Lummatii
Lothian League
Marian Hegemony
The Periphery
3 January, 3150
A week had passed, and Ned Bakker had managed to organize a gathering of all of the significant landowners. Eventually it had boiled down to basically putting out a call for everyone that had been on the hook with Bart Carter and the local pirate gang to show up to discuss options. Unfortunately, that had meant that a lot of people had gathered together with a very little planning or coordination.
The meeting, such as it was, had formed up at what might best be described as a festival grounds. Located in the planetary capital, there was a large recreational area set aside that held festivals, concerts, and the like. There was a circular raised dais type stage at the center, and the attendees for the meeting had gathered in groups radiating out from the center. What struck Freyja on their arrival was the vast and varied scope of the people gathered. Some were just like the Bakkers. But there were farmers, industrialists, factory owners, town mayors, a complete assortment of the population
The meeting had descended quickly into a kind of chaotic grandstanding, with different people each pushing their own agenda or solution, which usually amounted to trying to shift the burden of payment off of one group and onto another. Ned had registered himself to speak to the group, but after long discussion and coercion, he had persuaded Freyja to be the spokesperson for their interests.
She climbed the stairs to the platform and looked out over the crowd. Many looked at her with confused expressions, with no idea who she was. She was dressed as if she were having a day at work, baggy cargo pants and a tank top, with her hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. She cast an altogether dismissable look. She felt her pulse pounding in her head, and tried in vain to force herself to be calm and overcome her anxiety. Finally, she spoke up, trying to force an air of authority into her voice as she spoke.
"Most of you don't know me. My name is Freyja McCarron. I'm a Mechwarrior in service to Edward Bakker. I've been listening to all the discussions, and what I would say to you is this. You are all going about this the wrong way. You are trying to find a way to pay off Raiden Trogg. That is the wrong option. What we have to do is stand up to him."
There was a general murmur from the crowd, then one man spoke up over the rest. "If we openly thumb our noses at his protection offers, he'll just take what he wants. We don't have the force to stand up to him. All that fighting him does is turn our lands into a battlefield."
"Then we make the force. We find a way. The man is a monster and a bully who is going to keep on bullying."
Another man spoke up from behind her, and she turned to listen to him. "You don't just manufacture a force to fight a man that's probably worked for years to build up the group he has."
She shook her head. "Yes you do, you scrape it together to protect what it's taken you lifetimes to build. Look, among all of you we have to be able to patch together a handful of Mechs. And it's easy enough to strap some weapons and armor on AgroMechs and Industrial Mechs. And there's vehicles we can re-purpose. It will take some doing, yes, but surely we can gather up the resources for one fight with Trogg and his band of looters and thieves. That's all it takes. One fight where we take him out and bloody his organization. One fight to let them know that we won't just give up and give over."
Another man stood and voiced his thoughts. "That's a lot of talk, but you're just a servant, a slave. What have you got to lose? It's a fair bit tougher for those of us with real lives to put on the line."
Freyja turned angrily towards the speaker "You have absolutely no idea what I've put on the line already. It must be nice to cower there in safety, looking to just pay off the bad guy to go away. Not all of us can. And we shouldn't have to. Just because you're too frightened to lose some money or some land doesn't mean we all have to roll over and take it."
She started getting jeers from the crowd. She hadn't persuaded them, she'd lost them. There was no way she was going to be able to rally any kind of opposition to Raiden Trogg when he returned to collect his ransom. She could try to stop him, but she would fail, just like she had before. Her shoulders sank with the knowledge of defeat. Then a different voice spoke up from behind her and she froze.
"She's right. You might be able to buy them off for a while. I might be able to buy him off a bit longer. But this guy is a piece of work. He's not going to be satisfied, and he's going to ruin us all in the end. There isn't much choice but to fight.
As she turned, Gunnar Logan climbed the steps to the dais. She dared not look him in the eye. He must have recognized her. What could she do? She stayed silent and let him continue on.
"We do have the means to stop him, I'm sure of that. I can't speak for any of you, but I am pledging my Mech to the fight to stand up to this pirate. We cannot just roll over, that's not how we do things out here. Out here we stand up for each other, and we don't let people take what's ours. That's what this brigand means to do, take it from us slowly so we die a drawn out, uneventful death. That's not how any of our forbearers looked at things, and if we want to keep our way of life, it can't be how we do either. So I'm going to stand up, with her and anyone else that has the courage to fight."
Throughout his speech, the crowd swiftly came to life, and by the time he was finished, the crowd was raucous with a fire against the pirates. He rallied them on several times, and by the end of it, there were probably a few in the crowd calling to take the fight to the pirates. Through it all, Freyja stood silent, partly mesmerized by his speaking, but mostly out of fear. After he had finished, the crowd began to disburse, and he walked over to where she stood on the dais.
Finally she lifted her gaze to meet his. "Thank you. They were never going to follow me. You tipped the balance. " She paused and looked down at her feet, then closed her eyes before facing him again. "And I suppose I owe you an apology."
He looked to the side in thought for a moment. "They were afraid. They wanted to fight, but they needed a reason to get past their fears. I watched my father fire up enough crowds in his day that i knew the right buttons to push, that's all. As for the apology, what are you going to apologize for? It's a terrible tragedy when a beautiful woman tells a few lies to get into a man's bed. What I would settle for though is an explanation. Who are you really?"
She relaxed slightly. "My name is Freyja McCarron. Legally, I'm the property of Ned Bakker. I'm originally from the Capellan Confederation. I came out here to try to find my own way in life, free from the safety of my upbringing. And as you can tell, that's gone over quite well."
Ned snickered. "And you ended up at the ball how?"
She shrugged. "I had the opportunity, I thought it would be a chance to escape for an evening, back to how things used to be. A sort of last hurrah for my old life. I never planned on meeting anybody there or crafting any web of lies, it just all sort of happened."
Ned laughed gently.
"What?" she asked.
"You. A gorgeous woman, went to the event of the year, dressed in a gown that made you look absolutely delectable, and you didn't think you'd meet anybody there? I'm starting to see how you ended up falling off the wagon into the periphery here."
She blushed. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It takes radical events sometimes to change lives. I suppose you qualify. " He took her hand. "I think your people are looking for you. I should be going as well, starting to set things in motion for this coming fight of ours. Are you staying here in the capital long?"
"I'm afraid I have no idea. This whole thing is touch and go."
He squeezed her hand before letting go. "Come see me tomorrow evening for dinner? I'm relatively easy to find.
She smiled in a subtly playful way. "No promises. But I'll try."
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