Bckstone SystemNadir PointBridge of the Cn Wolf Command Ship Dire Wolf

  "Kahn Ulric Kerensky, the Jumpship and two drop ships have been destroyed." The weapons officer of the Dire Wolf called out.

  "Very good. Maintain position until the remainder of the fleet arrives." The Kahn replied, surveying the aftermath of their assault. There was no honour in blowing up defenceless ships like that, but the secrecy of their approach into the Innersphere needed to be maintained. Operation Revival depended on their assault going unnoticed for as long as possible, and it would not look good for Cn Wolf to have failed that directive on their first operation.

  IlKhan Leo Showers, the Khan of the Cns, was also onboard to supervise Cn Wolf's progress and was waiting for them to slip up. The man would do anything to try to dishonour Ulric and his people, still jaded at his loss to Ulric during the Trial of Possession of the pnet Tranquil over twenty-five years ago.

  "Navigation. How long will it take to get to Bckstone?" He asked, stepping up behind the man's console.

  "My Kahn. At full speed, the Warships can reach orbit in seven days. Two way communication with minimal g would be avaible in six and one half days." The navigator replied.

  "Very good. Let me know when the Arctic Wolf arrives, this is saKahn Garath Radicks world to take after all. I will be with the ilKhan in the operations room." The Khan said, then departed the bridge.

  The rest of the fleet would begin to fan out to the other worlds in their invasion corridor from this position. While they were waiting for their Kearny-Fuchida Drives to recharge, they would watch the second in command of Cn Wolf get to take the first blood of the invasion.

  It would be a good day to be a Wolf.

  Bckstone CityBckcat Bar - John's Apartment

  John wheeled the unconscious woman off the cargo elevator and into his apartment with no one the wiser. After their quick discussion, she agreed to work with him, though she assumed he was keeping her as a sve. He didn't bother correcting that yet, as he was going to keep the colr on her until he was positive she wouldn't try to kill him outright.

  However, the first hitch in his pn happened when she passed out due to pain when he shifted her from the gurney to the rickety wheelchair that was in the hallway, looking like something straight out of the 1950's. That actually ended up working out in his favour, as several people saw him wheeling a 'corpse' out of the unit, including Captain Kearney.

  He took the alleyways to the back of the Bckcat without meeting anyone else. The only issue he had was one security camera by the elevator, which he cast Darkness over while he was out of its line of sight, so no one knew he brought her here.

  Locking the door behind him, he wheeled her over to his fold down double bed that was on one side of the open concept apartment. It had a small kitchenette, a seating area and a small balcony with a few old chairs. There was also an attached bathroom by the door that wasn't anything fancy, but at least it had plumbing, unlike some of these other worlds he had been to.

  He picked Lucy up and id her down on his bed, then went to the bathroom to grab a few wet towels to clean her up. He dragged a chair over beside the bed, sitting down beside the battered woman. Before he could change his mind, he activated his belt buckle armour to get the boost to his holy magic, grabbed her hand and channelled his healing magic into her.

  "Middle Heal, Middle Heal. Cure." He chanted his spells. The damage done to her was actually worse than it looked from the outside. Her right femur had been shattered in three spots, her ankle broken, and some shrapnel still embedded in her Achilles tendon. Her elbow was shattered, several ribs broken, and she had almost lost her right eye from the gss. It was amazing she was even alive.

  Thankfully, it was all well within the realm of his current healing powers. That said, it took over half his current mana in this world to get those three spells out (Middle Heal is 25 mana, Cure is 5). Once he had finished, he deactivated his armour and then started to mop up the green antibacterial cream that was covering the worst of her wounds. It was a mess, but he managed to make her look somewhat presentable.

  Her breathing had returned to something sounding normal, all her bruising and scarring gone, just her perfect porcein skin in its pce. Other than her long bck hair, she looked nothing like the beat up pirate they pulled out of the Marauder yesterday.

  He looked at her sleeping face for a few minutes, and once again was taken with the fact that she looked like Saeko, or rather what Saeko would look like in her thirties. Other than the purple eyes and hair, she could be her mother. He shook his head; he didn't have time to reminisce about High School of the Dead right now.

  He walked over to the kitchenette, pulled out a bottle of water from the fridge and a bag of weird snacks that looked kind of like potato chips, and set them beside the bed. He then wrote a quick note for her to stay here and help herself to anything in the fridge. Just be quiet until he returned ter, and they would talk about the next steps.

  He was working out a pn in his head to expin that she was just a retired mechwarrior who was looking for her daughter, whom she believed had been captured by the pirates, and wanted to join them on the assault on the base. Her backstory would be full of holes on anything more than a surface examination, as there would be no record of her arrival on the pnet, but he could grease a few palms at the Starport to falsify a few records for him. He didn't want to blow all his money, but for whatever reason, he had a significant amount of it. If it helped him survive this world, then he would use every st credit if he needed to.

  Finishing the note, he pced it beside the water and pulled some C-Bills out of his safe. His next stop was the general store to find some clothing that would fit her, some makeup, and a pair of scissors. He had no idea what they had there, but he would try to find something to make her look more like a merc than her current bloody and torn up workout clothing. Then he had to go wash Suzy Q down, else Maggie would come drag him back there to do it, and the st thing he wanted was her showing up at his door and seeing Lucy before they could change her look a bit more.

  He stepped over to the bed one st time, tucking the bnket around the sleeping woman. "This world might be about to go to shit, but we will get your daughter back, Lucy. I'll keep you both safe." He spoke, speaking his true feelings aloud.

  He didn't know this woman, but the st few worlds he had visited had begun to change him, and he felt like he was losing his empathy for strangers. He just shoved six pirates into svery for the rest of their lives with no remorse. He executed those pirates in his search for Chris, after torturing them for information that would help him find her. Ever since he killed those mercenaries way back in The Great Cleric, he felt he was changing in ways he wasn't sure he liked.

  He wouldn't change anything he did, even if he could, but by deciding to help this poor woman rescue her daughter without knowing her at all, he was hoping to find a bit of his empathy for strangers again. He stepped out of his room a few moments ter, locking the door behind him.

  Unnoticed by John, a pair of bck eyes watched him leave, their owner having no clue what had just happened to her. A few hours ago, she was a crippled pirate who was sted to be executed, unable to save her daughter from a fate worse than her own. Now, she was somehow healed while she was asleep, and left alone, unchained in this modest room. And the person she had to thank for this was that kindly old man who nearly killed her yesterday when he blew out part of her cockpit, and she returned the favour by turning nearly half his mech into molten sg.

  She owed him a debt that she was not sure she could ever repay, and if he did manage to save her daughter... She had no idea what to do; her moral code told her she would pretty much owe him her life.

  Lucy was an ardent follower of Bushido and Neo-Confucianism; her honour as a warrior and her family were the major pilrs in her life. She fought for the Combine and her family since she was sixteen during the Fourth Succession War, meeting the man who would eventually become her husband then, though it would be another decade before they were married.

  When her husband was killed before their daughter was born, she was listless for a while, but her family brought her home and supported her. For a time. They only left the Combine because her Uncle was trying to ‘clean out’ her branch of the house due to her father's supposed dishonour.

  She and her then seven-year-old daughter had travelled all the way out here, the circuitous route taking nearly two years and millions of C-Bills, booking passage on multiple ships to shake anyone follow their trail. All that only to have their dropship attacked enroute to their final JumpShip to leave the Periphery to New Caledonia in the Free Rasalhague Republic. She had friends there from before that nation separated from the Combine, and they would have protected her and her daughter.

  Instead, she found herself being coerced into piloting mechs for pirates out in the periphery for the st year, only getting to see her daughter once a month for a day if she was lucky. Rei would be turning ten in a few days, her only friend a older female pirate assigned to take care of her when she wasn't busy moving cargo around. At least she wasn't as horrible a woman as most of the other pirates she had met, just someone else who was dealt a shit hand in life and was making the best of it.

  Lucy sighed, her thoughts starting to drift again. On top of her earlier exhaustion, whatever that man did to heal her took a lot out of her body. She closed her eyes, her st thoughts of what she would need to do to thank that man for another chance at life.

  The rest of the day went quickly for John. He found some clothing for Lucy, including a bck leather vest and bck paramilitary cargo pants that would make her look like a merc, along with a basic makeup kit suitable for someone with a pale complexion, according to the dy behind the counter. They didn't have any hairdresser scissors, but would order him a pair if he wanted; it would probably be six months to a year before they arrived. He just declined, not expecting this world to st that long.

  He returned to the apartment, dropping everything off beside the bed before returning to the Guards facility to clean up the Jenner. That took longer than he had hoped, the vibrations from the diesel engine in the Indy mech having shaken his entire body to the point he needed to keep rushing to the bathroom. It was nearly suppertime when he had finished, parking Suzy Q back in her spot.

  The ten-man crew of Maggie's was crawling all over that Marauder, welding new metal to its structure, reconnecting Myomar and power cables to the arms and legs, getting it ready for its new armour ptes. It was kind of shocking to John to see what the ptes were actually made of, only expecting some four to six-inch rolled steel that was moulded to fit.

  The armour was abtive, made by stacking four yers of materials to provide protection against multiple hazards. The top two yers were a hardened steel and a type of ceramic, meant to catch what blows through the steel despite its hardness. The next two yers were a titanium alloy backing to hold the ‘armour’ part of the armour in pce, and a polymer seant yer to prevent flooding or a vacuum from causing a catastrophic loss of pressure in the affected area.

  It was quite impressive, and was even more impressive that the weapons they were using would tear right through it. Well, Suzy Q didn't have these thick ptes; the light mech would be hard pressed to move if they tried to put that much armour on it. Her armour was speed.

  Just as he was leaving the hangar to go home, James called out to him, the older man walking in from the offices. "Evening, John. Maggie said you ponied up some cash to keep the techs working until our mechs were ready to hit the pirate base. Are you that eager to see me retire?"

  "No, you see," John replied, then filled him in on what he had learned from Lucy about the captives being sent off world in four days.

  "Hmm... that is troubling. Damn, I wish you had told me earlier. Here, read this." He said, handing John a few sheets of paper.

  "What is this?" He asked, gncing at the top sheet briefly. It was orders for the captain to meet at the governor's office tomorrow for a critical operation.

  "Well, apparently, a pair of eggheads from off world want to hire the guards to escort them to the mountains. They think there is a Star League Cache up there somewhere, and want us to escort them as they search around."

  "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard them st night at the Bckcat, they were sitting beside me when they were discussing this business with a pilot. By the sounds of it, the VTOL pilot was lit up when he was up there searching for a nding site. Was why I decided to question the pirates this morning." John replied.

  "Well, apparently, they convinced the governor that time was of the essence. They want to head out in two days, and he already agreed without talking with me first. So we won't have a mech for you by then... well, unless."

  "Unless what?"

  "Do you want the Urbie?"

  John facepalmed, his memories telling him exactly what that mech was.

  God damnit Alec! Was this your pn all along?