“Timber Wolf? It is the pinnacle of Clan OmniMech design. Fast, well-armoured, and has more firepower at all ranges than all but the largest of assault mechs. It is considered a great honour to be allowed to pilot one, with many MechWarriors willing to swap their Assault mechs to have the privilege of operating one. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. Just something that the saKahn had mentioned… Do you need a hand braiding that?” John asked, hoping to distract Mia from his random question. There was no way in hell that he was going to mention that he received a quest reward from deflowering her.

“No, thank you, John Way-… grrr… John. I can do this myself. Sorry, I am trying to change my speech patterns so I do not seem like I am from the Clans… it is not going well.”

“Why? I like how unique it makes you sound.” He asked. Yeah, it was a little odd, but he liked how she sounded.

“You do?”

“Yeah… don’t feel you need to change anything unless you really want to. It is something that makes you, you.”

“Okay. I was trying to do it because if we were staying here, it could pose a problem. But since we are leaving, I will stop.” She said, then gave him a small kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, John Wayne.” 

John and Mia left the apartment shortly afterwards, heading downstairs to the Blackcat to find Rei and Sandy. He stopped in his tracks the moment he stepped into the bar; the sight before him was rather disconcerting. 

There was a sea of nervous-looking women before him, all ranging from their mid-teens to somewhere around thirty. They were all carrying small backpacks and were seated at the tables, having quiet conversations amongst themselves or sitting quietly as if waiting for something.

Something? They are waiting for you, dummy.  

It didn’t take long before they were spotted standing in the doorway, the gaggle of women quieting down as both Maggie and Trix approached them. 

“Morning, Luv, I see you’re awake. Your beard is still a little short, though.” Maggie said with a slight tease, brushing her hand through his beard again before continuing in a more serious tone. “We managed to narrow it down to this lot to take with you off-world. Before you are as many of the brightest young women on Blackstone who are not already married and between the ages of fifteen and thirty as we could wrangle last night.

Every one of them is a skilled worker of some sort, or is excelling in their schooling. Brenda and I went through the candidates and thought this was the best way we could deny the Wolves as many resources as possible with one stroke and still reduce the number of… breeders available for that system of theirs.”

John just blinked. He was expecting to transport a bunch of children and maybe some young mothers. Now that he was thinking about it with a clearer head, this made a bit more sense. Everyone who came was more than capable of taking care of themselves wherever they ended up, especially if they supported each other along the way. And this denied the wolves dozens of bodies to help fuel their warmachine, while reducing the number of people with valuable skills on the planet, even if only a little.

“Okay then. We will see how many we can fit. I know I can stuff twenty-six fully armoured men into the back, plus we have an airlock utility room, so I can probably fit another ten or so. We might be able to fit a few more in the cockpit, but the biggest problem will be seating. There are only belts for ten or fifteen back there, and I need to go nearly vertical and pull some serious G’s when I break out of the planet’s atmosphere. Anyone not strapped down is going to go flying.”

“Already got you covered, Luv. I snagged a bunch of adjustable VTOL cargo hold harnesses from the supply room. I noticed there were tons of anchor points back there the other day, so we can set everyone up so they’re at least tethered to a net. It isn’t pretty, but they are willing to risk it.”

“You really thought of everything already, didn’t you?” 

“Well, I’m not perfect, but I am very confident in my abilities. Book smarts, and street smarts, Luv. Trix?”

“Here you go, hon.” She said, handing him a duffel. “That is ten million C-Bills, along with a bunch of dirt that James had dug up on people over the years. Use whatever you need to pay those bastards to get you all out of this system. I would suggest going to Oberon itself and sending an HPG message from there. Either that, or the pirates will need to ferry you all the way to the Inner Sphere.”

“Alright. Oberon is where we will need to go anyway to stage out of here, unless we go to the Greater Valkyrate. Trix, Maggie, thank you both. This… this has saved me a lot of headaches.” He said. He didn’t even bother asking if they were coming. Trix was well beyond her childbearing years now, and while Maggie still might have a chance, it was unlikely they would expect that of someone of her age.

“No problem. Do you have any orders for the Blackstone Guards before you depart?” The older woman asked, a goofy little grim on her face.

“Just do what you can. If they ask where I am, just say I’m… investigating breaking into the Brian Cache for Clan Wolf. That is what they call the Star League Cache for some reason. The saKahn seemed very concerned about it, so if I end up ‘dying’ on that mission, there will hopefully be fewer questions asked about where I disappeared to.” He replied, making that up on the spot. He was hoping to stay off their radars until he exited the atmosphere. Once he was out of orbit, even if he was being chased, he could activate his Slipspace drive and effectively disappear from any pursuers. 

Of course, he needed a destination first.

“Did Lucy and Bryn manage to get the information out of the pirates?” He asked.

“Yes. They should be back in an hour or so. The Wolves passed on a communication the last time their ship passed over Blackstone that they would be delaying their arrival until noon and that they expected the City to be ready for their arrival.”

“Great. Let’s get this started then.” 

They brought the evacuees up to the Guard facility to give them a modicum of privacy from prying eyes. It wasn’t known that John was taking a small group to evacuate; Maggie and the Governor’s wife were quite secretive when choosing whom to send with him. The sight of so many women walking into the facility drew a few glances, but no one questioned the reason.

John pulled the Pelican out of his pocket and expanded it in its usual parking spot, then Maggie and a small group of her techs started hooking up a bunch of vertical cargo netting seats. They loaded a bunch of dried food and water into the bay’s overhead storage area, then started cramming people inside. Somehow, they managed to pack nearly sixty people into the bay and airlock, leaving the only way for John to get to the cockpit was to squeeze through the side airlock, which had an old ramp rigged up to it.

He kept worrying when Lucy and Bryn didn’t show up, wondering if this was going to be the hitch in their plan, but right at eleven, they walked into the facility yard. John rushed down the ramp, picked her up and gave her a huge hug before kissing her.

“MmmMmMM…My Danna, I was not expecting you to be this enthusiastic to see me.” She said when he finally released her.

“I admit I was a bit put off at first, but once again, you did what needed to be done when I was in no position to do it. So, thank you.” He replied, then kissed her again. “Thank you, my Tsuma. Did you get what we needed?”

“Yes. It took a little persuasion, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Bryn was a big help.”

“Lucy Kurita is… scary. I do not want to get on her bad side. I think I would rather fight you again, John Wayne.” Bryn said, showing his wife some serious deference. 

“What happened?”

“She-” Bryn started to say, but was cut off by Lucy raising her hand to the Elemental’s face.

“I did what any good wife of the Draconis Combine would do for her husband. Nothing more, nothing less. Is Rei inside the ship?” She said, obviously not wanting to talk about what happened. 

“She is. My Tsuma… we will talk about this… later.” John replied, not quite willing to let this one slide. If it was something that could scare the Elemental, to say he had some concerns was an understatement. 

“As you wish, my Danna.” She said, wrapping her arm around his like they were about to go walking on a date and not enter the cockpit of the Pelican.

Trix, Megan, Sandy, and the tech crews bid them farewell as they boarded the vessel. John had no idea what was going to happen to them, but he was in no position to bring them along.

John fired up the Pelican, lifted off and headed along the coast at a low altitude. He wanted to get a significant distance away from Blackstone before he went and broke for orbit. He was running dark, with only passive emitters running right now; he was hoping the Pelican was small enough signature that they couldn’t see him from wherever they were up in orbit.

Everyone was quiet behind him, even Rei, almost like they were expecting something bad to happen. So it was a fairly large surprise when an hour later, John spoke across the intercom.

“Good Afternoon, ladies and… well, ladies. This is your Captain speaking. Thank you for flying on Pelican Spacelines, Blackstone’s number one budget dropship service. We are currently cruising at a hundred feet… err, thirty-three metres, give or take. Skies are clear, wind speeds are negligible, so hold onto your bladders because we are going vertical. Next stop, high orbit.”

John tilted the nose of the Pelican skywards and pushed the throttle as hard as he could, rocketing the Pelican off Blackstone and into outer space. 

He could almost swear he was hearing screams in the back over the roar of his engines, though that was pretty much impossible. 

In Orbit Around Planet Blackstone

Operations Room

Black Lion Class Battlecruiser Arctic Wolf

“Captain. Something strange just came up on the scanners from the equatorial region of the planet.” The radar operator said, calling out the odd anomaly he was seeing at the edge of his scope. “The system isn’t able to get a solid read on it due to atmospheric interference, but it appears to be a large Aerospace fighter of some ki- It just disappeared, Sir.”

“Seriously? Run through the data again and see if you can figure it out. I need to know if it is something real that I need to report to the saKahn, or if it is just a bug for the technicians to fix.” The Captain said, moving to stand behind his operator. Unlike the warrior caste, who acted like they knew how everything ran about a Battlecruiser, he actually knew how everything worked on board his ship, and would mentor his juniors if he picked up errors they did not. 

They ran through the sensor data several times, and it did indeed look like a ship of some kind had left orbit, but it had just disappeared. There was no explosion, no K-F fields, nothing. It was like whatever it was had never existed. 

“Switch to the secondary sensor array. Have the technicians run a full diagnostic on the primary array and send me the report as soon as it is completed. Quiaff?”

“Aff, Captain.”

The Captain sat back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest. Despite the lack of a system ID, he knew in his bones that it was a real contact. But without having any indication where it went, he was loath to report anything. 

Hmm… it might just be sitting there, running dark. Not likely given its speed, but it was possible.

“Launch a Bashkir (Light Aerospace Fighter) and send it the coordinates to where we lost that contact. Have them take some scans and report back with their findings.” He ordered.

“Aff. Captain.” Another operator said. 

“Very Good.” The Captain spoke. He had done his due diligence. Once he received the reports back, he would report the anomaly to the saKahn. There was no reason to bother him right now; he was busy trying to break into a Brian Cache while the civilian caste was moving into the city below. 

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep