I had gotten Crossfire into its hangar for repairs and diagnostic checkup after a skirmish with frontier pirates. I had a couple of days down time from the duty roster so I decided to spend the time working on Jabberwocky my Regis Mecha. I was calibrating the new Optical targeting system when The Niodemancer showed up in the hanger.
“Brother Pilot we need to talk!” he called up to me.
“Always when I’m busy,” I said to myself and clambered out of Jabberwocky’s cockpit.
I took the lift to the ground level to see there were two very well dressed individuals accompanying him. They were both dressed in similar looking nondescript charcoal gray suits, both had the corporate short slicked back haircut, and neither looked like they had done any hard labor in their lives at all. Captain Judas the Niodemancer brought me out of my own thoughts by introducing everyone.
“Brother Pilot, this is Mr. Mitsumisho from the Meiji Shogunate. He is here actually to see you and speak with you.”
I was a little on the wary side seeing as out visitor was big time and we were still small fries on the cosmic scales. But I figured what the hell, and stuck out my hand in greeting. “Pleased to meet you Sir”.
He slightly narrowed his eyes, looked at my offered hand, made a snorting kind of noise and slightly nodded his head in my direction. It looked like he was deep in thought for a moment or two as we all stood there in silence before he finally spoke.
“I am as you know a representative of the Meiji Shogunate, my job currently is retribution.” He addressed me in a hoarse whisper. “We had an infantry garrison team over on your old clan base's planetoid, in what you refer to as Sector -8214. Our team has gone quiet and we wish to know who was responsible!”
That was most likely me. See when we moved from the old base to Garhan station we didn't exactly leave on the best terms. We got into a rather heated argument over ammunition resupply schedules. And well to make a long story short, we got the ammo, they died. It was me who gave the fire order, it is all documented and logged with the Brotherhood mission files. I was screwed and we all knew it.
Judas stepped in to try and save my bacon a little. “Mr. Mitsumisho, we did not know those Mecha were in the employ of your organization. They were hoarding ammunition like crazy, enough to outfit a small army far beyond what that garrison needed. Most likely with hostile intent. The Brother Pilot handled the situation as would any Mecha pilot being attacked. He fought.”
Never knew Judas to actually root for me before but wasn’t like I was going to look a gift horse in the mouth at the moment. The Shogunate representative however was not so easily pacified.
“Actually according to our records your pilot was the one who gave the orders and is therefore the aggressor.”
Well he had me there, I did give the go. Judas just shook his head and continued on. “He fired first, and gave orders as a response to what he perceived as a threat! I’m sorry but anyone hoarding that much ammunition, being hostile towards proven allies like the Brotherhood, and powering up mechas is simply looking for a fight end of story. He just happened to give them a fight.”
Mr. Mitsumisho just stood stiff as a board while Judas pleaded my case. Everything came to a jarring halt though when he was explaining as the Shogunate Rep said, “No matter what reasons or excuses you have it does not change matters one bit. Those were our troops you blew up and they were led by my brother. I will have justice!”
Everything became very clear to me then in a nanosecond. The Meiji Shogunate was all about family, honor, and duty. I had killed his brother, he was duty and honor bound to try and avenge that death with my own. The Niodemancer even knew there was no way out of this, we could argue all day long but in the end the result would be the same, we would fight.
I sighed and looked at Judas, he just nodded to me. “Alright then name your time and place and let’s get this over with.”
Mr. Mitsumisho allowed a small smile to cross his face and then named the very same area his brother died in, Sector -8214 at noon the next day. He then went on to describe the rules such as they were. One on one combat, my best mecha against his. Winner is the one who lives to see the next day. Such simple rules even I could follow them. With a stiff nod of the head to me and a slight bow to Judas he turned and walked out of the hanger.
Once he was gone the Captain walked up to me and said, “Look Brother this guy is no push over. Your Fext is in for repairs, we can put a rush on that but I doubt it would be ready by noon tomorrow.”
I just smiled and told him, “That’s okay I need some quality time with my girl Jabberwocky here, and we have ourselves one hell of date planned."
Judas shook his head and walked off, leaving me alone with Jabberwocky. All we could do now was wait and prepare for what the next day would bring, hoping we’d live to see the end of it.
(To be continued…)
Submitted by Pat Willis#224534