them home three years ago. Now the three brothers ruled the house, as evidenced by scattered toys, scratch pads, and multiple cat towers situated near windows.
For all the jokes they'd made over the years, eventually "agreeing" on twenty-six cats, three was a good number.
"I know, I know." Cian murmured as the three cats followed him from the little foyer and into the kitchen, where he put their dinners down and watched to make sure Legolas didn't bully the other two away from their food as he liked to do sometimes.
Neither Cian nor Inaya particularly liked to cook, so they usually didn't. They threw some fresh fruit and pre-packaged salads into their diets for some balance, but most dinners were take-out or frozen meals of one variety or another. Inaya tended to work late just like she had as a MechTech and Cian was too focused on writing his book. So, he put a frozen lasagna in the oven and went about his after work routine of getting cleaned up and into his more comfortable house clothes.
Two hours after Cian got home, he heard Inaya from where he sat in the library upstairs. It roughly doubled as his office, his laptop and desk situated within. Among the books was the binder holding the questionable copy of The Silmarillion Cian had once printed off for her. Inaya had stopped looking for another one. "I've already got the best version in the Inner Sphere", she had once said.
Cian stood up and left the room, hearing Inaya talking to the cats. From the top of the stairs, Cian saw Inaya sitting on a low stool beside the front door, unlacing her work boots while Gimli batted at the laces and tried to chew on them, the tabby cat usually the most boisterous of the three.
Looking down at her boots, Inaya's hair was a curtain of deep violet over her face. When she raised her head to look up at him, it revealed the red bindi between her eyes. Cian had been surprised at first when Inaya chose to apply it every morning instead of wearing a ring, or not even bothering with any sort of tradition like that.
In the ten years since they'd met, the lines in Inaya's face had deepened, the calluses on her hands becoming more pronounced from countless hours working on machines. And every day, she only grew more beautiful.
"You'd think I forgot to feed them." Cian joked as he came down the stairs.
"They won't fool me again." Inaya assured him.
With her boots off, she rose and kissed him, heading for the kitchen.
"Food's staying warm in the oven." Cian said, following after her.
"Lasagna?" She asked.
"Mhm." Cian confirmed.
"Fuck yes." Inaya quietly enthused.
Dinner followed. Inaya spent most of it going in depth about the series she was currently reading, how dumb the protagonist was, how implausible much of the worldbuilding was, and so on and so forth. Cian listened. He could listen to her for hours, no matter what she was talking about, watching as her face shifted from smiles and laughter to scowls at some plot point she didn't like. Cian knew she'd listen if he wanted to talk. He just so rarely wanted to when this was an option. Although, today…
"Ran into you from about thirty years ago today." Cian said when there was a lull
"Oh yeah?" Inaya asked between bites.
"Didn't believe I used to be a MechWarrior." Cian went on.
"Can't really blame her, can you?" Inaya asked with a playful smirk.
Cian chuckled. "Not really, no."
After dinner, they spent their usual few hours in the upstairs living room, saying very little, absorbed in their own leisure tasks, but always there for a funny anecdote, always just a few steps away for a kiss on the head or hand on the shoulder. Tomorrow morning they'd wake up early and work out together in the home gym in their basement. The next weekend they were going to a metal show at their favorite bar.
It was easy. Slow. Some might even say boring.
It was perfect.
When it was time to turn out the lights, they held each other close until Aragorn wormed between them, a shadowy infiltrator, and his brothers exploited the gap in the defenses. The three cats curled up or loafed between Cian and Inaya. Cian didn't mind. He gave them each a scratch between the ears, then looked to his wife.
With one last kiss, Cian said, "I love you."
"I love you, too, Strider." Inaya replied, then sad the same to each of the cats as she pecked each of them on their foreheads.
They both curled up and went to sleep.
The tale of Valdr's Varangians did not end with the departure of Cian Serrano and Inaya Varma-Neophytos. But it, like so many other merc commands, would not last forever.
Ketill retired not long after Cian and Inaya left. Aimar took over, leading the Varangians for a decade before, tragically, an ongoing struggle with cancer forced them to retire as well.
Vishali would take command of the Varangians from there, giving orders on the battlefield from Mastani's cockpit until age caught up with her and she passed the 'Mech onto its next Varangian pilot. She would remain unmarried and romantically uncommitted, eventually retiring to Canopus IV, where she would start her own music label and multiple charities.
Konomi left the Varangians five years after Cian and Inaya. They sold Tiamat and opened a bakery a mere couple of blocks away from Cian's bookstore.
Zahir went the way that so many other MechWarriors did. Three years after Konomi left, he died on the battlefield while commanding Jotunn Company, slain by an internal ammo explosion. No one could know it, but his last thoughts, and his last words, were letting his nameless JagerMech know it was finally getting what it deserved.
Raleigh Briggs, the young AsTech, would eventually become the Varangians' head MechTech.
Valdr's Varangians, founded in the fires of the First Succession War, would serve in the three that followed, as well as the War of 3039, the Clan Invasion, the FedCom Civil War, and countless small, nameless conflicts long lost to history. It was during the war against the Word of Blake they would finally meet their end in a valiant, but ultimately doomed, rear guard action, defending the retreat of allied mercenaries from the Blakists. In an Inner Sphere where merc commands rise and fall with the passing of seasons, that one lasted so long as the Varangians was, perhaps, noteworthy. It may have been a tragic end, but it was a fitting one, and as worthy as any mercenary could hope for.
"Over the years, the question of what makes someone a hero has been something that's circled in my mind almost constantly. It is a subjective thing to call someone, undeniably. The hero who falls fighting for one House is the villain who got what they deserved when viewed by the other side. The pacifist who stands up and refuses to escalate a situation is the coward who didn't stop them from getting worse."
"Among mercenaries, I feel like this question is even murkier. There are some examples we can all point to. Few argue the heroics of Adam Buquoy, for example, leading his mercenaries in the defense of the Magistracy of Canopus in the Reunification War, refusing to fight in population centers or commit the atrocities that were so common in that war. But what of the lone MechWarrior who throws their damaged machine into the fray to buy their fellows time to retreat? What of the aerospace pilot who risks life and limb through anti-air fire to score a hit on some objective that wins a battle early, saving lives on both sides?"
"These are the stories I seek to illuminate in this work; the things that might sound extraordinary in these pages, but in the end, are part and parcel to the mercenary's life. To dismiss them as mere soldiers of fortune is to forget two things. The first is that few would fight in any regular, national army without compensation. The second, and more important, is that these 'dogs of war' are still as beautifully, imperfectly human as us, fighting the same fears, reaching for the same hopes, and enduring all the complexities and vagaries of a life lived in the Inner Sphere…"
-Foreword from "Heroes for Hire: Interviews With the Mercenaries of the Inner Sphere and Analysis of Their Realities by Sir Cian Serrano"