BattleTech Legends: Close Quarters by Victor Milán

Author:Victor Milán [Milán, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2016-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Outside the sun was a gigantic molten-bronze ball about to drop into the unseen Shakudo Sea. A Hunchback strolled along the western perimeter, in silhouette looking as if its head was lowered in contemplation. Diana Vásquez had shepherded her charges back inside.

“What’s on your mind, Cass?” Kali asked. She stepped to the side of the doorway, started to lean her shoulders back against a wall that looked to be made of wood planking, hesitated, and then went ahead and leaned. Their ever-helpful liaison Preetam Masakawa had proudly informed them at the dorms and auxiliary structures at the Sportsplex were made from panels of a synthetic processed out of sterilized human waste at an HTE-owned sewage treatment facility. Further evidence of Hachiman Taro’s unusual interest in environmental preservation, not to mention Uncle Chandy’s resourcefulness.

Lady K, like all the Seventeenth’s ranking officers, had grown accustomed to complaints about the smell. Preetam insisted there was no smell. Kali had just about decided it was all in everybody’s mind, but every now and then she caught a whiff of, well, something.

“That going on a lot?” Cassie asked.

Kali frowned, and suddenly she was a company commander confronted by an impertinent question from a lieutenant JG. Cassie braced herself for the blast. See? the taunting voice within her jeered. You opened yourself to her, and she’s going to treat you like dirt. Solitary means safe.

Instead, the stiffness went out of the Captain, and she nodded. “More and more. Usual garrison-duty fever. Only so many holo games a body can play, only so many times you can watch Tino Espinosa singing his handsome little heart out as the bad guys close in for the kill.”

“Is it just that?”

Lady K started to bristle again, then sighed. “Good thing we’re a family,” she said, “and you’re such a long-range, low-heat scout. You’d drive the brass crazy in most outfits.”

“You think you wouldn’t?”

Kali laughed.

Long-winged nightgaunts flitted around them, uttering mournful croaks as they feasted on the twilight swarms of late-season sedge midges. In a few weeks first frost would come, and the insects would disappear.

“It’s more than just the usual boredom,” Kali admitted. “We’ve had a lot more dust-ups, and the casualties are getting worse. Ever since you brought us the cheerful news about the ISF taking a close personal interest in our favorite uncle, the boys ‘n’ girls have got to feeling as if we’re sitting smack in the middle of the V-ring, waitin’ for ol’ Ninyu to drop the hammer on us.”

Cassie kept staring at her. The ends of Lady K’s mouth cut slowly back into her cheeks in an expression that wasn’t a smile.

“You could cut me some slack, here, Lieutenant.”

“You forced your way into my life, and made me take that damned bear. Forget about slack.”

Kali laughed humorlessly. “All right. Yeah, Don Carlos has been sunk even deeper than usual into a funk lately. All this inactivity gives him plenty of time to brood about Patsy. People are starting to wonder if he’s lost it.”

“El patrdn’s

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