The Let's Play Archive

Battletech

by PoptartsNinja

Part 736: Let's Read Close Quarters - Part 4

Chapter 13

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
2 September 3056


We’ve been on the same day for three chapters and it’s been six days since the Caballeros landed on Hachiman. The Caballeros have already convinced the owner of the bar they took over to rename it from the Permissible Repose to the Sagebrush. Cassie and Kali get hit on by Cowboy, who has two black eyes and a broken nose thanks to Cassie.

Kali asks Cassie why she hates her, Cassie says she doesn’t and Kali calls bullshit. Kali’s about four years older than Cassie, which puts her at 29 although that’s never explicitly stated. Cassie is terrified at an existential level because Kali actually seems to like her (and Cassie likes her back), which is completely at odds with the façade she’s put up in the nine years she’s been with the 17th Recon Regiments. Deep down Cassie is convinced that she can’t have friends because her friends always leave die.

Annie Sue “Avengin’ Annie” Hurd gets mentioned again, which leads the conversations back to teddy bears.



That is why Teddy Bears are a theme. They are an emotional safety net in a cold and uncaring universe, and Cassie hasn’t had one since she was three.

This is about the point where the 9th Ghost Regiment barges in. Cowboy immediately picks a fight, gets punched in the gut, then punches Buntaro Mayne into the jukebox. Cassie makes no move to help, so long as the violence stays “friendly” (aka nonlethal), but she doesn’t exactly need to since Lainie’s next in the room and orders her ghosts to stand down. It amuses me that Kali is described as “tall” when she’s 5’6.”

Cassie introduces Lainie by name and rank, because the Ghosts are sporting their unit patch and Cassie has had six days to do her homework. Buntaro Mayne and Cowboy bond over trying to crush each others’ fingers, pushing Cowboy’s friend count to a whopping four (this won’t last).

Lainie is only a Tai-sa, a Colonel, the Combine’s rank for a Battalion Commander, because the DCMS hard-liners would be scandalized if a Yakuza were promoted to general. Not much else happens, but this chapter establishes that the Ghosts are pretty good people who get along with the Caballeros. They bond over their mutual hatred of the Clans.



Chapter 14

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
3 September 3056


One day later. A lot of BattleTech novels have week or sometimes even month long jumps between chapters, but it’s important to stress that everything in Close Quarters happens on a very compressed timescale. The final chapter of the novel happens on 2 November 3056. It’s easy to see that the Caballeros are not going to have the time for adequate preparations before shit hits the fan. Especially compared to the likes of Ideal War, which starts in May 3054 and ends in March 3055. The average BattleTech novel usually spans six months to a year, the Caballeros are covering the same ground in two.

Anyway, Lainie’s been called in for a meeting with her Oyabun, who is an asshole. He hates the reforms Theodore Kurita has made to Draconis Combine society, this will be a running theme in the Caballeros novels.

Lainie’s Oyabun wants to know what she thinks of the 17th, and takes her casual “they’re foreigners” as dismissive. He views Uncle Chandy hiring the 17th as a disgrace, and Lainie suggests it’s simply a move to inflate Chandy’s ego. Thinking of the Caballeros, Lainie immediately starts thinking of Kali—Cassie had no real impact, she marked Kali as the more capable (and more dangerous) of the pair. Lainie is not wrong.

Lainie’s Oyabun begins a tirade against Chandrasekhar Kurita, because of the latest scandal.



I find this funny as hell, considering this is a problem in modern day Japan.

The book casually uses eta for the Combine’s ‘nonproductive’ caste, of which the Yakuza are suggested to be a part, and this is one of the things about the trilogy I don’t like. It’s born from several misunderstandings caused by a Samurai novel from the 80s, whose title I can’t for the life of me remember. Eta is not a term to use casually, and it irritates me the same way using “rape victim” for easy pathos does. The Oyabun suggests they’re part of a plot to kill Chandrasekhar Kurita, because OpSec doesn’t matter when you have an opportunity to gloat in front of an underling.

Meanwhile, Cassie has gone undercover as a penniless street urchin, and tricks a Yakuza into getting her a job at a club.



Chapter 15

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
4 September 3056


Cassie is working in a bar frequented by the Yakuza, after tricking a mid-level Yakuza into vouching for her by pretending to be Mitsuko, a “potato” from a Combine backwater. She owes him a debt, which she repays with a very fancy and expensive pen she stole from one of his bosses instead of paying with sex as he’d been expecting. This makes the Yakuza mark she tricked angry, so Cassie turns him in to the person she originally stole the pen from.

Cassie also notes that if her mark tries to lay a trap for her she’ll kill him, but that’s par for the course for Cassie. Deadly violence is always her first (and only) resort.

Afterwards, Cassie patrols the spaceport, trapping pickpockets so she can pay them to be informants, and casually murdering a pimp to take over his stable of prostitutes so she can use them to gather information for her as well. According to the prostitutes there’s some tough customers coming through, the kind who don’t speak much and don’t pay money to fuck prostitutes. They don’t know what that means, and neither does Cassie, but spoilers: they’re ISF.


Chapter 16

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
5 September 3056


Kali is amused that Cassie has murdered a pimp and taken over a stable of prostitutes, but cautions that Don Carlos’ wife would not approve. Cassie is paying the money the prostitutes are making her into the regiment’s Injuries & Disabilities pool—the 17th has single-payer healthcare.

They discuss the 17th’s situation and Cassie reveals her plan to find someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who has information she wants. They also discuss Uncle Chandy, and Cassie displays her first genuine human emotion:



Kali then discusses the dead pimp, and Cassie says she had no choice (which is Bullshit). Kali calls her on that, because she knows Close Quarters Cassie Suthor doesn’t have a “stun” setting. Cassie tries to deflect her by saying the murder was done for the sake of the regiment.



And this is what I’m referring to when I say that Cassie is a fundamentally flawed and broken human being. They bump into Archie Weston on the way out but Kali can tell Cassie is trying to dodge him and covers for them. Cassie admits Archie bothers him (because he’s an obvious spy), but they’re startled by distant fireworks. We then get the best line in the novel.





They return to the barracks and Kali surprises Cassie with a Teddy Bear. I’ve pulled a lot of quotes out of this chapter, but it’s fairly dense even if it’s not entirely subtle.



Cassie Suthorn, killer of BattleMechs. So utterly and completely destroyed by a teddy bear (an object that should be meaningless to her) that she spends the next several hours contemplating destroying a stuffed animal with her Kris. Because Cassie’s only resort to external stimuli is violence.

Cassie suffers a complete emotional breakdown over being gifted a stuffed animal.