Blake Belladonna, mercenary MechWarrior for Rose's Rowdies, shifted in her cockpit as her BattleMech took a false step across the broken ground. 45 tons of armor and weapons strapped to a two-story humanoid frame went stumbling like a drunkard. She recovered neatly, her neurohelmet helping to transmit her own finely tuned sense of balance to keep her Phoenix Hawk upright.

She was, in her defense, distracted.

Long range missiles came down in a shower around her, one or two gently plinking against her softer rear armor but most of the volley going wide.

"Please say that's the last of that clown's ammo," crackled a voice over her comms. The voice belonged to Yang Xiao Long, brawling enthusiast, gearhead, and (in her own words) professional meat shield. Yang's Dragon mech was going full throttle over to Blake's right. Blake could outrun the Dragon, her Phoenix Hawk was one of the fastest mechs around, but the last thing she wanted to do was leave her allies behind.

Again, her traitorous mind whispered.

"He should still have two more volleys," replied Weiss Schnee, in her Griffin running to Blake's left. Weiss was a renegade ex-heiress turned mercenary, and had the best head for figures in their little mercenary lance. How she was keeping track of how many missile volleys each mech was firing was beyond Blake, but for Weiss it was nearly automatic.

"Wonderful," said Yang. Twisting her Dragon's torso to its maximum, she fired its arm-mounted autocannon backwards at their pursuers, brrat-brrat.

The shells went wide, but their pursuers were very light mechs, and so they had to respect even such a mediocre weapon as that autocannon. There was a general scattering and ducking for cover.

"You see," said Yang as she faced forward to concentrate on running, "if you'd let me keep that Atlas we salvaged, I could've just stomped those bugs!"

Weiss scoffed. "And the Atlas moves so slowly all the bugs' friends would have caught us by now."

"...I could take 'em."

Blake paid no attention to the boast. She was tuning her ECM suite, trying to keep their pursuers jammed to ruin their harassing fire. Just in time: the next volley of missiles sent gouts of dirt and debris into the air behind Blake, far from its intended target.

Blake wondered if her lancemates appreciated how much thought and effort went into being an electronic warfare specialist. Probably not; it was a dying profession these days. Her PXH-2 was one of the very rare machines that had such a complete suite.

After two hundred years of Succession Wars, there weren't very many suites left, and even fewer people who knew how to use them…

Her mind was wandering again. Shame on her.

She tried a similar trick to Yang, firing behind her with the large laser in her Phoenix Hawk's right arm, but with no more success. She could see their pursuers starting to be emboldened by the ineffectiveness of the mercenaries' counterfire. They were a motley collection of light mechs from Red Tie Mining's private security: a Wasp, a couple of Locusts, a Commando, and a Valkyrie, that last being the mech responsible for the persistent missile barrages. Individually, all of those mechs were bottom-of-the-barrel chum, the so-called "bug mechs" most MechWarriors scoffed at, the cheapest and shittiest mechs in general use... but even their light weapons could be very dangerous if they got shots against the Rowdies' weaker rear armor.

And all of those mechs except the Valkyrie were faster than Yang's Dragon or Weiss's Griffin. The mercenaries couldn't outrun their chasers. If the mercs turned to engage, they'd win the fight, but it would give time for the Red Ties' heavier mechs to catch up, and that fight would be much more dangerous– for both the Rowdies and their liberated cargo.

They needed to convince the bugs to back off to give the mercs time and space to disengage.

Blake smiled, because Ruby Rose was about to make a very convincing argument.

As Blake looked forward, she saw Ruby continuing to open distance ahead of them - - but not to leave them behind.

When she'd gotten enough of a lead, Ruby guided her mech through a spin, keeping her momentum in the same direction while transitioning from running forwards to running backwards. It was a minor feat of piloting ability. Blake might have been able to manage it with effort and risk, but Ruby did it breezily, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Blake supposed that was the sort of skill one acquired when one spent their entire life (more or less) in a cockpit, simulated or otherwise.

No mech could run as quickly backwards as it could run forwards, but Ruby hadn't done this for speed. She'd done this to give herself maximum accuracy shooting back at their pursuit.

Blake had learned contempt for Sentinel mechs, but Ruby's machine was no ordinary Sentinel, and that was no modest autocannon in place of its left arm. Crescent Rose was a vintage model from before the Succession Wars, before the age of lost technology. It still boasted its original armament: a gauss rifle.

Ruby fired. The gauss rifle's electromagnets made a mockery of the crude chemical explosions of a typical autocannon, launching a hyper-accelerated shell at ludicrous velocities. The round hit one of their pursuers with such violence Blake felt the impact more than she heard it. According to her display, one of the Locusts had just been deprived of its leg, blasted completely off with the one shot.

Blake's large laser couldn't have done that. Yang's autocannon would have taken three hits to do that.

Ruby was terrifying.

The bug mechs, which had poured on some speed to close range, suddenly became much more interested in evasive maneuvers.

Ruby fired a second time. "Fudge nuggets," she said over comms, making Blake want to laugh. Ruby didn't miss often; it was amusing when she did. Sometimes.

As Blake and her lancemates drew abreast of Ruby, Ruby fired a third time. This time she connected, hitting the Commando in the side torso hard enough to smash its side to pieces and shear off its arm completely. Its pilot couldn't handle the impact and the sudden change in weight, and the Commando pitched over into the dirt.

"Looks like they got the message," said Ruby as she casually repeated her spin maneuver to rejoin her lance's formation. "The other bugs are backing off. Looks like they're covering their fallen buddies and waiting for backup."

"We'll be gone before that backup gets here," said Yang.

"That's the plan," said Ruby brightly. "Blake, tell us when."

"Roger," said Blake. Most of her attention shifted to her ECM. For this plan to work, they needed to be completely clear of that pursuit, outside of sensor range. Her ECM suite's jamming abilities wouldn't be enough for this job: jamming still told the enemy there was something there to do the jamming, it was still active and gave them away. The Rowdies needed to disappear, which meant opening range until the bugs couldn't track them organically.

Which was the other reason shaking that pursuit had been so important.

Seconds and minutes ticked by as Blake monitored her signal receiver. Judging range based on received signal was always tricky, since she could never be certain of transmit power. Someone could, for example, manually reduce power to pretend to be further away. Blake's paranoid nature would not allow her to say with confidence that they were out of range until her receiver could barely register the incoming signals.

There. No chance of those enemy sensors getting any sort of return from that. "We're in the clear," she reported.

"Finally," said Yang. "We were running out of real estate."

"Tighten up," said Ruby as she led the group on a sharp eastward turn. "Into pairs like we planned."

Ruby and Yang closed ranks until they were practically shoulder to shoulder; Weiss did the same with Blake, collapsing the four mechs until they were close enough to possibly be confused for two. At the same time, everyone but Blake was turning off all their emitters: sensors and IFF transponders alike. Blake was busy once more, working with her ECM suite to change her own transmissions and IFF reporter.

Inside of a minute, there were no emissions to suggest a mercenary lance of Sentinel, Griffin, Phoenix Hawk, and Dragon. Instead, there were emissions very similar to a Rifleman and Centurion, and IFF signals to match, identifying the Rifleman and Centurion as Security Element Two Echo, currently employed by the Red Tie Mining company– the very company Rose's Rowdies were running from.

The real Security Element Two Echo was on patrol, but on the far side of the mine, over a hundred klicks away, completely uninvolved with this scenario. All the mercs needed was for the Red Tie goons to not realize this for a few minutes.

"New contact," Blake reported as her signal receiver got noisy. "I'm picking up the bugs again… plus their bigger friends. Four new contacts– mediums and fast heavies."

"Then it's showtime," said Ruby. "Just as we planned."

"Right," said Blake. Her nerves were climbing, but she betrayed no hint of that in her voice. She'd grown skilled at burying her emotions. Especially her fears.

That was why this deception was hers to carry out, after all.

She had to hold on to her nerves as the seconds ticked by. She'd picked up the Red Ties on passive; she wouldn't pick them up with her standard sensors. Her array was having to transmit twice as often to simulate two different mechs' emissions. More transmit time meant less receive time– executing this deception was effectively blinding her.

She still had her signal receiver, which had better range than her standard sensors, but just as before, it didn't help her estimate the distance to the incoming Red Ties. She'd have to guess when she was close enough to hail them.

She hated guessing.

The corporate goons' sensors were getting awfully noisy, and Blake's nerve gave out. She transmitted. "This is Security Element Two Echo, hailing pursuit."

"Two Echo, this is DeeJay Actual. Why are you not chasing our bandits?"

"We ran into 'em already," said Blake, adding a harried affect to her falsely-accented voice. "They shot us up good. Real professionals, that lot. Couldn't hold 'em in a four-versus-two, it was all we could do to bail."

"You got beat up that badly by bandits who were concentrating totally on running? Shit, you'll have some explaining to do about your performance when we get back to base!"

"Understood, sir," said Blake with an affect of contrition. "We did get good positional data. After they tangled with us, they turned to 230. We thought they were headed to New Jack City, but it looks like it could be Plymouth instead."

"Or it could be a trick to throw us off. We'll split the difference. Altering course to 215 and continuing the pursuit. Three Charlie, split off and make for New Jack City at top speed. If that is their plan, you'll get there before them and report to us."

"DeeJay Actual, Three Charlie, aye."

"Two Echo is going home," Blake volunteered.

"Understood," said the pursuit leader's voice with undisguised contempt. "Get your machines into the repair bay for refit, then report to the ready room and stand by for debrief."

"DeeJay Actual, Two Echo, aye," said Blake with false chagrin.

Complying with their "orders", the Rowdies turned again, back in the direction they came, but at the slower speed of a Centurion and Rifleman to sell the deception. Blake checked her navigation carefully, compared it to the bearings she saw for their pursuers, and breathed a sigh of relief. She'd kept that conversation going long enough that they'd swung far out of the pursuit's path; they'd never enter visual range, never have the chance for some keen-eyed rent-a-cop to notice they were not, in fact, Two Echo.

With the Rowdies and the security force heading in opposite directions, it took much less time for them to pass by their closest point of approach and begin to open range; Blake could hear the Doppler shift as they went by. At no point did the Red Ties show any sign of suspicion.

Seconds raced by almost as quickly as the pounding of Blake's heart. The alerts from her receiver were getting much quieter much faster as the two groups moved in opposite directions. It seemed to take no time at all before the Red Ties' sensors were nothing but a whisper in Blake's signal receiver. As she started to lose signal completely, she said, "We're clear."

"Roger," snapped Ruby. "Rowdies, right turn to 125, full speed. We'll get out of their pursuit circle before they realize they've been had."

The Rowdies separated into a more comfortable cross-country formation with Yang in the lead and accelerated to Yang's max speed of 86 kph. Blake allowed herself to smile. It would take the pursuers maybe half an hour to realize the Rowdies had given them the slip, and even if they figured out that Two Echo had been frauds, it would take them another half an hour coming back just to pick up the trail. The Rowdies would be long gone by then.

So far, so good.

Blake never really relaxed when she was in the cockpit. Everything going to plan so far was no guarantee that it would continue to do so. She would always, always be ready for the next shoe to drop. Still... still. It was gratifying to get away with something. There was a giddy rush from plunging into something dangerous and pulling it off.

It reminded her of…

Her nostalgia died beneath her annoyance. Why was she thinking back to those times so much today? That was a lifetime ago, almost literally.

She checked her signal receiver again (mercifully silent), did a check of her mech's systems, checked her spacing in the formation relative to her lancemates. There was always another thing to look at, another thing to worry about, another thing to hold her attention.

She'd relax when she was dead, and not a moment sooner.

Ruby almost couldn't help her smile as Ten-Pins Spaceport came into view. It meant ninety percent of the mission was done. They were just about out of space for bad things to happen.

She wiggled happily in her command couch and let the banter of her lancemates wash over her.

"Can you tell me again what this was about?" said Yang.

"You weren't paying attention during the mission brief, were you?" said Weiss waspishly.

"Sure I was. I was paying attention to all the important stuff."

"Did the paper football you were making out of your printout count as the 'important stuff'?"

"In the moment, sure."

"It was a smash and grab," interrupted Blake with a bit of a growl. More than Ruby'd expected. Blake had seemed a little more on-edge lately; she normally had the whole "above it all" thing going. The "I'm too cool for school" thing. The… aaand Ruby was out of idioms.

"Well, yeah, obviously a smash-and-grab," said Yang, and she held up her Dragon's left arm to show the container she'd been carrying across the plains. It was like a mech-scale suitcase, and each of the Rowdies carried one, even if it was close to the weight limit for Ruby's Sentinel. "But what was it we grabbed?"

"Spider and Red Tie are rival companies here," said Weiss, back in her element. "Red Tie did a survey and quickie dig in lands Spider considers its own. We don't know what they found, but Spider did hear that Red Tie was calling for specialists to assess their samples. Whatever it was, Red Tie thinks it's valuable, which means Spider wants it– and wants to teach Red Tie a lesson about poaching."

"I get defending your turf, sure," said Yang. "Still, how's this supposed to work out long-term? Like, these are both Lyran Commonwealth companies, right? They operate under the same government and the same courts."

"The Lyran government is more a notion than a reality this far away from Terra," said Weiss. "If the planetary government isn't strong enough to keep the locals in line, then nothing will but BattleMechs. Why do you suppose they all have their own militias?"

"I guess. Must be good for repeat business!"

"That's for our employer to worry about," said Ruby as they approached hailing range of the spaceport. "But if no one comes through with a new contract before we're ready to skip town, we're not gonna hang around and wait for one."

That was one of the first rules of mercenary survival her mother had drilled into her: Never be where you just fought someone, even if you won.

That thought, as thoughts of her moth always did, brought bittersweet feelings into Ruby's mind. She wondered if it would be like that forever.

The Ten-Pins Spaceport was visible now– or, at least, its perimeter wall was. The wall was twice as tall as a BattleMech, even if mechs weren't the primary reason for them. As Weiss knew (she'd certainly read the brief on the planet, even if no one else had!), the atmosphere here was dusty, the climate was windy, and the biology favored a plant that resembled tumbleweeds the size of cement mixers. All three of those things were hazardous to a spaceport; all three were mitigated, at least a little, by large and sturdy walls on three sides of the port.

Defense against mechs was probably a factor, too, Weiss supposed. Her targeting system was picking out turrets at intervals along the wall's parapet. She was willing to bet the spaceport had some kind of mobile defense force, too. "Militias" indeed! Spider and Red Tie must have quietly been quite prosperous, for them to boast this much hardware. Ditto for the spaceport.

Ruby announced their presence to the spaceport and secured clearance to enter. A colossal gate, one that would have hurt Weiss' neck to look up at if she were on foot, opened enough to let the mercenary mechs move through.

In the interest of shelter from the pervasive dust, the spaceport had more hangars than others might. Every craft was inside one unless it was preparing to launch. The Rowdies' dropship, the Leopard-class dropship Huntress, was in hangar ten.

Hangar ten's door opened as the Rowdies approached, allowing the Huntress to come into view. The size of its thrusters suggested it stayed airborne, when and if it did, by brute force more than aerodynamics; the competing requirements of in-atmosphere maneuvers, space flight, and atmospheric re-entry had forced its designers into all sorts of unhappy compromises. Leopard-class dropships gave the impression of an airplane made of building blocks, or a pile of rectangles with some wings and fins taped to it. Its modest defensive armament broke up those flat surfaces in the ugliest of ways.

The inside, Weiss knew, was just as lacking in luxuries. Dropships were crowded, cramped, and cold, and the Huntress was no exception. The worst part was the smell. Atmosphere control equipment filled the ship with an instantly-recognizable funk that was like an unholy brew of waffles, fish, and feet. The pervasive stench seeped into all clothes brought on board, so that its passengers took the worst of dropship life with them wherever they went.

Weiss gave the Huntress a fond smile. It was good to be home.

"We're back," said Ruby, her voice as chipper as Weiss felt. "Maria, are we ready to load up?"

"I was going to ask you that," came the voice of Maria Calavera. The Rowdies' dropship pilot looked like she was well past her prime; Weiss had voiced that suggestion all of once. Maria had responded by challenging Weiss to a duel in a piloting simulator, and comprehensively (as Ruby had put it) "pwned her face".

Weiss still wasn't sure how to pronounce "pwn".

Regardless, Weiss would regard Maria as a top-shelf pilot until proven otherwise, despite her shriveled stature, heavy stoop, and goggle-like prosthetic eyes.

…it sounded worse when Weiss listed it all out like that.

"We're refueled," Maria continued, shaking Weiss out of her reverie, "the crew's back aboard, and we're all buttoned up except for the mech bays. We can request clearance to leave at any time."

"Go ahead and call it in," said Ruby. "We'll be aboard in a sec."

"Roger."

"Then we can deliver these samples and get off this rock," said Blake with unusual force.

"What's eating you?" said Yang, ever-perceptive.

There was a pause, before Blake said, "I don't know. I just have a bad feeling."

"I can help with that," said Yang, and Weiss could hear her smirk.

"Not that kind of bad feeling."

The Rowdies, still carrying the stolen cases of samples, each broke off for their bay. The Huntress had four bay doors so all four Rowdies could deploy at once, and, as a matter of habit, each Rowdie had their preferred bay. Weiss favored the starboard-forward bay: it put her in front of Blake's twiggier Phoenix Hawk, and it let her start most deployments with a left turn. As the lone southpaw on the Rowdies, Weiss appreciated that.

She stepped into the Huntress and into the combination gantry and repair bay waiting for her. Her shutdown checklist went breezily. Everything seemed easier today– from mission preps, to the sortie, even to a trivial thing like this checklist.

She felt a short twinge. Were things supposed to be this easy?

She shook her head, scoffing at herself. Superstitious nonsense. Things weren't "supposed" to always be a certain difficulty, they were what they were. Hard, sometimes, sure, but they could be easy, too.

A few minutes later she was out of the cockpit and down on the deck of the mech bay, watching her fellow pilots assemble in the centerline alley. To her surprise, only Yang was there already.

"Blake said something about the settings of her ECM," Yang said with a shrug. "What I'm wondering is what's keeping Ruby."

"There she is," said Weiss. Ruby was, indeed, walking away from Crescent Rose, but she had a communicator in her hand, and her face was somewhere between puzzlement and a scowl.

"...what kind of 'safety inspection'?"

"I don't know," said Maria's voice over comms, "they just rattled off a bunch of letters and numbers at me. Frankly, I think it's bullshit."

"But why…" Ruby started, but a sound cut her off, a sound Weiss felt in her feet.

"I don't know what that was," said Yang, "but it can't be good."

"Our landing gear's locked in place," said Maria. "Some system in the hangar to keep ships grounded. Boy, they really meant it when they said we can't leave yet."

As if to reinforce her point, the hangar door began to shut. It wouldn't hold the Huntress back, if it came to that, but the message was unmistakable.

"But why?!" Ruby repeated.

"Because I said so, kiddies."

Ruby yelped and nearly dropped the communicator. Weiss didn't blame her. Her curiosity was surpassed only by her anger, and judging from Yang's face, she felt much the same.

Maybe it was just as well it was Ruby on the line, then. After a moment, she gathered herself, and said, "Um, who are you? And how– and why– are you on this line?"

The voice that answered was smug, insolent, the voice of someone who wants everyone to know he's the smartest person in the room. If voices could be punched, Weiss would call it an extremely punchable voice. "Those questions all have the same answer. You see, ladies, I'm Roman Torchwick, and I'm gonna need you to stick around for a few days."

"Hard pass," barked Yang.

"Ooh, scary," said the voice mockingly. "Not to mention rude. Hasn't your friend taught you anything about manners?"

Weiss felt a chill run down her spine.

"What friend?" said Ruby shakily, and Weiss wanted to wince. Out of Ruby's many skills, deception was noticeably lacking. It had never really mattered before, but it suddenly seemed like a fatal lack.

"The little runaway," Roman said, his playful voice tinged with real malice. "The one who spit in dear old daddy's eye. The one who daddy will pay an awful lot of money to have back."

Ruby and Yang couldn't help themselves as their eyes drifted towards their fellow pilot, and Weiss, for her part, felt herself unable to move.

"Nice to meet you, Lady Weiss Schnee. Your dear old dad sends his regards."

To be continued…