Are You Watching Closely? (Tall Tales)

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=Story By JA Baker=
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I met Cacy back in basic. She'd been living on the streets since she was thirteen, husting to keep mind and body together. And no, she wasn't selling her body, even if she could have gotten a First Princess ransom for it.
No, Cacy's game was slight of hand: Three Card Monty, High Draw Wins, bending spoons, or even simple pickpocketing, she must have had the fastest hands in the Crucis March. Unfortunately, her legs weren't as fast as her hands, and that's how, shortly after she turned eighteen, a judge gave her a choice that would ultimately change her life forever: prison, or the military. Cacy, thinking it was three square a day and a roof over your head was the same either way, went with the one that would actually pay her, and maybe let her relocate somewhere that she wasn't so well known, so she took the second option.
Her service entrance exams showed a far above average intelligence, as well as excellent eye-hand coordination and an eye for detail. They also showed a staggering disregard for authority, something she would go on to display all throughout basic. If the Drill Sergeant left an opening for a witty comeback? There was Cacy. If there was an opportunity to embarrass someone higher-up, which was basically everyone, there was Cacy. She was a one-woman war on military discipline, who only avoided being sent directly to jail, do not collect £200, because she actually was unmatched behind a sensor screen. With rediscovered technology starting to trickle down from NAIS, the military needed people like Cacy, who seemed to instinctively know how to get the best out of it.
That's not to say there weren't consequences for her actions, and she spent plenty of time peeling vegetables, washing dishes and running extra PT.
So yeah, basic training was interesting, to say the least. Lot of time getting shouted at by NCO's, lot of time plotting my revenge on Cacy, only for her to somehow turn everything on its head. She was something else, I tell you: just when you thought you had a lead on what she was planning, she'd pull the rug right out from under you and leave you sitting there on your arse, wondering just what the hell happened. And she'd just stand there, all innocent like, and give you this little salute with her index and middle fingers. What made it worse was, she'd never say how she pulled so many pranks without once getting caught in the act. Oh, everyone knew she was the one who put powdered dye in Lt Havershaw's shower head, but even CID could never actually prove anything, leaving the Lieutenant to walk around for a week, her hair and skin a soft baby-blue, before they figured out how to remove it safely, with no way to seek retribution.
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, tried to get Cacy to talk, but she'd just smile and insist that "A magician never reveals their secrets."
Cacy was never going to be a MechWarrior. Even if she'd passed the aptitude test, there was no way that anyone would trust her alone with something worth that much, out of legitimate fear that she'd go AWOL and hock it at first chance she got. Given her natural talent behind a sensor suite, that left armor, the often overlooked middle child of the AFFC. Mech-Jocks get all the best toys, and even infantry gets dealt a better hand these days, but armor lacks the sexiness of the former, and the adaptability of the latter.
We somehow mad it through basic. Finding ourselves commissioned as Privates in the AFFC, ad shipped clear across the Inner Sphere to the outer-reaches of the Lyran half of the Realm. Of course, this was put in motion long before Kerensky's fan club came knocking and everyone was waiting for the proverbial bell to ring on Round Five of the Succession Wars, the only question being if it would be a rematch between Hanse and Teddy-K down in the Draconis March region, or if they'd pass the grudge match down to their kids, and let Victor and Hohiro tear strips off of each other up near Rasalhague.
And who knows how that might have worked out?
Well, we never even reached our intended destination. When the Clans started chewing through units like Stefan Amaris at an all-you-can-eat buffet and grill, they started feeding troops into whatever unit needed them before being flung back into the meat grinder. We found ourselves rerouted about a dozen times. Sometimes arriving in a system to find new orders awaiting us, then to get entirely different orders just before we jumped out. Eventually, we found ourselves on Black Earth, supposedly to meet up with a unit coming back off the front lines. Having been assaulted by the Jade Falcons... I honestly wasn't listening. I was too busy regretting my life choices and doing my best to blow through what passed for my savings account in record time.
If I was going to see my life flash before my eyes, I wanted to be sure it wouldn't be boring.
We ended up missing the big show: someone higher up had arranged for a few of us lowly tankers to be set up in vehicles that had been stripped of parts to keep more combat ready units in service. As such, Cacy and I found ourselves under the command of Sergeant Ming. A truly terrifying woman with an alarming fascination for large knives. We turtle up inside an old Skulker scout tank, half buried just behind the tree line on a hillside overlooking the spaceport. With pretty much everything powered down, and about two tons of scrim netting covering us, we were pretty much invisible from a distance.
Our orders were laughable in both their simplicity and their ludicrousness. We were to observe the immediate invasion, and, should the hastily organized defenses fail, continue to monitor the occupation. We had a buried hard-line link to a hidden burst transmitter that was apparently aimed at some point in the outer system where a LIC JumpShip would periodically make an appearance. We were to keep observing and reporting, never engaging the enemy unless they found us, until our supplies ran out. Then we were to do our best to blend in with the civilian population and await the glorious return of the vengeful AFFC!
It was bullshit, and we knew it. HighCom needed someone to feed them information, and we were skilled enough to get the job done, but ultimately expendable.
So, we sat huddled in our cramped little improvised bunker. As we watched through field glasses and passive sensors as the Falcons toyed with the Seventeenth Skye Rangers, allowing their pilots to get into their fighters so they died in the air rather than on the ground, then hit the ground forces like a freight train. It took us longer to write-up and encode the report than it took the spaceport to fall. We managed to pick-up scattered radio traffic, military and civilian, filling us in on what the Grave Walkers were up to, but mostly we just watched the cleanup crews at the spaceport.
Two weeks go buy of the three of us just sitting there, watching the Jade Falcons assert their control of the planet. We were listening in on what communications we could, and generally trying not to kill each other. Let me tell you, even without a driver, a Skulker isn't exactly a roomy vehicle to spend all your time in. We certainly could have gone outside, but Sergeant Ming was very insistent that we stayed inside, keeping our heads down. I was genuinely considering murder-suicide when a group of rather large people in battle armor arrived to discuss the wonderful opportunities that awaited us as Bondsman of Clan Jade Falcon.
Yes, apparently Bondsman is a unisex term, providing that equality of the sexes is still some way off.
Well, the Clans think even less of tankers than the Inner Sphere does. Which is somewhat ironic, when you think about is. As such, we weren't lumped in with the MechWarriors they'd captured, but instead assigned to the technical cast. Where we were told to make ourselves useful driving utility vehicles around the spaceport. Sergeant Ming was constantly going on about how it was our sworn duty to resist, to do everything in our power to slow the Jade Falcons advance through the Commonwealth. I asked her exactly how my delivering a shipment of self-sealing stem bolts and reverse ratcheting routers to the local power plant was an act of treason. She just gave me a dirty look. Through this all, I could tell that Cacy was up to something. There was no way that someone with a subversive streak a kilometer wide could so suddenly and happily adapt to the Clan way of doing things. It was like expecting a Liao not to stab you in back just to see if their knife was sharp.
No, she was up to something, and I couldn't tell if I wanted to be near her when it finally went down or not: something told me that the Falcons would be even less appreciative of her pranks.
Two months into our new lives as chattel, Cacy comes walking up to me with a worrying smile on her face and asks me to walk with her. Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I agree, and the two of us made our way out to the docking bay, where an angry looking Ming was waiting for us next to the battered old Bulldog truck I used to make my deliveries.
This was when Cacy started her show: she held up her hands to show they were empty, then, suddenly, the key for the truck, which I had seen my overseer lock away inside a safe, appeared in one. She handed it to me and suggested that we should go for a drive. I looked at Ming, who had an intrigued look on her face, and she told me to get in the truck. While I was getting sorted, Cacy walked over to the big, roll-down door to the dock, and slowly raised her hands up. Without so much as a creak, the heavy old door rose up out of the way, allowing the cold night air to drift in. I started the truck, but instead of the usual rattle and groan on an abused engine long overdue a complete teardown and rebuild, it purred like a newborn kitten. Even the normally temperamental clutch sounded smooth as silk as I put it into drive.
Cacy jumped up onto the running board and slapped the roof, indicating that we should get going. Slowly and with some trepidation, I started the truck forward, easing out into the moonlit yard. The docks door closed silently behind us, as I carefully edged around a pile of shipping containers that had been left outside. Evidently, the Falcons had no concept of basic security, because the gate leading out of the shipping offices into the highway had been left open. Anywhere else in the Inner Sphere, and there would have been armed guards on duty round the clock, but there? Nothing. Even the CCTV was obviously disabled, meaning just anyone could walk in, or out, at will. The roads were silent, the entire city still under strict, shoot-first-and-don't-even-pretend-to-ask-questions curfew, as Cacy directed us onto the main road leading towards the spaceport. Even during the day, I would have been stopped at least three times by second-line troops, checking my ID, orders and the contents of the truck, but we drove past the board looking sentries without so much as a glance.
In fact, if anything, it was almost as if they never saw us.
This feeling was only amplified when I had to hit the breaks suddenly when a 'Mech, ambled across an intersection ahead of us. Now, this could have been the usual sense of smug self-importance that most MechWarriors have, or something more unique to the Clans and their way of looking down on the lower casts, but you'd expect at least a look, or a shouted insult over the external speakers. But no, we were again totally ignored. Cacy glared at me, warning me to be careful as it was taking all her concentration as it was. To this day I have no idea what she was talking about, but Ming just grunted and told me to keep an eye out in future.
Reaching the spaceport proper seemed to signify the end of our good luck. That gate was not only closed, but guarded by an entire squad of Elementals in full combat armor. I may not have been a member of the Clans for long, but one of the first things you learn if, for all their usually jovial good humor, Elementals are not people you want to get on the bad side of. They'd think nothing of riddling our commandeered truck with enough bullets that you could use it as a tea strainer. I stopped the truck just short of the very clearly painted line on the road, and Cacy jumped down, walking forward with a casual smile on her face.
I couldn't hear exactly what she said, but she evidently had the guards attention, the five of them gathering around to hear her speak. A couple of them looked down the street, before their apparent leader nodded to Cacy and they took off in a series of long, loping bounds, assisted by their jump-packs. Seemingly without a care in the world, Cacy opened the gate and waved us through, relocking it after us. Now it was Ming's turn to ask what was going on, but Cacy just shrugged and said something about internal Clan politics and people not being careful about who might be listening when they talked.
Well, like a lot of places, once we were through the front gate, people just assumed that we were authorized to be there. An illusion only strengthened by Cacy acting with supreme confidence as we made our way across to one of the smaller civilian terminals. There we saw a truly ancient looking Leopard class DropShip that had very obviously been disarmed and converted over to cargo haulage. Cacy directed us into an open hatch, then into a waiting cargo bay. I stopped the truck, and latches snapped shut over the wheels, holding it securely in place. Shadows moved in the darkness, and as they stepped into the light, I recognized them as other Bondsmen. Mostly from the Seventeenth, captured during the invasion. Ming looked at them and asked what they were all doing there, to which their apparent leader, a former Hauptmann, told us that their entire barracks had been ordered to help load cargo, only none had arrived.
Ming and I looked at Cacy, who was grinning like the proverbial cat that got the cream, but she simply bid us to follow her.
Making our way up to the small flight deck, where we found the pilot, going over some kind of pre-flight checks. Cacy put a hand on his should then snapped her fingers, and his head slumped forward. Almost as if he'd suddenly fallen into a deep sleep while still standing. Leaning in, Cacy started to whisper into his ear, placing what looked like a CD-ROM into his hands. Stepping back, she snapped her fingers again and the pilot came sharply to attention, actually saluted her. Then quickly got to work starting up the DropShips transit drive. We all found somewhere to strap ourselves in, with some difficulty, as a Leopard has a crew of nine, and there has to be closer to twenty of us. The pilot slipped the CD into the flight computer and started to talk over the radio with air traffic control. I didn't catch exactly what he said, but we were soon hurtling down the runway and lifting off up into the air.
I still don't know how Cacy pulled it off, but apparently the flight-plan she'd arranged made it look like we were delving supplies and collecting ore from a mining camp on an airless moon in the outer system. Of course, no such mine actually existed, but had been created by he devious imagination as an excuse to head out that way without being run down and blown out of the sky by angry aerospace pilots. It did, however, get us to the general area of the LIC spy ship we'd been reporting to before being captured. The Hauptmann was able to send out a short-ranged transmission that convinced them that we were indeed friendly, and they picked us up before jumping back out of the system.
What followed was months of debriefings and questioning, by a seemingly endless parade of identically dressed and nameless officials. Eventually, we were all given some minor medals and shipped off to New units. All except Cacy, who vanished seemingly into thin air. Nobody seemed to be exactly sure what happened to her, or t the very least, wasn't willing to talk.
Years later, and I was on Coventry, awaiting a flight out to my next posting, when a gaggle of men and women who couldn't have done more to identify themselves as military intelligence if they'd been leading a parade, complete with elephants and acrobats, lions, snakes and monkeys. I watched them with only vague interest, until I saw her there, right in the middle: Cacy, still smiling that easy smile. We locked eyes for the briefest of moments, and she gave me that same lazy salute, and the, just like that, she was gone.
The End
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Are You Watching Closely?
Are You Watching Closely?
Are You Watching Closely?