Career Mode 3.9
- Location
- Singapore
F. SPENCER CHAPMAN, HARLOW, NEW DELOS
2 JUN 3015
"Mm. I didn't miss anything, then," Sanren mumbled, while chewing on a mouthful of his lunch. That's what I assumed he meant. The volume and movements of his jaw made it difficult to be sure.
There was also a lot of ambient noise, because we were in one of the DropShip's bays. Sanren wasn't working, not while he was stuffing food into his face, but there was work going on behind us.
A late meal had been brought in for the people in the bays, with a messy service line set up at one end of the 'Mech niches. Food was being scooped out into tins and other containers. It wasn't fine cuisine, but it was reasonably hot, with carbs, one meat, and two vegetable. Or just more vegetable, for the vegetarians.
I wasn't sure what one of those vegetables was, besides something local to New Delos. It was green, leafy, but also quite bitter. I honestly hoped Anton Marik's partisans weren't trying to get at us by secretly poisoning our food supply. It was all fine and well for Janos Marik's commanders to insist we should extend our supplies by supplementing rations with locally procured foodstuffs, but it wasn't old Janos that would be squatting on a toilet if things went south.
The techs were eating in turn, though. Not everyone had downed tools. Even with a late lunch on the cards, work in the 'Mech bay was continuing apace.
The main nexus of activity was the Dervish assigned to Adrienne, where a tech crew was busy getting the torso armour off the chassis, allowing access to the missile tubes and ammo feeds on either side of the 'Mech's body.
We hadn't seen heavy combat, but we had run into a whole bunch of unsatisfactory little skirmishes. And throughout it all, Adrienne Pulaski was consistently reporting intermittent issues with one of her 'Mech's missile launchers, necessitating that the techs take a closer look.
By now, it was likely there was some kind of deep-rooted hardware fault rather than something in the software. At least that was my read on the situation, but I wasn't one of the tech crew.
I called them techs, but I recognised a couple of the people working on the 'Mechs as vehicle operators, not really astechs per-se. Plus, the lady running the hoist was with our infantry squads. Either they'd volunteered for extra work, or… in the age-old tradition of militaries everywhere, they'd been volunteered for extra work. Because that was how volunteering worked, in uniform. But press-ganging aside, some degree of double duty was getting quite usual for us, given our enduring manpower woes.
For that matter, the lead tech overseeing the work wasn't rostered to handle the 'Mechs from my command demi. Del Pulaski was the crew chief for her family's Kintaro and the rest of her brother's squad, not Able demi-company. But she was Adrienne's aunt, by virtue of that familial relation. She'd insisted on personally rolling up her sleeves and troubleshooting the faulty LRM matter.
It might have been kinship ties at work, but I figured it also had a lot to do with how Adrienne had been complaining about the missiles over the past few days. Loudly and repeatedly.
To be fair, Adrienne was in there, herself. I hadn't noticed her at first, but on second glance, she was one of the figures swarming over the Dervish, playing the role of astech rather than MechWarrior. That was the kind of responsibility I expected from pilots. It was gratifying to know at least one person followed my principles on the matter.
Further down the line, the Quickdraw we'd captured was suspended in a bay. Tristan Anjari's BattleMech, still sporting the paint and unit markings of the rebel Eighteenth Marik Militia. It had to be held up, since the machine couldn't stand on its own weight. The only partially-repaired legs saw to that, with one in particular missing an entire ankle and foot.
One disc-shaped rotor assembly on the Quickdraw had been thoroughly chewed up by autocannon rounds and PPC bolts. The techs had pulled the wreckage off the end of the leg and done what patching they could to the rest of the BattleMech, but there wasn't much more that could be done without parts from further up the House Marik supply line. We weren't anywhere near the top of the priority list, so I rather suspected that the 'Mech would not be going back into the field anytime soon.
"You're still supposed to attend the damn meetings," I told Sanren. "You're setting a bad example for the impressionable young personnel in your section."
Sanren stopped mid-motion, a spoonful of rice halfway to his mouth. He looked incredulously at me, across the rim of his metal mess tin, daring me to press the issue.
"Well, maybe not," I admitted.
Sanren pointed the end of his utensil at me, a few grains of steamed rice falling off the edge of the spoon and back into the mess tin in Sanren's other hand. "There's auto-transcripts. You make me read them. And you'll yell at me if there's anything important."
"That's not an answer," I said, doing my best to put on a firm front. I didn't have it in me to be much of a disciplinarian, but there had to be a limit somewhere. "You're a section head. You should at least turn up. There's gotta be minimum standards here."
"I'm heading," Sanren insisted. "This head says, there's real work to do."
He had a point, but I couldn't say that. Not when it undermined my own point. But the whole thing made me feel less like a mercenary, and more like corporate management. Admittedly, a merc group was a business, but I didn't want to start citing HR policy or anything. Trouble was, I couldn't prevail on military rank, either, because technically Sanren was a civilian employee rather than an officer or enlisted. My own personnel policies were coming back to bite me on the ass.
Of course, the root problem wasn't my ass, it was that Sanren was being an ass. And I knew he was an ass, I'd known since day one, so this wasn't a surprise.
Rather than continue fighting on that front, I took a different tack. "Well, what if you've got something to say to the other unit leaders? Part of the idea is to give everyone a voice."
"Fuck am I going to tell them," Sanren replied, sceptically. "Yeah. Quit wrecking the BattleMechs. Sure, that'd work."
I sighed. "I don't know, you could have something."
Sanren swallowed another mouthful of food. I sensed he was gearing up for another caustic remark, but surprisingly, it never came. Instead, he looked thoughtful. "There is one thing."
"Great," I said, with forced enthusiasm, clapping my hands. "Do tell."
Sanren rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, then pivoted on one booted foot, stomping down the hangar. I followed him. After a few steps, it was apparent that he was heading towards the bay holding the captured Quickdraw.
By safety regs, you were supposed to climb ladders with both hands, but Sanren seemed determined to do this with one hand only, since the other was carrying his mess tin of half-eaten lunch, his spoon rattling loosely amidst the rice, meat, and unidentified veggies.
I followed with both hands and both feet on the access ladder, because I was rather less keen on potentially falling and breaking something important.
By the time I hauled myself up to the platform, Sanren was standing by the BattleMech. We were now at the right height to look into the exposed innards of the 'Mech's abbreviated left leg. Sanren waved his entire lunch vaguely in the direction of the BattleMech's inner workings, making a kind of grunting sound.
"Sanren," I said, patiently. "I have no idea what I'm looking at. Help, here?"
"Tsk," Sanren muttered. "Myomer. Actuator. Control board."
"Sanren," I said again, "in English? Please? Or at least Chinese. I'm not that fluent in Angry Technician."
Sanren arched an eyebrow, then pointed with two fingers, indicating different bits. "Myomer. Actuator. Control board. These aren't Quickdraw. Re-purposed from Rifleman, you can see where the myomers have been spliced, and the actuator mount improvised. Close, similar sixty-tonners, but not the same. Not original Rifleman, either. Parts are third-party manufacture. Capellan clones, knockoffs."
I blinked. "You sure?"
Sanren didn't reply. He just looked at me.
"Sorry," I acknowledged. "Dumb question. You're sure. The MechWarrior we have in custody, he didn't say anything about Capellan Confederation spares holding his 'Mech together."
A spoonful of mixed foodstuffs came up to Sanren's mouth, and went away empty. This meant that the technician's voice was a bit muffled when he spoke. "Might not know. Pilots don't know what's in their 'Mech. Only care if it's working or not."
Sanren gave me a pointed look, as he said that.
"Fine," I replied. "We know Maximilian Liao's been backing Anton's rebellion, though. This isn't news. Just additional confirmation."
But even as I told him that, Sanren was already shaking his head.
"Checked the serial numbers," Sanren said. "Factory codes."
"You're telling me that the Confederation marked illegally-supplied parts being smuggled across the border?"
"They wiped them," Sanren clarified. "But not completely. Actuator casing still has some numbers. Say… late thirty-fourteen, maybe first quarter thirty-fifteen."
I frowned. "That's new manufacture, then. Accounting for shipping, it means Anton Marik was still getting stuff in from Liao until relatively recently."
Sanren shrugged, noncommittally.
I thought about it. What it meant was that enemy might have better supplies than we'd thought. And if they had spare parts from House Liao, what else might they have?
Well, besides the Wolf's Dragoons. The Dragoons had been hired with Liao money, but Anton had rather helpfully thrown them away. Maybe he'd do us a favour and toss any Capellan supplies, as well. At this stage, we could use the help.
2 JUN 3015
"Mm. I didn't miss anything, then," Sanren mumbled, while chewing on a mouthful of his lunch. That's what I assumed he meant. The volume and movements of his jaw made it difficult to be sure.
There was also a lot of ambient noise, because we were in one of the DropShip's bays. Sanren wasn't working, not while he was stuffing food into his face, but there was work going on behind us.
A late meal had been brought in for the people in the bays, with a messy service line set up at one end of the 'Mech niches. Food was being scooped out into tins and other containers. It wasn't fine cuisine, but it was reasonably hot, with carbs, one meat, and two vegetable. Or just more vegetable, for the vegetarians.
I wasn't sure what one of those vegetables was, besides something local to New Delos. It was green, leafy, but also quite bitter. I honestly hoped Anton Marik's partisans weren't trying to get at us by secretly poisoning our food supply. It was all fine and well for Janos Marik's commanders to insist we should extend our supplies by supplementing rations with locally procured foodstuffs, but it wasn't old Janos that would be squatting on a toilet if things went south.
The techs were eating in turn, though. Not everyone had downed tools. Even with a late lunch on the cards, work in the 'Mech bay was continuing apace.
The main nexus of activity was the Dervish assigned to Adrienne, where a tech crew was busy getting the torso armour off the chassis, allowing access to the missile tubes and ammo feeds on either side of the 'Mech's body.
We hadn't seen heavy combat, but we had run into a whole bunch of unsatisfactory little skirmishes. And throughout it all, Adrienne Pulaski was consistently reporting intermittent issues with one of her 'Mech's missile launchers, necessitating that the techs take a closer look.
By now, it was likely there was some kind of deep-rooted hardware fault rather than something in the software. At least that was my read on the situation, but I wasn't one of the tech crew.
I called them techs, but I recognised a couple of the people working on the 'Mechs as vehicle operators, not really astechs per-se. Plus, the lady running the hoist was with our infantry squads. Either they'd volunteered for extra work, or… in the age-old tradition of militaries everywhere, they'd been volunteered for extra work. Because that was how volunteering worked, in uniform. But press-ganging aside, some degree of double duty was getting quite usual for us, given our enduring manpower woes.
For that matter, the lead tech overseeing the work wasn't rostered to handle the 'Mechs from my command demi. Del Pulaski was the crew chief for her family's Kintaro and the rest of her brother's squad, not Able demi-company. But she was Adrienne's aunt, by virtue of that familial relation. She'd insisted on personally rolling up her sleeves and troubleshooting the faulty LRM matter.
It might have been kinship ties at work, but I figured it also had a lot to do with how Adrienne had been complaining about the missiles over the past few days. Loudly and repeatedly.
To be fair, Adrienne was in there, herself. I hadn't noticed her at first, but on second glance, she was one of the figures swarming over the Dervish, playing the role of astech rather than MechWarrior. That was the kind of responsibility I expected from pilots. It was gratifying to know at least one person followed my principles on the matter.
Further down the line, the Quickdraw we'd captured was suspended in a bay. Tristan Anjari's BattleMech, still sporting the paint and unit markings of the rebel Eighteenth Marik Militia. It had to be held up, since the machine couldn't stand on its own weight. The only partially-repaired legs saw to that, with one in particular missing an entire ankle and foot.
One disc-shaped rotor assembly on the Quickdraw had been thoroughly chewed up by autocannon rounds and PPC bolts. The techs had pulled the wreckage off the end of the leg and done what patching they could to the rest of the BattleMech, but there wasn't much more that could be done without parts from further up the House Marik supply line. We weren't anywhere near the top of the priority list, so I rather suspected that the 'Mech would not be going back into the field anytime soon.
"You're still supposed to attend the damn meetings," I told Sanren. "You're setting a bad example for the impressionable young personnel in your section."
Sanren stopped mid-motion, a spoonful of rice halfway to his mouth. He looked incredulously at me, across the rim of his metal mess tin, daring me to press the issue.
"Well, maybe not," I admitted.
Sanren pointed the end of his utensil at me, a few grains of steamed rice falling off the edge of the spoon and back into the mess tin in Sanren's other hand. "There's auto-transcripts. You make me read them. And you'll yell at me if there's anything important."
"That's not an answer," I said, doing my best to put on a firm front. I didn't have it in me to be much of a disciplinarian, but there had to be a limit somewhere. "You're a section head. You should at least turn up. There's gotta be minimum standards here."
"I'm heading," Sanren insisted. "This head says, there's real work to do."
He had a point, but I couldn't say that. Not when it undermined my own point. But the whole thing made me feel less like a mercenary, and more like corporate management. Admittedly, a merc group was a business, but I didn't want to start citing HR policy or anything. Trouble was, I couldn't prevail on military rank, either, because technically Sanren was a civilian employee rather than an officer or enlisted. My own personnel policies were coming back to bite me on the ass.
Of course, the root problem wasn't my ass, it was that Sanren was being an ass. And I knew he was an ass, I'd known since day one, so this wasn't a surprise.
Rather than continue fighting on that front, I took a different tack. "Well, what if you've got something to say to the other unit leaders? Part of the idea is to give everyone a voice."
"Fuck am I going to tell them," Sanren replied, sceptically. "Yeah. Quit wrecking the BattleMechs. Sure, that'd work."
I sighed. "I don't know, you could have something."
Sanren swallowed another mouthful of food. I sensed he was gearing up for another caustic remark, but surprisingly, it never came. Instead, he looked thoughtful. "There is one thing."
"Great," I said, with forced enthusiasm, clapping my hands. "Do tell."
Sanren rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, then pivoted on one booted foot, stomping down the hangar. I followed him. After a few steps, it was apparent that he was heading towards the bay holding the captured Quickdraw.
By safety regs, you were supposed to climb ladders with both hands, but Sanren seemed determined to do this with one hand only, since the other was carrying his mess tin of half-eaten lunch, his spoon rattling loosely amidst the rice, meat, and unidentified veggies.
I followed with both hands and both feet on the access ladder, because I was rather less keen on potentially falling and breaking something important.
By the time I hauled myself up to the platform, Sanren was standing by the BattleMech. We were now at the right height to look into the exposed innards of the 'Mech's abbreviated left leg. Sanren waved his entire lunch vaguely in the direction of the BattleMech's inner workings, making a kind of grunting sound.
"Sanren," I said, patiently. "I have no idea what I'm looking at. Help, here?"
"Tsk," Sanren muttered. "Myomer. Actuator. Control board."
"Sanren," I said again, "in English? Please? Or at least Chinese. I'm not that fluent in Angry Technician."
Sanren arched an eyebrow, then pointed with two fingers, indicating different bits. "Myomer. Actuator. Control board. These aren't Quickdraw. Re-purposed from Rifleman, you can see where the myomers have been spliced, and the actuator mount improvised. Close, similar sixty-tonners, but not the same. Not original Rifleman, either. Parts are third-party manufacture. Capellan clones, knockoffs."
I blinked. "You sure?"
Sanren didn't reply. He just looked at me.
"Sorry," I acknowledged. "Dumb question. You're sure. The MechWarrior we have in custody, he didn't say anything about Capellan Confederation spares holding his 'Mech together."
A spoonful of mixed foodstuffs came up to Sanren's mouth, and went away empty. This meant that the technician's voice was a bit muffled when he spoke. "Might not know. Pilots don't know what's in their 'Mech. Only care if it's working or not."
Sanren gave me a pointed look, as he said that.
"Fine," I replied. "We know Maximilian Liao's been backing Anton's rebellion, though. This isn't news. Just additional confirmation."
But even as I told him that, Sanren was already shaking his head.
"Checked the serial numbers," Sanren said. "Factory codes."
"You're telling me that the Confederation marked illegally-supplied parts being smuggled across the border?"
"They wiped them," Sanren clarified. "But not completely. Actuator casing still has some numbers. Say… late thirty-fourteen, maybe first quarter thirty-fifteen."
I frowned. "That's new manufacture, then. Accounting for shipping, it means Anton Marik was still getting stuff in from Liao until relatively recently."
Sanren shrugged, noncommittally.
I thought about it. What it meant was that enemy might have better supplies than we'd thought. And if they had spare parts from House Liao, what else might they have?
Well, besides the Wolf's Dragoons. The Dragoons had been hired with Liao money, but Anton had rather helpfully thrown them away. Maybe he'd do us a favour and toss any Capellan supplies, as well. At this stage, we could use the help.
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