TEFAC Chpt 3

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==Chapter 3 - Time Enough For A Cat - - Zero Gravity, Many Worries -==
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====Upgrading an Heir====
En Route to Andurien, T-24 days to arrival
JumpShip Succubus, Dropship Borozoi
Sobriety, I noted, was a near-fatal condition on long JumpShip voyages. The sheer monotony of pacing about the Mule was mind-numbing, and I couldn't even jack into my mech in order to synch up with it to relax. Worse, sobriety was a catching disease, as supplies ran low and we pushed on towards Andurien with the doughty shove of people who really, really didn't like the trip.
 
Today, though, was special: Emma had finally gotten her ears. Szeny had just popped her fingers, pulled out the scalpels, and made with the snip-snip-snip to install the prosthetic data cable connector, the internal geegaws, and had even put on a wonderful set of tawny cat ears that matched her hair perfectly. The problem was, it was the start of Recovery-O-Clock now, and speaking from personal experience: it was the special hell.
 
See, the surgery had a lot of steps. One of them was snipping the spinal cord, and then splicing the data port through the spinal cord, into the cerebellum and temporal lobes, and then reconnecting everything with large blobs of synthetic nerve cables and stem cell regrowth structures. On my MRIs, it was nearly impossible to see the damage- there was brain, and then there was dataport, and no distinction between the two.
 
The cost of this seamless healing? Well, it started with several days in a wheelchair, and progressed to 'near-complete re-learning how to handle the human body' due to the fact that a major part of the brain surgery was installing the anti-feedback shunts. During… initial testing… we discovered that mech damage had a tendency to backfeed up the connection and cause Negative Effects. Fortunately, most of the Negative Effects tended to be very fatal very quickly. Unfortunately, when they weren't I had to argue against vivisecting them to see what went wrong where.
 
…There was a reason I'd taken the long patrols, the ones that were days out in the woods away from base. It meant I didn't have to help. I was already complicit in enough shit as it was- and if I had my way, those sins would stay buried in a future past.
 
Either way, I was there when Emma was wheeled out of the MASH theater, with Dr. Szeny comically pulling off her post-surgery gloves with a smile. "Good news, Tam! It was a very nice surgery, everything's in order, and she's even conscious! Blink twice for yes, once for no if you're awake please!
 
One long blink, a pause, and another long blink. I just sighed- Szeny was incredibly overenthusiastic after a successful surgery. "C'mon, doc, I'll handle the patient. Usual rules after implantation?
 
"Yep! Keep the plastic on over the cover, keep the cover on for the next month, green cream around the edges, red cream in the port. Take her back here once every other day, and we'll be good!"
 
"Thanks, doc. Let's go, Emma!"
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====Knocking for Service====
En Route to Andurien, T-8 days to arrival
JumpShip Succubus, Dropship Borozoi 
"Fuck," Emma tried to say, her spoon falling out of her hand again. Key word, tried, since she was still moving and talking like her brain was wrapped in cotton wool and someone was making her run the body controls through a tub of syrup. Really, it came out more of an undignified "Fhawqh," but I'd been there. We'd all been there.
 
Gently putting the spoon back in her hand, I waited for Emma to take another bite of her hot cereal, before holding up her straw cup to take a sip out of. She did so, before knocking the table three times- "I have a request".
 
"Alright," I said. "Ordinal choice: one for food, two for drinks, three for finished."
 
One knock.
 
"Ordinal choice: one for adding something, two for changing dishes, three for temperature."
 
One knock.
 
"Do you want something sweet?"
 
One knock- no, for yes-or-no questions.
 
"Do you want cream?"
 
Two knocks- yes. Getting a small container of heavy cream, I poured a small portion into the bowl, before stirring it in. "More?"
 
Two knocks. I added another portion, and raised an eyebrow at her. "That's your dairy ration until we get to Andurien."
 
A sad sigh, and Emma got her hand on the spoon, before taking another careful bite. "Why did I think this was a good idea," she tried to say. I won't write what it actually sounded like, though, since she bit her tongue on the last stop in 'good'.
 
"To be fair, it's absolutely worth the six months of misery, and you'll never have to go through this ever again in your life," Mersies said from next to me, where she was munching on a pizza slice from last night. "Plus, you can ask the Doc to get you one of the nice contraceptive implants, and then you can adjust it yourself in your mech!"
 
I gaped at Mersies. "You can do that?"
 
"I mean, yeah, you just need the wireless enabled one. I swear, if I didn't have it you'd probably have knocked me up by now, I'm so bad at remembering to refresh the damn thing."
 
"I thought they were good for years!"
 
"Not the wireless ones!"
 
Damnit Mersies.
 
Still, our little comedy skit got a laugh out of Emma, so it was alright. "C'mon, kid," I said softly. "We gotta get you to speech therapy, unless you want to be mute on Andurien."
 
"I still don't see why we're laying over at Andurien," Mersies muttered.
 
"Because we should get to see the blue sky, feel some grass under our feet, and most importantly get more books."
 
"Why? We can just download stuff from the JumpShip's library."
 
Emma started laughing, and I raised an eyebrow at Mersies. "The Centrella Family's personal JumpShip."
 
"Yes."
 
"What do you think is in that library, anyway?"
 
"Lost media, specifically Star League-era porn. So much antique porn."
 
"And you- yeah," I muttered. "That's enough for you."
 
"Listen just because all your favorite wuxia series haven't been written yet isn't a reason to get salty at me."
 
"I am not getting salty, that's entirely your perception."
 
"Alright, no-slip mix!"
 
We'd have kept arguing, except Emma was shaking enough to worry us. Turning to face her, I blinked in shock- she was laughing! Barely, with a shaking chest and loopy smile, but she was laughing.
 
"Thank you," she said, a little trail of drool coming out the side of her mouth as it tried and failed to close all the way. Moving in with a napkin, I just grinned to reset everything to normal and let Mersies grab the wheelchair.
 
"Right, enough fun and games, time for speech lessons!"
 
This time, Emma did not brother to try. "Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…" she moaned.
 
"Yeah, I know," I emphasized. "Speech therapy sucks rocks.
 
"Gah."
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====Impressions of future Allies====
Andurien, Free Worlds League
November 24th, 3022
Dame Catherine Humphries, I decided, would be the worst sort of employer. She would pay well and on time, give gracious gifts of land, and then dive headfirst into a hellbent war that would crack noble houses in twain and set the future of the next hundred years of a state. Great and Terrible, a fitting moniker for someone so fine. The best- or worst- part was that she was so kind about it. Our formal meeting with her, as escorts to Emma, was riddled with the sort of double-speak and noble's behavior that made me break out into hives in private. She was a high lady of the realm, without question, and her intelligence was frighting to behold.
 
She was also, as I discovered when I accidentally let out a small curse in Mandarin when Emma stepped on my toe with her crutch, the single-most rabidly anti-Liao women I had ever met. When we revealed our plans for a unification to strike out against the Liao menace and our desire to coordinate an offensive with Hanse Davion, her expression lit up like a battery of Riflemen. If we went in alone, we'd get slaughtered- it was an inevitability. If we had a large, conveniently shaped brick-to-the-face that was kicking in the door though? Andurien and Canopian regiments stood a better than even chance of marauding their way through the exposed flank of the Confederation.
 
Of course, the question of assets brought to the table was then brought up. If Andurien was going in, they were going in full force: all five regiments of the Defenders of Andurien would be on call, and so too would the main regiments of the Canopians: the first through third Fusiliers, the two regiments of the Light Horse, and the Cuirassiers. A total of eleven regiments, to take on the forty of the Liaos.
 
This was, as they say, not a winning proposition. Therefore, we needed the FedCom- er, the Davions- to strike first and strike hard. It'd need to be a fast insertion, and I argued to both Dame Humphries and Emma that we needed to pick an invasion corridor and stick to it like glue. If we tried to fight over every pissant planet, we'd be going right into their traps, getting bogged down and dying in droves. As I explained it, it'd be a lot better for all twelve of our regiments to land boots-first in front of two Warrior Houses and the Red Lancers fresh as roses to get the shit kicked out of them, rather than get worn down on infantry militias before the same two Warrior Houses and the Red Lancers got to roll them up, one by one.
 
Would this actually happen? I didn't think so, but the Liaos did have the most sophisticated doctrine about this sort of thing before Hanse demonstrated this thing called "basic logistical competence" and "concentration of force on operational objectives" to turn the Capellan Confederation into the Capellan Clusterfuckening.
 
Either way, initial negotiations had gone Well, and Dame Humphries and Kyalla could hash out further details and command staff integrations later. We only had a week and a half to sit around and enjoy the Andurien hospitality- that's when the last two DropShips full of medical personnel would come in. A pair of Monarch-class ships would serve to take our personnel compliment, while our solid and steady Mule would do the same for our weapons and military compliment. Fortunately, I had the time and inclination to spend a great deal of my pay on getting entertainment for the trip, and Emma had regained her speech and independent movement- albeit with a pair of crutches.
 
That was, in my opinion, more than enough to begin Direct Neural Interface training.
 
On the Humphries' main drill range, I helped Emma into her cockpit carefully. It was my turn to ride the jump seat, and Mersies was out playing bodyguard today- which was good, since we'd need help after the inevitable falls. Once we were both strapped in and starting the slow-boot cycle, Emma breathed in. "So. What first?"
 
"First you jack in," I explained, breathing deeply. I'd been doing this for… four years now, and hadn't had a real instructor. With Emma's hair now up in a mohawk for the brain surgery, it wasn't hard to get to her interface port at all. "Pull the fake skin cover back gently; there's a pair of soft plastic detents there that hold it in. If it ever falls out, we replace the detents."
 
Hands moving carefully, a little flap of not-flesh fell off the neck of a girl. "Next?"
 
"The way I've figured out how to do it is simple. Take the jack in your left hand," I said, my own mirroring this even if I couldn't plug in, "and go to your port. With your right hand, pull the cap off the jack, and hold it at the ridge where your port infrastructure merges with your skull."
 
"Right here?"
 
"A little lower," I corrected. "Now, bring the plug up until it hits the cap, and then down a millimeter. This will bring you in line with the port."
 
"And then in?"
 
"Close," I said carefully. "Getting the angle right is a bitch. How I figured out how to do it is look down, at an invisible string between your control yokes."
 
"Looking down, yes."
 
"Then slide forward, about a centimeter, and wiggle. That means you're on the reinforced bit of the plug, and you can feel which way you need to tilt it."
 
"Tilting, and… oh!"
 
I smiled. "Now, gently push it home until you feel a click, then twist right for a second click, in a mil, left until click, and leave it."
 
Emma chuckled. "This feels so weird! And it sounds like it's inside my head!"
 
"It is inside your head- that twist-lock is on the inside of your skull, not the outside. Now that you're jacked in, go over to the left side of the cockpit, right there, and activate the link."
 
"Activating-"
 
And that, I knew, was when the machine spoke. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. I just let it happen. The first communion with the machine was special, ten thousand new signals and muscles and joints and eyes and ears and sensors all singing out, threatening to overwhelm and drown with the millions of datums that flooded through the brain.
 
"Hey, Emma," I said, gentle. "Doing good?"
 
"It's so much-" she muttered, eyes glazed over.
 
"Alright, do me a favor," I said, reaching around to the yokes in case of emergency, "and raise your right arm."
 
Smooth as silk, the mech's right arm came up, naturally settling into a pistoleer's stance for the light PPC it didn't have installed.
 
"The meat arm, Emma," I corrected with a little laugh in my voice.
 
"Oh. Uh…. how?"
 
Taking Emma's arm, I slowly raised it up, then lowered it down. Raising and lowering it a few times, I listened to her breathing, steady and even in time with the reactor down below us. "You've got all these new senses, and believe me: we'll work on using them. For now, though, just focus on my voice and on your body. Listen to your heartbeat, the janky little pump that it is going lub-dub in your chest. Use the parts connected to that."
 
"But it sounds so ugly!"
 
I laughed. "It is, but it's a human ugliness. Come on now," I said, taking my hands off her. "Meat arm up."
 
Slowly, the meat arm came up, and I smiled. This was going swimmingly!
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====Suhel wakes up====
En Route to New Avalon, T-99 days to arrival
JumpShip Succubus, Dropship Borozoi
Once we'd gotten our doctors without borders into their Monarchs and taken off, it had been smooth, boring sailing henceforth. We'd all quickly settled into a comfortable routine, which had yet to be broken: wake up in the morning, take a half hour for Mersies and I to fool around, get breakfast, do zero-g physical conditioning with Emma so she couldn't skive off, get cleaned up for the day, boot up the Phoenix Hawk that was now named Suhel so Emma could spend time acclimating to being both a now-fifteen year old girl and also a 45-ton war machine, get lunch, drag Emma out of Suhel to get lunch, go spend some time hooking our rides up to the ship's umbilical so we could stay acclimated, do more zero-g conditioning, and then derp around bugging the medics until dinner, after which it was checkup time for Emma and the general meeting for the military compliment where I got to frantically baffle the Canopus Royal Guard tankers without bullshitting them as to our collective tech and capabilities. Along the way we had to promise to hand out upgrades like candy, but it worked.
 
A month into the trip, though, and we were already going sand-happy. While the spacers were still holding professional, the rest of us were not- and it showed. We'd need to take shore leave at some point, get the garbage out of our systems, and straighten up before half the doctors wound up pregnant and the other half grew more modifications than they left with. Fortunately, nobody had even considered breaking into the supply of Secret Bribe Hanse With tech that not even I knew the full contents of, but it was only a matter of time.
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====New Mission====
En Route to New Avalon, T-62 days to arrival
JumpShip Succubus, Dropship Borozoi
Discipline, normally relaxed en route to a noncombat deployment, had broken down entirely without question. Our schedule had stopped slipping and instead entered freefall, and our fucking-around levels had solidly entered terminal qualitative decent. After walking in on my third orgy in the passenger droppers, I knew we were in trouble for when we landed on New Avalon- everyone would have fully considered themselves "at home", and I knew that what counted as acceptable behavior in Canopus did not make for acceptable behavior in the FedSuns.
 
A large part of the problem was we just didn't have any officers. Each doctor kept their own staff in line, and I kept the soldiers from going absolutely haywire and accidentally scuttling the JumpShip, but there wasn't any way to communicate that one group was causing issues with the other or that groups from either were going wild and fraternizing to the point of destruction. Dr. Szeny should have been keeping on top of this as our nominal expeditionary leader, but in the fifteen-ish years I'd known her the mental Venn diagram of "what I should be doing" and "what I'm actually doing" for her were only connected by her daughter's wellbeing and the occasional neurosurgery. She was a terrible officer, and most of the reason why I'd been able to hoover up so much authority was because I'd likewise taken on the responsibilities related to it all too.
 
Issue was, though, these weren't all My People. It's one thing when you grow up with a band of inevitable fuckups moving in loose formation to hoovervac up tech and information and can prove your worth reliably and repeatedly on the battlefield. However, I had no chains of formal authority over the doctors, nor any ways to make them. My position to ride herd on the soldiers was likewise fraught with peril: Emma was the official commander of the armed contingent, and I was her chief representative amongst the fighting men and women because I was her trainer and an important part of her training/recovery process.
 
So to summarize: I was slowly turning into a nervous wreck from how much of a shitshow this was. Then Emma broke into the tech transfer vault.
 
Now, to clarify, this was the box full of things that we were considering selling to Hanse for material gains. Most of it was fairly basic shit: endosteel recipies and formulations (including the "do it in nul-grav you idiots", ferro-fiberous and ferro-aluminus compounds, one of my Clan Extended Range PPCs, a dozen standard LPPCs, two of our prototype LPPCs that we'd shoved out the door at mach speed for this, the Federated-Barret Gauss Rifle documentation (copied) that we'd gotten, and the rest of the bennies we'd scrounged up.
 
Then there was the thing that made my heart stop when Emma showed it to me: the DNI system. The original DNI system- not the Canopian upgrade I had!
 
It didn't take long to get to the good doctor's quarters, ire writ clear across my features. "Szeny," I snapped. "Get over here!"
 
Slowly drifting over, Dr. Szeny looked at me carefully. "Is something the matter, Nyan?"
 
"Emma decided to take a look in the war chest for negotiations with Hanse," I said without preamble. "She might not recognize the original Direct Neural Interface system, but I do. What in the uncompromised fuck, Szeny?"
 
The doctor shrugged. "We were out of the good ones."
 
"You wanna try that again, chief?" I asked with a snarl. "We're sailing straight into the nest of a Carrion Lord, and those bastards are vengeful motherfuckers. What happens when he chips up an entire Regimental Combat Team and learns they're on a use-it-or-loose-it timer? I'll give you a hint, it starts with them looking for the head of whoever sold them defective goods!"
 
"If you bothered to look into it," Szeny said with a shrug, "you'll note that I decided, quite generously, to include our documentation."
 
"That doesn't change the math on this," I snapped.
 
"Please, it absolutely changes the math. Now he knows how many test subjects he'll need, and most of the base system is good. All I really innovated was the interface plug, some of the software, and the automatic inclusion of a pain shunt."
 
"So you're just gonna let them have this."
 
Szeny chuckled. "No. I'm going to let them flail around in the dark, beg us for neurospecialists, and then watch them sink mechwarrior after mechwarrior into a training program that's going to spit out wastes of space like our old test subjects."
 
"You killed all our old test subjects!" I snapped.
 
"Well obviously, yes. Most of them were vegetables by the time we were done, and we only had so many beds in the clinic."
 
Breathing in and out, I put my head in my hands. There was a reason Mersies hated her mother with a passion, and being fair it was moments like this that I understood it with the clarity of a laser's last lens. We'd been raised as mechwarriors first and foremost, between worlds in exile from the Trinity Alliance and the crushing omnipresence of the House Liao. Our parents hadn't- and Dr. Ti Cho Szeny had been the daughter of a Liao immigrant family before she married a good local militia mechwarrior who turned out to be knee-deep in the MIM. Treachery ran deeper in her blood than it did mine, for all Canopian culture had watered some of it out. Now, it had been replaced by a coldheartedness that was willing to consign… I didn't know how many, really, test subjects to their graves. I was half-convinced sending her on a medical mission was a way to get rid of her, before we picked her up.
 
But my mother had. Canopians stuck together, and we were sitting on a goldmine if the DNI system could be made to work. So she signed a deal with the devil, throwing whatever poor fucks the Outback wouldn't miss to the good doctor to play with. I didn't know how much blood tainted the technology that rested in my head. The answer was probably oceans of the stuff, burned away by the liter as another corpse fell into the burn pits where all the rest of our garbage went. Even if my complicity was completely incidental to the issue, there was the fact I couldn't boycott or otherwise protest the masterwork of monstrosity that had been bequeathed to me by my mother in a fit of equal parts desperation and pique. It was part of me, now, and I was part of it.
 
Regardless of my humanity or lack thereof, regardless as to the fate of possibly hundreds of test subjects now never to be, regardless of the political considerations, I had to say my piece.
 
"Ti Cho," I said bluntly, earning a sharp look up. "Under what conditions were you planning on giving Hanse the DNI system?"
 
"Depends on what I could sell it for, really," the good doctor said. "My initial plan was to barter for something major: a better dropship or maybe a jumpship, a company of mechs or two, maybe underwriting a mercenary contract to help us for our invasion of the Confederation… you know. Little things."
 
"Little things?" I wondered, shaking my head. "No. We get veto on who gets the tech, and you need to wire up the rest of the mechwarriors we brought here."
 
Szeny laughed for a moment, before staring at me. "You're serious?"
 
"Yes."
 
"You're fucking nuts."
 
"Absolutely," I said with a smirk. "I also took the liberty of making sure Ti Anne was standing by to flush it all into the black void of space unless I tell her not to by midnight. In person."
 
Using Mersies' real name made Szeny freeze up. "My daughter wouldn't-" she muttered. "She has to understand how important it is to me."
 
"She also remembers literally begging you to operate on her so she could be like me, fight with me, and never leave my side," I said, ticking the points off on my hands. "Her words, not mine, since I was still in the recovery coma at the time I believe."
 
Hands scrabbling, the good doctor looked at her watch. I smiled. It was 2230. My threat to void it all was going to go off in an hour and a half. Being radically unfamiliar with the interior of the Mule, she had no idea where the possible airlocks to check were, much less if the package was even still on the dropship. Digital notes and two dozen DNI sets only took up about a single pallet's worth of space, so we could easily have shoved it up into the JumpShip or one of the other droppers.
 
"You know, I'm really not the person to lecture about filial piety," I said, taking out a pocketknife to clean my claw-like nails, "but really, trust and loyalty are a reciprocal set of actions. They're not a currency you can bank and save like a miser. Even social debt expires, Doctor, and you of all people know what happens when this sort of thing passes its sell-by date."
 
"That's been my research of the last ten years, you can't just throw it into the void!"
 
"Can, will, and already have standing orders to that effect. Either you give all of us who have the tech implanted in us collective veto power, or we keep the Davions from getting it."
 
Dr. Szeny vibrated with barely-constrained fury, before she snapped. "And what happens if I tell Kyalla about how you tried to piss away our diplomatic gift?" she asked archly.
 
"Then I get the best defense I have against that," I said, reaching up dramatically. We were still in zero-g, recharging the jumper, and Dr. Szeny's perpetual inhabitation of the MASH unit set up in the cargo bay rapidly turned against her as I grabbed the person I'd strategically parked over the door.
 
Pulling Emma down by the bootheel, I rubbed her fluffy cat ears for a second. "You're forgetting two little things, doc," I said lightly. "Item one, what the population of those already augmented is."
 
"And item two, that your future ruler falls into the list of people who can veto this," Emma added with a venomous stare. "Are you trying to get us discredited across the Inner Sphere?"
 
"Excuse me?"
 
"Canopian bio-mods are a universal sign of quality, Szeny," Emma said, deliberately leaving off the title. "If we hand out a faulty combat mod, then the medical tourism industry will disappear like a flash in the pan. Considering that's nearly a quarter of our foreign capital flow, you will have single-handedly doomed us to the sort of economic downturn the Star League wished they could do!"
 
It was at that moment, that Szeny realized she may have fucked up.
 
"C'mon, Doc," I said, playing god cop for a minute. "Say you give it up out loud, and we won't have an issue."
 
"Either concede gracefully, or I'll have to send this information to my mother," Emma said with a snarl. "I might be a bit young to lead a diplomatic mission, but I'm willing to step up if that's what it takes."
 
"Fine!" Szeny snapped. "Fine, you furry fucks. You lot of morons can collectively decide who gets the tech. Don't listen to the developer of the system, no, just go gandering it around like it's the best thing sliced bread!"
 
"At least we won't doom our nation in doing so," I spat. "Your package has everything, right?"
 
"Everything I worked on, yes."
 
"Even the drugs?"
 
Emma looked up at me, and my glare sharpened on Szeny. "You didn't forget the drugs related to maintaining brain-system bonding, right?"
 
"I said my work, not your mothers," Szeny grumbled. "It's an entire field of pharmacology I don't understand, and it needs a lot more customization than you think."
 
"Then what about instructions for the generic booster, that Emma gets?"
 
"Fine, I'll include a copy of it. Happy?" she asked, growling.
"Quite," I replied, cracking my knuckles. "Your first patient for the Canopian DNI system, full suite no holding back, is Captain Yulia Tasan. She needs to be in and out of surgery in under two weeks so we have enough time to get all the Royal Guard through- they're all getting their ears before New Avalon."
 
"Why?" Szeny asked, baffled. I just groaned, rolling my eyes.
 
"Always present a united front, Doctor. And more importantly, when it comes time to negotiate? Never let them see you blink."
----
====Rolling in to the new homestead====
New Avalon, Federated Suns
March 16th, 3023
"Steady as it goes, boys and girls," I said, watching the hanger bay doors open. "Armor, lead us out by the numbers."
 
"Armor one, rolling!"
As our Po slow-boated out the doors, I breathed deeply. Tabbing over to Emma, I opened a private comms channel.
 
"Think you can handle this?" I asked calmly. "Not too late to back out now, and leave on one of the trucks."
 
"Armor two, rolling!" one of the tankers yelled, leading me to look down at the Partisan going out the ramp.
 
"I've got this," Emma said, breathing deeply into her mic. "The mech is an extension of myself, and I was walking around fine on Andurien."
 
"Then watch your jumpjet spikes, keep your PPCs pointed down at the ground as a safety gesture, and don't be afraid to take a knee if you think you need a breather-" I said, before getting interrupted again.
 
"Armor three, rolling!"
 
"-in case it's too much," I finished lamely.
 
"Relax, Nyan, I got this."
 
"Armor four, rolling!"
 
"If you say so, Kid," I said, shaking my head and smiling. "Mech team, out the hatch! Standard finger four parade formation, everyone: Sokoloy on nose, Howler on left point, me on right, Mersies on my right. Kid, stick behind Sokoloy and even with me. Stepping off at forty klicks an hour, and let's go!"
 
"Sokoloy, walking!"
 
On a private channel, I caught a blast of feelings from Mersies. Love, support, trust, and above all conviction in our unit. We could do this.
 
"Howler, walking!"
 
"Uh, Nyan," Emma called out to me. "When do I go?"
 
"Dead last, Kid."
 
"Thanks."
 
Note to self, teach Emma about the machine-transmitted empathy later. For now, though, Howler was clear of the ramp: time to go. "Nyan, walking!" I called out, hitting the ramp and slowly moving down, before I formed up. Since we were competent people, I'd already arranged barracks for our rides on NAIS- and more importantly, we had plenty of meetings with Hanse's people and possibly the man himself about our showing up here. The medical professionals were already getting dispatched: it was only us that were up for discussion. Time to show the man the size of his buy-one-get-one-free deal.
 
"Mersies, walking!"
 
The stakes? High. Our tools? Low. Still, we'd go in heads held high and ears wide open, trying to find out all we could.
 
"Kid, walking!"
 
Emma was a little early down the ramp, but her step was steady and sure as she moved right into formation like she was born there. In front of us, the armor lance stood by waiting, and I breathed deep.
 
"New Avalon Institute of Sciences, this is the Canopian Medical Mission Guard. Calling in to move up to barracks and hangers."
 
"This is NAIS control, come in Canopian Guard. You are cleared to enter the grounds- just don't mind the gawkers."
 
"Wilco, control. Moving out!"
 
As we marched out, I blinked. This wasn't just our entrance, this was an informal parade! More importantly, I realized rather quickly this was a parade chock full of Capellan 'mechs! Shit! Oh, I'd screwed the pooch on that one, but there wasn't any time to regret it. The turrets and bunkers on the way up didn't track us, though, and the students gawking (including some in battlemechs, funnily enough) picked up in density until we got into the hanger area.
 
"Alright everyone," I said, sighing as I stepped into the cradle, breathing deeply. "Welcome to our new home for the next few years."
 
Then, I gulped once, breathed deeply, and opened the cockpit hatch. An intrusive thought jogged my elbow as I stepped out, though- wasn't it normally relaxing to come back to one's alma mater? Oh well- not like it could be that different from how it was back in the day.
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