Colonel Jaime Wolf was confused. He hated that. Being confused in the face of battle resulted in people dying. He had returned to the New Delos system expecting to send Captain Kerensky's unit on a mission of vengeance in the name of his brother, and twenty-seven other hostages murdered in cold blood by Duke Anton Marik.

Instead, his brother's bruised but smiling face was beaming out of the screen on a time-looped transmission, informing him that he and the former hostages were alive and in safe hands (though he refused to specify whose hands those were, not on an open frequency). And that it was now Anton and his closest advisor who were the prisoners.

What the hell was going on here?

~*~

A day later, a Mule-class dropship was approaching the Dragoon's small fleet, under the watchful eyes (and weapons) of the Dragoons. Scanned multiple times by every method Major Tulliver's people could think of, it held - or claimed to hold - his brother and the staff they'd left behind on New Delos. But was it a trap? Tulliver's people were frantically trying to discover that. Another dropship, a Leopard that was hopefully more expendable, was directed to dock with the Mule and take on all of it's passengers, who would then be scanned for implanted bombs, bioweapons and other dangers, while the Mule itself would be turned back to the planet.

Margaret could only pray that both Joshua and Jaime would forgive her for this insistence on such extreme security measures. To her mind, it simply wasn't possible that an unknown cavalry had ridden to Joshua's rescue in the nick of time. That sort of thing only happened in the 3D shows.

Didn't it?

~*~

Colonel Wolf smiled as a mortified Major Tulliver escorted his visibly irked brother into his office. He waved Joshua to a seat, and nodded to Tulliver who gratefully took that as her dismissal. As she opened the hatch to leave, Joshua spoke up.

"Oh, Major?"

Dread colored Tulliver's reply. "Yes, sir?"

"I fully understand both the reason and the need for the strip search. But the next time you get that intimate with me, I'm expecting dinner and a movie afterwards."

The Wolfnet officer fled with an entirely understandable look of embarrassment on her face. Perhaps she could find somewhere to hide before Captain Kerensky found out and skinned her alive?

Jaime took off his jacket, laying it, and his symbols of rank, to one side. Joshua did the same, understand this was going to be a brother to brother talk, and not Colonel to Major.

"So... I suppose I'll just start with the classic line here, Joshua. What. The. Hell. Just. Happened. Down. There?!"

Joshua grimaced. "I'm not entirely sure, so I'll start at the beginning."

"Always a good place to start," snarked Jamie.

"Hush, you. Anyway – Anton betrayed us, just as you suspected he would. He took my staff and I hostage, but never attempted to question us. We were beaten repeatedly, but never asked any questions of military significance. It was as if they didn't expect us to know anything they wanted. Or perhaps that whatever they wanted, they couldn't get from the hostages."

Jaime nodded. "Either control over the Dragoons -- or information about us. And then?"

Joshua laughed. "And then our lunatic friends from Executive Outcomes showed up."

That sent Jaime's eyebrows soaring. "EO? You're certain?"

"They told me someone had taken an insurance policy out on my life, and that it was cheaper to rescue me than to pay the claim." That wrung a snicker from Jaime. "When I asked who, they said it was my 'friend with the plastic knife in his hat'."

"The only people at that reception were Dragoons, Cranston's Irregulars - and Broker. So either one of our people was talking out of school, or it really was Broker. But that begs the question." Jaime rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Why?"

"Why and How, big brother. You should have seen what the interior of Anton's palace looked like as we evac'ed. They managed to kill everyone but Anton himself and his advisor Vesar Kristofur, and kill them before they could take any action against our people. I was the only one who came close to being injured. One of their people took the shot for me, and it was strongly implied that the reason Kristofur's pistol blew up in his hand was because they'd tampered with it." Joshua shook his head. "And when we went through the hallways, every one of Anton's people I could see had lost both feet to explosions, their feet literally ripped off at the ankles. I have no idea how EO managed that."

"So we have many questions, and no answers."

"Actually, one answer. Sort of."

Jaime looked at his brother curiously.

"The leader of their unit, a Rick Sharf, invited us to Porthos in Broker's name. All of us, as in the entire Dragoons, if we like. His words were 'Come see how deep the rabbit-hole goes, Major.'" Joshua laughed. "At least we know they appreciate the classics."

"Do you trust them?" asked Jaime.

"Maybe. But it's not if I trust them, big brother. It's your trust they're interested in. My trusting them, should I decide to trust them, is just an added bonus to what they really want. The trust of the leader of the Dragoons."

"I'm that important to them?"

"They appear to have trust issues with all the other leaders in the Inner Sphere. Or at least Broker does, as he's the one offering the invitation," Joshua chuckled.

"That says things I don't really like about the situation, little brother."

Joshua shrugged. "If nothing else, we have a lot of loyal followers who are heavily armed. If we step into an ambush, we'll be stepping into it with some serious firepower on our side."

"Point taken," nodded Jaime. "And on that note, did they say why they were unwilling to hand over Anton and his first flunky?"

"No," replied Joshua. "Only that they had a plan, that we'd hear about it soon, and we'd probably laugh ourselves sick at how appropriate it was. And one other thing, bro."

"Yes?"

"They told me flatly - this wasn't just Anton. It wasn't even just the rebels inside the Marik family. Vesar Kristofur is ComStar, all the way."

"Is that confirmed?" asked Jaime intently.

Joshua's expression was grim. "The surat actually bragged to me about it, since I wasn't intended to survive. This entire rebellion was to first, send us packing for home to get more gear and more recruits so they could follow us and discover our origin."

"And second?"

"Once Anton was on the throne of the Free Worlds League, Kristofur would become the leash around Anton's neck. And through Anton, they'd control a quarter of the Inner Sphere. 'The new Free Worlds League, a wholly owned subsidiary of ComStar, Incorporated.'"

Jaime nodded. The sickening scenario made too much sense, it simply couldn't be laughed away or denied.

"And EO's willing to hand over all the evidence we need to prove that. If we want it."

"Why wouldn't we want it?"

Joshua gently massaged the aching, slowly healing bruises on his face. "Because we might want to wait a bit. They have something nasty planned for Kristofur."

"What would that be?"

"Big brother... if I ever failed you as badly as Vesar's just failed his Primus, do you think I'd want to come home in defeat to face you? And you're one hell of a lot more forgiving than Tiepolo could ever be."

"Ouch." Jaime leaned back in his seat. "That's just outright cruel. Sadistic, even." A smile bloomed on his face. "I think I like it."

"One last thing you better think about, big brother," Joshua said with a smirk.

"What's that?"

"Duke Anton's just 'vanished' from the scene. So has Kristofur. No one's at the top giving orders to the rebels any more, and Vesar's not reporting back to ComStar about the progress of the rebellion, which has essentially been decapitated."

Jaime swore tiredly. He didn't NEED this emotional rollercoaster. "Lovely. So here come Janos and Tiepolo in a race to see who can get here first, FWL forces or the Com Guard. Let me guess -- along with the invitation, Sharf gave you a time table as to when the EO forces are going to pull out of this system."

"Just as soon as their Mule gets back to their fleet, bro."

But Joshua was speaking to an empty cabin. His brother had already dashed through the hatch to find his XO and begin issuing bugout orders to the Dragoon forces. The younger of the two Wolf brothers gave a shrug.

"Well, at least he left the whiskey cabinet unlocked. Thank Nicholas for small favors..."

~*~

"So the attacks against our stations were merely diversions to pull our rapid reaction forces away from New Delos." Tiepolo looked around the room at his innermost circle, displeasure evident on his face.

"It would appear so, my Primus," Matten sighed. "While we have no hard evidence of any sort, the attacks were too coincidentally timed and located. The forces we moved to deal with the self-professed 'Dread Pirate Roberts' had to be replaced themselves in turn, or leave our other stations uncovered. The easiest reserves to reach for were the reserves allotted to Kristofur's plan, which were believed by most to be unnecessary. It seems all too evident now, but at the time..."

"Quite so, Matten." Julian's hard eyes shifted to the younger man who was the temporary head of ROM in Kristofur's absence. "What useful information does ROM possess about the incident on New Delos, Bigelow."

A faint sheen of nervous perspiration covered the man's forehead. When word of the attack had reached Cairo - and the fact that ComStar's hyperpulse generators had been successfully disabled with no idea whatsoever of how it had been achieved - he'd been given access to higher level files that were sealed under CODE NAME CLASSIFIED/NEED TO KNOW access, with Kristofur's personal cipher. Vesar hadn't committed anything truly damning to computers under ComStar control, but the information he was required to record was beginning to form patterns, patterns that Bigelow knew would enrage the Primus. Heads were going to roll inside ROM, and he didn't want his own to be the first.

"I - ah, sir..." Bigelow coughed, then continued. "The attackers wore no unit insignia, nor did they identify themselves as belonging to any particular unit. They did not physically attack any ComStar installation, aside from their shut-down of the HPG's. We are still investigating how that was done. Nor did they attack the ComGuard unit protecting the ground-side New Delos installation. Vesar himself is missing and presumed dead, as is Duke Anton. The rebellion is in chaos, and the Captain-General's forces are sweeping rebel units aside in a sudden push to New Delos itself."

"And how did Janos Marik discover that his brother was no longer leading the rebellion?" asked Julian in a frighteningly quiet manner.

Bigelow took a nervous breath. "The first message transmitted once the HPG came back online was an announcement of the attack on New Delos and the defeat of Anton's forces, sir. The transmission was unauthorized, yet carried ComStar PRIORITY FLASH headers, so it was immediately delivered to the Captain-General without any questions on the part of our people on Atreus."

"Interesting. I presume our message priority codes have all been changed?" Tiepolo's tone was that of idle disinterest - and didn't fool Bigelow for a second.

"Yes, sir. It was done immediately." Bigelow held up a datapad. Please, PLEASE let this save my life. To hell with my career, I just want my life. "Something valuable has come out of this incident, sir. Extremely valuable."

Julian raised an eyebrow. "What might that be?'

"One of our minor acolytes had chosen to live 'on the economy'. His apartment was in the line of attack, and he caught a portion of the battle on a home video recorder, my Primus. He also informed his superior of what he had seen, and a retrieval team— it would perhaps be easier to show you, Primus?"

"Do so."

The video was clearly shot by an amateur with a hand-held camera - the fits, starts, and jerky pans were proof enough of that. It began with a brief sweep of the street, showing burning buildings and a squat, ugly machine, much shorter than any battlemech, striding down the road. The machine reminded Julian of an industrial loader, though the weapon mounted on the right arm quickly gave the lie to that first impression.

Duke Anton's troops were attempting to engage the machine with infantry weapons, leading to ludicrous results - at least at first. The squat machine brushed the foot soldiers aside in an almost contemptuous manner, until one of them produced a hand-held anti-armor missile.

The short-range missile was one of the heaviest that an individual infantryman could carry, and at such short distance, it was almost impossible to dodge. Only a last second movement by the machine caused the missile to strike one of it's arms, rather than dead center on what looked like a cockpit. The shaped-charge warhead tore off the lower arm of the machine, the impact knocking it into a nearby building. Bigelow paused the recording.

"The acolyte had the presence of mind to inform his superior of what he'd witnessed, sir, and the limb was recovered. It was on the first ship out, and was forwarded to Earth via a command circuit with the utmost priority, Primus. Two very important things were discovered that explained much of what happened on New Delos and why, sir."

Bigelow forwarded the contents of his datapad to the main briefing screen and began to display the results of the examination. "First, the primary material of the arm is an alloy of tungsten, vanadium and rhenium. This alloy is actually HARDER than diamond, yet still flexes and shears like metal. It makes our best battlemech armor look like aluminum foil, sir, yet it does not require the extra bulk that ferro-fibrus armor or endo-steel structure does. If this is what they make their 'mechs out of, then kilo for kilo, their mechs will outperform anything in the Inner Sphere, sir."

He tapped the datapad again. "Secondly, there is the myomer fiber used in the actuators. In the beginning, our technicians and researchers refused to believe their own reports. The performance of the myomer exceeds anything we know by a significant degree."

"How significant is 'significant'?" asked Tiepolo coldly.

Bigelow coughed nervously. "My Primus, the current state of the art in myomer gives a 100 ton 'mech with a class 400 engine a maximum walking speed of approximately 44 kilometers an hour. This myomer, under similar limits, produced the equivelent of 55 kilometers per hour, and a running speed of 87 kilometers per hour. It could easily give an assault mech the speed of a medium mech without any need to reduce the amount of armor or weapons carried."

Everyone at the table aside from Julian and Matten blinked in shock, imagining an Atlas that could gamble around the battlefield as swiftly as a Crab. Bigelow continued on.

"It has two apparent weakness, Primus. It generates more heat than either military or industrial myomer, generating as much heat standing still as other myomers would walking or running. And it reacts badly with myomer accelleration signal circuitry, freezing instantly."

Tiepolo went straight for the heart of the matter.

"Can we reproduce this myomer?"

The fear was clearly visible in Bigelow's eyes as he temporized, trying to avoid angering the Primus any further. "It is possible to produce in small batches in the laboratory, sir. This is both good news and bad, in that we are unable to mass-produce it for lack of proper materials, but the Successor states would not be able to produce it at all."

"Lack of materials," noted the Primus with menace in his voice.

"Yes, sir." Despite the air-conditioned room, Bigelow was now sweating heavily. "There are a number of extremely rare elements and catalysts required to duplicate this myomer, sir, making large-scale production prohibitively expensive. At the moment, it is cost that holds us back. It would be possible to produce enough of it to equip a small number of elite Battlemech units, however. If money were no object, that is."

Tiepolo rested his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers and peering over their tips at his advisers. "Again, rare and difficult to obtain materials. Does that sound familiar to you, Matten?"

"It sounds much like the large and still unexplained amounts of gold and silver flooding the precious metals market, sir. It sounds a great deal like Executive Outcomes."

"Indeed." Julian looked back at Bigelow. "You will continue in office until I see fit to appoint a successor to Precentor ROM. The investigation into the origins of the Wolf's Dragoons will take second place. All available ROM assets will strive to discover where these suspiciously wealthy Periphery mercenaries come from. You will find the source of their wealth and their homeworld or worlds." He looked to the head of science and research. "Reproduce this myomer. Find ways of reducing the cost, however small such reductions might be." His eyes shifted to the head of the Explorer Corp. "Find me the worlds they are mining for these rare metals. Find them swiftly." His gaze returned to the temporary leader of ROM. "Bigelow?"

"Yes sir?" The temporary Precentor ROM was proud of the fact that his voice didn't quaver.

"Kristofur is missing and presumed dead, as is Duke Anton."

"Yes, sir."

"I am... aware of Vesar's ambitions. You will find him, dead or alive. If dead, you will produce his corpse. Failing that, I will settle for yours. Is that clear?"

Bigelow swallowed the large and painful lump that had mysteriously found its way to his throat. "Quite clear, sir."

~*~

Jaime Wolf had chosen to take Sharf - and by extension, Broker - at his word, arriving with a full battalion behind him and Joshua at his side, while Natasha Kerensky was close by Joshua's side. Damned near welded to his side, thought Jaime, amused. She and her entire company were still furious that they hadn't been able to lay hands on the erstwhile "Captain-General of the Free Worlds League", and Kerensky herself wanted to have a long talk with Mr. Broker about that. It had taken all of Wolf's authority to persuade her that "talking" to Mr. Broker would not involve death threats, open gunplay and 'mech-to-'mech combat on her part.

That, Jaime felt, might put a bit of a strain on the good relations between the Dragoons and EO.

Just a bit.

Porthos was something of an eye-opener to the Dragoons. There were more jump-ships around the zenith point than he'd seen around even a provincial capital system. It definitely explained some of the reason ComStar was focusing more on the EO and less on the Dragoons, but nowhere near enough. Hopefully, he was finally going to get more of the truth behind Executive Outcomes. Of course, that might mean EO might get more of the truth behind the Dragoons.

That should make a loyal son of the Clans unhappy.

Shouldn't it?

He rubbed the gold coin in his pocket, a habit that had gotten stronger since his brother's rescue. Jaime wasn't the mystic sort - he'd have never fit in if he'd been taken as a bondsman by the Goliath Scorpions or the Nova Cats. That was more Cranston's style. Yet the irrational belief that Broker and his people were somehow central to the Dragoon's mission was growing stronger with each passing day.

Speaking of which, Cranston's people were here as well. It made Jaime want to roll his eyes melodramatically. Broker couldn't be more obvious about it if he'd invited them all to after-dinner drinks in a drawing room to announce that he'd discovered who the murderer was.

"And the butler did it..." Jaime murmured, getting a strange look from his brother.

"Need a little rest, big brother?"

"No," sighed Jaime. "Cranston's here, Broker's here, too damn many ships are here - the whole situation's beginning to feel like the dénouement of a murder mystery. A detective in a scruffy trenchcoat is going to walk on to my bridge at any moment and tell us 'whodunnit'."

That gave Joshua a bit of a pause. "Hadn't thought about it that way. But yeah, there is that sort of feeling in the air, as if someone's going to 'tell all.'"

"That, and the fact that anything we learn from Broker has to be reported to the ilKhan and Council," noted Natasha, standing by her lover's side.

"Captain, I'm beginning to think that if we tell the Council everything we know about Executive Outcomes, that will result in the Clans launching an immediate attack on the Inner Sphere. And I have the unwelcome feeling that we might not automatically win that war."

"Some might call that heresy," Kerensky pointed out flatly.

Jaime shrugged. "I made a guess about Mr. Broker's people when we first met them. And I suspect he meant for me to make that guess. If I'm right, then our Clans are literally playing catch-up to a people with a five century long head-start. The Clans are good, Captain. We're very good. But are we that good? Five hundred years is a long time."

Natasha gave him a sharp look. "Five hundred years? The founding of the Star League?"

"Just something Broker said that day at Fort Jaime. 'Our libraries and universities never burned. Our factories were never bombed into rubble.'" Wolf frowned. "The Inner Sphere had it's Succession Wars and we had our civil war. If Broker wasn't lying and my suspicions are true, we - Clan and Inner Sphere - are half an eon behind them. Maybe more."

"So they're manipulating us?"

"I'm reasonably certain we're being manipulated. Everyone's being manipulated by somebody. My question - and it should be yours, as well - is this: do we want to go where Broker's trying to lead us?"

"Even if we don't," Joshua pointed out, "the Council will. Someone with free access to Star League technology? Possibly a state that can strike the Clans from behind while they're attempting to retake the Inner Sphere? Even General Kerensky didn't believe in conducting a two-front war. We don't really have a choice. Anything less leaves us fighting in the dark."

A voice came from behind them. "Colonel?"

"What is it?"

"Message from the Porthos zenith jump station. We're being welcomed to Porthos, given a selection of parking orbits we can choose from, and that with your permission, Mr. Broker would be honored if he could dock his Mule with your command jump ship and discuss certain heretofore private matters with you."

"'heretofore'?" Mild disbelief warred with amusement in Jaime's expression.

"Yes, sir. That's how the message read. 'heretofore'."

"Definitely sounds like Jared's sense of humor," Joshua quietly snarked from behind his brother.

Jaime nodded. "Time to see how deep this rabbit hole does go, brother mine." He turned to the messenger. "Thank the station for the selection of parking orbits, inform them when we select one -- and send to Mr. Broker 'Wolf's Dragoons are ready to go spelunking.' Send that immediately."

"Yes, sir!"

~*~

"I'd like Major Wolf, along with Captain Kerensky and her people, to accompany me back to Kyfhon space for twelve weeks, Colonel."

That was perhaps the last thing Jaime Wolf expected to hear. He made certain that his impassive expression hadn't slipped, double-checked his voice for that stern, deliberate command tone, and made sure to look Broker squarely in the eye.

"Excuse me?"

His performance might have been a bit more convincing if his eyebrows hadn't tried to crawl up into his hairline.

"We know you're from the Clans. You know that we know you're from the Clans, Colonel." Jared's expression was amused. "I mean no offense, but the Diamond Sharks gossip like little old women at times." That statement got several amused snorts from some of the older Dragoons who'd experienced Chatterweb rumor and innuendo firsthand. "So we've come to the conclusion that our purposes are best served if you see, with your own eyes, who and what we are."

Broker shrugged ever so slightly. "I'm under no illusion that disclosure will restrain the more impetuous of the Crusader Clans, but the Warden Clans might just have the courage to admit we're a bit too tough a bite for them to chew on. And the best of my people believe that if we can convince the Dragoons of this, the Warden Clans will follow your lead."

"And how will you deal with the inevitable accusations that your 'evidence' is nothing more than a Potemkin village, arranged solely to mislead us?"

"Oh, for shame, Colonel. I'm asking for YOUR brother! Be honest - do you think we could fool him, and Captain - no, excuse me, Star Colonel - Kerensky, AND her infamous Black Widows for a full three months?" Broker chuckled. "We might be able to keep the truth away from him, but he certainly wouldn't believe our lies, and neither would the lovely Star Colonel. Particularly if he's already suspicious, and on the lookout for lies to begin with."

"You seem a trifle more informed than access to the Chatterweb would account for, Mr. Broker."

"A very wise man once said 'the power of gold over the mind of man doth surpass all understanding', Khan Jaime Wolf of the Wolf's Dragoons. And the Dark Caste are but men." Jared nodded at the almost imperceptible flicker in Wolf's eyes. "The bandit caste need food, air and water just as you do. And they find information to be such a minor and unimportant thing to trade for those items." Broker held out one hand, open and empty. "Information for information, Colonel. Simply informing the ilKhan that the bandit castes are 'betraying' them - not that they aren't exiled already - is of great value. I give you that for free, do with it as you will."

"And if my brother chooses to do this? What is involved?"

"Very little, Colonel. There are still some few errands, even today, that are best taken care of in a face to face manner. I need to take care of several such, and they require me to return home for a few weeks." Broker nodded in Joshua's direction. "All he, and the beautiful Natasha, need do is play tourist at my expense. I'm making a gamble here, Colonel, with my own personal funds. I'm gambling that I'm right, and that showing him this will benefit me and my people in the long run."

"And you expect my people to simply walk unarmed into a possible trap?"

For the first time, Jaime saw an expression of shock on Broker's face. Disgust quickly followed it. "Colonel Wolf, I would never insult a guest like that! Demanding a guest disarm in public? That's- that's sick." Jared looked almost nauseated, and Jaime realized he'd struck some sort of social or cultural taboo.

"I'm sorry, I simply assumed—"

"No, no, you had no way of knowing, Colonel." Broker inhaled deeply. "Cultural thing, I realize it wasn't intentional on your part. Still, I should make my position on this clear. Anyone we invite to Kyfhon controlled space is free to bring whatever personal weapons they care to. This includes everything up to and including personally-owned battlemechs. Weapons of mass destruction do require advance notice, but that is not a matter of 'law' but of culture and tradition." He paused, and then grinned slightly. "Well, that and the fact that when someone gets careless with thermo-nuclear demolition units or with Von Neumann machines, we tend to get a little irked. And with my people, there are no prisons."

"No prisons?" Now Wolf was desperately curious. "Then how are things handled?"

"Restitution, exile, and death."

"Mmm. That's very... Clan-like, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Not at all." Broker paused, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes. Major Wolf may bring any weapon he likes, as may Captain Kerensky and her Black Widows. They're welcome to bring along a fully armed and loaded Union, complete with their personal mechs, if they wish. In fact, that would be quite helpful, as they can simply dock with the ship I'll be taking home. Cranston will be doing the same."

"Captain Snord will be going with you?"

"Yes," nodded Jared. "For much the same reason as his group was originally created for. I want the Dragoons to have several different points of view about what they're going to see, Colonel." He made a sweeping gesture with one hand. "A great many preconceptions you may have about the universe are going to be challenged. That's never an easy thing for a man to endure. It's helpful to have as many facts to hand as possible when such a change occurs."

"I think you're probably right." Jaime looked thoughtful. "A question, if you don't mind?"

"I don't, but feel free to ask another."

Jaime grinned at the old joke. "Walked into that one, didn't I?" His expression sobered quickly. "Anton's men. I've read Joshua's report, he went into great detail. How the hell did you manage to do that?" Colonel Wolf didn't need to define what "that" was.

"Who cleans your uniforms, Colonel? Who shines your shoes?"

The apparent non sequitur threw Wolf for a moment. "My uniform? Why, that's— Oh. Oh, hell."

The smile on Broker's face was cold even by Clan standards. "Exactly. We saw this coming. You weren't the only people receiving information from inside House Liao. We consider you something of an ally, and definitely a friend. So we infiltrated New Delos some time ago. You'd be surprised how much access you can get to the inside of an opponent's forces if you're willing to accept jobs that others sneer at and look down upon. After all - who can get closer to a target than the target's own servants. Remember Yoguchi Kurita and Snow Fire?"

"You loaded their combat boots with explosives? How the hell did you manage that without being detected?!"

"No, we filled their combat boots - and the buttons on their uniforms, along with a few other items - with nice, sturdy, structural plastics that do NOT trip explosive detectors. It actually improved the quality and durability of their uniforms by a measurable percentage, and saved them quite a bit of money. They should have thanked us, really." A few of the Dragoons goggled at the irony contained in that dryly spoken statement.

"Then how— ?"

"The difference between plastic and plastic explosives is most often merely a little nitrogen here and there, sir. And there's plenty of nitrogen in the air around us. A few nano-machines that can respond to a command broadcast over a mesh network and make a slight chemical change to that plastic..." Broker gave an eloquent shrug.

A number of the Dragoons were looking at Broker with the stunned disbelief of a person who'd just realized they'd mistaken a lethal pit viper for a harmless grass snake.

"And then a second command over that same mesh network - this time to detonate," noted Jaime, calmly. But behind that calm facade, his mind raced, searching for ways to detect this sort of threat, and to defend against it. "After which, your people walk in and retrieve the hostages with no resistance from the guards, who'd by then be bleeding to death from two severed ankles. Viciously effective, with minimal risk to the hostages under most circumstances."

Broker nodded respectfully. "Thank you. We had several backup plans, just in case. It was important to us to retrieve all of the hostages alive."

"For which we thank you." Jaime returned the nod. "That would leave the decision up to Joshua, then. Is there a deadline, or do we have time to discuss things among ourselves?"

"My time - at least for now - is yours, Colonel." Broker rose and bowed. "If I might ask for an escort back to my dropship? And do feel free to call upon us for fresh supplies - I'm intimately familiar with how frustrated people aboard ship can become with canned... well, with canned EVERYTHING, I suppose. When even the air and water are canned, tempers rise. Porthos can't supply everything, but my supply people will try to rise to the challenge."

"Thank you, Mr. Broker."

Broker waved it aside with a grin. "It's something of a game to them. The more obscure and difficult the request, the more they enjoy trying to fill it. We had one wit decide to ask for Ovalkwik every time his cargo ship stopped by, and the supply department finally decided that if it was Ovalkwik he wanted, it was Ovalkwik he'd get."

"I'm almost afraid to ask, but... what's Ovalkwik?"

"A mixture of glucose, fructose, corn syrup solids, concentrated cocoa-bean extract, assorted methylxanthine alkaloids including caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline, sodium laureth sulfate, minoxadyl, buckminster fullerene, codeine, hyper-ephedrine, nicotine, butylated hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene."

All of the Dragoons in the office looked vaguely nauseated at the description. "And he actually ate that?" wondered Colonel Wolf.

"He annoyed so many people with his demands, my supply department made him eat it. He never asked for it again. Now, I have to return to my ship, Colonel. Thank you, and hopefully, all your questions will be answered very soon."

~*~

"Do you want to do this, Joshua? This is entirely voluntary."

The younger man grinned widely. "Just you try and stop me, big brother. These people just knocked an entire planet on its ass, and did it because they didn't feel like paying off an insurance claim! I have got to learn the truth about them, period. I'll go crazy with curiosity if I don't!"

Jaime sighed, and turned to face Natasha. "And if he goes, you're going to follow."

"If you order me to stay here, I'll stay here." Kerensky was stone-faced.

"And we'll be in a Trial of Grievance five minutes after I give that order, won't I," Jaime grumbled. It wasn't a question.

The attempted look of innocence on Natasha's face might have fooled a blind man.

Colonel Wolf took a deep breath, held it for several moments, then let it out slowly. "All right. If you want to go, Joshua, you may go. But I want you and everyone with you to be on your guard. And be as diplomatic as possible. If these people are who I believe them to be, they're another faction in the war that's to come. I'd really prefer to have them on MY side when the shooting starts." He turned to Natasha. "Take your Widows with you — but keep an eye on Koniev. I don't want to offend out hosts by turning a thief loose on them entirely unsupervised."

"I'll see to it," nodded Kerensky. "If he raises a single sticky finger, I'll break it off his thieving hand."

"Good. Assemble your people, brief them, and see to it that they're ready. We'll give Broker his answer just as soon as we finish our replenishment." Jaime and Natasha rose, saluted, and left the cabin to carry out their orders.

So, how deep does the rabbit hole go, Mr. Broker? As deep as I think? Or deeper yet? Wolf smiled to himself in the silence of his cabin. Khan Ward may yet be vindicated.

~*~

I love Natasha, but sometimes I think she's a little insane, mused Joshua Wolf. He'd just finished moving his personal gear to the Union-Class dropship Widow's Web. Her sense of humor was entertaining, but more than a little twisted at times. Though I suspect Broker would be greatly amused by it, given what his people did to Anton. Mental note: find out exactly what they have planned for Anton and that ComStar stravag Kristofur and report it back to Jaime soonest. I wonder if what they plan on doing is... appropriate for a betrayal of this sort. Boiling oil would be nice.

There was a rap at his cabin door. "Enter!"

One of Natasha's people was standing there. "Message for you, sir. Mr. Broker would like to invite you to the bridge of the Audacity once the Web docks. They're going to jump just as soon as Captain Snord's dropship finishes docking."

"Thank you, corporal. Please inform Mr. Broker that I'll be there."

"Yes, sir." The noncom saluted, and hurried away.

Finally. Hopefully, he'd get to see if his brother was right or wrong. Jaime had eventually shared his suspicious about the origins of Executive Outcomes with him, so that he would have someone to check his theories. It had been hilarious to discover that the Dragoons were speculating just as intensely about when EO had come from as the Inner Sphere was about the Dragoons themselves.

He checked his uniform before striding briskly to the docking ring. It wouldn't do to show up mussed. They were trying to impress EO. And he had to admit, he really did want to impress them. He still felt faintly irked that they had needed EO to come to his rescue. He knew it was irrational - the odds of twenty-eight people defying all of Duke Anton's forces were about those of a snowball's chances in a blast furnace. Despite that, there was a part of him that wished they'd put up a better showing, particularly in front of outsiders that he now knew had "seen it all," simply for pride's sake.

~*~

As Cranston, Joshua and Natasha all entered the lift for the bridge, they were noticing the same things. This ship was new. It had the look of a ship that had just successfully finished its space trials, and not the exhausted, used-for-centuries air of the irreplaceable jump ships of the Inner Sphere. It was a jump ship, but of no lineage they were familiar with. Even newly built Clan jumpships were the recognizable descendants of Star League designs. This ship was subtly different. All ships, space or water, were defined by two things - the task they were designed to accomplish, and the aesthetics of the people who'd designed them. Though there was nothing specific Joshua could point to, the over-all feel of the ship was different from anything built by either the Clans or the Inner Sphere.

They reached the deck below the bridge, and exited the lift under the eyes of the unfailingly polite, yet clearly dangerous guards who escorted them the rest of the way. The crew was preparing for the jump, while Broker himself stood in front of an observation dome. He turned and approached them, smiling.

"Thank you, all three of you. I hope you enjoy what you're about to see - and that you'll forgive both my sense of humor and the occasional small joke." His smile widened. "If nothing else, you can take pride in that you're going to be the first people from the Inner Sphere or the Clans to visit our home in over five hundred years. Your names would be in history books, if they weren't already."

Cranston's eyes sparkled. "I have an entire drop ship full of collectors who can't wait to arrive and start buying things. We will be able to get our money exchanged, yes?"

"That won't be a problem," Jared laughed. He looked over at Joshua. "I'm glad you chose to come, Major."

"I'm glad you chose to rescue me," Joshua replied. "I seem to have this allergic reaction to dying."

"Ah, yes - quite a bit of that going around these days," chuckled Broker. He waved them towards some jump-seats towards the stern of the bridge. "Shall we strap down? We jump momentarily."

~*~

Rumor and gossip had quickly spread from Cranston's people to those of Kerensky. So the announcement from the captain of the Audacity didn't surprise them very much.

"Attention all hands: first jump to take place in ten minutes. This is your ten minute warning. Please strap down and prepare for jump. There will be thirty minutes between jumps, and a three hour layover after the third jump for battery exchange and drive coolant flush. You will have ten minutes warning before each jump. That is all."

"How far away do you think the Kyfhon are?" asked Lynn Sheridan, curious.

"Can't be that far," replied Koniev. "Even if they can jump three or four times, that's only 120 light years."

"This is your five minute warning. Repeat: five minutes to jump."

"You're certain of that, are you?"

"Thirty light years to a jump, Sheridan. You heard Snord's people. They've got drives that can do more than two jumps, but they're still not going any further per jump. 120 light years max."

Strapped to a crash couch, Lynn couldn't shrug, but the doubt was clearly evident in her voice. "Right. You'll just pardon me while I withhold judgement."

"Lynn, if they had anything better, they'd have taken over the Inner Sphere by now."

"And if they simply don't care to?"

"Then they're fools."

"One minute to jump."

"Guess we're going to find out then."

"Jumpi—"

~*~

Cranston was a little nauseated, but didn't let that get in the way of taking in everything he possibly could. The first three jumps had been similar, if a little slower, than the first trip to New Valencia. The thirty minute window between jumps had helped mightily, fewer of his people were jump-sick, and going by what he overheard of the intercom traffic to Natasha, the numbers appeared about the same for her Widows.

The Audacity had finished exchanging batteries and was in the middle of a 'coolant flush' - and why hadn't anyone in the Inner Sphere ever thought of cooling a jump engine like that before? It worked for 'mechs, so why hadn't anyone tried it on a ship? He chalked up another tally mark on his mental list of 'how the hell did we miss this one?' and took in the vista from the observation deck. The captain of the Audacity had allowed everyone to move freely about the ship during the layover, with the understanding that they'd be back aboard their dropships at least thirty minutes before departure.

Wherever they were, Athos base was impressive for something deep in the Periphery. And he was amused by the classical reference. Porthos and Athos, two of the Three Musketeers. These Kyfhons enjoyed their little in-jokes, sometimes a bit too much. But then, given his own obsessive interest in history, he was the last person who could point a finger at them.

There appeared to be quite a bit of traffic through this base. He'd just seen another jump ship, a huge Monolith, passing by on its way out system. Where, he couldn't say. But given the huge amount of processed metals EO was dumping on the market, he could easily guess its cargo. The gold standard, at least in the Inner Sphere, was taking a beating. Along with the silver standard, the platinum standard, and just about every damned precious metal standard in existence.

The voice came over his shoulder. "Impressed?"

Snord grinned, but didn't turn around. "The special effects are nice, but when does the introduction end and the main title begin?"

Jared stepped into his line of sight. "In about thirty-five minutes. Cooling's almost finished, and the thirty minute warning will sound soon."

"Good. I've been wondering about this ever since that trip to Fort Jaime."

"Planning on buying some of our history books?" laughed Broker.

"If you're selling them," Cranston grinned. His expression turned sober. "I think I've guessed who your people are, my friend. Joshua and Jaime too, I'd wager."

"So you don't want to attend the Grand Unveiling? I'm hurt." The mock dismay on Jared's face was amusing.

"Trust me, Jared, you couldn't get me to stay away with a Battlemaster."

"How about an Atlas?"

"Only if you stepped on me."

The two men chuckled together.

"Attention. Attention. This is your thirty minute warning. All passengers and crew please proceed toward your bunks or crash couches and strap in. Rift insertion in thirty minutes. Repeat, rift insertion in thirty minutes."

Snord's ears pricked up. "Rift insertion? What's that?"

The smile Broker gave him would haunt his memory.

"Something wonderful."

~*~

"Thirty seconds to rift insertion."

Natasha looked over at Joshua, barely repressing her irritation. Every attempt to learn what "rift insertion" meant simply garnered an annoyingly polite smile from crewmembers, and the statement that she should "really ask Mr. Broker." If she didn't get an answer soon, ally or not, Broker would have a very irate Dragoon on his hands, and she did not intend to remain polite about it for much longer.

"Rift inser—"

Jumps between systems were supposed to be instantaneous. They certainly felt instantaneous. An almost immeasurably brief instant of cold and void, a flicker of impossible geometries. But however disturbing it felt (and over ninety percent of all humans felt at least some discomfort during a jump), it never lasted long.

This seemed to go on forever.

The air tasted blue. Her undergarments sounded F-sharp. The overhead lights seemed friendly and outgoing. Then the universe returned to normal.

"—ertion. Rift exit confirmed. Rift traversal successful. All stations report status."

"What The HELL Was THAT?" Kerensky almost shouted. She stared at the EO leader, her eyes demanding answers.

"That," smiled Broker, "was us traversing a cosmic rift, Star Colonel. Welcome to the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Mind your baggage, you're a long way from the Inner Sphere. A little over three kiloparsecs away."

For the first time in years, Natasha's jaw dropped.

"Welcome, neighbors, to Citadel Station."

~*~

Joshua knew what he was looking at, but he still couldn't believe it. It hurt his mind just trying to think about it.

It was huge.

Cylindrical. Ninety kilometers long. Forty kilometers in diameter. It made even the Star League's best efforts at space habitats look like a pathetic joke.

It was an O'Neil cylinder. And according to Jared, it was one of his people's smaller cities.

"Great Father."

He turned to look at his lover, who was staring at the station as if she thought it would vanish at any moment.

"I can't believe any of this is real," Natasha breathed softly.

"We'd better. According to the captain, we'll be in the docking queue a kilosecond from now. Then a few kiloseconds later, we'll head to Broker's local office for the 'official' debriefing."

"Kilosecond?"

"I asked the captain. They apparently use metric time measurements. It's about seventeen minutes."

"So we'll get our promised briefing in ... about an hour, then?"

"A little over that," Joshua agreed.

"I think we're in a little over our heads."

"No argument there."

"The Council's going to have a fit when they see this." Tasha's irrepressible good humor was gradually returning. "The Crusader Clans will shit themselves at the very thought."

"To be a fly on the wall of the council chamber when that happens."

"That would be worth bidding for," Tasha laughed.

"Let's go get briefed then," Joshua said as he gave the massive cylinder one more look. "I can't wait to hear this story."

~*~

It took more time than Joshua thought would be needed to enter the habitat. Not that the people were slow or inefficient. No. It was the fact that the outer skin of the habitat was kilometers thick. Literally. It reminded him of the massive stone walls of an abandoned Brian cache he'd seen before they'd left the Pentagon worlds. He suspected that this place could laugh at multi-megaton warheads. They had to traverse ten airlocks to get inside, and the airlock doors... fully two meters thick, perhaps more. An Atlas in all its fury might be able to ruin their paint job. Slightly.

Once they were through the locks, the short trip to the building Broker called his local office was eye-opening, and more than a little frightening. Yet very familiar at the same time. The crowds around them were strangely silent, yet acted as though they were communicating. As they passed a landscaped park, Joshua could see children running and playing, a young woman buying some sort of sandwich from a vender with a hand-pushed cart, young couples on the park benches, holding each other.

It was the fact that the young woman buying the food had fur and a tail that threw him. And she wasn't the only one.

He could hear the Dragoons behind him, some of them uneasily murmuring "genecaste." He had to put a stop to that immediately. He turned to face them. "I don't give a damn what your sibko leaders or parents told you when you were little sibbies. The genecaste aren't hiding under your bunks to take you away if you misbehave. These people saved my life and the lives of the Colonel's wife and children. They are potential allies, and they've treated us with respect and dignity. We'll treat them the same way unless and until we're given a reason to do otherwise. Is. That. Clear?"

He was the saKhan of the Clan (sort of) of the Wolf's Dragoons, and he showed it now, emanating hard-won authority, the authority he'd earned in brutal Trials of Position. The Widows went silent, and Joshua could see Snord taking his own people in hand, including a slightly nervous Rhonda.

Huh. I bet Cranston used those same bedtime stories when Rhonda got out of hand. If he did, he's probably regretting it now!

The monorail eased to a stop, and their escorts led them to the building. Not that they'd have missed it - the massive ohm and starburst over the main entrance was unmistakeable. It was a nice touch, thought Joshua, and it reassured him. Symbolism was important to humanity. If it was still important to the Kyfhon, then they were probably still human. Despite what they'd just seen in the park.

He could see Jared ahead of him, consulting with a receptionist behind a desk that looked large enough to land aerospace fighters, then nodding with a smile before walking off. A hundred meters and two quick turns later, and they were in a subdued yet elegant conference hall, being escorted to their seats. Despite the pressure he was under, Joshua couldn't help but grin. If he was right, this would be the most fun he'd had in years.

~*~

"So, would you like to ask any questions? Or would you prefer that I simply begin my long and tedious explanation?"

To the surprise of his fellow Dragoons, and everyone else in the room, Joshua's hand shot up in the air like a student's.

Jared looked at him quizzically. "Yes, Major?"

"Ooo! Ooo! Teacher! I know the answer! May I? May I?"

There was dead silence for a moment, and then...

"Bwahahahahahahahahaha!"

The Dragoons and the Irregulars looked on in confusion as Broker toppled sideways from his seat, roaring with laughter.

Wolf grinned in triumph. "Got you!"

Jared climbed back to his feet, still chuckling. "And to the victor go the spoils. You choose who talks first, Major."

"Thank you. And here's what I think. I think you're Belters. Or the desendants of Belters, to be a little more precise."

Broker held up his index finger. "Point to the Major."

"You said yourself that your people left the Inner Sphere when Ian Cameron founded the Star League, because you had no intentions of becoming another casualty of the Reunification War. You also told us that Rudolph Ryan was a sympathizer with your cause, whatever it was. I think that means he gave you the technology he created to synchronize sixteen jumpships and control overlapping hyperspace fields in order to move entire ice asteroids from system to system. The same technology we've long since lost with the fall of the Star League."

Jared held up a second finger. "Going strong now."

"You built entire space habitats capable of jumping, and more or less created 'colonies in a box', allowing you to settle an entire system in a single go, without the limitations of a single ship or fleet of ships. Schools, hospitals, factories, everything a colony required, already assembled and working. Colonization without the delays of building a supporting infrastructure, because you imported the infrastructure along with the people instead of building it on site. Entire prefabricated worlds."

"Three for three, Major. Care to go for the high score?"

"I do. When you arrived here, however long it took, you found a number of missing jump ships. Including the TAS Liberator and the Diamond Shark cargo ship you mentioned during our meeting at Fort Jaime." Wolf took a breath, let it out carefully, then continued on. "If an event occurs in nature, mankind can duplicate it, if he wants to. Eventually. You investigated, discovered how those ships got here, and you managed to recreate the process, under controlled circumstances, at will. That's how we arrived here, and what 'rift insertion' meant." He waved one hand in a deliberately melodramatic fashion. "That's all I've got. Now it's your turn."

"And the Major wins the cigar!" Jared cheered, giving Joshua a wide smile and a respectful salute. "Refreshments all around, and then I'll fill in the rest of the story. How's that sound?"

"Sounds good to me. I'll have a beer." With that, Joshua flopped back down in his seat and grinned at the rising tide of astonished babble surrounding him.

~*~

Cranston nursed his beer (nice, dark and filling, just the way he liked it - whatever else the Kyfhon were, they brewed an excellent beer) and watched his people carefully. Obsessions and personal loyalty could carry a person only so far, and his unit had just gotten a severe shock. He suspected that as soon as this refreshment break was over, Broker was going to start rewriting a lot of what people considered to be factual history, and there were a few in his company who wouldn't take that happily.

He glanced over at the Dragoons with amusement - Joshua was enjoying a beer of his own, and taking great pleasure in watching Captain Kerensky ride herd on the visibly shocked members of her Black Widows and giving her lover dark looks in return. Cranston suppressed a laugh. He'd suspected Joshua had put the pieces together just as he had, and the young man was clearly enjoying himself. Though Joshua would probably pay for it later that evening in Natasha's bed, if he wasn't mistaken.

He carefully caught Joshua's eye and nodded. The younger Wolf brother casually nodded back, and picking up his own beer, ambled over to where Natasha was dressing down the more audible of her people. Time to get this conference back on track. They might have weeks, but they didn't have time to waste. Every hour was precious.

A few words in her ear, and a few short, sharp words from her to her people regarding punishment details, and things were calm once again. He glanced in Broker's direction, who'd already noticed the interaction, and had noticed him noticing it. A good man, but then, he'd already known that. A tiny salute with his beer mug, a minuscule 'go ahead' gesture that would never be seen if you weren't already looking for it, and Snord could see the sharper edge resurface on Broker's face.

"Ahem!"

Faces turned towards Broker.

"Now that everyone's refreshed, I hope, perhaps a little melodramatic exposition is in order at this point?"

Joshua laughed. "Enlighten us, oh wise one!"

"Indeed!" grinned Jared. "As the comedian over there already knows, my people are the descendants of Belters. Is anyone here not familiar with who and what Belters are?"

A mass shaking of heads ensued.

"Good. Now, here's the rest of the story, the parts you don't know." Jared scratched at the back of his head, then started in. "In the early years of the 21st century, the United States of America, joining a coalition of Western nations, became the dominant power on Terra after the Second Soviet Civil War. Not everyone was happy with that. That fact was made clear enough by the riots in Brazil in 2098 AD. What wasn't made clear was that after those riots took place, a quiet movement began. A movement to do something about what was perceived to be the failures of the de facto world government."

"Your people," said Kerensky. "The Kyfhon."

"What would eventually become the Kyfhon, yes." Broker continued on. "A loose coalition of anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, propertarian agorists and others formed, and came to an unwelcome conclusion. That conclusion was that given the power of the Terran Alliance and its ability to control orbital space around Earth, there simply was no way they could remove the Alliance from power without themselves becoming the same dictatorial authoritarians they loathed and feared. This led to a second conclusion. That they had to leave the planet."

"And they headed for the Belt," nodded Joshua.

"And they headed for the Belt," Jared agreed. "At that time, the Alliance was desperate for resources, to the point of resurrecting the ancient Homesteading Act of the American West. If you could get out there and start grubbing metals out of a rock, you could claim that rock for your own. Oh, they insisted that they retained sovereignty, and they would parade a few ships past your homestead to remind you they had the big guns, but your day-to-day affairs were your own. The Belt was simply too large and too dispersed to impose a police state upon it and still have settlers who'd move there of their own volition.

"So, that's where we headed for. The High Frontier. The Kearny-Fuchida jump drive hadn't been invented yet, so the Belt was the only frontier available. Both Western and Eastern Kyfhon proceeded to pool their funds and left Earth behind, drawing colonists from every English-speaking nation along with much of Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia."

Broker paused and grinned. "The per capita percentage of colonists we garnered from Hong Kong and Macau was impressive, to say the least.

"But the success of the Deimos Project sent the entire Belt into financial free-fall, pun not intended. It became cheaper to colonize and mine a vaguely Terrestrial world in another system and ship the raw materials back to Earth by jumpship than it was to homestead an asteroid in freefall. This meant that for us, it suddenly became much less costly to purchase a stake in the Belt — and beyond.

"We settled, we grew, and oddly enough, we remained more true to our founding cultures than Earth did. Terra became more cosmopolitan, its various cultures amalgamating and diluting each other. At the same time, it grew more oppressive, yet less likely to look our way. We were happy enough, though cautious.

"Then came the Outer Reaches Rebellion, the civil war between the Expansionist and the Liberal parties, and finally — Admiral James McKenna. And we took notice. We grew concerned."

"But why?" asked Rhonda Snord. "Why worry about him?"

"Because his first act after cleaning house on Terra was to force all of the former Alliance worlds to join the Hegemony. At gunpoint, if need be. Not something we looked forward to."

"Okay," Rhonda replied. "I can understand that."

"Good. That was when we came to a decision. Rudolph Ryan had been one of us, philosophically speaking, and had sold us his technology for synchronizing the jump fields of multiple jump ships - making them into what amounted to one single, giant jumpship. His only limitation on our purchase was that we were not to share it with anyone else. That was in 2195 AD.

"We didn't let it remain at that. We'd been slowly drifting outwards, further from Earth. The Belt had discovered that when your culture covers an area as large as the asteroid belt, the terms 'travel' and 'communication' take on new meanings. Earth failed to notice that the Belters were slowly turning towards jump ships as a means of getting around the Outer system."

"Impossible!" interjected Colin Maclaren. "There aren't enough pirate point-"

"They weren't using pirate points, Mr. Maclaren. If you're far enough from the central star of any system, the local space is relatively 'flat', to coin a term. You can jump anywhere you like. It's simply been ignored, for the most part, because the distance is such that you're at least a month, if not more, away from the nearest worlds using your fusion drive. To flatlanders like yourself, the natural reaction is 'what's the point? it's just a waste of fuel to jump that far outsystem.' To a Belter, who's trying to get from the spinward side of the Belt to the anti-spinward side - often a distance of half a light year or more, it's a practical and useful, if rather costly, tool."

So," interrupted Joshua, "What did this result in?"

"Excellent question, Major. It resulted in our testing, improving, and eventually using Mr. Ryan's invention to move entire habitats, as you've already guessed. Sixteen jump drives, tied together with his proprietary technology, proved to be enough to move entire munditos out of the Sol system. We kept that fact to ourselves, of course."

"Of course," snarked Joshua. His face turned serious for a moment. "How many did you lose in testing it?"

"Too many, Major. Too many."

"Even one can be too many," agreed Joshua, a tired expression crossing his face. "But please, continue. You were moving entire... munditos?"

"Spanish for 'little worlds', Major - there were a great many Texans amongst us, almost as many as founded New Dallas. Tex-Mex strongly flavors our civilization."

"I think I see where this is going, Jared. If a jump ship loses a drive, there's little they can do about it. If the system they're trapped in has no habitable worlds, they're doomed. But if a habitat is large enough, they could not only repair their own jump drives, they could build their own jump drives. Merely stop over in some system with germanium and other materials to be mined, gather what you need, and there you have it. Food, water, air - you either grow it or mine it. You're self-sufficient. With an adequate breeding population, you could keep jumping outward until you reached the galactic rim." Joshua cocked his head, thinking almost audibly. "And I'm betting your first reason was what you just mentioned. Moving entire stations around the Outer Belts, from played-out mines to new strikes. Take your entire mining colony with you to the latest motherlode."

"Indeed. Although we kept that a close secret from all but our own, and a few allies in the greater Belt civilization. By this time, we'd mostly receded to the Oort Cloud. Not as much metal there, but it was private and quiet, just the way we preferred it.

"The centuries rolled by, and then - suprise! Ian Cameron came along with his idealism, and his belief that humanity had to be forced into one single political unit, for its own good. And that if a few billion people had to die to achieve this, well... such a pity."

Broker's jovial expression had vanished. There was no hate, no anger, just the cold, implacable look of a machine, remorseless and unfeeling. Joshua knew instinctively that this was the Broker who'd ordered the deaths of everyone inside Anton's palace and who had no problems doing so. And that he wouldn't want to have to face this one across a battlefield.

"So we left.

"It was a gradual process - mundito after mundito, slowly jumping about once every other megasec."

"Megasec?" interrupted one of the Irregulars.

The humanity returned to Broker's face as if someone had thrown a switch. "My apologies. When you live on a mundito or a station, the day/night cycle is whatever the builders set it to be. We went metric with time a very long time ago, and since I've come home, I've begun thinking in metric again. A megasecond is approximately eleven and a half Terran standard days.

"Getting back to the story, we began to jump across known space, using stars that hadn't any Earth-type planets. If you couldn't colonize the system, no one was interested in it. This made them well suited for jumping in and out without being noticed."

"Makes sense," nodded Cranston. "Wouldn't be till much later that systems like those would have jump stations placed in them to shorten trip time. So you could wander around the galaxy like space gypsies."

"Interestingly enough, one tribe of the Rom joined our exodus, Cranston. They still wander from system to system in their own habitats. Nice folk. We like them. But I digress.

"We continued onward until we reached this area, about 10,000 lights away from Terra. Far enough, we thought, that we'd never have to worry about Flatlanders or Federalists again. Our migration was slow and gradual. Since we were taking our own worlds with us, there really wasn't any urgency as long as no one followed us. Or so we thought.

"Then that idiot Amaris pulled his little coup, kicked the Inner Sphere into unending turmoil, and we had to get the hell out of Federalist space then and there. Our last munditos were leaving Sol system even as Amaris was trying to subjugate the rest of the Belt."

Broker took a sip of water from the glass in front of him, and continued. "We left a few contacts behind with our cousins in the Belt. For reasons I'll soon make clear, the contacts had their own reasons to hide from everyone in the Inner Sphere, and they remained very quiet, as they had no burning desire to end up on dissection tables."

That statement reminded everyone in the room of what they'd seen on the way to the building, and an uneasy murmur moved through the hall.

"So you are genecaste!" Nikolai Koniev accused.

"No, Mr. Koniev, we are not. We do, however, pay close attention to something you flatlanders do not." Broker waved at the room around him. "We're in a habitat, Mr. Koniev, not on a planet with a nice, thick blanket of atmosphere to block ionizing radiation. Long term exposure to low-level radiation does unpleasant things to the genepool. We started taking precautions against that centuries before the Clans were even a gleam in General Kerensky's eye."

"And that was?" asked Joshua carefully.

"The IBM GR/W-43. The human genome had long since been sequenced, and DNA is merely digital information expressed in chemical base pairs. The International Business Machines Gene Reader/Writer model 43 could not only read DNA, it could write it from scratch, building a new DNA string that had never existed before in nature. Or repair pre-existing strings that were damaged by radiation or chemical exposure."

"You repaired your damaged DNA," stated Natasha. "And eventually, began to improve it, I'll wager."

"Editing out inherited genetic disorders, for the most part. Though, as our technology in that area improved, a few small permanent improvements were made. But ONLY after we'd studied them to death, made absolutely certain they were safe and required for life in space, and were compatible with the greater genepool of humanity. And one major improvement, from the viewpoint of the Inner Sphere. Which brings us right back around to the question you haven't asked yet. Namely, why we're choosing to again have anything to do with the Inner Sphere. You simply need to ask the right question."

"All right," said Joshua. "What is the question we should be asking, Jared?"

"Look at me, Joshua. Look at me carefully. How old am I?"

Joshua's mouth opened, then snapped shut again. He paused for what seemed like an eternity to the others in the hall. "You look - you look about forty-five, maybe a well-preserved fifty."

"Thank you, my friend. Now multiply by three. My birthdate is about a megasec away. I'll be 142 years old, Terran standard time. And barring violent death, I can expect at least another hundred years of good health. Possibly more."

The entire hall had gone painfully silent.

"And before you ask - yes. The procedures can be applied to people other than the Kyfhon." Jared paused briefly. "Now draw your own conclusions, Joshua."

Babel re-ensued.

~*~

Tempers were clearly frayed by the time Joshua and Cranston regained control of their people. "Would you like to explain that, Jared? I know you enjoy the 'mysterious stranger' act, but I'd like to think we've gone beyond that by now."

Broker frowned, then nodded. "Quite right, and my bad, Joshua. I'm guilty of being something of a Socratic teacher at times, answering questions with questions. A useful technique, but very annoying to the person on the receiving end when they're not a student of yours. All right, then. Let's recap.

"The Clans are, sooner or later, probably sooner, going to move in force against the Inner Sphere and 'restore the Star League'. We all know what their intentions are. But what about their unintentions, my friend?"

Broker eyed them all sharply. "As Joshua himself just stated a few moments ago, anything that can be done once can be done twice. Simply knowing that it can be done is often half the solution. You know it's been done, so you keep trying to replicate it for yourself."

"You're implying something's going to happen twice, and that's why you've returned," stated Natasha flatly. "And that something is what, exactly?"

"With all due respect, Captain Kerensky, are you under the delusion that the Crusader Clans will take the entire Inner Sphere in a single night? It took the original Star League twenty years to subjugate the Tauran Concordat, and the Clans, while exquisitely skilled and trained, haven't the resources of a united Inner Sphere to back them as the League once did.

"Over the past thousand years, if you average it out, humanity's spread outward from Terra at a rate of almost one light-year per year. And you yourselves have proven that it's possible to leave the Inner Sphere, rebuild ones civilization - so to speak - and then return."

"Oh, Great Father!" groaned Cranston in sudden realization. "It's going to splash!"

Broker nodded in his direction. "Exactly. If - and that's a very big if, by the way - the Clans successfully steamroll the Inner Sphere, it's still going to take years to subjugate it all. Meanwhile, people with the intelligence to realize what's happening and the information that the Clans themselves were able to go from an exiled army to a virtual Successor State with nothing more than a few colonies and some time to themselves will try to do the same damn thing. They'll grab jump ships and take off into the big black, trying to get away from you - and some of them will have the idea of coming back someday to return the favor. Now, think like the Clanner you were. What should you do to deal with such a potential threat?"

"Track them down," said Joshua bleakly. "But when we do that, we'll encourage more people to flee. Which means we'd have to try to control colonization. We'd have to search all vaguely habitable planets for unauthorized colonies - and put preventative garrisons on empty worlds to keep them from being used against us. And that means—"

"That the people trying to evade the Clans would jump even further into the deep Periphery," Natasha noted, her voice flat. "We'd have to deal with that by establishing some sort of pre-emptive method of exploring systems, finding new worlds and garrisoning them before colonists can reach them. So they'll jump further yet to escape us. And we'll jump further trying to prevent them from doing so. Further and further, simply to try to keep the new Star League safe from angry Periphery colonists wanting revenge. And eventually..."

"Eventually, you'll run squarely into us," nodded Broker. "Centuries before you were predicted to do so. We had thought that our three thousand parsecs - and yes, Citadel Station's the closest station to IS space - would buy us at least three thousand years of peace and quiet before we came back into contact with the rest of humanity. As you can see, we were calculating on the one-light-year-per-year exploration rate the Inner Sphere had seemed to be going by. Well, that it averaged out as, anyway. However, like all plans made by mortals, it got a swift boot to the metaphorical groin from Fate. Our three thousand years of quiet looks to have been reduced to three hundred. Or less. Probably to within my lifetime.

"Our resources, our sciences, our life-extension treatments, our very homes, they'll all be wanted by someone. And many of those someones won't want to pay. Clan or ComStar - doesn't matter which, they'll demand, not ask. They'll simply try to stick a gun in our collective faces and say 'hand it all over, you're a member of the Star League now.' "

"And that's what you've been fighting for centuries to avoid." Joshua's face was grim. "You're not going to give in. You'll fight. And you'll fight with things we don't have any longer."

"We'll fight with things you never had, Joshua. We began as orbital miners. Do you realize what that means?"

"No, but I know you're going to tell me."

A frustrated sigh came from Broker's lips. "Joshua... the asteroids were easier to mine because they came pre-fragmented into nice, bite-sized pieces. It occurred to us a long time ago that if we weren't going to live on a particular planet, and we weren't really that concerned about it anyway - then why not make our own asteroids? There's a lot of valuable, high density metals locked up inside of a planetary core."

Faces went white around the room as they realized what he was implying.

"Planet crackers. To you, they're world killers. To us, they're just another mining tool. And they're among the smaller of the tools we have at hand." Jared shook his head. "But you'll see that for yourselves. We agreed to disclosure, and disclosure is what you're going to get. But I didn't promise you that you'd like it."

Joshua looked at him for a long moment. "I don't recall requesting such a promise. You saved my life, and the lives of my staff, my sister-in-law, and her children. That buys you a lot of credit with me, Jared. Let's spend some of it now."

"Thank you, Joshua. That means a great deal." Broker visibly relaxed. "Now, if you'd like, we've laid on a picnic on the grounds behind the building, along with an animated presentation of some of our culture and technology — though with us, that tends to be one and the same. So if you'll come with me?"

~*~

Cranston suppressed a small burp and tried to keep from licking his fingers. That simply wasn't civilized. He didn't know how many lost secrets of the past had been preserved by the Kyfhon, but from the way his people had dug into the provided meal, the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices had definitely been saved from the dustbin of history. He turned his attention back to the huge holographic projection that occupied most of the center of the grassy field. (And that itself unsettled him no small amount - that these people were able to built habitats so huge, a field this large could be considered just a 'lawn.')

He eyed the image with intense curiosity, paying close attention to the scale indicator along the bottom edge. Like the station he was currently in, it was huge. Twin contra-rotating cylinders, each about 52 kilometers long, linked together at their end points by a sturdy frame and surrounded by a pair of giant, cone-shaped reflectors. He drew his attention back to what Broker was saying.

"— are three layered dichroic mirrors. Each layer reflects only one color, while letting all other light pass through. The three layers used reflect red, green and blue, generating an artificial white light that's much cooler than natural sunlight, and less of a heat burden on the mundito. They're also quite useful for generating heat for various industrial processes."

"Including smelting?" asked one of the Irregulars.

"Including smelting, but that's only one use, and nowhere near the most important." Broker turned towards Joshua. "You've been wondering where all the money comes from, how we can afford all this, how we can fund what we've done."

"Yes, I have to admit that I've had the occasional stray thought about it cross my mind," Wolf chuckled.

Jared waved at the image, and it reformed into a wire-frame diagram. Two long thin threads were highlighted as they passed through the axis of the cylinders.

"The light from the mirrors looks white to the unaided human eye, but it's really three colors, and each of those colors is a single frequency. If you take a tube, cover them with spare mirrors - let's say, just the red and the blue - any light entering the tube would be a single, pure frequency of green. Then, fill the tube with methyl isopropyl mercury and carbon dioxide—"

"Holy Crap, it's a laser! A solar-powered laser! Pumped by sunlight!" Shorty Sneede choked. "Good lord, how big is it?"

"Twelve meters, Mr. Sneede."

"Crap, twelve meters long, that's..." Shorty did some quick math in his head. "That makes the capital lasers on a Warship look pathetic."

Jared grinned. It wasn't a nice grin. "You mistake me, Mr. Sneede. Not twelve meters long. The tube is one kilometer wide and twenty kilometers long. The beam is twelve meters in diameter. The effective range exceeds 100,000 kilometers. I hope you understand that, for the moment at least, we wish to keep the maximum range to ourselves."

The only sounds that could be heard were those of the local staff bustling about, serving food and drinks. It was a long and very quiet moment until Joshua managed to clear his throat.

"You're using it to refine - no, to mine - the asteroid metals. You're slicing them up like sandwiches, then smelting them down for the precious metals. How much and how fast?"

"The average mundito can refine about one cubic kilometer of nickel-iron every 15 megaseconds. Roughly two cubic kilometers per solar year per mundito. And we have a great many munditos. In this system, the nickel-iron grades out to a little under 0.76 parts per million of gold. Process one million tons, you get 0.76 tons of gold. In one year, that's about twelve thousand tons of gold per year per mundito. There are similar amounts of platinum, osmium, irridium, and so on. Not to mention impressively huge amounts of copper, which is still quite useful in many industries. Would you like some silver? So far, we're finding about twice as much silver as gold. If we dumped it all on the precious metals markets, we could crash not just a single Successor state, but the economy of the entire Inner Sphere."

Broker's face twisted up in a wry expression. "And don't even ask about the amounts of uranium and lead - the blasted stuff is gumming up the condensers and clogging the refineries. You're wondering how we could afford what we've done? I tell you now that what we've spent so far is merely the donations of people who are concerned about the welfare of their distant cousins they'd left behind. Not to mention their own welfare, first and foremost. Cash donations, and volunteer labor, Joshua. And the volunteer effort is actually more valuable than the cash. That's how wealthy we are."

"I think-" Joshua paused, collected his thoughts, and continued. "I think, speaking as a military commander, Jared, that it's time for me and my people to fall back and regroup before you drop any more info-bombs on us."

"You're my guest here, Joshua. Take all the time you need. While you do that, I'll tend to the affairs that called me here."

"About that...? I don't mean to pry, but you said you had things to do that couldn't be done except in person."

To Joshua's amusement, Jared suddenly looked deeply embarrassed. "I, uh... I believe I mentioned that my birthdate is about a megasec away?"

Wolf began to roar with laughter as he realized what Jared was implying. "A birthday party? They've trapped the head of Executive Outcomes into a surprise birthday party?"

Jared shrugged helplessly. "I'd managed to avoid the last three, and then my stockholders rose up in revolt..."

Joshua continued to pound the table with his fist, laughing helplessly, his people and Cranston's joining in the mirth.

"It's not that funny, people. Condemnation! It's not that funny! Really!"

The assembled mercenaries continued on, lost in their laughter.

~*~

O'Neill cylinders didn't have "day" or "night" as a planet might know them, but a light/dark cycle was ingrained into every Terran-based life form since the Precambrian Era. The Kyfhon weren't any different in that respect. Their habitats simply controlled the length of that cycle, and for now, it was "night."

The Widows and the Irregulars had been offered their choice of accommodations in addition to the default option of returning to their dropship, and Joshua had decided that a statement had to be made as to whether or not they trusted the people of Citadel Station. And more importantly, if they trusted Jared and Executive Outcomes.

So now both units were ensconced in a luxury hotel that any billionaire in the Inner Sphere would have been proud to call his own. Understated, yet elegant, without making a group of rough and ready mercenaries uncomfortable, they had settled down with a certain subdued wariness after assigning members of both units to maintain a night watch.

They were trusting, but they weren't stupid.

Joshua and Natasha had chosen to take a room together, and the two lovers were in bed, discussing the day's events.

"So we simply play tourist for two weeks?"

"We do," Joshua shrugged. "Jaime wants all the data he can get on these people, and so far, as long as we play nice with them, they'll play nice with us. Jared and all his people - all the people from here, that is - seem to share the same belief that once contracted, hold to your contract to the bitter end. I don't know if that's always true of the people he's hired from the IS, but his own seem to abide by that." The younger Wolf brother chuckled. "Trapped by a surprise birthday party - I'm not going to let him hear the end of that, and I know Jaime certainly won't."

Natasha surprised him with a girlish giggle. "You have to admit, for Mr. Grim-and-devoted-to-his-word, it was pretty embarrassing. I wonder if he'll ever live it down?"

"Maybe in a few decades," Joshua grinned. His expression shifted to the serious. "If he's telling us the truth about their antigerone treatments, then he's right - the Clans might not want it, but the Inner Sphere certainly will, and should ComStar succeed at becoming the core for a new Star League as Khan Ward warned us they might, they'll demand longevity treatments as their God-given right. Once they know such treatments exist, that is."

"And that means war."

"And that means war. But what kind of war?"

Natasha cocked her head and blinked. "What do you mean?"

"We fight with weapons, and occasionally with politics. ComStar fights with politics, and occasionally with weapons. But Jared's people seem to fight with money, Tasha. Impossibly huge amounts of money. That's not a weapon we're used to fighting with. We're used to fighting people who have it, but back in the Cluster, did you ever really think about money? About how to buy things? And what to buy them with? We're military. Food, clothing, weapons, quarters, vehicles, even mechs; they were items that were issued to us if we needed them, and withdrawn if we did not." There was a pensive look on Joshua's face. "Remember the Second Terran world war? The United States of America fought and won their war by out-producing and out-supplying their enemies. Even their most bitter rivals attested to this. It's possible to be wealthy and militarily incompetent. It's possible to be martially skilled, yet poor. But a nation that's both competent in war and wealthy? That's a dangerous enemy to have."

"So, what do we do tomorrow, Major Wolf?"

"We play tourist, just like Jaime and Jared want us to. We look, listen and learn. Then we report back to my brother. And what do you mean, tomorrow?"

Natasha reached under the blanket with a questing hand, a happy smile on her face. "I already know what we're going to do tonight."

Joshua laughed, and turned off the bedside lamp. For what came next, he was reasonably certain he wouldn't need a light.

~*~