Collab between @Letter Bee and @Starlance.FlashbackMarit went straight from one queue to another, from lining up for ten lashes to lining up for disinfection and verbal lashing from Doc Yuri. All for want of a shower, which was still on the schedule and now with an increased priority. She hung back in the queue a little bit as her previous position would place her behind her roommate, an astech Marit didn’t remember which ‘Mech she was assigned to, but she vividly remembered decking the smaller woman. Best let her cool off first. Her new place put her directly behind another victim of splash damage.
”You too, huh?” She asked Family Man in the same tone someone casually comments on the weather.
Raven Rivers nodded at that, having already put his shirt back on after disinfection, carefully looking away from Marit because he was a married man, damnit. He then responded, “Probably what I needed to clear my head.”
Leveraging the fact that he was the older person here, he would request, “I should probably wait till you shower for us to talk; practical reasons. That said, the Colonel called me out on my skewed priorities earlier; we agreed that once this is over, retiring is an option for me.”
He smiled faintly, even though Marit would not be able to see it, “Let’s talk in the cafeteria in an hour and fifteen minutes; I need to gather my thoughts in my quarters. Assuming you want to, of course.”
”Works for me. Win like this calls for a celebration anyway.” Just not like
this. Whatever Ziska thought, this was not the way to go about it.
Present timeMarit sat down with a cup in front of her, looking at it like a holy relic. Coffee. It was terrible, but it was
available. Beggars can’t be choosers. Improvement or not, they were still squatting in a junkyard.
”That was needed to clear your head? Ever heard of hobbies?” She joked, taking a sip of the life-giving liquid and burning her tongue. Probably a blessing, given the coffee’s taste.
Raven mused as he sipped his own cup, “I cook when I have supplies and Katrina isn’t the one doing it; I love cooking but… We’re currently in a crisis - I can’t spend my time cooking when we have a campaign to win and a people to rescue from liars and bullshitmongers who dared to wear our face and use my voice without my consent.”
As quickly as the anger spiked, it faded to be replaced by relaxation, a breath that signaled that he was letting go, and he spoke, “But to be honest, I do need hobbies; I can’t think of war all the time.”
Tilting his head slightly towards her, Raven asked, “So, what about you? What do
you do to pass the time? With me, it was doing household chores with Katrina together and listening to Andrew boast about his ambitions and how he was going to earn us all a Noble’s landhold…”
Marit choked back her coffee.
”Gotta start small, right?” Not that her family and entire mercenary company’s generational dream of free Rasalhague wasn’t the exact same one-in-trillion pipe dream.
”These days it’s mostly cards. Not much else you can do with what we have available, certainly haven’t seen any backgammon boards laying around. I’ve started pestering my techs about Archie a while before the shitshow really kicked off. Might as well know what’s under me.
But you’re right, can’t think about work all the time. Blessed be us rookies, I just go where the Colonel tells me and do what Ingrid says while there.” On the other hand, keeping his mind on the job could be a good distraction if not taken too far. That was how radio outbursts happen.
”That, and I like to imagine the Fists' faces when they get the news about our recent stunt. Would love to be a fly on that wall.
Wondering what’s next. Feels like we’re coming out of the shadows a little with ComStar clearing us.”Raven smiled, one of the first times he had done so since this entire crisis started and said, “Greatness or death or both; not to sound like Andrew, but we’ve got something good here - A story that has reached a point where even total and complete failure would be so epic, people will be talking about it as far as, well, Rasalhague for at least a decade. The Captain is a fanboy of the Eridani Light Horse; there’s a non-zero chance
they’d be reading about what we do today in Espia… If we do things right.”
He grinned, showing his teeth, “And if we do things super-right and win, then keep fighting, then the sky is the limit.”
”You and I have vastly different definitions of ‘good’. ‘Better than before’ we can talk about.” She returned the smile,
”I suppose if one has to die, it’s better to burn out than to fizzle away, just in case mom’s right.” Hel sounded like a boring afterlife.
”But we’ve got a good hand on the big-picture controls, or hand-and-a-half, and minor character defects aside, if Ingrid told me she had a plan to walk across the sea, I’d at least hear her out. I’m not worried about us.” The Colonel hasn’t put a foot wrong yet, and despite some setbacks, a very good backer just fell into their lap on her own. Add on top the fact that they’ve just reduced the expected Crimson Fists strength by a third and marit was feeling pretty confident if their sole goal was to get their people, liberate a ship and get the fuck off Espia. It was that which worried her. The folks in Tie Shan and biting off more than they could chew.
A nod as Raven’s smile held, as he responded, “We technically don’t have any responsibility towards the people here. Technically. After all, we’re not friends, maybe even less than that. One wrong step and we’d even be enemies. Nor is it our job to ensure that every petty tyrant and inhumane despot gets their just deserts.”
The implications of that statement, his specific phrasing, were given a few seconds to settle before the middle-aged soldier said, “Nevertheless, I feel uncomfortable leaving an enemy behind our rear and a people who’d resent us as catspaws of the Capellans who added to our offense by being cowards who left them to be crushed by someone who is our enemy
anyway. Add that to the fact that the Crimson Fists and Heavenly Sword are backed by forces from outside that we do not know the full details of, and could potentially give those assholes reach beyond this planet, so I think it’s best we don’t leave any loose ends.”
He then mused, “That, and I want to make sure no one uses my voice for a frame-up ever again…”
”Do we want to piss off mysterious puppeteers by messing with their evil plans more than we need to?” Marit countered with the opposite viewpoint,
”As far as I know, their problem with us - before we embarrassed them, that is - was that we were in the way. And the Heavenly Sword hates us because we understand economics and they don’t, but they’re a non-concern. If we don’t put them in the dirt, whoever is pulling the strings behind this will as soon as they don’t need them.” People like that were not a good thing to have on a planet you have plans for.
”As for the locals? They already hate us. Not that I can blame them. But they want our ‘Mechs, not us. If there are any FPA left alive and able to resist after Portveyn went up in flames. Lesson in decentralizing I guess. So does it matter how much they don’t like us?” She shrugged.
Raven closed his eyes and pursed his lips, as if to give it deep thought. He then opened them and said, “I know this won’t earn me any fans from you or them, but it does to me. I know they probably hate my guts because my voice was used by the people who killed their kin, as well as other offenses, but we’re not the sort of mercs without a conscience; the Colonel won’t be proud of us if we were. We’re not saving them out of affection or pity or because we don’t hate back - I don’t yet, but it’s a possibility - we’re saving them because it’s the right thing to do, it leaves us with a secure rear and one less dedicated foe who is petty enough to pursue us to the death
because we embarrassed them, and because I do not envision the Colonel as someone who wants a guilty conscience or loose ends.”
He then sighed, “I was a founding member of the Green Knights, and before that, I fought beside the Colonel as part of the FedSuns during the Third Succession War. We decided to be mercs not for the money but because the Kell Hounds were better and more honorable warriors than even our own professional troops. Our Colonel has earned his reputation by being the very opposite of an opportunistic coward or someone who does not clean up after himself. So if one argument does not appeal, the other, more pragmatic one should.”
”There’s some good arguments there, I’ll give you that.” She concurred. Yes, the main reason she was there was because the Colonel took a chance on someone with a blank CV, but the main reason she approached the Green Knights was their reputation.
”On the other hand, I was raised to look after my own people first. Everyone else is just a welcome bonus. Would it be nice if we could help? Of course it would. After our people have been taken care of.” Marit was one of the lucky ones, ‘only’ having friends in Tie Shan, not family, but that didn’t change the fact that if something happened to them while the free Knights were off solving other peoples’ problems, that would be a hard one to live with. Not that she was about to bring that up directly, Raven needed everything but being reminded of that.
”Either way we’ll need to clean up around here at least a little bit, whether for us or for them.” She shrugged. The time to be allowed to leave, if there ever was one, was three missions and a few weeks gone.
”Good thing we got some new gear, even if the salvage is going to cost us an arm and a leg. You thinking of any upgrades?”Raven smiled again, responding with, “A PPC; retooling my Shadow Hawk into that sniper model.”
Then he followed up with, “As for what you said earlier,
how else can we bust open Fort Tie Shan and get our friends and families out if not by getting help? As it is, it’s local help that’s already getting us our upgrades, isn’t it?”
A pause before he continued, “Confession to make, I actually complained to the Colonel about how the rest of you seemed to be callous about the locals and their plight. He told me to have faith in you guys, that he recruited you all because he recruits people who are
not sociopaths. To be honest… You convinced me he’s right and that I should have faith in you all. More to the point, I should have talked it over instead of assuming.”
”We have our moments.” Marit smiled before turning back to look where Tarak’s Phoenix Hawk was towering above the scrap piles,
”Ignore that.” They had
those moments, too.
”Don’t suppose the Colonel shared any plans for the future while you were there, did he?”Raven grinned at the memory as he shared what he remembered, “We’re ‘seeing this through to the end’, he said. And putting the Crimson Fists, Federov, and the Heavenly Sword’s remnants in the dirt, too. Also getting our people back. Quite frankly, I’ll do my best to do all three. And once we’ve done it… Want to continue to talk once I retire to civilian life and before the Colonel gets us a landhold?”
His smile held as he sipped his coffee.
”Depends on the ComStar prices.” She joked,
”Looks like they like us so far, there’s hope yet.”END 
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