Hap and Anastasia were finishing their breakfast in the embassy's cafeteria. It was the day after their meeting the MIIO agents. The MIIO agents had arranged for a visit to one of Tian-tan's nicer upscale shopping centers and then took them back to the hangar. The shopping center had a fine wine store. After purchasing a few dresses and a new suit for Hap, Anastasia bought enough wine to restock the Phaidin. Hap thought they would donate most of the bottles to the galley's wine store, instead Anastasia had it taken to the warrior lounge and promptly opened a bottle and filled glasses for her and Hap.

They didn't speak much of what they learned from the MIIO agents. They both seemed to sense that things were going to change soon, but neither said anything about it. Instead they drank several bottles of wine, and made love.

To Hap's surprise they had no problem getting up the next morning and helping the MIIO team load the large empty moving van with the things that were taken during the raid. The MIIO team also included SIGINT specialists that Anastasia helped inspect the device. They opened up every panel and took detailed notes and pictures. There were also two of the security detachment soldiers to secure the ROM agent When the vehicle was loaded they all went to the embassy together. Roweyna joined them so she could negotiate with the MIIO agents.

After helping the team unload the vehicle Hap and Anastasia changed into their military utility uniforms and went to get breakfast. Breakfast at the Cafeteria was a good selection of local fruits and vegetables, fresh bread, and an omelet bar.

Hap looked across the table to Anastasia. She sipped her coffee and starred at the logic puzzle in one of the papers that were provided by the embassy, "I don't know about you, but I'm surprised I don't have a hangover after all that wine we drank."

"Good quality wine does not cause a hangover, love." Anastasia said as she tentatively wrote down a number.

"So we could drink like that every night?"

Anastasia nodded as she wrote down another number then filled in several others in quick succession, "We certainly could."

"You sound pretty confident. You have a lot of nights where you put away a couple bottles of wine?"

"Not that many. Although I have learned it helps to drink water throughout the day and have a little food, at least bread and cheese. I will add, I've never had an experience with wine like we had the night we played poker with Commander McFinnigan."

"That was quite a night and a lot of beer and whiskey." Hap said, "But you won your poker game, humbled Joker, and showed Kelly McFinnigan you could mostly handle your liquor. All told I think it was worth the hangover."

"Perhaps, and yet I'd prefer to stick to the wine." Anastasia said as she completed her puzzle, and tentatively picked up her coffee mug as she checked her work.

"Yeah, last night was a lot nicer than that." Hap said as he also took up his coffee cup. "Of course if we have too many more nights like this, you'll end up pregnant."

"Yes. That's a very strong possibility." Anastasias agreed as she sipped her drink.

"Yeah, it is." Hap said as he took the paper and looked at the leader board for the Solaris VII matches.

"Thankfully we have plenty of wine, so we can try again this evening." Anastasia said.

"Wait. What?"

"We should do what we did last night. Find somewhere quiet and private, drink wine, enjoy each other's company and have another intimate congress. I suppose the wine's not actually necessary in this equation though, but it certainly makes things more fun."

"You want to get pregnant?"

"I'm certainly not opposed to it."

"You're not opposed to it?" Hap looked at Anastasia to see if she was kidding. He could see a slight smile on her face as she looked over her coffee mug and shrugged.

"If it were to happen, now would likely be as good a time as any." Anastasia said.

"As good a time as any? You're the woman that plans out what she is going to have for breakfast for months at a time." Hap said.

"I generally eat the same thing for breakfast. If it's available coffee, a croissant, poached egg, cheese, cucumbers, and tomatoes. That's hardly a significant data point."

"You know what I mean."

"Perhaps you're a bad influence on me." Anastasia said, "Look, my mother wants grandchildren, we both enjoy our intimate time together, I know you do. We both want children. In a few months we'll be going to New Avalon. Why not now?"

"When were you going to let me in on your plan?"

Anastasia looked guilty as she gently set her coffee mug down, "I honestly hadn't thought that far. Last night we were drinking, and things were heading down a particular path, and I thought to myself about potential pregnancy, as you just did, and I considered perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. I see how I probably should have mentioned this to you."

"Especially if you keep planning to ply me with wine and seduce me."

"You believe you're being seduced? Well then perhaps now isn't the best time to have a child, and it's something I should avoid at all costs."

"Now I think you're overreacting." Hap said as he stood up, "Tell you what, lets go meet with the elusive DAT, and then we'll go back to the Hangar, see if the Compact's convoy is still moving out tomorrow, and prep our 'mechs. Then after dinner we'll discuss this some more over some wine."

"And I shall pick the wine, the most seductive of wines." Anastasia told him as she placed their used dishes on a tray.

"What's the most seductive wine? Is it port or mead?" Hap asked.

Anastasia hesitated a moment. "I was thinking of a bourbon barrel aged Cabernet Sauvignon, but I could see why you might think Port as a very seductive wine."

Hap took their dishes to an alcove with a conveyor belt that took the dirty dishes back to the kitchen area. "My roommate back at Albion called port 'a bottle of panty-dropper'."

Anastasia gave Hap a reproachful look and shook her head, "With that endorsement I'm suddenly feeling hostile toward port, and Mead isn't exactly a wine."

"Mead isn't wine?" Hap asked as they left the cafeteria area and approached the elevators.

"It depends on who you ask, I suppose. Like wine it improves with age, but mead in its simplest form, is made with honey not grapes. The yeast strains are the same as those used for wines, particularly champagne, but nearly everyone agrees wine is, by definition, derived from grapes."

"All right, I thought mead was honey wine, but I'm pretty sure it's seductive." Hap said as the elevator opened and they entered it.

"I don't have any personal experience with mead, but when my parents married they received thirty bottles of mead from one of Hazelhurst's breweries and the master brewer personally told mother that if they drank one bottle each night they would certainly conceive a child before they ran out of mead." "Did it work?" Hap asked

"A lady never tells." Anastasia said as she used her thumb to count on her fingers, "My parents were married in June, and I was born in Mar…Oh!"

"So the seductive powers of mead worked." Hap said as he pressed the button for the third floor.

"It may have been a contributing factor, but I'd prefer not to speak about mead anymore." Anastasia said as the elevator door closed.

"Fair enough"

After a moment Anastasia added, "On their anniversary daddy would bring her a bottle of mead and they would laugh and laugh about it."

"Well, they were married."

"And then the butler would see the empty bottle the next morning and make comments about it."

"Sounds unprofessional."

"You have no idea, he would say every time he saw that bottle he would find ladies undergarments in odd places."

"So it is like port."

"I told you I don't want to talk about it."

The elevator doors opened and Hap and Anastasia started walking toward the Defense Attaché office. "Perhaps we should try mead." Anastasia said

"Perhaps we should"

"I'm curious about anything that could make my mother compromise her regular sense of decorum and poise."

"Your mother's poise is formidable."

Anastasia gave Hap a questioning look, "As formidable as she may be, my mother gracefully maintained her composure and wits as she went glass for glass with Elinor McFinnigan.

"And the McFinnigans are accomplished drinkers."

"Exactly."

"We can see if the embassy's commissary has any mead."

Anastasia nodded as they stopped in front of the Defense Attache Office's closed door. Hap knocked on the door and was greeted by Private Harmay.

She looked at the two officers nervously, "Good morning sir, ma'am. Please come in. Colonel Bruckner told me to ask you to wait until he is ready for you." As she spoke she motioned to a small couch near the closed door of the corner office.

Hap and Anastasia settled into the couch. Hap checked his watch it was ten till 0900. He felt Anastasia lean on him so she could see his watch.

"You know you could get your own watch."

"Why? I have you."

"What did you do before we met?"

"I was at NAIS, cadets are generally required to be at the same place at the same time. If I followed my peers I was almost always where I needed to be. There were also clocks everywhere."

"I'm guessing your mom's not big on being punctual."

"Quite the opposite, Mother has always made it clear that timeliness was the height of good manners. If she arrived early to an event she would be infringing on the time of her host, if she was late she was wasting everyone's time. Therefore she maintained that being promptly on time was the definition of polite and well mannered."

"That's a little different than the 'ten minutes early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable' concept that got drilled into my head as a young officer."

"As clever as that axiom is, I've been a member of the last squad of the last platoon of the last company enough to know that if every leader tells their subordinate unit to be ten minutes early you'll have people standing in formation hours before they need to be there. It's foolishness. If more people were like my mother, significantly less time would be wasted."

"I've also worked with people that are just incapable of being on time, so telling them to arrive fifteen minutes early was the only way you could hope they'd be at the right place at the right time.

Anastasia smirked, "That sounds like a leadership problem."

"You live and work with Joker, you think I could be doing more to 'lead' him?"

Anastasia crossed her arms and leaned back, "I have often thought that you should consider a cattle prod."

"If you threaten him with a cattle prod, I'm pretty sure he'll tell you he likes the sound of that."

"Remind me to buy one for Mags next time we find ourselves at an agricultural supply store."

Hap glanced around and noticed a few magazines on a side table. "I certainly will."

Hap picked up Federated Commonwealth Joint Officers Quarterly. He had never seen this magazine and it was from October of the previous year. The cover was glossy, and the paper was thick. He flipped past articles about combining military forms and manuals with the LCAF and AFFS forces, and another article discussing the successes of the new Regimental Combat Teams. He settled on an article describing the HCT-3F Hatchetman.

Hap noted that Team Banzai was behind the design and creation of the 'mech. The captions for several of the article's pictures stated they were taken at NAIS. "You ever seen one of these? '' Hap asked as he nudged Anastasia. He looked over at his wife. She was staring at the closed office door, and Hap knew immediately she was annoyed.

She glanced at the magazine. "Yes. That is a mech designed to skulk in dark alleys and literally cleave other 'mechs in the back."

"So it's like an Urbanmech's bigger brother?" Hap glanced back at the magazine and a picture of a Hatchetman slicing into a Vulcan's arm mounted flamer.

"Yes, but Dr. Banzai would be offended if he heard it compared to the Urbanmech. Although, Dr. Banzai is uncertain if axes will catch on as standard equipment. He also jokes about the Hatchetman being a proof-of-concept platform, where he, as an engineer, demonstrates he could make something he probably should not have made. I will add, the ejection system is brilliant and the most underrated aspect of the design."

"They interview him here and he uh…" Hap skimmed the interview section of the article, "He seems quite proud of everything about this design." Hap said.

"Oh he is." Anastasia said dryly. She grabbed Hap's wrist and looked at his watch, "Why are we out here waiting?"

"Well it's classic military punishment between officers. We're going to wait here as long as the Colonel wants us to wait, which is about as long as he thinks we need to learn our lesson about wasting his time. Then he'll talk to us and if we need his help or assistance with anything he'll likely ensure we get exactly what we don't want."

"I know that, but this is still foolish. It's not a very effective way to punish anyone."

"Are you annoyed?"

"I'm livid"

"Then it's effective."

Anastasia pinched Hap until he pulled his arm away and told her, "Ow that hurts"

"Then it's effective." Anastasia said as her eyes flashed.

"Look I'm not the one that insisted we meet with Colonel Bruckner. We got the secure hangar, we talked to the embassy staff and we got the MI-foreign affairs office looking into what we have and helping us. We did everything you said we should. I think we've done our due diligence. It seems meeting with Colonel Bruckner is a formality that no one wants.

"This is more than a mere formality. Colonel Bruckner should keep his appointments rather than constantly rescheduling them. It's a common courtesy." Anastasia said.

"Common courtesy aside, What do you hope to get out of this conversation? Like I said, I think we got everything we need out of the embassy. We should just help out the Compact forces while the guys in the foreign affairs office dig into everything we took from Necromo. I think you're taking this personally."

Anastasia paused, "No I just feel...Okay I may have taken this personally." Hap nodded as Anastasia thought, "Well we should still make sure that our operations aren't going to conflict with any of the embassy's initiatives or any other AFFC's activities."

"We'll I anticipate we'll be doing a lot of listening, so be polite and hopefully this will be quick." Hap said.

"I'm always polite." Anastasia said as the phone rang.

Corporal Weber answered and nodded. He hung up the phone and called out, "Bruckner will see you now."