TEFAC Chpt 9

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==Chapter 8 - Time Enough For A Cat - - Cocytus -==
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====Persevering====
My name is Ti Anne Nitya Szeny, callsign "Mersies". My mother is a pharmaceutical expert and passible brain surgeon, the ears on my head match my blaze-red hair, and I have not a drop of Allan Szeny's blood in my veins because he was worried about transmitting his family's old curse of muscular palsy. Instead, I am my mother's daughter, with the other genetic donor being an ancient sample of Elemental DNA acquired when a star of the Snow Ravens decided to emigrate after seeing a Pleasure Circus in the Outworlds Alliance. My callsign comes from an incident where I'd caught a struggling Drac mechwarrior screaming for death as he tried to crawl out of the cockpit of his Phoenix Hawk. He wanted to die, so I obliged him with a shot of my flamer. Thus, 'miseriecord', shortened to 'Mersies' since French was a bit ass to keep to on comms.
 
If I recited these facts to myself, if I focused, I could ignore the screaming pain lancing from my eye to my interface socket, or the worried yelling of Kamea as she held onto Emma's fainted form, or the grinding as Howler grabbed onto a pillar of rock to keep her 'mech and herself upright. My ears were as night-black as my hair; they'd be nearly indistinguishable if I kept them pinned down with a hair band. Nyan's eyes had developed a slight discolor over the years; his right being more yellow than his left.
 
He was alive. He had to be alive. Wrapped in sixty-five tons of endo steel and armor, he had to have known to run. His last call had been a warning, please let it not have been in vain!
 
"Kamea!" I snapped, trying not to let the pain put me on the floor. "Get freezer packs and aspirin!"
 
"Got it!" she snapped. Aspirin for me, freezer packs for thee. Blood thinners wouldn't make the pain go away, but they'd lessen it enough to stay functional while I got a cold compress. Nukes made EMPs that fucked withe electronics pretty badly- and while our implants were bio-powered, bio-rhythmic systems; they were still electronic. What had happened last time we'd been anywhere near a nuke (some test shot the Davions fired off) was we needed blood thinners to keep things moving so our blood didn't heat up as it served as a biological heat sink, and cold compresses to serve as another way to get everything back to standard operating conditions.
 
Choking down two pills dry, I popped the cover on my DNI port as carelessly as could be and just directly applied the cold compress to it, wincing and hissing in pain as I did so. There was only a small temperature difference between the metal and my head, but this was a brain: small temperature differences mattered. It did the job, though, clearing the worst of the migraine out and letting me think.
 
"Sokoloy," I hissed. "You got visual on them yet?"
 
"Almost-" he hissed, in as much pain as I, when another spike came over us all. This did drive me to the floor, and Emma started screaming.
 
"Damnit, Kamea, delegate this shit!" I snapped, racking my head for more assertions to distract myself with. I was Ti Anne Nitya Szeny. My first name was my mother's family name. My second name was 'my' name, the one given to me when I took a baptism to the face on New Avalon to spite my mother. It used to be Meihua, but I ditched that so I never had to remember the characters for it. Let Nyan read the Mandarin, he had the better head for the artistry of the two of us, except he was out in the snow and the fallout, was he even alive-
 
-no. He was alive. I would find him.
 
"Sokoloy, come in," I whispered, my handset barely picking it up. "Come in for me, you bonnie brave lad."
 
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I- fuck. Sorry. Handing you off."
 
The handset went to Sokoloy's second, some paper-pusher I couldn't name of Kamea's. "Where are the fuckers?" I snapped.
 
"They're equidistant between Door 28 and Door 15. If you want to dodge their skirmish line, go for Door 15."
 
"Good," I muttered. "Good."
 
Getting off the horn, I snapped over to an adjunct who was helping Kamea. "Lieutenant!" I snapped. "Get me the fort scouting teams! I need every stockpile of chemical goods we've got!"
 
"Captain?"
 
"What?"
 
"You- we just got nuked! We need to do something about it!"
 
"We are doing something about it!" I snapped. "If the fucking Bulls want to play by the Ares Suggestions, then I'm going to damn well make sure they learn why the suggestion was made! Until then, we need Lucifer online, because once she's up she can handle the rest of the pilots!"
 
"Yes, ma'am!"
 
"It's a fucking nuke, not the end of the world! We've lived through worse!"
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====Organizing the Rescue in midst of Fallout====
Castle Nautilus, Base Camp
 Artru, Aurigan Coalition
January 25th, 3025: 1630
It took a few hours to beat my migraine into submission, and then to get everyone else operational. A few rations of gin helped, although I honestly wasn't sure if that was the awfulness of the situation wearing off or the horribleness of the gin replacing the horribleness of the nuke. It could be either or both.
 
That said, it still wasn't a good time. To that end, I was setting loose the hounds. My kids, since they were mostly in lighter and cavalry 'mechs, would be performing a SAR mission to retrieve Nyan. Dead or alive, we needed him back. While SAR was ongoing, they'd also be doing preliminary recon by bait: if the Taurians took the time to try and fight them or conduct a fire mission, then we knew they were working on a 'containment' model to lead to a siege- presumably while Ostergaard called for reinforcements. If, however, they left the SAR team alone, then we were in the clear.
 
Once we had Nyan back in my hands, I'd get to work on the next stage of turning Ostergaard's guts into garters: isolating his combined arms battalion. While we hadn't managed to hack our way into the Castle Nautilus' core systems yet, we did know where about forty concealed and protected entrances and exits were, complete with their attendant bunkers full to the brim with automated firepower. The plan, therefore, was to lure the enemy mechanized and armor forces towards (and hopefully not into) an area with lots of entrances, ideally far away from the Iberia. Either Ostergaard would waste his limited supply of nukes on the distant entrances, or he'd keep pushing his mechs out further and further,
 
Then came the decisive stroke- a direct assault on his DropShip. Very, very few captains were willing to raise DropShip doors while units were deployed, since unless they had combat doors that could take no small stretch of time. While a Fortress would nominally have combat doors, I'd yet to see a Fortress operating at full factory spec capability, and the hatches off a Mule would fit pretty well with a little kerjiggering. If things went well, they'd have a door down we could slam through. Once we were inside, then it was simple: kill everyone on our way to the bridge, kill Ostergaard, and then bring his head back on a pike. How literal that last bit was depended entirely on if we could find Nyan, though.
 
Before we started, though, I had to get everyone together. Cramming everyone into the base camp created no small amount of noise, especially since half the BA troops had been running around in their armor to stay warm while they were exploring. My solution to the babble was to hold my pistol up, and fire it twice.
 
"Right, listen up everyone!" I roared, letting my hair down for a minute. It was time to think pirate. "As everyone here probably noticed already, our wonderful enemies have decided to drop a nuke on us. This nuke has downed Major Nyan's 'mech. As such, we're going to start our operations today with a SAR mission to find him. However, before we start deployment, I need to get a few things across."
 
Straightening my overcoat dramatically, I watched it flare behind me. I hated the darn thing, but it was warm and it was dramatic, so Nyan loved it and got them for every officer and pilot for when we needed to do things outside the cockpit. "Our enemy has launched nukes at us, in atmosphere, on an inhabited planet. This means they have decided that the Ares Conventions are now the Ares Suggestions. Notionally, there is supposed to be a formal means to redress this. However, that's for the small stuff. We got nuked."
 
Moving around the stage- yes we had a stage, it helped with meetings- I waited for the muttering to die down. "We can no longer trust that our enemy is willing to abide by any of the Ares Suggestions. To this end, I have decided that we are going to fight nuclear fire with chemical fire. Battle Armor units: we are preparing a series of chemical weapons for you to use. You already know that we're going to kick the doors in on that Fortress. Every squad is going to be issued a mustard chemical generator. Once you're in the Fortress, fire it up. The mustard gas is a skin and lung irritant-" I said, stopping to chuckle, "-which is the technical way to say it'll chemical burn them to a fucking crisp. One big, giant, atmosphere-deployed flamer."
 
In the distance, Kamea and Lucifer were looking at you, horrified. Good. This was horrifying stuff! Also completely necessary, since there was liable to be a company of infantry still in that Fortress and battle armor wasn't invincible versus small arms. The grunts, though, were chuckling darkly, a few making shotgun-racking motions.
 
"To be clear, this isn't standard procedure," I added. "This is a special, one-time-only deal. Taurians break out the spicy rocks, we break out the spicy air. Everyone else, however, is to understand that the normal rules of parlay are off the table. We cannot expect to receive quarter, and we sure as hell won't be giving it. If any Taurians are found ejecting or bailing out, if captured they'll be held for ransom. If there's no ransom, then we just leave them here to freeze. The rules bind and protect- either they understand that, or we watch them bleed until they learn."
 
That got a dark wave of laughter out of the troops, but I could tell I was losing them. "Briefings should be getting distributed electronically as we speak. Read 'em, then get to your stations. We start offensive operations at local nightfall, in four hours. SAR team, you're good to go as soon as you can."
 
It was time to go and get my part ready. That didn't stop Kamea and Emma from running up to me, getting ready to start screaming.
 
"Chemical weapons? Really?" Kamea said, trying to hold herself together. "What happens if someone finds out about it?"
 
"The same thing that happens to the Taurians when someone comes back in a few months and waves a geiger counter over the rubble out there: shitfuck nothing."
 
"I hate to agree with her, but Mersies is right," Emma said, sighing. "That doesn't mean we need to stoop to their level, though!"
 
"Lucifer, you're thinking like a princess again," I said, sniffing slightly. "I'm disappointed in you."
 
"Awhat,"
 
"What was the terms of the agreement?" I asked, looking at Kamea.
 
"You got anything flying a Taurian flag, and you can buy anything out of the cache," she said. "I don't see where- wait-"
 
"You cannot be serious," Emma said, looking at me like I had up and grown another head. "This has to be a joke."
 
"I don't joke when I'm in charge, Lucifer," I grumbled. "This is why I'm not in charge very often."
 
"Run it by me then?" Kamea asked.
 
"If Mersies can gas the dropship, she can capture it as loot."
 
"That, plus everything aboard, yeah."
 
Now it was Kamea's turn to stare at me like I'd grown a second head. Looking up into the ceiling- or rather, the giant fog bank of mist that was covering the ceiling- I just got my radio out.
 
"Howler, can you please be in charge now? I don't wanna."
 
"No, you fucked the boss last, so its your job still. That was the deal."
 
"That is a terrible method to secure leadership. I am filling a protest with the shareholders."
 
"The shareholders were literally just cheering at your meeting. Shut up and deal."
 
I harumphed, putting the radio back in my belt and trying to focus. "Lucifer, you done with your problems from the EMPs?"
 
"Mostly, yeah," she said, rubbing the side of her head.
 
"Good. Can you go with the SAR lance? I know it's last-minute, but I want to send something heavier than the Stingers and that Valkyrie in case you need to bring the whole Catapult carcass back."
 
"That thing massively outweighs me, though!"
 
I shook my head. "You've got a pulse laser- there should be a 'cut' setting, then just take the waist and arms off. The whole mech's bound to be a write-off."
 
"Got it."
 
As Lucifer left for her tent to get her piloting rig on, Kamea looked at me carefully. "What happens if Nyan actually is dead?" she asked, nervous.
 
"We finish the war," I replied quietly, out of hope, "and then I hope like fuck Emma does good in officer school. The Harvest Blades never really were a mercenary company to make money. Nyan's a good mercenary, I'm just a good soldier."
 
"Don't sell yourself short. You're also a good friend- not many of those, when you're this high on the pile."
 
I laughed at that. "Emma's got plans, Kamea. You're a medium fish in a pond the size of my boot right now- and I think that pond's going to get a lot bigger.
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====Defense of Artu: Stage Three - It's Go Time====
Castle Nautilus
Door 24 Ice Plain
Artru, Aurigan Coalition
January 25th, 3025: 1930
It was an hour to go-time that I got the call. It was Lucifer, her voice sweating and swearing as Central keyed her into my comms channel as I got out of the ghetto chem labs we'd been assembling our cans of revenge in.
 
"Nautilus, this is Lucifer, come in Nautilus," she yelled. "We found and retrieved Nyan's Catapult torso and cockpit, but we're getting pursued by the Taurian fast mover lance. We need a door and some fire support!"
 
"This is Nautilus Control, nearest door is 24, due west six hundred meters," Sokoloy's replacement said, one of the admin people who could run a computer like I could a 'mech. "I'm tasking a CF flight to get you some close air support."
 
"Better hurry, I've got no guns here and we're already down a Locust!"
 
"This is Brevet Major Mersies," I snapped. "Authorizing Armor Lance 2 and 3 to roll hot on Door 24. QRF, go show those bastards what they're dealing with."
 
"Armor Lance 2, wilco! Deploying!"
 
"Armor Lance 3, heavy metal on the way!"
 
The Maxims for my BA units weren't the only thing I'd put money down to buy from this Castle Nautilus. While I hadn't cashed out any of the mechs, I had put money down for the company of Alicorns that we'd dug up. Soon enough, the tanks were at Door 24, one of the few salley ports that didn't have automated defenses in favor of being nearly fucking invisible, and the sounds of gauss fire and mechs dying rung throughout the land.
 
"NAUTILUS TOWER TO ALL UNITS- SUSPECTED NUCLEAR FIRE! CLEAR ALL DOORS!"
 
Then fucking Ostergaard had to ruin it. Just after our 'mechs got down the door and were running like hell for the bends that would shelter them from the EMP, the nuke landed. This time, it was a few kilometers away at least, so it wasn't enough to put me down screaming. Instead, it 'merely' knocked me over with stabbing pains. More critical was that Lucifer was going down, her mech thrown into a stumble as she rolled with it to keep the precious cockpit tucked to her chest.
 
"Nautilus to Lance 2, Lance 3, come in!"
 
I barely heard the comms, just focusing on getting another pair of aspirin down as I fumbled for the thermos with a cold compress on my hip. Once the manual single heat sink was properly in my free head slot, I could get back to focusing on everyone.
 
"Lance 2 to Nautilus, we're- fuck, my head- we're mostly fine? Vic 3 isn't responding to hails, but I think that's because their comms are shot out. Lance 3 doesn't look so good, though, they've got two tanks that ain't moving."
 
"Nautilus to Lance 2, disperse into the woods. We'll open doors for you as we can, but if you have comms dead units keep them on you tight. Have someone else take that last vic under tow, we don't want them to try and blow it."
 
"Wilco, Nautilus. Lance 2 out."
 
Right, breathe. My name is Ti Anne Nitya Szeny, and after this clusterfuck of a day it'll be Anne Nitya Gallowglass whether Nyan can sign the paperwork or if I have to postdate it for his dumb ass. It wasn't hard to get to the coolant truck we were using as a decontamination vehicle, and soon enough it and a MASH wagon were zooming down the way towards what was left of Door 24. When I got there, I hissed- Lucifer's ride was battered to hell and back, with several laser burns and a PPC hit having clawed off most of her right flightpack winglet. As the coolant truck started hosing her down, though, I gulped. That- that was Nyan's Catapult torso. I'd recognize the nose art anywhere- a series of sickles around a ring of ivy, one of the old badges we'd cooked up as early mercenary swag.
 
As I gaped, a pair of Battle Armors came up, the Rapscallions easily climbing up the top of the remains to whip out cutting torches and start work. Soon enough the side door was open, and one was working his way inside.
 
"Airbags deployed successfully," he reported, trying to gently work his battle claws to clear the cockpit. "I can hardly see the guy- Christ!"
 
"What?" I snapped. "What is it?"
 
"Yvette, start cutting the door wider! He's breathing! He's alive!"
 
There was no moment of recognition that I'd fallen to my knees. Pulling out my radio and tuning it, I clicked twice.
 
"This is- this is Mersies," I said carefully. "Can you identify if any system in the cockpit is still online?"
 
"Negative, it's all dead except for a pair of emergency lights- everything's on emergency power, and the APU burned out."
 
I let out a breath. Our company standardized on oxygen candle APU systems as part of the life support system: that had likely been what kept him alive. Fresh air and enough electrical power to keep his computers dying gracefully if they hadn't all been fried out, plus more than enough heat to stave off the cold of this dirtball. "It should be safe to cut his data cables then, and do an extraction. Make sure you have a medic handy, he's bound to have spinal injuries."
 
"Right, then, let's cut the medtechs a hole then…"
 
Step by step, the troops worked, until they had to back off and get hosed down themselves. Another coolant truck came by to keep the water running, and finally the medtechs could get in.
 
"Alright, looks like the airbags did their job, no detectable spinal injuries so far. Captain, any procedures for the probe?"
 
"One second!" I called back, before grimly approaching the corpse of the mech. Up the side, into the cockpit, and then I was cradling Nyan. His breathing was weak, fluttering, but still there. It wasn't hard to gently pull his head into my shoulder, as I stroked his hair out of the way to let me to the plug. Taking it, I gave it a gentle disconnect turn- and it stuck. "You gotta be fucking with me," I muttered. "Tam, now is not the goddamn time."
 
Right, standard disconnect wasn't working. Sighing, I went over to the area where the rumble seat normally was, until I found the little tool caddy we all kept in our mechs. Popping it open, I groaned. Micro screwdriver, micro screwdriver, there we go.
 
Every so often, we needed to disassemble our plugs to re-gel them since bio-compatible electric jelly tended to dry out. What I'd do now was similar: disassemble the plug casing, pull the guts out, and then unbend it all out of his thick head. The outer casing, once unscrewed, came out fairly safely, but as I fished around to start pulling datacables, I had to stifle a scream. There was cerebral fluid on one, and blood on the casing. Just keep pulling cables, Mersies. Just keep pulling cables. When I finally got to what was stuck, though, I had to stifle a curse.
 
"Someone bring me a small metal saw and a battle armor guy," I said, trying to not yell in frustration. "I gotta cut the structural plug."
 
The structural plug was an almost-useless attachment point. While the base of our DNI plugs locked into the skull, there was a secondary positive alignment system at the top of the plug that interfaced into the top of the port so everything went together correctly- which was actually a massive issue in terms of development, because everything in the plug needed to activate in the right order or we'd get a titanic migraine from having to sort through random data input. Fortunately, most of the problems we had ended in 'titanic migraine' and not things that killed us. Pretty good, for experimental brain augmentations.
 
Once I got it cut, though, it popped out with a 'tink', and I finished clearing out the cavity. A flashlight-assisted check showed it secure, and the medics moved in to take Nyan away. Stepping out of the remains of the Catapult, I breathed in deeply. It smelled of metal salts, of coolant truck spray, and of the hint of blood I had on my hands. Just a drop, nothing more. Then, I took a knee, said a prayer, and hoped God was listening to me now, and not when I put my mask back on.
 
For on did it go- I had murder to do.
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====Defense of Artu: Stage Four - Storming the Castle====
Castle Nautilus
Door 32 Ice Spires
Artru, Aurigan Coalition
January 25th, 3025: 2115
I hated not being with the deciding arm of the force. It was one of my sins as a commander, and one that was liable to get me killed if people didn't stop me from doing it. Thankfully, Howler was on my left, and she'd try to keep me level-headed for this operation. Our Maxims were in position at their doors, and I was with the remains of our armor company and the kid's lance too.
 
"Remember the plan, people," I said, mostly to remind myself at this point. "Out of Door 32, run and gun until you get to Door 9. We're the distraction, so be loud and distracting. They knock you to yellow on armor, though, just go. No heroes tonight."
 
"Wilco!"
 
"Tower, open the doors."
 
"Opening!"
 
And then we were moving, a fierce little smile on my face that the 'mechs were walking out in good order. That was how people knew if a company was good- the little bits of nonsense drill, that suddenly stopped being nonsense when the missiles started flying.
 
"This is Sienna, I've got a lock on their Warhammer."
 
"Give it another minute, spread out a little," I replied, mentally flicking the safties off the brace of PPCs on my arm. "Don't want to eat shit if Commodore Warcrimes finds he has some plain jane regular ammo in his dropship."
 
That earned the little shaking of mech arms that was the equivalent of a silent laugh from the formation. As everyone readied up, I glared out at the ice spires. Had they not seen us? "All units, open fire!" I ordered. As our PPCs and LRMs lit up the night, the Warhammer recoiled- we were, to be fair, throwing the better part of a company's worth of fire at him! I'd be hard-pressed to handle that, so I couldn't fault him too bad for troublesome reactions.
 
Of course, then the fucker fell over. "What?" I asked, blinking. As the Thud and Ostol came roaring out, though, I shook my head. "Well, come on, keep shooting!"
 
It didn't take much for the fight to get started in earnest, the Alicorns being sparing with their Gauss rifles as per orders. I still wanted to salvage these mechs, so getting sandblasted with Light PPCs and LRMs was a better way to generate that result. Still, they were shooting like shit! I mean, so were my pilots, being real here, but they were kids and I knew all those mechs didn't have good night vision-
-and, now that I thought about it, it was likely those Taurian mechs also didn't have night vision, or one worth using. As we fell back, far slower than planned, the scale of the fight kept increasing. Returning PPC fire from the Taurians signaled the Marauder entering the fray, and LRMs put the Archer in the mix too as we sniped and spattered our way back towards Door 9. It wasn't all tea and cookies, mind- our Dragon and Wyvern both had to fall out, going critical on armor, and one of the tanks did get mobility-killed and went dark to hide in the snow.
 
Then my radio started crackling. "Captain Mersies, this is Captain Jiangshi. We're in the Fortress. Chemical weapons are lit, and I am horrified by the results. May God have mercy on your soul for making these."
 
"Captain Jiangshi, this was quite possibly the least harmful chemical weapon I could have cooked up on this notice. Provided most of the crew are smart enough to get masks or filters on, we can handle the worst of the burns by spraying them down with a bleach solution."
 
"I'll leave that to the support crews, then. Regardless of your opinions on the matter, however, I am taking prisoners."
 
I shrugged, before rippling off my LRM at the Archer in the back I barely had a lock on. "That's fine, honestly. Just remember they're not covered under the Ares Conventions, so- shit!"
 
Ducking behind an ice spire, I worked my shoulder joint for a second, feeling the armor pinch where it flexed around catching an autocannon shell. "Anyway, Jiangshi, no Ares conventions, if you're dead set on the prisoners thing we can just parole them on Ward."
 
"Parole?"
 
"We tell them not to fight in the war and that they can go home when the war is over," I said, leaving out the fact they'd all be dead in a week, tops, because they were Taurians and that was not conductive to good order and also the Mask would have questions out the wazoo for them. Either way, not my problem.
 
"Ah. Either way, I believe I may be tendering my resignation at the end of this operation."
 
"That's fine. Also, if you take Ostergaard alive, let me know. I call dibs."
 
"The implications behind that are horrifying. Jiangshi, out."
 
Despite how ridiculously well the running battle was going- one knockdown Warhammer that wasn't getting back up, one enemy Shadow Hawk forced to dump ammo and bail, with only the Thud, Archer, and Marauder providing pursuit- I was still breathing heavily. Our route from Door 32 to Door 9 went through the ice spires, and then around a massive spur of rock. We'd nearly finished the ice spires, and once we were out of those it was a two hundred meter dash to get to the spur. Most of us clocked out at sixty-ish kph: it would be a push to get there before a lucky PPC shot found our backs.
 
"Tanks first," I said, breathing out as the Marauder and Thud kept aggressively closing the range. "Get in and make us a base of fire."
 
"Wilco!"
Ducking out again, I kept shooting, waiting for them to close. Finally, the Thud got close enough for me to flick a LPPC out of the firing loop… and then warm up my lasers. My very nice, very shiny, X-pulse lasers. Time to get toasty. As the LRMs kept falling, I started to dance with death- specifically, the death by Thunderbolt. The trick to fighting heavier brawlers, I'd learned rather painfully, was to make sure they had to struggle to keep accurate ranging to you. This wasn't to futz up their aim- rather, what it did was it prevented them from clustering their shots and burning through your armor. So I juked and jived, letting the X-pulses keep shredding away at the Thud's armor. He might have fifteen tons on me, but I had a fresh coat of ferro-fiberous armor from the Castle Nautilus' stocks and a sense for when he'd snap. Specifically? When the Marauder fucked off. More specifically? When the vibroblade I kept in free arm snapped out, and I lunged into melee. I'd been Nyan's partner for nearly a decade of piloting at this point, and I knew he couldn't throw a punch for shit: that's why he took the Catapult after all!
 So I learned. Then I drove a mech, and I kept learning. Then I got good, and built a vibroblade into the arm of my Centurion. Suddenly, there was a whispering death moving in on the Thud, and he had to very quickly figure out how he wanted to deal with the fact I'd just put a sword through his SRM-2 mount and was ripping into his center torso with pulse lasers that burned away with a hellish fury. He tried to punch back, of course, but I still had a gun-arm to parry with.
 
And so we danced, my stabs inciting more and more panic as the Thud frantically tried to figure out how he was being bled of so many systems. Ineffectual machine gun fire? Silenced. Knees? Those were forbidden. Large lasers? Now sawn-off lasers. Tabbing over to open mic, I just chuckled. "Any last words?"
 
"Fuck you-"
 
Then he got nailed in the side by something like eight Gauss slugs, and promptly keeled over dead.
 
"Really guys?" I asked. "Really?"'
 
"Quit playing with your food, Mersies," Howler snapped. "We've got a fucking job to do."
 
Falling back towards the spur, I kept waiting for the inevitable hail of fire from the Archer to come impacting into my backplate. Still, as I put my legs into it, clearing the spur, I sighed. We were home free-
 
"Captain Mersies!" Jiangshi yelled. "They got the gun up! It's firing on you!"
 
"Everyone scatter!" I snapped. As the shells poured down around us, I hissed as one went internal on my left arm, blowing an LPPC out. I could replace it, though, as another one sent me staggering. Still, I managed to keep everyone walking, limping into Door 9. From there, I just let my mech sag to the wall, as a little Jeep came up. Dismounting, I winced- there were a lot of laser scars over my mech, and I could still see the little class-five shell that had mucked up my right shoulder. It wasn't hard to get to the jeep, though, and getting in it I accepted the driver's radio.
"Message from you, ma'am. Jiangshi has captured Ostergaard, and he claims to be willing to discuss terms of surrender," he said, and I resisted the urge to laugh.
 
"What were his exact words, again?" I asked. "I believe it was 'I'm going to enjoy painting the ice red with your blood' or something to that effect. Either way, we'll accept his surrender, round up his 'mechs, and then I can return the favor."
 
"I'd expect the prisoners would object to that," the driver said.
 
"Obviously, which is why we'll do that where they can't see. We'll just bring 'em back to the castle, deal with the chemical weapons damage, and I'll shoot Ostergaard in the back of the head outside the door so we can throw some snow on the body," I snorted. "Please, do I look like an amateur here?"
 
That earned a great big hunk of silence. Dialing into the station, I quickly got myself set on speaker, in front of Ostergaard and most of his bridge staff. "Commodore!" I called out, faux-cheerful. "So good to hear from you- did you like the welcoming gift I sent?"
 
A wet, hacking cough preceded Ostergaard's response. Seems like someone over there didn't keep an oxy mask handy. Oh well. "Whom am I addressing," he spat out.
 
"Captain Anne Szeny, of the Harvest Blades," I replied. "Normally you'd be talking to Major Tam Gallowglass, but you did nuke him."
 
"At least the damn things killed some of your ghosts, then," Ostergaard chuckled.
 
"Oh no, he's not dead," I clarified. "Just asleep. It's very hard work to handle someone throwing out the rules of civilized warfare, so I decided to let him take a brief catnap."
 
A moment of silence, while the other end of the line had another round of wracking coughs. Rolling my eyes dismissively, I snapped out an order. "Harvest Blades, someone find a sergeant and a medic to get that hacking bastard some morphine. We're trying to hold a conversation like civilized people here."
 
"Thank you," Ostergaard choked out. I could tell the words pained him- good. He deserved to suffer for this. "I- I would like to talk about terms of surrender for my forces."
 
"I believe you were initially looking for an unconditional surrender, but I'm willing to set terms," I said, stroking my chin. "We'll start with everything in your command, Ostergaard, from your mechs to your JumpShip."
 
"You can't be serious!"
 
"Can and am, you evil sack of shit," I said, snapping in a faux-pirate manner. "Soldiers are offered certain protections under the Ares Accords, which the Taurians did in fact observe even if they weren't direct signatories thereof. You threw that away when you turned my front door into rubble and irradiated my fiancé. That means you either buy your way back into my good graces, or I treat you like a pirate. That means a bullet in the back of the head and I go take your JumpShip anyway- since I have your dropper, your codes, and several of your junior officers who will be very happy to not meet your fate."
 
Letting out a throaty little chuckle, I called out over the crowd. "That is an offer, by the way. I want to kill as few people as I can here, so if the good Commodore proves too contentious, well, promotions!"
 
"Fine: say I hand it over, what then?" Ostergaard asked.
 
"Well, first things first, we get everyone you have into our medical center. Chlorine burns are nasty, and I definitely hear a few people who have lung damage from it. We can't fix all of it, but we can at the very least make sure nobody is getting worse and suffering from it. Then we pack you all up into a very nice pod on the Argo, and sail you all the way to, oh… Ward. The Concordat still has diplomatic channels with the CapCon, right? Better than leaving you in the Pleiades or something."
 
"Would the JumpShip crew be included in this?"
 
"Naturally."
 
"Then… acting in my powers granted to me, as a Commodore of the Taurian Concordat… I do surrender my command."
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====Defense of Artu: Stage Five====
Castle Nautilus Base Camp
Artru, Aurigan Coalition
January 26th, 3025: 0935
Walking down to the medical section slash prisoner quarters, I checked my kit over. Knife and gun were where they needed to be for my duty uniform, my overcoat had about the right level of billow, and my rank cords were in accordance with how they should be. I even had the square-topped rogatywka uniform hat that my mother had forced on the unit. The entire area smelled slightly of bleach and puke, a handful of medics running about trying to keep everyone comfortable. None looked at me with anything less than the utmost scorn, but that was understandable. We were at a cross-purpose in our professional oaths- them to reduce the suffering of man, and mine to use the threat of increasing it as a hold to good behavior.
 
Either way, it didn't take me long to meet Ostergaard. What had been a proud naval officer had been reduced to a wreck- swathed in the lightest of bandages, a not-insignificant portion of his mind gone from the pain drugs. Still, he could walk and wear more than a gown, which put him over most of the men in the ward. With the presence of mind to shake my hand, he didn't seem too out of it. Good. Taking out my noteputer to send a quick e-mail, I sat down on the ancient Star League-era stool ahead of his bed, sighing.
 
"You're a monster, you know that?" Ostergaard asked, sighing. "Killed my son. Mutilated yourself. Burned my men with that hell-gas."
 
"Could we not?" I asked, sighing. "Just- Ostergaard. I wanted to know if you had a next of kin we could send your effects if anything happens."
 
That stopped him dead in the tirade he was winding up for. It made him think, before he sighed. "My wife, on Sterope. Juliette Valdez-Ostergaard. Postage to Sterope Station should get it the rest of the way."
 
"Good to know," I said, grabbing a newspaper off the trunk at the end of the bed. Opening it one-quarter of the way, I sighed. The better part of a year out of date, and the sports section to boot.
 
"Fishing for intelligence?" he sniped, trying to get under my skin. I snorted, flipping the page one-handed.
 
"No, getting some space from Kamea. She's not happy with how I handled this whole affair."
 
"I don't blame her."
 
"It was a dishonorable mess from start to finish," I agreed. "Such is the fate of us dogs of war."
 
"I don't include myself in your ranks," Ostergaard coughed out.
 
"I do. You just work for a bigger command, at the end of the day, getting rented out to a bigger client. That's okay, though, since I do believe in professional courtesy."
 
Then I shot him, the newspaper in my lap muffling the faint sound of my needler. I only did it twice, and he died fairly quickly. Picking up my noteputer, I hit 'send' on the next message I'd drafted, and four of the BA troops came in through the sidewall of the medical tent.
 
"You know the drill," I said lightly. "Dump him outside the door he nuked. I'll make sure his effects are mailed home."
 
With that, I left. Our Mule was transferring the contents of this cache up to the Argo, Tam had already been shipped up, and it was time to go. Once we had the medical call stations set up there, then the prisoners would go, and our battle armor troops under Fireball were taking the Fortress out to the Taurian jumper to capture it. We'd be done, soon enough, and when we were I'd ask Kamea to get Tam and I married.
 
It was the little things that kept us sane. Sex, food, companionship, satisfaction, warmth, kin… all things this place lacked. The only thing left of the greatest point Humanity ever reached- cold metal and hell. Little wonder it collapsed. Still, as I made sure my pistol was holstered correctly, I heard a laugh from over where the kids had a Locust idling for power and warmth as they played a game underneath it. Then I shook my head- I needed to visit Tam. He'd wake up soon enough- although, a whisper in my ear told me it wouldn't be in this system. There was nothing here to wake up to, after all.
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