Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star
- Chapter 71 -[]
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"Although House Humphreys of Islington was already somewhat well known within the Hegemony, it was the surprise ratings success of the Reality TriVid Show 'The Von Strang's: A Life in Exile' which started airing in early 2848 that first catapulted them to the attention of the wider Inner Sphere. Despite all the attention being initially directed on the Von Strang's themselves it was Baron Reginald Humphreys himself that proved the breakout star of the show as he tried to maintain order and sanity in the household. For her part the Lady Amelia Grace still gets regularly asked for an autograph or requested to repeat her catchphrase, 'What the hell, Terren?' while out and about in the Hegemony capital on Alphard."
Stephen J. Tran, Red Star Rising: A History of Niops 2800-2900 - Niops Press, 2915
Defiant unit til the End[]
Baronial Estate - Islington – 2847
Although indisputably less able to stand up to artillery bombardment than his father's palace back home had been, for Terrens, Von Strang to deny that the Humphreys eseate was architecturally more attractive would have been philistinism at best, utter stupidity at worse. Naturally the more temperate climate helped, permitting the buildings themselves to be airier, and the expansive gardens to be lush and very pleasant to wander around, but despite it being the finest of gilded cages it was, nonetheless, still a cage.
Not that he was confined to the grounds of course, it being the entire planet that represented the metaphorical cage, so the feeling of being hemmed in wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but despite that illusion of freedom Terrens very much knew where he stood.
At least Baron Humphreys and the Hegemony authorities had the humanity to keep the leash as loose as possible, meaning that Terrens wasn't followed around wherever he went, and that modicum of freedom had enabled him to find himself a few hidden nooks and crannies on the estate where he could go when he wanted to be alone and undisturbed.
Settling down on a wooden bench under a tree, a place that he knew where he was very unlikely to be seen by anyone, much less interrupted this early on a Sunday morning morning not long after dawn, Terrens took out his noteputer and after plugging in his headphones loaded in a vid-chip, one that he knew a lot of people would not want him to have much less watch as many times as he had.
His aunt Arabella had given the vid-chip to him in secret, telling him that it was something she thought he should see, but that others would disagree saying he was far too young. Just in case anyone found it in his room he had marked the label on the chip as it being a pirated copy of Canopus Girls III: Debbie does Dieron because he would much rather have to explain that to any snooper than what was really on there.
Looking around one last time to make sure there was nobody around Terrens pressed play and started watching the recording, fast-forwarding through all the irrelevant stuff at the start until he came to the important part.
Somehow even on the small screen of the noteputer the throne-room on Tharkad managed to look suitably awe-inspiring and impressive, the two Griffin battlemechs that flanked the throne itself providing scale and despite dwarfing the man sat there between them somehow failing to make him look small and insignificant.
You had to give the Steiners that, they knew how a ruler should present themselves, even if they often failed to grasp how they should behave and act, Terrens considered as he watched his father being escorted into the throne-room between two members of the Lyran Royal Guard. The usual throng of minor nobles that might be expected to be in attendance was notably absent, clearly the Archon wanted this to be a more personal encounter.
The audio quality on the recording was quite good, the Lyrans had a decent handle on acoustics too and voices carried very well in the massive chamber, so when they started to talk it was easy to make out what they were saying despite the cameraman recording events standing some distance away.
"At least you refrained from having me brought before you in chains again this time" was the first thing Karl Von Strang said to Claudius Steiner sat before him. "I assume you took to heart my advice about how much of a cliché it was?"
Claudius smirked. "The rattling of chains as you trembled before the executioner's block would have been annoying" he responded.
"As if I would give you the satisfaction, Steiner" Von Strang replied, smirking back.
"I'm told you ate a hearty breakfast this morning" Claudius remarked. "The reality of the situation not sunk in yet?"
"My only concern was that if Lyran executioners are as incompetent as Lyran Generals then this could be a very long day" Von Strang replied placidly. "I'd hate to have to request luncheon to be brought in later because my stomach was rumbling and your headsman was still trying to figure out that the reason he can't see out of his hood is because he put it on backwards."
Claudius chuckled. "You need not have worried about that possibility, Von Strang. I'll be taking your head personally."
Terrens watched the recording playing on his noteputer intently as his father initially raised his eyebrows then frowned. "Well now I am terrified" Karl Von Strang eventually responded, sounding anything but. "It's one thing to be quickly decapitated, but the notion of being bludgeoned to death because you're so inept you're holding the axe by the wrong end, repeatedly striking me with the handle wondering why it's not working properly, quite frankly fills me with truly incalculable dread" he said sardonically, his body language meanwhile signalling that, if anything, he was bored.
'Good one, Dad' Terrens said aloud despite himself, then checking around to make sure he was still alone he made sure nobody had heard him before returning his attention to the screen.
Claudius meanwhile had narrowed his eyes, looking angry. "A smart man wouldn't seek to provoke me under these circumstances" he warned. "I might decide to make a hash of it just to watch you suffer."
"Steiner, if I thought for one second that you were capable of taking my head off with one swing of the axe via any means other than sheer blind luck then, believe you me, I would not be addressing you nearly so flippantly right now." Karl Von Strang responded drily. "I strongly suspect that you would be more likely to accidentally take my head off with the first sweep of the razor if you were intending on giving me a shave instead."
Claudius Steiner was clearly infuriated now and he practically leapt off the throne. "Watch your tone with me, periphery scum" he hissed.
"Or what? You'll have my head sewed back on so you can clumsily cut it off twice?" Von Strang retorted, rolling his eyes. "The only saving grace to this whole farce is that I know you'll mess it up and look a simpleton. Hacking away at me with all the artistry and skill of a mentally deficient skatha ape suffering from an advanced neurogenerative disease" he said with utter derision dripping from every word. "Even the mewling sycophants and gibbering imbeciles that unceasingly bow and scrape before you, pathetic lickspittles seeking favor from a tyrannical despot as they are, will be hard pressed in private to hold back laughter when they recall your ineptitude with such a basic tool that most of humanity mastered the use of it during the Palaeolithic age."
Unfortunately for Claudius he was so now incensed that he took a little too long formulating an appropriate reply, allowing Karl Von Strang to get in another line first before he could open his mouth.
"What's the matter Steiner, too polysyllabic for you to parse? I'm happy to wait here quietly while you send for a dictionary if that's what's required. I'd hate for any of my insults to pass ineffectually over your head because of your seemingly limited vocabulary. I was no great fan of your older brother either, but at least Marcus wouldn't have needed me to use shorter words" he said, crossing his arms.
Despite the fact he was watching his father's last few minutes amongst the land of the living, Terrens smiled. He wondered how long it took Claudius Steiner to realise afterwards that the taunting was not merely mockery for its own sake, a last gesture of defiance, but was also a manipulation intended to make sure that the man swinging the axe would make certain to do the job quickly and cleanly to avoid looking like a blundering fool.
"Perhaps you'd prefer to have one of these battlemechs tear you limb-from-limb instead?" the Archon asked angrily, somehow managing to regain his hold over himself.
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Throne room of the Archon
Karl Von Strang looked up at the nearest Griffin, looking thoughtful. "Depends. Would you be the one sat in the cockpit? If so then I'd probably fancy my chances against you unarmed" he replied, smirking again. "Of course you would never allow such a fair fight. Everyone knows that the only reason the Lyran Commonwealth invaded us when they did was because Kerensky had already stripped us of our military strength. You would have never dared to face us in the field otherwise."
This time it was the turn of Claudius Steiner to roll his eyes before laughing. "You're nothing but a common pirate who ruled a bandit kingdom" he told Karl Von Strang. "Your pretensions to be more than that, the ludicrous claims of your barony to be the successor to the Rim Worlds Republic, are laughable."
"If they were so laughable then why did the Star League Defense Force itself have to cross the breadth of the Inner Sphere from Niops to topple me from my throne, while nearby Steiner armies feared to do so?" Von Strang asked rhetorically. "At least I can die happy in the knowledge that I was defeated in battle not by some mere Lyran toady who was only appointed the rank of general because his second cousin thrice removed was some Steiner's mistress a century ago, but by an enemy actually worthy of my people and my lineage" he declared. "It took actual warriors fighting beneath the banner of the Cameron Star to bring low the noble Stefan Amaris and my great ancestor Gunthar Von Strang, while the toy soldiers of Robert Steiner vanquished unarmed civilians before lauding themselves as mighty conquerors. Clearly, little has changed since then."
It was more than obvious to Terrens why the version of these events that had been televised in the Commonwealth had been so heavily edited so as to remove almost everything his father had said that day. Quite how this unedited version had leaked, and who was ultimately responsible for it being leaked, was still a mystery, although most media commentators seemed to believe that elements within the Lyran intelligence community aligned with either Melissa Nin or discontented members of the Estates General were responsible.
If Melissa was the person to credit with the leak then Terrens hoped he would get the opportunity to shake her hand one day. After all she hadn't actually been born into the Steiner family, only married in, so it wouldn't be an utter betrayal of his ancestors to do so.
Given that she too was now living in exile in the Hegemony, albeit on Stafford a few jumps away rather than Islington, there might even be a chance he would get to meet her one day, although for her part she might not wish to. Terrens knew that the Lyrans probably felt the same way about him as most people from the former Rim Worlds Republic felt about them.
It was always your immediate neighbours that you had the greatest rivalry and distaste for. The Magistracy of Canopus quietly maintained their own deep-seated hatred of Free Worlds League too, them being another poor unfortunate periphery realm sorely oppressed by the supposedly civilized Inner Sphere nation they bordered.
If relations between the Niops Hegemony and the Free Worlds League didn't eventually sour too and lead to them coming to blows in the fullness of time Terrens would be very surprised.
Forcing himself to watch the rest of the recording Terrens was proud of his father's courage and poise. Asked what his last request was Karl Von Strang queried drily whether it might be possible to have something to read placed in the basket his head would drop into, while his final words before kneeling before the block were a heartfelt and stirring, 'Mark my words Lyran scum, I may die this day but the Rim Worlds Republic will rise again!'.
In the 'official' version released to the Lyran press Karl Von Strang had begged for his life at the end. Terrens wouldn't have believed that even if he hadn't gotten to see the truth with his own eyes. The Von Strang family were no cowards.
Despite having watched it several times already Terrens still flinched when the axe fell, Claudius managing to perform the task with one stroke and looking proud of himself for having done so.
Looking away from the screen Terrens stared off into the distance. He needed to do something about this but his current circumstances precluded him doing so.
Fortunately a conversation with Amelia Grace a couple of days earlier had given him a few ideas on how he might go about it, and while his first attempt had failed, Baron Humphries not being immediately cooperative, he might be able to force the issue with a little chicanery.
For the sake of efficiency he could also kill two birds with one stone and scratch off something else on his to-do list at the same time he decided, unplugging his headphones and turning off his noteputer as he stood up. No time like the present, he decided, heading back towards the house as the sun continued to rise in the sky.
Negotiations for a safe haven[]
A couple of hours later, Václav Štefánek was thinking about maybe making pancakes later as he walked into the kitchen of his farmhouse, the medium-sized family farm situated on the other side of Gislandune, the capital city, from the Baron's estate and even further out. If it wasn't a Sunday then he would have already been out on the fields by that time in the morning, but because it was the day of rest he instead went about pouring himself a cup of coffee and making plans to laze around in front of the TriVid for the next couple of hours. His wife meanwhile had gotten up early in order to take their eldest daughter to church, the two of them being the only devout ones in the family, and as usual his son had wolfed down his breakfast before dashing off to tear around the countryside on his motorcycle like a maniac, leaving Václav and his youngest girl as the only ones in the house.
Judging from the sound of running water upstairs Diya had finally dragged herself out of bed and was taking a shower so Václav readied himself for an argument as to what channel they were going to switch the TriVid to. With luck he could nudge her into playing one of her computer games so he could watch the news channel in peace, as having to watch the quiz show channel, or even worse the music channel, would require something a lot stronger than coffee.
They were usually both okay with the documentary channel, but Sunday mornings they always seemed to have on either repetitive history shows about the Amaris War or that that goofy series hosted by the conspiracy nut with the weird hairstyle that thought aliens were behind everything.
If the man contended that ComStar was behind everything instead he might suffer from lower ratings, but conversely he would benefit from a lot more credibility. It frankly mystified Václav that even after the ComStar War that anyone still gave the benefit of the doubt to the 'jumped up telephone company', as they were usually referred to in the Hegemony, but the fact that they weren't widely regarded as nefarious throughout the Inner Sphere did in itself demonstrate the soft power derived from their quiet control of the interstellar media.
NHCOMNET News broadcast segments from CNN on a regular basis and comparing their own spin on things with the typically factual-to-the-point-of-being-boring news reporting style prevalent in the Hegemony was entertaining in itself. Judging by the negative manner in which ComStar liked to paint nearly everything Niops did, their bias was so blatant it was genuinely funny to someone that knew better.
Like most independent observers Václav had long ago concluded that ComStar was willing to let most anything slide for the sake of maintaining their supposed neutrality, except of course for trying to make them pay taxes, threatening their HPG monopoly or butchering millions of unarmed civilians with swords. Getting the story out of what was happening on Kentares was probably ComStar's finest hour and did at least show that there was a limit to how much they were willing to put their own political interests ahead of following their conscience. The Draconis Combine would not have been happy with ComStar when they went public about the massacre, especially when the news unsurprisingly resulted in untold millions of extremely angry Federated Suns citizens throwing themselves headlong at the soldiers of House Kurita while swearing bloody vengeance.
Real life was like that, nobody was all bad Václav knew. Even the wretched Capellans had been the ones that had originally pushed for the Ares Conventions to be agreed, even if these days they were even more likely than the rest of the Great Houses to only regard them as the 'Ares Suggestions'.
In the modern era the great champions of the Ares Conventions diplomatically were ComStar and the Niops Association, effectively the two rival successor states to the Terran Hegemony. Ironically it had of course been the Terran Hegemony, through the Star League, that had decided to annul the Ares Conventions in the first place as the prelude to launching the Reunification War. Cynics, and smirking Taurians, would tend to point out that this abrupt volte-face in policy clearly resulted from it being the worlds of the Terran Hegemony that eventually ended up with the greatest proportion of their surface areas turned into radioactive glass now that slinging WMD around was 'okay' again.
What goes around comes around.
Sipping at his coffee, Pirehill Mountain Blend from Stafford that more expensive than what was grown on Islington but he had gotten a taste for it while living on Copernicus, Václav was interrupted from his thoughts by the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside the farmhouse. Anjali shouldn't be back from church yet, and it didn't sound like their ICE powered four-wheel-drive anyway, so he put down his coffee and was already heading to the front door to investigate when someone knocked on it from outside.
Václav opened the door and found himself looking at a lad no older than his early teens, the boy wearing expensive looking though practical clothes, and with well-made walking boots on.
The boots themselves were no indicator of wealth of course, everyone had decent footwear in the Niops Hegemony as the people on Comstock were practically giving them away to try and free up warehouse space. If there was any free tonnage available on a ship leaving the system you could guarantee it would be filled up with footwear. Václav himself had three pairs of SLDF issue combat boots that he usually wore while working and which were stamped as being manufactured way back in the 2770's having been in storage ever since.
People joked that the only thing the Hegemony had more of gathering dust in storage than army boots was the Association's fabled vast stockpile of nuclear weapons. Either way Niops was always well prepared to give you a hefty kick up the ass if you went there looking for trouble.
"Mr Štefánek?" the boy queried.
"Yes" Václav confirmed.
"That's a relief. I thought I might have taken the wrong turn" the boy replied. "My roadmap seems to be out of date."
"They often are, lots of new construction over the last few years" Václav responded, trying to place the boy's accent. Thanks to Islington's policy of making it easy for immigrants to settle there, and the generally awful state of much of the Inner Sphere, people were showing up from all over the place these days although they all had to go through Hegemony immigration control on Copernicus or Alphard first. There were just so many poor folks out there just looking for a better future for themselves and their families on a world where there was ample food and water, and most importantly where the weather forecast was never, 'Twelve thousand degrees. Very cloudy'. "Are you a friend of my son?" Václav asked, wondering if the lad was a little older than he looked. "He's not here at the moment."
"No. I'm an acquaintance of your daughter Diya" the boy explained. "Is she available?" he asked.
Frowning, Václav looked at him suspiciously. "Diya is a little young for boys to come calling for her" he said, his tone indicative of his considerable feeling on the matter. It was bad enough that they were increasingly interested in his older girl, having once been a teenage boy himself he trusted them about as far as he could throw his tractor. "It's also very early on a Sunday, and we live in the middle of nowhere so I'm going to need to know more about you before I call her down here."
"Ah, I fully understand" the boy responded, straightening up. "Perhaps a formal introduction is in order to help allay your fears that I might be some kind of miscreant or ne'er-do-well with nefarious intentions" he continued, smiling. "Baron Terrens Von Strang at your service" he said, bowing his head ever so slightly, clicking his heels together in an archaic military manner then offering his hand to shake.
If he thought that revelation would, in any way, allay any concerns Václav Štefánek might have then Terrens Von Strang was alas, sorely mistaken. The man just stared at the boy nonplussed for an extended period before eventually taking his hand and shaking it because he simply couldn't think of how else to respond. Václav noted that the lad possessed a strong grip although he clearly didn't perform much in the way of manual labour judging by the softness of his skin. The farmers own hand was all calluses by comparison because he himself had always worked hard for a living, he certainly hadn't grown up having people do all the work for him if they wanted to keep on living.
"Who are you talking to Dad?" Diya asked, her voice heralding her appearance before she entered line-of-sight with the front door. When she saw who was standing there she froze and much like her father simply stared for a moment before collecting herself. "What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded to know.
Normally Václav would have chided the girl for the mild cursing, but under the circumstances felt she deserved at least some credit for not using the f word instead, he himself wouldn't have been quite so restrained at that age, having been pretty foul-mouthed as a teenager.
"Would you believe I turned up at your doorstep by accident?" Terrens asked rhetorically.
"No" Diya replied.
Terrens nodded. "Good. I didn't have you pegged as an imbecile, despite your impoverished background as a refugee" he told her, smiling again.
"We're immigrants, not refugees" Diya corrected him curtly before her father could. "And I've had you rightly pegged as an obnoxious jerk ever since we first met" she continued, glaring at him. "What do you want Terrens? Also how did you know where I lived and how did you even get here?" she reasonably wanted to know.
"You should really address me as 'Baron' rather than by my given name until invited to do so, but under the circumstances I'll let the breach of etiquette slide" Terrens responded in what he thought was a suitably amiable and conciliatory manner but really wasn't. "To answer your first question, it occurred to me that I never did thank you for your letter of condolence for my father's death, it certainly made a change from all the ones saying they hoped he was burning in hell, and I thought it polite to do so in person" he continued. "Regarding how I found out where you lived, you're literally the only people named Štefánek on Islington, so it wasn't exactly a feat worthy of a master detective to track you down. You're in the telephone book" he pointed out. "If you'd been named 'Smith' instead it really would have been a lot more work than it was."
"That's… fair" Diya conceded, although it still didn't explain why he had shown up at her door. "Wait! People sent you letters saying they hoped your father was burning in hell?" she asked incredulously.
"Only a small fraction of those that were thinking it, I'm sure" Terrens replied sounding all too blasé about it all. As his father had instructed him once, one shouldn't outwardly display one's innermost feelings in public, particularly not in front of the lower orders, it made you look and sound weak.
The Von Strang family was not weak Terrens knew. The Von Strang family was calm under pressure, measured and unflappable, except for auntie Arabella at times of course but her lack of poise was among the least of her issues.
Another piece of sage advice the late baron had given his son was that while Arabella could be trusted implicitly to try and stop anyone from outside the family knifing him in the back, her filial loyalty was unquestioned within that narrow remit, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't be the one holding the knife. Not as part of some power-play you understand, she was just completely mental, or at least she had been before the compulsory medication, now she was only mostly mental in Terrens opinion.
In Terrens's mind the inability of James Humphreys to grasp that by getting into a relationship with her he wasn't so much playing with fire as much as he was juggling reactor plasma was something that didn't speak well of the man's own mental health either, but that was another matter. "Oh, and I got here by car obviously" he suddenly remembered to answer the last of the girl's questions., stepping aside to point at the expensive-looking fuel-cell powered SUV with the tinted windows behind him.
"Who's waiting for you in the jeep?" Václav asked, unable to make out anyone inside the vehicle.
"Nobody, I drove myself" Terrens replied.
"You're my age. How do you even have a license?" Diya asked him.
Terrens shrugged. "I don't."
Václav frowned. "Isn't that illegal?"
"I imagine so, but honestly seeing as how I stole the car, worrying about having the correct paperwork needed to drive it lawfully seemed a tad trivial" Terrens responded.
Diya and her father both stared at him dumbfounded. "YOU STOLE THE CAR?" Diya managed to ask after her brain caught up.
"Well, 'stole' might be a little hyperbolic as I always intended on giving it back, but I'm not sure if there's too much legal distinction between that and 'borrowed without permission' so on that basis I'd have to stick with stole, yes" Terrens confirmed, nodding.
"Whose car did you steal?" Václav asked, sounding considerably calmer than he felt, probably because he hadn't finished his coffee yet and wasn't fully awake, and somewhat wishing that he had gone to church with Anjali so he could have personally avoided this mess. Not that it would have been fair on Diya.
"Baron Humphreys" Terrens replied, "but it's okay, he's got others if he urgently needed to drive somewhere today" the boy said dispassionately before pursing his lips thoughtfully. "You might want to call the authorities though if you want to ensure you don't get accused of being an accomplice or an accessory to the crime" he advised.
"You stole Baron Humpreys's car?" Diya said slowly. "And you drove it here?"
"Explaining to your mother why we're all being deported back to Cerignola is going to be fun" Václav told his daughter wryly. "I'd better make that phone-call to the police before they turn up and stick me in handcuffs thinking I put the boy up to this like some latter-day Fagin" he decided.
Terrens raised his eyebrows, slightly surprised that a mere peasant farmer would make a literary reference. That wouldn't have happened back home, mostly because his sort couldn't read. "I still have one living parent so the Oliver Twist allusion doesn't quite work out" he said. "Although that poor facsimile of porridge the SLDF people forced on me a few times most certainly counts as gruel."
"If you mean the stuff they make from Fonio I actually kinda liked it when we lived on Copernicus" Diya told him.
"You also think the Moa Nuggets at FrancasBurger to be superior to their Deluxe Double Bacon Cheeseburgers" Terrens recalled, "which already proves that your palate is distinctly suspect" he opined.
Diya narrowed her eyes. "If he tries to run while you make the phone-call should I take the shotgun down from above the mantlepiece and shoot him?" she asked her father.
"No" Václav replied.
"Just one charge of birdshot into his ass while he's running away, that's all I ask" Diya persisted.
"No."
"Rocksalt?"
Václav thought about it. "Sure" he agreed, confident that the shells were all locked up anyway as he went to make that call, hoping like hell that the authorities had enough of a sense of humour that there wasn't going to be any blowback from this farcical situation. Fortunately the Von Strang name had more than enough notoriety that the kid being a troublemaker operating entirely on his own initiative shouldn't be a hard sell.
"You wouldn't really shoot me would you?" Terrens queried.
"Try me" Diya responded, glaring at him. "Seriously Terrens, are you crazy?" she asked, throwing up her hands.
"No, I've even got the paperwork to prove it" Terrens replied defensively. "The Niops government had me tested because my aunt Arabella clearly has a few issues. I mean I love her, but she does. Did you know that when she and my father were children she once tried to disembowel him with a tuning fork?" he asked randomly.
"A tuning fork?!"
"I know right. Dad was just lucky she wasn't slightly less nuts or she'd have tried using something more suitable for the task" Terrens agreed. "Despite the lack of true peril it was still one of his better bedtime stories though" he added with a sigh. "My grandfather made Arabella apologise and grounded her for three months, and he had the piano tuner scourged for not keeping a closer eye on the fork."
"You're kidding?!"
"No, really, three whole months" Terrens confirmed, nodding.
Diya blinked. "No, I meant he really had the piano tuner scourged?" she asked again, wondering how who the subject of her question was could possibly need explaining.
"Okay, so I exaggerated a little," Terrens admitted sheepishly. "He wasn't actually properly whipped as such, he just received a few lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails so it would have hurt a lot but it wouldn't actually risk killing him or stop him working. It's not like there were a lot of people back home that knew how to tune a piano."
"Jesus Christ" Diya muttered quietly to herself. He might not be technically crazy but Terrens was far, far from being well adjusted and she was about to tell him so in no uncertain terms when she was interrupted from her chain of thought by the sound of an approaching VTOL coming in low.
Helicopters were fast, and they weren't that far from town, but as the aircraft appeared looking like it was planning to to set down in the meadow next to the farm, the chickens in the pens nearby reacting badly to the whine of the turbine engines, there was still no way that one had gotten there that fast in response to her father's phone-call.
As it set down Diya could see that it wasn't even a police helicopter, nor one belonging to the planetary militia, instead to her surprise it bore the insignia of the mercenary regiment Bolton's Rangers.
By the time a very surprised looking Václav rejoined them, still holding the cordless telephone to his ear as he talked to someone from the police, two men emerged from the helicopter and began walking towards the stolen vehicle, changing direction towards the house when they spotted Terrens stood there at the door.
"And now the Baron of Islington himself arrives on my doorstep after landing in a helicopter and he looks really pissed off" Václav remarked, thinking that his son was going to be annoyed that he missed all the excitement. "Yes, I'm being serious" he told whoever was on the other end of the line, they having clearly heard what he said.
"Terrens. What the bloody hell is wrong with you?" Baron Reginald Humphreys thundered as he stomped towards them.
"Before I answer that question, I would like to introduce you to Diya Štefánek and her father Václav, and I would like for it to be known that neither of them had any involvement with my clearly unforgivable and unquestionably criminal behaviour" Terrens replied quickly. "I believe Mr Štefánek has the constabulary on the line, having correctly reported me to the authorities, perhaps you could have a word with them to clear things up?" he suggested.
"Oh, for the love of God" Baron Humphries muttered quietly to himself. "May I, Mr Štefánek?" he requested, reaching out to take the telephone which Václav handed to him.
While Humphreys took a few steps away, talking to whoever was on the other end of the line, Terrens turned to the man who had arrived with the baron. "Colonel Bolton, I'm surprised to see you here" he admitted.
"Baron Humphreys was invited to inspect our new headquarters building this morning, so when he was told that you were AWOL in a stolen car I offered the use of my VTOL to come get you" the mercenary replied. "Believe me son, I'm considerably more surprised at spending my morning this way than you are to see me" he told the boy.
"Colonel Bolton and his Rangers fought against my father's Guard Division during the Battle of Amaris City" Terrens told Diya. "I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to buy back my father's Battlemaster from him that he salvaged after the cessation of hostilities, though I suspect it's value as a prize greatly outweighs its monetary worth."
"Yeah, I earned that thing the hard way so I'm keeping it" Daniel Bolton confirmed before his expression shifted. "For what it's worth I never believed your father died like a coward even before the truth came out" he said, clearly having seen the same recording Terrens had. "I'm not going to pretend I respected his cause, his methods or his beliefs, but I got to exchange fire with the man and he didn't seem the type to act craven."
"Thank you, Colonel" Terrens replied, genuinely pleased.
Humphreys rejoined them, passing back the telephone. "Hopefully I've smoothed things over, but the police may want you to provide a written statement for their records" he told Václav. "Terrens, what in the world possessed you into thinking it was okay to steal a car just so you could go see your little girlfriend?" he asked the boy angrily.
"I am not his girlfriend!" Diya exclaimed, clearly horrified by the accusation. "You didn't tell the police I was did you?" she asked Baron Humphreys, aghast at the idea of that being potentially written on an official record somewhere.
Terrens ignored her histrionics, after all it was the girls that most loudly proclaimed to not like you that really did, at least according to both his mother and aunt Arabella.
Although thinking about it more he wouldn't necessarily accept the validity of their opinions on other subjects, so perhaps he needed more reliable counsel? Something to consider later perhaps?
"You do realise just how much trouble you're in here, Young Man?" Reginald Humphreys asked the boy rhetorically. "If I pressed charges then you could be sent into juvenile detention and even if I didn't the police might still want to do so."
"Clearly my actions are unforgivable, and a clear indication that I require urgent intervention at this time to prevent me sliding further into hooliganism and criminality" Terrens replied. "Perhaps it would be best if I were given into the charge of some organisation that would teach me proper discipline and respect. Somewhere that would force me to straighten up and fly right before it's too late" he suggested.
Humphreys blinked then facepalmed. "Jesus Christ" he could be heard muttering behind his hand before he removed it from in front of his face again. "Terrens, I am not sending you to military school on Kanata" he told the boy.
"But I clearly need to be taught to walk the straight and narrow and Geoffrey speaks so highly of the place" Terrens protested. "With your family contacts and recommendation I'm sure the Humphreys School of Warfare would take me, even if no other institution in the Free Worlds League would."
"You're in exile here Terrens. Even if I was willing to pull some strings, ask a favour from my cousin to try and get you in, you aren't allowed to leave Islington under condition of your parole" Humphreys told him. "That wouldn't be a domestic political matter. The government on Niops would veto it ever happening."
"If I graduated the School of Warfare on Kanata then I might be able to obtain a commission in the FWLM" Terrens said with determination. "If I can join the Free Worlds military I can kill Lyrans, and I want to kill Lyrans."
"You shouldn't want to kill anyone Terrens, you're just a boy" Humphreys replied softly.
"They cut my father's head off and then blackened his name by lying, saying he was a coward. My father was no coward" Terrens practically growled through gritted teeth. "I don't care if people liked his politics or not, my father was a great man."
Humphreys had no idea how to respond to that but Daniel Bolton was considerably blunter in manner. "Terrens, I agree your father was no coward, but he was also, objectively, a tyrannical ******."
"Then he was a great bad man, but he was still my father and he deserved more respect for his courage at the end than he received" Terrens replied coldly before turning towards Diya who was now staring at him, shocked. "I apologise for any of my actions that have inconvenienced or upset you and your father in any way, Ms. Štefánek" he said to her before turning back to Humphreys. "I guess that I'm not going to be allowed to drive the jeep back?" he checked.
"No, Terrens" Humphreys confirmed, sighing.
"I was going to take James's sports car instead but I didn't know if the roads out here were suitable" Terrens told him.
"Probably best that you didn't, he would have killed you, or at the very least pressed charges" Humphreys replied.
Terrens nodded, that sounded about right. "Aunt Arabella complains that he loves his car more than he loves her."
"I can only hope so" Reginald Humphreys, Baron of Islington, replied in a manner that almost made it a prayer. There was entirely too much Von Strang related drama in his life already without having to face the appalling prospect of ending up with one of them becoming an actual member of the family rather than just a ward.
Chapter Notes[]
- Notes from the Author
- If Baron Humphreys had known what a monumental pain-in-the-arse it was going to turn out to be for him in agreeing to take in the Von Strang family he wouldn't have agreed to. At least the people on Stafford only had to worry about Loki agents sneaking in to try and kill Melissa Nin.
Oh, and if you think that Terren's plan to try and get sent to military school was all his own idea then you're very wrong, and unfortunately for them he's not a very convincing liar so it all fell flat. There's only one scheming mastermind living in that household and they're not named Von Strang.