Part 735: Let's Read Close Quarters - Part 3

Chapter 9

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
27 August 3056

Cowboy, Buck Evans, and some others invade a local bar. There’s some holographic J-Pop idols singing on the jukebox, and Cowboy beats it up until it stops playing music (he is a jackass ). Zuma, chief of the Caballeros’ Astechs, gets conscripted into helping the bartender set up some right-proper country western music, the Caballeros settle in for some drinks.

Archie Weston, Not A Spy is here, hanging out with Cowboy (uh-oh) who dragged him away from Bob Garcia before he could learn too much about the regiment (double uh-oh). The third (and final) member of a group consisting of Cowboy’s only friends is introduced, a bearded cowboy named Rebel Perez. Rebel Perez is Jewish, and has a voice “like sand in a BattleMaster’s hip actuator.” Rebel Perez doesn’t talk much and he’ll be dead by the end of the book, but Cowboy’s friend count will not be diminishing. He will always have precisely two friends, and when one of those dies another will step in to take his place.

Cowboy tells Archie he’s going to teach him how to talk “like a Southwesterner.”

Fortunately Cassie’s here, so when (at Cowboy’s prompting) Archie approaches Macho Alvarado, one of the unit’s norteños, and introduces himself with “Odale, Cabrón” Cassie can step in. Someone who actually speaks Spanish can correct me, but I’m pretty sure this was a typo and should’ve been orale Cabrón. Which I think means literally: “Hi, Cuckhold!” and is basically an invitation to fight. Cassie stops Macho and then immediately breaks Cowboy’s nose for trying to get the MI4 spy who got sent to spy on a Spanish-speaking regiment despite not knowing any Spanish killed.

Cassie is pissed not because an outsider almost died. She does not care about Archie, she’s pissed because if he had died it would’ve made Don Carlos look bad. The only thing she cares about is the regiment, and as far as Cassie is concerned, Don Carlos is the regiment.

Archie can’t read Cassie, which bothers him because he’s a womanizer. He is not a very good spy. Cassie casually discusses killing Elementals with boiling sugar and lye, which she calls Kitchen Napalm. I’m not sure if this is a real thing, but it’s another glimpse at Cassie’s broken psyche. She could look you in the eyes while burning you to death and not feel a thing. Cassie explains more of the regiment’s nuances, but it basically boils down to: anyone not of the 17th is a gringo.



The mind of a perfectly healthy and normally-functioning individual. Wait, no, Cassie is a nutjob. She’s an eternal outsider so she can explain aspects of the 17th’s culture that those who grew up nowhere near the Southwest (like myself) that an insider would never even think of needing to explain.

Captain Kali MacDougall shows up, she’s the stereotypical tall blonde cowgirl with big breasts. Cassie immediately beats a retreat, leaving Archie with her. Cassie does not like Kali. Kali makes her uncomfortable because Kali cares about something that Cassie doesn’t.

Kali cares whether Cassie lives or dies.

Cassie wanders the city to think, she doesn’t understand why Kali makes her uncomfortable. She yells at some drunks and glares at some of the local police, who walk around armed with shotguns because that’s just how the Draconis Combine rolls.



Chapter 10

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
2 September 3056

Cassie is scouting a parking garage, from which she can see the entire HTE Compound. One of the other scouts she’s brought with her jokes that he could kill everyone in the compound with a Zeus Sniper Rifle. He couldn’t, but a character from one of the later novels probably could. We finally get confirmation that Patsy Camacho is dead in this chapter. She’s as close as the 17th had to an actual typical BattleTech character: A brilliant pilot in a Phoenix Hawk who took on a Clan star by herself to buy time for the regiment, and died for her troubles.

Cassie asks some questions of their local handler, and learns that Uncle Chandy owns all the buildings around the complex, each one worth about as much as a battalion of `Mechs. She then immediately asks for her handler to take her to see Uncle Chandy.

She doesn’t get to interview him, but does get an interview with the Mirza Peter Abdulsattah. They make small talk for a bit which Cassie has no patience for, and she immediately reveals that she knows he’s Uncle Chandy’s spymaster. The Mirza is not an Arkhab, but he is an Arab in a position of authority in a novel who is not portrayed as a villain. This was pre 9/11, and he is the Jaws to Uncle Chandy’s Hugo Drax. But at the same time, the 17th Recon are now the guys in the yellow jumpsuits.

Cassie wants to booby trap the surrounding buildings, the Mirza admits it’s already been done, but then invites Cassie to share her ideas with him anyway just in case she’s spotted an angle they’ve missed.



Chapter 11

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
2 September 3056

Pleased with herself, Cassie gets ambushed by Archie Weston as she’s leaving the Mirza’s office. She does not notice his approach, which is the first real vulnerability she’s shown. When Cassie stops acting and starts thinking, she starts hesitating and loses track of her surroundings. She does not see this as a good thing, partly because her crazy old martial arts teacher would beat her for inattention.

Cassie is irritated enough to subtly suggest that she knows Archie is a spy, but Archie doesn’t catch it. Archie has a British accent, which is apparently rare enough to be a “curious” thing. She talks about taking down Bobby the Wolf’s Wolverine on Larsha, then mentions Patsy. Archie blunders right into that minefield by asking when he can expect to be introduced to Patsy Camacho, and Cassie tells the full story of Patsy’s death. She took down a Mad Dog and an Adder in her Phoenix Hawk in typical BattleTech Main Character fashion before dying. She was also Cassie’s only friend. Cassie’s teddy bear.

I told you Teddy Bears were a theme. Cassie was Patsy’s sidekick, and without Patsy Cassie is slipping farther and farther into misanthropy. Cassie leads Archie to see Zuma, likely so she can use Zuma to scrape the barnacle that is Archie Weston off her ass, and introduces him to Lt. SG Annie Sue “Avengin’ Annie” Hurd. Mmhm, she was a canon character.

Zuma Gallegos is very Mexican in appearance, right down to a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his back, but he’s Cowboy Payson’s cousin. Another nice little touch.



Annie is innocent and overly credulous, she talks for a bit and then leaves because “Bunny Bear” will start to miss her. Bunny Bear is her Teddy Bear. Teddy Bears. Theme. Still not ready to talk about what that theme is yet.

Archie notes that the 17th seems to have a lot of antipathy towards Mechwarriors, and Cassie casually drops that she doesn’t get paid to like them, she gets paid to kill them. Archie distracts himself from his increasing discomfort by asking Zuma where his nickname came from.

It’s short for Moctezuma, because Zuma is “head Aztech.”

Archie asks Zuma to play a song on his guitar, he plays once about a Captain Carlos Camacho who fought wild Indians in Chihuahua.



Historical revisionism.

There is a song for Carlos, and one for Patsy, but Don Carlos won’t let Zuma perform it. Don Carlos has not gotten over Patsy’s death. For all that the books say they are about Cassie Suthorn, she’s not the exclusive viewpoint character—and the real main character of the trilogy is the 17th Recon Regiment. Carlos is the mind of the 17th Recon, Patsy was its soul.

Cassie is merely the Regiment’s eyes.

Cassie asks Zuma if there’s a monkey pit she can use, and he directs her to HTE’s motor pool. She practices a few katas in the oil pit because fighting on unsteady ground was her Guru’s specialty. This is the part about Cassie that is the most overtly magical / fantastic. There wasn’t a lot known in the early 1990s about Pencak Silat, and Cassie’s Guru is described more like a madman than anything. She seeks out the worst possible terrain to train in and then actively seeks out the same sorts of shitty terrain on the battlefield.



Chapter 12

Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
2 September 3056

We’re introduced to Lt. Colonel Gordon Baird, the regiment’s intelligence officer. Cassie can’t resist getting digs in at him. The regiment is having a command meeting, but Don Carlos isn’t really paying any attention. He’s lost in his depression. This chapter proves the back cover a lie, Cassie isn’t the only one who thinks Uncle Chandy is paying a lot of money for some fancy gaijin wall ornaments. Kali thinks the same, as does Bobby “Navajo Wolf” Begay.

Bobby’s also a madman who named his `Mech Skinwalker, so the other Navajo Mechwarriors shun him. It’s pretty much akin to a modern air force pilot insisting on the callsign “Cannibal.”

Anyway, Cassie wants to go underground, drop off the grid to blend with the locals and do some real urban scouting. Cassie “feels” something’s off and the rest of the regiment agrees to Cassie’s request pretty much instantly. Shame on you back of the book cover, shame on you.

Cassie surprises herself by thinking about Archie with something other than sheer and utter contempt, even though she’s made him for an MI4 Spy. This disturbs her because he is an outsider. Gavilan “Gabby” Camacho finds faults with the plan because Kali is backing it, Gabby’s got issues with women. Patsy was a brilliant Mechwarrior and he… isn’t. He isn’t taking her death well either, because he never got a chance to beat her at anything, and he’s taking it out on the other women Mechwarriors who are better pilots than he is.

Don Carlos has stopped paying attention again, and Cassie worries that the Regiment won’t survive much longer with him barely making it through the day.



Still, he trusts Cassie, and allows her to do whatever she feels she needs to keep the Regiment safe. After the meeting, Kali confronts Cassie in the hallway. Kali won’t let the tension stand between them. She’s about to force herself into Cassie’s bubble, but we’re 28% of the way through Close Quarters and that’s good enough for tonight.





That's going to be more true than you realize, but Close Quarters was written in 1994. Cassie Suthorn is basically the Cassandra Cain batgirl... except Cassie Cain was introduced in 1999. Cassie Suthorn is an action hero from a time period where women were just starting to be allowed to be action heroes. Her only other contemporaries were Buffy and Cammie from the Street Fighter movie. Even famous female action heroine Xena, Warrior Princess didn't premier until 1995.