At last, he was free of the prick of a recruiter. He’d heard the locals weren’t too keen on mercenaries, but one would expect some humility when they admitted to their presence being necessary. The recruiter himself even admitted they needed them. Well, he said he didn’t see a reason to hire mercenaries and then spelled out the reason for hiring mercenaries, poor fucker probably got hit upsode the head with an axe too many times playing with all the other little vikings in daycare to notice the contradiction. But the slog wasn’t done yet. Karel was immediately directed to a nearby battalion aid station and put through a battery of medical examinations, even a damn height measurement. The nerve of these people. But with the medical finally over, he could go grab a beer once he navigated the place, with most of the signs being written in a diabolical mix of Swedish - an even angrier version of German - and that gibberish the Dracs speak, and found a suitable watering hole.

At least the search was worth it. With a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of ‘class III’ beer - whatever that meant but it tasted right - in the other and some time before the scheduled departure of the shuttle he was directed to, Karel found a spot with a good view of the spaceport near where his shuttle was supposed to be departing from, perched himself on a crate and watched ‘Mechs go by to get an idea of what he might be working with. Locusts, ubiquitous for centuries. Not great, not terrible. An Urbanmech. Ugh. Hopefully they had something with a bit more pep in its step than a Lloyd Marik-Stanley Aerospace graduate after a shot and a beer. Some assault or heavy ‘Mechs, fat chance of that. Wasps, ‘Mechs with jump jets, actual arms and hand actuators. That was a bit more interesting. A Whitworth… God damnit. One couldn’t expect much from a newly established power, he wouldn’t be surprised if the Lyrans and Dracs alike just dumped their trash equipment on the fledgling republic and claimed material support for the PR, but not even a single 1D Commando? Or a rusted 1K Phoenix Hawk the Dragon couldn’t be bothered to steel brush and paint?

And what would their DropShip look like, and what would it be? A Union? A Leopard? Maybe a Danais? He’d even seen a Buccaneer in what looked like hastily applied military colors fly overhead. Then again, perhaps a civvie DropShip wouldn’t be bad, unless all the amenities were stripped down to save weight. Anyway, time to find out. After swinging by the pub again, now armed with a Hel Special for the road and eight more beer bottles in one of his bags, he found his way to the appropriate boarding gate with the aid of a helpful cargo handler - and one of the beer bottles - in time for the flight. And boy, a [i]Drop[/i]Ship it was. Someone [i]dropped[/i] it onto a gutter and left it there for half a millennium. At least the crew might be good? Maybe…?