GblaRCS Chpt 15

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 15 -==
<<Next Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
----
"My opponent asks of my campaign promises during this election, 'Where's the beef?', saying that they're vague and insubstantial. To that I say, the beef is on the plate of everyone on Niops that wants it because I was the one that ensured the Cameron Star flew over Francas again. With Giles Olson you get a proven record of action."Re-election Campaign Speech by High Associator Giles Olson - 2835 CE
----
===Beginnings of the Interrogations===
SLDF Headquarters – Niops VII – 2829
Stefani Marcus had never been handcuffed and chained to a piece of furniture before. She had certainly ordered other people to be put in chains on many an occasion, albeit for entirely practical reasons to stop the forced labor from escaping, but now the shoe was on the other foot she couldn't for the life of her understand why some people supposedly enjoyed this sort of thing. For a start the handcuffs chafed at her wrists, you couldn't scratch your back when it itched, and it was just so damn inconvenient not being able to get up and stretch your legs when you needed to.
The breakfast served earlier in her cell had been bread and water, such a classic, and while it had been enough to stop her stomach rumbling she would kill for a cup of coffee, literally. The orange jumpsuit she had on just wasn't her color and they had taken her jewellery, including her wristwatch despite her protestations it wasn't pirate booty like the rest of it. After voicing some surprise she still wore them they did at least let her keep her Rim Worlds Republic Army dogtags, which provided some small hope they might treat her as a POW not a pirate, and they addressed her as 'Major Marcus' once she told them that despite it stating her rank as captain on her tags she had in fact been accorded the status of a brevet major before the 141st decided that the war was lost.
Trying to get them to take her more recent title of 'Pirate Queen of the Blood Rain' seriously was an excise in futility and had only prompted a response that if she was a queen then they might have to construct a guillotine for her instead of a gallows.
Frankly anything would be better than getting flushed out of an airlock, so decapitation was fine with her when it came to methods of execution. Not that she actually expected a merciful beheading.
Thanks to the judicious use of some kind of drugs to render her comatose shortly after she was dragged out of the wreck of her Dragoon and identified as the one in charge, Marcus had no idea how long it had been since the battle on Algenib or where she was, only that she had woken up in a cell yesterday. They had obviously treated her injuries, and they weren't near to be fully healed yet including the more minor cuts and bruises, so it couldn't have been that long, or her present location that far away.
After being escorted from her cell to another room by a couple of hulking soldiers in SLDF uniform, presumably for interrogation, she had been sat chained to this damn table for a couple of hours now. The white-painted room was devoid of any furniture apart from the table and two chairs, the one she was sat on and the other across the table from her, and she was getting bored. "I'm going to need to visit the restroom at some point, just saying." she said loudly, knowing someone would be listening in. "I don't have the right plumbing for peeing accurately into a bucket if bringing one in was going to be your plan instead."
The door opened and an older woman with grey hair wearing civilian clothes entered, incongruously dabbing at herself with a towel as she walked in. "I believe you mechwarrior types have some other contraption for dealing with that issue in the cockpit" she remarked, smiling.
"The men's version is a lot more comfortable to use from what I've been able to determine." Marcus replied. "Where are we and who are you?"
"Regarding where we are, you're in a facility belonging to the 11th Army of the SLDF, the closest we have near the Inner Sphere, it also happens to be the headquarters of the 295th Battlemech Division. As for myself, you can call me Gloria." the woman replied. "It's actually my real name because we're not in the least concerned about your escaping to tell anyone" she continued, still smiling as she draped the towel around her shoulders like a scarf and sat down. "Apologies if I drip any water onto the table, I've just been waterboarding your friend Critchly, hard to stay dry doing that unless you're being extremely half-hearted about it."
Marcus did not let any emotional reaction or response show on her face. "He's still alive then. Did he talk?" she asked, sounding only mildly interested as to whether he did or not.
"No." Gloria replied, shaking her head.
"I'm surprised, I've always thought he was a bit of a blow-hard who would fold under real pressure." Marcus responded, wishing she could cross her arms but the handcuffs and chain would have made that awkward.
Gloria chuckled. "Oh, he tried to talk but the damp cloth over his mouth made that very difficult." she said brightly. "I find it best to break them first before getting around to actually asking questions, saves an awful lot of trouble and effort when they know you're not bluffing" she explained her methodology. "Time was, during the war when we found out what you people were doing in the Hegemony and General Kerensky took the gloves off SLDF Intelligence, I would have worked on the man with a set of pliers and a blowtorch but alas our peacetime civilian administration is rather squeamish."
It was hardly a surprise that the woman was an intelligence spook of some description, they were usually unassuming and seemed innocuous and harmless in Marcus's experience, at least they did until they slit your throat or started pulling out your fingernails. "Aren't you a little long in the tooth to still be doing this kind of work?" Marcus queried. The woman looked like she had at least ten years on her, and if she was Terran born that could be more like forty or even fifty.
"Oh, I'm mostly retired My Dear, usually just a couple of days a week to teach classes in espionage and counterintelligence, though I do still find time to give the occasional lecture on interrogation techniques or advanced knife-fighting when they ask me nicely" Gloria explained. "A couple of my more gifted interns were in with me when I worked on your friend, it's so nice to get the chance to pass these skills on. A little like when I showed my granddaughter how to make a souffle last week" she continued then smiled once more. "Listen to me rambling on. You know in my youth I was quite taciturn but these days I'm positively loquacious. Comes with age I suppose" she continued with a sigh. "I've been told in confidence that I'm still quite terrifying so there's that" she added happily.
Stefani Marcus envisioned thumbscrews in her near future but shook off the mental image. "How many of my people did you take alive?" she asked. "What have you done with them?
"Not as many as we could have, quite a number chose suicide I'm told, the older ones in particular. Not unexpected given how war-criminals tend to be dealt with when justice eventually catches up with them" Gloria replied. "There are still more than enough in custody to make for an impressive sight if we impaled them all on wooden spikes in the vein of Vlad Dracul, or crucified them in a long line beside a roadway taking inspiration from a namesake of yours, Marcus Licinius Crassus I mean, but again I doubt our politicians would allow it." she said sadly. "Naturally your friend Critchly would have to be burned at the stake instead, it would be only fitting given his crimes against the Catholic Church don't you think?"
"You keep calling him my friend but he is absolutely not that" Stefani Marcus replied flatly. "He's my subordinate, one of my company commanders."
"I can say without hyperbole that he is one of the loathsome individuals to have ever lived." Gloria stated as a matter of fact. "I have literally garrotted or disembowelled people I thought of in more positive terms."
Marcus smiled herself, wrongly assuming that last part was hyperbole. "If you're expecting me to argue otherwise then you're talking to the wrong pirate." she responded. "His own people didn't even like him, the Legos's Lancers I mean, his body odor alone meant nobody wanted to be around the man."
"But you gave him a home and helped him escape Terra." Gloria pointed out.
"That was the decision of our commanding officer at the time, and only because Critchly bribed him with gold bars that were probably made from melted down crucifixes or something" Marcus replied. "He stuck with us and as a longstanding part of the band by the time I took over I couldn't just kick him out. It would make everyone else concerned that I might do the same to them" she explained. "It was merely a matter of expediency and reassurance that was necessary to maintain loyalty, although, to be fair, he is a surprisingly good mechwarrior and company commander and the man has a gift at making prisoners behave themselves."
Gloria smirked. "Interesting to hear loyalty being valued by a traitor." she observed sardonically.
"My loyalty was only ever to the Rim Worlds Republic not the Star League, which was basically just the Terran Hegemony wearing a fake mustache." Marcus spat back. "We were forced to join during the Reunification War, our people never wanted foreign overlords."
"I was actually referring to when the 141st Amaris Dragoons fled Terra before the war reached its conclusion, abandoning Stefan Amaris to his fate" Gloria replied wryly. "That he happened to be your own cousin as well doesn't exactly strike one as indicative of much fidelity on your part."
Marcus narrowed her eyes. "A rather distant cousin, we ran into each other in family gatherings exactly twice, once at a wedding and the other a funeral" she responded, ignoring the slight to her character. "I played tennis with his eldest daughter a few times when she visited our family estate though, lovely girl, very sweet natured, Aleksandr Kerensky had her executed along with every relative I had that was named Amaris."
"So he did" Gloria conceded, "not his finest hour perhaps. I believe the rest of House Marcus fled to the Outworlds Alliance just in case the SLDF decided to get rid of them too" Gloria noted. "Did you run across any of them while you were raiding systems there a few years ago? A nice family reunion to go along with the piracy and murder."
Marcus smirked. "No, but I wouldn't have minded meeting my cousin Arthur, he used to pull my pigtails when I was a little girl. It would have been fun to have a few of my people give him a thrashing."
"Interesting that you don't deny, or even seem to regret, preying upon the people of the periphery yourself despite complaining about the Star League's actions against the periphery realms during the Reunification War" Gloria observed. "It wasn't just the Outworlds Alliance either, you've also raided worlds in the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat who were surely just as much victims of the supposed rapacity of the Star League as your own nation was."
"Maybe I think they should have fought back harder." Marcus suggested.
"I'm sure the Taurian Concordat thought that about the Rim Worlds Republic, your people folded much faster and accepted the supremacy of the Star League far more easily than they did." Gloria countered.
"But which one of us later burned half the Terran Hegemony and rid the galaxy of House Cameron?" Marcus asked rhetorically. "And since you mentioned the Concordat and the Alliance, and still presumably think that I should be held accountable for any 'war-crimes' I may have committed in the past, you people would have better standing if a certain General Amos Forlough had been punished for what he did to beat them, instead of lauded for bringing them to heel" she contended. "I've heard it said before that the Amaris Dragoons treated the articles of the Ares Conventions like a to-do list but it's not like we set the precedent there. You might bitch about Critchly and his people using nerve gas against the SLDF in Italy, or regiments of the Amaris Dragoons deploying bioweapons against our opponents when they were stubborn, but Forlough used both against the Taurian military two hundred years earlier and you people put up a statue of the bastard. How does it go, he who is without sin shall cast the first stone, right?" she asked rhetorically.
"Touché" Gloria responded looking thoughtful. "Alright, you've convinced me. After we execute you we'll dig up Forlough's corpse and try him for war-crimes too. Does that sound fair?"
"Works for me" Marcus responded placidly. "I suppose my own trial is a foregone conclusion?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised at how many of your people offered to testify against you in order to save their own necks, or in some cases just seeking to have their families spared our wrath" Gloria remarked, leaning back in her chair to make herself more comfortable. "Not to mention all those poor souls from Comstock and elsewhere that you kept in bondage. They're not your greatest fans to put it mildly."
Marcus laughed. "Unless the number of my people that offered to testify against me is less than a quarter of them I most assuredly would not be surprised, believe me. It's not the old days, we've been progressively more pirate than professional soldiers since the turn of the century" she told her interrogator. "I must say, I'm enjoying your efforts to build up a rapport before getting to the point. What is it that you want to know anyway?" she asked. "Hoping for useful intelligence of some description or merely gathering information to throw at me during my show trial?"
"A little of column A, a little of column B" Gloria replied. "One of your jumpship captains already told us the location of your old bolt-hole in the Perseus-Cepherus Cloud Complex, but it seems like you stripped that of anything useful years ago. He also mentioned another facility he knew of, Rim Worlds Republic Outpost 11, but that's so far away we may not bother with it" she continued. "We are curious about where your former colleagues in the 141st retired to when they gave up the pirate life, and there was mention of another outpost that you may be aware of that's a lot closer to home."
"If you mean Outpost 25 I've never been there, I just heard about it from the Colonel who had never been there either. He just knew the officer assigned to run the place from attending the Military Academy together, and from him that it was supposedly a few jumps anti-spinward of Republic territory" Marcus told her. "I occasionally mentioned it to the troops because we never heard of anyone finding it, meaning there might be a few other Amaris loyalists still out there other than those weirdos that worship that overrated self-publicist Von Strang."
"Overrated?"
"Very. Our colonel always said that Von Strang's regiment, the 18th Amaris Chasseurs, were only fit for looting and terrorizing civilians." Marcus replied. "I mean we did that too, I'm not denying it, but at least we took on and beat plenty of SLDF regulars in our time as well."
"I see" Gloria responded, pursing her lips. "And the name of the commanding officer of Outpost 25 was…"
"General Ephram Offenbach, if memory serves." Marcus told her. "You can try torturing me for the outpost's location, or pumping me full of truth drugs, but you'd only be wasting your time because if we knew where it was we'd have gone there years ago looking for new recruits when the Old Guard started to age out" she said then paused. "You're going to go with the 'enhanced interrogation techniques' later anyway right?"
"Not my decision." Gloria replied, "although I will advise we do so."
Marcus blinked. "That's… refreshingly honest of you."
"Although a gifted liar I often find that being brutally honest pays dividends." Gloria replied, the latest appearance of her rather warm and disarming smile becoming increasingly disconcerting. "In that spirit I will reiterate that we really are the Star League Defense Force, just as the general told you we were on Algenib."
"And she's the real Jenna Romanov" Marcus said, shaking her head. "Which would make sense given that she sounded like she genuinely wanted to know who Raymond's Redcoats really were."
"It's a sore point with her, as I'm sure you'll understand." Gloria explained. "Care to spill the beans?"
Marcus laughed ironically. "Would that get me spared execution?"
"I'd be lying if I said yes, but the more cooperation we get I suspect the more the bleeding hearts in government are likely to commute it to life imprisonment, no guarantees of course" Gloria replied. "General Romanov herself suggested we offer to hang you as a pirate instead of as a war-criminal if you told us."
"How is that any better?"
"Pirates get the long drop and the sudden stop. War criminals just dangle there until they asphyxiate" Gloria explained. "It's quite a fascinating procedure really, the long drop I mean, they weigh you and measure the circumference of your neck to determine how far you need to drop to break it. Drop you too far and it might rip your head off, so there's less margin for error than you might think."
"You must be a lot of fun at parties." Marcus wryly observed.
"We can't all regale the crowd with entertaining tales of how we put someone's town to the torch, stole all their goods and abducted their daughters into sexual slavery" Gloria replied flatly.
Marcus looked her in the eyes. "For the record, sometimes I abducted their sons into sexual slavery too, I'll not have it said that I discriminate based on gender, or worse that I'm a self-hating misogynist."
"I do find your own candor refreshing as well, I'll give you that." Gloria admitted, truthfully. "I can see why you ended up leading your little band of cutthroats and thieves."
"They do say that the cream always rises to the top." Marcus observed.
Gloria snorted with derision. "In your case a better analogy would be the scum floating atop a river of sewage, but everyone is the hero of their own story I suppose."
"That's hurtful. I've got to ask, are you trying to play both the good cop and the bad cop here because it's an interesting combination of nice and nasty you've got going on?" Marcus inquired, genuinely interested.
"Oh, if I was being nasty you'd know it, believe me." Gloria told her sincerely. "I'm just trying to get a handle on your personality so far, it helps when figuring out what buttons to push when I get around to asking questions properly."
"Properly? By which you mean when I'm the one with the damp cloth over my face or the truth drugs being injected into my arm" Marcus surmised.
"Obviously" Gloria confirmed. "Regarding the truth drugs, by any chance are you frightened of needles?" she asked.
"No" Marcus replied, shaking her head.
"Pity, I'll just have to use a blunt one so that you are for the follow-up sessions" Gloria said sadly. "So much easier if the subject is under stress before the drugs hit their system, plays havoc with their resolve not to answer the questions."
"Can I ask a favor?" Marcus requested. "When you waterboard me maybe you could apply some shampoo and conditioner to my hair, it's not usually this lifeless." he said, projecting more bravado than she currently felt.
Gloria shook her head. "Oh, we'll be shaving all of that off presently, but I do admire your poise" she said admiringly.
Stefani Marcus considered her situation. "Raymond's Redcoats used to be the pirate band Cameron's Curse" she suddenly announced. "Before that they were the Thirty-eighth Amaris Fusiliers" she said. "Please ask your superiors to take into account that I told you that when they're deciding what to do with me and my band."
"Oh my!" Gloria exclaimed. "I'm sure General Romanov will be positively livid to hear that the people pretending to be her people used to be your people" she said, shaking her head sadly. "I might have to delay full retirement for a few more years because I'm sure she'll want to have a full and frank discussion with them regarding the matter" she rightly supposed. "Giving them up like that isn't a good look for you though, although there being no honour among thieves, pirates and war-criminals is hardly a shock."
"I wouldn't have given up any of my own." Marcus responded before pausing. "Maybe not even Critchly."
"We'll see if that's true when we have a meaningful conversation as to where your retired personnel may have headed off to once age set in and piracy lost its appeal."
"I guess we will. You can also tell the people in charge that I'm happy to make a public confession, and personally accept responsibility for the actions of those under my command, in return for a formal undertaking not to have my people executed."
"How noble."
Stefani Marcus straightened her stance as much as she could. "I may be an evil bitch in your eyes but I'm damned if I'll go out like a whiny one" she declared, deciding that she owed it to herself to die like a good leader and an Amaris Dragoon should.
Gloria clapped her hands together a few times in mocking applause. "We'll see" she said. "Now if you'll wait here, I'll go ask permission to work you over properly. Don't worry, I'll make sure a doctor confirms you're healthy enough to proceed. I wouldn't want you to suffer a stroke or a cardiac arrest before I'm sure you've told us everything you know."
"Very considerate of you."
"Mere professionalism on my part I assure you." Gloria replied, standing up, turning around and heading towards the door. "If you want to get anything else off your chest that you think might demonstrate a degree of cooperation deserving of mercy, just say it out loud while I'm gone. Everything is being recorded."
"Before you go" Marcus spoke up again. "The curiosity is killing me, how is the 295th back? Did they catch up with Kerensky? Is he leading the whole SLDF back to the Inner Sphere?"
Gloria stopped at the doorway and laughed. "The 295th never really left you silly goose, we just pretended to be chasing after the rest of them and doubled-back." she replied, trying out the cover-story Niops was planning to use once the presence of the SLDF there went public. Did you really think that Amaris was the only one with hidden outposts and supply dumps?" she asked rhetorically. "We spent decades building up our forces to the point that we didn't have to worry about the degraded militaries of the Successor States doing to us what they did to the rest of the Terran Hegemony."
"The rest of the Terran Hegemony?" Stefani Marcus repeated quizzically, raising her eyebrows.
"Rumors of our destruction have been grossly exaggerated, although I will say our self-imposed isolation was abruptly curtailed by you blundering into our part of space. We couldn't have lived with ourselves if we didn't put a boot up your ass when the opportunity presented itself."
Marcus smirked. "Nice to hear that we've been living rent-free in your heads all these years."
"Rent free? Oh no. You've just built up arrears and it was nigh time to collect" Gloria told her, opening the door and walking out, closing the door again behind her as she acknowledged the guards outside in the corridor with a nod.
----
===Choices looming ahead===
Striding off down the corridor Gloria passed the first couple of rooms by before knocking on the door of the third and entering when bade to do so. "Generals" she greeted Jenna Romanov and Franklin Hallis who were sat at a table there drinking coffee as they watched a large screen showing the video feed from the interrogation room. "I assume you were listening in?" she checked.
"We were, Gloria." Hallis confirmed, "And may I say that you were as disconcerting as ever." he added.
"Why Khan Hallis, I may blush." Gloria replied, choosing to take that as a complement. "If I may be so bold as to ask, General Romanov, what were your first thoughts as regards the revelation as to the real origins of Raymond's Redcoats?"
"That I can understand why they preferred to pretend to be someone else." Jenna Romanov replied. "Not that I've heard of a pirate group calling themselves 'Cameron's Curse' before, likely because none of us were anywhere near the Inner Sphere when they were still calling themselves that."
"The name says a lot though." Hallis observed.
"Doesn't it just." Romanov concurred. "I'm not that familiar with the 38th Amaris Fusiliers either to be honest."
"Unless my memory is failing me they were stationed on Castor and devastated the planet with nuclear weapons as part of Amaris's plan to delay the SLDF's offensive towards Terra." Gloria recalled. "Then they went missing with most of their equipment and personnel still intact, which is why I know about them." she explained. "Shortly after we won the war, Star League Intelligence became concerned that units like theirs might re-form in the periphery and give it another try, so we were instructed to keep a special eye out for them just in case. Since the pirate queen down the corridor seems to know all about them I'm now wondering if they did make contact with each other and I'll have to make sure to find out during our next session."
Hallis nodded. "Seems from the name they chose to call themselves as pirates that they definitely still held a grudge." he surmised. "I mean 'Cameron's Curse' isn't exactly subtle."
Romanov rolled her eyes at the name. "Raymond's Redcoats appeared in about 2803, I've been studying their career with interest for obvious reasons but before then there was nothing to go on" she said. "I guess they got tired of the pirate life after twenty-five years, but they were smart enough not to revert to their old name when they adopted the mercenary lifestyle instead" she said.
"Former employer, Rim Worlds Republic Military. Job description, Professional War Criminals. For employment references please contact the frozen corpse of Stefan Amaris, care of the University of New Samarkand." Gloria said drily. "Not exactly the ideal thing to have on your résumé when applying for work."
"Not within the Inner Sphere but it might get you a second interview in the Tortuga Dominions." Hallis quipped. "I'm sorry to tell you this Gloria but we've still not heard back from the High Associator as to his decision on how to proceed with Marcus. Getting the okay to work over Critchly was easy enough, he's infamous to the point of being practically a household name, but Olson isn't convinced that her own history necessarily warrants a no-holes-barred approach."
"It's not like he's going to pardon the bitch, and if the courts pass a death sentence he'll be fine with that he says, Olson's just not used to signing off on your kind of specialist treatment of prisoners" Romanov explained. "Critchly notwithstanding of course, because we all want to make sure that if he knows the location of any other former members of the Greenhaven Gestapo that information is quietly passed on to the Catholic Church."
"Which one?" Gloria queried.
"Both, I'd wager that the Pope in Rome and the other one on New Avalon are in full agreement on this, if not necessarily much else." Hallis replied. "If we ever decide to turn over Critchly himself, or more likely his remains one day, we'll let them both make a case for who wants him more."
"Half each? Judgement of Solomon style?" Romanov suggested. "Anyhow, we don't need to hang around here so if you want to head home for now we'll call you when we need you" she told Gloria.
"The day after tomorrow is my daughter's birthday so if you need me then it'll have to be in the morning, I need to bake her a cake in the afternoon" Gloria warned.
Hallis blinked, the woman's ability to emotionally compartmentalize the different parts of her life was almost as disturbing as some of her anecdotes, and her anecdotes were unsettling to a major degree. "We'll try and work around your schedule" he replied.
"Very considerate of you. Now if there's nothing else I really should be going, I might still be able to get to the diner to help out with the lunchtime rush. It's been terribly busy since we made contact with Francas and arranged regular shipments of more affordable beef" she noted.
"Best burgers in town by far" Hallis stated with conviction. "Frederick says that all the kits, sorry I mean 'kids' from his new school hang out there."
"It took a little time for word-of-mouth to spread but we're certainly not short of customers these days" Gloria replied. "You should try our new 'Juicy Lucy' stuffed cheeseburger, they come from Minnesota on Terra you know" she told him. "Good day General Romanov, General Hallis. I'll await your call" she said before heading off.
Romanov waited until Gloria was gone and had closed the door behind her before giving Hallis a wry look. "Are you sure her husband was killed when your city on Circe was nuked? She didn't just eat him after mating the first time?" she suggested sardonically.
"I remember meeting him in the family diner they had in Great Hope, and a couple of their kids worked there too, so I'm pretty sure" Hallis replied. "You really should try their food if you haven't already" he advised.
"The days when I could eat fatty junk loaded with cholesterol and still fit into my cooling suit are long gone" Romanov told him. "You're spending more time with your son now?"
"Frederick is not technically my son." Hallis pointed out. "I just had to sign paperwork taking parental responsibility because social services had issues with the legal situation regarding sibling companies and I was his closest relative. Genetically speaking."
Romanov gave him a look. "Right, if he was only your son he wouldn't be as closely related to you as he is." she remarked. She still remembered the first time she met Frederick, the boy had escaped the Clan Homeworlds on Yukon along with the rest of his sibling-company, and he looked like his genetic donor to the point you would think someone had taken Franklin Hallis and de-aged him somehow.
"He's not a clone, he's just…" Hallis momentarily struggled for the right phrase, "…clone adjacent." he said eventually. "Trish has taken responsibility for Jennifer, Khan McEvedy's sort-of daughter now, which got me off the hook fortunately."
"How does Barbara feel about it all anyway?" Romanov asked.
"I'm only glad she has enough of a sense of humour to find what happened the first time she met Frederick really funny" Hallis replied. "He looked at her, said 'You're pretty', turned to me saying 'Nice work Dad' before asking Barb if she had a younger sister his age."
Romanov smiled. "He's what, twelve now?"
"Nearly thirteen, one of the first to come out of the Iron Wombs. There weren't that many in the first couple of generations, they didn't get the technology working smoothly until 2819 and it was like a production line after that" Hallis told her. "The elementary schools are supposed to be having trouble coping with all the kits aged between six and ten being foisted on them now."
"Eh, they coped before when the Capellan's turned up I'm sure" Romanov replied. "We still need to talk about Francas and Comstock, it's fifty-fifty whether we're going to have to deploy garrison troops, the politicians can't agree but legally they're our problem and responsibility."
"They were Terran Hegemony colonies, albeit ones located in the periphery, and they haven't been claimed by any foreign power since" Hallis responded. "As I see it, our position is that the High Associator is, by default, Director-General of the Terran Hegemony so on that basis they're our legal and moral responsibility" he said. "They're not like Alphard, an informal protectorate because it's in our interests for it to be so, the people on Comstock and Francas are Hegemony citizens that are bound by Hegemony law but they're also entitled to our assistance and protection as a result."
"What if they don't see it that way?"
"I just can't see anyone there kicking up a fuss if we tell them we're going to defend them against pirates and, oh yeah, drastically improve their standard of living over the next few years." Hallis maintained. "Hell, outside the Alliance Core most Hegemony worlds were largely self-governing anyway, let them run their internal affairs if they want to, I don't want to occupy and oppress anyone and it's not like the Hegemony political structure and constitution was ever hideously tyrannical like the old Terran Alliance was."
"True enough." Romanov agreed. It had had actually been the military that had overthrown the government of the old Terran Alliance way back in the 24th Century. Under the leadership of Admiral James McKenna it's successor state, the Terran Hegemony, was established with a more stable system that was considerably more democratic and gave it's colonies far more autonomy. "We're still dealing with an awful lot of Niops Association Council members that aren't happy with how much we're already veering away from isolationism though."
Hallis snorted. "If I know Olson he's savvy enough to have the press interview the poor bastards we rescued from the Blood Rain on Algenib, and point out that the ones from Comstock were Hegemony citizens just like the people here. The 'Manifest Destiny' and 'Guardians of Civilization' stuff makes for great electioneering."
Romanov frowned. "You don't think he really means it?" she asked.
"It's more the case that the messianic quality reminds me of Old Nick, but honestly I think Olson is just being a clever politician and his hearts in the right place." Hallis replied. "I hope he spends enough time today working on that speech he's giving at the funerals tomorrow."
"I made sure to tell him to go mournful and not bombastic despite our victory." Romanov replied. "We didn't lose as many people as we might have if things had gone badly, but every soldier we're laying to rest tomorrow is still a personal tragedy to their friends and loved ones. He'll have our victory parade next week if he wants to sound triumphalist" she said. "The honor guards are looking slick, they're drilling hard to make sure everything goes properly."
"Does Olson still want us to march what's left of the Blood Rain through town in chains as part of the Victory Parade?" Hallis checked.
Romanov nodded. "He thinks it'll go down well with the masses."
"Seems tacky to me but he's in charge I guess." Hallis replied with a shrug. "What are you going to do about Raymond's Redcoats?"
Jenna Romanov narrowed her eyes. "Let me put it this way. We might get some more use out of those chains." she said coldly.
----
==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Comstock and Francas were Terran Hegemony colonies established in the periphery between what would have been the Marian Hegemony and the Magistracy of Canopus. They are both mentioned in the Periphery Sourcebook as being established to help provide logistical support to the SLDF (Francas was all grassland and open plains ideal for ranching, leather from there was shipped to Comstock for making boots). Both worlds fell on very bad times when the Star League collapsed, Comstock eventually became a pirate base.The return of (semi) retired Star league Intelligence operative, and small business owner, Gloria who we last saw back in Chapter 7. She has a skill-set that makes her valuable for certain kinds of work (and people find greatly disconcerting). At some point the recon ships from Niops were bound to run across Francas (it's really not that far away in astronomical terms) and start importing meat from there (as a burger variant from Minnesota the Juicy Lucy is popular with the 331st, Gloria's new family diner sells a lot of them).Thanks originally to a garbled communication there are actually two Roman Catholic Churches by this point in battletech history, the Roman Roman Catholic Church and the New Avalon Catholic Church. They argue with each other a lot, but they do however agree on the subject of Bernard Critchly.The clans started using Iron Wombs in 2816, improving the technology quite a bit by 2819 and then incrementally improving them further over the years. Twelve year-old Frederick Hallis of Sibling Company Gamma was made using DNA from Franklin Hallis (he's not a true clone though). The sibko system and Niops Association Social Services were bound to come to an impasse eventually, Franklin had to formally adopt Frederick (he's still mostly raised by the sibko system) and the kits from the Iron Wombs now have to attend regular school... which can only go smoothly surely?The Terran Hegemony wasn't like the old Terran Alliance (or most Successor States for that matter) in that its colonies were allowed to mostly govern themselves, at least internally. Using that precedent if Niops decided to absorb Comstock and Francas, they are Terran Hegemony citizens after all, it doesn't mean they lose all their autonomy. Terran Hegemony worlds often kept their own (well trained and equipped) armies for example, some of them putting up a hell of a fight against the Successor States after the SLDF left.
----
<<Next Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
Chapter 15