(Inspired by many hours playing the new BT game. I've probably got a bunch of canon details wrong, but it wouldn't leave me alone. And apologies if the formatting is hedgehogged, I've fixed it twice but it keeps reverting every time I open the saved draft.)
Fortress-class Dropship Wexford, currently landed on Skye
"Natasha," Colonel Jaime Wolf said as calmly as he possibly could, "good to hear from you at last. Yes, I got your last report, but... Well, there are a few things I'm unclear on. Such as how exactly a simple training contract on a Periphery backwater turned into what I can only describe as a melee a'trois with your old buddy the Bounty Hunter and the Aurigan Coalition's Royal Guard..." With the hand not currently occupied by the comms handset, he reached up to massage his forehead in an attempt to ease a growing headache. "The Dobrev? Never heard of her. Should I have...?" There was a long pause while he listened in growing disbelief. "Holy hell. You're quite sure you've got the right ship? I'll take your word for it. Anything useful in the nav computer? Damn. Oh, well, at least we have confirmation that someone made it out of that shitshow. I just hope this was worth a permanent spot on House Arano's shitlist for scuffing up Lady Kamea's mint-condition SLDF Atlas. Yeah, alright. See you in a few weeks."
Jaime put the handset back in its cradle and banged his head gently on the desk in front of him. "Great Father gimme strength..." He muttered, because even Clanners need someone to swear by.
"Everything alright, sir?" his adjutant asked, putting his head around the stateroom door.
"Just Natasha being Natasha."
"I see. Shall I have the wardroom stewards send up a bottle?"
Jaime laughed. "Don't tempt me. Any new contract offers come in?"
The adjutant checked his clipboard. "Not through MercNet, but I do have a request for an appointment to discuss one in person. Light on specifics, but they're from Tellus."
The prospective client arrived a few hours later after seeing to some business elsewhere on the planet, in an aerodyne drop-shuttle of a type the Dragoons had never seen before. It was about the overall size of an ST-46 but wider and shorter, a sleek and wedge-shaped flying wing design that was borderline lostech; the theoretical understanding of aerodynamics needed to keep such an inherently unstable design in the air had been old when the Pathfinder first jumped to Tau Ceti, but the multiple-redundant computerised flight controls required to put that theory into practice were prohibitively expensive for anything but niche military applications or ostentatious toys.
Then again, if the Twoflower was any indication the Tellusians had their own ideas about what was and wasn't prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately for the prospective client's representative, Colonel Jaime Wolf was not the kind of man who could be overawed by fancy technology or profligate displays of wealth. He stood alongside the rest of his senior command staff outside the airlock as the shuttle touched down in one of the Wexford's vacant small craft bays, touching down with surprising grace for its size. There was a brief pause, and then a large loading hatch at the stern folded down to become a ramp.
"Doesn't look like a 'technomage'," Stanford Burke said quietly. He wasn't wrong. The man descending the ramp eschewed the allegedly traditional green robe in favour of a vaguely military-looking outfit consisting of a black sweater with epaulettes over a white shirt and a scarlet-and-navy striped necktie, charcoal grey trousers and meticulously-shined dress shoes, and an old-fashioned but immaculate leather attache case in one hand. He was tanned enough to pass for any number of ethnicities, about fifty in Terran years, and walked with a slight but noticeable limp.
"Good afternoon, Colonel Wolf," the man said, offering his hand. "I'm Agent Thomas Rutley of the Fenspace Convention Security Service."
Jaime shook, noting with mild approval that Rutley's grip was firm without trying to make a dominance contest out of it. "Welcome aboard. I must admit, from the text of your message I'd expected you to be here as a private citizen."
"That was intentional. Forgive the subterfuge, but my government would rather not advertise the fact we're hoping to hire you away from the Commonwealth."
"Understandable," Jaime replied. "Anyway, this is my intelligence officer Major Stanford Burke, Chief of Staff Major Kenneth Quo and senior logistics officer Captain James Quo."
"No relation," the latter Quo added, in the tone of someone who's had to explain this entirely too often.
"I'm afraid Colonel Kerensky and my brother are currently deployed elsewhere, but I'm fully authorised to discuss terms on their..." Jaime saw Rutley's expression and paused. "Something wrong?"
"Not exactly," he replied. "It's just that I had been informed in my briefing that your brother had been killed during the Marik Civil War."
"Not for lack of trying on that bloodthirsty maniac's part," Jaime replied, with feeling. "But to be honest, I'd rather not talk about that. Shall we adjourn to the conference room to discuss your proposal?"
Once everyone was seated at the conference table, Rutley handed Jaime a bulging manilla envelope from within his briefcase. "You'll find both digital and printed copies of our proposed contract in there, along with a pamphlet that various interested parties have been putting together to help new arrivals acclimatise to Fenspace. But to briefly summarise, we'd like to hire your company for a garrison and training contract, emphasis on the 'training' component. You are to a great extent going to be starting from scratch there, I'm afraid: We have abundant infantry, armoured vehicles and aircraft but our battlemech assets consist of a grab-bag of about thirty assorted light and medium mechs that were mostly confiscated from pirates. We need to build up a cadre of both pilots and technicians, and our conventional forces need an OPFOR who aren't learning the theory and practice of battlemech warfare as they go along."
"Not a small job," James Quo remarked. "Would I be right in assuming you're going to need some logistical support for those captured mechs?"
"That's up in the air at the moment," Rutley replied. "Other representatives have been sent to various manufacturing concerns to offer some generous incentives to set up local subsidaries and our own firms have made a heroic effort to produce the parts we understand the physics of and reverse-engineer the ones we don't, but it's not a fast process. Chances are we'll be placing some orders with Hephaestus Station's machine shops; there's clauses about that in the contract."
"I take it that's why you aren't offering salvage rights," Jaime added, looking up from the document in question.
"That and the fact that we hope and expect you won't be seeing much if any active combat. Employing mercenary companies in offensive operations is not something we're terribly comfortable with back home," Rutley explained. "We lack any equivalent of the MRB and there have been some... unpleasant incidents, shall we say, particularly when contracts go to the low bidder." The senior Dragoons nodded in wordless understanding; they'd all had experience with that sort of mercenary company, often in the context of being brought in to clean up their messes. "Besides, at the moment our main threats are from the occasional pirate band trying to transit through Antallos, and so far none of them have even got a dropship through to threaten the garrison at Port Krin. By the time we're facing someone with a real military we hope to have our own military on a better footing."
"As Captain Quo pointed out, not a small job," Jaime remarked. "Or a cheap one."
"Payment scales are covered in Article 11. Why my superiors put ten clauses of legal boilerplate in front of that is best known to themselves."
Jaime flipped a page or two forward in the contract until he found the relevant clause. "I see," he said carefully, drawing on all his years of experience negotiating mercenary contracts and defending his title as champion of the Alpha Regiment poker tournament to keep a smile off his face. The numbers involved were not small, even if qualified with the words "or equivalent in local currency". He could work with House bills.
"So," Burke said a moment later, "What's the catch? I'm not trying to talk us out of a job here, but you yourself just stated that your only immediate military threats are the occasional particularly stupid pirate, yet you're spending extremely serious money even by your standards to hire us to prepare your forces for a war. Is there something you're not telling us?"
Rutley smiled humourlessly. "We're simply thinking long-term, Star-Captain. That is your correct Clan rank, isn't it?"
The faint tinkle as Jaime's pen slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers and landed on the conference table seemed deafeningly loud amid the silence that fell over the room.
"What," Burke said, at last. His tone suggested he was just too shocked to add the question mark.
"Ineffable Technomage bullshit powers, remember?" Rutley quipped. "Well, that and some of your compatriots in Goliath Scorpion made the trek back to the old country to find out why an entire graduating class of Mechwarriors had exactly the same necrosia vision, and apparently it involved... well, us."
Nobody commented on this. It made as much sense as everything else that had happened in the Gernsback Expanse in the last few years.
"How much time do we have?" Jaime said quietly.
"If events proceed precisely as they would have before the Incident?" Rutley tactfully refrained from using the word "canon". "Until the middle of the century, give or take a couple of years. And it ends about as well as you've already concluded it will, I dare say If word gets back to the Pentagon Worlds, your guess is as good as mine: Best-case is the whole thing gets called off because someone sent some of that oddly on-the-nose Tellusian fiction home and they all suddenly remember what a supply line is and why it matters. Worst-case, the Crusader Clans decide they have to invade now before there's a major security breach. But whatever happens, my government and our allies are in the firing line the minute they realise what we represent."
"How do you mean?" Stanford asked.
"Well, if your burning ambition was to restore the glory days of the Star League, would you want to have a rival faction on your border whose long-term ambition is to create something better? A rival that also regards many of the principles you held dear as so deeply, profoundly immoral that observing them is forbidden by our highest laws?" Rutley replied. "Oh, and that reminds me: One of the many, many topics where we're going to need your help is how to explain the difference between Prisoner of War status and bondsref, because our laws don't make any distinction between taking someone as a bondsman and taking them as a slave."
And the Tellusians had Opinions about slavery, Jaime thought to himself, recalling some of the stories to come out of Antallos after the annexation. "That's a... complicated issue, certainly," he admitted.
Rutley nodded. "I imagine it must be. So, does that mean you're interested in the contract?"
"Interested, yes. But I'm going to have to consult with all the senior staff before we commit to signing." Jaime took a deep breath. "I think we should have a short recess. Would you excuse us, please? I'll have someone show you to the wardroom."
Once he was gone, the Dragoons exchanged haunted looks. "Well, savrashri," said Kenneth, after a long silence.
"That about sums it up," Jaime agreed. "So, what do we do now?"