After John forced Mia to admit surrender, they cuddled for a short time before getting up for the day. They showered and stripped the bed, hiding any evidence of their lovemaking in the washing machine. Once that was done, he went outside to grab James' letter; now that he was rested, he wanted to look it over again and decided if it was even possible to action.

  We only have a couple of hours before the Wolves nd at the starport, so if we are going to action anything-

  The letter was gone.

  "Shit! Did it blow off the balcony?" He said to himself, scrambling to search for it. He could have sworn he left it outside, but he was tired. He started ransacking his apartment, looking for the letter.

  "What are you looking for, John Way- John," Mia asked, looking out from the bathroom. She was in the middle of braiding her hair in an intricate five-strand weave.

  "A letter from James. I thought I left it outside st night, but it's not there."

  "Captain James Kearney's letter? Lucy had it st night when she started organizing people for an evacuati- Why are you looking at me that way?" She said, cocking her head sideways a bit. It would have been oddly adorable to look at if it weren't for the fact that she just dropped a bomb on John's p.

  "She what?"

  Last Night, while John was asleep

  Trix swiped her identification card to get access to James' office, then took a deep breath, steeling herself before entering. She had just come to terms with his death, but she knew what was behind this door would be difficult to see. She was no stranger to death, but seeing pictures of her ncemates on the walls was sure to test her resolve.

  Surprisingly, the office appeared to have been cleared out already, with nothing but a few chairs and his desk. The safe was behind his chair, the picture normally covering it nowhere to be seen. She went over and plugged in the keycode, wondering if James had decided to clean out his personal effects so the surviving guards wouldn't have had to.

  The safe was full of C-Bills, fsh drives, and data discs. Supposedly, they were all filled with dirt he had collected on people in the Lyran Commonwealth from decades ago and, more recently, dirt he collected on people in the Oberon Confederation. She wasn't sure if any of the data would be useful in their current situation, but she shoveled all of it into the duffel bag she had brought with her.

  Just as she finished and was about to leave, she paused. Taped to the back of the safe's door was an image she hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years. It was a picture of the Guards' command nce, just after her first operation with them. She was much younger then, the ripe age of sixty-three, practically a spring chicken compared to how she felt these days.

  They all looked younger, well, everyone except the old man. He was eighty-five in this photo, but didn't look a day over sixty. It wasn't until the st couple of years that he truly started to show his age; his battle with cancer was what finally ended his run of eternal youth.

  She shed a small tear for him, her memories going back to when she first met him back in 2990, when she was promoted unexpectedly from the scout nce to his command nce. The Lyrans were embroiled in the Third Succession War, like the rest of the Inner Sphere, so they saw a significant amount of fighting against the Combine.

  The then twenty-year-old Trix, then known as Tina, became infatuated with her company commander, the forty-two-year-old James Kearney. Always the consummate professional, he rebuffed her advances for the next thirteen years, until his retirement was announced. They had a brief love affair for the next six months, before he disappeared off into the periphery, and her unit was deployed from hotspot to hotspot for nearly the next twelve years.

  When she was finally allowed to retire, she started to hunt him down again. Their communications had been spotty due to where he was living, with him able to send an HPG message only once a year, but she didn't let that stop her. The look of surprise on his face when she showed up to this very office sixteen years ago was priceless. Sure, they were a bit older now, but she found her man yet again.

  She pocketed the picture, then hoisted the bag and left the office. Lucy had brought a letter with James' final orders for John, and she would be damned if she would fail her old man's st request.

  "Maggie? What are you doing here at this hour?" Brenda, the governor's wife and secretary, asked. She had deep bags under her eyes and a haunted look on her face.

  She had been fielding calls all evening about the Guards having lost the battle, and these new Wolves coming in to take over. She had no idea what was going on and hadn't been in contact with the governor for a couple of days now, so she had been completely blindsided by yet another wave of enquiries. She eventually just took the phone off the hook and went to bed.

  "Here, take one of these; it will wake you up," Maggie said, popping a ball of Substance X into the woman's mouth. "C'mon, girl, we have a lot to do, and not much time to do it in."

  "Hrrmph! The hell was that, Maggie? You know my party girl days are long past. What kind of trip is this thing going to send me on?"

  "About four pots of coffee and maybe some other minor side effects, but it isn't a party drug; it is a working drug. Here, read this." She said, handing her the letter from James to John.

  Brenda read through it a couple of times, then looked into her best friend's eyes. "Is this true? Do they really do things like this?"

  "Got confirmation from a pair of them that are on our side."

  "Let me get dressed. Do you know how many he can take?"

  "No idea. The hold is pretty big if you pack them in there, but we would also need food and other supplies. I can't ask him because he is asleep right now."

  "He is asleep? Well, go wake him up! This is important!"

  "You do realize he has been fighting constantly for the st week? He was a damn zombie when he left the Bckcat earlier. I don't think we could wake him with a bucket of ice water, or even if his apartment were on fire. He has been running off those pills like a lot of us Guards to prep the battlefield. Let me tell you, when they get out of your system, you sleep the sleep of the dead."

  "Fine." She sighed. "I just wish you Guards could have given us a heads up. I would have known to prep for our new Overlords tomorrow, instead of getting dozens of calls asking what the hell is going on."

  "Just be happy the Guards managed to fight well enough to earn a peaceful transition. Only two of our mechwarriors survived the battle."

  "It was that bad? Okay, Okay, I'm wasting time nattering here. Let's get started."

  The pair of them went inside to do the repulsive, unpleasant job of deciding who gets to escape this pnet before it becomes a breeding factory for their new overlords.

  That Morning, while John and Mia were busy

  *Smack*

  "Hah! Like I am going to talk. You know what they will do to me if I snitch on our jumpship's location? You might as well kill me now, because I'm a dead man anyway, and there is nothing this ogre can do to me to change my mind." The man said, the captain of one of the pirate dropships.

  Lucy and Bryn had chartered a VTOL out to a nearby mining camp st night, the pilot part of the crowd of people at the Bckcat asking questions. He had no problems taking them once she pressed a significant amount of C-Bills into his hand, not understanding they were about to become worthless.

  She had taken the letter straight to Trix and Maggie; the two women were the only ones she knew who might be able to help. It didn't take them long to divide up the task, though they were not sure exactly how they were going to calcute the exact location of the pirate jumpship. Maggie started to do some napkin math, which was confusing the hell out of everyone else at the table. The main problem was that there were too many possible points in the system, with each pnet's gravity needing to be accounted for in the equation.

  That was when Mia mentioned they should probably just look for the crews that were sold to the mines and ask. There were several bnk-looking faces around the table for a moment, the group of them realizing that would probably be the fastest solution. Lucy volunteered for that job, much to the other two's confusion. She just smiled, saying she had her ways.

  Unexpectantly, Bryn said she would tag along. The massive woman had been half asleep during their conversation, having eaten enough food to feed three grown men. Lucy wasn't sure about her like she was with Mia, but Mia had vouched for her, so she accepted the Elementals' offer. One quick stop, and they were out the door, the VTOL pilot already knowing where the st batch of pirates had been dropped off since he was the one who did it.

  That is how they ended up in this cell, with Bryn having a bit of fun spping the man around while Lucy sat in silence watching the woman work him over.

  *Smack, Crack!*

  "ARGH! I am not going to tell you anything! They will kill me!" He screamed, having just had one of his fingers broken.

  She let Bryn rough him up a bit more before standing up from her chair. "Pin him." She said coldly, her normal soft demeanor having vanished, repced by the steel beneath the facade she wore.

  Bryn smmed him into the wall one st time, then kneeled on his chest and held one of his wrists in an iron grip. Lucy dropped a bag beside the man's head and started pulling out an assortment of utensils and kitchen ingredients, pcing them right where he could see them.

  "Wha- What are you doing, you crazy bitch? Going to make me a sandwich? Hah!" He spat, causing Lucy to smile.

  "You might be surprised to learn what the operatives of House Kurita learn to use when they don't have proper interrogation equipment." She spoke, then started to describe in detail the alternative uses of some of the things she had brought.

  "A properly maintained kitchen knife is quite sharp, and can peel open a pirate's skin as easily as a pig's. Then, using this fine cheese grater on the remaining skin and muscles below, you can make someone experience excessive amounts of exquisite pain. Then we add a liberal amount of table salt, rubbing it into the wounds, increasing the intensity of the pain to the point that people want to pass out, but just can't. It is beautiful, really. Then we move on to my favorite part. The fme broiling. Did you know we smell like ham when we are cooking, pirate? Well, you will shortly." She said, igniting the small kitchen torch she had found in one of the drawers.

  He started to sweat then, as she pulled even more things out of the bag, his mind reeling at what this crazy woman was going to do to him.

  Lucy started to slowly put on a pair of bck tex gloves, staring at him with a wicked smile the entire time. She took a single toothpick from the pile of goodies beside her and grabbed his hand and wrestled the pinky finger free from his clenched fist. She slipped the tip under his nail and pushed on it slightly, causing him to hiss in pain through his clenched teeth.

  "Now, st chance, tell me what we need to know, or I will pop off all your fingernails and then start shredding you limb by limb. You might need to worry about some pirates in the future, but right now, it is just us three, and I will leave you in such a state that you will wish I had killed you instead." She said casually, wiggling the tip of the toothpick a bit to make her point.

  "Pah! What in the hell is wrong with women out here in the periphery? I swear to fuck you are all insane, psychotic, sadists. If I don't tell ya what ya want to know, you'll torture me, or if I do tell ya, my boss will. I am fucked either way."

  "Well, if it helps make your decision, Susie Morgan-Ryan is dead. Three pistol shots to the head from Mia, her former sve."

  "That weird one who spoke funny? Hah! I'd love to have seen that. Fine, you win, girly. Just get your attack dog off me."

  *Smack*

  "Stravag! I am a Wolf, not some trained pet!" Bryn said, spping the man.

  "Ow... fuck. I said I would tell you! You don't need to keep beating me!"

  Lucy touched her on the shoulder, drawing the Elementals' attention away from the pirate. "Bryn, you were a Wolf... right?"

  "Right. Sorry, Lucy Kurita, I am still adjusting. It took some time when I went from Steel Viper to the Wolves as well. I know I am not the smartest, but I do not like being insulted, be it from a Trashborn or a Freebirth." She said, releasing the pirate.

  "You are fine just the way you are, Bryn." She said softly, then turned back to the pirate, tossing him a notepad and a pencil. "Now, write down where that jumpship is hiding at. And I warn you, we already plotted down all the points currently in the system, so it'd better match up with one of those, else I am coming back here and cooking a ham dinner."

  "Alright, alright. You won already, you don't need to rub salt in the wound-" He said, then shivered as he paused to look down at her 'tools' again.

  Back to the Present

  "So you're telling me, they all went out of their way to gather the money, people, and are even getting the location of the pirate dropship for me?" John asked after Mia expined what went down st night.

  "Aff. Sandy is even looking after Rei downstairs while I was left here to make sure you got a proper rest. As the second in command of the guards, Mechwarrior Trix delegated everyone a task except for Bryn and me, so Lucy took Bryn with her and asked me to stay with you. You were going to order them to prepare for evacuations, Quiaff?"

  John didn't answer; he just sat down on the bed, his thoughts racing. He was going to do that, but it was like the decision was torn from his hands and forced upon him now. He ughed.

  Is this what James felt like when I just went off and did my own thing, then informed him after the fact? Fuck it, I trust my people here. I don't always need to do everything and micromanage everyone. I will be sure to give Lucy a reward for helping me out when I wasn't able to... somehow.

  *Ding*The quest window popped up in front of him then, showing that he indeed had updated the quest. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but he had the perfect person to ask right in front of him.

  "Random question, Mia. What is a Timber Wolf?"

  [Quest]

  [The Cross-Worlds NoFap Challenge Level 2][Take the virginity of five different women - 3/5][Rewards][One S-Css Impnt From Infinite Frontiers][One A-Css Impnt From Infinite Frontiers][One Heavy Cn OmniMech From Battletech - Timber Wolf][X][X]