We’re not out of Tutorial Woods yet! Soon, but not yet. There’s one more required mission to go, and then we can actually start taking our own contracts. That said, this update is mostly going to focus on getting to know the Marauder’s command staff. (Unit name to change soon.)
Unfortunately, our MechWarriors are largely without their own personalities – your only interaction with them will be through telling them what to shoot in missions, and their occasional involvement with shipboard events.
Rebel:
Darius? Why did we dust off like that without collecting all the mechs we shot to pieces?Darius:
Sorry, Han. Sumire detected that the IPL and MMM were swarming your way. And while I’d bet on us in a lot of fights, they had something like a good battalion of tanks between them, and we were on everyone’s shit list.The clients and target for the mission were:
Darius – The Rimward Frontier is a hotbed of simmering hostilities, piracy and low-intensity skirmishes. In this environment, MechWarriors with more guts then sense can carve out a living for themselves as independent mercenaries. The pay is good, but the survival rate is very, very low.
Majesty Metals & Manufacturing – This world is independently run by a planetary government, unaffiliated with any of the interstellar states of the Inner Sphere or the Periphery.
We came out without any major damage – though Glitch cooked her structure a bit, and Dekker took some minor internal damage, it was all easy to fix up. Rebel took home five kills, Glitch had two, and Behemoth one.
We then cut to the in-progress command meeting.
Sumire: You need to start finding us better clients, Darius. I mean it.
We’ve been slumming it on the ass-end of the Frontier for
three years now, and we are
drowning in debt.
Darius: I’m fully aware of our financial situation, Meyer. But I can’t just conjure up new clients out of thin air. Han, do me a solid and back me up on this.
Rebel: If we’re really that hard up for cash, we need to stop talking and start doing something about it.
Yang: Hey, you’ll hear no arguments form me – when we made you our Commander, we all agreed to follow your lead.
Darius, could you walk us through the details of this trouble we’re in? it might help if you broke things down point by point.
Darius: Sure thing, Yang. Point one, Meyer’s right – we’re in debt. Every
C-bill we make technically belongs to the banks.
Point two, this corner of the Frontier is a dead zone for mercenary work. There are clients, but they’re terrible. That’s just a fact.
…And that’s it. There are no other points.
Rebel: What’s our best-case scenario? How many jobs will it take to repay the loans?
Darius: Truthfully? I can’t even say. We’re in a pretty deep hole, and from where I’m standing, I don’t see a whole lot of daylight.
The thing is, these banks… and I use that word loosely… they don’t
want us to pay off our loans. They’ll do whatever they can get away with to keep us on the hook – hit us with fees, jack up our interest rates, “misfile” our paperwork. I’m trying to find us a way out of this, but it’s gonna take time.
Sumire: And every day that passes, we accumulate more debt. If we keep going like we have been, we’re screwed.
Rebel: Why not just refuse to pay? We can afford to throw our weight around, we’ve got BattleMechs.
This is legitimately a good question. While the universe is super shaky about adhering to it, having BattleMechs is supposed to be fucking rare, which is why mercenaries are hirable in the first place. They act as a massive force multiplier to what should be large formations of infantry and vehicles going at it.
That said, the games are never good at holding to this, so everyone and their mother has access to massive reserves of ‘Mechs.Darius: That wouldn’t be a very good idea, Han. The banks wouldn’t come for us themselves – they’d hire mercenaries. And you already know how hard up Frontier mercs are for work.
If we stiff the banks, we’ll wind up dead or in debtor’s prison… and out here in the Frontier, those are basically the same thing.
Besides, we’d also get blacklisted by the Mercenary Review Board, and once that happens, our only choice would be to disband or go pirate.Rebel:
Yeah, I’m not fond of either of those options. Okay, so we’re in a bad spot. What are we gonna do about it?
Darius: I don’t see what we
can do, Han. I’m already serving up every legitimate contract I can find.
Unless you want me to sidestep the Mercenary Review Board entirely, we’re basically out of options.
Yang: Go around the MRB? No thanks. Taking an uncertified job is a great way to wind up with a knife in your back.
Rebel: We just got betrayed on a Board-certified contract, Yang. How much worse could it get?
Yang: Plenty. What happened down there was an exception, Boss. With uncertified jobs, it’s the rule.
Remind me again why we don’t just skip town and head to a nicer corner of the Periphery?
Sumire: Because the banks and the JumpShip crews have an arrangement. Until we pay up, they’re gonna keep us on a short leash.
Rebel:
Could we commander a JumpShip? Force the crew to jump us somewhere greener?Sumire:
I want to say yes, but honestly? We don’t have any marines trained for zero-G combat, and once you have a reputation for hijacking JumpShips, it’s really hard to hitch a ride.Yang: That’s a good reason.
Look Darius… Meyer’s right. We need to start earning some real money, and we need to do it soon. It’s only a matter of time before something breaks down that I can’t fix with duct tape and good intentions.
Rebel: Desperate times, people. Darius, you know what you need to do.
Yang: Yeah, Boss… much as I hate to say it, I agree with you. We need to sidestep the MRB.
Guess I’d better get mentally prepared for that knife in the back, huh?
Rebel:
Cheer up, Yang. If you expect your employer to backstab you, it’s always a pleasant surprise when they don’t.Darius: It’s settled, then. I’ll start digging for contracts outside the MRB system.
Who knows? Maybe it’ll work out for the best. It isn’t like we’ve got all that much to lose. In the meantime, we need to find another paying job, and our prospects in this system have completely dried up.
I’d recommend booking travel to a neighboring system and seeing what the Review Board has for us. With any luck, we’ll find enough work to keep going until something better rolls in.
For now, we’re trapped in the ass-end of the Reaches, the banks and JumpShips basically forcing our debt-ridden unit to stay in a stretch of poor planets with limited prospects.
Darius: Our top priority right now needs to be finding work, so we can raise cash. None of the contracts here are very good; I picked out the only viable one I could find, and it helpfully includes our travel fees as part of the deal. Come by the Command Center when you’re ready to review it.
With that, we can look around our DropShip and talk to the Command Crew, review our MechWarriors, check our finances and rename and repaint the unit.
And there she is, our current dropship. She’s a modified Leopard that has had its two AeroSpace Fighter bays ripped out to carry two more mechs. I’m not going to show off every screen and explain everything here, so let’s hit the highlights (and spend more time talking to our command crew)
We can currently have up to 8 MechWarriors besides our self, but the quality of who we can hire is pretty lacking. The better pilots don’t want to sign with us because we’re relatively unknown.
Each MechWarrior you can hire has traits, which may come into play when an event happens. The ones we can hire only have a basic ‘this is where I came from’ background trait, while the one in the screenshot is also a Tinkerer and amateur MechTech.
For the procedurally generated MechWarriors, they also have no backstory, so they’re boring and no fun. We won’t be hiring them if we can help it.
Ur Cruinne is a crappy backwater, and its store shows it. There’s nothing beyond some wrecked Panther and Spider parts and a few basic weapon systems for sale, and none of them are worth considering.
Darius hangs out in the Command Center, where we can negotiate contracts for sweet, sweet salvage, C-Bills and improved reputation with various factions.
While we’re here, we’ll chat up Darius.
Darius: Always good to see you at Ops, Han. Can I do something for you?
Rebel: I want to know more about our debt situation.
Darius: Yeah, sure, that’s fair… and I’m glad you’re taking an interest. I’ve got time to get into the nuts and bolts of it if you do. What do you want to know?
Rebel: Remind me why we took out so many loans in the first place.
Darius: How much time have you got? I mean, we’ve been hit with a thousand expenses since we were forced to flee Coromodir… but I guess you’re mostly interested in the big-ticket items.
Well, first and foremost, there’s the Leopard. We still owe a lot of money on this ship, and losing her isn’t an option. Then you’ve got all the assorted fallout from our impromptu trip across the Frontier: JumpShip passage, docking fees, miscellaneous travel expenses. All paid for on credit… as if we had a choice.
There’s more that I could get into – the load we took out to set up Markham’s family, et cetera, et cetera – but that’d b e gilding the lily at this point.
The fact is, we’re in a lot of trouble with a lot of lenders. But hey, we’re mercenaries.. we live for trouble.
Rebel: Who are we in debt to, exactly? I want names.
Darius: How about I gave you the top three? First, you’ve got Blue Horizon. that’s the big commercial bank on
Lyreton They’re the ones that own the lease on the ship. Then there’s the Indri Consortium… they’ve got people everywhere, but they’re based somewhere in Marik space. We borrowed form one of their “associates” to make the jump away from Coromodir on the day of the coup. Finally, you’ve got Lockown Lending. They’re a Frontier outfit from Hastur, and they’re about as crooked as they come. Now, I wouldn’t normally do business with an outfit like the Double-L, but we didn’t have a choice… they made a deal with Blue Horizon to buy half of our debt.
So that’s the big three: a commercial bank, a shadowy financial consortium, and a bunch of leg-breakers in cheap suits. And each of ‘em is dangerous in its own way.
Rebel:
Any chance we can cash out with one of the three and get our debt payments down that way?Darius:
Maybe with the Consortium, but we’re basically treading water right now. Without a change in fortunes, we’re not gonna make any headway.Rebel:
Anyway, I figure I’d check how you were holding up after this morning’s friendly meeting.Darius:
Eh, I’m doing alright, but thanks for asking. It wasn’t as hot as some of our previous jobs.Rebel: Before any of this started, you worked with the Arano Royal Guard. Tell me about it.
I only got drafted in right before the coup, thanks to Mastiff. Before that, I was in the regular army.Darius: It was more then just a deployment. It was a full campaign. High Lord Tamati gave us the job back in ’19. We were supposed to be assisting the Royal Guard to round up and eliminate a pirate clan on
Fjaldr. Commander Markham thought it’d be easy money… turned out to be anything but.
We lost a dozen MechWarriors in the three months of the Fjaldr campaign. Had to hose ‘em out of their cockpits. Would’ve been more if it wasn’t for Sir Raju. He saved our people’s asses on more than one occasion… went out of his way to do it. And the thing is, he didn’t
have to. We weren’t under his protection – we were the hired help.
A lot of people in Mastiff’s position would’ve used us as cannon fodder, but that wasn’t his way. He treated us as if we were his own.
He was a good man, Han. As good as they come.
Rebel:
Yeah, he was. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. Tell me a bit about yourself, Darius. Where are you from?
Darius: I grew up on Nassau Heights… it’s one of the hab stations orbiting Artru. Thirty decks of economic stratification, with the corporate suits on the upper decks and everyone else crammed into the lower ones. My old man was a dockhand. We lived on Deck 28 – two levels up from the bottom, with the other station maintenance personnel.
Twelve hours a day, six days a week, my dad would load and unload cargo shuttles. Vacuum-sealed
quillar and nutrient paste for people like us, and luxury goods for the suits upstairs. The old man must’ve unloaded a thousand cases of
Cassildan eel roe – plump, succulent eggs the size of melon balls. Never got to taste any, though. Any one of those tins would’ve cost him a half a year’s wages.
Anyway, Han… I don’t wanna saddle you with my life story. Suffice to say that I got an eyeful of what I
didn’t want to be on Nassau Heights, and I did what I had to do to change my circumstances. And by the age of sixteen, I struck out on my own. I left the station with a handful of skills, an enormous web of contacts, and a rucksack full of that expensive caviar. And once I made it off of Nassau Heights, I never, ever looked back.
Rebel:
I know that stuff is expensive, but it seriously makes me almost gag to even smell it, much less taste it.Darius:
Really? I thought the one can I tried was pretty good stuff. I ended up selling the rest bit by bit to fund my way, though.Rebel:
Yuck. Well, thanks for the chat. I want to check up with Yang before Sumire gets us underway.Darius:
Talk to you later, Han.The Barracks allows two things – upgrading our pilot’s skills and looking at their service record. The four MechWarriors of the Marauders actually have backgrounds, unlike the procedurally generated characters. The Kickstarter backer and Ronin characters also come with more fleshed out backgrounds.
You can increase each skill up to level 4 without having to commit to a tactical skill. My plan is for Glitch to spec for Multi-Target, Breeching Shot and Bulwark, sit in the biggest mechs available, and kill things from a distance.
Rebel and Behemoth will take Bulwark, Evasive Movement and Ace Pilot. While the first two might seem mutually exclusive, I plan to put them in heavy close-range ‘Mechs. Extra evasion when moving closer, or extra defense once in position and no longer moving aren’t bad things to have.
Dekker and Medusa will spec for Sensor Lock, Evasive Movement and Ace Pilot, allowing him to use a lighter mech to reserve until he moves last, get into position behind a target and rip it open, then rip into it again and move back into hiding at the start of the next round.
For now, Han picks up Piloting 3 and 4, Guts 4 and Tactics 3. This gives him an extra hit to play with.
Dekker picks up Tactics 5, giving him Sensor Lock (and something to do while he hides his squishy light mech ass.)
Medusa picks up Tactics 4 but doesn’t have enough banked XP to pick up 5 as well just yet.
Our current MechWarriors are:
Attributes: Spacer, Military, Inner Sphere, Criminal, Brave, Lyran
Biography: Miranda Aguilera grew up in the Lyran Commonwealth. She was a tall kid who made a name for herself as ‘the girl you don’t mess with.’ At eighteen, she signed up with a small-time mercenary company to feed her growing wanderlust. Miranda went undefeated in her crew’s drinking games – and in the brawling that usually followed. When her fellow mercenaries turned to piracy, she was in. When they turned over a new leaf, she was out, and looking for a tougher crew.
Attributes: Nobility, Officer, Spacer, MechWarrior, Capellan, Military, Command Experience, Inner Sphere
Biography: Amir Kowalski was brought up as a loyal scion of House Liao, and sent to a military academy as soon as he was of age. There, he did not disappoint his family name and graduated on time. After graduation, by family request, he was assigned as a naval lieutenant aboard a Capellan Confederation DropShip. He served without particular distinction and was eventually transferred to a MechWarrior unit, which suited his abilities much better. After another tour of duty, in which he developed the motto: ‘any battle you walk away from is a victory,’ he decided he wanted to pursue his own goals, and became a mercenary.
Attributes: Inner Sphere, Criminal, Brave, Federal
Biography: Jessica Chernovskaya had a peaceful and ordinary middle-class childhood in the heart of the Federated Suns. But even in the heart of civilization, you’re not safe from a glitch. It was a garbed bioscan that got Jessica committed to a maximum security prison and changed for life. After ten years, her case was re-opened, the evidence re-examined, and her name cleared, but it was far too late for the kid Glitch had been. She’d learned skills on the inside, and she applied them on the outside. Killing for money is surprisingly easy and lucrative, and elite killers can command high prices for their discretion and effectiveness.
Attributes: MechWarrior, Officer, Military, Technician, Aurigan, Periphery, Cautious
Biography: Mohammed Benitez was born on one of Mechdur’s lunar colonies and subsequently traveled with his prospector parents all over the system before moving to Katinka. There he attended a local technical school to augment the knowledge he’d picked up while growing up. He spent some time working as a tech on his parents’ IndustrialMechs. Eventually, craving more excitement, he hitched a ride on a mercenary DropShip, where he soon talked his way into a BattleMech cockpit. He’s never looked back.
The Mech Bay, unsurprisingly, holds our rides and our MechTech. We have six open bays, containing our five mechs – in addition to the lance we took out for the last mission, Medusa pilots our LCT-1V Locust.
We ask Yang to repair the damage the Vindicator and Spider suffered – it’ll cost 21,000 C-Bills in total and 5 and 4 days respectively, but we’ll have more then enough time to have everything in working shape before the next mission.
Yang: Heyya, Boss. Welcome to the Mech Bay – my own little piece of heaven right here on the ship. Something I can help you with?
Rebel:
Heya, Yang. I’ve got a few concerns about our ride. I want an assessment of the Leopard. How much trouble are we in?
Yang: Dunno. I mean, we’re doing okay for the moment, but give it a few months, maybe a year… You know how it goes. Eventually, everything falls apart.
Maybe our drive system will give out. Maybe some debris will perforate the hull. Who knows? But on that day, we’re gonna need to be able to cover our repair costs. And if we can’t… well. That’ll be that.
Rebel:
I’m sort of concerned about the ‘drifting helplessly in space’ aspect of those concerns.Yang:
That’s why we need the cash, Boss. I can fix just about anything if I have the spare parts for it, but we haven’t had the money to replace the spares I’ve been using. At some point, I’ll reach for something and it won’t be there.Rebel:
I understand. Hopefully Darius digs up some paying work for us – soon. But I’m curious – Tell me a little bit about yourself. How’d you wind up with this crew?
Yang: That’s a long story, Boss. Shortest version I can give you? I signed on after I served my term in the
Third Succession War, fighting for the Capellan Confederation. If you want to know more, you can ask whatever you want. Otherwise, let’s get back to talking shop.
Rebel: Where are you from, originally?
Yang: Bryant, in the Confederation. You may have heard our claim to fame: the
Crowley Lizard Cow… No? Well, trust me, they’re delicious.
Anyway, as the story goes, Bryant was a really nice place once – a tourist spot, big with hikers and fishing enthusiasts. Pale blue skies, emerald-green seas, and a booming agricultural business. You know... the works. I never knew it that way, though.
Stefan Amaris got to it a couple centuries before I was born, and, well… that was that.
As the story goes, Bryant used to have these enormous orbital mirrors – “Storm Inhibitors” they called ‘em. The Star League put them in place. When Amaris took the system in his civil war, he had his troops use ‘em for target practice. Without those mirrors, Bryant reverted to its natural state: a miserable little ball of windblown dirt, actively hostile to human life.
By the time I came along, the only places where people could live in relative safety were the planet’s poles. Of course, you can’t fit a planet’s entire population into a handful of cities at its poles – there isn’t enough space, no matter how far down you dig or how tall you build. A lot of people – mostly the poor – died in the early days. There’s still a lot of overcrowding in Bryant’s cities even now.
That’s my childhood home in a nutshell… way too many people jammed into a tiny, claustrophobic space, with nowhere to go but off-planet. I cleared out of there as fast as I could and never looked back. Gotta admit, though… I do miss the taste of Lizard Cow.
Rebel:
Maybe we’ll run across some, even out here.Yang:
Ah, don’t get my hopes up. Even if we did, it’d cost as much as a spare actuator, and I’d rather have another one of those on hand.Rebel: Tell me about your time in the military. Who’d you serve with?
Yang: The
2nd St. Ives Lancers, 1st Battalion, under Major Ling. We saw more action then most. The arm is a souvenir of my time in the service. I lost the original back in 3010, on
St. Loris.
Y’know, when we first arrived at St. Loris, I loved the place. It’s an agricultural world… sort of a breadbasket for the neighboring systems. Green fields, rolling hills, you get the picture. We’d just walked out of hell on
Kittery – the
FedRats drove us out in ’05 with our tails between our legs. So it looked like paradise to us. I remember kicking back in the Mech Bay, my feet propped up on an engine block, sipping on a snifter of
Ambergrist vermouth. Not a bad way to spend a sunny afternoon.
Anyway. Turned out, the Federated Suns weren’t done with us yet. We were barely a month into our deployment when they sent the
Ceti Hussars to burn us out. I’m sure that there were sound strategic reasons for House Davion to want St. Loris, but it sure felt personal to me.
Long story short, one of their scouts managed to slip through our perimeter and hit my Mech Bay. I was tinkering around in a Centurion’s custom-made
rumble seat at the time… being surrounded by all that armor is the only reason I made it out alive. Still, I didn’t make it out unscathed. I lost two of my favorite assistants and my own right arm, and I’ve got this ugly thing grafted onto me as a reminder.
…and yet, here I am, doing mercenary work for a living. Some people never learn, huh?
Rebel:
At least we keep our support element away from the front line?Yang:
Which is a great comfort until the AeroSpace Fighters come calling, and Sumire starts maneuvering.Rebel: Why’d you leave the Capellan Confederation?
I would have thought with your injury you could have taken a medical retirement to a factory position somewhere.Yang: After my tour of duty was up, you mean? I dunno, it was just… time for a change. Besides, the place wasn’t for me anymore. In a way, it never really was.
I learned a lot from my time in the service. Got a first-hand view of the elitist bullshit that saturates Capellan culture, how it rewards highborn idiots at the common people’s expense. Speaking as a thoroughly common man, that didn’t sit right with me. When my tour was over, I walked away and never looked back.
Rebel: You’ll never really get away from the aristocracy, Yang. Hell
I was born a noble.
Yang: Yeah, but you’re a
competent noble, and you aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty. At the end of the day, that’s all I really care about. I wonder how many times I watched talented engineers get passed over for promotion so some idiot with a title could advance? Too many to count.
Rebel:
Yeah, that sort of nepotism is self-destructive. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you walked away. You’ve brought my ‘Mech back from the brink more than once.
Yang: Heh…
way more than once, if memory serves. Still, I appreciate the kind words. And for what it’s worth, I’m happy to be here, with this crew. Going career military would’ve been an enormous mistake.
Rebel:
Well, as I said, I’m glad you choose this way. Thanks for the chat, Yang. I need to check up with Sumire.Yang:
Catch you later, Boss.Man, Yang is chatty once you get him going.Our next stop is the Captain’s Quarters. It’s pretty spartan, but it’s where we can look at our finances and reputation and change the unit’s look.
The bank loan is about a quarter of our total costs, and a little more than half of our operating costs. MechWarriors command high salaries – twice the maintenance costs of the machines they currently ride in, and it only goes up as they become more skilled.
About the only faction not represented in our little slice of space is the Outworlds Alliance, which is located on the borders of the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns, and tends to keep to itself. That said, none of the factions or the MRB care very much about our little unit.
We do a little rebranding. A new name and a new coat of paint might not mean a lot, but maybe the break with the unit’s past will translate into a brighter future.
The Navigation room lets us talk to our Pilot, Sumire, and plot which system we want to travel to next.
Sumire: Hey, Commander. Sometime I can do for you?
Rebel:
Hey, Sumire. Does the decision we made about uncertified contracts satisfy your concerns?
Sumire: My concerns won’t be satisfied until our creditors have been paid and the loan sharks are off our backs. But this is a step in the right direction, and that makes me happy. I’m not blind to the risk that uncertified contracts entail, by the way. I mean, I know that what we’re doing is dangerous. But it’s the best chance we’ve got to dig ourselves out of this hole.
Rebel:
I agree with you, for what it’s worth. And it can’t be any worse then the last contract. Worst case, we run into that sort of betrayal, we can kill our former employers and loot them for our pay.Sumire:
A little bloodthirsty, but whatever works I suppose.Rebel: I’m collecting stories about the crew. Tell me something about yourself.
Sumire: Well… I’m from a noble family, like you. We’re old money – made our fortune out in Rasalhague, then repatriated to the Taurian Concordat. That’s where I grew up. I’m not sure if this is the kind of stuff you were hoping to hear, but we can talk about whatever. I’m not shy.
Rebel: Where in the Concordat are you from?
Sumire: I grew up on New Vandenberg. It’s a nice enough place, I suppose. Do you like birds?
Rebel: Why do you ask?
Sumire: Because New Vandenburg is crawling with them. It’s basically one big aviary. Sometime like two-thirds of the native fauna has feathers, flutters on the wind, and splatters its excrement across every available surface.
Naturally, the original colonists adopted the feathery little monsters into the culture, and those of us that came after were kind of… stuck with it. Statues, fountains, murals… you name it. Just a giant, feathery pile of screeching alien birds. If the system had a motto, it’d be “Squawk.”
Rebel:
Heh. I get the picture.
Sumire: You sure? Because I could keep going. I hate birds, is what I’m saying. That may be an unpopular opinion for a pilot, but I’ll stand by it until the day I die.
Rebel:
Speaking of pilots, Where’d you learn to pilot a Leopard, anyway?
Sumire: The Taurian Naval Institute, on New Vandenberg. Well, among other places – it’s a big campus. The low-gravity training station orbiting Lompoc was my second home for a time. TNI flight training isn’t normally open to civilians, but my parents had good credit back then, and they could name-drop
Protector Calderon. That’ll get you pretty far in the Concordat… for a while, anyway.
The other cadets in my class weren’t especially happy sharing air with a civvy, but they couldn’t say much. I was nobility and they weren’t. Everyone sort of kept me at arm’s length, so I had plenty of time to concentrate on my studies.
I got my certification in both DropShip and JumpShip operations in four years. I even tried working on a commercial jump crew for a while, once upon a time. The people were fun, but it wasn’t for me. The ratio of flying to violent jump sickness skewed hard in the wrong direction.
Rebel:
Ah, yeah. I get some serious nausea from the jumps, so I imagine if your whole career is making jumps roughly once a week…Sumire:
As I said, it wasn’t for me.Rebel: What can you tell me about House Meyer?
Sumire: You’re looking at it. My parents are both gone – blood cancer and heart disease, respectively. Both treatable, but they were out of money at that point, so into the ground they went. Ditto my brother David, who ran off to serve in the Third Succession War and never came back.
Rebel: I’m sorry.
Sumire: The galaxy was at war for nearly two hundred years, Commander. People died. You don’t need to apologize for it… and truthfully, I was never really all that close to any of them.
David was thirteen years older than me, and had a foot out the door before I turned three. And my parents, well... they raised me by proxy, in the traditional noble fashion. There was no real bond there, even when I was young. None of this is to say that my folks were bad people. They weren’t! They were just… doing what they knew. Their upbringings had been outsourced, just like mine was.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say about my family. They’re gone, I’m here, the end. So… You got another question? Or should we get back to our duties.
Rebel:
Just one more. Your family came from Rasalhague?
Sumire: It was a long time ago, but yeah. As my parents told it, we were landowners on Pomme De Terre… it’s an agricultural world, sort of the breadbasket of the Draconis Combine… and yes, I know that “Pomme De Terre” means “potato.” My ancestors came from the planet Potato. It took some time for me to accept that, but hey, here we are.
…Anyway. Moving on, House Meyer’s holdings were meager, but the value of that land was astronomical. For minor nobility, we were really very wealthy. And then the Third Succession War broke out, and the political rhetoric got ugly. House Meyer didn’t want a single part of what was happening, so my ancestors emptied their accounts and ran.
As a rule, House Kurita takes a really dim view on nobles who cut and run. Worlds like “traitor” and “defector” start getting thrown around. In the Combine, you
really don’t want to be on the receiving end of allegations like that. I wouldn’t be standing here today if House Calderon hadn’t granted my ancestors asylum in the Concordat. In all likelihood, House Meyer would’ve been wiped out before I was even born.
Rebel:
Yeah, my parents told the same story. We went to the Reach instead of the Concordat, but leaving, especially with a ‘Mech means that if I’m smart, I never even try to go back to the Combine. The Dragon has a long and unforgiving memory. Thanks for the talk, Sumire. Shall we get this show on the road?Sumire:
Alright, flight time!We’re being hired to take on and wipe out a Marik lance that’s harassing the planetary government on Bellerophon. We agree on 54,250 C-Bills, an ability to choose 2 pieces of salvage, and another 8 pieces of salvage randomly chosen from whatever is left over. If we went all in on money, we’d get 170,500 C-Bills, but only two random pieces of salvage. The other direction would only pay 15,500 C-Bills, but only give two more random pieces of salvage then our chosen settings. I’m basically gambling that we’ll be able to loot something expensive. The mission difficulty of 1/2 skull means that we’re unlikely to face anything more then light mechs in shoddy condition… hopefully.
That’s it for this time. Next time, we deal with our final required mission, and we can start taking on some other work! Due to character limits, the glossary terms from this post will be folded into the next post.