TEFAC Chpt 5

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Chapter 5 - Time Enough For A Cat -

- An Ounce of Professionalism, and a Pound of Courage -

---

Questions and More Questions

Dropship Borozoi, JumpShip Hawser of the Stars
En route to Menke, T-65 to arrival

Sitting down in my quarters, I smirked at Emma. She was fuming quietly, glaring at me as I smirked while lighting my kiseru and adjusting my off-duty robe. I was a grown up pilot, and I didn't have to wear pants in my quarters on my day off if I didn't want to- even if it did annoy my nominal boss for some reason.

"Fine, I admit it," Emma groused. "Your decision to call up the Church was a good one."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear that," I said, rubbing my ear theatrically. "Could you say that again? With some details this time?"

"I'm sorry I didn't think you going to the New Avalon Catholic Church was a good idea, because I, the heathen barbarian Periphery princess, didn't think a bunch of old men in cloisters knew where to get six combat trained pilots who'd just gotten out of their regimental posting with the fucking Eighth Crucis Lancers and were still looking for action! Seriously! How did they do that?"

"God works in mysterious ways," I said serenely, before a knock at my door stopped Emma from flinger her plimsoll at my head. "Yes? You can come in."

"Ah, I'm sorry, I was under the impression we could come in whenever," the mystery person said, before opening the door. "I'm Captain Mitchel Dyne, sir, leader of your Aerospace contingent."

"Well, come on in!" I said, smiling. "We were just talking about you indirectly, anyway."

"Oh?"

"Our employer, Duchess Emma Centrella," I said with a smirk and a handwave, "seemed curious as to the mechanics of how the NACC managed to find your services so fast, among what's liable to be a dozen other issues."

"Ah, that's simple enough," Captain Mitchel said, coming over to sit on my nicely made up bed. "As to the first, I was split between sixes and sevens between going mercenary for a bit or going to the seminary- the rest of this squadron being folks I knew who were hitting EAS at about the same time. Getting this offer was a sign from the good Lord, so I decided to put my scholastic ambitions down for a bit to keep racking up stick time."

"And the Jumpship that can cross the border to Menke, of all places? You know, home of McCarron's Armored Cavalry, only one of the most elite of assault-weight brigade formations in the Inner Sphere?"

"For all they might be godless Capellans, the Big Mac does both recognize the NACC as the primary faith of their dependents, and more importantly does try to limit the war crimes to a minimum."

"Counterpoint: Barton."

Mitchel winced. "I said limit, not stop."

"Eh, they don't attack me, so I can't complain too much. Besides, the Magestrix got a quote from them once. Terrifying stuff."

I coughed. "Either way, there's a reason I looked for allies in the Church. Incidentally, Captain, any thoughts on the spread of planes available for you?"

"Well, sir, they're equal parts gold and shit. The Stukas are going to be a joy to handle, but judging from scuttlebut we're interfering in a Periphery war so that means it'll be a lot of bomb trucking on them. The Meteors, though…"

"Let's not invite questions on the status of those Meteors until we're done leaving the Suns," I said calmly. Damnit, the techs were supposed to have repainted those birds by now, it had been a month!

"It's still a problem. We'll need to land the Leopard CV to use them, and it'd be best to break out the Marston Mats instead of trying to operate out of the Aerospace bays."

"If we're in position long enough to do that, we'll do that. Unfortunately, we're the 'fun' kind of mercenaries," I said drolly.

"Ah yes, the 'I can't believe we're not House troops' kind."

"Exactly."

"If you don't mind," Emma asked, "Are we actually planning to do anything at Menke?"

"Change Jumpships," I said, shrugging. "We've got enough supplies to keep trucking until we get to Panzyr, and there's apparently a Jumper circuit that goes down from Menke to… Ward?"

"You're correct, it's Ward," Mitchel said. "From there, we figure out which way we're jumping."

"Good to know," Emma grumbled. "Well then, that only makes two birthdays I've spent cooped up on this damn dropship."

I shrugged. At least it wasn't a Leopard.

---

Very Model of a Capellan JumpShip Crew

Dropship Borozoi, JumpShip Though the Tortoise Lives Long
En route to Ward, T-14 days to arrival

This time, mostly due to proper planning and not having Doc Szeny hovering over us like a case of the vapors, I'd managed to keep things from turning into a portable shitshow as we transited from one locale to the next. Everyone in the aerospace squadron got stick time on the two Stukas, everyone in the ground compliment got their mechs regularly rotated through the half-assembled work frame we used for maintaining and power cycling, and everyone joined me for tai chi in the mornings so that we looked Very Capellan and Respectable to the JumpShip crew.

While most people don't talk about it very much, there's a lot of cultural difference between each Carrion Lord's respective space navies. The Capellans, in my time and this dark age of technology, were the stiffest of all the Successor States. Your ship docked, you booked your time aboard the JumpShip's grav and hydroponic decks, you did your trading in your allotted time, and then you went back to your dropper calmly and peacefully. Everything had a ritual, tight and rote.

When the Captain found out I spoke Mandarin fairly conversationally, though, and we had tea together, the degree of the rote changed. Before, it was a draconian in-and-out affair: very stiff, cash-on-counter sorts of interactions. Once it became more obvious I was a 'good Victorian boy' (how they got the concept I came from Victoria was beyond me, especially considering my accent leans towards Tikhonov) though, things opened up. We didn't have a run of the ship, but we could nearly entirely freely visit our other dropper and let the crews cycle between the two boats, as well as take the time for our Stukas to do their practice flights. As a wonder of wonders, I even managed to snag a heavily-used Lightning that was in desperate need of a core change- while the ASF was practically scrap metal, practically didn't mean entirely, and Andurien aerotechs could work wonders if any were sent in the infantry compliment like I'd asked for.

Still, everyone's skills were getting rusty. I desperately hoped we'd have a month to shake our legs out before we went into the thick of things, or we'd get bled dry in our first mission. I desperately needed some simulator pods, or something to let us keep from building up so much dust.

---

Negotiations with an Exile

Aboard the Dropship Argo
Ward, Capellan Confederation
June 8th, 3024

Argo Class DropShip

"Right, I gotta admit," Mersies said as we drifted down the hallway, "this is the real fucking LosTech."

"We're in a three hundred year old Dropship so big it only needs a KF core to be a WarShip, and that's what you zero in on first?" I asked rhetorically. "God. Imagine if they still made these…"

"I want to find out why we didn't make these again. It's magical," Mersies said, even as a tech frantically trying to get a wiring issue behind a panel fixed stared at her. "This, this is civilization. An exploratory and settlement craft like this is how you can tell there was once a golden age."

"Aye, and now we're using it as a flying field hospital and repair shop," I grumbled. "Time to meet the sub-employer, now."

Dodging work crews and mechtechs, we got to the meeting room, just behind the bridge. Standing around the table were a number of people- from a swarthy engineer, to a pale Drac pilot, and most importantly, a young woman with slate gray hair in a Mechwarrior's bun.

"You must be the other company," she said, reaching out to shake my hand. "I'm Captain Ariane Markham. You?"

"Major Tam Gallowglass," I said, smirking. "This is an excellent ship."

"I'm glad you think so," she said. "I'm given to understand you command a mercenary battalion of infantry?"

"Combined arms," I corrected. "A mechanized striker company of mechs and tanks, and two companies of Battle Armor with tracked support."

"Haven't heard of battle armor before," Markham said, her voice curious. "We'll see how it goes, I suppose."

Moments later, a pair of younger people came in- both in the Harvest Blades dress uniform. Snapping crisp salutes, even in zero-g, they looked at me expectantly.

"Major! This is Captain Surren, and I'm Captain Shallot. We're your company commanders."

"Get here recently?" I asked, grinning. "Still, good to meet you two- now, mum's the word on the toys, we'll get to that when we're back on the Borozoi."

"Yessir!"

Markham chuckled a little. When I looked at her, she shrugged. "They remind me of what I was like before I took over the Marauders," she said without much explanation.

"Young, shiny, and with only a Blackjack to their names?" the Drac pilot asked.

"No. Optimistic."

I snorted. "So if I understand correctly, Captain Markham, you've got a lance of mechs, and a Leopard aside from this wonderful flying palace."

"That'd be correct, even if this 'flying palace' has enough room for the better part of a battalion on it."

I smiled. "When this war is over, give me a call. I'm looking to expand my company, and I'd pay top dollar for this transport."

Markham nodded. "Where would I call for that?"

"Harvest Blades has a recruiting office on Canopus IV, and if that doesn't work just call the nearest MAF ops center- they can find us."

At that point, conversation drifted off, up until a pair of people came up to us. On the left, good old Emma. On the right, a statuesque young mechwarrior, obviously of… hmm. I'd say likely Free Worlds League decent, but her face was wrong to be Punjabi or Pashto. It was a good looking face, though, unmarred except for a faint facial scar. Still, in her red and gray uniform, she was striking as she chattered with her peer in Emma. This must be Lady Arano, then.

Coughing lightly, Emma took the lead, gathering everyone around the holotable. "Right, I guess I'm calling this war council meeting to order," she said, tapping the holotable. "First order of business, campaign planning."

Markham and I looked at the table, before looking at each other and nodding. This was where we'd be needed the most.

"To start off, we've secured open transit and storage rights on Ward for our supplies and reinforcements. The Directorate can't touch this: the Liaos have already issued them a stiff denouncement for being uncivilized barbarians. No basing rights, though, so we better be snappy about jumper scheduling," Emma began, pulling up a map and starting to annotate it. "I know we can source spare light and medium mech parts from Luxen, the chop shops there are good for it. Heavies and Assaults though, we're hosed."

"Our lines of credit in the Federated Suns should be good for me to acquire more conventional fighters," I said carefully, "although if we want ASFs I'd probably source them from the Liaos."

"We have better credit with the Liaos than the Suns?" Emma asked, confused.

"No, I'm not going to get bled dry on shipping from Pampour," I replied. "More importantly, I think the Liaos like the concept of having a rump state down here- it makes things easier to keep track of for the Mask. It's not like we're gonna get subsidiaries, but they'll grease some wheels for us."

"Good to know…" Arano muttered.

"Capellan attitudes are a little weird, but we can work with it," I said, shrugging. "If you don't claim the legacy of the Star League, they don't really care. The old war with the Taurians was a pretty good demonstration on why the Periphery is more trouble than it's worth."

"Either way, we've got parts and ammo sourcing," Emma said, pinching her nose. "Now the question is manpower."

"Weldry," Arano said without question. "That's where the main Directorate prisoner of war camps are, and I've got the two loyalist battalions barracked at Herotitus anyway. That puts us in one jump to objective, for both my main force and the supporting battalions."

"Right, then," I muttered. "Who's taking field command?"

"I am," Arano said without question. I just frowned.

"Are you sure," I pressed. "Because fundamentally, a regimental command is difficult. You're certain you don't have any staff officers to handle that."

"Are you implying I can't?" Arano asked, leaning forwards menacingly.

"Hell, I know I can't," I shot back, tapping my chest. "I'm going to be neck deep in making sure my battalion doesn't do something brain-dead as it is, and that's before we count the difficulties in adding aerospace forces."

Arano blinked. "We have aerospace forces?"

"We have two Stukas, four Meteors, and a Lightning I've got the boys going over with a fine tooth comb," I said, tapping my hand on the table. "Can we get a view of Weldry?"

Emma, quick on the ball, got us a mpa of the planet. Cold, mostly tundra, with a few icecaps. Taking the cue I was hammer-throwing at her, Arano shook her head and got to work. "The main Directorate forces are based in two locations," she explained, tapping two areas. "The first is Ceras, the capital city. They have two battalions of foot and one of light armor: mostly locally made Bulldogs and Vedettes, plus a few SRM and LRM carriers. We think the armor is from Parata, the infantry are local militia."

"We can handle that." I muttered.

"The problem is the prison we need to crack open: the Icebox. That's got a battalion of Espinosa armor, plus another two infantry battalions of Gallas infantry and a company of formerly Arano mechs," Lady Arano explained, frowning. "I request if we bring down any of my family's mechs intact, that they be added to the Restoration Army's forces."

I shot Markham a look. "And how are we to tell if a given mech is a House Arano 'mech?"

"Presuming they did a full repaint, you should be able to find a brass plate in the cockpit with the house crest and the mech's serials. I do have a datachip with a verified log of our mechs on it," Arano said.

"Got it," Markham said. "Boss calls dibs on the family loot, we get the rest of the metal. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Arano said, proving we were in fact working for someone who'd never done this before. Next to her, Emma's head met her hand.

"Not good. Kamea, make sure you get salvage terms in writing before we kick this off, and not such bad ones."

I batted my eyes at Emma. "But Duchess-"

"No," the aforementioned duchess said. "Not falling for it. No kitten eyes, no soulful bargaining, no seducing the employer. I'll write up a fair and equitable salvage distribution contract. We're not savages running 'keep what you kill' rules here, come on."

"Damn," Markham muttered.

"Do I hear dissent in the ranks?" Emma asked rhetorically. "Because if I do I'm sure I can make the contract include some fun provisions."

"We can leave, you know," Markham said, frowning.

"And I can tell my cousin to let the loan sharks back after you, so we're just not going to threaten each other over this like a load of idiots. We need to work together, and that means not screwing each other over points of contract."

I sighed. "Fine, fine, we'll tone it down a bit. That said: standard 50% of market price on destroyed materials, plus another 25% over that for any lostech."

"Every mech in your lance is chock full of lostech!" Emma snapped.

"Exactly! We," I said, stressing the bond, "need to make sure we're getting our money's worth of the parts we can't replace. There's two ER mediums and a Large Pulse on your ride alone, and if my engine gets shot out that's an extra-large engine we can't replace- much less the winglets that get me my long jumps, or our freezers."

"You have freezers?" Kamea asked, gasping.

"We have a very limited supply of Double Heat Sink kits, yes," I said. "Stick around long enough, we might be convinced to do your mech up with them. What do you drive?"

"A Kintaro."

"Yeah we're gonna have to DHS that sonofabitch at some point," I muttered.

"Right, I'll write the LosTech bonus in," Emma grumbled. "Reasonable salvage shares, too, with a bias towards mechs to the mercs and armor towards Lady Arano. Pay isn't going to be amazing, but we'll hash specifics out later. For now, back to Weldry."

Looking down at the map, I grinned. "Man, the Espinosas are idiots."

Everyone else looked at me.

"Look, these places are connected by like… three rail lines. In the tundra," I explained. "The Icebox has dropper pads, while the capitol has an aerodyne strip."

"And?" Markham asked. "We're still outnumbered, oh, call it three to one?"

"Two to one with my infantry," Lady Arano said.

"Infantry are free," I shrugged. "No, I'm worried about the armor. If we can cut those rail lines, they can't reinforce each other, and then we can isolate them and take them out at our convenience."

Everyone at the table nodded. Divide and conquer was a good tactic, so I continued speaking. "We drop… north, I'll say, behind this ridgeline so they'll have to come up the hill and can run into SRM carriers behind the ridgeline. Then everyone else goes for the Icebox, we liberate that, and then pivot around to the capitol."

"Small problem," Lady Arano said. "I need to drop the Marauders behind the prison. If they hear we're going for a jailbreak, they might try killing the prisoners."

"Okay, yeah, that's an issue," I grumbled. "Still, it's only one lance of mechs, so I can live without. Markham, do you expect to need air support?"

"No, but I won't say no to backup."

"We'll task Air Lance Charles on it. Air Lance Aleksander is the Stukas, they need to cut the rail line before we set down. Air Lance Bartolomeau is going to be flying ITAR patrol: I want no surprises here. Then all the rest of us have to do is walk up at them, menacingly."

"We're going to need to refine this," Arano said, smiling, "but I like the start of it."

"We've got plenty of time while you get your infantry over here, so let's get to work- after the contract is signed."

"Of course."

---

Opening Phase: Snipping Strings

Assault on Weldry
Aurigan Coalition
June 20th, 3024

As my ASF pair started falling through the atmosphere of Weldry, I waited in my cockpit in the Mule, tense. We were burning down, the Leopards securing our LZ hadn't said anything, and the first high-altitude bomb strikes had already landed (missing by miles, of course) as the Stukas mirrored us and burned in closer still.

Mule Class Cargo Ship, Borozoi

"Everyone ready to rumble?" I asked rhetorically.

"Born ready," one of the tankers said, and I laughed. I couldn't help it.

"Good answer, kid!" I shouted, and then the turbulence started so we all shut up. The fact our Mule wasn't taking fire was a very good sign- it meant we weren't on a hot drop, and had in fact managed to nail any air defense- wait. This was the Third Succession War. There was no air defense. No anti-air Arrow IV missiles. No SubCap lasers. No ground-based NACs.

Holy shit, suddenly the history books made so much more sense now!

As the Borozoi hit the ground, all the ramps went down, and out we poured. As my Catapult stepped out into the atmosphere of Weldry, the cockpit glass immediately started to frost over until the heaters kicked on.

Catapult Heavy 'Mech

"Captain Shallot, you're on point," I said, grinning as a Packrat burst forward of the pack.

"We're deployed, sir. Call me Fireball."

Packrat Scout Vehicle

"Then call me Nyan," I shot back. "Either way, spread out. Even if they missed your Leopards doing a pallet drop, they sure as shit didn't miss my Mule. Kid, you see the engineers working?"

"Yeah," the Kid said, her Phoenix Hawk bobbing around the side as she checked it out. "We've got two more Spheroid slots going down, and they're breaking out the liner charges to lay out the Marston Mat runway for the Leopard CV."

"Good. We transferred stuff over to the Argo so we could re-arm the Stukas there in a pinch, but I'd rather we stuck low for this," I said, breathing in and out.

Now that we were down and getting ready, it was once again sit-on-your-heels-and-wait hours, as the two infantry dropships finally got their asses down. Both refitted Unions, they quickly spat out their hordes of infantry and… that's it.

"Kamea," I said, trying not to let my frustration show. "Do you have trucks or APCs for your troops?"

"No," she said flatly. "They're leg infantry."

"It's three klicks to the Icebox, Kamea."

"I know."

"Do you have a medical service, Kamea?"

"No."

Fucking Christ, Buddha Sagartha, and the ghost of my sanity. "Fireball, Surren-"

"-Jiangshi-"

"-Fireball, Jiangshi, please designate two APCs each as medivac vehicles. Our employer did not think she needed an ambulance service for the walk to the Icebox in… negative seven degree Celsius weather. The troops from them can help stiffen up the backstop for the ridge line defense."

"Wilco."

Amateurs. I fucking hated working with amateurs. "Core lance, form up in skirmish line, spread out. Please do not assume the squishies are smart enough to not walk under you. Armor lance, you're going between the BA troops and the squishies. Keep the snow-chewers safe, please, they're annoying to replace and I think the employer would be sad. Kamea, Kid, you two are buddies. Do not let the other one get killed."

"Wilco!"

Naturally, about a half hour after that? Everything went right to shit. The flavor of shit? Probing fire from a lance of light 'mechs. A Valkyrie and Panther had found us, their attached Locus and Javelin hanging back. We'd been made- but we were halfway there, and about to come out of the woodline. That's when the fire opened up on us- dozens of AC/2 guns firing wildly from turrets.

"Alright people, you know the plan!" I snapped. "Fireball, get that trench line suppressed! Jiangshi, blitz the mediums! Command lance, let's do this!"

Pike Combat Vehicle

"Wilco!" Mersies yelled, right behind me as her armfull of LPPCs barked out a salvo of shots. I was already searching for targets, discarding the lights in a heartbeat as the trailing edge of an LRM salvo nearly hit an APC. LRM support platform- oh. Some poor fucker in a Witworth. Moving quickly to juke the unsteady aim of a Pike, I dumped my LPPC and both racks into the guy- and that took him out? As the cockpit flared and the pilot punched it, I tried to compute. That… wasn't a lot of damage? I mean, sure, Whitworths weren't anything to write home about, but they could take a pair of 15-packs and a LPPC to the chest without melting.

Phoenix Hawk Medium 'Mech

Blinking at how low my heat meter was, I took the time to jump, using my wings to force a twirl as I came down at a radically odd angle. A few AC/2 shells were plinking off my forward armor, and that Pike had expended my patience: the missile racks were up and I was less than amused. Blast it with everything, then keep moving. For all I was driving a very heavy, very potent mech, I was really just a skirmisher and fire support platform. With only two ER Mediums to my name I was worth piss-all in a brawl (unlike Howler, who had just grabbed a Phoenix Hawk by the arm and put her ER PPC into the cockpit with an audible "punch out or die" glare) and as such did the very smart and sensible thing of sticking to the edges, slapping anything that looked particularly odd

Speaking of odd- Kamea's Kintaro and Emma's Phoenix Hawk were ranging pretty far north. Putting both my lasers into what I thought was an SRM Carrier before running up to do the 65-ton tapdance, I got the radio line open at the same time.

SRM Carrier firing it's ahort range missiles

"Kid, Kamea, where the fuck are you going?" I snapped. "Fight's right here!"

"Markham's contact board just lit up with a shitload of contacts, and she thinks they're gonna try gunning down the prisoners. We have to help!"

"You have to stay safe," I snapped, torso twisting into giving an enemy Vedette both racks. "Don't go anywhere- oh shit."

Panther Light 'Mech

The 'oh shit' was a pair of Panthers coming out in green-and-silver livery, both PPCs blazing as they immediately opened fire on me. Backpedaling, I snapped off a missile salvo, before jumping straight up to spiral back and out of there. Artemis IV guidance might let me get more hits per salvo, but it didn't deal with the fact that LRMs had a pretty stiff minimum range those two Panthers wanted to run in under. Catching one long lightning in the leg and the other on my right pod, I swore.

"Mersies, Sokoloy, I need a backscratch! Two Panthers on my nose!"

"On it!" Mersies snapped, before a bracketing flight of LRMs packed into one of the Panthers, along with a triple-tap of LPPC bolts. That handled one of them, but the other was getting to the point where I had to drop the LRMs and go down to my LPPC and the ER Mediums. Jumping again and again, I watched my heat gauge slowly climb with a sort of painful finality. "Howler? You free?"

"One sec-" Howler called back, her pulse lasers scathing over a- was that a Goblin? Here? "The squishies are calling for help a lot."

"Yeah I think I take priority-" I snapped, as another PPC bolt caught me in the torso. "-fuck! They're going down swinging!"

"Firing, firing, you big baby," Howler grumbled, before her own long lightning slammed straight into the Panther's center torso, through which I could see the telltale sparking and sputtering of myomer. Backing off, quite sensibly when delt the mech equivalent of a sucking chest wound, I took exactly zero pitty on him and slapped once more with the LRM batteries. Enough of the hits must have gone internal, as his mech slumped over with a keening hiss.

"Right where's the other bastard," I snapped, scanning the field. "There were two of the fucks-"

"Handled it," Mersies called out, her PPC arm smoldering faintly.

"Come in, Nyan, this is Wyrm," I heard Markham snap out on the emergency frequency. "Call your flyers off right the fuck now!"

"Wilco, just give me a reason-" I said, dialing up their frequency before getting cut off.

JagerMech Heavy 'Mech

"Jaegermech."

Switching over in a panic, I got over "All flights, wave off CAS/ISAR on the Icebox right fucking now, enemy has priority AA in the area!"

"We read you. Aleksander-one peeling off."

"Bart lance, bailing."

"Charles Actual, backing off."

"Good, I'll sound an all clear when we bag his ass."

Taking a second to breathe, I just watched over the infantry fighting, occasionally slapping a hardpoint or little bunker with my LPPC. The rest of my lance was doing much the same- occasional blasts into the deep, but not much more. The troops were in the entrenchments, Battle Armor blazing forward and squishies rushing in behind like a tidal wave.

"Major, this is Firebomb," one of my subordinates called out. "We're through, losses minimal. The squishies got chewed up, though."

"Are their medics handling it?" I asked, sighing.

"They don't have platoon medics."

"Christ the Buddha," I groaned. "Wounded in the APCs, call the Mule and tell them to send the MASH wagon out. How the fuck is Kamea this incompetent."

"She's something like eighteen, didn't go to a real school, and spent all her time with some old wardog named Raju learning to drive that Kintaro," Mersies said, before lighting off on a blockhouse that had a machine gun open up in it. "She got thrust into this with negative warning."

"Well here's hoping she doesn't get mad we're upping our percentages for this, because my medical supplies are not free," I grumbled. "Fireball, how's the way in doing?"

"Send in Jiangshi any time now. Most of my boys are down to the bottom on armor and ammo- we'll need to re-arm and repair."

"Doing it," I said, changing channels quickly. "Jianshi, you're up. Get in there, root out the defenders, save the prisoners. You know the drill."

"Yessir!"

---

Second Phase: Negotiations of Terms

Assault on Weldry
June 22nd, 3024

Victory was a bitter pill to swallow sometimes. Finding a man three-quarters dead from a combination of passive abuse, active torture, and criminal neglect was enough to make even me start to choke. Raju "Mastiff" Montgomery, the Master-at-Arms of the House Arano, was in bad shape by any reasonable measure. We had him on life support within the hour of finding him, and keeping him from slipping beyond the veil was taxing one of our MASH bays to capacity. I'd transfer him up to the Argo if I could, but it wasn't an option- the poor man was in that bad of a condition.

The rest of the prisoners weren't in much better shape. We rescued the better part of two battalions' worth of tankers and mechwarriors, their metal stolen to bulk out the Espinosa forces on the planet- and, incidentally, also composed most of what we'd blown to smithereens. We did manage to reunite the Whitworth pilot with his ride (he'd turned his coat under threat of hostages, and Lady Arano had decided to accept his bond it'd not happen again) but the rest was, quite painfully, up for grabs.

Of the mechs, I scored both damaged Panthers in such shape that we could make a whole one of the two and some parts, a Trebuchet that the Marauders had downed and traded to me in exchange for an undisputed claim on their downed Jaegermech and all the scrap weapons in the field, and a beat-to-hell Locust. The Marauders took home the aforementioned Jaegermech, a plucky Phoenix Hawk that Howler had fought hand-to-hand, and a Jenner in decent condition they kneecapped.

Lady Arano got… the Whitworth. A Valkyrie. And a whole shitload of scrap parts, which Markham agreed to hold onto for her in the name of their friendship training under Raju.

The disposition of the loot wasn't the only thing we negotiated, though. With the only Espinosa troops on the planet gone, I was willing to give the Parata troops a chance to surrender without us going over there and kicking their asses. This wasn't a bluff, either- two days was more than enough to repair armor, water the pilots, and shuffle the battle armor squads so that we had a coordinated strike force to hit the capitol with. The problem was, urban fights were ugly- and I didn't have the troops to make this a siege.

So- negotiated surrender, once I was through negotiating with Arano, which directly meant going through Emma. The heir to this pissant Periphery kingdom was in a high dudgeon, apparently equal parts upset at the mass death of her infantry and the loss of her mentor. Worse, Emma was in bright spirits since Markham and her lot decided that the Duchess of Luxen needed a callsign after out-shooting a Trebuchet and not dying to a Jaegermech dumping literally everything and the kitchen sink at her. As such, "Lucifer" was trying not to be overtly smug near her friend, while being utterly insufferable to the rest of us.

She had three more days to enjoy it before I changed all her letterheads to it.

When I finally nailed Arano to the floor, though, her glare was powerful. "What," she asked, "is the problem?"

"The problem is, we need to ask the capitol city for their surrender," I said patiently. New client, Nyan, kid gloves. Kid gloves. "That is, rather unfortunately, a 'you' job."

"And here I thought you were taking over," she grumbled.

Don't call the client 'kid', that would start so much shit… "Lady Arano. I want to settle this as bloodlessly as possible. A negotiated settlement, any negotiated settlement, is going to save us valuable time and lives."

"Like we didn't spend enough of those? I have a hundred dead and wounded on my hands, Gallowglass."

"Well, we can expect roughly the same performance again, so bump that up to two-fifty dead and wounded, approximately," I said, voice deliberately a shade too light. "The more you use, lesse mass casualty causes, the less you lose."

Arano turned pale.

"There's no good loot for us to take, either. Most tankers don't have the ability to punch out, so for them it's death before dismount. Probably end up with a lot of mech damage from it," I continued. "Please, just make the call. If you need me to, I'll make you up a script."

"No, you don't need to," she muttered. "It's just- I don't know why. I can't sleep. I can't think."

That was combat fatigue. Not PTSD, not yet, mostly since the 'post' in post-traumatic stress disorder was nowhere near the situation. Right- Arano's first combat was a milk run turned sour. It explained the irritability and mood swings too: stress buildup she couldn't burn off. When I wrote the wish-list for the next supply run, I'd need to include "a psych team" in it, wouldn't I.

"Either way, a few salient points," I said carefully. "They can march out with their standards and equipment and seek transit offworld if they desire. They can be taken as prisoners of war and placed on parole on Herotitus. Or they can join the Restoration Army."

"And for the civilians?"

I shrugged. "I suggest leaving the civil administration in place and letting them know that taxes are now payable to the Restoration Government. That said, how that all works is more Lucifer's bailiwick than mine. That said- Lucifer, a word?"

Getting up, Emma blinked at me as we walked away from Lady Arano. "Yes?"

"Arano's got the beginning stages of PTSD," I said quietly. "We should be done with the fighting for now, but keep an eye on her."

"Got it," Emma said, dead seriously. "She'll be safe with me."

"Good. Which reminds me, Lucifer," I asked, stressing the callsign. "What did you do to earn that name?"

"Well, I, uh, I outshot a Jaegermech-"

My eyebrow went up. "The real reason."

Emma's- now Lucifer's- face pinched. "Do I have'ta?"

"I can and will get Markham so drunk she tells the story."

"Fine," she grumbled. "I got clonked in the head by an AC/2 round, and accidentally smacked my lasers into 'illumination' mode instead of 'weapons' mode for a minute. So I'm running around, frantically trying to alpha strike, and the only guns that are working are my light peepers," or in other words, her LPPCs, "and I'm jumping and juking, and then I land in front of Dekker just as the Jaegermech goes down, and the dipshit goes 'are you an angel,' and I… uh… said yes."

I was trying to hold down my maniacal grin. I really was. The fact it was leaking out the side was irrelevant. "Right. Thank you, Lucifer. Go keep an eye on Arano please, and make sure she makes the surrender offer before dinner, okay?"

"Got it. You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"No man of the company will hear it from my lips," I said, dead serious. Accepting that, Lucifer walked off, head held high at getting her callsign and a mark of respect from her mech commander. True to my word, I did not tell a single man of the company.

The fact Merseies and Howler heard it that night while we were laying in bed together? Proof that Lucifer really needed to get better at wording her promises, and that it was painfully easy to get little secrets out of me. Still, knowing that her first kill had near half again her weight on her made me smile. Little Emma was growing up strong- and it was my hope that spending time with Arano would keep her from growing up hard, too. It was a dream worth having, as I snuggled down into the piles of covers and happy women to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, come what may: we did good today.

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