(Thurs. January 5, 3049)

If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If it smells funny, look under your shoe.

I’ve been pounding the pavement with sore, tired feet for long years on Outreach. Know many a Dragoon better than my own family. Those I give the time of day to, that is. So I know a thing or two. I tell ya, gents, there wasn’t even a whiff of fart in the air when ’Mech Magic Incorporated suddenly opens shop and customers are pouring in two years ago.

Now I’m not one to bad-mouth. Unless you deserve it. So I’m not here saying these guys are gonna shaft ya. Far from it. I’ve kicked the walls in their shop and they’re solid. Jawed with half a dozen customers and there’s nothing but twinkling eyes and flashing teeth. They got the expertise to fix even the oldest ramshackle family ’Mech that hasn’t seen the inside of a true repair shop since the start of the Second Succession War.

I’m just saying they make my skin crawl. Where the heck did they come from? Where’d they get their backing? Almost no one seems to know. Sure, most of the astechs were skimmed from shops from Outreach to Galatea. But the top techs? No one seems to know these guys. And it’s not like they grow on trees, gents. Small community, big ears. And nothing but silence like the echo of locked up C-bills as soon as a Canopian Circus leaves a Lyran world.

Not that I don’t trust the work. You got a problem, they can fix it. But I don’t necessarily like them. I don’t like mysteries. And you gents shouldn’t, either. Lay the cards on the table or it leaves me itching that there’s secrets…and any good merc unit worth its salt hates secrets.

Keep it locked and loaded, gents.

—Jacob Hardenson, MercNet