personal6

16

Grady's mech was shot to hell, but he was still in the fight. His right arm Large Laser was toast, leaving him with the other one in his left side and a couple of mediums in the left torso. His armor status showed plates in yellow, orange, and red, and one of his jump jets was out, meaning if he used them he'd lift off balance and tip. He could adjust for that, but only gain a half distance hop at best, though his fuel for them was also low.

Of the three Companies' 36 mechs that were now under his command, only 26 were still operational, and most of those had significant damage as they walked to the south away from what had been their primary engagement zone as the Lion's Teeth Legion Companies they'd sent after him had gotten chewed to pieces in a mix of a tonnage mismatch and a bag of tactics Grady had pulled out that the mercenaries could not handle, more for the most part.

The enemy had had numbers on him though, and that's where most of the damage had come from. Medium mechs could take down heavies and assaults if there were more of them, and it looked like there had been at least five Companies dispatched to come after him or after the Comstar base. The two fights had ended up grouped together, and all but a few of those 60 mechs were down.

The rest had ran, using their superior speed, for none of the House Morten medium mechs were in Grady's three Companies at the moment. They were back at the main brawl that Vander was reporting in every now and then. Grady would check with him when he got a moment's break, but otherwise the Lord of Military Operations knew better than to try and chat with him during a fight.

Right now that battle appeared to be over, with the survivors fleeing back east to where their base camp had been. They probably didn't even know it was destroyed at this point, and Grady wasn't going to let them regroup and maybe kill another one or two of his mechs, so he was bringing what was left of his three Companies in on top of the retreating line from the north and challenging them to either stand down, power down, and disembark their mechs…or engage them, and most of their war machines looked just as bad as Grady's did.

Only he was in an assault mech and the ones coming out of the fight were mediums and lights.

A group of Phoenix Hawks that registered as House Morten on the IFF pings were coming up from the south in a pincher move, and their speed was far greater than any of Grady's mechs could match, but the Lion's Teeth wounded mechs did not stop, and instead tried to run straight through the two closing claws.

It was only then that Grady saw it. Three dropships were coming down to the east…and two were slowing. Another one was angling to the north and trailing a massive amount of smoke, going too fast to stop now. The Mech Commander winced as he saw it hit in the distance and explode in the farm belt region northeast of the city. It took several seconds for the shockwave to actually hit his mech, but it rattled it none the less as the other two, also smoking, set down under power…with the Lion's Teeth Legion mechs running as hard towards them as they could.

Even damaged, they were still faster than Grady's Companies, but not faster than the Phoenix Hawks.

Grady shot a passing Blackjack that was no faster than his Victor with burst from his Large Laser, but his mediums were out of range. He hit it in the left shoulder, severing the already damaged arm that dropped to the ground and caught a bit of grass on fire. It didn't spread much, but there were little fires all across the horizon from burning bits of mech and errant laser blasts. Smoke was everywhere and drifting to the west, leaving Grady's field of view mostly unobstructed.

He kept walking his mech forward into the flow, cutting off the other fleers who, for the most part, wanted no fight with the wall of Victors and Riflemans and Warhammers now crossing in front of them, and they finally heeded the calls to surrender, stopping their mechs where they were and powering down their fusion reactors.

The others the Phoenix Hawks chased after, nailing several from behind and making the takedowns before the rest got back to their dropships and clustered around the base of them, for no ramps were lowering to let them onboard.

"Vander, what's going on upstairs?"

"A bloodbath, but it's over now. Those dropships that came down near you are the last they have. Everything else we destroyed, and they took more than half of ours with them."

"What about that warship?"

"Spacejunk."

"Itomo came through then. Good for him."

"His dropship got hit," Vander said solemnly. "If he survived, he's off comm."

"Damn it all," Grady said, not wanting to ask the next question either. "How many of our laddies did we lose?"

"If you mean mechs, 68 are down. I don't know yet how many mechwarriors survived. Add in the choppers, birds, and dropships, we're looking at maybe 300 or more dead. And that's not even counting the people in the city."

"What about the city?"

"They were taking down buildings for the fun of it. The whole southeast corner was turned into rubble before our main force arrived. They came out to the plains to fight, though. So the damage in there is all their doing."

"I have surrendering mechs out here. Can you get some security vehicles to pick up the mechwarriors?"

"As soon as they finish near the city they'll be out to you."

"What do you want to do about the two dropships?"

"Don't engage. They have nowhere to go. If they lift they'll be destroyed by what's left of our fleet. Just let them sit for now. I'm seeing about 20 or so mechs with them."

"Yeah. Some of the little buggers got past us. Orders?"

"Stay with the surrendering mechs so they don't get any ideas until our hovercraft get out there to take possession. After that, we're setting up a mobile repair base to the south of the main battlefield. Our dropships are busy picking up lifeboats and dealing with their own damage."

"For future reference," Grady added. "The energy-only packages we're running were the right call. A lot of these mercenaries were operating with empty loads on half their weapons by the time we got to them. It was worth the tradeoff."

"Says somebody sitting in an assault mech," Vander pointed out, given that the autocannons and missiles gave mechs a much larger initial punch before they ran out of ammunition.

"Aye. How many little mechs did we lose?"

"About half. They didn't fight stupidly, there were just so many enemies that poking around the edges got nasty when they were noticed."

"If I'd known they were going to hit the city, I'd have got more mechs in position earlier," he said, slamming a fist down against his right leg. "What in the blazes was their objective anyway?"

"Hard to say. We'll have to ask them once we get the prisoners rounded up."

"Is Stephan there?"

"No. He's heading out to you on a chopper and taking command of the field base. He just had it out with the Duke over the comm. The bastard thinks he's laying claim to the salvage and has ordered our mechs back to the Estate despite the fact the mercenaries were only 6 blocks away from burning his palace to the ground before we showed up. Didn't even bother to say 'thank you.' Oh, and two of the militia mechs survived and are now working for us effective immediately after the Duke told them to stand their ground and die at the spaceport."

"The Davions sure know how to pick 'em," Grady said, choosing to let Stephan get angry at that and deal with his own problems. "Do you want me to try to negotiate with the dropships, or have you found a commanding officer out there somewhere?"

"Everything is still a mess and we're just starting to pick up the pieces. Keep an eye on their active mechs and just make sure they stay near the dropships. Stephan or I will deal with the Captains when they feel like talking. Right now they're not."

"Copy that," Grady said, twisting his Victor around and surveying the battlefield. "Phoenix hawks," he said on the open comm because he didn't know which Company they had come from. "Head on back and provide security for the field base we're about to set up to the south. I'll worry about the dropships."

"On the way, Grady," Arne Keev said as the group of scrawny mechs started to dart their way across the grasslands. "Bye the way, your mech looks like shit. I hope the Comstar base looks just as bad."

"Unfortunately no. And I would call you a little mercenary shit right now, but after today I don't think that applies anymore."

"After today, I have an equal hatred for mercenaries. Thanks for not stepping on me out here way back when."

"This isn't over yet. Not until every one of those enemy mechs and prisoners is secured. Consider it a live battlefield as long as those dropships are here too."

"I'm no rookie. We'll stay on task."

"Good," Grady said, cutting him off. That man always annoyed him. And he hoped Stephan wouldn't be adopting any Lion's Teeth mechwarriors after all of this was sorted out. He'd rather deal with bringing raw recruits up to standards than converting mercenary trash. Though in the case of Keev, he couldn't really complain. Stephan had made a good call on that one, but he still didn't like the guy.

The Azure Pearl had been taken out, not with a hit from the big guns on the warship, but with a lot of the 'smaller' guns on the Lion's Teeth Legion dropships. It had taken a few hits from the warship's regular weaponry, then got pounded so bad in the second wave of fighting that both the floor and the ceiling of the bridge compartment had blown through from different sides, making a porcupine lattice of broken beams puncturing work stations and crisscrossing with each other on one side while the rest had been spared the explosive damage, but not the gradual decompression.

Dropship hulls…at least the Morten conversions anyway…had an insulating gel placed just inside the outer layer. It helped keep heat in or out, but it was also designed to expand in near vacuum. So if there were small holes made they would seal up on their own. The 'Self Sealing Gel' was damn expensive, but building quality equipment always was, and in the almost brand new Flight Systems Unlimited corporation on Drymo every dropship blueprint they used had the gel included as standard equipment.

Thankfully the Azure Pearl, which had been purchased secondhand, had been upgraded with the gel and a few other small changes when they'd overhauled it. But the holes tore into the ship now were too large for the gel to seal. It had only slowed the leak, with the bridge now down to .6 atmospheres of pressure…though other decks had none at all.

Yoshi Itomo was still on the bridge, unconscious and pinned beneath a bulkhead when a rescue crew forced open the bridge door and floated inside through a temporary airlock made of little more than some thick plastic and instant adhesive to fit it around the door frame…which meant the other side was completely without air.

Four people were still alive on the bridge, and the crew quickly gave them spare envirosuits that they pulled on with a hurry and sealed up, then were able to breath normally inside them as they were ushered through the airlock one at a time and back through the confines of the ship to a breach point in the hull where a rope was attached. It crossed through the vacuum of space to the nearby Hazel Egg's blasted open aerofighter bay door. The dropship had other visible damage, but no gaping holes in it other than that bay, through which the line had been attached and more suited individuals were coming out and over to the flagship, hand walking along the rope on the 'top' side while the evacuees were doing the same underneath.

When the rescue crews got the last of the bridge crew off, they checked the two bodies that were visible just in case. The one that was free floating was Lieutenant Henderson…who was missing one half of his head. The other was the Commodore with his arm impaled with a bulkhead pinning his body to the floor.

But when they check for life signs, they found he wasn't quite dead yet and tried to free him from the bulkhead as they placed a portable breath mask over his face, but that would only work so long. Decompression would destroy the body even if you had air in your lungs, and as it was his skin was starting to redden as the blood began to push outward through it as the air pressure diminished more and more.

The rescue crews tried to pry the bulkhead off him enough to pull him free, but it wouldn't budge. They got a cutting torch and started to work through it, but the air was dropping too low and one of the emergency medics pointed to his arm, with them noticing that it was smashed down to a thickness of less than an inch.

"The bone has to be crushed," the medic said over the comm between the suits. "Even if we get the bulkhead off him, he'll lose the arm. We can't repair crushed bone, and he's going to die from decompression anyway. We need to sever the arm now," he said gravely.

"With this?" the guy with the torch asked, aghast.

The medic pulled out a syringe from a briefcase-like medical kid and injected the already unconscious Itomo with as strong a sedative as he could risk, then he looked up at the torch wielder.

"Make it a fast, throughout cut. Then I'll cap the stub. Hinni," he said to another of the rescue crew. "Pull the suit onto his legs and as far up as you can."

"You want me to burn the Commodore?" the torch wielder asked a second time.

"If we leave him here a few more minutes he'll die, and his arm is already a loss. We have to do this to save him. Give me the torch if you won't."

"You don't know how to use it," the engineer said grimly, setting himself over the Commodore with it unlit, then put the end down right next to the bulkhead where the arm was pinned underneath. "It should cut easy enough. Tell me when."

The medic waited until Hinni had got the suit on the body as far as she could without getting the material close to the arm and torch. "Now!"

The engineer lit the high powered emergency plasma torch and cut through the Commodore's arm as close to the metal as possible to preserve as much of it as he could. Four seconds later it was over and they were pulling the body into the suit, with a white patch of cloth with some sort of goo applied to the charred stump of an arm before the pressure suit went over it and was sealed up.

When it was, the missing right arm inflated anyway, making it look like the Commodore was intact as they hauled him out the airlock, across the rope, and into the aerofighter bay where another temporary airlock let them enter the otherwise intact Overlord-class dropship and float the unconscious fleet commander to the medical room where they hooked him up to as much life support equipment as they had available, not sure whether he'd hang on long enough to get him and the other wounded back down to the surface or not.

Three days later Stephan was sitting at a table inside one of 16 tents set up to the south of the city with the carcasses of the mechs still situated in between them and the rubble field that had once been the spaceport and the surrounding buildings. The largest three tents were tall enough to hold mobile mech bay equipment also flown in from the Estate, inside of which the intact mechs were getting field repairs made…removing dangling limbs, replacing armor plating, cutting free damaged weapons and replacing a few, otherwise leaving those cavities empty.

The mechs that weren't limping but heavily damaged were sent walking back to the Estate, but they still had to keep a good number of them here because of the two dropships and the surviving mercenary mechs stationed around them. But sitting before him now at a fold-out table, was one of several individuals recovered from an escape pod that had made it all the way down to the surface. Several had made it down, actually, with many more still waiting in orbit to be picked up, including the lifeboats that could not reenter atmosphere without burning up, for they weren't designed for it.

The few escape pods that had come down had calculated their orbit well enough to have them fall near the battlefield…except they didn't have the maneuvering capability to fly on the way down, and four of them had landed within a radius of 230 km of the dropships. Stephan's people had picked them up and brought them here…including Colonel Keller, the commander of the entire Lion's Teeth Legion, who was trying to get back to the mechs on the ground to take command.

Only he didn't realize the extent of the rout that had taken place until he'd been brought to the field tents and could see with his own eyes the carnage that had taken place to the north.

And yet, he still wouldn't order the dropships to surrender.

"Make me a better offer," Keller said, sitting with his arms crossed over his chest next to two of his men, and in a far better mood than Stephan despite the fact that he had lost and the First Lord had won…but then again, mercenaries thought everyone was expendable, and House Morten definitely did not tolerate that mindset.

"What options do you think you have, Colonel?" Stephan ground out, with Roger and six other men standing around the table with the three mercenaries seated at it in cuffs. The others had been put into the two tents set off to the side of the camp that were holding the enemy survivors that weren't badly wounded. Those were already flown off to the Brinestorm hospital that Stephan had commandeered over the Duke's objection to reserve his own medical staff for his people's needs. The locals could deal with the mercenaries until his own people ran out of wounded to treat.

"You'll lose more mechs assaulting the dropships. I can spare you that."

"You just killed more than 120 of my men…with another 18 that may or may not live out the month. And you have the gall to sit here and dictate terms to me? You're a dishonorable piece of shit who not only killed my people in combat, but murdered who knows how many people in the city. Even for a mercenary, that's lower than low, and you expect that you're somehow going to get out of this and continue to be a mercenary? No, Colonel. Your future is in a prison cell."

"I'd have expected you to be a little more understanding since we were the ones who lost, Lord Morten."

"I'm not."

"And I'm not going to make it easy for you to take our remaining dropships and mechs. If you won't negotiate, you'll have to bleed for it."

"You're not bluffing your way out of this."

"Who's bluffing? I've got nothing left to lose, and you want me to give you those dropships and mechs for free? You're crazy."

"And you're counting on our good nature not to just shoot you."

"I did my research."

"And what exactly were your orders?"

"That's confidential, Lord Morten. I'm sure you can understand that."

"You think this is a game," Stephan said, anger dripping from his voice. "You were sent here to kill me and my family, and probably everyone in the city, and you want to sit here and treat this like a game? Very well, Colonel. We'll play your game," he said deadpan, pulling out surveillance photos of the Nadir jump point.

He pushed them in front of the mercenary leader, with all three people staring at pictures of the 6 jumpships sitting at the star.

"How long do you think they're going to wait for you?" Stephan asked.

"As long as necessary," Keller said firmly. "We're not in a rush."

"But they will leave eventually, especially considering they don't know that you survived. Someone else will take command and start to rebuild your Legion while you and the others here will be sitting in prison cells for the rest of your lives, or perhaps marooned in a penal colony. Either way, you have no hope of ever being a mercenary again unless you can strike a deal with me. And for your sake, I still have a little bit of negotiating savvy underneath my lingering rage."

"I don't understand."

Stephan pointed at the jumpships. "I want two of them."

The Colonel frowned hard. "Absolutely not!"

"Then your prison cell awaits. Or do you expect they'll launch a raid to free you? Our information says you brought about 2/3rds of your mechs on this assault. Even if they risked the other third in a follow-up, it would not be successful. They might not even make it to ground without your warship providing cover. And do you really think that they'd even want to try after this debacle? From a mercenary perspective, what loyalty are they going to have to a failed…and now assumed dead commanding officer?"

"Unless you execute us, I'm still alive and still in command."

"They don't know that, and I'm not obliged to tell them that you survived. And even if I did, odds say they'd just cut their losses and start to rebuild without you. Depending on what your mission actually was, they can go collect their payoff and write off the heavy losses as due to your failed decision making. I don't really see any case where they want you back, let alone have the ability to get you back in command. So I'll ask again. How long will those jumpships wait before they consider everyone that came down here a lost cause?"

"There won't be any pay for them to collect," the Colonel said, with the first sign of real fear visible in his eyes. "Our employer came with us. She died onboard the Lion's Den. All we got out of this was the down payment."

"Then why do you feel the need to keep the details confidential?"

He glanced to the man on his left for a moment, then nodded. "You make a good point. We were hired because we had a warship capable of orbital bombardment. We were supposed to gain control of orbit and target key buildings on the planet. The mechs would then land and destroy everything else. No survivors. The employer was strict on that."

"Who?"

"Anonymous. We were contacted through a broker and the employer sent their representative. Name was Korra Venni. I did some checking, but she's not listed anywhere, so I assume it was a cover. The promised pay was excellent, so I didn't ask too many questions."

"How much?"

"2.3 billion C-bills, but the information she gave us on you was wrong. It indicated less dropships and less mechs."

"And no aerial assets," the mechwarrior Captain that was now his ranking aid added.

"Then you were set up," Stephan said frankly.

"Why do you say that?" the third man wearing a naval uniform asked, drawing a sneer from the Colonel.

"Because we've had birds in the air over Cholis for years. It's been no secret, and even the laziest reconnaissance couldn't have missed them."

"Why would someone set us up?" Keller demanded.

"If my information is correct, there are only a handful of mercenary units larger than yours, and of those, there's less than 5 that have warships."

"Four, unless you count pocket warships," the Colonel corrected him.

"I'm not. I think your employer had better information about us, and they saw that no mercenary unit would be able to beat us here at our stronghold. So they needed to do something we couldn't defend against…orbital bombardment. But they had to convince you to come, and an even fight isn't very profitable when you lose most of your equipment and troops. So they probably told you what you wanted to hear…that you had an advantage that you could exploit, and while the fighting would get a bit hard, you'd win the day and earn your pay. And that might have come close to being true if you'd maintained your warship, but the ground fighting still would have been hell because we would never have grouped up enough to get picked off with orbital bombardment."

"You mean to say they threw us at you hoping to get lucky?"

"Or to wear us down so the next mercenary unit could finish the job."

The Colonel frowned. "Is there another on the way?"

"Speculation only. But we're considerably weaker now, so other mercenary units smaller than yours can now have a go at us. You see how that works, Colonel?"

"I'm starting to."

"I know who your employer is," Stephan said flatly. "But for your sake it's probably better you don't know. Let's just say that they're one of the major players in the Inner Sphere."

"Who else has that kind of money to throw around?"

"A lot of noble families do, actually. Tell me, how much did that warship cost you?"

The Colonel squirmed in his seat for a moment. "It was a custom job built 70 years ago. It was worth 8 billion on the black market."

"And you risked it to get a payday of 2.3 billion?"

"You weren't supposed to have more than 16 dropships, and nothing was said about them being upgraded into pocket warships. How many did you have?"

"You don't need to know that to pass on to the next guys to take a swing at us," Stephan said, leaning back in his seat and trying to slip into negotiation mode better, but the anger was still there eating away at his skull the longer he stared at this amoral man. "But the point is, you were sent here to be expendable, and your employer knew you'd never risk your warship if they told you what we actually had waiting for it. But they wanted us damaged, and taken out if you got lucky, and they got the damaged part. And it seems they don't even have to pay you what they owe."

"We'll be appealing that with the MRB," he growled. "We didn't achieve all objectives, but we did enough to warrant at least partial payment."

"But it's still nowhere near enough to cover your losses even if they release the full payment. And they probably won't release anything if you're not alive to argue the point. You've been played, Colonel. Played by people that are just as ruthless and dishonorable as you are, and I don't think they're finished with me yet, so I'm willing to make a deal to put us in a better position going forward. If not for that, you'd never see your freedom again."

"And you think that freedom is worth two jumpships?"

"What does that matter to you?"

"Two jumpships, modified as ours are, are worth nearly a billion on their own."

"What good is that if you're staring at the walls of a cell? You have only one path to return to the mercenary profession, and I'm willing to bet that lifestyle is worth more to you than all 6 of your jumpships…and all I'm demanding is two of them. You and your men will be released, you return beaten and humiliated, but you still have a stronger mech force in reserve than most mercenary units out there, and four jumpships to your name…assuming they're not hired contracts?"

"No, they're all ours."

"So you see, you can rebuild from this…but not as a prisoner. And sooner or later those jumpships will leave, and someone else will take command and start rebuilding, forgetting about you and all your captured people here. They'll just write you off as combat losses.

"Let's negotiate something more reasonable," the Colonel said, crossing his fingers as he placed his cuffed hands on the tabletop.

"Cold blooded murderers don't get to claim the title of 'reasonable,'" Stephan said icily.

The Colonel pulled his hands back and they disappeared in his lap beneath the tabletop. "I don't particularly like leveling cities, but I'd be a fool to pass up a billion C-bill job, let alone two, because of some civilian bloodshed. It's a hard business we're in, but we're generally nicer about it than an occupying army. This was just one of those rare cases when total destruction was demanded."

"You could have passed on it."

"Honor doesn't buy mechs. And since you're asking, we were also offered all the loot we could get out of the city and your Estate afterwards. So depending on the rumors, that 2.3 billion could have ended up being a lot more."

"Sifting through the rubble afterwards?"

"No. Your place was going to be spared damage. The employer was going to bring in their own team to look for files or something after the battles were over and the population was exterminated. Everything else, including the mech salvage, was to be ours."

"And look how it actually turned out?"

The Colonel grimaced, having got caught up in his original dreams of riches for a moment despite the stark reality of his current situation. "Point taken."

"You keep the two dropships on the ground here, and the mechs surrounding them. We send you and the other prisoners back up on them, or give you a ride if there are too many to fit. You transfer control of two jumpships to us, then your dropships are allowed to dock with your others and you leave. I'd take all 6 if I could with my remaining dropships, but they've had enough time to recharge and would just jump out if we approached them. So I'm not getting any of them without brokering a deal. That's the only reason we're talking now. I'd be doing the galaxy a favor by getting you and your men out of the game."

"We'd just be replaced by others less skilled. Power vacuums are always short lived."

"Yes, they are. But I doubt your warship is going to be replaced anytime soon."

"We hardly used it anyway. It was more of a status symbol," he deflected, drawing a harsh glare from the naval officer.

"Do we have a deal?"

The Colonel considered for a moment. "I suppose I should know when I'm beaten. The Legion will live on, despite our losses, and it needs me in command, otherwise it might fly apart in ten different pieces with most of our command staff dead or captured. You have a deal."

"One other thing," Stephan added. "You have to get rid of any notions of payback here. You will not take any other contracts against us, nor pursue any unpaid military action against any world in the Morten Protectorate. You just write this off as a debacle, return to the Inner Sphere, and never come back."

"I wasn't planning on it anyway. I never want to see the Periphery again."

"Say the words," Stephan pressed.

"I agree to all provisions, with one addendum."

The First Lord just stared at him for a moment saying nothing.

"You keep this sack of shit here," he said, gesturing with his head to the naval officer. "He's no longer part of the Legion."

Stephan looked at the graying man, then pointed at him. "You stay. You two, will be taken to your dropships. Do not lift off until given clearance to, and my pocket warships will escort you to the jump point. Any funny business, and they'll rip your ships to shreds."

"I'll make sure the jumpship Captains learn about the transfer after being boarded," Keller promised.

"Make this a smooth transition, or I may rethink the deal entirely."

"It's a fair deal. I won't break it," he said standing up with his hands cuffed together, same as the Captain beside him, as Roger's people led them out of the tent.

"Explain that," Stephan said to the naval officer.

"My name is Francis Neeva, and I was an Admiral in the Lion's Teeth Legion in command of the warship you destroyed until the Colonel relieved me of command just prior to the battle."

"For what reason?"

"I refused to attack into a mismatch. I had also made an agreement with Commodore Itoro to let the outcome be determined by the ground fighting, and I did not want to break my word. Even if I did, I did not like our odds with our dropships included. My XO didn't agree, and told the Colonel we could win. He relieved me, and you saw the results. I got into a lifeboat and jumped ship once the fighting got heavy."

"That explains a number of things," Stephan said evenly.

"I was not told about the orbital bombardment until we were at the planet. I thought this was a regular escort mission."

"And what would you have done if my ships hadn't blocked you from it?"

"I guess we'll never know now."

"Evasive."

"What do you want me to say? Yes, I would have to to keep my position…or no, I wouldn't have, and gotten relieved or shot for it? I know Itomo had to face that choice, and I did not expect it would be dumped in my lap here without warning."

"You will remain a prisoner for the time being," Stephan said, standing up. "I'll figure out what to do with you later."

"Is it possible for me to speak with Itomo? I owe him an explanation at the minimum."

"He's barely alive in a hospital. Even if he makes it, he won't be speaking to anyone for a long time."

Neeva slouched visibly. "Damn that Colonel."

"You should choose your employers more carefully."

The former Admiral's head came up. "It's no better in the Lyran fleet where I came from. If you can direct me to an honorable command anywhere in the Inner Sphere, please do so. I don't think one exists, mercenary or otherwise."

"One does exist," Stephan said grimly. "And the saddest thing of all is you don't even realize it."

With a wave of his hand Neeva was escorted out a different direction as the First Lord turned around and drew another cup of coffee out of a portable machine as different people came in. His this time, and they sat down at the table with touchpads out and reports to give…