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Zohra

The tear of lasers capacitors discharging. The heavy thunk of autocannons. And the screeching wail of missiles. Tempting sounds. Distracting sounds. But Zohra would not be distracted. She had a role to play. She had a task. The left flank was hers to watch. Perching above the valley, she kept a constant move, a stationary light mech was a dead light mech.

Zohra wasted no time moving to secure the left flank. The sounds of shooting were a tempting distraction, but she had task. Screening for any more pirates was the priority. Infantry was unwelcome. Tanks even more so. Expected as enemy forces were. Incoming BattleMech signatures presented a far worse threat. Even pirates could be dangerous when they pinned you down with infantry and combat vehicles. A stray Autocannon round or SRM was all it took to leave the world as a fine red mist.

The infantry that popped out of cover to fire a brace almost caught Zohra unaware. But they were too eager, perhaps afraid. They were too greedy. The range was far. Their weapons clearly dated. And a batch of missiles sailed long, passing far above the top of her BattleMech. Zohra didn't hesitate. She didn't want to think. And she didn't want to see. Green beams arced out from the scorching the ground as she swept the deadly right arm of the RVN-2X precisely across the uncovered trenches still smouldering with smoke from the fired missiles.

There was no to time to wait and to observe. Instead Zohra firewalled her throttle, sending the Raven stomping over what remained of the infantry squad. Swinging wide, she tried not to think about anyone unfortunate enough to be alive beneath her before the claws of the BattleMech came thundering down into the dirt.

Shifting forwards, Zohra kept her eyes forward across the ridge, checking her sensors with each shuddering step of the running Raven. She had to keep up with the lance, if only in parallel. Across the valley she could see that Karel was busy. A J. Edgar moved rapidly beneath her. It didn't seem to see her. It was focused on the Dragon. Zohra stopped for only a moment, drawing a deep breath, and squeezing the trigger on her left control stick.

Brilliant blue cut through the air, lancing through the armor just below the cockpit of the nimble craft as raced towards her lancemates. Zohra had only to wait as the combat vehicle floated helplessly through her sights, the large laser scorching along until it rested over the engines. The J. Edgar shook with smoke and then burst into sad flames as the fusion reactor faded. The smell of burnt ozone filling Zohra's cockpit, but she did not linger. Many would die. Many would die soon enough and she only hoped she would not be one of them.

"Left flank, still clear! Keeping pace with you, Commander," Zohra said, keying her comms.

Zohra
Karel Chalupa
Having exhausted all means of bumming around unproductively before the flip happened at 0200 hours and he could go to sleep, Karel loathed to admit it was time to start being productive. He didn’t see much of a point in going over any of the intel they had right now. One, by 1100 tomorrow Ulrik will probably have learned more from their viking overlords and two, that was what briefings were for. There was no way between Heaven and Hell he was doing self-study, he’d had enough of that tosh at AMI.

Instead, he turned to familiarizing himself with the ship’s layout starting with his quarters, actually unpacking properly and locating a suitable stash for hiding things others should remain unaware of. A costly lesson paid for with way too many energy drinks and sleeves of butter cookies that had disappeared from his dormitory at the academy. With that sorted, he changed to his PTs - one of the numerous pieces of non-serialized FWLM equipment he’d ‘lost’ over his years of service - and set out on his combined run/expedition throughout the ship.

"It’s a mandole, not a guitar."

"Well, I’m afraid the rules still apply."

"Rules? What rules? I’m not hosting a party."

"Be that as it may, Miss…?"

"Imalayen. MechWarrior Imalayen."

"Bit young for a MechWarrior aren’t you? Are you sure you aren’t a lost AsTech?"

"Seriously? Look, I'm just trying to get to my quarters. Please, get out of my way."

"I’m just doing my job, if you’ll just-"

"Oh, please, how do you think I got onto this ship?"

"Stowaway?"

"Ant rajul qalil al'adab. You’ve seen my ID, what more do you wish to investigate?" Zohra muttered, fighting a growing urge to utilize her mandole as a weapon. "I would very much like a shower before our drop and you are making that very difficult."

Sounds of discontent reached him through the halls, close by the sounds of it. Damn, already? And by the sound of it it wasn’t even two MechWarriors getting a little too much into some dick measuring contest. Slowing to a walk to quieten his footsteps, he rounded a corner out of sight of the two belligerents, wishing for popcorn.

Stealth was broken by Zohra’s Arabic cursing, forcing a chuckle. Though taught Arabic at school since it was one of the languages frequently spoken throughout the Free Worlds League, it had been decades since he last spoke it. Understanding was a lot easier though.

"Bit young to be nagging at people like an old lady aren’t you?" Karel matched the soldier’s tone as he approached the pair before turning to Zohra.

"Evening, Imalayen. How’s the Raven? The light BattleMech she’s been assigned?" He added aside to the crewman, "Though bossman hasn’t updated the roster yet. Who’d want to stow aboard this thing anyway?"

"Not this old lady, that’s for sure. I didn’t know you spoke Arabic, you’re quite the traveler…Chalupa wasn’t it?" Zohra said with an impish grin.

"It seems I got lucky with the Raven, it’s about the only mech we got that isn’t a rust bucket. How’s the Star League vintage treating you? Find any stray rats yet?"

"It was. Karel." He offered a handshake. Only four more people whose names he had to figure out. Calling people ‘Hey, you, on my left.’ in a fight rarely worked. At least they each had a different BattleMech. "laqad marat fatrat mundh 'an... tahadatht... alearabiatu." He managed to get the longer words straight in his head with small pauses without completely murdering them. Only slight mutilation by atrocious accent. "’Traveler’ is relative. By astronomical standards, Marik isn’t all that far from here."

"No rats. No free mascot for me. Though something definitely died in one of the antiques and stayed there for a few weeks. Cooks must have gotten to them first, those sausages smelled suspicious." He jested, "Tell me one thing about the Raven though, I’m curious: Control labels. Capellan mess or English?"

"Lays syyan, not bad!" Zohra exclaimed as she cheerfully shook Karel’s offered hand. "You’ve got a lovely Marik accent, but it’s better than most. I’m Zohra."

Watching the upjumped security guard slink off, Zohra felt obliged to smile even more at her growing good fortunes. It had been long since she had someone to speak to in arabic. A lance mate capable of conversing in her native tongue was a pleasant surprise.

"A perceptive question! Everything is labeled in English. Ghanima, a spoil of war, I would imagine. The work has that Davion touch to it. Our Federated friends got lucky, but not so lucky that they managed to salvage a working electronic warfare package in its entirety. We must not be greedy in our hopes, but I would have loved to have seen what the Capellans had managed to whip up from the Helm Memory Core."

"I would not risk the sausage, but some tea would be welcome, perhaps you can show me the way? You seem to have had a head start on exploring"

A mint condition Raven. With a large laser. With controls labeled in English. "Kurva! Should’ve taken it. I was going to take it. Fuck. It was almost shockingly good work for something out of the workshop of his Galactic Southern neighbors. Even a broken clock was right twice a day or something. No point crying over spilled milk though. It didn’t bother him. It didn’t.

It bothered him. It bothered him a lot.

But since the only way to correct his mistake now was murder, he’d just have to live with it for now. "I think looking out of the window on approach dashed everyone’s hopes, even the most humble ones, then again we can only go up from here. Knocking on wood."

He started walking in the mess hall’s direction, or at least what he believed was the mess hall’s direction. "Well, since no one’s accused me of being a wayward Astech, I’ve had some time to look around. Let’s see how much of it stuck. If we end up at the sewage tank, at least we’ll know where not to go in the future."

Following close behind, Zohra nodded, "Who knows, maybe we’ll find Kerensky and his lost band of misfits hiding somewhere here? Doubtlessly this ship is old enough to have carried them."

"History shows they’d have enough sense to leave." He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, walked backwards four steps to the nearest junction and took a different door.

"Not to sound like Private Protest back there, but what do you have experience with?"

Grinning at Karel’s sudden change of direction, Zohra chuckled, offering an apologetic shrug, before changing her course to follow Karel, "Raiding mostly. Hit and run. Smash and grab. A bit of headhunting. Some defensive operations. Too much garrison duty. I served with the Arkab Legion, so I earned my C-bills unofficially officially fighting the Feddies over lines on the map for the Dracs."

"What about you, got tired of eating loukoumades in some quiet corner of the galaxy?"

Sounded like Zohra might be more at home with mercenary-style operations than he was. Good.

"Eating what now?" He cocked an eyebrow, racking his brain for available Arabic vocabulary and coming up empty. "Whatever it is the answer is ‘no’, I got tired of the staggering levels of incompetence on display by the LCCC and SAFE alike. Also maybe of Wolverine cockpits."

"What!? How do you not know what loukoumades are? Honey balls man, honey balls…For shame, Karel, and you say you were in the LCCC." Zohra teased. "You do look a bit tall for a Wolverine though.

"I was not in the fucking LCCC. I am aware of shortcomings in my leadership abilities and stay the fuck out of command positions, unlike half of those shitheads." He turned around and walked backwards so he could wag a finger at Zohra. Well, stayed out as much as any military allows you, much less an officer, to stay away from any post. The closest he could do is let his more talented underlings do the thinking while he made sure the company always had enough ammo, food and toilet paper.

"’Bit tall.’ Prick of an HR guy didn’t even read my evaluations, looked at the ‘height’ field and I was on my way. What? You want to see to the left, or have room to breathe? Fuck you, SRM6 rack. Leg room? Medium laser. Tear the head off, replace it with anything that’s not an assassin cockpit. Do that and you’ll have a great ‘Mech." His tirade ended when he almost backed into the wall at a T-junction.

"If only the engineers spent half as much time in a cockpit as they do up-selling stats and we might have more livable cockpits," Zohra agreed with a low sigh. Every MechWarrior with any time in a cockpit had experienced first hand designs that were great on paper but missing features that were more than a little important when you spent hours staring at your radar, sweating it out in your own private, fusion powered sauna.
"Left or right?"

"If at least the engineers were allowed to do what they want without someone else getting involved." How many things, ‘Mech, vehicle or even household items, were great in the prototype stage, before other departments besides design and manufacturing got involved? Accounting always throws a spanner into things.

"Right. The opposite option would be ‘wrong’. Then it should be a ladder and a final right. 50 pence says they stopped serving five minutes ago."

"I would cry," Zohra said with the irony thick in her voice. "Tea is a critical part of any pre-drop preparation. What’s next? Are they going to offer us day-old coffee? If you help me get my tea, I’ll put in a good word with the cook and see if I can’t get you something other than mystery meat."

"That was ground and packed at least four years ago. If you give soldiers or mercenaries good quality food, we would be too happy and a lot less willing to kill people on command." Climbing up the steep stairs - no wonder navy folk called them ‘ladders’ - and covering the last stretch of hallway, they’d indeed reached the mess hall. There, among the gathering of technicians and crew, they found their grand prize in the form of a battered 40 liter thermos.

Filling a metal cup that she had judiciously selected due to the lack of obvious rust, Zohra smiled cheerfully having finally acquired her cup of tea. She made no bones about the fact that she was drinking tea out of a packet. She was a mercenary, not a social general. Things were looking up. The odds were only terrible and at least Karel seemed to have a grasp on the layout of the ship. There was hope after all.

"A happy mercenary is a retired mercenary or so my great uncle used to say," Zohra quipped, "Are you all squared away for our first drop? Intel was predictably spotty, but if we’re lucky the Commander might have managed to find something before we launch."

"Am I squared away, let’s see: Never seen a Mongoose before a few hours ago, never piloted a light ‘Mech, only know three out of eight of the company’s MechWarriors beyond a face and tone of voice and last I saw it the ‘Mech was still missing bits." He took a few seconds for silent contemplation, "Yeah, squared away. Down to waiting for the flip so I can finally go to sleep." There were of course the usual worries that came with fighting in such conditions. The lack of a safety net. At 0.4 atmospheres, anyone ejecting or having a cockpit breach was looking at decompression sickness. The complete list of environmental hazards was likely broader.

"That’s what I’m hoping for with the intel, otherwise this will be recon by force and that rarely ends well." He took a sip of his cup, actually pleasantly surprised by the taste. "Now that you’ve acquired tea and no one’s denying you a shower anymore, you got everything ready?"

"I am satisfied," Zohra beamed, the tea managing to dull the edge that she discovered, finding that she shared many of Karel’s thoughts. "It would be greedy to hope for more than a BattleMech and tea at this point, but I would perhaps have wished for a more pleasant planet…and an Atlas for backup."

"If it will cheer you spirit, I can happily report that based on a thorough analysis of the gambling pool maintained by the Techs our odds are not unfavorable to survive more than three sorties. You will simply have to see that you end up on the right side of those interstellar dice."

"Shit, they’re taking bets? Where? I just figured out a patch on my financial situation." If he wins, money. If he loses, who cares, he’ll be dead. Karel finished his tea and rose from his seat, inwardly sniggering at the thought of an Atlas trying to get on the ship and its foot immediately going through the deck plating. So far it was one count tolerable, one count quite agreeable on company mates. "I better go find that bookie, betting on my own survival is gonna require some persuasion and potentially a bribe. I’d wish you good luck, but with what you’re driving, you I’m not too worried about."

Toasting Karel with her tea cup, Zohra grinned, "Bshofak bokra, good fortunes MechWarrior."

'ant rajul qalil al'adab → You are a man of little literature.
From: Qalil al’adab ( قليل الأدب ) – Of little literature, suggesting someone is behaving rudely or in an uncivilized way

laqad marat fatrat mundh 'an... tahadatht... alearabiatu - It's been a while since I spoke arabic.

Bshofak bokra = See you tomorrow

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