![]() ![]() The quickly vanishing island of calm around the opened-up Mackie was the exception to the rule for the rest of the shop. “See if you can start on the ammo bins for the autocannon while I try to wrangle some eggheads,” he called back up as he descended.Ī called, “Yes, Boss!” chased him down before less distinctly-heard commands got his crew up and moving again. Jason grunted in the affirmative before starting to descend from the maintenance gantry. “Well, that and the Administrator is more likely to notice one of the big boys missing or with new gear than an old Commando.” Anne shot back with a lopsided smile, the less mobile skin on her left side only sufficing to give that edge of her lips the faintest hint of a curl. Jason shrugged and pulled himself to his feet as he responded, “We knew these old heaps were going to be a pain in the ass to upgrade. After the slow buildup and then the last few months of frantic activity everyone was ready to kick things off and finally take their pound of flesh from Amaris’s government. “Shit,” Anne replied succinctly, a disgusted expression flashing across her face momentarily. I’ll have to check with the engineers to be sure, though, so by the time they’ve double-checked, we’re probably going to lose a day of work.” It’s no wonder the ammo feed for the LRM launcher doesn’t fit. “I think it was a support for that hunk of junk Fusion Engine they pulled to put the modern 300 in, which means it should already be out of there. “There’s a damn strut in there that isn’t on any of the plans,” Jason replied after his moment’s thought. House Amaris’s less-than-gentle touch had affected all of them, or they wouldn’t be where they were now. When he’d first met her, he’d assumed the angry-looking burn mark that covered most of her left cheek was just one more of those. ![]() Part of that was sheer talent, but the rest was the fact that she’d been working on or around Battlemechs since she was a preteen, and she had the scars on her lithe frame to prove it. She served as his second for their shift, was well liked by the rest of the crew, and was probably his most intuitive tech. “So what’s the verdict boss?” The inquiring voice that greeted him as he emerged belonged to brown-haired Anne Thompson. And at more than two centuries old, they were showing their age. The primitive machine with its unfamiliar structure and clunky internals might have been a mainstay of the Hegemony, but the Mechs the Rim Worlds Republic had obtained for its Militia second- or third-hand were some of the first production models. It was the first of the Assault-weight Militia Battlemechs that they’d worked on, and the theoretical refit their engineers had designed was proving somewhat problematic in practice. Jason Maxwell cursed as he carefully extracted himself from the left side-torso of the Mackie his crew had been working on for the past week. ![]()
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