Journal Extract 75324-Rho

Remember what I said about the kids being walking security leaks? Well, if anything, I seem to have underestimated the risk they represented.

Jessie isn’t that stupid. Hopelessly naive, in over her head and being pushed way past her capability because of her parentage, yes, but not actually stupid. And let’s be honest here, she’s far from the first child of a mercenary commander to be promoted simply because of her parentage. In a family run unit like this, it’s inevitable; you just have to hope that the child is up to the task. In Jessie’s case, the answer is ‘no’, and I can’t see any way that she would ever run the unit on her own.

Ronnie is that stupid, but that’s another matter.

Thanks to Jessie’s actions, the unit had captured four of Magyari’s MechWarriors. They had also lost Ronnie to the unexpected Wolf attack. And while I would be tempted to let the Wolves have him, the major, of course, had other plans. (Not that Big Ron would have let her do otherwise, what with Ronnie being his son). No, Connie had a plan, one that was going to get her what she wanted and strike a blow to her apparent enemy.

Having gathered just how angry the Wolves were at the Irregulars (and at one of them in specific) she was going to use them as a bargaining chip. She was going to trade the four of them to the Wolves for the four MechWarriors the they had captured. And for the deal, she was going to keep the Irregulars’ BattleMechs for her own. Trading three lights and a medium for an assault, two heavies and a medium seems like a good deal, especially when you figure that they got an advanced Clantech Omni out of it. It’d work well and suit my goals, although personally, I would have been tempted to let the Wolves have Ronnie, but I don’t get to make those sorts of decisions.

Jessie went and threw a king-sized wrench into all of that. Apparently she felt bad about Oda et al getting locked up and having their ‘Mechs confiscated after she was just trying to save their lives. Apparently the fact that the Irregulars are our current operational enemies had nothing to do with it, and that does get me. It’s not like Jessie hasn’t been in an operational campaign before, and she certainly has taken prisoners and confiscated BattleMechs in past (Like the Cataplut in her lance). Why this time was different was beyond me. Maybe it was because she and the Irregulars had cooperated to keep each other alive she felt she owed them or something.

Re-purposed police station

Anyway, she headed down to the lock-up (and I mean an actual police lock-up in one of the ruined cities the unit has been using as a base) to negotiate a deal. Though our prisoners were proving to be rather inventive in and of themselves in trying to get out of there. Aardvarkssen had managed to rip the bunk off the cell wall, and was in the process of dismantling it for parts by the time she got there. And even though she had no authority to do such, Jessie first told them about the Major’s plans for them. Then she negotiated a deal whereby if the four of them rescued Ronnie (and the other members of his lance) she would get them their release and their ‘Mechs back. And yes, she just flushed away any advantage we could have gotten out of this mess.

Suffice it to say, they agreed and were able to make a discrete departure with their confiscated gear and a pair of our jeeps. Obviously I wasn’t there for what happened, but I managed to piece it together from various accounts.

The Wovles had taken over an abandoned town (one killed by Ahsburton’s decades of economic malaise following the Jihad) and parked their ships there. They had the two Broadswords that had carried their ‘Mechs, as well as a troop carrier packed full of conventional infantry for security. Unfortunately, they weren’t aware of the full extent of the Irregulars’ skillset. Oda is a skilled infiltrator, while Aardvarkssen was raised in the Rasalhauge Dominion, and thus knows a lot about how to act like a clan warrior. With a uniform that Oda had procured, he was able to infiltrate the Wolf force and find out where the prisoners were being held.

Having located their objective, the lance split into two teams. Aardvarkssen and Oda secured the prisoners by entering through a skylight. In Aardvarkssen’s case, he literally dropped in on them by jumping on and crushing the Wolf warrior keeping watch on them. In order to cover their escape, Zhen and Georges arranged for a distraction and snuck onto one of the Wolf Broadswords. They set off a bomb or something inside of it, which drew just about everyone in town away while allowing the four of them and the prisoners to slip away unharmed.

Of course, when they got back was when the drek hit the fan. The Major had found out that the prisoner had escaped, and put everyone on alert. A lookout had reported the jeeps returning, so she had mustered everyone to meet them in the pre-dawn. When she found that it was the Irregulars with her captured MechWarirors (including her own son) she was basically forced to concede to the deal that Jessie had made with them, letting the Irregulars walk off with their BattleMechs. It wasn’t like Big Ron would have given her an option either, given that he was getting his son back from the deal.

So as soon as the Irregulars were away, she publicly berated Jessie in front of the entire unit.

This is a complete disaster, to say the least. On the tactical side of it, we lost four BattleMechs for no gain whatsoever. We also probably made an enemy out of the Wolves as well, but they’re more likely going to be focusing on the Irregulars for now. On the long-term operational side of it, there’s the distinct possibility that Magyari is going to be able to deduce the unit’s identity, which blows our secrecy. When the Major found out who the Ashburton government had hired to deal with the pirate problem, she was giddy with glee at the thought of honouring her stupid family vendetta. And now it could backfire on us completely.