That EveningBckstone CityBckstone Guards Hanger

  John backed Suzy Q into its gantry, finally shutting down the battered mech for the day. Cleanup after the pirate base raid took longer than anticipated, but they managed to drag all three pirate mechs along with their prisoners into the Leopard. It was quite the process without dedicated salvage vehicles like the Federated Commonwealth used, hooking up chains to the fallen mechs and pulling them inside the Leopard. Still, they managed it.

  The pirates didn't have much stored in their prefabbed buildings, recently having sold their ill-gotten loot to the bck market in other areas of the Oberon Confederation. John intended to question them more tomorrow before they got sent off to their new jobs at the mines, using his scouter skill to 'mine' for more information.

  The female mechwarrior who nearly killed him and Jerome was patched up a bit to stop her bleeding, but was sent along with the rest of the pirates to the holding facility at the Guards' base. About all John could get out of her after she confirmed that those six were all the pirates was her name, Lucy. She reminded him a lot of an older version of Saeko, but with bck eyes instead of purple.

  He looked around the cockpit of the Suzy Q, but he could not find some of his gear. The only things he had on his person were his leathers, belt buckle armour, and the Sword of Truth. The Pelican, Substance X tin, and his spell scroll of spider climb were in his pocket as well. The bow, quiver, and house were nowhere to be seen. Not that he needed them, but it made him curious as to why they had disappeared.

  Probably some weird thing with the scenario they gave me.

  He sighed. He wasn't actually worried about them; he was sure Alec would expin whenever he returned to DEN. He was just deying the dressing down he was about to receive from the blonde woman standing in front of his mech. He was too tired for that right now.

  "JOHN SUZY WAYNE! WHAT IN THE HELL DID YOU DO TO SUZY Q!?! GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT THE HELL NOW AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF!" Maggie shouted, her voice somehow echoing through his cockpit despite still being sealed up.

  "Fuck it. Let's get it over with." He mumbled to himself. She was the chief mechanic of the Guards and had the skills to work for any of the major Innersphere militaries. The fact that someone with her skillset was out here on the literal edge of known space was crazy.

  She is like Chris, but with more attitude. A lot more.

  He climbed out of the cockpit and stepped onto the lift that would bring him down to the ground, watching Maggie as she stared back up at him, hands on her hips and tapping her foot. She was in her te thirties, standing around five-foot-ten, and more muscur than most women. Her ptinum blonde hair was done up in faux twisted dreads, and her blue eyes were locked onto his, a wicked looking gre on her face.

  "Umm, hey Maggie. We are back." John said, giving her a weak wave as he stepped off the lift.

  "You're back? That is what you lead with, John? What the hell did you do to my mech?!?" She said, pointing up at Suzy Q.

  John looked back, already knowing that the damage looked worse than his internal readout indicated. Most of the right side of the mech was missing; the two PPC strikes he took did an incredible amount of damage to the small machine. He could even see the side of its reactor compartment from where they were standing, thankfully undamaged from the battle.

  "Well, it was this or let Jerome die. The idiot decided to fight a Marauder without the rest of us, so I needed to come in and save his ass." John said, trying to pass the buck to Jerome. He really didn't want to deal with her tirade right now.

  "Don't worry, he will get his, too! But this is MY mech, John! I loaned it to you until we can get that Hunchback operational again. Do you know how difficult it will be to get the governor to pay for my mech's repairs? The parts are not the problem; we have those in the boneyard. It's paying overtime for my crew! You are going to help me fix Suzy Q up, either out of your pocket or your own blood, sweat, and tears. Do you hear me, John!" She said, poking him in the chest.

  John had enough and grabbed her wrist, pulling it to the side. "Enough, Maggie! You knew this could happen when you loaned it out. We are going into battle, not some parade for the governor. Now I am tired and don't appreciate you poking me in the chest. Go py your games with Jerome if you want to yell at someone, I ain't apologizing for rescuing his dumb ass."

  She looked at him in surprise, not expecting the normally mild mannered John to speak back to her. A smile spread across her face. "Finally, I wondered if you actually had a backbone or not. It only took a couple of years for it to come out." She said, then used her free hand and rubbed it through his beard on the right side of his face. "Too bad you don't have a real beard, one could really take to a sliver fox like you."

  "Huh?" John said, confused at her abrupt change of attitude. He didn't have time to question it further when Franky showed up beside them.

  Six feet tall, a little overweight, with a shaved head and fiery red beard that ran down almost to his belly, Franky Beard was looking at the pair of them in amusement. "Oh, honey, cut the man some sck. He got stuck pying meatshield while the rest of us got to sit back and rex. Now, get over here and give me some sugar."

  Maggie stepped away from John, then grabbed Franky's beard and pulled him in for a kiss. John turned away, letting the pair of them have a moment. The pair of them had this on again, off again retionship that John didn't quite understand, but he didn't need to. Whatever it was, it worked for them.

  "I'll see you guys at the bar," John said, extracting himself from the conversation before Maggie noticed the mud and dead fish that were still hanging off Suzy Q's exposed structure. He didn't think Franky's joke of tying his shoe would fool the mechanic, and treating her mech as a submarine was definitely not something he wanted to hear about.

  A Couple Of Hours LaterBckcat Bar

  "I tell ya, it's all in the beard, man. The dies are crazy over this thing." Franky said to John, spping him on the back. "Between this and my musical talents, I am going to ride this retirement out until some pirate gets a lucky shot in and finishes me off for good."

  "Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself. I still think that you have birds nesting in that thing." John replied, sipping his beer.

  The pair of them were having a few drinks as they normally did after a deployment, before retiring to the small apartments they rented above the bar. The Bckcat was one of three drinking holes in Bckstone, all lined up along the waterfront that the small city boasted as an attraction to visitors. It was more of a live music bar attached to a hotel than a watering hole or dance club like the other two, which suited John just fine. Most of the clientele were middle aged or older, so they didn't have to worry about 'kids' coming in and causing a ruckus.

  Dar and Jerome were with them earlier, but had already gone upstairs, Jerome compining of back pains from the demands on his body that day. The four of them technically had the next four days off to recover; their part-time gig as mech pilots was another way the governor saved even more money. Not that any of them really cared that much, all of them more than well enough off to live the rest of their days on their savings.

  John wanted to say the governor was just pocketing it for himself, but the colony was small, and the taxes incredibly low. They really didn't have that much capital to work with to start, so they had adopted many ways to reduce operating costs. Hiring retirement aged mechwarriors who wanted more time off than anything else was one of those methods. No training needed, saving them money on ammo and maintenance.

  John had checked his C-Bill bance earlier, and he had well over a million, equating to nearly fifteen million dolrs in USD. He could live happily here until he turned 150 years old, which was actually fairly common in this world, though that was in the more developed worlds. Out here on the edge of space, 120 seemed to be easily doable, which was a hell of a retirement. Living on a beachfront property, cheap drinks and live music twice a week downstairs. He could get used to this.

  "Where is Maggie at?" John asked. The mechanic usually joined them for drinks, but was absent tonight.

  "Pying around with that Marauder. She thinks she might be able to get it functioning with some of the scraps, or bring another one of the other heavies back from the brink of death. She still wants you to come by to help fix Suzy Q, but she was in a much better mood when I left."

  "We will see about that. I need to see the boss tomorrow about our payout for the pirates, maybe I'll check in with her afterwards."

  "You do that. Now, I'm gonna go py a song or two. Feel like joining me?" Franky said, smming back his drink, then waggled his thick eyebrows at John. "You could score a dy or two for the night!"

  "Another night. I don't want to upstage your performance; these people are not ready for my sheer sex appeal." John said with a ugh. His memories told him he always turned Franky down, and the man didn't seem to care. For whatever reason, Franky would manage to head back to his room with two dies on his arm after one of his sets. Sometimes he would do it two or even three times in one night as the bar didn't actually close until dawn.

  John admired the older man's stamina, not sure even with his DEN skills, that he could manage such a feat. Still, one night stands were not John's way. He leaned back against the wall of the booth they were sitting in and closed his eye, letting his mind drift a bit. He assumed the pirate base was the tutorial mission... the system? The system told him about when he was floating in space. If that was his introduction, he wasn't sure what the hell the actual mission was going to be. His whole body would be aching if he hadn't had time to hide and cast some healing magic on himself.

  Winning isn't possible; the goal is to survive.

  If he had to be in a harder battle than that, he wasn't sure if that goal would even be possible.

  A conversation at the next table pulled him out of his thoughts, with the occupants' voices raised enough to be heard over the general din of the bar.

  "What do you mean you won't escort us there now? We paid you good money to take us out there and even agreed to a share of the profits." A man's voice said, sounding angry.

  "I ain't got a deathwish kid. I did a flyby of that location today to check out the area for nding zones, and my console lit up with target locked warnings. I fly a damn Karnov, not some combat aircraft. If you want to go there, talk with some mercenaries, not cargo pilots." A gruff voice replied, the man obviously one of the contractors for the mines around here, looking to make a little extra money on the side.

  "But this could be the find of a decade! Think about it! If it's a Star League cache, it could contain billions of C-Bills worth of equipment, not to mention all the valuable data that might be stored inside."

  "Right! Or, and this is more likely, it's just a bunch of pirates hiding out in the mountains away from the guards' sight. I'll transfer your money back minus my fuel cost, and find someone else to take you there if you feel like getting shot up by a bunch of pirates. I'm out!" The man said. He then stood up from the booth and left.

  "But-" The first voice said, but was interrupted by another, more feminine voice.

  "Let him go, Cid. He obviously doesn't want risk it. Can you bme him? Pirates are rampant in pces like this, and his VTOL is his means of surviving. Let's go and get some sleep. We can see if we can hire mercenaries or the guards tomorrow to help us."

  "Fine, Abby, but I don't expect much from a backwater like this. Chances are that anyone we hire will be just as crooked as the pirates." The man said with a sigh.

  The two of them left the table and passed in front of John, heading to the side of the bar that led upstairs, where there were short-term rooms for rent as well as the apartments. They both looked to be in their mid twenties, smartly dressed in something resembling business-casual suits. The man was slim, standing about five-foot-eight, with messy dark brown hair and brown eyes. The woman was of simir height, with lighter brown hair and hazel eyes. She had a fairly generous bust around an E-Cup and wider hips, giving her that hourgss look under the tight fitting charcoal suit.

  "A Star League cache? Now that is interesting." John said to himself, sipping his beer.

  According to his memories, the Star League predated the current Innersphere political yout, but their technology was beyond what is capable of being produced today. If there was a cache here, it might indeed be full of mechs from that era, untouched for the st six hundred years. Or it could just be full of expired rations or farming equipment; the caches were not all meant for military purposes.

  He signaled a waitress who was going by for another beer, then settled back in again to listen to Franky start pying the saxophone he retrieved from his room. Tired or not, he had yet another thing to think about before he went to bed tonight.