BattleTech: Fox Tales (The Collected Fox Patrol Stories) by Bryan Young

Author:Bryan Young
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2022-10-31T05:00:00+00:00

“What do you mean you can’t pay?” Katie verged on screaming into the radio from her office beside the bridge of the Fox Den.

“The minister deeply apologizes for the ruse,” the administrative assistant said. “But we needed to deal with the bandits, and simply don’t have the resources to pay you.”

The minister didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself.

“We have a contract!”

“If you’ll notice in the fine print, there was a clause allowing us to renege under certain financial conditions, conditions which, unfortunately, have been met.”

“What are we supposed to do?” she asked.

But there was no answer on the other end. There was nothing that could be done.

Katie would, naturally, report this, to any person or institution who would listen. She’d scream about this story in every bar and merc hangout on Galatea…if she ever made it there.

She sighed heavily.

She didn’t want to tell the group any more than the local minister wanted to tell her.

She’d already assembled the briefing for the after-action report, so the other Foxes were waiting in the conference room already. They wanted to know more about the Kodiak and the pilot, but the pilot had vanished by the time the cleanup operation had ended and they’d gotten around to investigating the assault ’Mech. The first thing they discovered was why the Kodiak never fired its autocannon. It wasn’t because the bandits wanted to take their ’Mechs, but because they didn’t have any ammo for it.

Also, from what Katie could piece together, the leader of the bandits had been a Ghost Bear, but she’d flunked out of being one, or something. Katie didn’t quite understand the Clans.

But that wouldn’t be the big news they needed to hear. She had to stroll in there and tell them all the terrible news, too.

They’d be stuck here on Kaesong for a while.

Maybe she could at least negotiate room and board.

Thankfully, she’d put full salvage rights in the contract. That frustrated her. She’d have to sell the scraps of the Kodiak to keep everyone fed and get to the next job instead of keeping it to tinker with.

“Damn it!” she said to herself.

The door for the conference room opened, and she stepped inside, smiling wide.

“Well, friends, I have good news and bad news…”

Ah, the life of a mercenary captain…

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