SmoMir Chpt 9

==Mirrorsmoke Company - Chapter 9 -==
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Albany City
New Oslo​, Draconis Combine
September, 3018Local Time: 10:00 
Tai-i Martin Beck considered himself a very lucky man to be able to reach the heights he had in his military career. Of course, to be a part of the 1st New Oslo Outriders is to end up in a dead posting, forever anchored to the system of the regiment's namesake, but that just meant the most he had to contend with were starving pirates, or the occasional angry insurgent that popped up now and then.
 
That had been the easy life. Now times were all changing–and changing fast–crumbling the precious peace and silence that he had so gathered for himself and his company, like sand slipping between his fingers.
 
He stood in front of the office of his superior and knocked, quickly flipping through the ream of documents and pictures he had gathered of the events that had happened three days ago. As soon as he finished, he cupped his mouth and drew out a long breath, and upon finding the smell acceptable, Martin then quickly readjusted his fine white military tunic, the starkness of the outfit practically blinding him as it glinted under the yellow lights.
 
Shortly after, the door opened, and Martin stood straight at attention.
 
"Good, you're here. Come, drink." commanded his superior, who promptly dragged him inside, ignoring courtesies. The next few moments then became a blur, as he was quickly accosted by the man, forcefully pushed down onto a chair with a crystal tumbler half full of bourbon on a free hand.
 
The Tai-sa always was uncharacteristically jovial for a man of his rank, and it left Martin's fellow officers baffled.
 
Or in his case, left unsettled.
 
Never forget, Martin thought. As grandfatherly as he is, never forget that this man can still kill you a dozen different ways.
 
Brown piercing eyes speared Martin, like a heron upon a fish.
 
Thin lips then smiled at him, when he began sipping the drink, no doubt shipped offworld at a king's ransom.
 
"It is to your liking, I hope?" the Tai-sa asked, pouring over his own drink. "The Lyrans are ever so free to part with their liquor."
 
Ah. Contraband. Or spoils of war. It didn't matter which, he supposed. "...It's lovely, sir. Do I detect a hint of caramel?" Martin asked in return, more to delay the coming report. He'd had this song and dance before, knew how the Tai-sa detests guests who do not partake of the hospitality behind his closed doors. One on one, he preferred you to be relaxed and unguarded. A fortress with open gates.
 
And Martin knew the devil would be handsome.
 
"But of course," his superior said, "Our neighbors do love their sweets, you know? Decadence has a way of… softening your taste, you see. Leaves one quite vulnerable to vice and complacency. But who are the Lyrans but complacency incarnate, yes?"
 
"Indeed, sir."
 
"Please, we are in the privacy of my office, Martin. How many times must I say this," the Tai-sa chided, a mock offense in his tone. "Let us dispense with stuffy propriety, young man. Do call me William."
 
That had been an order, Martin instantly recognized. One that, should he defy, would cut him and his career short. The former, more so than the latter. The black and gold adorned daishō mounted on the wall behind him was not a threat, but a promise.
 
Leaving no other response, he nodded. "Of course, Will."
 
The Tai-sa laughed. "There we go!" the man rose, reaching over the table to give Martin a light slap on the shoulder, before pouring more of the sweet bourbon on Martin's glass. "Now, I hate to cut this conversation short, but I'd rather not waste your time, Martin. What have you found for me?"
 
Finally. "A whole lot, Will. And at the same time, not enough."
 
"Disappointing. Go on."
 
Martin began to report from the beginning. Several civilian dropships had alerted an attack on the spaceport through emergency tight-beam over their garrison, despite Lindorm spaceport declaring no such attack happening via encrypted satellite codes. Verified ones, at that. With too many reporting the same thing at the same time, they had been ordered to investigate, mustering half of Akevitt Company. His company. Within a span of nine minutes, they had reached the spaceport.
 
 Or what was left of it.
 
 "My men have ascertained that there were at least five or six platoons of heavily armored combat vehicles–the exact type and model we have yet to determine–on the night of the attack, sabotaging key structures around the spaceport using prodigious amounts of laserfire, as well as destroying a large amount of our fuel reserves," Martin explained. "Some of the seaside ground had even been sunk to the sea. It would take the latter half of next year to even make the spaceport nominally functional."
 
"And where were the mercenaries we hired for the defense in all this?" the Tai-sa asked.
 
"Presumably dead. The last passing mention we'd heard of the Southshore Group were from the civilian witnesses, who saw their lance attempting to intercept the attackers by the entrance. They never returned."
 
There was evidence of BattleMechs fighting, he explained further. Indentations and scorch marks on the ground, suggesting the mercenaries had at least engaged some of the armored vehicles, even spent enough munition to destroy even the hardiest tanks a dozen times over. Further northward were more fighting, this time on equal footing. The mercenaries had engaged a lance of BattleMechs, for it could only be a lance. Who else had the firepower to accurately blow apart the load bearing hinges of the wall?
 
All Martin could give was evidence. For now. What his men had were also the downed vehicles that the mercenaries had managed to destroy. They were of a design he didn't recognize, though that hadn't been his purview in the first place.
 
Then he mentioned that the enemy had taken the time to recover their fallen, showing pictures of crudely opened armoring from the wrecks. They were thorough, Martin had to admit. The most his men had found was a mechanical hand, presumably a prosthetic. It spoke of advanced training, or there were enough of them in the area to allocate some of their assets for recovery duty.
 
His superior gave him a toothless smile at that piece of information, before Steepling his fingers together like an upright tent. "How delightfully sentimental of them. Continue."
 
Martin allowed himself another sip of the drink, wetting his throat as he spoke. "The control tower and main office building themselves were untouched from the attack, giving us some answers."
 
"And yet even more questions."
 
"Yessir." Outwardly untouched, yes. The interior was a different matter. Martin had attempted to make the report as clinical as he could, but there had been no denying the rising contempt in his voice, the heady mix of rage and horror welling in him as he recalled his first steps inside. "There were no survivors in both buildings. The enemy made doubly sure of it."
 
Martin grabbed hold of one of the documents, rapidly flipping through its pages, before stopping at a field of images of people.
 
They were taken by complete surprise, with tight precise shots to their heads. Even the uniformed civilians. His men had revealed that those who had the means to fight back had broken bones, most often an arm or two shattering, as if they had just tried to block the full brunt of a battering ram using only their limbs.
 
It was too clean. Martin hated the word he had chosen to describe a massacre, but it was just all too clean.
 
All this death for flight logs. Nordmarka was simply a developing project for the Governor. There was no intel there for the enemy to take. Had these been insurgents who've come across a cache of military hardware, all the killings here would have made them pariahs. Command had plans to turn this spaceport over to the civilian side. The civilians were being taught in the tower.
 
"It was a two-pronged attack, sir." He ended. "A lance and vehicle support from the front of the wall acting as the hammer, and then a strike team infiltrating from the rear as the scalpel. As of this moment, we are still trying to determine just what they've managed to filch from the databanks, but it couldn't be anything more than just cursory data. We're confident that even if they managed to make off with just a copy from our hardware, they would still need a computer advanced enough to decrypt what's inside."
 
And even if they had access to hardware like that? Brute-forcing it would take decades.
 
The man nodded. "And let me guess, we have no idea who these people are."
 
"No, sir." Martin confirmed, nodding. "As far as we could tell, no one that night managed to recognize any of the OpFor. If we are allowed more time, I am certain my men can find some clues as to the identity of these killers. End of report."
 
"No, Will," the man commanded.
 
"No, Will." Martin repeated.
 
The Tai-sa then slowly rose from his seat, hands behind his back as he turned, eyeing the daishō on the wall, as if in a trance, or in meditation. There was an odd quiet in the room, one that Martin feared breaking, and so he didn't.
 
"Martin," his superior softly said, allowing the name to suffuse in the room like an ominous sound. It made the owner of that name alert, the hairs on his pale umber skin standing at attention. "What do you make of all this?"
 
His tongue stalled. "...It's nothing short of tragic, Will."
 
"The governor is quite… displeased at this incident, you see. Too many eyes have seen the attack for it to be buried, and too few have seen anything concrete. Make no mistake. Whoever these people are, they have given us a veritable black eye, Martin."
 
His superior's neck craned, aiming an eye his way. "We have just been attacked by a group of people that no one could identify until it was all too late, making off with what I'm sure is disastrous information gleaned in that tower. By all accounts this is a legendary heist, no doubt further galvanizing the insurgent vermin here in Albany should they hear of the prize."
 
It was devastating, hearing the consequences from somebody else's mouth. All Martin could do was nod listlessly. "...You mean to say that you know what they were looking for, Will?"
 
The man fully turned to him, a smile forming on his face. "Yes. Our betters had turned the Iron North's natural camouflage into a well hidden cache for the Procurement Department. A plan set in motion years ago. What these rats might have just taken from us is the detailed location of every warehouse hidden in Nordmarka. Imagine it, every BattleMech that could be set aside, every tank manufactured, every bullet made, all hidden right under the noses of the populace. The perfect cover."
 
Martin turned to the drink he had been cradling all this time, gulping it down in its entirety. What he had just heard would have him executed on the spot for knowing.
 
"There are very few who can pull off an operation of this magnitude," the man said.
 
Of course. Current theory among his fellow officers had been the Lyrans, for obvious reasons, tasking a large merc company specializing in reconnaissance and stealth.
 
Or perhaps even a detachment of a house regiment.
 
"Shall my men prepare for the worst, Will?" Martin asked, "Is this a prelude to an invasion? A Lyran invasion?"
 
The Tai-sa simply laughed. "I don't believe even they would be so brazen for that, unsubtle as they are as a people." The man returned to his table, but didn't bother sitting on his chair again. Instead, he loomed over Martin. "It's all so very confusing, is it not? I'm sure you and your men have theories."
 
The man drummed his fingers over the table. "If they had the firepower, why put their 'Mechs in the back, and put more risk to their men in the front with far weaker vehicles. But if their men had the skill and training to be able to quietly take over our tower, why then would you need the large distraction?"
 
"Assurances, maybe? Back ups for their back up?"
 
His superior waved a hand. "No, it's almost as if it's by design, I fear. Smoke within smoke."
 
"My men have certainly concluded…" Martin paused, hesitation slowing his tongue. "That digging any deeper might be above their pay grade, sir."
 
"Ah yes, if I hadn't known any better myself, I would have even claimed this to be censure by DEST."
 
At that, Martin didn't dare to reply. This discussion was far, far above him. A retort here, would have him losing his tongue. Not to mention the last thing he would hear from his superior, a very treasonous statement, so casually thrown to the wind.
 
Politics in High Command often ended in blood split in a dark alley.
 
The Tai-sa waved his hand again, sensing his discomfort. "Oh, don't mind the musings of this old man."
 
Martin nodded, silently praying that this meeting would not end in him being put in chains the day after. Or worse.
 
His superior walked towards him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Your fellow officers will be given the task of reinforcing those caches. But you, young man, I will personally task with hunting down these rats. They cannot, must not, get access. I can sense that you've a soft spot for the death of innocents. If you want the coming bloodshed from an uprising halted, then you must stop these people, at all costs.
 
William Nabara smiled, and for the first time Martin had ever met the man, his smile finally showed his teeth. The devil was handsome. "You will answer to me now, Martin. I do so hope that I've chosen the right man for the job."
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Chapter 9