AWF Chpt 71

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=Chapter 71=
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===Campfire Stories===
Temporary Base Camp, St. Ives
St. Ives Compact
February, 3030
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A few hours later Hap found himself sitting around a fire with his friends. It was twilight on a cool and crisp evening. The stars were just coming out As they finished a meal of canned stew and pre packaged bread. Fiona allowed everyone to have two beers, which seemed to raise the morale enough to stop the general grumbling. Chyou and her techs had accepted the invitation to stay and eat with them. 
Everyone had split apart into their own groups. Hap could see the Compact techs with Mike and the mercenary techs around their own fire a dozen meters away from him. On the other side of them was a few members of the flight crew also with their own fire, but most of the flight crew had retired for the evening. The furniture was a mix of camp chairs, stools, logs, ammo cans, and equipment crates. 
Hap enjoyed the paradox of being almost uncomfortably warm from the fire in front of him, but his back nearly freezing. Hap took a sip from his weak coffee as Crow told everyone about how he, Anastasia, and Hap had taken down the Crockett. From Hap’s perspective it was an uninteresting fight, but Crow’s performance was at least entertaining.
“Then I jumped to the left” Crow said, “landed on a building , barely dodged the King Crab’s large laser, and launched a salvo at the Crockett. As I jumped again I felt the reloads go in then heard the tell-tale click of the loading chains stopping short. Then the computer tells me, “LRM magazine empty’.”
“As I’m getting my final shot lined up, Hap jumps to where I was at. The Crockett gets ready to use his Autocannon and lasers on Hap’s Griffin, but this is where he had made a mistake. See Anastasia had stopped firing missiles for a couple minutes. I thought, and I’m guessing Hap thought she was out of missiles.“
Hap realized he should “play along”, “Oh yeah, I, uh, thought she was out of missiles too.”
Anastasia blushed, as Crow continued, “So the Crockett pilot is thinking Anastasia is Winchester on LRMs so he ‘squared off’ to hit Hap. But, when he puts his back to Anastasia, she puts ten missiles into him, blowing off his right torso and all his ammo. It was a pretty big explosion so I’m thinking the Professor found his autocannon magazine. Whatever she hit, it meant the poor bastard only had one large laser and a couple small lasers, and his engine shielding was showing.”
“Wait, Anastasia hit the AC mag and it didn’t blow his mech to hell? How’s that possible?” Fiona asked.
“He’d been firing his Autocannon non-stop for most of the engagement. Given his accuracy and the way he kept alternating between the three of us, I’d say he was a very inexperienced or poorly trained pilot.” Anastasia said.
“Which gets back to the story, after taking that damage the Crockett seemed confused for a moment, and tried to back away from us. I guess he forgot we were loaded out with long range weapons.”
“I presumed he was trying to close with his SRMs and so losing them caused him to have to reevaluate his strategies.” Anastasia said.
“Yeah, maybe, I think he was surprised he wasn’t dead.” Crow said, “Anyways he jumps backwards, takes a moment to get his balance, evaluate his tactical situation, and let Hap shoot him right in the fusion reactor. As the Crockett’s reactor goes critical and explodes-“
“That’s a common misconception.” Anastasia interrupted, “A fusion reactor will automatically and quite rapidly shut itself down once the reactor shielding is breached. The bright flash of light and explosion is the super-heated plasma rapidly cooling as it contacts the air and the external portions of the reactor. The explosion is not due to a criticality of fissionable materials rather it’s thermal expansion.”
“Hey, Professor, I’m telling a story here, and you’re killing the flow of my narrative.” Crow said in his characteristic laid back tone. Hap wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or just pointing it out for everyone else’s benefit.
“Oh, sorry.” Anastasia said.
“It’s fine, that was most of the good stuff. The King Crab had spent the whole engagement trying to catch up and taking pot shots with his laser when he got a rare opportunity to put one of us in his crosshairs. Since we had finally stopped he hoofed it around a building and exposed his open right flank to me. So I followed Hap’s lead and dumped forty missiles into his reactor.”
“Which-“ Crow looked over at Anastasia, “Caused a breach in the shielding around his reactor core, that in-turn allowed superheated plasma to be exposed to relatively much-colder oxygen and portions of the engine. This extreme interaction resulted in a brilliant flash of light as well as catastrophic destruction to the reactor. This transfer of energy also caused excessive damage to the King Crab’s internal structure and key components located in and around the ‘mech’s center torso.” Crow gave Anastasia a wink. “Did I get it right that time.
“Again I apologize, and yes, that was a text book description of what a breach of a ‘mech’s fusion reactor does. I see how it hurts the narrative structure of a good story.” Anastasia said.
“Naw, I think it’s good.” Crow said, “People might actually remember I graduated from Somerset.”
“You graduated from Somerset?” Fiona asked. “To think I was going to let you get lucky tonight.”
“You girls from Nagerling are all the same.” Crow said as he shook head. 
“I went to the Martial College of Donegal, sir.” Fiona said with mock anger.
“They have a MechWarrior program? I thought they only taught space sailors.” Crow said.
“You and I are about to have an ‘extreme interaction’.” Fiona said.
“Does that mean I am getting laid tonight?” Crow said.
Fiona rolled her eyes, “Chyou, you see what I have to work with? I’m certain you’re starting to question Crow’s entire story.”
Hap glanced at Chyou, she, like Anastasia, sat with perfect posture, and the exotic but placid features of her Asian ancestry made it hard for Hap to guess her feelings. She maintained a faint smile and looked down into the fire as she said, “I must confess there are portions of Crow’s story I find unlikely, but your companions prevailed today, so there must be some grain of truth in it.”
“It’s a pretty damn small grain of truth.” Fiona said, “However, they are here and you and I survived our little piece of the engagement, and ultimately that is all that matters.”
“How did you survive the encounter with Ebrahimi and the Stalker?” Anastasia asked.
“By being smarter than him.” Fiona took a sip from her canteen cup. She related her conversation with Chyou and how she had pointed out that some of the buildings had sub-basements that reached into the undercity. She guessed if she went back to where Chyou, Anastasia, and Hap had traveled through the undercity she might be able to trick Ebrahimi into pushing his ‘mech through one of those buildings. She explained how she had goaded Ebrahimi into chasing her while Chyou moved around to secure the necessary supplies and help Zhang.
As Fiona recounted her story it differed from Crow’s in that Crow focused on the action, and even though he had a laid back, lackadaisical, almost sarcastic way of talking he came alive as he regaled everyone in the destruction of the Crockett. Fiona focused on her thoughts and feelings. Defeating the Stalker was an academic exercise for her, keeping him at range, trying to take his ‘mech apart as she tried to force or goad Ebrahimi into making a mistake.
Fiona stared at the fire as she spoke, “I know I had started the shit talking, and generally speaking if you can’t take it you shouldn’t dish it out. Usually Ebrahimi or Ahmed or other Immortals will go on and on about how they will kill us, destroy our equipment, abuse our spouses, enslave our children, kick our pets, eat our lunch, whatever terrible thing they can imagine.”
“Why does this company hate you so?” Chyou asked. 
“Ahmed had three sons.” Fiona said, “All three have now died at engagements with McFinnigan and Sons mercenary company. The first son died in some run-of-the-mill engagement in Marik Space. I think we were doing a raid on…damn it’s been so long… I think Calloway VI, wherever the Earthworks factory is. The mission was to escort a team of Loki operatives to steal Marik Stingers so they could go and use in some likely terribly planned and brutal operation that I desperately hope was in Free Worlds Space.”
“We blew through the Etherworks factory security and got the Loki operatives to the ‘mechs, and that’s when the Immortals show up. The Immortals engaged us directly and the Loki operatives, being Loki operatives, couldn’t care less about what happened to us so they steal their ‘mechs and rush off to do whatever evil Loki does in the dark. Since our client wasn’t going to help us we concluded we were mission complete and started to disengage.”
“Now this is where stories differ. Llewyn, Kelly’s brother, was in his Victor laying down covering fire so we could retreat. As we were trying to break contact an Immortal Grasshoppers was harassing us. It nearly cored one of our Wolverines and Llewyn took the Grasshoppers head off with his AutoCannon. Once that happened Ahmed started requesting to disengage and suing for us to stop military operations. By that time we had a clear path to the LZ so we kept radio silence and departed.”
“According to Ahmed he had requested an end to the engagement before Llewyn shot his son. He even appealed to the MRB, but the MRB investigator couldn’t figure out who was telling the truth, and considered the matter hearsay. They ultimately refused to punish McFinnigan and Sons.” Fiona said.
“I see why this would infuriate Ahmed.” Chyou said
“Oh it gets worse. Ahmed started to somehow find himself taking jobs that would pit McFinnigan and Sons against the Immortals. A few years later we took a job that was basically a classic “train robbery”. We had to snatch a few train cars that allegedly had lostech the Kuritans were trying to steal or sneak away from House Davion. Kelly thought the job would be a pretty straightforward ‘smash and grab’.”
“The train had to cross a large chasm and the bridge seemed a logical place to ambush the train, so Kelly decided to avoid that, and ambush the train in the open. We did an orbital drop and had to grab the train cars and sprint to the LZ while the drop ship landed a few kilometers away from our ambush site. The Immortal’s were waiting in the chasm so they had to guess where our LZ was and try to ambush us before we got away. Because lostech was involved two other mercenary companies showed up to try and capture our prize, and a regular Davion unit was offended that mercenaries were hired for such an “important” job so they also decided to participate in this operation.” 
“From the moment we burned in, till we got to our dropship it was a non-stop running gun fight. We had to neutralize the Kuritan escort as two other mercenary companies showed up trying to poach the lostech. Then the Immortals tried to out flank us, and a company of Davion dropped on our heads. Meanwhile our ride home is watching Kuritan fighters trying to vector on them. If we weren’t at the LZ before the AeroSpace Fighters got in range we might not have had a ride home.” 
“Somewhere in the middle of this shit show Ahmed’s other son ejects, and gets trampled by somebody. It was night, it was raining, and you had multiple opposing forces fighting over train cars that allegedly contained lostech. I have no idea who stepped on him, or if he even survived the ejection. Honestly, it was so damn confusing he might have even been hit by the train, but Ahmed blamed us for his death.”
“Was it actual lostech?” Chyou asked
Fiona stared at the fire as it hissed and popped, “That’s the funny thing, the train cars were full of concrete and a bunch of tracking equipment. MIIO was investigating the Davion commander and the entire operation was set up to implicate him in stealing military equipment or something. We were never supposed to get off the planet with the train cars. MIIO had leaked the operation was lostech and expected their dirty commander to show up with the biggest force and walk off with the prize. Once we figured out that our client had intentionally created an impossible job to hurt a third party, Kelly demanded quite a lot of MIIO before he returned their evidence.”
“Wait. How did MIIO convince the Draconis soldiers to be part of the operation?” Chyou asked
“The Dracs in this case were probably MIIO.” Crow said.
“When you’re a mercenary you try not to think too much about the hows and whys of what your client is doing. It’s best to just do the job you’re paid to do, take your money, and speculate over drinks on the long ride to the next job.”
“Or just drink.” Crow added. “Otherwise you’ll start to think things like MIIO must have hired the Immortals too, knowing how they hated us.”
“Responding to this sort of mystery with alcohol seems unhealthy, and worse, intellectually disingenuous.” Anastasia said.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to assure you, Crow’s right.” Fiona said, after a pause she added, “Back to your question Chyou, that’s how we earned the unending animosity of Ahmed’s immortals, but don’t cry too much for them, Ahmed personally killed Llewyn in a brutal ‘mech-on-‘mech slug match, that Kelly swears ‘was only business’ and when Kelly’s son, Richard, died Ahmed made sure to mention it was a sure sign the gods hated him and were on the side of the Immortals. It was always annoying, but Kelly kept us from sinking to their level because he felt that wasn’t how Mercenaries should treat each other.”
“It does seem that this is more personal and less business for this Ahmed.” Chyou said.
Fiona nodded, “The Immortals became an inconvenience for us. They had a nasty habit of showing up often, but Ahmed was so angry at us, and had lost so often that he was running into a “diminished returns” problem. He’d hit us too often and lose and then have less 'mech’s and material next time. A few times when he caught us in a bad position he didn’t have the capacity to exploit it. After awhile he wised up and would go and do some work to rebuild, but he never seemed to be able to get his company FMC.”
“Last time we fought I think even Kelly was sick of the nonsense so he tried to make a run at stealing his DropShip so we could finish them off once and for all. It didn’t work out, but this feud has gone on too long even if the Immortals were generally on the losing side of it. Then Ebrahimi started talking about how they had a rich patron that would help them reconstitute. That could turn the feud into their favor, especially if it was mechs like the King Crab or that Crockett. As I was mulling that over Ebrahimi started needling me about losing a child.
Crow put another log on the fire and used a pry tool to adjust the burning wood and stir the fire. “That’s a pretty low blow, even for Ebrahimi.”
“Well, I sunk to their level and decided it was time to start taking away something Ahmed couldn’t replace, namely his son.” One of the logs in the fire broke and kicked up more sparks and flames, “and I don’t feel any remorse.”
“It’s a dangerous business we do.” Hap said, “He could have been killed any number of ways-“
“Had he ejected I would have activated my anti-air target and tracking system and used his ejection seat for target practice. I was determined he wasn’t leaving the battlefield alive today. Part of the reason I was so late getting back from my talk with the Compact high command was because they wanted to give us what was left of the Crockett if we agreed to let them have all of the Stalker and King Crab salvage.”
“The Crockett was such a rare ‘mech the Compact did not want to waste energy trying to find what they needed to get it repaired. They are pretty sure they can get the Stalker up and running and have a good chance at getting the parts they need for the King Crab. I preferred to have the Stalker, because I wanted to drop the broken and headless hulk onto the next battlefield where we encountered Ahmed and watch him lose his shit. Then I realized I was being a jackass and wasting time so I took the Crockett and thanked them for the generous offer.”
“So what happens next time you meet Ahmed in open combat?” Hap asked.
“I get Kate to tell him that I killed his son while he was crying like a bitch, and then when he runs his Battlemaster full tilt at me I have my lance take him apart with LRMs.” Fiona said.
“I’m sorry I caused this.” Anastasia said.
Fiona was silent as she stared at the fire. “This isn’t your fault. Honestly, as much as I respect Kelly’s idea of a professional mercenary ethic, I think Ahmed and his sons took things too far and Kelly should have addressed it directly.”
“I am sorry, how is this Anastasia’s fault?” Chyou asked.
“It’s a long story...” Fiona said quickly, “but, as I explained it to your high command. The gist of it is that Anastasia’s mother is a Countess ruling a planet on the other side of the Federation, and her father was a weapons expert industrialist. As near as we understood, it seems a rival company or a political rival killed her father, and has put a kill/capture bounty on Anastasia.”
“Ah, I see.” Chyou said. “This seems like it would be a liability of mercenaries.”
Fiona nodded, “It creates some problems, but as you can see we find ways to turn it to our advantage. Your leadership is reaching out to hire our company, and requested we stay until they receive confirmation and the rest of our company joins us. While that sounds nice, I’ve been doing this business long enough to know that we could easily become hostages in the negotiation process.”
“I politely declined to stay. Your command was hesitant to let us go, but between our dependence on missiles, which are apparently in short supply, and the fact we’re likely to attract more hostile forces, they choose to allow us to leave the planet. Of course, I want to leave before they change their mind.” Fiona said.
The conversation died down for a moment. Hap watched two young techs, armed with federated long rifles, doing their patrol of the bivouac area. Hap saw one of them pause, shoulder his rifle, and scan the area with his starlight scope before continuing his patrol just outside the fire light. Hap glanced up at the stars and was glad it was a relatively clear night and the planet’s one moon was mostly full. It was cold but it would be easy to walk around and it would be difficult for anyone trying to sneak up on the camp.
“Chyou, you seem to know a lot about this area, are you from around here?” Crow said. 
Chyou nodded slowly, “My father was the Mandrinn of this area, we lived outside the city.”
“How does your dad feel about you fighting for the St. Ives Compact?” Anastasia asked.
“My father has no daughter.” Chyou said quietly, “I believe he has returned to Capellan space and is waiting for the ‘treasonous rebel dogs’ to be put down so that he may return to his holdings. He likely contributed money to support some of the people we fought today. When I listened to Lady Candace speak, I wanted to follow her, and I believed she would lead the people of the St. Ives fairly and kindly. The Capellans have historically not looked out for our interests, but Lady Candance, I believe, would change that. My father said she was a ‘disrespectful and selfish child that was the shame of her father’.” 
“From what I’ve heard Lady Candace Liao has been very successful at liberating the Compact, and the rest of the Capellan forces are too weak to try and reclaim the worlds of the world she has liberated. Perhaps as she consolidates her power she’ll make you the new Mandrissa in your father’s stead.” Fiona said.
“Perhaps.” Chyou said with a faint smile, “Perhaps, she will give that honor to another who is more worthy. For now, I simply wish to serve the Compact as a MechWarrior.”
The fire popped and hissed as everyone got quiet again. Hap looked over at Anastasia. She was sitting in a camp chair and looked warm under his poncho liner. Their eyes met and he reached for her hand. With a gentle tug he got Anastasia to move over to him. Wordlessly she stood up, sat on his lap, and covered them both in his poncho liner. 
As Anastasia and Hap settled Chyou asked Fiona to tell her more about the McFinnigan’s train robbery operation. Fiona related to them the epic raid and that only Kelly McFinnigan could conceive and execute. As she spoke Hap looked around again. He was among friends enjoying a fire on a cold crisp night. He glanced again at Chyou and while he admired her noble motivations, if he were being honest, he was probably more like Fiona or Crow. He fought for the men and woman on his side.
Hap was glad he still had his commission and was part of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns.. His experiences on the Draconis March, and now in former Capellan space, confirmed that the Federated Suns way of life was better. Still with the nobility being what it was, a planet or even the Federation was only one or two leaders away from similar problems. Hap hugged his wife. Ideals were good and sometimes when you’re lost they guide you to the right decision, but when bullets started to fly or when it was cold and dark it’s the people around you that are going to help you survive.
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