McGinty's Bar, Galatea
Lyran Commonwealth
28 October 3010
Morgan and Patrick Kell looked up with eeriely similar forbidding looks at the man standing behind the empty third chair at their table in McGinty's Bar on Galatea. He was - they guessed - perhaps ten years older than they were, portly and red-faced with thinning blond hair cut in the style of a Lyran Mechwarrior. "Do you have a problem?" Patrick asked bluntly.
"Well, actually yes," the intruder replied, although he sounded more chastened than aggressive. "May I explain?"
Morgan leant forwards, eyebrows drawing down over his eyes. "Are you here to chisel?"
"No, Colonel Kell. I'm hoping to bargain." He reversed the chair and sat down upon it, resting his elbows upon the back. "We're, uh..." He paused and then caught the eye of the waitress. "Could I have a Canonbie and bring these gentlemen whatever they are having please."
The woman glanced at the two younger mechwarriors who exchanged looks and in unison told her: "Timbiqui Dark."
"That's kind of expensive," she warned. Timbiqui ale was highly regarded but the planet was also more than four hundred light years distant from the Mercenary's Star. Her response was a pair of Katrina Marsden-Steiners - twenty kroner bills - and a mild admonition not to take too much as a tip.
"My name's Nicholas Saint." Despite the name he didn't appear asian in any way, but that wasn't unusual after a thousand or so years of ethnic and cultural mixing. "I aspire to the rank of colonel, but unfortunately - and quite unintentionally - the pair of you have rather inhibited me there."
Patrick shrugged. "How did we do that? Poached some mechwarriors you had your eyes on?"
"Not quite. Well, a few yes, but this is Galatea. Mechwarriors might as well grow on trees, if not necessarily mechwarriors with the highest of qualities. No. The problem that confronts me, you see, is that of technicans."
"Ah." Morgan nodded. He and Patrick hadn't begun recruiting their regiment by amassing fighting forces, they'd started by recruiting scores of technicans to keep their fighting forces in operation.
"Exactly." Saint must have heard the waitress returning because he half-turned to accept the change she gave him along with a brimming tankard. Two sealed bottles were placed on the table before the Kells and they clinked the bottles together in toast before twisting the tops off.
Saint gulped down half his tankard's contents. "Mechwarriors I can find. Battlemechs I have." He did not miss seeing the brothers perk up. A man with more 'Mechs than Mechwarriors would have no difficulty filling those cockpits with the best of the dispossessed that thronged the cities of Galatea. "But those Battlemechs require repairs before they are battle-ready and one skilled pair of hands," He held his own up in illustration. "Are not enough to do the job."
Patrick turned his now half-empty bottle around in his hands. "You're a technican?"
"Among other things."
"And how did you come by these 'Mechs?" probed the younger Kell while Morgan watched Saint thoughtfully. "Battlefield salvage?"
"I won a treasure map in a game of chance."
"What!"
Saints smiled slightly. "You're familiar, of course, with Cranston Snord."
Morgan threw back his head and laughed, the sound drawing attention from all around the room. "Of course," he admitted. Everyone in the mercenary trade knew of Snord, once a battalion commander in the Wolf Dragoons. Four years ago, he had been thrown (all but physically) out of the Dragoons for leading that battalion in an unauthorised attack just to capture an antique collection of some kind. Jaime Wolf had not been amused, but a year later Snord had won the start of a mercenary company in a game of poker and proceeded to make a royal pain of himself for Janos Marik.
"I was his chief tech until Sneede quit the Dragoons to join him." Saint shrugged. "I cannot blame him for favouring Sneede, the man knows his stuff. Unfortunately, that does not make him any easier to work for though so I decided that having upset Cranston by winning his precious treasure map off him, it might be best to make my own way in the universe and see if there was anything to the map."
Patrick nodded. "I take it that there was something?"
"Enough to pay off the dropships I hired to haul my share here and leave me with the seeds of a good force," he agreed. Then he paused and Morgan laughed again at the twinkle in Saint's eyes. Quite obviously the man was fishing for one of them to ask what exactly he had left out of what must have been an impressive find.
"Which would be...?" asked Patrick obligingly.
Saint raised one finger and waited until the background noise had risen enough to mask his words. Then he told them.
Patrick Kell, veteran (if only for a year) of the Tenth Lyran Guards and one of the most brilliant cadets ever to graduate from the Nagelring, fell out of his chair. "One hundred and thirty-two!"
Around the room heads turned towards them. Saint shook his head disapprovingly. "If you cannot hold your beer better than that I will not buy you another of those," he warned. But he was smiling beneficently.
"I take it you want our technicans to make your equipment battle ready?" Morgan asked quietly as his brother righted his chair. "So what are you offering us? Some of the Battlemechs?"
"I considered that," Saint admitted. "But then I thought to myself: Nicholas, you have never led a regiment and you are only a better mechwarrior than seven or eight out of ten. Why should I not be a Major first and get some experience in someone else's regiment."
"You're angling for a position now?"
Saint raised his tankard in salute before draining about half of what was left in it. "A partnership. I will bring Mechs, you will bring techs. You have your regiment and I will have a battalion of it. And someday, if we are all alive, perhaps I will take that battalion and form my own unit. But that will be another day."
"If, as you say, we are still alive," agreed Morgan. He lifted his bottle to check the contents and then took a swig from the neck. "It's a tempting offer, but we're looking for a certain calibre of Mechwarrior. I'll not take you on without knowing what you can do."
The blond man simply smiled confidently and finished his tankard. "You want a demonstration? How about I bring a mech out to one of the practise fields tomorrow. You can judge the material and the man at the same time."
Patrick grinned. "Sounds good to me."
Practise Field 17, Galatea
Lyran Commonwealth
30 October 3010
It actually took two days before a practise field was available and quite a crowd had pushed their way into the bunkers overlooking the field. Some of them were men and women that the Kells had already recruited for their Kell Hounds regiment. More wanted to be among that select company. By setting the bar high, the Kells had presented an all but irresistable lure to the proud mercenary community.
Most of the onlookers were simply curious. The Kells had made quite an impact, but thus far their recruitment had been done quietly. This evaluation had been agreed to publically however and it really wasn't very difficult to find out who had booked what practise fields if you had advance notice. Some of the officers watching might find themselves fighting alongside or against the Kell Hounds some day. Who knew what dividends observing them now could reap?
Three Kell Hound 'Mechs were present, all heavy-weights. Morgan's Archer and Cat Wilson's Marauder were standing near the control array, evidently they would be observing the performance. Patrick, on the other hand, was walking his Thunderbolt around the field, familiarising himself with the simple geography: the small hillock near the middle, a few rather worn trees that had obviously been too close to too many training round sover the year, a crater that had filled with stagnant water and might now pass for a pond.
It wasn't long before a third Battlemech arrived. It was an obvious antique - many observers didn't recognise it at all, save for a familial resemblence to the Ostsol and Ostroc heavy 'Mechs. Only a few history buffs recognised Saint's 'Mech as the precursor to the two, the Ostwar.
Patrick Kell was among those who did make the connection. "Is this typical?" he asked bluntly.
"Fairly," Saint admitted calmly. "I have been able to make a few improvements but working alone makes it difficult." He didn't say exactly what those improvements were, but it was enough that Patrick decided to put more faith in what his instruments told him than in the fragmentary data in his warbook.
A small convoy - a cherry picker, a crane and an ammunition transport - crewed by Kell Hounds technicans roared over to the Ostwar and began to efficiently check that the machine's lasers were in training mode and loading training missiles into the ammo bins.
"I hope your mechwarrior days are a little more current than your BattleMech. Didn't the Star League retire the design four hundred years ago?"
"My training is a little more recent than that," replied Saint. He popped open the armoured hatches of the ammunition feeds for the technicans to work. "I admit that I have relatively little experience. Only one actual combat."
"And you lost your 'Mech?" It was the most likely explanation for why Saint, if a trained mechwarrior, had been working as a technican.
There was a moment's hesitation from Saint before he he answered: "I lost my BattleMech, yes." Understandable. No one liked talking about being dispossessed. It was among the worst possible fates for a mechwarrior.
In other units, the notion of appointing a mechwarrior with only one battle - and that a defeat - to command an entire battalion would sound strange. But then, Morgan and Patrick between them had no more than four years of active service between them. Saint must have at least twice that many years of military service, if only in a support capacity, so it would be hypocritical to condemn him for lack of experience.
If, on the other hand, he didn't have the ability - and he must be rusty - then that would be a problem.
"Saint," Morgan announced over the speakers of his 'Mech, rather than using a private radio channel - playing to the crowd perhaps. "Once the techs give you the clear, move to within one hundred metres of the southern edge of the field. Patrick, the same but at the northern edge. This will be a straightforward training duel. No firing outside the field, no physical contact and if Cat or I tell you to stand down then that's what you do. If you break those rules... well, the two of us are carrying live ammunition."
"I understand." Saint's voice was even - clearly he wasn't taking offense at the precaution. Battlemechs were powerful and dangerous machines even without their weapons. A collision could easily kill either mechwarrior and a weapon in training mode was still at least potentially capable of harming a bystander.
Silence fell across the field as the technicans worked and Patrick moved up to the far end. Morgan watched Saint also move into position once the technicans had confirmed his status. There were limits to what you could tell about a mechwarrior's skills from watching him walk a 'Mech. Any fool could do that, after all. Hundreds did.
But that didn't mean that there were no clues. Saint's movements were good, but there was the slightest hesitation, fading visibly as he grew accustomed to the motions of the Ostwar now that it was fully loaded, that confirmed his tale of having been dispossessed for years. The rust was shaking off those skills though, and rapidly. Morgan's lips quirked in the privacy of his cockpit. It was good to see that the fat man was serious about becoming a Mechwarrior again, although given that he would be pitting himself against Morgan's brother...
Well, Morgan would not be cheering him on. But he had to admit he hoped Saint proved worthy of being a Kell Hound.
Out on the field, Patrick closed in upon his enemy slowly. The Ostwar had taken shelter in a stand of trees and Saint apparently saw no need to shorten the range if Patrick was willing to do it for him.
At long range the slightly larger LRM rack of the Ostwar gave it an thin edge over the newer Thunderbolt. At close range, it had enough lasers and missiles to yield only a slight advantage. But at medium ranges the large laser in the right arm of the Thunderbolt tipped the balance strongly into it's favour.
Although not apprently strong enough since the battle computers of the two 'Mechs decided that Patrick hadn't managed to score a hit at all in the initial exchange of fire. The same could not be said of Saint who was either moderately lucky or even better at aiming missiles than he was at piloting four hundred year old battlemechs: three quarters of his LRMs had struck Patrick's 'Mech, one of the underpowered warheads bursting harmlessly against the cockpit.
The next salvo hit home as well, once again with few missile failing to reach the Thunderbolt althoug Patrick managed to throw up his left arm, taking all of the damage there. Still, with the simulation marking a full ton of armour torn away from the limb it was not going to be an exchange that Patrick was happy about. Particularly since he'd missed again. Saint was making very good use of the cover.
Firing for a third time got Patrick some satisfaction, since he did manage to score a hit with his laser. Of course his slow, somewhat crabbing approach, intended to keep the damaged arm in the line of fire where it could soak up damage had by now brought him to within much less than three hundred metres of the trees. Saint's reaction was predictable and probably correct: he fired everything he had, which looked quite impressive on infrared and probably did his fire control systems no favours since now, for the first time in the battle, he missed. With one chest mounted laser and one of his two SRM launchers. Not the LRMs, or the other laser or the other SRMs. More armour peeled away.
Morgan shook his head. Patrick would continue to fight but the outcome was already clear and it wouldn't be too long before his brother recognised that fact. Too much damage had been done, too rapidly, for Patrick to regain the advantage unless Saint made foolish error, something that didn't seem very likely at this point. Something like leaving the very good cover he'd managed to get himself behind and trying to take on a more agile machine on open ground. Then the young colonel grinned evilly. "Saint, go over to the woods behind Patrick."
He wasn't sure exactly what language the words that Saint replied were from but the sense of obscenities came through.
And then he saw the Ostwar wriggle backwards through the woods, the exact opposite of the direction that it had been commanded to go in. Either Saint was planning on disobeying the order - and while Morgan was in no sense a martinet, that would be a mistake on his part - or he was going to be creative.
It turned out to be the latter. Judging by infra-red, while Morgan contemplated the merits of this new recruit Saint had let his 'Mmech cool and then fired another massive salvo off. Slowed by the heat, shuffling backwards and turning slightly was all that the Ostwar could do at that moment. Firing another weapon would have been reckless in the extreme. However, being behind the trees and entirely safe from Patrick's now (according to the computers at least) badly savaged Thunderbolt the Ostwar was cooling rapidly and positioned to take the easiest and straightest route out of the trees at its admittedly lumbering top speed.
Not being a fool, Patrick opened fire with everything at his disposal the moment that the BattleMech cleared the cover of the trees, even firing his long range missiles despite the fact that the missiles didn't have time to arm and even those few that managed to makes contact could only boast that they were inflicting damage via impact instead of high explosive force.
Saint's Ostwar staggered but did not fall. Armour across the 'Mech's right arm was now non-existant and Morgan could see the telltale icons of damage to the myomers behind that armour. Letting the arm sag, Saint fired instead with his chest-mounted lasers. It was a pitiful salvo in comparison to the one that he had just received, but the Thunderbolt had already taken a beating and the two lasers tore gouges through the chest armour.
Then the left arm came up and the Ostwar added four SRMs to the volley. In reality all four burst harmlessly against the Thunderbolt's red and black paintwork but in the simulation three of them had found the chinks in the armour and the battle computer judged that they had junked the gyro buried inside the torso - the vital means of holding the Thunderbolt upright while manuvering.
Patrick cried out - more in annoyance than dismay - as his heavy 'Mech accurately portrayed the results by toppling forwards into the dirt, incidentally doing more genuine damage than every training round fired so far had accomplished.
"Sounva...!" Cat exclaimed and then remembered himself. "'Man down! Hold exercise."
Out on the field, Saint brought his Ostwar to a halt already and appeared to be powering it down.
Morgan moved his own Archer forwards. While Mechwarriors were well secured in their cockpits, being inside of sixty tons of metal as it crashed to the ground was never a risk-free experience. "Patrick! Are you hurt?"
"Only my pride," the younger Kell replied. "Ouch. Okay, maybe not just my pride. I don't think anything's broken at least."
McGinty's Bar, Galatea
Lyran Commonwealth
30 October 3010
The three were around the same table, although this time Cat Wilson had joined them.
"Nicholas Saint," Morgan declared. "You have demonstrated that you have the virtues we look for in a Kell Hound: to whit that you are more or less adequate mechwarrior, have the brains to find cover and the balls to leave it. More importantly, you play poker. How do you plead?"
The older mechwarrior furrowed his brow for a moment. "The accused pleads guilty and throws himself on the mercy of the court."
"Then I have no choice than to sentence you to serve as commander of our Third 'Mech Battalion. " Morgan popped the caps off two bottles of beer and handed one to Saint. "And may the almighty God have mercy upon your soul."
They all drank, Patrick and Cat having had their bottles at the ready already.
"Are all your 'Mechs that old?" Cat asked bluntly, once they were all well lubricated.
Saint set his bottle down. "That Ostwar," he advised solemnly, "Is probably the newest BattleMech I have. The production number strongly suggests it was built during the reign of Deborah Cameron."
There was a brief moment of calculation and then: "Wasn't she ruler of the Terran Hegemony five hundred years ago?"
"She was indeed," Saint answered Patrick. "You see why I needed the technicans. A hundred or so fusion reactors and a thousand tons of modern armour probably wouldn't hurt either."
"Well we can help with the armour but that many reactors would be a bit outside of our budget," Morgan told him. "Still, you'll want to keep some of the 'Mechs for yourself - probably most in fact."
Saint leant forwards. "What I am thinking is that I should donate a dozen medium 'Mechs to each of your battalions and then two dozen heavy 'Mechs for my battalion. I have done some preliminary plans for upgrading them and replacing the armour and cockpit systems shouldn't be too expensive. That opens up plenty of tonnage for extra armour, heatsinks and ammunition. Anyone who mistakes them for their historical selves would be in for a... unpleasent surprise."
Evil grins blossomed. "I like the way you think," Morgan told him. "In addition to commanding Third Battalion - which just so happens to only include you right now - I hereby assign you responsibility for seeing that the Kell Hound's new windfall in equipment is all properly cared for."
The newly appointed major looked slightly put upon but sighed. "Why does victory feel so much like defeat," he asked somewhat plainitively.
Cat patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "It's like that a lot when Morgan's around."
