Chapter Text
April 11, 3111
When the giant metallic foot crashed through the wall of my workshop, I dove for the nearest source of cover. That was the salvaged old SDR-5V Spider I’d been painstakingly piecing back into something closely resembling fighting trim. I’d found her here, moldering away and abandoned; a little investigative work on MechWarrior Online and the sources it pointed me to revealed she was long since written off. Thus, Old Widow was all mine. Or she would be, once I was a citizen, anyway, assuming I lived long enough.
That wasn’t a given right now. For once, it wasn’t those three bitches in my study group, or Blackwell’s combination of obliviousness, officiousness, uselessness, and actual maliciousness. Even after the locker, she’d been utterly unhelpful, shredding my application to retake the citizenship exam and tutting at me for being “clumsy”. I’d never wanted to hurt someone more, not even the Trio, but I just stalked out. Dad filed a complaint with the refrector, and I’d left school.
That night, I found Old Widow and my future. A chance to be a MechWarrior, to show I wasn’t the idiot worm the others called me. I was a damn good technician and I’d be a good MechWarrior someday, too, with practice. I’d certainly gotten a lot with my tools.
All caught up? Good, now let’s get back to the part where some unknown MechWarrior tried to kill me. I’d caught an impression of green and red, and as I threw myself into getting Old Widow up and running, my blood nearly froze. Lung’s Bad Boyz were a scourge, roaming pirates who terrorized the Aurigan Reach and the rimward end of the Capellan Confederation. The core of the gang, their old guard, had been samurai of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery once, but that was before I was born. Before they’d come here, descending on pillars of fire to raid and plunder where the Chancellor and the CCAF didn’t pay attention, or even further out into the Periphery. Before they’d started stealing guns, tech, and people, and trafficking them wherever they pleased, setting up shop and kidnapping girls off the street.
Before one of them stuck their BattleMech’s giant metal foot into my workshop and nearly killed me.
As my BattleMech crept from cold to a waking condition, I ducked out long enough to grab a few things, stuffing them into the old duffel bag I used to lug things around, and clambered back into the cockpit. I went down a hasty checklist, then pulled the restraints into place; thankfully, I’d already been in my cooling suit, testing it. Well, it was going to get tested tonight.
Old Widow came alive under my touch, and I pushed some of the debris off my Spider, then turned my attention to getting up. The sims don’t do the feeling of being on your back in a BattleMech justice, or the sensations of righting it, but I got her up and on her feet reasonably enough. The integrity of the back plates weren’t great – that wasn’t news, they’d needed replacing – but if I was taking fire to the rear in a Spider, I was probably going to be dead anyway.
Fortunately, Old Widow was fast and agile. Her core computers were mostly functional, after some not-really-like-new parts I’d traded labor for, but I was still chasing gremlins in the controls. It was going to have to be good enough. The sensors weren’t doing great, either, but it was functional enough to give me a clear idea of where other BattleMechs were; I had the Home Guard’s public IFF loaded, but not much else. I’d have to sort out friend-or-foe the hard way, setting flags in the target tracking software, but I’d practiced that as much as everything else. Thank God the SLDF included simulator modes in their gear; they really did believe in being prepared.
Two BattleMechs were clashing nearby. One was an old Wolfhound, the other the smaller, round-headed figure of a Commando firing off Infernos. In a built-up area, with no regard for target checking. Or at me. I twisted my Spider into a sidestep, avoiding the missile barrage, and the Wolfhound’s chest glowed with refracted laser light as searing lances of energy hammered at the smallest of the three BattleMechs here. I saw the Bad Boyz’ signature red and green on the Commando when it dodged out of the gloom into the illumination of a still-working streetlight, and lined up my own lasers. I tagged it on the arm, wrecking one of the SRM launchers, and then launched myself aside to avoid return fire that torched what was left of my workshop.
The Wolfhound’s searing return fire cooked off one of the Commando’s ammunition bays, and the bandit ‘Mech erupted in fire. I expected some sort of communications but got nothing; either the radios weren’t working, or the other pilot was just as interested in talking to me as they were shooting me: Not at all. It beat some of the alternatives.
I turned to survey my workshop and sighed. I could see a fire raging already. Maybe some of the tools would survive, maybe, but it wasn’t anything I could deal with right now. For now, I needed to get away from here and hide my BattleMech somewhere safe. Safer. This hadn’t been safe enough!
What I jumped into a row of warehouses over was much, much worse. A gigantic assault ‘Mech with a ferocious bronze-painted mask on its head tore through a rail car, scattering packages, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Red and green paint leapt out at me as the firelight cast its visage in a demonic snarl. Only one of the Bad Boyz had a BattleMech like that, the big man himself – their leader Lung. A dishonored samurai, the Dragon King of Pirates.
I was so screwed now, so of course it got worse. I tried to dodge and the myomers seized at the wrong moment, leaving me flat-footed and nearly tripping when the monstrous BattleMech’s oversized missile pod rippled with the kind of fire I’d seen in recordings of missile crawlers. From one BattleMech!
Fortunately, the fire wasn’t too accurate, sandblasting armor across my Spider’s front, but the explosions pockmarked my armor, and I leapt free, more fire tearing at Old Widow’s feet. The landing was hard, I’d misjudged things, and I pushed at the controls, throwing my BattleMech aside from the searing laser fire that gouged the street. I tried to weave away again, hoping to evade the next salvo, but the vicious MechWarrior at the controls tagged the center rear plate with a laser, at least partially; if he’d gotten a clean hit, the laser must have been a small, but I had basically no armor left back there.
Hoping to get away from him, I flung Old Widow into the air once more, only to find myself leaping from the fire into the frying pan. Four tanks that were busy harassing another BattleMech suddenly found themselves with a new target in their midst. The two Scorpions scattered desperately, not armed for a close-in fight, but the Bulldog charged and I kicked the tank, denting the armor and throwing off the gunner’s aim just enough that the turreted large laser tore through the night instead of my already-battered armor. Hastily throwing my Spider into reverse, I looked for cover, only for Lung’s titanic ‘Mech to crest a building on a pillar of flame.
I said a word in Mandarin I’d deny knowing if my father had heard and evaded desperately, the unknown BattleMech distracting the tanks by catching one of the Scorpions with a fusillade of lasers and missiles. My evasions came to a sudden halt when the left hip actuator froze at the wrong moment, just a moment I was able to correct, and the right leg twitched. Those corrections robbed me of momentum, though, and I caught the fringes of Lung’s massive cannon blast, cluster rounds punching through the armor on the chest and disabling one of my jump jets.
Still, I kept ahead of the lasers and titanic salvo of missiles that tore the Bulldog apart when he missed, so I scored that as a win for me and a loss for Lung’s situational awareness. Always know what your backstop is, came the unbidden reminder from my tactical simulations, and I giggled. It had a manic edge to it, and I shook my head.
A moment’s work and I was airborne again, the Spider’s systems compensating for the damaged jump jet. A hapless pile of crates broke Old Widow’s fall, and I skittered away from the massive battlefist on the assault ‘Mech’s left arm, ducking behind Lung. Then I drove my own puny little battlefists into the titan’s back. One blow missed – I hadn’t practiced physical combat much – but the other struck home, and I lined up the lasers as best I could, pulled the trigger, and prayed they worked. The arming circuits said they did, and I’d checked the systems as best I could, but…
Whatever I was expecting with that hasty, desperate snapshot the rear of the gigantic red-and-green BattleMech, “sudden explosion” was not on the list. The cockpit armor broke apart, an ejection seat flying up into the air on a plume of smoke, as the bandit lord’s BattleMech spewed flames, adding to the carnage. Even as the secondary explosions started, I backed Old Widow up as fast as I could get her going, kicking in the jump jets for additional clearance and spinning in mid-air to touch down on the reinforced roof of a nearby parking garage with a flare of jets. Lung’s demon-faced ‘Mech tore itself apart in a massive blast that rocked my much smaller Spider even with the distance I’d put between us, a few stray pieces of debris pinging off my armor.
There goes the paint job, I thought to myself, irrelevantly. I had bigger problems than whatever was left of the primer on my scavenged armor plate, like the fact I’d just engaged in out-and-out urban warfare with the so-called “Dragon King of Pirates” in the Trainyard and been caught in a massive explosion. (In hindsight, I must have destroyed part of the safety systems around the ammunition, not just touched off the magazines themselves.) Dad was going to be pissed if he found out, and I really hoped he never did, or I’d be grounded until I died.
It wasn’t long before another BattleMech stalked from between a maintenance building and a storage shed, the emissions like nothing in my Spider’s pitifully antiquated recognition database, but I recognized the profile in the gleaming firelight. A Raven, no, a Raven II, its TSEMP cannon pointed right at me. A very new model; what was one doing all the way out here on Jacomarle? We were most of the way to the Periphery! It wasn’t running a Capellan Confederation Armed Forces IFF, either. I didn’t have any other recognition codes, but like most legitimate military forces in the Sphere, the CCAF provided its “open” identity codes in an unclassified format for public safety. They were in the same mottled camouflage as the Wolfhound I’d seen earlier.
Even as I was starting to fret, a BattleMech I didn’t recognize scooped up Lung, ejection seat and all, and approached the Raven II. My radio crackled on the old SLDF guard frequency, maintained even centuries later as a neutral band for open communications between combatants. “Unknown Spider, this is Tattletale. You’re welcome to come with us, but otherwise you might want to clear out – there’s a garrison lance coming this way.”
The voice was female, off-world. I couldn’t tell too much about her accent yet, but she had a point about getting clear before the authorities turned up. Being caught as a servitor (which I effectively was, as I’d missed my first citizenship exam and had yet to get a chance for a second) in an unregistered BattleMech at the site of carnage like this would be bad; yes, rebuilding a ‘Mech for the state would be considered appropriately industrious, but chaos like tonight was to be avoided. It would take days to clear the mess from the railyard before the trains could resume, and I winced at how the Dockworkers were going to get caught in the middle of the mess.
Even so, I didn’t have a lot of other options. “Tattletale, lead the way,” I decided, bracing myself for whatever was coming next. It wasn’t like I had anywhere else to go. I couldn’t exactly park my Spider in the garage my home didn’t have to begin with.
The other ‘Mech – mottled in urban camouflage, like the Raven – fell into pace next to me. Old Widow might be lightly armed and even more lightly armored, but she’s fast. Even so, both of the larger ‘Mechs were nearly keeping an even pace with me. The old Wolfhound I’d noticed before slid into formation, its armor marked with the spalling and burns of combat, the thermals hot enough it had been ridden hard, was the original model without double heat sinks, or maybe both, while another BattleMech jumped over a parked train to join us. Another unfamiliar design, the one I’d seen fighting Lung’s tanks before I managed to bring him down.
Tattletale’s voice came back onto the radio after a moment. “Mind telling us your name, stranger?”
I paused. What did I tell her? Not the truth, not oven an open channel. Taylor Hebert had no business being out here tonight, and I hadn’t come up with a call sign. “My ‘Mech is Old Widow,” I deflected instead of transmitting my name to anyone who might be listening.
The soft laugh told me I’d been caught, but she didn’t press the point. “Mine’s called Reynard.”
I recognized the name, of course; a trickster fox from old European tales that long predated spaceflight, let alone the Star League. My mother’s stash of “illicit” literature was something I’d explored at length, often my only solace other than my work on Old Widow. Not really approved habits in the Confederation, necessarily, but not really illegal, either. It was a gray area. There’s a lot of those in the Capellan Confederation, and you have to live in them.
“We’re a mercenary lance, the Undersiders,” Tattletale went on, leading the main formation while one of her lance mates darted forward at a run to scout our path. Her BattleMech radiated a strong active radar, but electronic warfare support was the whole purpose of the Raven series, and the Raven II was magnificently outfitted, so that wasn’t a surprise. “Regent’s to your left, Bitch to your right, and Grue is the one running recon up ahead.”
“Hi,” I said shyly, my voice breaking.
Tattletale’s voice was warm, a soft laugh, but not a mocking one. “Anyway, we weren’t really expecting the Dragon King himself tonight; having you deal yourself in made things a lot easier. I don’t suppose you’re looking for work?” she asked me, sounding entirely serious.
I blinked in shock. “I, uh. I’m not part of a unit,” I replied lamely after a moment. Was she really…?
“Not one of Lung’s, either. Especially not after tonight.” Another soft laugh. “You brought him down with just that itsy bitsy little Spider? That’s amazing. Like I said, are you looking for a gig?”
I massaged my way past one of the sticky points in Old Widow’s maneuvers again, making a mental note to spend some quality time on the actuators after I found somewhere to repair my BattleMech once more. Then I sighed. Salvaging parts from the IndustrialMech heaps had worked, up to a point, but the patchwork of armor and overloaded myomers weren’t doing me any good. “Do you have a repair bay?” I asked instead of making a decision, bracing for the answer. “Old Widow’s been… kind of my project for the last few months, ever since I found her.”
“Of course we do! We’ve even got extra armor plating. Can’t have our stranger and Old Widow all banged up after she helped us bag a bounty like this!” Tattletale answered, her voice warm and encouraging. She led us into the disused section of the Docks, stopping in front of a large hanger that had been for IndustrialMech maintenance, once, before the IndustrialMechs were relocated with the port closures. Before SAFE – or that was who they blamed, anyway – had wrecked Brockton Bay with the Boat Graveyard riots and the Night of Fire.
The ‘Mech gantries had been overhauled and put back into service, and despite all five of ours being proper BattleMechs, none of them were too large. One of the gantries, looking disused and battered, was being cleared, and I eased Old Widow into her parking spot before powering her down. On reflex, I checked the knife and pepper spray on my belt. A jumpsuited worker extended a boom to my cockpit and I climbed out, pulling off my mother’s old neurohelmet and shaking out my hair. To my pleasant surprise, despite redlining Old Widow’s temperamental cooling systems, the silk cooling suit had held up well, and it fit me like a glove. I’d intended it as my project to claw my way out of servitorship by providing something of worth to the state, the design for a cheap, effective cooling solution, and I’d worn it in a baptism by fire.
Leaving my neurohelmet on Old Widow’s seat, I grabbed my duffel from where I’d slung it behind my chair, then walked along the boom. Tattletale’s Reynard was parked in the next gantry over, and I saw a blonde in a purple-trimmed cooling vest with black shorts that left her well-toned legs on display. I looked away, my cheeks coloring with something other than the heat of my ‘Mech, dragging my eyes up along to see her freckled face smiling at me. “Hello there, stranger!” she called out, waving as she trotted along the top of the gantry, bottle glass green eyes surveying me and my ‘Mech both. “Huh! That’s a nice suit.” Up close, Tattletale was younger than I’d expected, surely not too much older than I was.
“It’s, uh, homemade. From Darwinsilk,” I explained, rubbing the back of my neck. “We have these big spiders here, well, they’re not Earth spiders, they have ten legs, but…” I shook my head and stopped babbling. “The silk’s puncture resistant and has good thermal qualities, so I figured I could make a cooling suit out of it. As a, um, offering to the Confederation. Since I…”
Tattletale smiled at me. “Might’ve been too busy to deal with the service period?” she suggested, winking impishly. My face heated immediately, but I nodded. That wasn’t the problem, but it was close enough, and I didn’t want to tell her the real reason. I didn’t want to think about the real reason, remember it. Ever. “Hey, I’m from the League. That whole servitor thing’s not my business, but it looks like your suit held up despite the way things got.” She hiked a thumb at Old Widow, where the spalling and holes from the monster assault’s massive cluster cannon were obvious, not to mention the missile craters. “And you repaired her from salvage?”
I nodded, watching Tattletale lean across the railing a little to get a better look. “My dad, he’s part of the Dockworkers, and I was able to use their information and contacts to find parts, but…” I sighed a little, shrugging. “I wanted to be a MechWarrior. I figured I could do it myself.”
“Well, like I said, if you’re looking for work, we’ll sign you up. I think our boss would be willing to sponsor you for citizenship, too, after the way you helped us bag Lung,” Tattletale told me. “Bringing in that bandit snake’s got to be a service to the state, right? Of course, we won’t be here forever, but you’re welcome to stay when our retainer’s up or come with us, and that’ll be a bit.”
I looked at her, not sure how to take that. I hadn’t found my renewed service yet. “That… that would be helpful,” I said quietly. My dad didn’t even know I’d failed until the locker, that the others had pushed me out of my chance at citizenship. I’d missed the test because they’d shoved me into that hell, and Blackwell had refused to let me take it again because it was my own fault for being insufficiently alert. “I, uh, I forgot to tell you my name. I’m Taylor, uh, Taylor Hebert.”
Holding out her hand, the pretty young blonde smiled at me. “Lisa Wilbourn.” As we shook hands, she glanced at Old Widow again. “Seems like she’s got a bit of a skitter to her movements sometimes, almost like a spider. The bugs, I mean.”
I nodded with a frown. “I’ve been trying to get some glitches out of the actuators and myomers. That’s how I got tagged by that cluster gun,” I admitted sheepishly. “First time I’ve ever really done anything with her, I was just trying to get out of my workshop when someone stepped on it.”
Lisa’s green eyes widened. Getting a better look, I could tell they were like ancient sea glass. “You did that on your first night out?”
Behind her, I noticed a big, burly man with dark skin approaching, taller than I am; with my lanky height, that’s not a given. He looked around a decade older than I was, not that old for a leader of mercenaries, but there was a nasty scar along one cheek, and his cooling suit had seen better days. Despite that, his face was handsome, though the scar might have made him imposing along with his height and muscles if he hadn’t been relaxed. “You said it was her first night out?” he asked, glancing at me in surprise.
“Yeah. Never seen combat before and she shows Lung the sky,” Lisa explained to her companion, shaking her head in disbelief. “Please tell me we’ve got Mr. Zippo tied up properly for the locals, Brian,” she added, glancing at him.
“Yeah, the grunts took him off my hands when we came in. Pity that Akuma’s not any good for salvage after the ammunition storage failed that catastrophically, but taking one of those down with a Spider?” Brian’s face lit up with a smile, his pearly teeth like a splash of white in a dark night. His big hand practically engulfed mine. “That’s damned impressive work for anyone, especially a rookie. My name’s Brian Laborn, but I go by Grue in the field.”
“Taylor Hebert,” I told him quietly, not sure how to take being complimented. At least he wasn’t obviously checking me out. The way I had Lisa. “I, uh, I was looking for a place to work, maybe someone to work for…? If you’re hiring?” I said uncertainly. “I’m a good technician.”
Brian was still smiling. “Anyone who can do that her first night on the job’s welcome to apply,” he told me with a chuckle. “We’ll give you a hand patching her up, too. Bringing that big monster down would’ve been a pain even for the whole lance at once. Saving us the trouble and repairs is easily worth helping you fix up Old Widow. I’m the lance leader, but Tattletale here likes to help with the paperwork sometimes.”
I surprised myself with a yawn, then nodded. “That… that would be nice,” I decided. “I should really get home…”
“They’ll have shut down the buses this late,” Lisa told me. “Let’s go grab showers, get checked out by our medtech, and then one of our techs can run you home, okay? We’re on standby for SAR, or I’d take you myself,” she added, flashing me a reassuring smile.
April 12, 3111
Sneaking in from where the technician dropped me off down the block was surprisingly easy. Dad’s a heavy sleeper these days, and even getting in with my old duffel bag wasn’t that hard. I stuffed it under my bed, stripped off my clothes, and laid down, eyeing Lisa and the Undersiders’ local com numbers in my phone. Dad didn’t especially like the devices, which had limited me to a barebones model, but even he agreed that a staple of life for centuries wasn’t something to do without, especially with the crime in Brockton Bay these days.
I spent a while pondering things. Did I want to join up with the Undersiders? Was I going to be a MechWarrior? Could I even trust them? I pushed it all out of my mind and finally managed to get back to sleep after some tossing and turning, dreaming of MechWarriors and green eyes.
When I got up the next morning, Dad was already up; a glance at the old-fashioned analog alarm clock next to the bed made me wince. I’d apparently overslept. A lot. By the time I got downstairs, Dad was putting breakfast on the table – eggs, toast, and fish sausages; I’m told they taste a lot like pork, which is apparently some sort of hoofed mammal, but on Jacomarle, pork is a fish.
“I’m surprised to see you getting up this late, Taylor,” he said, glancing up from the newsreader in front of him. It’s cheaper than delivering newspapers, so durable tablets are a fixture for information from the government. Some worlds can’t maintain them, but Jacomarle can. The benefits of not having a major military industrial hub during the early Succession Wars, I guess. Not that Brockton Bay had any microelectronics industry to speak of; the city was focused on shipping and the chemical industry, including advanced pharmaceuticals at Medall.
“I had trouble getting to sleep,” I replied, honestly enough, before cutting up one of my sausages and taking a bite, then putting pepper on the eggs. “Uh, Dad, would you, uh, mind if I were to, I don’t know, get a job?” I asked him, bracing for his reaction.
Dad lowered the newsreader, looking at me skeptically over the rim of his coffee cup. “Taylor, we get by. You don’t have to do that; you can focus on school,” he told me, frowning. “Your mother-“
“-would have wanted me to become a supporter, like her, I know,” I replied with a sigh. A teacher. “But I don’t have the grades. Not… not anymore, not after…”
Dad was frowning. “We should wait for the refrector, Taylor. They promised you another opportunity. But… I’ll think about it.”
I sighed a little. That was the best I was going to get. After the Trio, and the rest of my learning group, had sabotaged me, and Blackwell’s utter uselessness, I was so very done with school. They’d even driven me out of my first attempt to become a citizen. “What’s going on today?”
“There’s a real mess at the trainyards. That bandit, Lung, went on a rampage last night. Mercenaries captured him and turned him in, but apparently there was a fair bit of damage. We’re probably going to have extra shifts to help clean it up,” Dad told me, taking another sip of his coffee.
I winced, but he seemed to think it was at the extra work, instead of my part in making that gigantic mess. Of course, I’d helped stop the real cause, too, hadn’t I? “Can I get a ride to the Docks? I want to look at the work groups; maybe volunteering will help me requalify,” I told him. Or maybe the Undersiders would sponsor me… or just take me to the stars when they left, as little as I wanted to leave Dad behind. But I’d always wanted to be a MechWarrior, visit other worlds, even leave the Confederation to see what the Free Worlds League or the Federated Suns were really like.
We finished our meal in an awkward silence, like all too many meals since Mom died. Then I gathered my things up into my duffel bag and followed Dad to the beat-up old truck. It was practical, running on replaceable batteries like most civilian vehicles on Jacomarle, and the broad bed helped him when he needed to haul things. As an administrator, Dad didn’t have to do that very often, but it came up on days like today, and most people didn’t have personal vehicles.
I waved goodbye to Dad and caught a bus, following the directions Lisa had programmed into my phone. When I got to their renovated hanger, one of the mercenary troopers in fatigues they employed stopped me before Brian himself came out. “Good morning, Leftenant Laborn,” the infantrywoman said, nodding to Brian. “Expecting company?”
“This is Old Widow’s owner. We’ll get her registered with a guest pass today,” Brian explained to the sentry, waving me on inside. “Morning, Taylor. Glad to see you made it in.”
“Dad gave me a ride,” I replied quietly, looking up at where the damaged head on one of the unfamiliar BattleMech’s – not Brian’s – was having the transparent canopy cut off, and a wrecked weapon mount was being peeled open. “Ouch. That looks ugly.”
Brian snorted. “You’re not wrong. Regent’s lucky the laser mount took the worst of it instead of him.”
“What happened?” I asked, looking up at the ongoing work.
“Couple of Scorpions caught us in a flank because of a stolen jammer. Tanks, not quads,” he added with a gesture. “Regent zigged when he should’ve zagged and Remittance caught an autocannon burst to the face dodging the laser fire from the Bulldog with them. That’s about the time Lung seemed to find something else going on.” Brian flashed me a grin. “Thanks again for that.”
I looked over at Old Widow, whose armor panels were being inspected by one of the Undersiders’ technicians. “You’re welcome,” I told him, sticking my hands in my pockets.
“If you’re up for some work, the Home Guard’s requested a hand with the cleanup.”
I nodded at him. “Y-yeah, that’s what I told my Dad I was doing anyway.”
Brian gave me a thoughtful glance at that, his eyebrows slightly raised, but he didn’t say anything. I followed him through the hanger floor to a loft above a storage area, following Brian’s broad frame up metal stairs. Inside, it was quieter. The area looked almost like a clubhouse, with rooms sectioned off for each of the Undersider MechWarriors, someone named Aisha, and another labeled “Guest” with a paper sign. Was that mine?
I didn’t recognize the dark-haired young man with a sling and an icepack nursing a cup of coffee at the table, but he waved. “Bonjour, petite araignée,” he called in what I recognized vaguely as French. Not too uncommon a language in the Federated Suns, but rare here.
“Good morning,” I replied softly, glancing at Brian uncertainly.
“This is Alec. Alec, this is Taylor, but I think you figured that out,” he explained.
The young man raised his coffee cup in salute. He managed to make it look almost refined, like he’d had a course in a finishing school just on looking cool while sitting there in boxer shorts, pink bunny slippers, and a novelty T-shirt celebrating some off-world fish while nursing injuries. “Good to meet you,” Alec said, his voice bored but not unfriendly or hostile, and a smile that I found vaguely creepy.
I nodded at him. “Same to you.” I looked over at Brian. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Bitch went out for her morning run with her dog. Lisa’s probably still asleep right now; that was a late mission, and Lisa and I wound up going back out to help with SAR because of our active probes,” Brian told me, walking to the coffeemaker and getting a cup. “Like I told you, they want us to use our ‘Mechs to help with the cleanup; apparently there’s a Mule due in today down south, so the LoaderMechs aren’t available. Old Widow could be very helpful there.”
I nodded. Not disrupting interstellar logistics schedules was a big deal, and the only saving grace was things happened at night, and they’d been available for the initial survey. “I can help with that. Old Widow’s not too beat up for that kind of thing, but I need to get your IFF first. Unknown ‘Mechs running around might get shot by the Home Guard,” I explained.
Brian chuckled, pouring himself a cup. “It’s not a bad policy. We’ll give you an IFF chip before we head out, after we settle your pay.”
“My pay?” I replied, blinking at him in surprise. Alec cackled at my expression.
“Your share of the bounty on Lung and the other bandits we picked up last night,” Brian explained with another laugh. “Like I said, you taking out Lung made that way easier for us. Rachel was a bit annoyed, but frankly, not having the extra damage more than makes up for another pilot’s share. It’s not the full thing but Lung had a lot of C-Bills on his head. Sharing that out above our normal salaries is standard for a win like this.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I wasn’t, I mean-“
“I get it, but you need to appreciate the good times to have the memories get through the bad ones,” Brian told me with a knowing smile. “Now get yourself some coffee or something. Even if you don’t join up, you’re an Undersider for today.”
I looked around, but failed to find any tea, and opted for a cup of coffee. Alec laughed at the face I made before I hastily added some creamer and sugar. “What? I usually drink tea,” I told him.
Alec grinned, shaking his head before he winced. I guess it exacerbated the injury. “Dork,” he teased, but despite his weird affect, he didn’t seem to be especially mean.
I shrank in on myself a little anyway, nibbling on a donut, and talked shop Brian, who proved to be a much more professional sort of MechWarrior. Not a technician like me – most MechWarriors aren’t good at repairs – but he made up for it with a wider knowledge of the battlefield. I got the rundown on the others’ rides – his B2-HND Bloodhound, Rachel’s battered old original model WLF-1 Wolfhound, the STH-2D Stealth, and, of course, Lisa’s Raven II, Reynard. The trickster fox. It wasn’t the line variant, but a survivor from the pre-production run without stealth armor.
“That’s… a lot of EW,” I commented, reviewing my mental notes of the loadouts. I was a little jealous of Lisa, Alec, and Brian for their more modern BattleMechs, too, but Rachel in a classic Wolfhound made me feel better about that. Besides, it’s not the size of the Spider in the fight, it’s the fight in the Spider – and where you point the lasers. I’d proved that last night.
Brian smiled mischievously. “Makes certain kinds of jobs easier. We’re oriented for speed – recon, raiding, that kind of thing, not straight-up firefights. We weren’t even expecting to run into Lung, we were just sniffing around looking for some suspected smugglers and had started to pull back when it turned out they were his people. But the ECM’s great for spoofing things, ghost targets, all kinds of tricks. I do alright, but Lisa’s a damned wizard with that kind of gear.”
I nodded, not familiar with the wide world of electronic warfare past some light reading, but I knew enough. “You didn’t use that to slip away last night?”
“Didn’t get a chance – we had to break visual contact first, and then you happened,” Brian explained with a shake of his head, sipping at his second cup of coffee. Before he could go on, Lisa walked out in purple fox print pajama pants and a T-shirt that read “Kiss me, I’m Irish”, whatever that meant. I mean, I know what Ireland is – a place on Terra, Europe, I think – but why would that mean I should kiss her? “Morning, Tattletale. Your stray found her way back again,” he added, smiling at me.
Lisa patted my shoulder as she went by. “Morning, Taylor! Glad to see you drop by, we could use an extra pair of hand actuators out there. The Home Guard wants a full lance, and, well…” She poured coffee into a mug with a grinning fox – I was beginning to sense a theme with her – and gave me a vulpine grin as she poured in a slightly alarming amount of sugar along with a couple of cups of creamer. I raised an eyebrow, and she just grinned some more. “You see, Alec’s not up for that today.”
“I guess not,” I admitted, glancing at him.
“We got a few hours of sleep, but there’s still more that needs doing. I’m going to run primary scouting, but you’ll be working with Brian and Rachel on lift-and-shift duties; his probe will help there,” she explained to me. “Follow his directions – this isn’t something you want to screw up.”
I nodded, my expression intent. “I won’t,” I promised her.
Rachel turned back up with a dog on a leash, walking past me as I wasn’t even there. I shrank away from her, not wanting to cause a scene, and Lisa sat down next to me after grabbing a more powerful tablet than the simple newsreaders most people of Jacomarle own. We went through some of the electronic paperwork to register me as an Undersider – apparently, I get insurance? – and created an account through ComStar’s Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission, the expanded version of the old MRB created after the chaotic years of the Strife. My eyes went wide at the sum deposited – how big had Lung’s bounty been? – and Lisa grinned at me. “Yeah. That’s what last night was worth, Taylor,” she explained, patting me on the shoulder again before finishing off the flash heated breakfast burrito she’d had along with a donut.
Brian glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “We should get suited up and start our mission checks. Taylor, do you have a callsign in mind?” he asked me.
I paused, not sure how to answer that, when Rachel’s gruff voice broke in. “Skitter,” she said. She hadn’t even looked up from the mutt she was grooming to say it. “Look at how her ‘Mech moves.”
I looked at her, not sure how to interpret that, thought about it for a moment, and shrugged. “It works for me, I guess.” At least it wasn’t insulting.
“The best callsigns are the ones your unit gives you,” Lisa pointed out, clinking her coffee cup against mine. “Welcome to the Undersiders, Skitter.”
I smiled back bashfully, then went into my room to change into my cooling suit. It looked like a converted office; small, with just a cot and some shelves, but it was usable. When I came back out, Rachel was in her own skimpy gear, similar to Lisa’s, and she eyed my suit. “What’s that?”
“Something I made out of spider silk,” I replied, brushing my hands over the pipe mesh that kept it cool. “Silk’s… not really a luxury item here.”
The blunt, gruff MechWarrior gave me a look, then walked up, poking at the suit without asking. It felt weird to have her in my personal space like that, but I didn’t react, just letting her inspect it. “Nice,” she decided, whistling to her dog and pointing at her room. The mutt scampered inside, and Rachel closed the door behind her companion. “You do the work on your Spider?”
I nodded at that. “That’s all me. I… didn’t have anyone to work with,” I said, not wanting to explain.
Rachel gave me another unreadable look, then nodded once before walking out. I looked at the others. “You get used to her, but that was actually good,” Lisa told me with a slight shrug. “She’s a real gearhead like you, just… not very talky. I think you impressed her a little.”
“I know you impressed me. Old Widow’s clearly had a lot of TLC just from the exterior damage survey the mechanics ran,” Brian explained, gesturing to his own tablet.
“Oh,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.
Brian did our mission and communications briefing, running through the expected plan of action and the various frequencies and protocols. There was more than I expected, but we were working with Home Guard and the local police.
I followed them out onto the gantry once more, climbing aboard Old Widow with assistance from one of the technicians after doing my external walkaround. We spent a few minutes loading the Undersiders’ IFF codes and a more modern recognition database from external power, and then it was time to go. As the cockpit closed, I pulled on my neurohelmet before starting the BattleMech. The familiar sequence played as the old girl came to life around me, and I settled back into the operator’s couch, getting ready to ply the controls.
“Grue to Undersiders, report status,” the lance leader – my lance leader – announced over the radios once we were all outside the hanger. “Union-1, Grue, ready op.”
Tattletale’s amused voice came through loud and clear. “Union-2, Tattletale, ready op.”
“Union-3, Bitch, ready op,” my fellow light ‘Mech jockey announced crisply.
I checked the readouts. Other than the damage I already knew was present, everything was good, and this wasn’t expected to be a firefight. “Union-4, Skitter, ready op.”
“Copy all Undersiders ready op. Lance, proceed; Tattletale will lead us through. Mind your step –we’re trying to help clean up now, not making a bigger mess,” Grue reminded us bluntly.
The next hours passed in a whirl of activity, following Grue or Tattletale from site to site, then assisting in heavy lifting alongside engineering gear. Finally, it was over – any battlefield has a finite amount of space, and yesterday’s wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been – and we returned to the hanger, disembarking from our BattleMechs and chattering idly.
I’d spent the time between lift-and-carry duty getting to know my new lancemates a little better. Lisa was a mischievous jokester, well read, intelligent, and clever. Brian was much less of a literati, but he was vastly better on military stuff. He’d done his reading on the subject, from ancients like Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz to Rory McKenna’s seminal classic BattleMechs at War: A Company Commander’s Guide and the more contemporary Wolff Commander written by Harlan Wolff, founder of Wolff’s Dragoons, after he retired. (In fact, he offered to loan me his print copy of the Wolff Commander and pointed me at digital versions of the others.) Rachel, on the other hand, liked hardware; she was a gearhead like me. She was also downright taciturn and didn’t participate in the banter much, but we occasionally talked about our BattleMechs and a few times she offered me tips on keeping an heirloom ‘Mech running.
What I was not expecting was to find Dad parked at the table in the MechWarrior quarters when we returned, sipping coffee with a thunderous expression. I nearly tripped over my own two feet before Brian’s steady hand caught me. “Alec, mind telling me why there’s an unannounced guest in here?” Brian asked in his give-me-no-shit-if-you-don’t-want-to-clean-heads voice. I saw a girl my age duck into quarters at the sound of how irritated Brian was.
“Oh, Danny here? He’s Taylor’s father. Came by to check on his little girl.” Alec’s grin was unbearably smug. “Someone’s bus-ted,” he singsonged.
It was a relief that Dad joined me in glaring at the annoying Fedrat, but Lisa stepped up. “Mister Hebert, I’m Lisa, and I do some of the paperwork to help Brian out. We just got in. If you’ll give us a few minutes to shower and change out of our cooling suits, we’d appreciate it,” she said smoothly.
Dad nodded once, giving me a glower. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” she said with a winning smile on her face. “C’mon, Taylor, I’ll take the first shower while you get out of the heavier gear, okay?”
I nodded, not daring to look at Dad’s face. “Y-yeah.”
Once we were out of the main room, into the small bathroom the girls shared, she looked at me. “Are you going to be safe at home?” Lisa asked bluntly.
I stared at her. “What?” I asked, honestly not understanding the question.
“Your dad looks mad as hell. Is he going to do anything bad?”
“W-what? No,” I hissed angrily, outraged at the very suggestion that he’d hit me. “Are you crazy? He’d never hit me. I mean, he might ground me or something. It’s just that Dad doesn’t know about any of this, I was still figuring out how to tell him.”
Lisa let out a breath, then reached up and squeezed my shoulder. “Okay. Good. Surprise I can handle. Abusive I’d feel obliged to shoot,” she told me, and I didn’t think it was a joke. Not with the look on her face, or the way her eyes had turned to flakes of cold jade.
I shrank in on myself a little. “He might be mad because, well…”
“You’re not a MechWarrior family?” Lisa said, and I nodded. That was one of the problems, yes. “If you didn’t steal Old Widow – and you didn’t, I think – she falls under salvage. If you’re a citizen.”
“I’m not,” I whispered quietly, a tear on my cheek.
Lisa waved that off. “Your father is, you’re his daughter, he can hold it in trust as long as you don’t get relegated to servitor. We can make it work, if this is what you want. Besides, you’ve got a gift for this – as a tech, and as a MechWarrior. He doesn’t know that yet.”
I nodded a little, reassured by her words.
“I’m going to grab a quick shower and get changed. Lay your clothes out, shower, and we’ll talk this out. Just let us talk to him, okay? He doesn’t know how much we plan to pay you yet, either, or how good you are,” Lisa added with a wink. “Let him see what you’ve done, not just the shock of it all.”
I trudged out in my best gray hoodie and worn-out old trousers to find that Lisa had already beaten me out, wearing her still damp mane of golden hair down instead of in the ponytail she sported in battle, and was showing Dad something on her tablet, while Alec had apparently left the room. Rachel took her turn in the showers, giving me a nod as she passed, and I walked over.
“Taylor,” Dad said, not sounding quite so furious. Quite. “Lisa’s told me a few things, but I want to hear you tell me – in your own words – how you got wrapped up in this.”
I gulped a little, then nodded, taking the glass of chilled fruit juice Brian pressed into my hands. “Do you mean the Undersiders, or, well, Old Widow and, uh, being a MechWarrior?”
“Start with the Undersiders.” Dad glanced at Lisa for a moment. “She gave me the basics on BattleMech salvage and ownership, at least for registered mercenaries.”
I nodded again, taking a sip of the juice cocktail. Fruit is a specialty on Jacomarle. Once I’d swallowed, I licked my lips, and said, “Basically? Someone stepped on my workshop.”
“…shit, we forgot to send out a salvage team for it,” Lisa swore, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“No, you forgot,” Brian said a bit smugly. “I didn’t. Some of her tools survived the fires; we claimed them as ‘salvage’. Everything that was recoverable’s boxed and waiting for Taylor downstairs.”
Looking from one of them to the other, Dad raised an eyebrow, then nodded. I wasn’t sure why. “Okay, so your workshop got… stepped on. What then?”
“I was testing my cooling suit, so I grabbed my bag and climbed into Old Widow – that’s what I call her, my BattleMech, I mean,” I explained in a rush. “It was safer than waiting to see if the ceiling collapsed on me, right?” Dad nodded at that. “I got outside and found a firefight going on, started trying to get a sense of what was going on to call the Home Guard, and then, well, Lung found me.”
“Lung found you, not the other way around?” Dad asked me, crossing his arms.
I gave him a look and crossed my arms, my own temper flaring. “I haven’t even done more than basic checks on the lasers, Dad, and I’m still fixing some movement glitches in the controls. Even if I was crazy enough to deliberately pick a fight with an assault ‘Mech, I’m not dumb enough to do it when my ‘Mech’s not in fighting trim. Do you really think I’m that stupid?” I spat out angrily. He wasn’t the only one in the Hebert family with a temper.
“Easy, Taylor, easy,” Lisa said gently, putting a hand on my wrist. “He didn’t know that. How could he?” she pointed out reasonably. I felt like I was being ‘handled’, but Lisa wasn’t wrong.
So, I did what she said and took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth, and it didn’t escape my attention that Dad was doing the same. “Okay. He found you. And you… fought him?”
“I tried to run, and he chased me,” I replied, shaking my head. “Then I found the tanks.”
“Those would be the ones that gave Alec his injuries,” Brian put in helpfully.
“I was trying to get away from that and I got cornered, so I… tried something else? Got around behind his ‘Mech and stayed there. Flailed around with my battlefists and then I put a snapshot from my lasers in the right place.” I made an explosion sort of motion with my hands. “Bang.”
Dad pushed his glasses up, pinching his nose. “That is not as reassuring as you think it is,” he grumbled at me. Before I could respond indignantly, he sighed. “But you didn’t try to hunt him down, that’s good, at least. You just… did what you had to. And accidentally helped a group of mercenaries capture the most wanted criminal on the planet.” I shrugged sheepishly. Dad sighed again. “This is the job you were talking about at breakfast?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, nodding. “They, uh, offered me a spot on the team. And to sponsor me for citizenship, since Blackwell’s so useless.”
Lisa raised her hand. “SAR and capturing wanted pirates is a civic service, and that cooling suit of hers looks nice,” she pointed out, grinning her vulpine grin once more. “Besides, she’s done the time, right?”
Dad and I both nodded.
“Mind telling me what happened that you didn’t pass the exam?” she asked gently.
“Yes,” I said almost immediately, closing my eyes and looking down. Dad reached out this time, squeezing my hand. “It… it wasn’t…”
Dad squirmed a little. “She missed the examination due to illegal detainment,” he explained very, very delicately. “It was… much worse than it sounds.”
As he spoke, I tried to remember where I was, the feeling of the seat against me. I made the mistake of tasing the juice and spat it out as the smell triggered more of the memory, as lost as I was. Dad seemed helpless to do much beyond hugging me but Lisa’s soft voice in my ear was reassuring. “Taylor, I want you to tell me where you are right now,” she urged me gently.
“In… I’m in the Undersiders’ base. At the kitchen table,” I said, shuddering a little in Dad’s arms as Lisa stroked my hair reassuringly. “Dad’s… Dad’s holding me, and you’re… petting my hair.”
“Brian, get her some ice water; I don’t think she should have more juice right now,” Lisa said firmly. Brian just nodded, whisking the cup away and not asking questions.
I could feel a few tears on my cheeks at having an attack like this in front of my new employers, but Lisa just reached up and brushed them away. “Hey now, none of that. I’ve got my own bad moments. We’re not gonna judge you in here.”
Dad squeezed a little harder. “Thank you,” he said softly, looking at Lisa.
She nodded; her smile was much gentler not. “Of course. Taylor may very well have saved our lives, and she certainly made our job a lot easier last night and was very helpful today,” she pointed out. “Plus, Lung and his crew were a real menace. Bringing him down genuinely is a public service.”
Brian delivered the ice water, and I broke away from Dad to drink some of it while he wiped up the juice. I took a slow sip, feeling the cool, clean (non)taste as I felt myself relax a little. “We won’t ask you about that again,” Brian told me, sitting down. Somewhere in the middle there, Rachel had emerged, but she didn’t seem ruffled, just grooming her dog, Lucy, and letting me have my space. “I’ve had a couple of things in my life I never want to remember, either.”
That incident alone seemed to convince Dad more than anything else. “I’m not comfortable with this, but…” He sighed, raking a hand through his thinning hair. “We need to do something, and her teacher has… not been helpful. She even shredded Taylor’s application to take the test on another day in front of her.”
Lisa muttered something I didn’t quite understand. “Well, your daughter’s clearly gifted with her hands, sir,” Brian said, letting Lisa stew for a moment. “Old Widow’s all shot up right now, but she’s functional – Taylor put her through her paces today, helping with the cleanup. We can train her as a MechWarrior, and even if she doesn’t go into the field, I’d hire her on as a mechanic right now just from what she did with her Spider.”
“I’d prefer she didn’t, but…” Dad sighed, reaching out and squeezing my free hand. “Can you at least improve the armor?”
“Oh yeah, as much as we can. That’s not a big deal,” Lisa assured him, much to my surprise. When I looked at her, she was grinning again. “There are 9F kits on the market for an old 5V like hers. The tonnage is tight, but heavy ferro-fibrous plating, improved cooling, and extended-range lasers help. The result is a BattleMech that runs cooler and is tougher than the SDR-7Ms you see in line units. Decently cheap to acquire, too.”
Dad looked surprised at that, and Brian smiled. “Mercs don’t usually have weight of numbers. We’ve already ordered a kit to refit Rachel’s Wolfhound, Mister Hebert, and I’ll make sure we have the one for Taylor’s Spider in the next parts order. Besides, with other techs around, and proper tooling, Taylor will be in a good position to learn from them.”
The commitment seemed to help Dad relax. “Alright. I know this is dangerous, but…” He sighed tiredly. “I don’t know that it’s worse than what your mother was doing when I met her.”
Lisa and Brian looked intrigued, but I just shrugged. “Mom never told stories about helping do SAR in the Docks, so… no, probably not,” I pointed out, smiling a little.
Dad didn’t seem to know what to do with that. “I don’t think she did, no. But it’s a path to citizenship, and a good paycheck, and…” He looked away. “Every little girl dreams of being a MechWarrior, doesn’t she?”
“Well, Anne never did,” I replied before I could stop the bittersweet reminiscence about Emma’s older sister. She’d never been interested in it that I could recall. Anne, at least, never bothered me, just like Aunt Zoe hadn’t. They’d even reached out to see if I was okay after… things.
“No, she didn’t,” Dad agreed with a small smile. Emma was an uncomfortable subject; I’d had to explain it after the locker incident. I hadn’t wanted to, but there wasn’t a lot of choice under police questioning. You don’t just not talk to the police, not in the Capellan Confederation.
Nothing much had been done, of course, other than promising to move me to another peer group, but until that went through, I was in limbo, studying at home. Or in my workshop. “I, uh, I’ll keep up with my schoolwork as best I can,” I promised him. “Honestly, I’m doing better in the work now than I was around the others. They… weren’t helpful.” One of Mom’s old colleagues, since retired, had kindly taken me on as a remote tutoring subject in the meantime, but without active credentials, they couldn’t do much about replacing Blackwell as my teacher of record without official sanction.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Dad told me before standing up. He looked at me, lost for words, and I felt us sliding into the usual awkwardness again.
Then Lisa butted in, reminding me I had friends now. Or, well, coworkers, anyway. “Why don’t you show us what you’ve done with Old Widow? Let us appreciate your skills.” Her unstated emphasis of letting Dad appreciate my skills didn’t go unnoticed and I smiled a bit uncertainly, drinking my water. Even Rachel perked up at that idea, looking over with clear interest.
Licking my lips nervously, I led the others out onto the BattleMech gantries toward where Old Widow was parked, the restored Spider being surveyed by one of the Undersiders’ astechs. I nodded to the woman in her mid-20s, who handed me the ruggedized tablet she was annotating. “Uh, hi,” I said, looking at her. Dark-skinned and slim, she had dark hair. “Thank you.”
“I’m Sabah, your crew chief,” she explained, offering one slim hand. “At least for now?” She looked past me to Brian; he gave me a nod when I glanced his way uncertainly.
“Sabah’s good, ready to be a lead,” Rachel said in her usual blunt style.
I decided to take that at face value and shook Sabah’s hand. “Taylor Hebert.” Then I inspected the exterior damage survey and winced slightly. “Thanks for putting this together. I’ve got a lot of work to do on her,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Especially after last night.”
Sabah smiled. “She’s a beauty, under all that scarred plating,” the woman told me. “Of course, the seat needs replacing, too – I can tell that just looking in the cockpit.”
Sabah gave me a hand as I pointed to various parts of my BattleMech, half showing Dad and Rachel what I’d done, and half talking shop with Sabah and Rachel about the work that needed to be done to put Old Widow into full fighting trim.
Brian had excused himself to meet with a Home Guard representative, but Lisa stuck around, working on some paperwork on her tablet as she half-listened to us. “So, Taylor, do you think you’re ready to let Sabah help work on your BattleMech tomorrow?” she asked after a while.
When I saw the time on Sabah’s tablet, I blanched a little. I’d had no idea it had gotten that late. “Uh, yes. I think so,” I decided, looking at her.
“Cool. I’ll get her into the queue to start stripping armor down, starting with the damaged commercial plate,” Sabah told me seriously. “We’ve got a shopping run tomorrow, too; I’ll see if I can find some new upholstery for your chair.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “That’d be nice, yeah. It was on the to-do list, but, well, that’s a lot harder to come by in the salvage yards I was able to source from. Getting parts hasn’t been easy, even with me trading it for favors working on some stuff.”
“Favors for who, exactly?” Dad asked, fixing me with a look over the top of his glasses.
“The Dockworkers?” I squeaked at him. “I was helping with the LoaderMechs, and…”
Dad took a breath, let it out. “I’m going to need to have a few words with one or two people about off-the-books teenage help, clearly, but thank you. That wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.” He muttered something under his breath about them never telling him things.
Lisa and Sabah traded looks, and Lisa decided to tackle that one. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be aboveboard here. Well, as aboveboard as small unit mercs get, anyway,” Lisa promised Dad. I don’t think it helped as much as she thought. “We’d be giving Taylor her share of the bounty and a place to fix up Old Widow whether she signed on or not – a lot of that damage came saving our butts, sir.”
Dad nodded a little, looking like he was feeling very, very old. “Okay. I’ll allow it, on the condition you continue your studies, pay attention to the training, and keep getting good reviews from your employers.” The look he gave Lisa was emphatic. “And that they keep faith.”
“Already sent in the request to sponsor her with snapshots of her helping with cleanup today in between sensor sweeps,” Lisa promised him, grinning. “Brian’s going to write up a review of her SAR work as an affidavit in his debrief paperwork, too.”
That seemed to mollify Dad, and he squeezed my shoulder. “Let’s get home, okay? There’s a curfew tonight after everything, and we’re pushing it as it is.”
I nodded, dashing off after my things, and then trotting out to descend from the gantry and get into Dad’s battered old truck. I waved goodbye to Lisa and Sabah, then we headed home.