Part 767: Let's Read: Main Event - Part 9
Let’s Read: Main Event (part 9)Chapter 9
Solaris City, Solaris
4 August 3054
Days elapsed since book start: 104
Mercenaries recruited since book start: 2
Mercenaries recruited off-screen: 1
Things accomplished since book start: 0
Protagonists introduced since book start: 3
Protagonists mentioned but not yet introduced: 1
Antagonists introduced since book start: -2 (Warwick and Scoggins likely won’t see any comeuppance for the murder)
Chapters Spent on Northwind: 5
Six hours after the shooting, Jeremiah is contemplating ways to capitalize on what’s-her-name’s death. A police officer is talking to the bartender, who is telling the cop everything he knows about Jaryl so that hopefully, due process will see the murderer caught and tried.
Main Event posted:
With ill-concealed contempt Rose watched the policewoman work. She was beautiful, if somewhat short for Rose’s taste, but he had long ago learned never to judge a woman by appearance, either for good or bad. In another circumstance he might have been impressed with her soft features and athletic body, but tonite she was just another officer. An officer he did not care to be around. An officer who, for six hours, had done nothing but ask questions, covering the same ground over and over.
Y’know. Policework.
Jeremiah can’t rationalize murder—he only understands killing on the battlefield, accidental deaths, and natural causes. Sorry, Jeremiah, a rocket-propelled microgrenade to the skull will quite naturally kill someone.
He’s currently piecing things together as fast as his room-temperature IQ will allow; equating Jaryl with a soldier and the bar with a battlefield. He then contemplates his life with the ComGuards, the first time he’s ever done so, and their emphasis on “Dogma and Duty”.
Given Rose’s penchant for irritating and/or abusing authority figures, it’s a wonder the ComGuards didn’t shoot him. Then again, Warrior: Riposte established that ComStar went out of their way to hire sociopaths into ROM (because, and this is their exact logic, “who would miss them?”); and until 3050, the ComGuards were just a sub-branch of ROM. It’s kinda interesting to note that the sociopaths start vanishing once Anastasius Focht takes over as their supreme commander.
Unfortunately, we still have to put up with Jeremiah Rose.
Rose then basically admits that he has no idea what the police actually do.
Main Event posted:
Another lead, another dead end, only this time he could do no better than watch as the woman who’d tried to help him (NOTE: she hadn’t decided to do anything, they were justtalkingwatching a fight while sitting next to each other) was gunned down. He briefly considered the possibility that he was somehow to blame, but quickly gave up the idea.
Crisis of conscience resolved. Glad that’s out of the way.
Rose then imagines that the policewoman and the bartender are fucking each other, since they seem to know each other.
Main Event posted:
Whatever the situation, Dillon obviously had more patience for her than did Rose, who’d stopped answering even her occasional questions more than ninety minutes ago.
Rose then does what he does best: he gets frustrated, impatient, and angry. He yells at the police officer for a while, and she then tells us that Scoggins is a Liao national and that he’s likely safely in Cathay (where a Davion police officer would likely get murdered by the Tongs).
Main Event posted:
Feelings were boiling in him—his frustration at not being able to find a ‘Mech anywhere in Solaris, exhaustion from going without sleep for something like forty-eight hours, and then the horror of Jaryl’s murder. Even a man as controlled as Rose was cracking under the strain.
Rose then insults Viets’ policework, calls her an idiot, practically calls her out in the bar; and for his trouble gets treated with remarkable restraint. She counters Rose’s idiocy with a good, strong dose of sarcasm. Rose then leaps over the bar and tries to murder her.
“ROSE SMASH PUNY SOLARIS!”
Main Event posted:
The lieutenant ducked under the blow. With a sharp movement, she struck the inside of the elbow of the arm supporting his weight. Rose’s entire body, which a moment ago had been perfectly poised on that one arm, came crashing down. Momentum carried him across the bar’s flat surface, allowing him to land mostly on the padded runway. His head, however, bounced off the stainless steel sink just below the bar’s surface.
Viets is amused by the entire thing, and says she loves kicking the shit out of ‘Mechwarriors. Rose responds with “Touché” which is IN NO WAY AN APPROPRIATE RESPONSE. Rather than arresting Rose for assaulting a police officer, Viets then develops a case of terminal brain damage, declares herself off-duty, and demands a beer. Rose doesn’t apologize, but reacts as though he’s been humbled by having the fight go south an instant after he started it. Viets then casually announces that she’s a ninth-dan black belt (because anything less wouldn’t have been able to stop Rose, you see).
Rose then apologizes for insulting the police, mostly to keep her from
She reminds him that he tried to kill her not TWO MINUTES before.
Rose then asks her why she hates ‘Mechwarriors. My head is starting to hurt.
She gets angry and tells him to mind his own business, and Rose decides, finally, that he can’t take her in a fight (either a fair one, or if he cheats) without a Battlemech. He then decides he needs to keep her talking in order to complete his ‘personal mission’.
WHAT MISSION?!
The police officer will in no way, shape, or form be able to help him beg, borrow, buy, or steal a fucking battlemech. WHY DOES THIS CHAPTER EVEN EXIST? If memory serves, the murder is going to go completely unresolved.
Viets then describes police process in detail. She’s willing to take Rose’s word (even after he tried to kill her); she has to send things up the line (accurate); fill out a mountain of paperwork (accurate); things get sent up to the bureaucrats (accurate); there may or may not be a trial depending on plea bargains and/or debts owed (accurate). She then calls out Rose’s impatience and politely tells him to go fuck himself because they both know he’s not willing to stick around for six months to testify at the trial.
We are then treated to more of Rose’s… eeeugh.
Main Event posted:
“So you’re saying it won’t be easy to bring Scoggins in for trial?”
“Rose, I’d have to take off both boots to count the steps in that ladder, and you’d like it all to be finished by the start of the fight—I can see it in your eyes.” Rose tried, with surprising success, to conjure a mental image of Viets without boots, or anything else for that matter.
Ghk…. Ghrrrhk…
He then… ghk… GHRRRK…
NO. YOU STUPID SONOFABITCH, EAT A DICK!
Wait a second. Microsoft word’s autocorrect thinks a no-spaces SONOFABITCH is thumbs-up A-OK. That… that blows my mind. Really? Of all the things I’ve learned while doing this Let’s Read, that is the weirdest.
Anyway, Jeremiah then discusses his hatred of Warwick and blatantly accuses him of being involved. Now, he is probably right, but the only successor states that would move without proof are the Draconis Combine (only if they bothered to investigate, which they wouldn’t) and the Capellan Confederation(likely to give the murderer a high-up position in the military and/or Maskirovka because they love go-getters).
Rose then makes to storm out of the bar, and Viets asks if he’s going to start something stupid. Rose announces that he’s going back to the hotel to take an asprin and sleep off the ass-kicking; and that he won’t bother her or her police force again.
See? You can teach a retarded dog a new trick. You just have to beat—goddamn, I can’t make this analogy, I feel too bad about it.
Then the chapter ends.
Things Accomplished: 1 (Jeremiah Rose has FINALLY taken a fucking nap)