Part 152: Political Vote 8 - Freedom Part 2

Freedom, Part 2: Political Vote 8



A soft tremor shook the earth beneath her heels as Melissa Arthur Steiner, AKA the Red Corsair, crouched in near total darkness. The air around her was musty and water dripped down the back of her neck, but neither she nor her companions could risk activating a light. Their only light source came from a distant cavern, well lit, and filled with regiment upon regiment of pristine BattleMechs in the eggshell white cream of unassigned Star League `Mechs.

Morgan settled down behind her, and rubbed his eyes. “Definitely ComStar,” he grumbled quietly.

A heavier tremor shook the earth. Melissa glanced at the ceiling. “Earthquake?” she asked with quiet concern, then shook her head. “No—how long has it been? The Free Worlders have started shelling us, haven’t they?”

Morgan nodded, thoughtfully stroking his beard. “For all the good it’ll do them. I’d heard rumors that Helm had a Star League facility, but… I didn’t expect this.”

Melissa peered over the rocks at the milling ComGuards. “… It’s been over a month. Why are they even still here?”

“This is an intact Star League facility,” Dr. Banzai replied grimly. “They’re cataloguing everything they find. There may even be an intact Memory Core. If there is—”

“They’d want to copy it,” Melissa replied quietly. “Damn. This is bad, Morgan.”

“An understatement, highness. We need the rest of First Regiment,” he paused for a moment, then gave the doctor a nod, “and the rest of Team Banzai.”

“You really think the Kell Hounds have a chance to blast ComStar out of here?”

Morgan nodded, “… But first, we’ll need to call them down; and tell them where to drop. And then we’ll need `Mechs. Fortunately,” he turned, peering over the cavernous Castle Brian, “I know where we can find some.”





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Oozing heavy black smoke from the shattered remains of its boxy SRM-launcher, a Battlemaster strode purposefully into a hail of Inferno SRM fire. It clutched the shattered PPC in its right fist like a club, drew back, and smashed the useless weapon against an enemy Javelin’s left shoulder. The light `Mech staggered, and fell to one knee. The Battlemaster seized it by the top of the head and twisted, tearing the cockpit away with a shriek of tortured metal even as a Quickdraw rose into the air on jets of white-hot plasma. It sailed through the air towards the injured Battlemaster as the pilot moved his `Mech to attempt a Death from Above. Normally risky, the Battlemaster was badly overheating and the bulk of its dangerous weapons had been shot away.

A flight of LRMs caught the rising Quickdraw from the side, ripping open the thin armor over the `Mech’s left breast. Its left arm long-since lost shot away, the Dragon lifted its right arm with a contemptible precision and loosed with a light autocannon around which a long, serpentine dragon coiled directly into the breach in the Quickdraw’s armor. The `Mech tipped as its gyro skipped, then simply vanished as its LRM Ammo exploded. Its legs fell to the ferrocrete below amidst the shower of metal shrapnel that, until a moment before, had been the Quickdraw’s torso.

The Battlemaster turned, its blackened armor no longer showing the colors or emblems of the Davion heavy guards; brought its arsenal of medium lasers in line with the Sword of Light Dragon. The medium laser’s amber beams cored the rear armor of the Locust who’s machineguns were worrying at the Dragon’s internals like a rat gnawing at an open wound. The unexpected assault took the Locust by surprise, and the pilot punched out as the assault shot away the little scout `Mech’s engine shielding.

The Battlemaster’s joints locked as its own engine shut down, heat rising from the pitted and scorched armor in rippling waves. Less visibly damaged, but in equally dire straits with a fused hip and knee, the Dragon swiveled at the hips as it searched for its next target, its head scorched where its sensor systems had been shot away early in the fighting. The Battlemaster squealed in protest as the pilot overrode the engine and brought his tortured `Mech back on line.

Panting heavily in the sweltering heat of his cockpit, Prince Hanse Davion checked his own sensors, then toggled through his radio frequencies to get a feel for the battle’s continuing ebb and flow.

“That’s the last of them, Jannike-dono,” he broadcast quietly.

In her crippled Dragon, Jannike Kurita tried not to wince as the First Prince of the Federated Suns butchered her name. “You are too kind, Prince Davion,” she replied, sinking back into her command couch and letting her fingers slip from the controls. Her head was still pounding from the SRM that’d blown away her sensor suite. That contemptuous-looking shot she’d made against the descending Quickdraw had been lucky—and desperate. Though she was a skilled `Mechwarrior, without sensors her Dragon couldn’t lock on and her desperate manual control had been just that: an act of utter desperation.

“I never thought I’d see the day pirates would attack New Avalon so openly,” Hanse continued. He sounded neither tired nor upset. In the Draconis Combine, Jannike reflected, the traffic controllers responsible for letting a band of pirates land on Luthien would’ve been beheaded, their families made unproductive and sold into slavery. The Coordinator would see to it personally, yet Prince Davion seemed thrilled for an opportunity to test his skills in combat.

“I should not be surprised,” she mumbled in Japanese. Prince Davion’s blue eyes were perhaps only a slight shade darker than the Coordinator’s, or her father’s. They shared the same demeanor, and similar convictions. “He is a warrior, first of all. Not samurai of course, but if I am not careful, I may begin to admire this barbarian Prince.”

She laughed, quietly at first, then with growing conviction; her helmet microphone picking up and carrying the signal part-way through. Hanse Davion’s own pleasant laughter joined hers—and they were both still laughing a minute later when Arden Sortek’s battered Victor descended on roaring jets.

“Well,” Sortek broadcast in amused tones, “I’m glad to see you’re getting along. Perhaps there is some truth in the old Capellan curse: ‘may you live in interesting times.’”

“These certainly qualify,” Hanse replied with a chuckle. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d fight side by side with a member of the DCMS, either.”

Jannike quieted, straightened herself; reflected briefly on her decidedly un-Kuritan lapse. The irony, that she had perhaps saved the life of the greatest foe the Draconis Combine had ever known, was not lost on her. Nor, she suspected, was it lost on the Fox.

“I must admit,” Hanse continued, bringing his Battlemaster about, “I was concerned when Ambassador Kurita requested permission to remain and ‘negotiate—’”

“Ah,” Jannike replied with one of those non-committal sounds that resembled an affirmative in Japanese, “Kurita Chandrasekhar-sensei is reluctant to return with your gift, Prince Davion. It is not uncommon in the Draconis Combine to, ah—what’s the expression,” she paused, “‘Kill the messenger.’ Your acceptance has already been divined by the Coordinator, he is sure. He also wishes to make sure your gift survives the journey, lest its death dishonor him.”

“Regardless,” Ardan replied after a moment’s uncomfortable silence, “we’re thankful he was willing to loan us your assistance, er, Miss Jannike. Even in the Federated Suns, we wouldn’t expect a private citizen to risk a skilled bodyguard and an expensive piece of equipment for no gain.”

“I serve the Dragon,” she replied quietly. “Even if serving the Dragon requires me to protect a Yellow Bird.”

Hanse only laughed in reply.





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Vote

“You should at least consider it, Galaxy Commander.”

Dusk rubbed her eyes in irritation, and gave her bondsman a pointed glare. Bondsman Caesar had proven invaluable, both in understanding the Lyran mind and their bizarre battle rituals, but he was impudent, irritating, frustrating, and as persistent as a hunting Steel Viper. She respected that, in her own way, but it did not make him any less irksome.

“That information was classified, bondsman. Where did you hear it?”

Caesar shrugged, then flashed what she suspected he believed was his most disarming smile. “That’s not important right now. What is important, is that for the first time since the fall of the Star League, Skye is free. The same Skye that remained loyal to the SLDF through the Amaris coup. The same Skye whose rebellion kept your ancestors fed, and sheltered them when Kerensky—”

“When we lost the battle of Terra,” Dusk’s eyes flashed with rage and shame, and Caesar’s mouth clamped shut. He knew that history was a sore spot for the Clans as a whole, and perhaps the Steel Vipers in particular. He waited silently for a few minutes while Dusk regained her composure.

“The Steel Vipers, as I have learned,” he looked his bondsmaster in the eyes, “believe that we should work with the great houses to bring about a new Star League, to restore peace to human space and usher in a new age of prosperity. We should open a dialogue with Skye! We can work with them, and think, by moving peacefully through their worlds the Steel Vipers could reach Terra long before—”

“Enough,” Dusk hissed, letting herself float free of her desk in her small shipboard office. As a Galaxy Commander, she was entitled to a far larger space, but she’d preferred the close, intimate confines of her old office. “What you ask is a breach of protocol that would infuriate the other Clans. There would be repercussions.”

“A breach of protocol—like the Goliath Scorpions’ allowing the Sea Foxes to garrison their conquered territories to keep their entire Touman on the front lines?”

Dusk scowled.

“I will consider your advice. Now, leave me.”

End Vote





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The Free Trader Sumiyoshi Taisha lingered in silent space, her massive solar sail unfurled to collect power from the system’s distant primary as she sat at the standard Zenith jump point, waiting for her dropships to return from their profitable journey planetside. Her captain hoped, perhaps in vain, that his ship would not be contracted to haul troops to the front lines. A quiet, cautious man, he’d learned from his predecessor that hauling troops around was a recipe for disaster.

A massive surge of electromagnetic radiation washed over the Sumiyoshi Taisha, bathing it in a harmless shower of neutrinos as another ship prepared to jump into the system. No cause for alarm—until the neutrino shower didn’t end.

A dozen dark shapes filled the void around it, massive and foreboding. The nearest bore the flaming knight crest of Clan Hell’s Horses, a Cameron-class cruiser identified by its IFF as the Sleipnir. It was flanked by a pair of Lola III destroyers, the Red Night and Gold Night; the three ships forming the spearpoint of a massive invasion fleet totaling well over twenty vessels.

A massive McKenna-class Battleship, identifying itself as the SLDFS James McKenna appeared in tandem with five other vessels, their relative position so precise as to form a perfect pentagon. The James McKenna itself so close to the Sumiyoshi Taisha that the symbols on her hull could be seen with the unaided eye—a strange black bird clutching a shard of ice. Another five vessels appeared with similar precision. Then another.

The Sumiyoshi Taisha broadcast a warning, and was cut off nearly instantly when the James McKenna blew it in half with a Naval PPC. The other vessels lingering at the Zenith point were less fortunate, and received no opportunity to broadcast a warning.

The Hell’s Horses had come to Luthien, and they hadn’t come alone.




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Political Vote 8 (Galaxy Commander Dusk):
1) Present Caesar’s advice to the Clan Council, support idea.
2) Present Caesar’s advice to the Clan Council, remain neutral.
3) Present Caesar’s advice to the Clan Council, work against the idea.
4) Ignore Caeser’s advice entirely.

And I still need MVPs