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The story is continued from posts on the previous board. The earlier sections can be found here or here.






Star Colonel Malthus was not, unfortunately, in a position to talk to anyone.  At some point during the kicking that Galen had delivered, the Clan mechwarrior’s straps had parted and when infantrymen broke the cockpit open the man was comatose, sprawled in a bloody heap across his command console.  There was reasonable hope that he would awaken... eventually.

Instead, Victoria had to make do with Adam Steiner’s other bete noir among the ranks of Clan Jade Falcon. The princess amused herself as she waited for the Star Colonel to arrive by guessing at names for other such Clans. She already know of Wolf. Perhaps there was a Clan Black Cat out there. And if so, would it be unlucky to have them cross her path. For someone, no doubt.

Kristen Redmond’s face was trying to display defiance as soldiers hustled her out of the personel carrier that had rushed her to the improvised rendevous – an open-sided tent just inside the campus gates. It was easy to make out the shock however. Around them were the signs left by the battle... and it would be plainly evident to the woman which side had emerged triumphant. After all, she was still a prisoner.

“Good evening,” Victoria said, disturbed despite herself at the first sight of one of the redoubtable Clan warriors in the flesh. It was doubtful if Redmond had ever been pretty, but the scar across her face and the distinctly different colour of the eye within the socket bisected by the injury made it clear that the original optic organ had been destroyed somehow. Adding the metallic pseudo-tattoos and Redmond resembled little more than one of the reckless bands of reavers that boiled in out of the Periphery from time to time. She would have fit in perfectly alongside a mugshot of Paula ‘Lady Death’ Trevaline.

But then, for all their advanced science, in some ways the Clans didn’t seem so very different from an ambitious band of pirates.

Redmond glanced around, feigning anger. “Who is in charge here?” she demanded.

Victoria’s own eyes narrowed. “I am in charge. Sit your ass down.” She pointed imperiously at the seat that had been prepared for the captive.

“You?” The mechwarrior’s lips curved in derision. “Impossible. You are tiny.”

It was always useful to have skills applicable outside of the cockpit, Victoria noted. The Mauser and Gray was pointed at Redmond’s nose in the wink of an eye, a well-practised quickdraw that she had practised for hours as a child under the tuition of her bodyguards. “God made man and woman, Colonel. But it was Samuel Colt who made us all equal.” She spun the weapon in her hand, rather flamboyantly and then replaced it in her holster. “More simply: I won, you lost.”

The two women matched glares for a moment and Redmond conceded the point, sinking into the chair, leaning slightly forwards. “Very well. What do you want of me?”

“Information of course. One of my cousins tells me that it counts as ammunition and I find it almost as valuable.” Victoria leant against the field table and eyed her prisoner. “I’m sure that you’ve grasped that Nicolai Malthus’ force has been defeated, just as you were. The garrison forces that were placed at Old Exeter have also been defeated. We now control the surface of Somerset. In orbit however, we are stalemated.”

Redmond nodded. “We wondered how long it would take for your warfleet to arrive,” she said. “The Falcon’s Nest will not be defeated easily.”

“I noticed that. Impressive that they’re still fighting after my pilots nuked it.”

The scarfaced woman’s face went an unfetching shade of grey. “You used a nuclear weapon?”

Victoria shrugged. “Yeah. Well I couldn’t exactly smuggle a battleship around in my field kit so a nuke was the next best option…”

“You savage…” the former Star Colonel murmered, her eyes focused on something other than Victoria. “We were right to come here, to protect the Inner Sphere from you.”

“Now you’re just overreacting,” replied Victoria casually, her mind ticking over options as she took the measure of the older woman’s disgust at the tactic. “Come on, it’s a warship. The Ares Conventions are pretty clear that I’m allowed to use nukes against one of those. It’s not like I’m flattening cities with orbital strikes. Now that would be pretty barbaric, wouldn’t it?”

Redmond lowered her face. “Those actions have caused much recrimination among my people. They will not be repeated.”

“You’re right. They won’t be,” Victoria told her flatly. She took a deep breath. “However, that’s not my immediate concern. Your friends up there have been crippled, but they are still in position to threaten my dropships if we take off. And I’ll give them credit, destroying a ship that size with only aerospace fighters will take time I don’t feel like wasting. In a situation like this, where both sides lose by continuing the fight, what is the position of your people on negotiation?”

“We do not approve of waste,” Redmond told her, speaking slowly and cautiously. “If neither side will accept hegira, then -”

Victoria held a hand up to pause the explanation. “‘Hegira’?”

“The right to leave a battlefield unharmed. Bondsmen are released by both sides, but the victor retains all other spoils.”

It took only an instant for Victoria to weigh that option and find it wanting. “As if. Continue.”

“‘As if’?” Redmond asked instead, apparently confused by the slang.

“A derisive way of saying no,” the young Kommandant explained. “An abbreviation, if you will, of ‘as if I would do such a thing’. So, failing Hegira...?”

“Ah. Then it is usual to bargain forces to minimise losses. It is, obviously, a mark of disgrace to have to do so after combat has already been joined, but preferable to the waste of both sides being destroyed.”

Victoria nodded. “Some sort of proxy battle then? And who would make such a bargain with me? The senior officers on this planet are all... what is your word? Bondsmen, isn’t it? And it does not seem that that whoever commands your proud Nest wishes to speak to us.” She smiled somewhat ruefully. “We have tried, you see. But it seems likely that their radio antennae have been damaged by the battle as there has not been the least response.”

Redmond frowned and then shrugged. “Have you tried contacting them via this planet’s hyperpulse generator? I recall the unit aboard the Falcon’s Nest is buried deep within the hull and would probably remain operational.”

“There you go. I knew that you would be helpful,” said Victoria, somewhat patronizingly. “I’ll have a word with ComStar about that. One useful thing about those double-dealing batards is that they doubledeal with everyone. I’m sure that they have crawled their way into regular contact with your superiors.”

“What will you do to me now?” Redmond asked her somewhat bitterly. “I know that you barbarians have no equivalence to being bondsman but you have made it clear that you will not release your prisoners.”

Victoria gave her an amused look and picked a radio handset from the table. “Galen, this is Victoria. Over.”

A moment later Galen’s voice crackled over the radio speaker, only slightly distorted by static. “This is Galen, over.”

“Apparently the illustrious Clan Jade Falcon fitted a hyperpulse generator to their ship and Redmond reckons there’s a good chance that it’ll be operable. Have someone go twist ComStar’s arm into setting up a communications channel, would you?”

“I live to serve,” the Hauptmann replied sardonically. “Galen out.”

With that matter dealt with, Victoria picked up a field stool and sat down upon it. “Now, Kristen Redmond, we talk. I’m a little vague on this bondsman business of yours, so maybe we do have some equivalent way that you can make yourself useful. That would be pleasent, since the alternative is wasteful.” She used the last word deliberately and saw a subtle tension fade from the clan warrior’s posture. So avoiding waste was a fetish to these people, just as she’d guessed from Redmond’s earlier words. “Perhaps the most immediate question is the one you just touched upon.”

There was a pause, Redmond’s brow furrowing as she realised that she was clearly expected to respond but was unsure how. “I do not understand.”

“Precisely.” The princess smiled slightly. “We clearly have significantly different cultures and we do not understand each other.  You are going to help me to understand your people.”

“I see. What do you want to know.”

Hmm. Probably too early to press for military information. “Well, let’s start at the beginning. Your origins. You’re obviously human, but no civilisation I’ve ever heard of within the Inner Sphere. So where did you and yours branch off from the Tree of Man?”

Redmond frowned as she worked through the question in her mind. Clearly, Victoria noted, florid oratory was not something that Clan Jade Falcon considered a common practise. The mechwarrior’s final response however, astonished her.

“We are the weapon of the resurrected Star League,” Redmond recited, clearly from memory. “Honed to a razor’s edge by the Trials, by the Remembrance, and by the Words of the Great Kerenskys, our sires, our saviours.”