TEFAC Chpt 10

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==Chapter 10 - Time Enough For A Cat -- Wedding Bells -==
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====In an Unhappy Place====
Dropship Argo
Attached to Jumpship Señora de los Remedios
Regis Roost, Aurigan Coalition
February 24th, 3025
I'm ashamed to say I wasn't there when Nyan woke up, but that's mostly because I was in the lounge with our latest batch of Mechwarriors. Tomcat, Cypher, Fierro, and Tourniquet were the latest in the long line of mech handouts we'd had to do, and all of them were currently aboard to get the Marauders' chief MechTech to do their cockpit installs. Normally we'd do that on their home dropship, but the Battle Lance they were in was assigned to the Iberia and the mech bays on that were still getting decontaminated. We'd vacuum-flushed the boat three damn times already, and there were still pockets of chlorine gas and films of the shit everywhere, so most of the delicate bits were out of commission.
 
Either way, we were doing a stock car race when the news came in. Putting my controller down, I was more than a little surprised when the Battle Lance followed suit and tracked after me like little ducklings. It still brought a smile to my face, though, especially since they lined up all in order of the height of their mechs. Fierro- the Archer- pilot was first, then Tourniquet the Thunderbolt driver, followed in turn by Cypher of the Warhammer and Tomcat bringing up the rear as the Marauder.
 
Up in the infirmary- or down in the infirmary?- Nyan was half-awake, ears randomly spazzing as he tried to focus, muttering intently. Since we weren't in one of the grav decks, he was floating lightly over his bed, while I just floated there and resisted the urge to wrap him up in a hug. We'd both hurt each other by accident after concussions and the like- violence as a response to unexpected stimuli was normal in this line of work.
 
"Nyan?" I asked, carefully reaching out. Slowly, he reached out, grasping my hand and pulling in close for a hug. Then the sobbing started. Gently reaching up, I stroked his back, trying to ground the poor man. With the Direct Neural Interface was up, our mechs were part of ourselves; a living extension of our bodies we could see and feel from. There was so much of him missing right now, sixty-five tons of it back on Artru. "Tam. It's me. It's Anne. You're safe."
 
"Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry," Tam muttered, clinging to me tighter. "It was so cold."
 
"That's alright, I'm here now," I muttered.
 
It took the better part of a half hour- and the battle lance pilots leaving once they realized there would not in fact be some shonen powerup bullshit- before Tam finally calmed down enough to let me look him face to face. His left eye still wasn't focusing right, but his right was locked onto me. "Does this count for- the thing?"
 
"Yeah," I muttered. "It counts. We'll worry about the rest when we get your mom or mine to check your implants, alright?"
 
"Thanks," he muttered. "Gonna sleep now…"
 
With that, he crashed out in my arms. Rolling my eyes and smiling faintly at the MedTech, I slowly worked Tam back down to his bed, while softly cooing nothings at him until he let go.
 
"Glad you got here quick, ma'am," he said, smiling. "The major here was quite distraught until you showed up."
 
"I'm not surprised," I muttered. "There's a lot riding on the deal he mentioned. Let me know next time he's cognizant, alright? That or if he doesn't want to do rehab."
"Not much rehab for him to do, but I'll keep it in mind."
 
Walking out, I drifted towards the wardroom. Nerves were tapdancing up and down my spine, and for good reason. 'The thing' was something Nyan and I didn't talk about much any more, and one of those driving things that had been pushing and pulling at us for nearly a decade now. Each of our parents had certain things they wanted from us- Gallowglass, her warrior son whom conquered all placed before him and had thews thick enough to choke out his brain; and Szeny, who desired a minister of a daughter skilled in every field she put her hand two without regards to passion or love.
 
Needless to say, both of them were nebulously against our existing relationship- hell, Gallowglass had specifically hired Howler's previous bond-owner (I repressed a shudder at that ill memory) to get his mech and his indentured servant so she could use Howler as a wedge between us. Fortunately for all involved this didn't work for shit. However, it was hard, solid proof the two of them were conspiring to keep us from each other in anything other than a purely professional relationship.
 
 Considering I'd wanted to marry Tam for about ten years now, though? They could fucking die in a fire.
 
We'd been together forever, thinking about it. Fourteen when we'd left Canopus, back in the Before, and then learning to be Mechwarriors- me in a Vulcan, him in that Stinger. Seventeen in NAIS the first time, those halcyon days, and then reaching our majorities and that one booze-and-sex filled night of disaster and passion that had turned into a week-long hiatus from classes, culminating in the heist of the library and an orgy that nearly got us tarred with the same brush as Julian Davion did so long ago. That was when we decided that we'd be together forever- or at least, before the fires of war separated us for good.
 
My memories of the first proposal were still golden- Tam on one knee with the ring, Gallowglass fainting in shock, my mother coming in with a textbook rugby kick to blast it out of his hands before I slugged her for interrupting. The answer was 'yes', but without our parents and their purse strings approving we'd loose our 'mechs, our homes, and likely our lives. So, we promised to do it in secret if we were ever in danger, or just wait for one of the old bitches to die.
 
After that, there were some- well, additional attempts for us to tie the knot. I got my implants as a silent and loud offer to marry him (and to forestall the inevitable 'he is an irreplaceable experiment stop trying to pollute my sample' arguments) so he countered by buying the Centurion I drive now. That didn't work. I countered by trying to be 'traditional' and propose to him. That didn't work either. He tried to bribe me and our parents by buying out Howler's debt and setting her owner up to get shot for treason. No dice. I, well, did something stupid I'm not going to recount here: no marriage. The pile of Clantech was going to be try five, but that got derailed by the whole time-travel thing.
 
So here I was, nearing thirty at an unhappy clip with my husband-to-be kept away in medical. Well, it was bad, but we'd been through worse- and more importantly, we were getting married as soon as possible, if it meant stapling Kamea to a chair so she could draw up the forms and rule it herself. My willingness to let either of us catch more weapons of mass destruction without a ring was nonexistent- and if we found ourselves hip-deep in the CapCon like we planned, then the odds of us getting nuked again went up like a skyrocket. They broke out the radioactive party favors at some point in the 4th Secession War if memory served, and lighting liked to strike twice.
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====Preparations of a Princess====
Dropship Argo
Attached to Jumpship Señora de los Remedios
Nadir Jump Point
Smithon System, Aurigan Coalition
February 28th, 3025
Kamea, bless her heart, was trying to do a runner. I'd said the M-word at dinner yesterday, and the young princess had run like a bat out of hell at the topic. It hadn't even been a marriage for her- I'd been talking about it with Montgomery of all people now that we'd picked him up from his previous advisory post. The man wouldn't be able to pilot again, and instead had transferred over to a staff position. Fortunately, he was better at the delegation than Madeira, who had been sent to Smithon in lieu of Montgomery to be a light hand at sorting out the defenses there.
 
Unfortunately for Kamea, she wasn't just fighting my desire to get a ring stuck on it: she was also fighting Wyrm. True to her callsign, the leader of the Marauders loved chivalric romances almost as much as she loved having a hold stocked with treasure (I had seen a cavernous storeroom full to the brim with Star League era refrigerator cases of all things) and had enthusiastically both welcomed us to be wed aboard her dropship and threatened to try and take droit du seigneur until I reminded her that A: that could apply to me or Nyan, and B: we were fine with it. Hell, if she wanted, I could show her a good time once I got the all-clear from Tam. Apparently, when the forbidden fruit was served in the buffet line, it wasn't as interesting. Her loss.
 
Either way, Kamea, fleeing, unwillingness to sign a marriage certificate, et cetera ad nauseum. Unfortunately for her, though, I spoke zero-gravity as a second language and she didn't. As such, all I had to do was to hide in medical with Tam, wait for Wyrm to confirm which pod Kamea was in, and then BOOM. Ambush. Unfortunately, Kamea had her own card to play: Emma, being incredibly hyper about the fact I was getting married.
 
I lost two days to wedding planning with her. Two whole days. It paid off, though, when Emma got Montgomery involved- and I quickly learned why he was Sir Montgomery. The mess hall was decked out in white for a whole two hours before I had to tell Montgomery ("Call me Mastiff young lady") got the memo it wasn't this very hour. Then he managed to track down Kamea, while using a cane, in zero g, with no coordination with Wyrm, in order to make it this very hour. My explanation that Tam was still bed-bound only slowed him for about twenty minutes, until he got to the infirmary to see for himself.
 
Which then resulted in Tam, fitfully sleeping, hearing Mastiff come in and attempt to snap to attention with a perfect AFFS salute before drifting so his feet were on the ceiling and was pointed about thirty degrees off-kilter from the door. That, of all things, managed to convince Mastiff to put things off for 'a little bit', or at least until Tam could use both eyes consistently. I still had to elbow him into saying "at ease!" before I could put my fiancee back in his bed, though, which meant the improvement was going quickly at least.
 
After that, though, Kamea took the time to track me down.
 
"I, um, listen," she said kind of bashfully. "So, part of the reason I was trying to stall on the whole marriage thing, was well, I, er, didn't have a gift."
 
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
 
"You know, a wedding gift! Weddings are when everyone pools up and makes sure the new couple can set up their estate, and I'm supposed to be the High Lady of the Reach! I can't just not do that, or I'll look terrible to my vassals and it'll seem like I don't support them!"
 
"So just give us Fort Snowball or something?" I asked, scratching my head. "We're mercs with what's getting close to a regiment under our banner. We are established."
 
"It's the principle of the thing!" Kamea insisted. "And, well, I feel kind of terrible about Nyan losing his Catapult."
 
"You should be, that thing had more LosTech in it than some fucking regiments," I muttered, before shaking my head. "No. I shouldn't be cruel. We knew the risks."
 
"Most mercs would say the risks do not include nukes."
 
"The Harvest Blades are a different breed."
 
Kamea laughed a little at that. "You can say that again. I finally made up my mind on it a while ago, though, so come with me please."
 
Shrugging, I followed Kamea down to the refit bays, where Yang- the Argo's chief MekTech- stood waiting with a smirk. "Kept me waiting!" he yelled, slapping his prosthetic arm on the side of a tech's console. "Still, we got the girl out and started work!"
 
"Thanks, Yang!" Kamea yelled, before launching herself artlessly at a mech bay. Following her, I came up to the head of a Cyclops, still in Royal drab green with white splinter camo.
 
"So, as High Lady of the Reach, here," she said with a smile. "I'm going to make up for the loss of the Catapult by giving you this."
 
"The Cyclops."
 
"Yes."
 
"Are you sure."
 
"Very. Also, Yang and Wyrm are gonna pick up the tab on any modifications you want to do out of my parts stocks."
 
"You're friends, Boss," Yang yelled up, "but make sure you've got a refit plan set in stone before I try and break too many bolts!"
 
"Got it!" I shouted back, before reaching around to my back pocket and pulling out a small sandbag. It only weighed something like half a kilo, but as I snapped it out at the far wall to get some momentum, it still was pretty useful to do a no-handhold zero-g maneuver. As I drifted in towards the faceplate of the Cyclops, I grinned.
 
"Gonna have to do some serious refits on you, buddy," I muttered. "That class twenty's got to go… need to get some ferro-fib on you… maybe some Artemis on that ten-pack? I'll talk to Nyan about it."
 
"Think Nyan will like her?" Kamea asked. Sighing, I leaned up against the glass.
 
"I think I want Gallowglass to check his implants over before we try and hook him into another mech," I admitted. "Until then, though? It'll do wonderfully.
 
Kamea just did a little fist-pump where she thought I couldn't see.
 
"Now, about that paperwork…"
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====Ceremony Amongst the Stars====
Dropship Argo, Jumpship Señora de los Remedios
Nadir Jump Point
Panzyr, Aurigan Coalition
March 16th, 3025
It took a little more than two weeks to get Tam finally back into the fullest breadth of existence. Apparently, aside from the unimaginable pain of the event, what had been causing most of the issues was sensory fuckery and lingering motor control issues. Once we found that, we could fix it: Canopus-trained medtechs and prosthetists had known about sensory issues related to traumatic events for literally hundreds of years. The thing about our DNI is that the guts of the system that we needed Gallowglass for were all the read systems: the actual write systems that provided feedback were built off some fairly standard- if hellishly esoteric- hardware for things like the Taur and Lamia prosthetics packages. For those people who wanted to be half-horse or half-snake, basically.
 
Yeah. Welcome to Canopus. We can do that.
 
So in short: Tam needed a good debugging in case of fuckery, some neural regeneration around half his neural write ports, a good look over his pain shunt, and a deep inspection of the read system. An extensive workload, but not an impossible one to accomplish. It did however mean he was tied to the Argo, which therefore meant the Harvest Blades were tied to the Argo too. The only person unhappy with that was Kamea, mostly because it meant the Argo was running at full population and she couldn't have the occasional brood in a corner.
 
Still, once we were en route to Panzyr, and Tam was fully cognizant and self-propelled, the wedding talks were back on with a vengeance. Mastiff would run the service since Kamea was a chicken and a half about the affair; while Sokoloy, Rads (a Stinger pilot who'd somehow managed to survive the same nuke as Tam, mostly by taking his advice and running like hell out of the danger zone) and Kaparov were the groom's party. My bridal party got Howler as the maid of honor, with Kamea and Emma playing bridesmaids since the latter was perfectly willing to herd the former around with a cattle prod. The service would be held in a well-decorated storage bay in transit to Panzyr so we had a room big enough during a time we were under thrust anyway, and then it would be a luncheon following before I finally got Tam for some quality relaxation time in the pool that had been slapped together.
 
No, not that kind of relaxation time. There was a hot tub, and I called dibs. I wouldn't do that on this ship in public unless I had permission- or Wyrm participating.
 
When the day itself came, everyone was in a panic except for Wyrm and I- mostly because she'd done her work ahead of time, and I'd done mine. Emma and Kamea, though, were fussing over dresses (I was the only one in a dress as a point of order, the rest were in dress uniforms) and hair and makeup and urg. Once I was sufficiently made up, hair dye fresh, and dress set, we started the procession complete with Lohengrin blaring out of the speakers. I'd tried really hard to get Wyrm to use literally anything else for the processional, but unfortunately my appeal to Draconis instincts ran straight into the fact that This Was The Wedding Song- and Wyrm's tendencies as a Rasselhauge loyalist were not enough to shake the traditionalism inherent there.
 
Either way, we entered the storage-bay-turned-wedding-place in full dignity. Tam and his party were already standing up at the altar, dressed to the nines in his white nehru coat with sleeves skilled with embroidery and, wonders of wonders, him actually remembering to put his hair up in a tight fold. We obviously matched- my own dress was wood ash gray, with white embroidery over the chest trailing down into streams of red and gold to match the blue and green on Tam.
 
The ceremony itself was wonderful and short. Mastiff, not being a preacher by inclination, made sure the bases were all covered: nobody objected, our parents were not there, we understood the duties inherent in marriage, we understood the difficulties of being married- including a dry jibe about not borrowing each other's neurohelmets- and that we still loved each other. Finally came the oath.
 
"Repeating after me," Mastiff said, calm as crystal. "I, your name here, take Tam Gallowglass to be your husband to have and hold. To cherish for better and worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or health: to love and cherish him 'till fate do as it will?"
 
"I, Ti Anne Nitya Szeny, do take Tam Gallowglass to be my husband to have and hold. To cherish through better and worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health: to love and cherish him 'till we fall in bed or in battle."
 
A quiet beat slipped out, and then I smirked enough to make an addition. "Even if he takes my last good laser again."
 
That earned a chuckle, and I could tell Tam was resisting the urge to facepalm. Mastiff had no makeup to smear, though, so he let it happen as he looked to the ceiling. "Kids these days," he muttered.
 
Another chuckle, and he kept going. "Repeating after me again: I, your name here, do take Ti Anne Nitya Szeny as my wife to have and to hold. To cherish through better and worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health: to love and cherish her 'till fate do as it will?"
 
"I, Tam Gallowglass, do take Ti Anne Nitya Szeny as my wife to have and to hold. To cherish through better and worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health: to love and cherish until our final night together by storm or battle."
 
Another beat where he should have added something funny, and didn't, passed. Rolling his eyes slightly, Tam grinned at me. "Even if she does make a mess of my cockpit whenever we share a ride."
 
"Right, vow's said, rings on folks," Mastiff said with a smile. "With these bands, to be worn on the third finger of the left hand, you mark your dedication to your partner and remind yourselves of the vows made."
 
Taking the ring for Tam off the pillow that Mastiff was holding, I breathed in carefully. It was exactly what I'd gotten it to be, ten years ago: a simple band of BAR-10 armor, forged in a ring, polished to a shine. I'd put other rings onto Tam's fingers before: signets, keyrings, costume pieces to blend in with society. This was more than that, though; so much more it closed my eyes as I tried to blink away tears. I couldn't see him slide my ring onto my hand- hell, I barely felt it.
 
Brushing the tears from me, Tam got me to open my eyes to his little smile. "Take a look, Anne."
 
Looking down, I had to gulp. At first blush, the band was gold set with an emerald- but I knew better. That wasn't gold, that was copper from one of the dozens of planets we'd been on, with that luster granted to it by a thin electroplating of aluminum. Gold would deform in the cockpit or when we wore work gloves- this would hold its shape forever. The stone, meanwhile, was actually optical sapphire: back in the Before, our first ever piece of personal salvage just after Tam had started piloting his Stinger was a large laser: an old Krupp model 32. We'd taken it down for parts and used and sold it, but it wouldn't surprise me at all that Tam had saved the lens and taken a chunk off to use for this.
 
"It seems a mite redundant at this point," Mastiff pontificated, "but you may now kiss the bride."
 
So Tam did.
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