A Question of Greatness
- Chapter 2 -[]
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Sort out why and what to do next[]
Detroit System, Periphery - Early 31st Century
"It was McClary," Hector blurted out after we'd been hugging for what seemed like a long time.
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Star Map of Detroit, early 31st Century
I blinked in confusion as I slowly pulled away from my brother, wiping tear tracks off of my face. "McClary? What does he have to do with anything?"
Antonin McClary was the closest thing Detroit had to a ruler. Antonin's father, Marian, had managed to convince the Ten Families who pretty much ran all of Detroit to put him in charge of the planetary militia and gave him certain rights to carry out this task. This had led to the McClary's becoming a sort of "first among equals" and frankly, the McClary's hadn't stopped trying to get the rest of the Ten Families to grant them even more power ever since.
Of course, I thought with a scoff, it's a waste of money and resources since for the rest of us the planetary militia is literally worthless. When there was a pirate incursion, and sooner or later there would always be another pirate incursion, the militia were always deployed to protect "strategically critical infrastructure." Which, to be fair, protecting things like their few airfields with the required infrastructure for large scale interstellar commerce and the militia's armories and equipment depots was important. But that was cold comfort when Antonin McCleary sadly shook his head, said it was out of his hands since his deployment orders were in the best interest of all of Detroit as per his mandate, and in the next breath asked for more funding and authority for the militia if we actually wanted them to protect us from anything.
He was a power hungry and useless irritant and giving his family a mandate to administer the planetary militia over fifty years ago had been a mistake. But I still failed to see what he had to do with anything.
Hector looked at me then, and I was a bit taken aback by the sudden hardness in his jaw and the anger in his eyes. "I noticed a pattern, and on a hunch got an investigator to start compiling some data for me. You know how I sometimes get some good hunches?"
Hesitantly, I nodded. It was just a thing Hector was sort of well known for in the family. While he was plenty smart, he also tended to trust his gut feelings. And they were usually right. One time when he'd been fourteen he'd gotten an "uncanny feeling" that something was off about one of their new gardeners. Turns out the man had been a sociopath and had killed at least two people. No one in the family had simply dismissed Hector or one of his "gut feelings" out of hand since then, even if he was occasionally wrong.
"Well," he continued. "It was hard to spot at first, but a clear pattern has emerged over the last twenty or so years. Do you remember what latest thing dad was pushing for to be on the agenda for the next official meeting of the Ten Families?"
I frowned. "Something about reforming the tax system? I haven't been paying close attention."
Hector nodded. "Yeah. It was a push to change how funding for the militia is handled. Basically, his proposal would have given the Ten Families more direct control over the funding of the militia. Having to go through us instead of just taxing the populace directly. McCleary and his allies, of course, despise the idea."
I frowned. "You're not suggesting that McCleary… what? Orchestrated this pirate raid on us as political retaliation? To shut us up?"
"Why not?" challenged Hector.
"Because it sounds crazy and there's no proof?" I replied with more than just a touch of sarcasm.
"Maybe no direct proof, no," acknowledged Hector. "But as it turns out there is plenty of circumstantial evidence if you have someone take a closer look."
"Such as?" I challenged, not bothering to hide my skepticism.
"Look, pirate raids are common, but if you start to look for a pattern you'll find that over the last twenty years or so members of the Ten Houses who have been, shall we say, problematic for McCleary for one reason or another soon find themselves hit with a surprisingly large pirate raid within a year," said Hector, sounding more and more passionate as he spoke.
"That…," I said with a thoughtful frown. "That sounds suspicious, yes. Maybe even very suspicious. But it might still simply be a coincidence."
He nodded. "Yes, but there's more. At times the pirates on these suspiciously targeted raids have gone out of the way to target things that make little sense for them to target. Unless you start to look at things from the point of view of who might benefit if certain things were stolen or destroyed. And almost uniformly, these seemingly 'random acts of destruction' have benefited McCleary or his allies in some way."
I frowned. Could that really be true? How could people have missed it if it was? Then I remembered our own recent pirate raid just a few days ago. I remembered being puzzled why two Firestarters would bother running around wasting time just setting fire to all of our crops. If one assumed this raid hadn't been just random but specifically targeted at hurting us, then things started to make a little bit more sense.
The Axe family, our family, gained a portion of it's wealth and a large chunk of it's influence from being the agricultural heart of the planet. We were responsible for growing just over 50% of the calories the citizens of the planet consumed and that formed the backbone of our position on Detroit. Why would pirates go our of their way to burn our crops? Unless their goal was to hurt us. Or to hurt the citizens of the planet by reducing their food supply. Or worse, both.
More so, why would pirates raid us to mostly steal our very large industrial farming equipment? Not to mention I'd personally seen them destroy what they didn't or couldn't haul away. At first I thought the destruction was just random violence by a bunch of murderers and thugs, but had that really been the reason? And while I'm sure they could get a lot of C-Bills for the equipment they stole if they found the right buyer, why target that in the first place? The equipment was large, bulky, difficult to move, and not at all useful to them unless they could sell it first.
The raid was starting to make less and less sense the more I thought about it.
Which meant that my brother's theory was starting to make a sickening amount of sense.
"You realize of course," I said, my voice dropping with a cold, icy fury as the possibility that this raid had been orchestrated by what was at least ostensibly supposed to be an ally to House Axe began to hit home. "That we haven't got any solid proof of this? Not a single, solitary trace? If we bring up this sort of accusation half-cocked McCleary will dance rings around us and make us look like fools."
Hector sighed, looking angry and bitter and frustrated. "I know. Fuck, I know. And after that raid… we're now weaker than we've ever been, Logan. We've gone from four BattleMechs, then to three, to now just one in only six years. Our finances are going to be in the red for a good long while after this, too. It took days to put out the blaze those fucking Firestarters started. Best estimate is that we've lost about 15% of our crop for this year. Then there's the equipment, and the people the pirates kidnapped… point is, I know we're not in any position to challenge McCleary like this right now. But, I'm also the Lord Axe now." His hands clenched into fists, so hard that I heard his joints pop. "Our father is dead. I have to do something. We can't just let this go. I just don't know what."
"We don't actually need proof you know," I remarked after a few seconds of silence. "This isn't the court of law. All that we'd need to do is convince the other Ten Families that this has been going on. They aren't stupid. If there's as much smoke as you're claiming, then the Ten Families will definitely conclude that there is a fire, or at the very least start looking very hard for one from their own end."
Hector looked at me and blinked, as if surprised I had made such a suggestion. "Huh. You're right," he said, before shaking his head. "Still, the Ten Families won't be easy to convince, and even discreetly making the accusation is risky for us. You forget, most of us don't trust each other. The Ito and Abadi families are already deep in McClary's pockets. The Rosenbergs, the Falls, the Clements and the McCabes aren't fans of McClary but all have different reasons to not want to rock the boat unless they felt they had no other choice. The Vargas and maybe the Falconers are the only ones who can maybe be counted on to hear us out seriously without it potentially blowing up on our faces. But after being weakened as much as we have, I expect that even with them our words won't carry the same weight that they used to even just a week ago."
I thought about it, and realized one of the reasons we counted the Vargas and the Falconers as friendly, if not necessary friends. "Let me guess," I said, "Since the Vargas and the Falconers have historically pushed back against McClary the hardest right along side us, we are the three families who have been hit the hardest by these 'oversized' pirate attacks? Which would make any accusations coming from us seem suspect to the other Ten Families from the outset without some kind of overwhelming proof."
"Bingo," said Hector, and I found it incredibly odd that that expression seemed to have somehow survived for over a thousand years. "Which means… that right now, I have no idea where to go from here."
A humorless smile twitched at the corner of my lips and I took a stab at lightening the mood a bit. "Is that why you were lurking at my beside while I was unconscious, brother? Just waiting for me to wake up so you could pump me for advice?"
A bit of amusement peeked through his obvious frustration. "Isn't one of the responsibilities of the heir to give sound advice to their Lord? Don't think I'll let you shrink your duties just because you're my little sister."
That was a sobering thought, that I was now next in line to head our family until Hector had children of his own.
By the look on his face my brother probably hadn't been expecting me to magically come up with a solution, but had wanted to both share his suspicions with someone and have someone there to help shoulder the burden. And it was a heavy burden. We didn't say it out loud, but both of us knew that there was no way we could repel another attack of that size if it came again. If our suppositions were in any way true about who had been responsible, then that meant McCleary could now potentially arrange to have our family be utterly broken by another raid, potentially wiping us off the map down to the very last one of us.
Unacceptable. Completely, utterly unacceptable.
With that new, absolute determination at the forefront of my mind I felt something shift inside of me. This is what I went away to train for. No one gets to hurt us. I'll put anyone who tries in a shallow grave myself if I have to. It was like a fire had just been lit in my chest, and in spite of everything suddenly feeling like I had a tangible direction, a goal, something worthwhile to fight for made me feel strong. Powerful. This will never happen again.
The determination of Detroit-Logan and the ambition of Earth-Logan churned and turned inside me, reinforcing each other, turning into something far more than the mere sum of it's parts.
Anyone who was responsible for this will pay.
And as fate would have it, the means to start going about that had already been conveniently laid on her lap.
Any tiredness or weakness I might have been feeling left me in a burst of adrenaline. As quickly as I could without jostling my arm I practically threw myself out of bed, ignoring my wobbly legs. Within seconds I was frantically searching around the room for something other than the thin hospital gown I had on to wear.
"Logan, what the hell are you doing?" Hector asked, sounding very concerned.
I ignored his tone as I continued to rummage around the room. "I've got something to show you. It might be the solution to our problems. No, it will be the solution to all our problems. If only I could find some damn clothes, then we'll get out of here and I'll show you."
"What?" Hector asked, bewildered my sudden change. "Leave? Logan, you're not going anywhere without the doctors clearing you first!"
Silly Hector, why focus on the most irrelevant part of everything I just said?
I stopped and looked him right in the eye. "I need you to trust me, Hector. I don't know how I know but I suddenly woke up knowing something incredible. Something that I need to show you. So just forget about the doctors and let's go."
Of course, Hector did not just forget about the doctors.
It took another hour but eventually we got a doctor to declare I probably wouldn't die I needed to leave urgently. The doctors were confused, and Hector was irritated, but eventually we left.
Time to see the toys that had been left for me. You wanted to see the mice dance, you random otherworldly bastard that decided to stick his nose into my life? Then sit the hell down and watch me dance.
Reflection of Who I am[]
Two hours later we were breaking atmosphere in the K-1 DropShuttle that our family owned. It was just the two of us and thankfully the DropShuttle could be manned by just two people provided we didn't have any emergencies or needed to do anything more than simply fly from point A to point B. Luckily Hector had the training to fly the DropShuttle and was currently in the pilot's seat. I, on the other hand, was staring at my reflection in the mirror of the DropShuttle's lone and rather luxurious bathroom.
Identity was a funny thing. Like a fish born in the ocean, I'd never noticed the thousands and millions of opinions, assumptions and attitudes that went into making you "you." For example, I'd mostly never noticed that I'd generally been uninterested in people, seeing most of them as having little to offer me and not really worth spending the time to get to know. It was just how I'd always been. Earth-Logan, however, had for most of his life had been fascinated and entertained by getting to know people inside and out as much as possible. Not as simply a goal in and of itself though but also to find out what made them tick and how that could be turned to his advantage at some future date.
Now I was some weird fusion of both. I was one. I was the other. Both were true, independently and together.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I half expected to see a square face, lantern jaw and salt and pepper hair. That wasn't what looked back at me though. What looked back at me was the same person I'd always been (in the 31th century). Female, very tall and willowy, 23 years old. Face symmetrical but not particularly pretty. My lips were too thin for that, my nose was too long and pointy, and bras had always been and would forever be strictly optional for me even during hard PT. Instead of a professional looking male haircut that was maintained by an appointment with an expensive stylist every two weeks, my platinum blonde hair was cut by our cook into a short bob with bangs that was perfectly practical for wearing a neurohelmet and piloting a 'mech.
Can I even claim to be the same person anymore?
The thought was unsettling and there were no clear answers to be had. So I engaged in a time honored tradition of humanity and decided right then to firmly ignore the problem. I didn't have time for navel gazing and existential crises, even if I did feel like two holograms suddenly superimposed one on top of the another. There were real problems in the real world for me to deal with.
The ship-wide PA system suddenly crackled to life. <<"Logan, we're coming up on Livonia. Now get up here and properly explain to me exactly what we're doing approaching this lifeless rock.">>
My blue eyes, at least, remained familiar. As did my exasperation and affection for Hector. As did my affection and love for all of our family.
For now, it would simply have to be enough.
Hidden Treasures[]
Livonia was one of Detroit III's two moons. It was a dead, lifeless rock, remarkable only by how few useful mineral resources it had and how the few operations that had tried to set up shop there anyway had been hit with one disaster after another and eventually gone bankrupt. It was rather pretty though, something in the soil giving the surface a soft blue reflection when it was hit by the light of the local star.
"Here," I said, imputing a string of coordinates on the computer. "This is the exact orbit we need to be on. There won't be any power readings we can detect. You should be able to pick up a large metal object once we get within a few thousand kilometers though."
"What is this?" Hector asked, sounding surprisingly grumpy. "Are some of your friends from your time in Taurus out here for some reason? Is that what this is about?"
I had to struggle to not to make a face. I'd made it a point to make useful connections in Taurus when I could. But I'd made very few real friends, and none who would have any reason to come to a backwater like Detroit.
"No," I said succinctly, before a beep from the console drew our attention. I turned to Hector with a grin. "Looks like we got lucky. I was afraid we'd be orbiting for hours before we caught up."
"Caught up with what?" Hector grumbled, even as he adjusted our heading for an intercept course.
It only took a few minutes before we spotted it. A speck in the distance that we could immediately tell by the shape had to be man made.
We stared at the speck as it slowly grew bigger, my heart leaping to my throat as I could just begin some of the more prominent details.
"What is that?" Hector said as the object finally grew in our viewscreen to become something recognizable. "Is that a JumpShip?!"
I couldn't hold back an elated laugh. I'd been convinced that I was right, that it was all here, but as they said seeing was truly believing. "Yes, but not just a JumpShip," I said with a wild grin that I couldn't have wiped off my face if I'd tried. "And not just any JumpShip. That's not any old Merchant or Invader. That, dear brother, is a Star Lord. In perfect mint condition as if it had just come off a Star League shipyard yesterday, equipped with experimental LostTech from the last days of the Star League, and as of now it's 100% percent ours."
"How did you even…?" Hector asked, his face filled with almost childlike wonder as they Star Lord got bigger and bigger on our viewscreen.
I ignored his implied question for now, as there was nothing I could say that would make any kind of sense.
Instead I drew his attention to something else, wide grin never leaving my face as my eyes stayed glued to the viewscreen just as much as his were. "That's not all. In fact, you could almost say that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you squint, I think we can almost make them out now. Do you see the DropShips attached to her docking collars?"
I could tell by his sharp intake of breath when he finally saw them. "All six docking collars are occupied," he said, eyes wide as saucers. "Those two big ones. Those look like Mules."
I could understand why he would zero in on those first. They were the biggest and most easily recognizable. I could also tell that Hector, ever the financially savvy one, instantly zeroed in on the possibility of how drastically those two Cargo DropShips alone could increase our income. Our family already owned two Danais Cargo DropShips and one Merchant JumpShip that we continually had in service. Those three along with our farms they made up the lion's share of our wealth. A Mule was over three times the size of a Danais and could consequently move much more cargo. Which meant potentially much higher profits.
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Buccaneer Cargo DropShip
The two Mules were not what I found most interesting though. "Brother," I said, hardly having to fake the reverence and solemnity in my voice. "What we have here is two Mules, yes, along with a Buccaneer," the latter being an aerodyne cargo hauler roughly a third the size of a Mule. "But the bigger deal are the other three. Those three are all military DropShips. The one of the far left by the Buccaneer is a Union," that being a fairly standard workhorse DropShip among militarizes everywhere that could carry a company of mechs and a couple of aerospace fighters. "The last two, though. Those two are Fortress-class DropShips."
Now, my brother had not gone through three years of training at a military academy like I had, but by the way he sobered up at hearing that meant he realized at least some of the implications. "Those are Assault DropShips," said Hector seriously. "Dangerous ones. If I'm not misremembering, doesn't one Fortress carry more firepower than two whole companies of mechs?"
"Depends on the tonnage of mechs in a company, but broadly you're about right," I replied, examining him closely. "They're also famous for each carrying a Long Tom. In case you'd forgotten that detail."
Hector for some reason turned to look at me incredulously. "An important detail, I'm sure. You do realize no one outside of the major periphery states can usually even field that kind of firepower?" It went without saying that the Great Houses could field them, too. "And now, two of them simply landed on our laps? How did you even know about this? This… this is insane!"
I raised an unimpressed eyebrow at my brother. "Well, look at the bright side. At least they weren't two Colossus-class."
"Logan," he said, voice and expression turning serious. I hid a grimace. His tone right then very clearly said "I expect some damn answers." He was also asking as my head of house, newly minted though he was. Damn it. Frowning, I realize I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to give him something right now.
I chewed my lip, thinking thing through before replying. The truth was, I wasn't ready to share everything. It was too crazy. And frankly, even though I was still clearly me, I couldn't help that in some ways I also felt like an impostor. I wasn't quite the same Logan that Hector had known his whole life anymore. That was undeniable. I was different.
For example, Detroit-Logan had never been any good at lying. Maybe it was just a matter of never having practiced much. Earth-Logan, however, had always been very skilled at convincing people of all sorts of things. He'd been a very good liar.
The best lies were simply misdirections. Simply put, it meant telling the truth in such a way that didn't paint the full picture. Best yet, if done correctly, it was hard for anyone to ever call you out on it, since you never did anything but speak the truth. It helped ease my conscience that everything I was about to say was truthful.
I sighed heavily and sat down in the co-pilot seat, turning it to face my brother. He didn't look like he was going to have the patience to wait very long, so I decided against dragging this out and just put him out of his misery.
"I already told you, kind of, back at the hospital," I began. "I don't know if you missed it, but I said something like 'I just woke up knowing something incredible'. That's… basically it," I said with a shrug. "When I woke up, suddenly I had all this new knowledge in my head. About all of this," I said, gesturing out the still now rapidly approaching Star Lord on the viewscreen, "and about where it was. I really don't have any good explanation. None whatsoever. Divine intervention? Hyper advanced aliens? Some buried black project from the Star League suddenly activating and giving me these memories for some reason?" I shrugged, the action tailored to look helpless along with giving him a helpless smile. "Your guess is as good as mine, Hector."
Hector took that in, before leaning back and rubbing his face, suddenly looking exhausted and overwhelmed. My new perspective told me that twenty-six was still young, and few people could be expected to be doing well after the last few days my brother had had to live through. I gave him a few minutes to process as our DropShuttle began to slow on final approach. The Star Lord was almost filling the entire viewscreen now. I couldn't help but admire her. She was absolutely a thing of beauty.
"That's the single craziest thing I've ever heard of," he eventually said.
"I know."
"And this has really just been sitting there, ripe for the taking by anyone who came along?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. I genuinely don't know."
Hector turned to look out the window before he quietly spoke again. "What the hell are we even going to do with all this?"
"Well," I replied, feeling cheeky. "When I was a kid I always told everyone I wanted to be famous a merc, remember? With this I could make my childhood dreams come true."
Hector barked out a loud laugh, probably more out of a need to release tension than because my comment was so incredibly funny. "You need BattleMechs more than anything for that, even more than DropShips. We're running kind of low on mechs right now." Then he froze, and turned to stare at me with wide eyes. "That Union and those Fortresses aren't loaded up with mechs, are they?"
I smiled and shook my head. "No. No 'mechs or combat vehicles or anything like that. Just a crap ton of ammo and spare parts to last a century assuming we're not combat dropping them every month."
"Good," he said, before quickly backtracking. "Well, not good good, but I can't wrap my head around all this being here, let alone if there was a battalion of Star League era 'mechs simply waiting for us here too. Can you imagine how impossible it'd be to keep Beatrice out of one if that was the case?"
Hector and I shared an understanding exasperated smile at the thought. Beatrice was twelve and already scarily good at getting her way. We'd have eventually caved and let her have her own Banshee or something if we had the 'mechs to spare.
"Though I wonder," Hector said after a moment, "why would all of this just be sitting out here completely empty? Most hidden LostTech cashes have always been equipment the Star League squirreled away with whatever they would have needed to fight a war. Hard to fight a war without 'mechs, tanks or aircraft."
Because this wouldn't be an entertaining play to watch if things were too easy.
"There is one more thing," I said to him. "A big thing, actually. Maybe the biggest, depending on how you want to look at it."
Hector turned to me, his eyes bright with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. "What is it?"
"For this one… I think it would be best if I just showed you."