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Chapter 16 - Time Enough For A Cat -
One Quiet Night []
Talk of the Tigress[]
NAIS War College
New Avalon, Federated Suns
November 9th, 3026
Finishing up today's class, Operations in Non-HPG Connected Space, I yawned as I went to pack up my desk. Dataslate, check; textbooks, check; phone, check. Getting the papers and documentation put together, I blinked. A couple of students were looking at me, bright eyed and bushy tailed, holding a handful of magazines.
"Can I help you?" I asked, cocking my head.
"Professor Gallowglass, you've done a lot of work with custom mech designs, right?" one of the students asked. Scratching behind my ear for a second, I tried to remember her name. Bechmel? Sounded about right.
"I've helped put together a few customs, yeah. What do you need?"
"Well, Aslain and Coventry just dropped new models of the Phoenix Hawk, and some of us were looking at trying to talk the Petting Zoo into getting some."
I nodded. That all made sense: the NAIS Petting Zoo was infamous for the bounties they'd put out for new mechs or interesting frankendesigns. A mech petting zoo worked much like an animal one: it was a place for pilots to get a 'hands on' feel for a mech, see how it worked, and depending on the institution even see how they fought.
Personally, I didn't like the NAIS one, since they tended to be Moderately Upset I had a fully operational Cyclops and didn't want to sell it since theirs had gotten the B-2000 shot out of it. Not my problem, fuckers, this was a Star League relic and I wasn't letting it out of my sight. That said, they did do live-fire demos and limited training engagements with their petting zoo when Team Banzai wanted some stick time, so the annoyances weren't enough for me to blow them off entirely.
"Do you need my signature on a petition, then?"
"Oh no," Bechmel said, smiling. "We want your opinion. We all knew you did the Tigress' mech after all."
"Tigress?"
"The Tigress of Canopus? You know, Emma Centrella?"
"Oh! Lucifer's mech," I said, laughing. "Yeah, the Harvest Blades got it set up after she decided to take the ears. We were bringing it in to do the Direct Neural Interface, so the decision was made to finish refitting it along the way."
"Okay, putting aside that can of worms," another student- Kostan, I think it was, said before opening his magazine and putting it on my desk. "We've got the -2K here and Trapline has the -2D."
Right, what was I looking at here? -2K, paired Large Lasers, and a torso four-pack of missiles. No mention of what was under the hood, but I knew they had extralight engines so that probably explained the free weight. I didn't have technical specs, obviously, but the Kuritans liked having more armor.
"So right off the gate, we know they're probably using an extralight engine," I muttered, tapping the two lasers. "You're not getting the freeweight on a 270 rated engine-gyro pair otherwise. We can assume one ton of ammo on the SRM pack, probably general-purpose rounds or infernos. That leaves the question of protection versus heat sinking."
"Extralight engines are lostech," Bechmel said, raising an eyebrow at me.
"Lostech isn't sorcery. The kludges you do to make it work might end up being the sort of thing to put some hair on your chest, but if the Dracs are willing to accept some pilots with cancer then they'll be in a good position to make some bullshit up and get a Good Enough design."
"Okay, so they've got a horrifying ghetto extralight engine. Totally not terrifying," Kostan muttered.
"Like there's not some Gauss Rifle Prototypes getting beaten to death in the labs I don't know about," I scoffed. "Everyone develops secret tech. It happens."
"Either way, compare that to the new Coventry one, Teach."
Shuddering, I shook my head. "Never call me 'Teach' again. God. Next thing you know someone will be coming out with a wheelchair for me."
"Shiny mech though."
Students. Taking up the magazine, I got out a magnifying glass and started going over the arms and legs. "Let's see, those look like standard medium laser lenses in the arm pods, and maybe flamer ports? It'd be smart to get rid of the machine guns, honestly. The PPC is a nice touch, though. Still has her jump capability it seems, so the question is this: is the magazine accurate, or-" Pulling out a binder from my books collection, I dropped it on the desk. "-are my papers on the design better?"
A lot of jaws dropped, and I grinned like the cat that had gotten the whiskey.
"Professor Gallowglass, do you really think you should show these off?" Bechmel asked.
"Oh, certainly. After all, they're buying my engines for it."
Several jaws dropped, and I grinned. "For those of you smart enough to ask for the syllabus, you'll notice we've got coming up in two weeks a unit labeled 'LosTech and You'. This ties into that fairly closely. As a little spoiler, though, we managed to find a facility out in the back of fucking nowhere: a Star League research lab. One that held enough to get a small extralight fusion engine line going."
"That'd- and you sold it to Coventry?"
I laughed. "Oh heavens no. I just sell the engines. There's a reason why the sticker price on this mech is nine million and a half C-bills: most of that's in the engine!"
Many winces were had, but I opened up the book and started explaining. "Designing a 'mech is something your other classes should cover, and likely will, but I've got a- we'll say non-engineering viewpoint to take at this."
At this point I was fully engrossed. "Let's take out the new Phoenix Hawk. Jerome," I said, naming one of the student's who'd yet to speak up. "On the blackboard, draw me out a pair of stock wireframes."
As Jerome got to work, I dug around in my binders and got a recognition guide out. Tabbing it open to a standard -1D Phoenix Hawk, I went up after him and started annotating the first wireframe. Twelve heat sinks, six jump jets, a large laser, and a medium laser. Then, on the next wireframe, I did the publicly available details on the -2D model.
"So I'll admit, this is going to be the sort of messy analysis that won't earn you much in other classes," I started, "but it works. Extralight engines generally take off about fifty percent of your engine weight. Assuming the same armor and mobility, this means we're going from a large laser and two mediums to a PPC and four mediums and two flamers. That's an additional two tons for the PPC, another two for the lasers, and another two for the flamers. So, six tons. Now, I'll tell you an extralight 270 weighs seven and a half tons versus the normal fourteen and a half tons. So we've got one last ton unaccounted for: any guessers at where it went?"
Tapping his chin, Kostan looked at it. "Probably sinking?"
"Correct. Bringing it to thirteen heat sinks is important- that lets it run and shoot the PPC cold, or walk and shoot the laser battery cold. It can't stay icy when its jumping, of course, but if heat buildup is an issue then it'll be perfectly happy to jump out, run with the PPC firing, and once its back chilly it can charge in again. The flamers, meanwhile, mean that infantry isn't a threat."
"And we appreciate that!" Bechmel laughed.
"Exactly!"
The Most Important Things[]
NAIS Rapid Response Apartment
New Avalon, Federated Suns
February 14th, 3027
Sitting around the table, I sighed happily. Numbers go up was a heady feeling, and right now I was in fact feeling the joy. Why was I so happy? Well, it was good news out of Adherwin for once. We'd hit new strides in education, after getting the orbital facilities online for endo steel production in some anemic one-ton heat batches, and the 270 XLFE line had worked out another few invisible hinks related to traffic control and component sub-lines.
Most importantly, though? We'd cracked a whopping twenty-five percent literacy on that shitstain of a planet! Sure, it involved dragging in ten thousand junior sons and daughters of the Magistracy, handing them wrenches, and waiting for them to go settle down in the factory boomtown in semi-disgrace, but that was a price I was willing to pay to drag that planet out of the rocks. Make no mistake: I said drag literally. Reports from the Red Horse battalion indicated they'd had to put down at least two or three local uprisings of noble luddites and other unpleasant types, plus two pirate raids. Nothing changed, except the number of corpses in the earth.
Of course, better news came in from the Reach: somehow, between the resources that were in the Castle Nautilus and on Panzyr, Kamea had somehow kitbashed together a mech manufacturing line. With some sort of gumption and what must have been God's own luck, she'd turned some three hundred year old frozen tooling and a commercial Securitymech facility on Panzyr working to produce the most kitbashed, delusional, busted-up Panther -8Z models I'd ever seen.
Because yes, I did have to see one. Kamea sent me three: a 'stock' -8Z, a 'new model' concept design she'd cobbled together, and finally what she was dubbing the -8A: a prototype design that honestly kind of horrified me. It turned out that no small number of "my" apprentices were secretly Kamea's apprentices, and they'd been stealing my methods of building extralight engines lock, stock, and barrel. Kamea's in-house black box, meanwhile, fucked with it enough to make it patent-distinct, shaked and baked out two of the major issues we'd been having that dictated our weird engine sizes related to reactor shielding and coolant looping into ventilation systems, and started up a production line for 'em.
She even stole the concept of "just put it on a horse", even if her horses were snowmobiles and her carts were ice sleds.
Either way, the PNT-8A Panther: an abomination of a mech that annoyed me to no end, because it would probably actually be fairly decent. An XLFE 140 engine, four jumpjets, and sixty-ish miles an hour top speed sounded like a waste of tech, until everything else that had been crammed in came to the fore. One Light PPC took the traditional place of a Lord's Light full-size for the main gun of the mech, but Kamea's team had smelled which way the wind was going and called up Andurien. They'd been working on the multi-missile launcher since we gave them the idea, and the -8A put a five pack in a left-side torso mount, backed by three tons of CASE'd ammunition. That secret I'd let slip willingly: CASE was piss-easy to make if the build team knew what they were doing and didn't try to cowboy it up with auto-ejectors and shit. Sensible blowout channels, half a ton of extra armor around the magazine, bada bing bada boom you're good. Don't fuck with a simple thing. A pair of normal medium lasers on the other arm helped round up the package in close, and a 15-pack ghetto-ass rocket launcher took the old SRM-4 bay in the center of the mech. Twelve heat sinks and seven and a half tons of armor rounded out the design, making a nasty, nasty little trooper.
Now if only it didn't look like tossed shit!
Naturally, I 'donated', read "sold at silly markup" all three of mine to the NAIS petting zoo. Of course they loved it.
Meanwhile, in happier news, marriage was agreeing with Anne and I well, since this time we actually planned on what might happen if we went at it like we usually did. The fact that Sofia was actually turning out rather well- once we got over the fact her favorite things to chew on were bits of paperwork or armor lying around- made it easier to accept we might have another child.
When I brought it up at dinner though, Emma looked troubled.
"Guys, I've been meaning to ask a question," she said, trying to hide herself in her sweater. "Your ears and all, those are visual prosthetics, right?"
"Yep," Anne said, serving herself some of the carbonara we were having. "Got 'em the same time we did the DNI, same as you."
"Gaaah" Sofia added.
"Well, I was wondering, I've been making a lot of friends. Some of them were with the genetics team that came as part of the service corps to NAIS- when the next wave comes out in March, they're going to bring a genetic sciences group out to discuss gene-therapies. If you want, you could make the ears full, reproducible systems. Self-healing and everything."
"Would that take additional surgeries?" I asked.
"No, no," Emma said, shaking her head. "There's some voodoo they end up doing to make it stick perfectly, but no surgery if you're already drilled and tapped with the ear canal adjustments."
I blinked. "Thank you for the offer."
"There's, well, another reason I'm bringing it up."
I looked at Anne, who looked at me, before Sofia decided to 'give' Emma a bit of sausage covered in alfredo sauce by means of horking it at her. Folding her ears back just in time to keep it from heading down the left one, Emma tried to laugh, before just quietly getting back to stressing out.
"You can't tell the Magestrix- can't tell Kyalla- any of this, but our teams managed to find something in the old Halsted Station archive," Emma explained. "We used to be able to do Star League era life extension gene therapies, but lost the tools, and eventually knowledge, when Luxen got raided back just after the war with the Taurians. The Halsted Station archive had enough information to let us rebuild the tools- and testing revealed that we still know enough to make it work. Not as good as an original Star League job- but we think two hundred years of life isn't out of the question."
Anne looked at me, hissing through her teeth, before instinctively taking Sophia and holding her close. I just tried to breathe.
"This is a poison chalice," I muttered. "What about Sofia?"
"We'll treat her too, in a heartbeat. Full life extension and any other mods you want- just wait for her to turn five, and it'll be "
Anne looked at Emma darkly, and for a moment, I could see the knives behind her eyes. Kyalla's attempt to baby-trap me had generated some bad blood between her and the Centrella family, even if she worked to keep it away from Emma. When the thought of Raas and Mau came up, even I had intrusive thoughts about taking back what was mine. "What about the Centrella kids?"
Emma took a shuddering breath. "I don't know. I can't ask- I literally can't. The one time I tried, the office of the majordomo told me to inquire in person at the orders of the Magestrix. The genetics team won't willingly mod them further without your consent, but I don't know what Kyalla's done to them. There are good doctors on Canopus- and when the Magestrix commands, most obey."
Pushing those thoughts out of my head, I breathed deeply. "Anne? I can't see a downside to this."
"I can. Is it carried over to the children?"
"Yes. It's the most stable gene-mod we know," Emma said softly.
"Then I think we accept."
I nodded. "Talk to your doctors- quietly. Full work-ups on our ears, the life extension packages, and make sure you let us know if there's any other add-ons we might need too."
"Thank you," Emma said, a tear crossing into her eyes. "I just- I didn't want to risk losing you two. Having friends makes it easier to put up with this exile, and I can't let the Magestrix win."
"You told us, a few years ago, why you had a grudge against Kyalla," Anne said softly, handing me Sofia so I could work on feeding her. "Is this really an exile for you? Why would she do that to her own daughter?"
"Because I'm one of the 'bad ones' who won't put up with her," Emma muttered. "The Magestrix rules Canopus from her bedroom, and power flows to who can stick their head between her legs and use it. The promiscuous bitch has made a hash of my country since before I was born, married my father to try and fix it, and then had him killed for treason when he suggested to one of my aunts it might be worth seeing if Kyalla could get put in a gilded cage where she belongs. I can't see her as my mother, really. She never took the time to try."
It was a good thing Anne had already given me Sofia, since she just rushed around the table to give Emma a hug. As I held one daughter as my wife held someone close to becoming another, I sighed and kept feeding little Sofia, who was now much more interested in the food since this was my carbonara.
Then Sofia decided now was the time to throw a piece of pasta at her mother, which caught her right in the cheek.
"Gaah! Gaaah!" Sofia squealed, happy with her marksmanship. Blinking, Anne straightened up with a slight twitch, staring at me for not stopping my daughter. Energized by the attention, she babbled a little more, before chucking another piece of sausage- and this one did land in Anne's ear. Staring at our daughter, one eyebrow twitched.
"Tam," Anne explained to me in her most serene voice, "if your daughter throws another piece of food in my ears, her mech will be a Rifleman."
"You know what? Fair enough."
Rude Awakening[]
NAIS Rapid Response Apartment
May 25th, 3027
I was sound asleep when the silent alarm went off. Fortunately, I had it wired into my implants, so the giant shot of Adrenalin coursing through my veins got me up just fine. Next to me, Anne was already moving, belting on a skirt and pulling on a plain blouse as I grabbed my boots. Pants, boots, and gun belt all went out before I got to the hall, a nervous comms tech looking at me.
"Sitrep, corporal," I snapped.
"Sir. Five minutes ago, Station West failed to make scheduled check-in. We tried hailing them over a VOIP connection, but the intranets are out. Radio is also being soft-jammed, all frequencies military and civil. I decided to pull the alarm and bring us to high alert."
"Good call," I said, slapping his shoulder. "Get to the armory, pull a plate carrier and a battle rifle. Once you're ready to go, get back on console and raise caine to get us a contact, alright?"
"Wilco, sir!"
Following the young man, I got to work quickly in the armory. Plate carrier, helmet, rifle, three clips of ammo, then straight to the command center.
"All squads, report in."
"BA Squad Distemper, reporting in with Sgt. Casey. All units loaded up in Rapscalions, standard HE ammo in the bins."
"BA Squad Scarecrow, reporting in with Sgt. Murrow. We're in Nue IX, loaded airburst ammo."
"Foot Squad Casper, reporting with Cpl. June. We're on the roof, standing by."
Deep breath, Nyan. Not your first infantry rodeo.
"Casper, get the roof mortar out. Red flare rounds, put three up. Scarecrow, front lawn. Stay together, keep an eye out for anything fishy, get ready to LRM anything coming in loud and fast that isn't in Heavy Guards liveries. Distemper, back yard, same mission. Let's move, people."
A deep breath, as I made sure my rifle was ready, and then it was back to orders. "Comms, dumpster the landline attempts. Go to radio, start broadcasting SOS. Full military power, burn out the emitters if you have to."
"Yes, sir!"
Above me, I could hear the sound of the mortar. One thump. One more thump. One last thump- and then a panicked call in.
"Casper to CO, incoming VTOL! Two of them, bearing southwest!"
"Roger. Scarecrow, bearing southwest, inbound flyers. Knock 'em down if you can."
"Wilco!"
In the front yard, I could hear the swish-crack of LRM tubes lighting off. Four LRMs a salvo wasn't a lot, and the Nue IX only had five salvos, but I could trust in them once. Three rounds in, though, and the missiles were traded for their light recoilless rifles- salvos of thunder, until I heard a shout.
"Colonel! One VTOL down!"
"You see survivors?"
"No-"
At about that time, the second VTOL started dumping. I had to make a snap call: where do I get the guns? If I left the Distemper in the back, they'd be able to handle any second waves- but I didn't know if the Scarecrow in the front could handle a VTOL full of infantry-
"Shit! Sir, these are cloaky fuckers!" Scarecrow Lead called out.
-make that PA(L), specifically fucking Tornados. Blakists. It had to be fucking Blakists. Damn this all to the special hells. "Distemper, front yard, do it with a bang! Casper, mortar fire on that downed transport, now! Paste that shitbird!"
"Targeting."
"Distemper, engaging!"
Moving into the door, Anne looked at me carefully. "Status?"
"Blakists, two transports. One's shot down, no outside contact yet."
"They want us bad, then. Are we gonna hold out 'till the cavalry comes?"
"Hopefully," I said, frowning. Outside, recoilless rifle fire dueled with autorifles, and I couldn't tell who was winning and who was losing. Both sides were definitely taking casualties, though, as shell after shell mouseholed soldiers that thought they were being sneaky. They could stealth and suppress as much as they liked- it was the dead of night and we had enough ammo to chew through their numerical superiority if our own troops didn't get shredded first. The situation was bad. Not dire, but bad.
"Sir!" Casper Actual, on the rooftop, called down on comms. "Green flare from west! Distance, five kilometers!"
Please, God, let that be Station West sending in the QRF.
"Colonel, this is Distemper-three. Requesting permission to come in and re-arm."
"Granted," I snapped- just in time for one of the Nue's to go down, LRM bank cooking off. "Fuck."
"Nyan, I got Sofia," Anne snapped, my daughter very unhappy at the noise and wrapped tight in a swaddle against a spare trauma plate. "You have an ETA on evac?"
"Neg, hypothetical inbound reinforcements soon-" I said, before I was cut off as a series of SRMs clapped into the wall of the command center. Even with us having sprayed up spall liners, it still knocked a giant-ass hole in the wall- one that the Blakists were quick to try and fill with fire. "Run!" I snapped, making for the door myself.
I nearly made it, before a late, stray round whiffed through the hole and slammed into the far wall. Mersies and Sofia hadn't run that way, thank god, but I wasn't so lucky as shrapnel and force slammed down on me like the force of a wrathful god. I'd been wearing plates and a skull bucket, though, so I came up fighting through the concussion and the blood in my eye. Scrambling through the door, I hissed. That was the feeling of blood loss kicking in.
"Casper, start pumping flare rounds. Everything you have," I ordered, sucking in a breath. Chest still works, just hurt like hell: likely a broken rib from trauma plate deformation. Good. Meant I wasn't dying yet. "Scarecrow Actual, dump your LRM launchers and go to straight rifles. Distemper, rot your eyes, suppress everything. Everything!"
Down the stairs, to the ground floor. God, I hurt. I wouldn't kill for binocular vision either- no matter how much I wiped at my brow, I couldn't clear my right eye out. No, I'd do worse than kill- maybe roast a Blakist over a fire, or siege down an HPG compound. I don't know. It was bad.
Moving up to one of the interior protected rooms, I flopped down on a bench made to take our BA, and hissed. "Medic?" I called out. "Medic?"
Thank christ the floor medic was on standby, as they came up. I couldn't see them well, but I sure as hell felt it when they just put a nine-by-five up to my good eye and started coating the right side of my face in wound sealant. Motherfucker must be a local. That shit burned like hell going on, and it must be hitting nerves since that fire was running straight to the back of my brain.
Snarling into my mic, I mentally put down a puff of relief. At least that still worked. "Casper: get down from the rooftops. Scarecrow: go in, flamers hot. At this point the civvies are out out or dead. Distemper, stick by the building."
A chorus of "Wilco!" came back, and I tried not to grind my teeth from the pain. Digging a piece of gum out of my pants, I just put it in my mouth to try and slow down the frustration. Fuck infantry actions. Just, take them, and never let me dea with that every again, please and thank you.
"Come in, apartment!" a new voice came through on the 'net. "Come in, apartment!"
"This is Colonel Nyan, who's there?"
"Captain Jaul, Harvest Blades West Station. Code today is four-one-niner-niner."
Code checked out, and while I wasn't super-familiar with all my captains I did remember Jaul distantly as one of the people brought in to replace Jiangshi after he decided that he liked his wars like he liked his sports- too full of rules. "You are cleared to approach the building. What's your ride?"
"I brought Alpha Platoon in Maxims."
"Get them out and get a defensive perimeter up," I said, hissing. Yeah, I'd definitely taken some eye damage or something to have it all hurt this much. "Once perimeter is secure, we're moving likely HVTs in myself, Major Mersies, and one noncombatant to West Station and alerting military forces as soon as possible.
"Understood, sir."
"Full free fire is in effect, we've got what looks to be a level two- er, company of enemy around here in light power armor with infantry sidearms if I'm remembering my war-book right. Be careful, they have visual stealth."
"Wilco. We can see the engagement area- did you shoot down a VTOL?"
"Yeah, morons tried to drive a Karnov in as a hot dropper," I grumbled. "Scarecrow managed to knock the rotors, though, and crash go the morons."
"Colonel- are you okay?"
"Took some shrapnel," I grunted.
"Good- I'm coming in."
Sighing, I got up, checking my rifle over as I started walking towards the exit. At about that time, I heard a knocking on the back door. The back door I'd specifically ditched on. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Ducking back down towards the reinforced room I was in, I hissed into the radio. "All units, I need two suits in the building, they got around us!"
"Moving!" someone said, but I didn't care. Gun up, left shoulder now so I could see and shoot, and wait.
And wait.
Then I saw the Tornado. It was beat to shit, optical camo sparking and stuttering, the gun beaten out of hand, leaving the fuck with a combat knife and his pistol. The range was just over a meter- I couldn't miss if I tried. Hauling the gun in tight, I mouthed a prayer and started shooting.
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Tornado Power Armor
The first few rounds skipped off the helmet, but stupid of stupids, he turned towards me. BAR-10 armorglass was good shit, but this idiot had to have nearly caught a few splashes off recoiless rifle shells- my bullets managed to drill through it anyway. It didn't stop him from putting out some lead of his own, the pistol-fire mostly going wide. Mostly. A few caught me in the trauma plates, and with a searing crack I felt the thing give out before one more perforated me in the gut. Still, the Tornado was going down, and I might have enough blood in me to survive this.
"MEDIC!" I roared, before coughing. Fuck, battle-lung was kicking my ass. "MEDIC!"
"Here, sir-" one of the BA troopers said, before they noticed I was bleeding. "-Fuck! Shit!"
Said BA trooper, in a fit of what could only be described as "enthusiastic incompetence" then dropped his gun, picked me up in a bridal carry, and immediately started legging it for the Maxim. While I could appreciate the desire to get my ass out of the line of fire, getting bounced around like a sack of potatoes with shrapnel injuries and a gut wound was painful. By the time the trooper slung me onto a bench seat in the hovercraft with a pair of medics standing by, I couldn't really talk, and barely see past the pain haze. Still, Mersies was there, along with a pair of medics that had an IV set up. Good. The graying around the side of my vision was a pretty definite side I was at least a liter low on the 'ol red stuff.
"Is he gonna make it?" Mersies asked, grabbing my hand, bringing it up so the medic could IV me.
"Probably. I don't know what's the face problem, fucking rookies," the medic said, "but the rest is just shrapnel and a gut wound. If the shock doesn't get him, we can probably handle this."
"Good. Keep him alive- I need to make sure our daughter doesn't see this."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Tam," Mersies said directly to me, fire in her eyes. "Don't die. We've got a lot left to do."
"Yes… dear…"