Eventually the spacers and the mercenaries worked out a kind of truce that gave Rose and his people more freedom aboard the ship and the spacers less to worry about. Once they'd made the first jump from Outreach the trip settled into a steady routine. Every six to eight days the Iron Hand,the JumpShip carrying the Bristol ,had to stop to recharge its jump drive via its gigantic solar sails. In those periods Rose and his mercenaries would work on their 'Mechs in the cargo bay where they were stored. Space would usually have been a problem, but because the Bristol had been forced to leave Outreach earlier than scheduled much of her cargo hold was empty.
When the engines were fully recharged, the JumpShip captain passed the word to the DropShips it was carrying that it was time to jump to the next star. Gear would be secured and the occupants of the Bristol ,spacer and mercenary alike, would strap themselves in for the instantaneous jump through hyperspace that would take them some thirty light years further toward their destination. Having made the jump, the spacers would go back to whatever they'd been doing and the mercenaries would return to the cargo bays.
Just as plenty of space was available in the cargo holds, it was also available in the guest cabins. Each member of the Black Thorns actually got his or her own cabin for the trip, an unheard-of luxury aboard civilian and military DropShips. The mercenaries were as giddy as cadets at this unexpected luxury.
Because there were no regular hours for day and night aboard ship, Rose allowed the mercenaries to work when and as they pleased. They held their weekly status meetings in the galley, usually just prior to a jump. At these meetings everyone was updated on the current status of the ongoing maintenance.
Rose had never met a MechWarrior who didn't work on his own 'Mech, at least to some degree. Even House troops, whose 'Mechs were owned by the House ruler who employed them, worked to make their 'Mechs as reliable and comfortable as possible. Independent units and pilots who actually owned their own machines were even more renowned for their tinkering. For pilots like Hawg, whose 'Mech had been in the family for three generations, the amount of tinkering bordered on the insane.
Because the Black Thorns were a small unit, they could not afford the luxury of hiring a full-time technician. Rose hoped eventually to field a large unit with a complete staff of support specialists, but at the moment every warrior had to oversee the care of his own 'Mech. If the task was bigger than usual or beyond the pilot's expertise, Rose assigned other members of the team to assist. Fortunately, he'd been lucky enough to hire several warriors with excellent technical experience.
Rianna undoubtedly had the most formal training, but much of it did not apply to the kind of repairs necessary to keep a sixty-year-old 'Mech running after countless battles. Hawg, on the other hand, was a fount of information on how to by-pass damaged circuits and repair battle-damaged components. Working together, with the assistance of Esmeralda, the three kept the other four mercenaries busy for their full work cycle.
Rose insisted on working on his own 'Mech, as much to lead by example as to make sure he would know everything there was to know about the Chargerbefore having to ride it into a real battle. His example seemed to have the desired effect, for when the Iron Handmade the final jump to Borghese, all seven 'Mechs were in excellent condition. They'd been freshly painted and renumbered according to the system devised by Rianna, and Rose had to admit the demi-company looked very sharp. Sharp enough, he hoped, to impress the local leaders of Borghese. When the mercenaries were not working on their 'Mechs, they were studying what they laughingly referred to as their play books.
Rose had devised a series of commands based on his years with the Com Guards that would allow the unit to deploy and maneuver with a minimum of confusion and conversation. Although he had originally designed the system for a full company, it had not taken long to trim down the manual for use by the smaller unit. Rose had divided the unit into three demi-lances. The pursuit lance consisted of Angus' Valkyrieand Ajax's Raven.Rianna and Rose formed the command lance, while Esmeralda's Warhammer,O'Shea's Shadow Hawk,and Hawg's Zeusmade up the unit's battle lance.
The team held review sessions on a regular basis, during which Rose drilled individual members of the unit on which maneuvers would be called for during a particular action. After one or two times of being embarrassed before their comrades, the unit members began to carry the manuals with them and to quiz themselves. By the end of the trip the Black Thorns were challenging Rose with situations and commands.
Although Rose spent a considerable amount of time with his 'Mech, he also spent many of his off-duty hours with either the delegation from Borghese or Rachel McCloud. Leo Wilkins proved to be good company, despite being a civilian, but Rose considered Hoffbrowse terminally boring. The two men were well-informed about various situations on Borghese and considered it their patriotic duty to make sure Rose knew as much about the planet as they did. Despite Hoffbrowse's best efforts, Rose focused only on the major topics and ignored much of the detail.
"I don't have to know every fact about the planet," Rose told the man on several occasions. "I just have to know who does." Rose did nevertheless end up finding out much more about Borghese than he'd initially intended.
He learned that salt-water oceans covered more than 80 percent of Borghese. The world had one major continent, but it was smaller than Australia where the Com Guards used to practice on Terra. With so little usable land available, the planet's initial settlers had looked to the sea to provide them with sustenance, but the sea turned them away with sudden electrical storms and crashing waves. Eventually the settlers had given up, the population leveling off at its current level. Borghese's ten million inhabitants were mainly involved in the world's only industry, mermaid harvesting.
The creatures were not actually mermaids, but the early settlers' name for the fish had stuck and become official. Because of the storms, the fishing industry was limited to the waters nearest the land, but mermaid fish were considered a delicacy on many worlds and brought a good price. Only the wealthiest could afford to buy it, though, and so the market was limited. Any fisherman who could survive ten or more years supplying the food merchants could retire quite well-off.
The major city on Borghese was Houston. Located on the southern coast, the sprawling metro area was home to more than 60 percent of the planet's population. The remaining cities were mostly small towns or, more often, simply a collection of families who happened to build near one another. The land was able to support several hybrid Terran crops, mostly strains of beans, corn, and wheat, which allowed limited livestock production.
After studying the information supplied by Hoffbrowse, Rose deduced that Borghese was still dominated by pioneers who refused to believe that there was something better than what they had. The planet was completely self-sufficient, but that was about all that could be said for it. Then again, Rose reconsidered, maybe that was saying quite a bit in the current era.
When he would finally satisfy himself that he'd worked enough for one day, Rose usually wandered into the spacers' quarters to look for McCloud. Though he would never forget the support she'd given him during their stay on Northwind, something had changed when they reconnected on Outreach. Rachel seemed like a different person. Despite their previous intimacy, she'd insisted on keeping her distance. He was sure that pulling her, and her DropShip, into the Dragoon fiasco had strained their personal relationship, possibly to the point of no return.