The news has been going all over the internet this weekend. Blaine Lee Pardoe no longer writes stories for BattleTech. Some people say he is a bad man who deserves to be fired. Other people say he was cancelled by the woke mob for being a conservative. I know everybody involved. I have met them all in person and talked to them. I have looked them in the eyes. I actually like most of them. I would not say I know any of them good enough to call friends, but they are definitely acquaintances of the working variety. I have seen them work over the years and recognize their patterns. That makes me absolutely biased of course. If you are looking for an unbiased opinion, look elsewhere. My opinion is that Blaine Lee Pardoe is substantially accurate in his description of the events and reasons. And that opinion will affect my financial transactions in the future.
Dawn DeMarco flew under Ken Banno’s wing back during the War’s early years, but she quickly became the heart and soul of the gang of misfit Cowboys that enjoyed the party scene. They glomped onto her like birds of a feather and spent years going to rich and fabulous parties throughout Alpha Centauri, Earth, and the other core worlds. They worked with various and sundry Western Alliance intelligence agencies to stop war profiteering, and those agencies helped keep their involvement under cover so they could continue their good work. And of course Ken joined her for most of them. He was famous in his own right, and could fit into those parties just as well as she. I pulled them out of all that when it came time to send Third Fleet to strike back at the Russians. That was for the Epsilon Reticuli campaign. Yeah. Epsilon Reticuli.
I learned that Dawn DeMarco was amazing at Alpha Centauri, but she really had the chance to show off in the months and years that followed. Not that most people realized what she was doing. She was real good at keeping things under the covers, but I had the pleasure of reporting all her very best deeds to Charles. She grew up hosting all the best parties on her home planet, and so she was a natural at the kind of highclass parties that disguised the very best war profiteering schemes. She slowly collected a gang of misfits that loved that kind of party as much as she did. Or at least enjoyed catching the war profiteers in flagrante, with no way to maintain their innocence. They sent many rich and nobleborn people to prison, and helped save more money than I can count for The War effort.
An angel’s face with a devil’s sense of humor. That is certainly one way to describe Dawn DeMarco. She was the immaculate, bodysculpted noble daughter of a distant world from the tip of her perfect nose to her very flexible toes. That’s where the angel comes in. She used those looks to hide a deadly skill with the spoken word, or a knife. She could twist either into a target with exquisite skill, and step away leaving confusion in her wake. Her targets rarely realized she was even the one who struck, and often found themselves laughing at the absurdity of their situation with her. She could make a crowd laugh at anything or anyone, without offending any of them, including the primary target. That allowed her to step in and out of a situation with a dancer’s skill that rarely left her holding the bag when the cat got out. And going out on the town with her was always a devil of a good time.
Dawn DeMarco came directly from the Outer Colonies to help reinforce Alpha Centauri, and that brought an entirely different experience than we had seen. She grew up with a lot more conflict than those of us who grew up on Earth or Mars ever dreamed of. She may have been a noble on a distant world with all the comforts of modern technology, but she knew how tenuous civilization was. She had fought to defend it for years before The War came upon us all. We needed that experience in the Cowboys, so I was actually very happy when she flew rings around me during my evaluation of her fighting ability. It gave me an excuse no one could question when I stamped my approval on her paperwork. It also allowed me to surprise Charles. He knew how much I disliked the nobility, so he took my recommendation seriously.
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