64

Boy, I had been dreaming for so long to say this to their faces...

The silence then the silent denial, followed by the understanding was going on like I had foreseen it. And I had everything recorded from various angles and in high resolution... unfortunately not in 3D/holographic as the equipment for that was too big to hide well.

A few minutes latter

'How?' asked Jaime, keeping a calm air, but his eyes and tone of voice indicated that the time for joking was over.

'It is a damn Wolverine, it has to be with the 'Mech and equipment that he showed more than a decade ago,' Natasha almost screamed with a very dangerous look, forgotten the Wolfnet information that debunked that theory, and almost jumping out of the chair.

'First, thanks to confirm that information' I said in a calm voice with a small, tense, smile. 'How? It is quite simple, after all – after you stopped communicating home in early 3020s, the Smoke Jaguars sent a ship to investigate. Fortunately for us, said ship suffered a misjump and ended stranded deep in the Periphery, with almost all the electronics fried, and all people dead. About two years ago, one of my teams, searching for hidden SLDF bases, found it. Like I said, both the JumpShip and DropShip electronics were fried and all aboard were dead, but the personal data crystals are another story. And in the captain's cabin we found several heavily encrypted crystals, with a variant of late SLDF codes. A few months ago, the decoded files arrived to my hands, and they told me a very interesting story about your little group. Your mission, your TO&E, including several WarShips that you never showed, a lot about the political and history of the Clans – interesting stuff, Trueborns and Freeborns, Bloodnames, Wardens and Crusaders, and a not-named Clan, that I believe is the Wolverines, by your reaction, - and their mission, finding you to discover why you stopped sending them intel. So, I will ask you one more time, why did you stop send information back, and what are your intentions these days?' 

'And what do you intend to do with that information?' asked Jaime after a long exchange of glances with Natasha without answering my question.

'Good question - in reality what is really of interest to me is what you intend to do, when as I predict, either the Crusaders – that I infer just want to invade - win the majority, and decide to mount a campaign to 'free' us, or the Terran Explorer Corps come face to face with one of the worlds of the Clans? From what I know, and from what I got from the Wolverines data, I have a good idea of the location of the Clans worlds and the TEC is getting close. From what I know, the Clans have equipment superior to the best that even the Royals had. So I ask you again, when the Crusaders invade, what do you plan to do, and in case it's helping us, when do you plan to start?'

This was followed by a prolonged silence with several exchanges of glances between the two.

Since they didn't decide to talk, I added 'as far as I know the last time you carried out a resupply mission and received more Clan personnel was almost 30 years ago, so, what happened? You decided to stay, or you received secret orders from your Clan to stop all contact?'

'Eliminating you will not solve this issue, will it?' asked Natasha, but her posture and stance made it clear that she didn't intend to do something stupid.

'Apart from these PA(L)s just outside that door, there is also a WarShip in orbit. Let's say that if you try something violent, you won't leave this system alive, so spare me the useless menaces, ok?' after a moment, Natasha acquiesced, and I continued 'If I understand what I read about the society that the Clans have created - you don't have a future there in case you want to come back, right?'

Again, a prolonged silence with the respective exchange of glances. Finally, Jaime looked at me.

'We have a lot to think about, before making a decision that affects the totality of the Dragoons, can we have a few hours?'

'A reasonable time, yes but not a single minute more.' was my answer.

'We will come back to you, before the end of the day' say Jaime Wolf, and with that they both departed for their DropShip.