I eat breakfast. I put a kettle on, go out and take care of the animals. Gene rips, all of them, need some special care, but the milk is good and the breeding brings me in enough to live off of. Come back in and have my morning tea while starting on todays book. I stop reading long enough to grab some lunch and turn on the ComStar broadcast, I see her giving some speech, it’s enough for me. Do some errands, fix some broken posts, work on getting this old hover car back into working shape, that sort of thing. Then I go to sleep, and let the cycle start again. Days go by, then months, and somewhere along the line it became years. She was still on the broadcast, that hover car still didn’t work, and I still hadn’t forgotten or disappeared. Should have known, though, nothing lasts forever.

“We’re receiving reports from the planet’s southern continent more regularly now, they are confirming that Duchess Regina Enkel has been taken into custody at the city of New Dunkirk by members of the Veban Revolutionary Order. The VRO is claiming that their goal is for control of the planet to be relinquished to House Liao.”

I picked up the com receiver and punched in Dulcman’s number.
“Dulcie here, what can I do fer you.”
“Dulce, I need a full armament. LRM20s, some of those S-SRMs you’ve got stashed away, gauss rifle ammo, oh and an lbx-ac 5 if you’ve got it.”
“Ho ho, guess you been watching the news. Don’t know how you knew about my stash, but for you, it’s all on the table. Now about my price…”
“You know where to charge it, they still owe me a few. By the way, it’s worth double if you can get it out here and loaded before nightfall.”
“Be there within the hour, always a pleasure.”
There was more that I’d need so I went back to my room, into that closet I never used and opened that box I never open. The nano helmet was dusty, forgotten, but a few diagnostic button presses proved it was still functioning like new. The gun next to it came apart easy enough as I swabbed it back into shape. No sense letting some dust get me killed. Finally I walked out to the barn, listening to the rippers groan and bleat to no one in particular. Opening the transformer box revealed a small and unassuming switch next to the main circuit breakers which I pressed in and held for twenty seconds. Mechanical buzzing and whirring filled the air and the ground shook as the floor parted in the center of the barn. Achingly slowly, the frame rose out of the ground and up into position, the doors closing underneath it, finally falling with an immense metal on metal ring to rest both feet on the ground.

I look up, appreciating the simple beauty of the frame, the sleek curves and the angry mix of red and yellow paint in a digital camouflage formation. The Mad Cat merely looked out the door of the barn into open space. Conserving energy for the fight to come, I thought, then walked over and started filling a bucket of water, like I said, no sense letting the dust get me killed.