[Battletech] A Life Worth Living For

Hermano Mayor Part 6

Local businessman and Community Supporter Geraldo Abrahán Cortés was found dead at his home in Sendreia yesterday according to police and emergency services. According to a spokesperson in the Emergency Services, they were contacted yesterday morning by his spouse Zaida Cortés, who found her husband. An ambulance was dispatched and collected Geraldo and Zaida but shortly after they arrived at Pamura Hospital Zaida disappeared. While police do not suspect foul play they have requested a security review of the hospital and are requesting information regarding Zaida. The public is asked to contact the Police with any information or tips as soon as possible.

Geraldo Cortés was born in 2242 in Naya Ghar and was a life long resident...

Bonifacio Vicente crumpled the printout and threw it in the waste bin. He and Basilio had been waiting for the old bastard to die, it was only a matter of time since his heart attack. Everyone knew he would work himself to death despite his doctors and Zaida recommendations. That was when the various Ministers had started to secretly talk to each other. They knew that in most organizations fell apart when a leader died and the lieutenants fought each other, outside enemies would swoop in, vassals and clients would declare independence and the cycle would repeat again. The ministers were supposed to resolve this, they had made plans, divided the empire and made agreements. When the bastard died, Zaida would mourn and be placed under security and away from her supporters. Then the Fellowship would continue under new management. Then this happens.

Basilio entered Bonifacio's office with a worried look on his face. Bonifacio already knew what he was going to say. "Any leads?"

"Nothing."

"I thought you had people watching her?"

"We did, we followed the ambulance all the way to the hospital and she went into the hospital. Then she disappeared. The woman our people were following was one of her girls disguised like her. We questioned everyone at the hospital and so did the police and with the crowds and disguises she became a ghost."

"What about the records?"

"Everything was wiped. All the terminals, all the books, there was nothing in the house or the business offices. All the girls have disappeared along with many of the people working with us."

"No big loss. People like them can be replaced. They will come back when they run out of money. It looks like we will use the records that we copied from them earlier to locate assets."

"What about the widow and the bastard?"

"We bury the bastard per his orders. We appear as the loyal business partners to the end. Let the police and the independent contractors hunt her down. Make sure we use our contacts in the press to run down her reputation. Let her disappear. We have the kingdom, let her hide in the wilderness."

Hermano Mayor Part 7

The new Council of Ministers would take over the Fellowship soon after the burial of Geraldo Cortés. The deceased received a full memorial service from the Church due to his support and care for the community. It was whispered that when the burial was completed the new Council was already launching their plans against each other. Using the records they copies they were able to recover three quarters of the assets the Fellowship had. New people were hired for the various legal and illegal businesses in the city and those who had left were placed on do not hire lists. The other criminal organizations launched an assault on various fronts, but the Council was able to repel them with minimum losses.

A month after the death of Cortes the Special Area and the city returned to a state of calm. Many people convinced themselves that the worse problems had passed and that business would return to the way it way. The widow Cortes still had not been found, despite the reward offered by the Police and the Council. It was as if she disappeared off the planet. The months would pass and people would attend to their daily lives. It would be eight months after the death of Geraldo that the widow would make her presence known.

One morning the staff at a luxurious mansion would call the Police to report a terrible crime. Over two dozen men who had attended a party the previous evening were dead. When the police arrived they would find all the leaders of the Council of Ministers along with their seconds in command dead with no signs of struggle or wounds. Crime Scene Investigators would discover the alcohol consumed by the men was laced with a slow acting poison. As they consumed more and more liquor they would become sleepy and simply never wake up. The staff was questioned that parties like this were normal since the death of Cortes. Food and liquor would be ordered from a local hotel along with some dancing girls and musicians for entertainment. There was no need for guards since the entire house had a alarm system and there was a response team only a few minutes away. The hotel kitchen staff and alcohol distributor were questioned and they had delivered the usual order, all the items were sealed and the regular staff on duty.

The police would try to locate the dancing girls who had come separate from the musicians. The musicians could not tell anything, the women were covered head to foot in a variety of costumers, they were excellent dancers but no one could see their faces. Video surveillance could not tell anything either, neither could sound or DNA. To the police they were ghosts, ghosts that could kill. The police report estimated that the poisoning started late in the evening when most of the food was already eaten. Since the only people in the house were the dancers, the musicians and the victims it was guessed that the dancers, who brought and concealed the poison on their persons, administered the poison. In one evening the whole Council was dead, any attempts to suppress this news was futile, which led to the next question. Who would do this?

During this media storm the widow Cortes would arrive by ship from Raopatnam. Even before she stepped off the ship the Police met her and took her for questioning. She answered all the questions, proving that she was at Raopatnam during the crime visiting her adopted son Abilio and daughter in law Flor who was having another baby. She was surrounded by dozens of witnesses in the hospital who confirmed her story. She was released to a crowd of supporters and media. She was no longer the widow Cortes.

Nearly a century has passed on Lakshmibasti, with preparations for Landing Day underway in every settlement and the capital, tens of thousands eagerly working to prepare the fireworks, foods, toys, and materials required for the centennial of the colony and nation. And the centennial was not the only thing being celebrated because Terra Nil had been completed a mere week before, on time, to find itself fully ready and capable of producing everything needed to speed up the terraforming effort and reduce the required work to a short century ahead of the people of Praya. Within its glittering domes of glass and steel, the verdant wombs of careful and regulated greenhouses, underneath in the tunnels of concrete and sterile laboratories, tens of thousands worked around the clock to bring ever closer that day when the planet would grow independent of humanity, standing on its own rather than using sapient minds and titanic machinery as crutches.

And yet, while millions found themselves swept up in the celebrations of a hundred years brought to fruition in independence, ecology, and more, tens of thousands weren't part of the celebrations, the wonder of green artifice on an island, or everyday life, but meeting within hidden spaces, deep cellars, open homes, and connected networks of machines.

The world had changed, but the people in it hadn't. Humanity was ever greedy for that better tomorrow and ever vicious when denied its vision or utopia, just as these social democrats, democratic socialists, communists, workers, anarchists, and more had found themselves on the sideline of a government dedicated to its order, its security, its prosperity at the cost of the people of this world.

No more, they whispered in their cellars.
No More, they spoke surrounded by friends and allies.
NO MORE! they shouted, grabbing weapons and giving the signal for the rising.

NOT ONE DAY MORE UNDER TYRANTS! came the rallying cry, radio and digital networks screaming the message over the world preparing for a festival, guns blazing, and corpses falling.

Blood adorned streets, killers stalked streets and roofs, tanks hurled deadly payloads at each other as flying eyes streaked through the sky, teams of those loyal to the iron hand and the free workers springing into action, all the while, Death itself walked the world, guiding the murdered souls of one and all toward what lay beyond.

War had come to Lakshmibasti, and it had come on the centennial. But was it over then?

[] Yes.
A people rise against those that had taken a future from them, and a people stand triumphant. The war is won, but will the peace be?
[] No.
The fight continues onward; towns declare for one side, families fall in blood, and the sky burns in the fires of Civil War.
[] Yes...
The cry for freedom failed. The guns now lay silent for the workers, but they ring for the oppressors around the clock, a thousand shots delivering wrath and spite at those now beaten.


AN: Due to my main Quest starting again, and this one having mainly been written to get brain worms out, I will finish this Quest and write an epilogue after the next Turn (and its sub-votes) is completed unless someone wishes to take over. Thank you for your participation.