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“What was that?” The Loyal Wing in charge of the Albatross detachment turned his head to look at the grizzled man who’d come up beside him.
“They ain’t dead.” He nodded at the ruined house set a bit away from the others, one side of it blown outward in an impressive display of ruined wood and twisted metal.
I am sore tempted to write this off as a false alarm, some fool playing with the emergency channels, the Loyal Wing thought to themselves, and this house the result of the same fool’s moonshine still exploding.
“Ser,” the voice of one of their Petrels crackled in their earpiece. “We’ve found… something. Somethings. Mech chassis – remnants of mech chassis.”
They blinked, their gaze flicking between the house and the man, who smiled back knowingly. “See if you can tell where they came from.”
“On it, ser.”
“Found something, did they?” the old man asked, with a knowing little smile. The Loyal Wing forced themself to relax.
“Something, yes. Tell me – what happened here?”
The man laughed as he pushed open the door, ignoring the ruin only a few feet away, and stepped inside. They hesitated only a moment before following, only to stop as soon as their eyes adjusted.
Sitting on a couch, hands folded in their lap, was an inactive humanoid subaltern, looking all the world as though it were waiting for someone.
“That there’d be Suzy. Or… well, what she used to wear,” the old man said. “Her and her Johnny. They didn’t talk much, y’see, about themselves, just showed up outta the blue a few years back, said they’d had enough of where they came from and wanted to farm, she could look up just 'bout everything they needed to know.” He let out a cackle. “Knowin’ ain’t the same thing as doin’, but they managed. Said they were gonna turn that mech of theirs into a tractor somehow, but they never got around to it.”
“And then…?”
The man shrugged. “Ain’t much left to tell. ‘Bout a week ago, some pirate group made a threat over open comms just before dinner, said they’d made landfall and they’d come to grab whatever caught their fancy. Johnny damn near tipped the table over at Masouf’s and ran out the door, shoutin’ about ‘hit the distress beacon, yank the core out, and fire her up’. ‘Course, everyone followed to see what he was on about, and the next thing we all see is the side of their house get blown out and that mech of theirs stand up, the central power supply of the place dangling from cables. Quick as you please it gets pulled up into the chest of the thing and the whole damn machine just… it looked like smoke and steam, y’know? But it didn’t act like it- too thick, and it didn’t wisp away, just stuck close to the body. It takes a few steps out, away from town, then stops, looks back at us for a second.”
The last look you take before you leave, knowing you won’t come back, the Loyal Wing thought, and nodded. They’d seen too many Petrels make that same look, made it too many times themselves. “And then?”
The farmer shrugged. “Distant lights, sounds of thunder all night long, though there weren’t a cloud in the sky all day or night. Then just before dawn, a shooting star that went the wrong way 'round.”
“Ser,” came the voice of the Petrel, “we think we found where a dropship landed. No sign of it now. A rough guess is that it landed, dropped off the mechs, and then left a few hours later. We're still investigating.”
“I see,” they said, turning their eyes from the subaltern back to the farmer.
“They were lancers, weren’t they?” he said, eyes bright and shrewd underneath the bushy eyebrows. “They’ve gone to take the fight to the rest of them pirates.”
That was a week ago, and there’s been no other distress signals in the area. If they did… “It… certainly seems that way,” the Loyal Wing replied, carefully.
“They ain’t dead,” the farmer said with a nod towards the roof and the sky beyond it. “So we’re keepin’ their home just like they left it until they come back. Lancers… lancers don’t die, y’know?”
The Wing bit their tongue. Lancers do die. I’ve seen far too many ship out who never return, talked with too many who lost their companions…
They looked at the farmer, who was staring at him challengingly, and a name floated out of their memory. Xiong Xiaoli, bodhisattva of the Long Rim, she who killed a gunboat full of White Tiger pirates and the gunboat itself. Whose mech was found, but never her.
“No. Lancers don’t die.”