"Nice Things"
Originally created by Matt Shimkus
(Warning: Spoilers for those who have not finished Episode 18 "Apollo, Pt 2")
His tea was cooling at an unacceptable rate.
Percival tossed the slim ‘Official Lyran Intelligence Corps’ noteputer into it’s storage area on his desk, and leaned back in his leather-padded office chair. Luxury. The sheer size of his ‘ready room,’ just off the command deck of the Mule dropship (absolutely must name this beast, he thought) beggared description, especially considering all of his previous command appointments. His space on “The Gambler” was a broom closet compared to this new office. Of course he knew why he hadn’t thrown in his lot with an intelligence agency from the Great Houses before, but now he wondered what the fuss was all about when they had such nice things.
Report reading was something he had become incredibly efficient with since his time as a field agent, and even more so after he was transferred by the Dragoons to nursemaid the first batch of ‘Mechwarrior Academy’ graduates into mercenary life. The particular report he’d just finished was, for a change, full of welcome news.
Rampart had taken a full inhale of the poison gas released by the ROM agent. Doctor Weiss spent the last six hours neutralizing the toxin, buffering Rampart’s immune system and ‘re-conditioning’ his lungs. Rampart may feel some short-term effects from his dosing, but they would wear off in due course, and with continuing treatment and careful monitoring he would make a full recovery. Far better than the alternative.
Where there was once a beleaguered combat medic, a single, jury-rigged gurney and a closetful of medkits, there was now an honest-to-god NAIS-trained surgeon and a full Medbay with surgical suite. Such nice things.
Rampart was the only real soldier they had on the ‘Aces,’ anymore, and they couldn’t afford to lose him. It was disturbing, though, that his name had appeared in the Jade Falcon’s list of people to ‘find’. So odd that in such a short time, he’d found his way onto the hit list of this new, invading power. As far as Percival could determine, the Jade Falcons had no particular reason to pursue the remaining members of the 2nd New Ivaarsen Chasseurs. The combat on Anywhere had been nothing out of the ordinary, for a complete rout. There was certainly more digging to be done there.
Six hours, 45 minutes, 37 seconds since Rampart was stabilized, and they still hadn’t lifted off from Apollo. Without clearance from Clan Jade Falcon’s airspace control, they’d likely be shot down on their way to rendezvous with their Jumpship. Part of Percival was anxious as hell to get off the planet, crawling with Clan Jade Falcon as it was. Another part of him was thrilled to be gaining so much data about the Clans’ military habits, and their invasion and deployment scheme. The sensor suite of the Mule dropship was like nothing he’d seen since, well, since leaving Outreach. He had near planetary-level scanning ability, and, cross-referenced with the data from LIC and from the mysterious ‘Uncle Ivan Kirov,’ he had a thorough grasp of the Clan way of conquest.
At least, this particular Clan’s way of conquest. Apparently, there are four main invading Clans, and they’ve begun to carve a swath of territory from the Great Houses the likes of which hasn’t been seen since . . . ever. The Jade Falcons, the Wolves, the Ghost Bears, and the Smoke Jaguars. There had been signals intelligence about another Clan within the Smoke Jaguars’ invasion cordon called ‘Nova Cat,’ but he hadn’t seen enough credible intelligence to suggest they were a truly major player in this invasion. No, this was all something new.
It thrilled Percival to no end: the simple novelty of it all. Something new was happening, and nothing had prepared humanity for it. We would have to be creative and cooperative in order to survive.
The recent history of humanity among the stars had been marked for the last four hundred years by near constant warfare. Great House struck out at Great House in a cycle of aggression and recrimination that always reminded Percival of an odd paperback book he once read on Terra called “Appalachian Vendetta” with the subtitle “The Dynastic Struggle over Nothing between the Hatfields and McCoys”.
The book basically broke down an essentially meaningless quest for revenge between two families on ancient Terra. The two dynasties were related by blood, territory, and cultural ancestry, but petty division and the inability to compromise and forgive brought them to bloody conflict for generations. Perceived heritage determining policy determining destiny. Pointless, but the belligerents were powerless to escape a cycle that had become reinforced by tradition and dogma. And so, over a thousand years later nothing had changed except the sheer scale of conflict. No ‘moral high-ground’ achieved, merely an amplification of the continual destruction.
This, thought Percival, is why we can’t have nice things.
And here he was. The Blakeneys had always been a proud lot, but few had been ‘notable’ for their achievements in the circles of the high and mighty. Very often, a Blakeney was known as popular for some fad reason, possibly a bit of a fop, and unreliable. It’s what his family had done without recognition that brought a feeling of pride to his, well, his heart? Did he still have one of those, or had his training actually extinguished that particular vestige of humanity within him?
Sipping his unacceptably cold cup of English Breakfast, he wondered briefly about Melia. How did the Lyrans do it? Rumors about ‘catching them young and conditioning them before they’re too old to remember anything else.’ He wasn’t sure he believed that, but he wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. In their line of work, nobody’s hands were clean. Ever.
But here they all sat. They were granted some kind of leave to depart the planet by, of all people, Jaxun Sokolov. They couldn’t take off due to the nearby battle and their desire to not become a casualty of cross-fire. Regardless, a free pass to leave a combat zone unmolested was a gift not to be overlooked, especially considering the potential adversary. If they could maintain their ‘non-combatant’ cover, they could deliver a wealth of intelligence to the LIC, and hopefully, AFFC High Command.
Jaxun was a fiendish cribbage player. To his shame, Percival missed him more than the others they’d lost in the last few months, even Jaxun’s sister MacKenzie. He was at once relieved to hear Jaxun was alive, and terrified that the boy had somehow managed to join the Jade Falcons. Young Jaxun was a singular talent, surely, but how on earth had such a meek and intelligent lad become one of their brutal armored infantry? The facts defied simple explanation. “And that,” Percival recalled from one of his instructor’s lessons “is why we need to reveal more information than exists to an untutored observer.” There was more to be discovered about Jaxun’s ‘conversion’ to the Clan cause.
Percival retrieved the noteputer from it’s storage cubby in his desk. His ‘something is amiss’ sense was tingling in the back of his mind, making its way slowly and insistently forward to overwhelm his attention. He wanted to see the sensor feed from any radio signals. The background interference of the aftermath of a battle was easily filtered by the Mule’s advanced sensor suite and he was certain that the combat in the nearby valley had been over for hours. Signals intelligence analysis was not his primary field, but he still new a few reliable tricks.
As soon as Percival opened the radio frequency readout on the noteputer’s display, it jumped out at him. Not obvious to a casual observer, and more elegant than most radio and radar techs would recognize, there was something unnatural hidden in the local radio static.
After filtering the background static of damaged fusion engines and unrecovered electronics from the battlefield, there was a faint but recognizable pattern. Numbers, followed by letters, coded in a numeric semaphore. He taught it to all his best students, and there were only two of them that could possibly be on the planet: Jaxun Sokolov and Mason Kadir.
“15 . . . 2 . . .15 . . .4 . . .P . . .A . . .I . . .R . . .F . . .O . . .R . . .S . . .I . . .X” Was the repeating message, which bookended what could only be location coordinates.
----------
Minutes later on the crew deck, in combat crew quarters room 12, Percival loomed silently over a sleeping berth for one that contained two contentedly sleeping humans. “Wake up, for God’s sake.”
Fergus’ eyes opened, blearily.
Clarissa’s eyes opened immediately.
“Ach. Haloo, sir. Care for a cuddle, ye limey ***?” came forth a quieter than usual reply from the Scot.
“Ohmigod, Fergus. Not now. Can’t you see he’s here on business?” purred the bombshell from Vega.
“Listen, both of you. We’re not departing the planet at the moment and I need you to take a Pegasus to these coordinates . . “ Percival did his best to suppress a smirk, and dropped a simple datapad onto the nearby desk. “Go quickly. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. Take Vasquez with you. Bring back what’s ours.”
----------
The cup of English Breakfast tea Percival had recently poured was now, again, far too cold for drinking. Damn these Lyrans! What in known space did they drink? Iced Coffee? Room-temperature schnapps?
It was just then that Percival noticed a small, brushed metallic panel, flush with the top side of his desk, about ten centimeters square. Etched into the lower right-hand corner of the panel’s surface was what looked to be an outline of a teacup with wavy lines emanating from the top, and wavy lines below, parallel with the bottom of the cup as well.
His desk had come with a manual. Everything on this ship came with a manual. “God love the Lyrans and their documentation fetish,” he thought as he pulled open the wide, shallow ‘keyboard’ drawer where he’d stowed the vacuum-bagged, glossy-paged, full-color product manual.
Paging through the surprisingly hefty tome, he learned many useful functions of his “Social General Premiere Model Executive Command Desk”. It was then he discovered something that would improve his daily existence, and without which, he decided, he never wanted to be again.
Percival set his “Social General Premiere Model Executive Warm Beverage Tumbler” containing his now lukewarm tea onto the brushed steel square on his desk, and, following instructions carefully, tapped the etched teacup on the desk’s surface twice.
The teacup outline on the desk began to glow with a soft white light at the first tap.
The second tap brought the wavy lines below the teacup an orange glow.
In seconds, Percival beheld the image of the cup on his desk become more elaborately lit as the wavy lines above the image of the teacup now glowed with a soft white light. He could smell the unmistakable aroma of his favorite beverage.
No, not Islay Whisky, although it was a close race.
English Breakfast Tea, at the perfect temperature.
Nice things, indeed.
Originally created by Matt Shimkus
(Warning: Spoilers for those who have not finished Episode 18 "Apollo, Pt 2")
His tea was cooling at an unacceptable rate.
Percival tossed the slim ‘Official Lyran Intelligence Corps’ noteputer into it’s storage area on his desk, and leaned back in his leather-padded office chair. Luxury. The sheer size of his ‘ready room,’ just off the command deck of the Mule dropship (absolutely must name this beast, he thought) beggared description, especially considering all of his previous command appointments. His space on “The Gambler” was a broom closet compared to this new office. Of course he knew why he hadn’t thrown in his lot with an intelligence agency from the Great Houses before, but now he wondered what the fuss was all about when they had such nice things.
Report reading was something he had become incredibly efficient with since his time as a field agent, and even more so after he was transferred by the Dragoons to nursemaid the first batch of ‘Mechwarrior Academy’ graduates into mercenary life. The particular report he’d just finished was, for a change, full of welcome news.
Rampart had taken a full inhale of the poison gas released by the ROM agent. Doctor Weiss spent the last six hours neutralizing the toxin, buffering Rampart’s immune system and ‘re-conditioning’ his lungs. Rampart may feel some short-term effects from his dosing, but they would wear off in due course, and with continuing treatment and careful monitoring he would make a full recovery. Far better than the alternative.
Where there was once a beleaguered combat medic, a single, jury-rigged gurney and a closetful of medkits, there was now an honest-to-god NAIS-trained surgeon and a full Medbay with surgical suite. Such nice things.
Rampart was the only real soldier they had on the ‘Aces,’ anymore, and they couldn’t afford to lose him. It was disturbing, though, that his name had appeared in the Jade Falcon’s list of people to ‘find’. So odd that in such a short time, he’d found his way onto the hit list of this new, invading power. As far as Percival could determine, the Jade Falcons had no particular reason to pursue the remaining members of the 2nd New Ivaarsen Chasseurs. The combat on Anywhere had been nothing out of the ordinary, for a complete rout. There was certainly more digging to be done there.
Six hours, 45 minutes, 37 seconds since Rampart was stabilized, and they still hadn’t lifted off from Apollo. Without clearance from Clan Jade Falcon’s airspace control, they’d likely be shot down on their way to rendezvous with their Jumpship. Part of Percival was anxious as hell to get off the planet, crawling with Clan Jade Falcon as it was. Another part of him was thrilled to be gaining so much data about the Clans’ military habits, and their invasion and deployment scheme. The sensor suite of the Mule dropship was like nothing he’d seen since, well, since leaving Outreach. He had near planetary-level scanning ability, and, cross-referenced with the data from LIC and from the mysterious ‘Uncle Ivan Kirov,’ he had a thorough grasp of the Clan way of conquest.
At least, this particular Clan’s way of conquest. Apparently, there are four main invading Clans, and they’ve begun to carve a swath of territory from the Great Houses the likes of which hasn’t been seen since . . . ever. The Jade Falcons, the Wolves, the Ghost Bears, and the Smoke Jaguars. There had been signals intelligence about another Clan within the Smoke Jaguars’ invasion cordon called ‘Nova Cat,’ but he hadn’t seen enough credible intelligence to suggest they were a truly major player in this invasion. No, this was all something new.
It thrilled Percival to no end: the simple novelty of it all. Something new was happening, and nothing had prepared humanity for it. We would have to be creative and cooperative in order to survive.
The recent history of humanity among the stars had been marked for the last four hundred years by near constant warfare. Great House struck out at Great House in a cycle of aggression and recrimination that always reminded Percival of an odd paperback book he once read on Terra called “Appalachian Vendetta” with the subtitle “The Dynastic Struggle over Nothing between the Hatfields and McCoys”.
The book basically broke down an essentially meaningless quest for revenge between two families on ancient Terra. The two dynasties were related by blood, territory, and cultural ancestry, but petty division and the inability to compromise and forgive brought them to bloody conflict for generations. Perceived heritage determining policy determining destiny. Pointless, but the belligerents were powerless to escape a cycle that had become reinforced by tradition and dogma. And so, over a thousand years later nothing had changed except the sheer scale of conflict. No ‘moral high-ground’ achieved, merely an amplification of the continual destruction.
This, thought Percival, is why we can’t have nice things.
And here he was. The Blakeneys had always been a proud lot, but few had been ‘notable’ for their achievements in the circles of the high and mighty. Very often, a Blakeney was known as popular for some fad reason, possibly a bit of a fop, and unreliable. It’s what his family had done without recognition that brought a feeling of pride to his, well, his heart? Did he still have one of those, or had his training actually extinguished that particular vestige of humanity within him?
Sipping his unacceptably cold cup of English Breakfast, he wondered briefly about Melia. How did the Lyrans do it? Rumors about ‘catching them young and conditioning them before they’re too old to remember anything else.’ He wasn’t sure he believed that, but he wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. In their line of work, nobody’s hands were clean. Ever.
But here they all sat. They were granted some kind of leave to depart the planet by, of all people, Jaxun Sokolov. They couldn’t take off due to the nearby battle and their desire to not become a casualty of cross-fire. Regardless, a free pass to leave a combat zone unmolested was a gift not to be overlooked, especially considering the potential adversary. If they could maintain their ‘non-combatant’ cover, they could deliver a wealth of intelligence to the LIC, and hopefully, AFFC High Command.
Jaxun was a fiendish cribbage player. To his shame, Percival missed him more than the others they’d lost in the last few months, even Jaxun’s sister MacKenzie. He was at once relieved to hear Jaxun was alive, and terrified that the boy had somehow managed to join the Jade Falcons. Young Jaxun was a singular talent, surely, but how on earth had such a meek and intelligent lad become one of their brutal armored infantry? The facts defied simple explanation. “And that,” Percival recalled from one of his instructor’s lessons “is why we need to reveal more information than exists to an untutored observer.” There was more to be discovered about Jaxun’s ‘conversion’ to the Clan cause.
Percival retrieved the noteputer from it’s storage cubby in his desk. His ‘something is amiss’ sense was tingling in the back of his mind, making its way slowly and insistently forward to overwhelm his attention. He wanted to see the sensor feed from any radio signals. The background interference of the aftermath of a battle was easily filtered by the Mule’s advanced sensor suite and he was certain that the combat in the nearby valley had been over for hours. Signals intelligence analysis was not his primary field, but he still new a few reliable tricks.
As soon as Percival opened the radio frequency readout on the noteputer’s display, it jumped out at him. Not obvious to a casual observer, and more elegant than most radio and radar techs would recognize, there was something unnatural hidden in the local radio static.
After filtering the background static of damaged fusion engines and unrecovered electronics from the battlefield, there was a faint but recognizable pattern. Numbers, followed by letters, coded in a numeric semaphore. He taught it to all his best students, and there were only two of them that could possibly be on the planet: Jaxun Sokolov and Mason Kadir.
“15 . . . 2 . . .15 . . .4 . . .P . . .A . . .I . . .R . . .F . . .O . . .R . . .S . . .I . . .X” Was the repeating message, which bookended what could only be location coordinates.
----------
Minutes later on the crew deck, in combat crew quarters room 12, Percival loomed silently over a sleeping berth for one that contained two contentedly sleeping humans. “Wake up, for God’s sake.”
Fergus’ eyes opened, blearily.
Clarissa’s eyes opened immediately.
“Ach. Haloo, sir. Care for a cuddle, ye limey ***?” came forth a quieter than usual reply from the Scot.
“Ohmigod, Fergus. Not now. Can’t you see he’s here on business?” purred the bombshell from Vega.
“Listen, both of you. We’re not departing the planet at the moment and I need you to take a Pegasus to these coordinates . . “ Percival did his best to suppress a smirk, and dropped a simple datapad onto the nearby desk. “Go quickly. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. Take Vasquez with you. Bring back what’s ours.”
----------
The cup of English Breakfast tea Percival had recently poured was now, again, far too cold for drinking. Damn these Lyrans! What in known space did they drink? Iced Coffee? Room-temperature schnapps?
It was just then that Percival noticed a small, brushed metallic panel, flush with the top side of his desk, about ten centimeters square. Etched into the lower right-hand corner of the panel’s surface was what looked to be an outline of a teacup with wavy lines emanating from the top, and wavy lines below, parallel with the bottom of the cup as well.
His desk had come with a manual. Everything on this ship came with a manual. “God love the Lyrans and their documentation fetish,” he thought as he pulled open the wide, shallow ‘keyboard’ drawer where he’d stowed the vacuum-bagged, glossy-paged, full-color product manual.
Paging through the surprisingly hefty tome, he learned many useful functions of his “Social General Premiere Model Executive Command Desk”. It was then he discovered something that would improve his daily existence, and without which, he decided, he never wanted to be again.
Percival set his “Social General Premiere Model Executive Warm Beverage Tumbler” containing his now lukewarm tea onto the brushed steel square on his desk, and, following instructions carefully, tapped the etched teacup on the desk’s surface twice.
The teacup outline on the desk began to glow with a soft white light at the first tap.
The second tap brought the wavy lines below the teacup an orange glow.
In seconds, Percival beheld the image of the cup on his desk become more elaborately lit as the wavy lines above the image of the teacup now glowed with a soft white light. He could smell the unmistakable aroma of his favorite beverage.
No, not Islay Whisky, although it was a close race.
English Breakfast Tea, at the perfect temperature.
Nice things, indeed.