The return of the Irregulars to Galatea has Kept me rather busy. In addition to my usual babysitting duties, I've been keeping an eye on them as needed, and there has been a few interesting things to report. The first is that it's clear that they suffered A few losses along the way; not only are there a few gaps that were hard to hide, but Magyari almost immediately began putting out feelers for new people. That could be useful to us immediately.
I'm still trying to get the details of where they were and what they did, but the other interesting thing is that they offloaded a pair of strays that they seemed to pick up along the way. One of them was outwardly pretty harmless and, I'm also going to say, probably not really worth our time. The second, however, turned out to be a lot more interesting and came very close to causing a massive and only narrowly averted disaster for us. But more on that to come.
The first event worth noting was that once again, the Snake took a visit to the Combine Consulate, disappearing inside it for some time before eventually emerging. I did some digging, and it turns out that he was again visiting the Cultural Attaché. Now it is eminently possible that he is just doing that, popping in to get a comforting dose of home and a nice tea ceremony (or whatever else a Cultural Attaché allegedly does) in order to have a break from being surrounded by dirty unwashed foreigners. Or it is possible that he's a spook visiting his contact. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just assumed it was the former, so I'll say that it's the latter and something worth keeping my eyes on.
Interestingly enough, the Snake has also been doing some asking around town, following up on, of all things, members of the Combine embassy staff. In fact, he met with a business representative from the embassy later that day inside a tavern in the brokerage district. I wasn't privy to the meeting (I only heard about it after the fact as I was otherwise occupied) but it does seem that there's a lot of wheels within wheels going on there.
What had me occupied was following up on Magyari's recruitment feelers. From what I’ve found, she's looking for two MechWarriors, a VTOL crew and a half-dozen Battle Armour troopers, with the latter being optioned as both individuals and a full squad. More interestingly, the MechWarriors are options both for as is or with 'Mech, so she clearly has some reserves there to give her options. I think there may be an opening there, but we do need to be quick about it. I'll throw you some options after this report.
The next day, a group of the Irregulars, including the Snake, left their compound and headed to Thronjas. I'd tailed them, figuring that, if nothing else, it'd be a good way to gently eavesdrop and get some idea of what was going on with them and look for any sort of opening. It appeared one of them was leaving; I eyeballed the man, but I had nothing on him whatsoever. As near as I can tell, he was actually one of Magyari's newer recruits, which made me wonder why he was going so soon. Doubly so is that he as clearly leaving on amicable terms.
Nothing else in the group was too extraordinary (Zhen, Georges, Perez, Owens, Bruce and the Snake), save for one blonde girl that I wasn't able to immediately recognize but otherwise seemed to be entirely un-thrilled to be there (She ordered a bacon salad and then proceeded to pick all the bacon out of it, if you can believe it?). I'm going to try and find out who she is, but that's more of out of completionisim then anything else. When she did become a problem was when she recognized one of the other people there.
See, Ronnie had, for whatever reason, decided to do some recruiting on his own (I haven o idea why, beyond suspecting that after that last battle his ego was massively hurting again and hiring his own recruit was some way to cover that massive bruise). And in this case, he was meeting his potential hire in Tharonjas and treating him to a lunch. The problem was that Ronnie's potential recruit was a former Steel Wolf by the name of Ivar, who was one of the two 'strays' that Magyari bought back with her before offloading. Somebody at the Irreguars table recognized him and called out to him, and that's where it almost exploded.
So while the blonde girl wilted and looked like she wanted to hide under the table, our mystery man walked over to Ivar and Ronnie and pretty much stepped on his recruitment efforts. Now my minimal exposure to Ivar so far has suggested that he had a chip on his shoulder the size of a dropship and a grudge that was waiting to explode against the first Capellan that looked at him funny. What our mystery man offered him in reply was a chance to turn his life around, to use the skills he worked so hard to perfect and to gain a sense of belonging that he'd been denied for so long, In short, he played on the same sort of emotions that problem drove Ivar to become a Steel Wolf in the first place.
It worked fantastically. Ronnie was left sitting there gobsmacked as Ivar pretty much agreed to sign up to whatever it was that the mystery Man was offering him on the spot. Ronnie got up and demanded to know who he was and what business he had trying to take his recruit, which is the point where things almost exploded. The Mystery Man asked Ronnie who he worked for, and I swear that the brat almost told him right in front of a whole bunch of Irregulars. However, amazingly enough, common sense prevailed and he backed down, finishing his lunch with a sulk while Ivar left, agreeing to meet the Mystery Man later.
I was convinced that Ronnie was going to get the rest of his lance and a few of his dad's 'good ol' boys' and lurk outside Tharonjas to pick a fight with the Irregulars as they left. Fortunately, for once in his life, he made a sensible decision and instead stormed off to get drunk.
There's no easy way to say this. Ronnie's an idiot, plain and simple. And if he wasn't the commander's brat, he'd be turfed out long ago. Hell, I'd consider him a risk, but operational requirements say that I can't do anything about him because, what do you know, he's the commander's brat. And in this case, he came perilously close to blowing everything wide open.
The only other interesting event to report was that later that evening, Irisz Magyari left their compound dressed in a nice black number which made it clear that she wasn't headed out on business. I tailed her to Le Chiffre, one of the city's upscale restaurants which told me that whoever she was meting had some degree of pull to get them a table two says after she arrived on-world. No chance of my getting in there, but a few discrete enquiries told me that she was meeting Terry McKinnon, of McKinnon's Marauders' fame. And the fact that she didn't return to the Irregulars compound until the next morning suggests that it wasn’t entirely a business meeting.
As a postscript, I did some digging on Ransom Victor Kelley, their recent hire/departure and the mystery man who so publicly humiliated Ronnie. What's interesting is not what I found on him - which by the way is next to nothing - but rather on his background. He's the lone survivor of the Highland Gryphons, a unit with a past that ties in to both Magyari's command and our own operations. Small world, huh? I've attached my own findings. I think you'll find them interesting.
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