GblaRCS Chpt 8

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 8 -==
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"Niops VII is too damn cold for comfort, Alphard is too damn hot. I've heard that Stafford has a nice temperate climate, let's annex that system quickly while the Marik's are still distracted."'''
Colonel Roger Callhan - 2833CE'''
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===Banquets and Open Bars===
Association Council Building – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2828
Trish Ebon grimaced as a particularly sharp gust of icy wind that came barrelling down the street caught her. 'How long do we have to wait out here?" she asked. "It's getting dark, by which I mean darker" she added. It never really got bright here, at least not by the standards of worlds in most inhabited systems.
It didn't help that the street lighting was expressly designed to avoid light pollution which the locals regarded about as negatively as other places thought about radioactive nuclear waste. On the plus side you could pretty clearly see the stars at night, even in town. That gave you something to look at when you lay on your back gazing up at them after being run over by a ground car, crossing the street at night wearing dark clothes being pretty hazardous here.
"Told you we should have worn the cloaks, Trish." Franklin Hallis replied, his sense of vindication off-set by his failure to press the issue.
"Maybe if it was a fancy-dress party and we were going as Comstar." Trish replied dismissively. She had never liked the hooded cloaks that Khan McEvedy had adopted as clan formal wear.
"They're warm." Hallis pointed out.
"They're ridiculous." Trish opined as they continued to wait outside the seat of government for the Niops Association, a building that resembled a drab office block more than it did a grand senate house or potentate's palace.
It would be bad form to go in before Lieutenant-General Romanov arrived but she had gotten herself caught up with something urgent she couldn't delegate and was running late.
Trish sighed. "There had better be food served at this shindig" she said, "and a free bar" she added.
"It's a formal affair, so it's a 'soirée' not a 'shindig' Trish" Hallis told her.
"You know you can tell your father was a general, you were just born to be an officer and a gentleman weren't you?" she asked rhetorically. "You're just so sophisticated" Trish continued, grinning. "Or does that come with being Khan?"
Hallis smirked. "Sure as hell doesn't come with being saKhan apparently" he replied, checking his watch. The only reason Trish even got an invite was actually her semi-official title of saKhan, and a degree of confusion among the local elites as to what Clan leadership positions actually meant in terms of their status in high society. In the end someone decided that you could equate a Khan to a Count of the Terran Hegemony in terms of power and authority, which made a saKhan equivalent to a Baron (or Baroness in her case). "We're missing the chance for a glass of champagne and caviar on melba toast while the High Associator schmoozes the guests" Hallis complained.
"Yeah" Trish responded laughing for a moment before stopping when she saw his expression. "Wait. Are you being serious about the caviar?"
"Sure. They introduced a genetically modified sturgeon here years ago, you can find them in a lot of the river estuaries in the warmer parts of the planet." Hallis told her.
"How do you know that?"
"I went out on a boat fishing with Frederick and his sibling company, there was a guide who was telling the kits about the fish here, native and introduced." Hallis explained. "I nearly caught an Ironfin Tuna."
"Nearly?"
"Damn thing broke the heavy-duty line." Hallis explained. "Did you know they grow up to half-a-ton in weight?" he asked rhetorically. "I should have rustled up some ****** depth-charges" he muttered to himself. "The Ironfin look a little different than the ones imported from Brownsville supposedly, nowhere near as much in the way of heavy metals in the seas here."
Trish sighed and shook her head sadly. "I read a report on the state of the Hegemony Worlds saying that the nuclear winter there should finish soon, if it hasn't already. Still not somewhere I'd want to go for the sport fishing."
"It's doing better than Lone Star." Hallis replied gloomily, having read the same report. "Romanov is here" he suddenly announced, pointing down the road to where an old J. Edgar ground-effect vehicle came just come into sight, the reconnaissance hovercraft kicking up dust but making sure to remain under the town's speed limit. Most of the way from the Arecibo Plains Romanov likely had the driver going flat-out, but tearing through the capital at over hundred-and-eighty would result in a speeding fine that no quantity of stars on your collar could get you out of.
The J. Edgar came to a stop and Lieutenant-General Romanov got out, returning salutes from both Hallis and Ebon before telling the driver she would radio him when she needed collecting. As it drove off again she appraised the two officers from the 331st.
"What kind of dress uniform is that?" Romanov wanted to know. Whatever it was they had on it certainly wasn't proper SLDF issue even if it was, at least, regulation olive drab in color.
"These are the only dress uniforms we have, Ma'am." Hallis explained, apologetically.
"You look like you're cosplaying as cadets from a Lyran Military Academy" Romanov opined. Certainly the style and cut of their uniforms had the air of Steiner about it, the Prussian Collar in particular, although the Sam Browne belt worn over their jackets was more of a periphery militia thing.
Trish Ebon thought the yellow-tan leather gloves and knee-length boots that accompanied Romanov's own SLDF Dress Greens looked even more ridiculous and incongruous than a Clan Wolverine cloak did, but was smart enough not to say it.
"I think all the other guests have already arrived and gone in, Ma'am." Hallis told Romanov. "Couple of hundred of them all-told."
"I'll expect we'll overhear a few snide remarks about military punctuality, but some things are higher priority than a social event" Romanov replied. "One of our JumpShip scouting to anti-spinward ran into some pirates. They had them outgunned so as per standing orders they engaged. After losing a few aerospace fighters the rest of the pirates jumped out. Admiral Bremman wants to deploy an L-F Tramp with a Titan to Alphard to secure our grain supply."
"Sensible." Hallis concurred with the admiral's thinking. Finding out that there was a reasonably sizeable farming community on Alphard only two jumps away, one that was willing to trade for their food surplus after a good harvest that year, had been a blessing. After a few months of fish most every day, and edible seaweed every other day, even the fonio they grew on Alphard, the arid conditions making it a more suitable crop than the rice, wheat or maize common on most worlds, had been gratefully received by the civilian population. Bread and porridge made from fonio wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either, and you could always turn it into a perfectly good beer.
The Alphard Trading Corporation (ATC) had settled the planet not long prior to the Periphery Uprising of 2765, wanting a local workforce for a planned expansion in their nascent mining operations there. The ATC had named the world in honor of the other planet Alphard, the one in the Free Worlds League where the corporation was founded, but any plans they might have had for further development were stymied by the entire Inner Sphere having gone to hell shortly thereafter. The Periphery Uprising was immediately followed by the Amaris War which was itself soon followed by the fall of the Star League and then the Succession War, resulting in the new colony being abandoned and left to its own devices for decades, while the corporation itself went bankrupt and largely folded.
On the plus side, the isolated and forgotten settlers stranded there managed to get through the whole terrible age without getting blasted by orbital bombardment, so compared to many other places they didn't do too badly out of an otherwise unfortunate set of circumstances. They did have to suffer the very occasional visit by pirate raiders, something that led to them having treated the first visitors from these 'Niops Association' folks warily, but if you turned up seeking trade not making threats, and you brought news from the rest of the galaxy, they soon warmed up to you.
Alphard would never be a bread-basket of a world. It was so hot and dry that only a small proportion of the land was ever going to be arable without a number of truly epic irrigation projects, but you didn't need billions of acres under the plough to support a population that was barely into the double-digit millions by the late 2820s. They had a lot more people living there than Niops could boast, but the Inner Sphere was littered with cities that had more people living there than the combined populations of Niops V, VI and VII.
"I've told Bremman to be ready to go as soon as I get approval from the High Associator" Romanov told them. "Good thing he's right in there and hopefully in a pliable mood after a few drinks. Let's get going shall we?" she asked rhetorically, heading off towards the entrance.
If this had been an event held in much of the Inner Sphere, where the nobility reigned supreme, and for some reason the rules of etiquette were based on those of 18th Century Europe, they might have expected to be loudly and formally introduced to the other guests on arrival by a servant with excellent diction, but, as it was they practically managed to sneak in unnoticed.
Officially the 'High Associators Annual Ball' the guest list in previous years had been invariably made up of politicians, senior academics and a smattering of NAM officers, all either born within the Terran Hegemony or whose parents or grandparents had been. It seemed however that High Associator Olson had taken to heart a few pointed remarks from certain people of a Wolverine persuasion regarding caste systems and there were a few more token representatives from the Capellan immigrant community than usual. Respectable small or medium business owners for the most part, although there were a few 'community leaders' who had been pushing for more integration and, of course, Guan Yuanchun, the richest man in Niops.
The richest man in Niops being the son of a Capellan immigrant might have seemed a little odd if you didn't know the story, it had certainly surprised the SLDF people when they found out. His father had been the ship's captain and owner of the Chǎngníng, the Leviathan class jumpship that had carried eight overcrowded DropShips full of refugees into the system decades before. The government of the Niops Association allowed them to stay but they didn't want the Chǎngníng leaving so it could remind outsiders the place existed.
After some negotiations the government nationalised the jumpship, agreeing to pay the owner the market value for the vessel. The problem was, even an obsolescent four-hundred-year-old jumpship, of a class that hadn't been manufactured since the Reunification War, was worth an absolute fortune, and they didn't have the sum required to hand. Fortunately Guan Yuanchun's father was open to being paid in instalments of roughly two-and-a-half million dollars a year… for the next century, thus setting up his young son and future descendants quite nicely.
The Guan family had learned that while you couldn't buy your way into the ruling class here, you could make campaign contributions to their election campaigns, which meant they certainly wouldn't ignore you for fear of you giving money to their rivals.
On most any other planet the richest family would have held even more sway, but in the Niops Association, where the money had portraits of famous scientists on it not long-dead members of the nobility, it wasn't 'All about the Newtons' despite what the rappers said. It was all about standing on the shoulders of giants.
Rapping being a big cultural thing on Niops was something else the SLDF people had found weird. The first time Trish Ebon went into a bar and found the entertainment for the evening was two nerds rhyming to each other in a lyrical battle about whether Gottfried Leibniz or Isaac Newton was the 'King of Calculus' left her nonplussed. It was also the first time she heard the phrase 'It's all about the Newtons', when the advocate for the man himself waved a handful of the hundred-dollar bills that bore his likeness in front of his rival.
It had been stacks of 'Newtons' given out as loans from the Guan family which had enabled other immigrants to set up businesses, including the popular Cantonese restaurants and take-out places dotted around town. As such it was unsurprising to see a number of the guests from that community buzzing around Guan Yuanchun, while in-turn the man in question chatted with the High Associator and other important politicians.
To some among the original population, albeit a small minority to be fair, Guan Yuanchun was considered 'uppity'. Given that he had four children already, and another on the way, all that money was eventually going to be divided up amongst an awful lot of grandchildren and great-grandchildren so in the longer term the proper order of things should be restored, they reasoned.
There had always been Capellans other than the Guans at these sorts of events of course, it just made a change that the majority of them were there as guests, they weren't just serving canapés or tending bar.
It was a small incremental change perhaps, but Franklin Hallis felt pretty sure that Sarah would have approved as he sought out a drink.
Although billed as a 'Ball' there seemed to be very little actual dancing going on, with only a handful of couples to be seen on the dance floor, going through the motions as a waltz played from loudspeakers. Less than half the female guests were clad in actual ballgowns, the majority in more conventional dresses of varying quality, though none being actually cheap or informal. Most people were simply milling about having conversations, generally with a glass in their hands. The 'Ball Room' for the evening was itself really just a large chamber usually used for charity events, townhall meetings and the like, with other smaller rooms that opened onto it used for spillover, a couple with tables and chairs and one hosting the bar.
Not being exactly familiar with champagne Trish and Hallis asked Romanov if the stuff being served was good quality, her reply that it was the best champagne she had tasted in over fifty years failing to clarify things much. She did warn them from experience that it had a higher alcohol content than they might think it had, being very easy to drink, and that it was also a very, very bad idea to get drunk on the stuff because it was hellish coming back up, refusing to elucidate further on how exactly she knew that.
Hallis quickly determined a method for telling who the Capellans among the guests were, they were the ones that addressed his commanding officer as 'General Romanova' instead of Romanov like everyone else, and they invariably asked if she was related to the Tsars. Despite the stereotype the Capellan Confederation wasn't just 'China in Space', it was partially 'Russia in Space' too, thanks to the mix of worlds that comprised the youngest of the Inner Sphere's Great Powers.
She was in fact related to the Tsars. At least according to her grandfather who had told her as a little girl that they were descended from the fourth son of the third son of Tsar Nicholas I. That didn't put them very high up in the line of succession at the time, but it had meant they had to flee Russia in 1917 before the Bolsheviks had them shot.
Despite her lineage she herself spoke barely a word of Russian while many of the Capellan community on Niops could. That was something you had to keep in mind about them, their English wasn't necessarily always necessarily the best, but that was because most of them spoke something else at home. In many cases English was actually their third or even fourth language, after Mandarin, Cantonese and Russian, and they actually thought it was pretty funny to have their accents or fluency in English criticized by the terminally monolingual.
Franklin Hallis had intended to prop up the bar, this being situated in a side-room off the main meeting hall of the building where the Ball was taking place, but Romanov ordered him to mingle like Trish was doing so he sought out Brigadier-General Nellis of the NAM who was discussing fleet deployments with some academics interested in stellar mapping.
"I don't think most people truly grasp the distances involved, at least not judging by how many seem to expect the ships to be back any day now." Nellis opined to the group. "Thunderer and Rawhide might have set off months ago but Camelot Command is thirty jumps from here, just the round trip there and back would take more than a year, and that's not taking into account how long it will take them to strip the place of everything useful and pack it up for transport back here" he noted. "We're talking hundreds of thousands of tonnes of equipment just to fill the dropships they're hauling with them, let alone the cargo bays of the ships themselves."
"Nearly three-hundred thousand tons of cargo space aboard Thunderer, closer to four-hundred thousand for Rawhide." Hallis interjected. "We borrowed the largest available ships we could from the Clan boneyards for Switchback."
"Interesting use of the word 'borrowed' there, Franklin." Nellis responded, amused by the phrasing.
Hallis laughed. "Rumors that I told the crew that boarded Thunderer to 'drive it like you stole it' are entirely unfounded' he joked, the academics laughing along with him.
"In some ways the ships assigned to salvage Camelot Command have it easy though" Nellis suggested. "The round trip to Buffalo Meadows is over eighty jumps for Buccaneer and Maverick, and that's taking the short route practically straight across the middle of the Inner Sphere."
"They don't even get to visit anywhere interesting on the way. Only systems that were never colonized, had mining outposts or hosted SLDF facilities because we can't risk them running into anyone" Hallis noted. "It's a good thing we got used to long boring journeys."
"You're not worried about mechanical breakdowns? I know that JumpShip prefer to travel between inhabited systems because of that concern" one of the academics queried.
"They're both in good condition that's why they were assigned the mission. Buccaneer is actually the youngest warship in the fleet with the fewest miles on her." Hallis replied. "She was only completed a year before the Periphery Uprising and was still in her shake-down cruise when fighting broke out" he continued. "The Monolith Class JumpShip like Maverick weren't even put into production until the tail end of the Amaris War so she's even newer."
"The Buccaneer is a Sovetskii Soyuz class Heavy Cruiser right?" one of the academics asked. "My son makes plastic models of warships and talks about them a lot. I blame myself for buying him a copy of Janes Fighting Ships instead of a telescope when he was younger."
"He must have been thrilled when the real thing jumped into the system" Hallis surmised.
The academic nodded. "Yes. Now he wants to join the navy when he's older." he replied. "I suppose you approve?"
"Of joining the Navy? Never, my family are Army going back forever. I had an ancestor in the British Army who rode a tank during the NATO intervention into Second Soviet Civil War" Hallis told them.
Nellis smiled. "I think I had an ancestor who flew fighters for the United States Air Force in that one" he recalled. "Or it might have been in the war against the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, I'm not sure" he said. The two early 21st Century conflicts were often bound up together in people's minds as the origin of what eventually became the Terran Alliance.
"The Air Force? Didn't he want to join the military instead?" Hallis couldn't resist the old joke, Nellis laughing along although he doubted the aerospace fighter jocks of the NAM would find it quite so funny. "If anyone wants to lay a bet on it we're running a book on who gets back first, Buccaneer or Thunderer." he announced. "The ships heading to Buffalo Meadows have a lot further to go, and they left well after the ones going to Camelot because we had to manufacture the replacement jump drive parts for Ulithi first, but compared to taking apart a whole starbase fixing a ship, even something the size of a Potemkin, is a quick job as long as you have the parts."
As to whether they could get the jumpdrive on Ulithi working again with a jury-rigged repair that was by no means certain, although the parts the Project Workshops produced for the task met the required standards, at least theoretically. In the worst case scenario the fourteen dropships the Buccaneer and Maverick could haul between them could bring back all the rest of the 295th personnel wise, plus a lot of their equipment. The remainder of their gear would likely have to wait there in mothballs.
It was difficult to make up for the carrying capacity of a Potemkin. Between its cavernous cargo hold, and the twenty-five dropships it could carry, the thing was in a league of its own. In reality it was as much a prize as the six regiments of Battlemechs also waiting to be collected at Buffalo Meadows were, if not more so. Even if they got a shipyard up and running in record time, the economy of the Niops Association simply wouldn't stretch to building something remotely as costly in money and resources as a Potemkin for decades, perhaps not this century.
As the night wore on, and more alcohol was consumed, people started to loosen up a little. Hallis was taken a little aback by a woman asking him if it was true the Clans practiced jus primae noctis, which he of course truthfully denied but wondered how the hell that rumour got started.
The other medieval thing, trial by combat? Oh, yeah that was true, we did that, he confirmed before being persuaded to tell a few war stories.
After pestering the man for a while Romanov received permission from the High Associator to deploy a ship to interdict any pirates heading to Alphard, contacting Admiral Bremman by radio straight away to tell him the mission was a go. They didn't need to send an actual warship, a Tramp class transport carrying a Titan fighter carrier dropship was more than a match for most any pirate force. The Tramp itself carried a few relatively light guns, the Titan more than a few, but it was really the three squadrons of aerospace fighters the latter carried that would inspire the belief that discretion was the better part of valor and send the miscreants running. That was a lot of fast-moving, hard-hitting firepower by periphery standards.
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===Matchmaking for a shy man===
Later, after making the mistake of revealing she had taken lessons in ballroom dancing while a cadet, this being very much the thing to do back then apparently, Jenna Romanov found herself unwillingly on the dance floor. First performing a Minuet with an elderly nuclear chemist who was surprisingly light on his feet, happily not making a complete idiot of herself though wishing her dress uniform boots were more suitable for such things, she then found herself stuck there for a Viennese Waltz as well.
"The last time I did that it was with the youngest son of the Duke of Caph at a Ball on Zollikofen, I remember finding out years later than Amaris had him killed along with most of the rest of his family" Romanov told Trish after she eventually managed a tactical withdrawal from the dancefloor. "Felt a little bad for having slapped him so hard when he got drunk and tried to grab my ass later that evening" she recalled, frowning.
Trish laughed. "Talking of asses, Franklin has been checking out the one on that girl over there in the slinky dress for most of the last ten minutes" she said. Pointing over to where her commanding officer stood nursing a drink and an expression of uncertainty what to do.
"If there's one thing I can't stand for in the men and women under my command it's indecisiveness," Romanov declared. "Go kick him or something."
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"Yes Ma'am, right away, Ma'am" Trish responded gleefully, heading off in his direction.
Franklin Hallis sipped on his latest glass of champagne wishing it was a good scotch, or a passable vodka, or a strong hooch that was light enough on the methanol that it wouldn't make you go blind as he tried to look interested in a conversation about the mass of stars and how brown dwarfs were also-rans in the sport of stellar evolution. The young woman over there watching the dancing was pretty though and he racked his brain on how he could strike up a conversation without sounding like an under-educated cretin.
"Can I have a request a private word with you, Sir." Trish Ebon broke his train of thought.
"Affirmative" Hallis replied, following her off to one side, the music being loud enough that they wouldn't be overheard. "What is it, Trish?" he asked.
"Her Imperial Majesty, the Tsarina of All the Russias, says if you don't go talk to the girl instead of continuing with the creepy staring she'll have you shot, or sent to Siberia or something" Trish told him, embellishing her instructions a little.
Hallis blinked. "I don't know what you're talking about." he lied unconvincingly.
"Franklin, if you think I'm above going over to her and saying 'My friend over there really thinks you're pretty and stuff and wants to ask you out' then you are very, very mistaken about just how much fun that would be for me." Trish threatened. "You're a grown man not a teenager for the love of Cameron. I've literally seen you looking less nervous leading soldiers into battles that were likely to get you killed" she said. "For that matter I have seen you leave a bar at the end of the night with a chick from the Steel Vipers who had literally threatened to knife you in the back earlier that evening."
"That turned out to be a big mistake, she was completely insane" Hallis replied, grimacing at the memory.
"All Steel Viper girls are insane, they take after their Khan, you can practically smell the crazy on that bitch but that's beside the point" Trish replied. "Stop checking out the girl and go talk to her. Romanov's orders."
Hallis groaned and set off towards the girl. "Jax Benedict would not have treated me like this if I'd made him saKhan instead" he muttered to himself regretfully.
The girl must have noticed him approaching because she turned towards him as he arrived. She had been sitting with an older man earlier, not her partner judging by their interactions, more likely her father Hallis decided. The man was off having a conversation with a few other guests on the other side of the room and had been for a while now. "Hi" Hallis greeted her. "This is the first one of these I've been to, how long do they go on for?" he asked, thinking that might be a decent way to strike up a conversation. "I need to be up early for an inspection."
The girl shrugged. "First one of these for me too" she replied in a thick Capellan accent which surprised him a little as her dress looked bespoke and really expensive. Her ethnicity was obviously East Asian but it wasn't like the people from the Terran Hegemony who settled here first were some kind of Caucasian monoculture. Given her age she must be a second-generation immigrant but the Terran accent typical of Niops had passed her by completely somehow. "What you being inspected for?" she asked, revealing her English was a little halting too.
"I'm the one supposed to be doing the inspecting" Hallis told her.
"Make sense, you must be an officer to get invited here. Not Militia, wrong uniform. SLDF soldier?" she reasoned.
"Yes" Hallis confirmed. "Mechwarrior with the 331st Division" he added proudly.
"Wolverine person then, not real SLDF like General Romanova" the girl replied airily. "I meet Wolverine people before. They don't speak proper English, use made-up words."
Hallis opened his mouth to vigorously challenge her assertions before closing it again because objectively she wasn't entirely wrong, her own fluency in English notwithstanding. "You should have heard me speak a couple of years ago, I'm still trying to relearn to use contractions consistently" he responded instead.
"We both need talk to people that speak proper English more then. I mostly talk Mandarin or Russian to friends and family" she told him. "I was better at it before I left school" she admitted. "Got rusty fast working for uncle over there" she continued, indicated the man who had been sitting with her earlier. "All his workers at clothing factory also Capellans. I boss them around all day" she continued before grinning. "Only usually use English there for extra swear-words when I run out of Chinese and Russian ones" she joked.
"I am shocked, shocked I tell you!" Hallis responded, trying to sound as if he was appalled by her confession. "I would never swear at my troops to get them to do something more quickly" he lied, blatantly and unconvincingly. "Although I can threaten to have them shot, or thrown out of an airlock, which you can't and that has got to be bad for labour relations."
"Since when I can't threaten to have them shot?" the girl asked, feigning visible confusion that lasted a few seconds before she laughed. "Uncle say much easier to do business back home in Capellan Confederation, none of this 'Workers Rights' nonsense like there is here" she joked again. "So what are you? Major? Maybe Colonel?"
"Lieutenant-General" Hallis replied. "Technically only an Acting Lieutenant-General of brevet rank, so I get all the extra work without the extra pay."
The girl looked dubious about his claim. "You're lying" she replied eventually.
"No. I really don't get the extra pay" Hallis confirmed deadpan, fully realising that wasn't what she meant.
"Franklin Hallis Lieutenant-General of Wolverine people. You not him, he like fifty, same age as my father, born before Kerensky left, it say so in the newspaper" the girl stated with conviction. "You no older than… thirty maybe?"
Hallis laughed. "I was about twenty years ago" he told her, reaching down under his collar and pulling out his dog tags with his name on them, showing them to her as proof of identity before putting his tags back in place. "Hegemony anti-aging treatments as a kid" he explained. "So now you know my name, can I get yours?" he requested.
"Barbara" she replied. "You too old for me" she told him flatly after a pause.
"I'm sorry?"
"You going to ask me on a date but you too old for me" Barbara repeated her assertion.
"What makes you think I'm going to ask you on a date?"
"Aren't you?"
"At this point I'm not even sure." Hallis told her. "I'm apparently too old for you" he said wryly. "Although you might want to consider that in fifty years people will think I look way too young for you."
"Sixty maybe, Capellan Chinese genes, we age better than you Caucasians without fancy Terran drugs" Barbara replied before something suddenly occurred to her. "All the women your age on planet look too old for you now!" she realized before pursing her lips and looking thoughtful. "Alright, one date… out of pity" she offered magnanimously.
Hallis looked at her incredulously for a few moments before grinning. "If you didn't seem like this much of a challenge, and didn't look that good in that dress, I'd have too much self-respect to take you up on that offer."
"One date." Barbara repeated. "Out of pity." she reminded him. "Uncle coming over, don't tell him you don't get full pay for being Lieutenant-General" she advised seriously. "Do tell him I look good in dress. He made it for me."
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==Chapter Note from the Author==
*;Notes from the Author : Back in the 2720's the Alphard Trading Corporation (ATC) from Alphard in the Free Worlds League (FWL) decided to expand its holdings in the periphery and set up subsidaries out there looking for investment and development opportunities. One of these subsidaries staked a claim on a world a few jumps anti-spinward of the FWL and promptly named it after themselves. The other Alphard, the one in the periphery, proved to be incredibly blessed in mineral wealth and would have made ATC rich beyond the dreams of avarice if not for the Periphery Uprising (2765-2766) which was followed by the Amaris War (2766-2799) and then the First Succession War (2786-2821) all of which conspired to shatter the economy of the Inner Sphere and bankrupted the corporation.Most of the land surface of Alphard (the periphery one) is very hot and arid, with only a small area in the two northern continents cool enough to farm with water available for irrigation. When ATC folded a few settlers were left behind but being cut-off from civilization by decades of war never developed much beyond subsistance farming. The mining operations of the ATC were much further south in the parched inhospitable regions where nobody went (it wasn't like they could export anything they dug up and anything that looks like wealth in the periphery draws pirates).The Capellan Refugees that turned up in the Niops system must had got there somehow, they weren't rich and and there were a lot of them, so I thought why not an old Leviathan jumpship. The Niops Association buying the thing off the owner to prevent them leaving (endangering the system's isolation) was a more civilised course of action than they might have adopted but they were still faced with the problem that even an obsolete jumpship is worth a staggering amount, hence having to pay for it by installments.The popularity of nerdcore rapping being a unique cultural trait of the Niops Association was a notion I had that struck me as hilarious. The Niops Dollar (based on the old Star League Dollar) having famous scientists on it rather than First Lords of the Star League is the reason why it's 'All about the Newtons son'.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz posse represents!Oh, and Trish Ebon is very right about Ellie Kinnison, Khan of Clan Steel Viper.
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