Shrapnel: Fragments From The Inner Sphere by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi, Space warfare, MechWarrior, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781555600822
Amazon: 1555600824
Publisher: FASA Corporation
Published: 1988-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

You have to understand that Marakani is a decent, orderly city. Ka-wabe, like so many of the worlds of the Draconis Combine, is not rich in natural resources. Most of the people are poor, and the economy is dominated by a handful of big, military-run combines. There is a factory outside of Marakani that produces viden extensors for BattleMech containment dampers, and a modest wire drawing plant that gives the city its principal export. Most of Marakani's citizens are employed in one of those two plants, both of which are owned by the monolithic Ka-wanashi Enterprises. Those who don't work for the Company work on the agroplantations that surround Marakani like a patchwork quilt, irrigated green against the dusty tan of the Kawabean desert. Life is hard here, but it is satisfying as well. Marakani's population numbers 20,000 or less, and at times it seems that everyone living there knows everyone else.

Prefect Vander Hassan was not a native of Marakani, or even of Kawabe. He had been born and raised on neighboring Shaul Khala, and it was said that the malicious glint in his eye was that of the Saurimat. the predatory secret society of mercenary assassins native to that world. He had arrived on Kawabe, it was rumored, as hired bodyguard for the chief executive of Kawanashi Engineering. When the workers' revolt broke out at the Kawanashi plant in Eibo. Hassan was in the right place at the right time, managing to blunt the workers' rush toward the administration bunker with a heavy machine gun cradled in his massive arms...and to save Kawanashi's president from an unpleasant death at the hands of the mob at the same time. His position as Prefect over the Marakani Workers' District was said to be a reward for his services to the firm.

The title 'Prefect’ might be translated as 'chief of police’ on some worlds, or as 'mayor,' or simply as ‘chief bureaucrat.’

Hassan was something of all three, master of the local work force in the employ of Kawanashi Enterprises, keeper of the peace of our town, and our representative before Lord Hideshi, the Planetary Chairman.

Chairman Hideshi was the ruler of Kawabe. but he was far away in the capitol at Itamiyama. So far as we were concerned, Hassan was our absolute monarch, feudal lord and master of 20,000 souls.

He looked like an absolute monarch, too, when I brought Holmes before him late that afternoon, at the-Pretecture Headquarters on the hill above the town. The Judgement Hall was a place of austerity, of bare tile floors and a frosted glass ceiling that admitted diffuse, white sunlight. The few art objects on their pedestals about the room were enhanced by the spartan interior: a porcelain bowl so thin it was translucent, a tower of fantastic and chimerical beasts carved from jade, an alabaster vase of haunting simplicity. Hassan, whatever the people In the street said of the man, was a man of delicate artistic sensibilities. Dressed in his red robe of judgement, he reclined on the divan on its dais at the end of the hall.

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