Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

Scrap heap​

In hindsight loading everyone into the beds of trucks and making them drive into town on pain of pulse laser could have gone a lot worse. The villagers of via Caballero could have gotten the pitchforks and the nooses out. That they didn't immediately resort to that was [probably] because they'd never seen a Marauder before. Having to tell them he'd be coming back with the rest of the would be invaders was probably another reason they didn't start lynching anyone.

Don't piss people with giant robots is a lesson that is especially engrained throughout the denizens of many a periphery world... and the Inner Sphere for that matter... and Aquagea was no exception. He was willing to leave things to the townspeople since the planetary militia still hadn't shown up. The recovery work party was a bigger issue...

Gene had ended up telling them to take all of their shit and load it back into their ship. He frankly doubted he was going to get to keep any of it, and maybe if he had wanted to be sneaky he should have left it where it was before having them all load up on the vehicles and drive into town.

It was kind of like a cattle drive, wasn't exactly the best thought to have, but that took care of the problem at least. The decision to go poking around on the inside of the Union now that it was abandoned in hindsight had been a little risky as well.

He had discarded the kooky idea of telling the computer to take off, and then try and have it autonavigate to the outpost castle's nav beacon to land in the underground dropship bays. It was tempting for a fleeting moment, but quickly put aside. It didn't hurt that he was pretty sure the castle's bays were for whatever reason configured specifically for aerodyne hullshapes.

The files on the computer put the kibosh that idea all together. Zathras wasn't just here because they were greedy assholes who wanted to be a minor periphery power. They wanted to be that, it was true, but they thought they had a lead on LosTech, and while the information contained in the computer banks didn't jive with what he knew of the Outpost Castle he called home it didn't necessarily mean someone might not find his home while looking for some other el dorado that might not even exist.

The question was how many of the Zathras personnel knew about the information in the banks... the captain, the 'viceroy', probably the unit mech commander... who had been in the Zeus like he had expected... who else? Who might have gotten told by accident or otherwise? He couldn't say. It explained the BattleMech Company's condition and presence. Thankfully their files were pretty clear that the legendary loot should have been somewhere south of town, well south of town, though not quite half way.

It was definitely something to look into, and he planned to. The question was whether or not to tell the townspeople the next time he was in Via Cabarello. He didn't take anything from the Union. He really didn't have anyway to take anything, which was really only part of it. He needed to get off world and find something to do, or rather find somewhere with an actual job market. As comfortable as the Outpost castle, as much as there was to learn from its library, and practice in the simulators it wasn't the same thing as being out in the world. He'd have been safe, but bored out of his mind, and he knew that. He also knew he wasn't in any way set to start a mercenary company.


Groaning he pushed the Star League era Terran Hegemony educational material off to one side as the signals filtered in. The Outpost had been built and staffed by Terran Hegemony troops of the SLDF, probably intelligence cut outs but even those spooks weren't all knowing. It was entirely possible that the LosTech they were after could have been pre Amaris, or into the first or second succession war. This had at one point been a world belonging to the Cappies, before the Mariks had come along.

He ran a hand through his hair, and reminded himself that he needed to grab a hat to throw in his day bag in case of either bright sun or rain. There was a cargo hauler that needed work in the bay, which was probably why it had been left behind.

Heavy equipment transport cross country had existed since the first world war, eleven hundred years in the distant past on earth, and engines capable of pulling not just the rig's weight but a vehicle or piece of equipment even heavier meant that recovering a mech was about getting a mech on to the flat bed not driving off with it once it was up there.

It might be useful if he went anywhere, assuming that it could be gotten to start again, but he was still working with only a rudimentary grasp of Star League systems and technology, and knew most of the work would be done by automated SLDF gantries, and mechanic systems.

--
Via Caballero had an eighties meets tombstone kind of look to it. The town was dominated as sort of made sense by the Caballero railway running straight down the middle of the town. It would have just been a farming community really before the Marik's came and mucked everything up. There weren't but a couple of thousand full time residents anyway.

"The bastards were trying to jump a lostech claim?" The sheriff's twang was funny given he was five four bald and looked to be southern Chinese in ethnicity, if Gene were to guess. Aquagea... or here this town at least... had a lot of Chinese, Sikhs, Russians and English or Scots-Irish who spoke with an absurd south western US accented English.... with the odd duck loan word thrown in to the mix.

Maybe it was just from being hunched over from age, but he was shorter than the thirteen year old bold of the MechWarrior, which was something else that he, Gene, found funny. "They say anything about that?"

"Nothing of the sort." The Sheriff replied, "You a lostech prospector too? Look a lil young."

Gene shrugged and looked over to the county gaol where the not pirates were being held, "I'm not one to pass up an opportunity, even if I doubt that there is anything there. I'll ride along as security," He offered, "You going to do something about Zathras's equipment?"

"You aiming to collect?"

"Not in salvage, I don't have any place to put it." He replied, having decided "I'm not planning to stay around sheriff probably see about getting off world."

The mayor who was a dandy looking maybe slavic mix of some stripe thought he looked a bit young for the mercenary life, which Gene figured he'd probably get a lot of.

"I'm looking for a quiet job that pays for food and drink, or a loud job running pirates, in that order by preference, but I wasn't planning to stick around here."

"Fair enough." The old timer snorted, "Well if you're right about why they're here, I suppose having a MechWarrior along wouldn't hurt. As fer the salvage, that will be something you'll have to take up with what passes for a planetary gubermint on this world, gunslinger." As if reading his mind regarding the pointed absence of the Planetary Militia even still the Sheriff hocked and spat in the dirt, "Once they're sure all the real work is done I'm well sure they'll come up from down south, but not quickly... could still be a few more weeks."

He resisted the urge to groan but he supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised. "You have any ideal how they'll handle the Zathras personnel?"

"Not a one." The sheriff replied. "Probably ship the live ones home, sure as shit don't want them here. That dropship fly?"

"It should."

"Gubmint gonna wan' keep it then. Even if it didn't they'd want it. Give you a tin star maybe, or a fancy title over some pile a dirt fer it, but probably not much in cash that'll spend any where other than here I bet."

That figured, and it was his turn to shrug. "Guess we'll see."

"You serious about them think'," thinking that "there is something buried south of town?"


"Someone in some place called the Aurigan reach certainly seems to think so, enough to convince them." He replied remembering what had been in the databanks. There was no telling if there was even anything there, or if there would be anything worth anything.

"I can get some excavating equipment from the mayor, take a few days, but I can do it if you can wait that long."

What else was he going to do in the interim exactly? Nothing except drive the Marauder back out to the Outpost castle and make sure he wasn't followed and bushwacked, or attempted to be bushwacked. They were probably just assuming he was camped somewhere near the salvage sight or in the city ruins, which was fine they could keep thinking that as long as no body followed him.

--
Commentary: Not entirely happy with this one, and it was originally going to come with other character perspectives but I've shifted around my scheduling for posting. The story will be coming back to Aquagea at least two distinct times in the future at least in present outlines in the later 3010s, and again in the likely early to mid 3020s so I'd like to have some of via Caballero's townsfolk fleshed out, but not today.

As to the locals perspective, some of the 'young folks' (read teens early twenties) have ground cars and road out to video tape the fighting, which we've seen from Gene's perspective is a lot of scoot and shoot, but from the Zathras perspective its getting shot at by a guy who doesn't show up on any of your electronics, and for the locals its stuff like the jumpjets and point blank shooting down another giant robot.

 

[lancelot]

Commentary: Not entirely happy with this one, and it was originally going to come with other character perspectives but I've shifted around my scheduling for posting. The story will be coming back to Aquagea at least two distinct times in the future at least in present outlines in the later 3010s, and again in the likely early to mid 3020s so I'd like to have some of via Caballero's townsfolk fleshed out, but not today.

As to the locals perspective, some of the 'young folks' (read teens early twenties) have ground cars and road out to video tape the fighting, which we've seen from Gene's perspective is a lot of scoot and shoot, but from the Zathras perspective its getting shot at by a guy who doesn't show up on any of your electronics, and for the locals its stuff like the jumpjets and point blank shooting down another giant robot.

Click to shrink...

The points you put into that over sized base only to abandon it and the planet are completely wasted. I'd understand if you wanting auto repairs if you hadn't picked phantom mech, and then played it safe and dragged it out to a hilarious degree, but honestly the base is just a massive waste of points.

Even if for some reason you make it a long term base of operation unless you get your own jumpship you have to pay top price for jumpship to go to a useless nearly dead world like this one. Most of your choices don't make much sense.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Finding what the bad guys were looking for...
...and getting a piece of the prize.​

Aquagea got progressively more green as you got further south, or at least that was what it looked like from orbit. From the ground it was still mostly brush country supporting thin herds of cattle grazing on scrub grasses from the looks of things. Or maybe the rainy season would mean that more of the planet would get green, and then dry back out later in the year. Gene didn't know, but just kept trucking along in his Marauder with the occasional downward check to his sensors.

He had kind of hoped that the Star League Oshkosh would work, but it needed some parts fabricated for it, and he just hadn't had time to even begin to consider fucking with that. Never mind that the truth was even if he could have it would have involved moving weights that his thirteen year old body just wasn't up to doing. So he had left it as it was. It just wasn't an option. So he was driving the Marauder down there. The Via Caballero denizens were driving a mix of trucks of all shapes and sizes ranging from small to monstrously large and most were bumping along the ground hauling trailers behind them.

The dust trail behind them was pretty epic.

His radio squawked a bit of static as one of the trucks tried to broadcast and flubbed it a bit. "So what are we even supposed to be looking for?" A young ranch hand named Darryl asked.

"Supposedly there was a warehouse in the stretch along the train." Along the railway, "There used to be a town down these parts but the damn chickens came in and bombed it to hell back during the second half of the Second. We didn't even rebuild the rail line until after the bastards were driven off." An old timer declared over the radio.

"All this down here is overgrown."

"Yeah nobody moved back here. The railway got fixed up and no one wanted to stay round."

While the locals talked he listened, but more than that flipped through his HiRez's sensors trying to adjust. Ground penetrating radar was a feature, but that was for mostly checking for things like mines, the exploding kind, not for subterranean or buried structures. He had some limited degree of looking for seismic irregularities but it wasn't an ideal solution. If Mariks had bombed the place chances were any signals or control systems were probably buried as well.

It looked like that rather than follow the original railway path though they'd shifted a couple of miles to one side. There was no telling what had prompted that other than at the time it must have seemed like a good idea. He could see on his scopes stretches of track left, and what looked like an old loading tower for maybe grain or something near a silo.

He banked hard towards the remains of the old track, or more precisely where his computer stated they should have been according to the Star League era maps. "Hey where you going gunslinger?"

"The rail was shifted when it was rebuilt. The old buildings are two or three miles different," He replied as he trigged a ground radar scan.... yeah the basic route north south hadn't changed, but it looked like the Mariks had knocked over several large buildings that had then sunk into the ground over a couple of decades. That was probably the reason for the shift.

Gene queried his computer for a map of the continent from the outpost castle at the time it had been shut down. It wasn't an exact match in terms of buildings but the neurohelmet gave him an idea of what things had looked like back them. Literally actually. Star League military maps came with holographic street views to guide pilots by apparently.

There had been a rail yard annex here used to support an SLDF garrison post anchoring the rimward periphery.

"What you got?"

"There was an SLDF garrison near here." Regular SLDF not connected to his Outpost Castle, or any Intelligence just regular troops apart of the LX Corps under Madson. Who if SLDF dossiers in the castle were to be believed would have likely been briefed on CID presence at least vaguely since at the time the Outpost castle had been tasked to oppose Periphery rebels not member states. Assuming of course that any of that information would have been valid by the time the succession war had kicked off. He had no idea the fate of those units during or even after the Amaris Civil War, never mind as a result of the first Succession war breaking out. There were other possible units stationed in the rimward periphery who could have come this way, Kenersky had managed to only shanghai most of the surviving SLDF divisions not all of them after all. Of course most of those hadn't survived the first succession war's chaos.

Did he really think there was a cache loot like Helm? Hell no. This was the periphery, but if this was from the second succession war then there might indeed be some LosTech. If there wasn't that was fine.

"Star League?"

"At one point," He answered flipping through the scopes again letting the computer reconstruct the surroundings through the overgrown half buried area. Unlike the castle there were no signs of automated defenses, or even sensors. Those had probably not survived either the Amaris war or the first succession war never mind, and there probably hadn't been much here to begin with given this had been a normal frontier post. A notice popped up, "What did Aquagea mine?"

"Germanium, stuff in jump cores." The sheriff added for unnecessary clarification. "Gold, platinum, a bunch of other 'spensive metals back in the day."

"Then I think I've got something. Bear to eleven o'clock about two mikes out dead ahead south of that location, looks like an annex of some kind. Underground structures." Probably hardened, but it looked like there were still power in them.
--
Aquagea had probably never been all that big of a world. It had been a part of the Cappellan Confederation during the Star League, but they had lost it during the second succession war, and then the invading Mariks had been driven off of it. Most likely the FWL simply couldn't have maintained a foothold this far into the periphery, certainly Liao as the weakest of the Great Houses had been in no position to reclaim their lost territory.

"Good god damn I ain't never seen this much Germanium in all my years."

They were standing in a warehouse that was big enough to accommodate Industrial mechs, which was how he assumed most of this had been moved. The lights were not great though, even if the power did work. "How much do you think is here?" Darryl asked the old man.

Gene clicked the noteputer with the manifest information, "Assuming this data is correct. This is 25 Tons." Which was a lot to be sure. He looked around. One problem would be getting it out of here, but who even bought Germanium? How did you move this to market? Not his problem. The young mechwarrior shined his stream light around the cavernous room. "As for the rest of this, its a grab bag of..." Of well everything. The pallets of MREs made sense... they might even still be safe to eat not that he was going to test that. The wine crates were odd, but again that was fine.

"What you make of these papers. They say SLDF on 'em. Say Court Martial." Another of the locals twanged off.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to secure a complete and detailed record of SLDF court martial proceedings. Specifically, that of the SLDF vs a Captain K. Marik, regarding conduct on Pollux. Given the age they might very well be the last remaining copy in known space. Not that it was very useful, but someone had thought it was important.

"That ain't nothing lookie here."

"First Edition handwritten," Brushed? "Dictatum Honorarium," Copies of the most frequently talked about piece of literature to emerge from the Draconic Combine.

"Huh?"

"It was written by the daughter of the founder of the Draconis Combine." Again interesting, and probably historically significant, maybe even valuable, but why had it been secured here in this giant sealed ferrocrete box ... whenever it had been locked up.

He shined the light over a Nascar looking flag and glanced inside the container. "Is that Star League?"

"Yeah Terran Hegemony." He replied to the question. "Its not military this," He shined the light up and down at the computers, "Volgadon," He said highlighting the name, "Was the capital of Lone Star," He shined back to the Nascar flag with the star on it. "It was abandonned during the second succession war."

"My grand pappy said we ran the puking chickens," The sheriff paused as his grimaced, "What?"

"Don't call the Mariks puking chickens, that's the 101st​ Divisions nickname."

"Thems SLDF?" It was a silly complaint to be making. he recognized since ... barring the Clans or some surviving House or Merc unit they were gone, "Well my bad any way ran them purple chickens all the way off cause some fellas came down to these parts. Those fellows were from somewhere coreward, but it would have been before all of this." Yan waved his hand to the SLDF bunker's contents.


"I don't think so, these dates are all second succession war or later." He wondered if the Germanium hadn't been planned to be gotten offworld to buy or barter for more supplies for the resistance, or if it had been intended as a nest egg to try and get the planet rebuilt.

"I found the motherload they is guns over here!" Someone shouted before they could discuss it further.

Any discussion about the strangers in the 29th​ century or what not ended as they moved further into the warehouse. "These is mech parts ain't they?"

They were. There was also a crate full of what looked like Draconis Combine money, that Gene had no idea if it would still spend, but sure looked impressive. "Who this princely looking fellow?"

"Kurita Sanethia, 18th​ Coordinator Draconis Combine."

"Can tell somebody actually went to school." Darryl ribbed the friend who'd asked the question. "Forget that, come on and lets see them guns Boyd." Another local good ole boy paused in dragging the shop light across the floor long enough to flick Darryl off. "Holy shit. It is the motherload." He whistled.

Not really, but Gene could understand given that up until a month ago most of the town's residents had never seen a BattleMech in person. All the same he considered checking out the mech parts but the light showed at least one BattleMech back there. This had been somewhere the resistance to the Mariks had been storing whatever they had in the region if he were to guess. There were a couple other vehicles as well he noted as he moved passed one of the smaller artillery pieces. One of the mechs was stripped of its parts, and he couldn't make much out of it, but there were plenty of weapons for it to be fitted out. There was a crate with a mech gyro in it, so maybe it had taken gyro damage and they hadn't gotten around to finishing repairs. "Those are jumpjets, heat sinks. This one looks like it was in the middle of a full strip down," He remarked looking for any computers to check. The other one though, "They must have finished with this one though.

The stripped one looked like it was a fifty tonner, might have been a centurion of some stripe, but he couldn't be sure. The assault mech was easier. The Battlemaster was in near mint condition, the paint job wasn't quite perfect but it looked fully ready to fight.

The medium mech wasn't the only vehicle that had been left here incomplete in need of a refit, apparently there had been a couple more vehicles that needed some work. There were parts for other mechs as well... though since the mechs they were likely intended for weren't here they probably would end up used to restore the Zathras mechs.

"You see anything you want?" The sheriff asked as he checked over a Sperry Browning MG's head space gauges.

"He's got a mech."

"I know he got a mech, I ain't blind." Yan snipped back.

He was honestly still trying to figure out what half of this shit was, even as his eyes fell on another storage crate of armor... "If that transport vehicle runs, well it'll be easier to move some of this." If it didn't then he had no need for it, and that reduced the need for the armor.

"We going to split the money up anyway, if you going to rock city you'll need cash in your pocket."

"Load up and sell that Germanium in Rock City." Somebody added, "We all could go down to Detroit, god know be nice to be able to buy some new mining rigs."

Gene ignored the banter and hauled up to another Texas like flagged mark container. He didn't recognize the battalion name, and it wasn't important so much as what the noteputter manifest read as. Lone Hegemony had been a Terran Hegemony world. That, coupled with the fact that the House Units, or at least elite units like the Davion Guards and swords of light would have had access to Double Heat Sinks.

"What you looking for?"

"My 'mech carries a Pulse laser, I was hoping for spares."

"Darryl! Look for Pulse Lasers!" Boyd shouted.

"Well what do they look like?"

One of the old timers shook his head, and went back to crawling over the chassis of Gene thought might be a stripped down Goblin Medium Tank... or what was called a medium tank anyway. He moved to the crate and tapped the computer prodding it to life. The date was definitely- "Something?"

"I think," Gene paused, "that they moved off Lone Star, probably a general Hegemony Diaspora that was trying to escape the first and second succession wars. None of this looks to have been packed up directly on Lone Star, and some of this had to come from Kurita held planets in the 2830s." He shrugged, and hoped to find a star map or some indication of where these people had been trying to go.

Had the worsening succession wars forced them to risk moving further? Had they known what they were carrying? Why was the library here? There were too many questions.

--
Commentary: I am really trying to get through the first Aquagea arc, and hence this being today's update, even though I had planned to do MCU Jump, and part of that is also that the Asgard half is proving... annoying to put to paper.

So anyway just to reiterate this is based off of , inspired from Cimbri's CYOA and my build for it but it is not necessarily a one to one hewing towards everything. Yes I decided to use Aquagea, because its both in the CYOA and because of were in the Periphery its located. Yes, Detroit is in the CYOA and yes we will be going there next, but I am also using Aquagea for things later on, because its the 3010s and the Clan wars are not for a very long time.

(In regard to my other BT fic, in the original draft/outline/snippets Kane timeskips to the future due to having been put in a stasis pod and is woken up only because of the Clan Invasion, which is not necessarily going to still happen in the current version of that story.)

So yes, the build is kind of wonky from some perspectives. As this chapter sort of hints at in the future there may very well be a landhold out in the boonies. Certainly though I could do a, loath as I am to call it this, a reboot of the idea

That Idea: Start on Detroit during Pirate attack, use the loot boxing results for there to have a base of operations, and go from there. I could do that, but for now I'm going to keep with this because there is a lot content already written. The main thing here is that the build, and the story plot are not tightly bound together. In story context the base is nice, but the MC can't stay here forever, because as Lance observed its a pretty 'dead' world.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

That Idea: Start on Detroit during Pirate attack, use the loot boxing results for there to have a base of operations, and go from there. I could do that, but for now I'm going to keep with this because there is a lot content already written. The main thing here is that the build, and the story plot are not tightly bound together. In story context the base is nice, but the MC can't stay here forever, because as Lance observed its a pretty 'dead' world.

Click to shrink...

Well Aquagea can the the homebase of his company later on. Maybe even train some locals up to be his support team or as even pilots for other mechs later. Having home to comeback to is nice to have.

 

[Rodon]

SLDF vs a Captain K. Marik

Click to shrink...

Oh, hey isn't that the thing that got Kenyon kicked out of the SLDF? https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Kenyon_Marik_(28th_c.)

 

[carterhall]

I'm enjoying the story. The CYOA set-up makes it tricky to get into it for me, with it stacking so many boons on one person (Phantom 'Mech; not just a secret Star League base, but a secret fully automated Central Intelligence Directorate Star League base; a LosTech Marauder; Gunslinger training materials; only 13 years old, and now loot box #2). But that's my problem and the CYOA's fault, not yours. The process of defeating the pirates could have been summarized to a point to shrink the arc down. Only a couple battles to show how Gene is using his talents/training to manhandle the miscreants, then narrating the rest. It is good practice in writing the battle scenes, so understandable. I do think you're doing the setting justice, especially getting the worn-out frontier feeling for the Periphery. Looking forward to seeing what Gene's greater plans are and picking the pace up a little.

Thanks for writing and sharing!

 

[Imperator Pax]

Prize Catch​

At least the transport ran, and hadn't given him any trouble getting it back here. Currently he was watching as the automated gantries and lift as they worked to refit his Marauder with the parts from the warehouse. The mechanical arms had pulled off the armor, and heat sinks and were overhauling the VLAR 300. He had made the decision not to go too crazy.

No attempts to add LRM 10s to the Marauder this go round. There had been three in the warehouse once they'd finished cataloging them. No the more important find had been the double heat sinks, and sixteen tons of Ferro fibrous armor tucked away from the second succession war era. No Extended Range weapons unfortunately, and no pulse lasers had turned up. The refit would officially put his mech under weight for the frame.

He was going to put the maximum of protection that could be mounted, and replace the engine's heat sinks with double strength models. Putting missiles would have to wait. As for what was left? He was going to leave it here. The remaining tonnage of ferro fibrous would sit in storage in case he came back. He wouldn't be able to replace it if it was damaged, but it and the Valiant Lamellar armor would be safe in the depot of the Outpost castle in case he needed it.

Whenever he came back here.

He had also considered trying to use large lasers, but for now that was also a no. Once it was painted no one would be able to tell he had likely done anything to his Marauder. They were just spare parts, and wouldn't attract any attention. Even if you did know what you were looking at, his Marauder was lacking an Autocannon and thus suggested it was a rebuild custom made with what was available... or that was what he was hoping it would be taken as. Lobbing in was nice, but he'd have preferred a long laser.

Probably more valuable than the heat sinks and ferro fibrous though were the 'strangers' computers what they had brought in their flight from Volgadon, and Lone Star. It was the University's academic library, or at least the bulk of it. That included the school of medicine, Star League era medicine. The base computer was making copies of all of it.

Not that he expected it would do him a lot of good, but it was something. He was going to print out text book format versions of some of the books to leave with Via Cabellero's hospital... or what passed for a hospital out there, but not the computer itself. The chime almost made him think he had lost track of time though. He had been running a schedule where he was trying to get a star league education down in addition to scheduling time for classroom and sim pods for mech training.

He was starting to piece together what he suspected had happened in Aquagea during the second succession war. Someone from the Terran Hegemony had recognized Lone Star was lost, and had run for the periphery, and then they and their dependents had probably been scattered, and some of those people had gotten tied up in the resistance against House Marik during their occupation. The reasons, the hows and whys? He didn't know them, but it was obvious someone had started running, and there had been waves following after.

He looked at the alert. There was a training heading into town. Oh, now that all the heavy work was done it seemed like the Planetary Militia had showed up. He wondered how Darryl's centurion was shaping up. He'd been thrilled at the idea of rebuilding the thing... or installing parts on it in his parent's garage. He wondered how pushy the planetary militia was going to be about the Zathras salvage.

It wasn't like he needed anything from that lot... but the Periphery that was a pile of money even discounting the DropShip. Twelve Mechs, even four light mechs was a hell of a haul to make in terms of salvage. He certainly wasn't going to fight over it. The K-bills were nice, since it seemed like they'd spend, but the armor and heat sinks, never mind the library were well huge in themselves. He wasn't going to fight over the Zathras rights not when he was planning to leave the planet anyway. He was going to need passage on a dropship for both him his marauder, and potentially the ground vehicle and that would be a lot easier if the planetary government wasn't pissed off at him.
--
The Sheriff's shiny new Battlemaster did presumably a good job in convincing the PM Colonel to mind his 'p and qs' or at least that was the current way things were going. Since they hadn't done anything they weren't exactly getting the most welcoming welcome of abundant 'southron hospitality' either, the town had been strafed by the Eagles at least once. Admittedly, the Air Lance had probably flow south to haras the militia, probably. It might have been these guys, or someone else he had no way of knowing.

He suspected that if Aquagea had any mechs at all they certainly weren't out in the boonies of Via Caballero these days. Maybe back in the second succession war before the big cities in these parts had been bombed, but the planet nowadays only had a few million people total spread across the main continent.

To say that Aquagea had a small population well was kind of an understatement. He wondered if it had ever really been a big planet... it didn't seem like House Marik had ever used nukes, and he doubted that warship bombardment had been a thing but it was clear the planet's lost of infrastructure made it a lot harder to do much productively. It had apparently killed the mining industry, though he supposed that had probably been petering out anyway due to the collapse of the Star League demand anyway. Most likely the destruction done to shipbuilding had made Germanium mining this far out less interesting for the Marik's to hold on to... or that was just a guess...

The Germanium in the warehouse though was going to have to be shipped off world. Detroit was as good of a place to try and sell it as anywhere else in the periphery. Selling it all as one batch might not have been the best idea, but then he was freely going to admit to not knowing shit about what Germanium was worth or what the market was or any of that.

He elected to avoid any of that in favor of hand delivering the stacks of books to the hospital and having avoided the town's center of government all morning. The truth was he'd been ducking it, but it was only a stalling tactic really.

"This?" The PM Major who was a poor bloody infantryman on top of it looked incredulous, "This kid is your mech pilot?"

"Gene's a deadshot, ace twice over." The sheriff said from the window seat sipping at what was probably local brewed whisky. "Certainly did more than anybody from down in Leone has during this whole mess."

"You some kind of mercenary?"

"I'm between jobs, I just thought they were pirates." He replied crossing his arms over his gray field jacket and leaning against the bookshelf. Gene was conscious of the number of people with obvious weapons on.

--
They had discussed this. It would be four jumps to get from Aquagea to Detroit. That was about a month of travel so really not that bad. If they could find a JumpShip and a DropShip with the space to take them. That was the part of the equation that in the periphery might actually take a few months. Thankfully Detroit was a pretty clear destination for trade from the Magistracy. The other option was the JumpShip that had come from Zathras with their Union. There was always the chance of some other Jumper from the Inner Sphere would come along, but the Magistracy was less likely to do politics.

Leone was the nominal capital of Aquagea and was less of bust town looking place. It was still on the small side with probably less than a hundred thousand people. It had a kind of coastal california esque geography to the layout of the town and its neighbors sprawling along the beachfront. There were lots of mission style houses, and buildings in general to go along with the area. That would have been nicer if it was tourist picture-y rather than half lived in worn down and tired looking.

Via Cabellero had largely devolved into people surviving as a ranching and farming community with far more limitted mining. It was the last big town at the end of the rail line because all the other ones were gone. Leone had a spaceport, but it also had fishing wharfs where people went out with nets in boats that belonged to the 20th​ century and with nothing more advanced pre spaceflight tech to try and make a living.

It wasn't like there was an abundance of people here who they could all throw together to work the Union the Zathras had touched down either. That was really the nail in the coffin to just taking their DropShip and putting it straight back into service, which was unfortunate, but that was how it was, but that didn't mean the Planetary Government wasn't interested in the DropShip. It definitely wanted to keep the Union as a prize of war even if they didn't have anyone to fly it right now.

It would probably be the sort of thing to cause trouble for them, but then the reason they even had the union in the first place was that their neighbor had decided to throw it at them loaded full of Mechs so... that it wasn't like they were asking for a whole lot of extra trouble.

Undoubtedly something would happen, but that wasn't Gene's problem. Right now he was just looking at getting offworld and to somewhere bigger and with more job prospects. Detroit made sense because it had pirate problems and could probably pay him to do regular mercenary security contracting, and if not the planet itself than maybe some merchant concern and that would at least generate a work history that he could use down the road for getting potentially hired on at mercenary company down the road if he wanted to go that route.

Even this far south though he was something that took him away from his big advantage. The Outpost Castle was safely hidden away but a month by dropship and multiple systems away meant he wouldn't be able to use its goodies... and he was already missing the fact he wasn't getting to use the simulation pods like he normally did.

Someone though had known about the resistance cache from the mid 2800s... someone not local, and who lived in another periphery power... and that raised questions.

--
Commentary: I rolled the loot using Drakensis's lootboxing CYOA. Lot of just spare weapons and stuff, and since I knew a general time frame of when it came out I used the 2750 era random table for Terran Hegemony. The BattleMaster is not royal, it will make a return later, though we will see more of Darryl's Centurion before that.

The Marauder's upgrades are relatively minor. The upgrade to ferro fibrous gives the mech a more crab like appearance, making it more blocky shaped, I envision as looking a Marauder IIC / King Crab sort of affair but without the shoulder cannon. The upgrade to DHS is strictly all in the engine, so those extra single are coming out. These are star league DHS not Clan models.

That being said this is based off a table top legal design but I am strongly considering from here on out for mech customization ignoring things like 'crits', even though that's supposed to be an abstraction of amount of space it takes up.

In any event I'm looking forward to moving onto the next world.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

You going to turn the Marauder into the Marauder 2 later on?

 

[Imperator Pax]

You going to turn the Marauder into the Marauder 2 later on?

Click to shrink...

Given what I have in mind over hte next three four years of story content I don't going to be on good terms with the Wolf Dragoons any time soon, not enough to warrant a Marauder II (They entered production in 3012). Certainly it would be nice.

The Marauder will function in its configuration at present for a while. Probably never going to actually put the LRM 20 poor man's timber wolf into Frontline use, even when we get to the Merc company though as a second line unit in some variation may show up with other pilots.

Most likely it'll be something like 4x ML 2 LRM 20 type affair because the TW has endo and XL to save weight.

No if we see another unique mech it'll probably something crazy, I'm leaning towards Gene's alternate be something like the Screamer LAM.

For where I am in drafting right now. The Marauder is long range dueling, some brawling and manuevering and won't be getting any further upgrades through the Majesty Metals contract.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

Given what I have in mind over hte next three four years of story content I don't going to be on good terms with the Wolf Dragoons any time soon, not enough to warrant a Marauder II (They entered production in 3012). Certainly it would be nice.

The Marauder will function in its configuration at present for a while. Probably never going to actually put the LRM 20 poor man's timber wolf into Frontline use, even when we get to the Merc company though as a second line unit in some variation may show up with other pilots.

Most likely it'll be something like 4x ML 2 LRM 20 type affair because the TW has endo and XL to save weight.

No if we see another unique mech it'll probably something crazy, I'm leaning towards Gene's alternate be something like the Screamer LAM.

For where I am in drafting right now. The Marauder is long range dueling, some brawling and manuevering and won't be getting any further upgrades through the Majesty Metals contract.

Click to shrink...

Most of Marauder 2 are just upgraded 1. Or you can do the Bounty Hunter route and steal one from the WD.

If you want a 4x ML 2 LRM 20 type affair then get a Catapult or Archer, mechs that are built for fire support. The Marauder is made for directed fights.

 

[Drickie]

The K-bills were nice, since it seemed like they'd spend, but the armor and heat sinks, never mind the library were well huge in themselves. .​

Click to shrink...

Its C-Bills, named after Comstar. I'm enjoying this so far, keep up the good work.​

 

[stads]

nice chapter thx for writing it
good some usefull loot will be fun to see the next arc and the long term plans

 

[Imperator Pax]

Its C-Bills, named after Comstar. I'm enjoying this so far, keep up the good work.​

Click to shrink...

No, this is actually correct we're referring to Ryu, the Kuritan House bills not Comstar C-Bill, this is something that came out of the lootboxing where it specifically gave a value in H-Bills, and to roll for House.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Periphery Prospectus​

Much as he wanted to he knew the old man knew he couldn't go with them.

The county Sheriff just couldn't go running offworld to haul a load to market, which was disappointing since Yan really would have liked to get off world... see some big city like Ann Arbor. He just had to content himself with his shiny new BattleMech. The BattleMaster would be the most powerful War Machine on the planet once the gunslinger moved onto his next battlefield. It apparently carried a different model lightning thrower than Gene's Marauder, and of course it would need missiles and ammo for its machine guns, but it was his. Bullets wouldn't be that hard anyway.

Darryl had claimed the fifty ton Centurion that was needing to be fitted out. There would be a lot of arguing with Leon about what all to do with the salvage from Zathras but they'd get some of those for the town since the militia hadn't done squat. The congress would get the DropShip, and the Eagles, and probably most of the mech salvage but that was alright.

"The mercenary recommends we argue for the other Centurion." Garcia, one of the big time ranchers... or what passed for big time out in these parts... remarked.

"We'd have two then," The mayor remarked.

The rancher ignored the comment and looked down at the print out, "The Blackjack is a good training mech, and should offer at least some degree of anti air capability if refit to spec." Garcia continued to read off the paper. "and with four mechs that would be a lance right there." He added.

"Contingent on us being able to fix 'em you mean," The head of the mine grunted, which Yan admitted was true. They'd rewatched the video Darryl and his friends had shot of the battle at night among the sands, and fixing the damage was going to be a big time thing. It was part of the reason no one wanted to try and take all the mechs anyway. If Leon wanted some of them, well theoretically they'd be contributing to the planetary defense.

They needed to play ball with the capital district cause they needed to use the spaceport so they could go offworld and sell the Germanium, and hopefully come back with stuff that would make day to day life a little easier.

Of course even if the big city folk did lay claim to the Dropper the Sheriff still had no idea how exactly they were going to actually move it down south. It wasn't as if they could just the Zathras people to do it, but he suspected they'd end up hiring some hands to do it as they passed through the trade route later in the year.

--

The rainy season had really picked up, and was currently belting the barn slash machine shop hard enough to rattle glass as Darryl and Boyd clambered over the exterior of the machine. In a few weeks the desert would be in full bloom, but right now you couldn't go outside without getting soaked. That was fine since there was no sense going out in this slop. The 50 ton mech was coming together and they had the Zathras Centurion to reference by even if it was a little crispy. They hadn't put the armor on, but they'd gotten the gyro installed this morning.

"What about the manual Gene dug up?"

"I don't need no damn Manual Boyd." Darryl snapped. "I have worked on my share of Nissan engines and I don't need no damn manual to tell me about this big boy." He declared patting the eight and a half ton fusion engine.

"There ain't even anything to do to that engine." Boyd grumbled tossing the hypo spanner onto the tray with a clang. He wasn't wrong. The mech chassis needed to have its armor secured over the exposed myomer bundles, and weapons installed, but the engine, the engine was fine.

The cache of weapons stockpiled to fight the Mariks had come with enough equipment to probably repair both mechs. Though there was probably no way to repair even half of all the mechs Gene had knocked out with what they had had. It didn't matter anyway the town would be shipping most of the Zathras stuff down south anyway to Leon when they headed down to the starport.

The planetary capital hadn't thus far said anything about their belligerent neighbor, or their delusions of granduer other than some talking points and posturing on the radio, and the Union was still parked in the derelict city waiting. They'd been told to leave it well enough alone though.

Which given they had a BattleMech, or two, to work with was easy enough to do. There was a clamoring in town over what was to be done with the rest of the salvaged Mechs. It wasn't just the idea of Zathras coming back either, out here in the periphery any 'mech that was gained was an immediate boost to status, and could set up your family to enter in the nobility... which on Aquagea shouldn't really have mattered because the Pre Marik invasion nobility had largely gone down fighting in the Resistance so there weren't any proper nobles left. That didn't stop people from dreaming though of the future.

"Darryl we should wait for Bibb to get back from town," Boyd muttered adjusting the lift, "This ain't just some agrimech."

--
He glanced at the muted television screen as they waited.

They had ended up going back to sleepy... ish... little Via Caballero. They'd been killing time for about a month now. There just hadn't been a DropShip available, or a JumpShip open at the time they went down to what passed for a planetary capital so they had to wait. The mayor and the planetary government hammered out some stuff in that time frame. After those several weeks and two different JumpShips coming and going they were finally getting ready to move on to loading their cargo onto a dropship. The Mule wasn't necessarily going to be comfortable, and a month was probably pushing it because even a month in a union was sure to be unpleasant, but it had plenty of space to load everything up in the cargo bay.

They were making progress though, and that was something. Knowing he wasn't going to have access to all the technical goodies of the Outpost Castle for a probably very long time had made him come up with a more or less self study curriculum. It had occurred to Gene that break down in education or not it wasn't a terrible idea to try and pursue some kind of more structured education, especially for things more social. That, he supposed, was another reason to go somewhere like Detroit surely there be some kind of education infrastructure there to fill him in what all was happening with the Successor States, and Periphery.

There was also the limited factor of there was only so much he could take with him, and... well there was stuff from either the Outpost's learning material or that had been pulled from the library that would have raised some eyebrows. There was also the fact that while the star league military manuals probably could have been explained away if stumbled upon... the more academic material was stuff that he wasn't ready for. The basic educational package of the Star League was something he was going to have to get through if he was ever going to get into the more advanced material from the library of Volgadon University.


There was something more than that to. Trawling through the CID material one of the things that stood out was the starmap, never mind that he would have brought the hegemony star maps anyway. The Hegemony, and the Star League hadn't trusted the Periphery and hadn't really trusted the great houses either. It wasn't going to be a priority. Lost Tech prospecting was a busting sort of industry, and dangerous, and he knew he didn't have the resources to go trucking around the periphery or anywhere else looking for buried treasure. Maybe one day but not today and not any time soon. So he'd be taking a copy of the map, but mostly in case he needed it but couldn't get back here.

He wouldn't be coming back any time soon after all so he was currently packing up what all he thought he would need. It wasn't just the academic information for studying. Battletech Computers were... sort of weird. It didn't help he was in a thirteen year old body, and the physical limitations that came with that.

Land hold prospects or no, he wasn't coming back here any time soon. He was going to get on that DropShip, burn up to the nadir point and dock with that JumpShip, and spend a month in Space jumping to a planet with something that passed for heavy industry. More important than that would be the jobs, a chance to get a footprint, and earn some money... to go on to bigger better things.


--
Commentary: So a couple of things, the next segment jumps to Detroit. One thing I considered is that (not immediately) is having Gene ship off later after a couple years in Mercenary Life getting a Lyran recommendation to ship off to Nagelring. The principle reason for this was Nagelring is an ex-SLDF academy with a baccalaureate program and its been discarded for a couple reasons.

One is that I don't really want to do however long it would take to graduate from it lets say... Gene is '13' so four years in merc contracts would be 17 so say graduation in 3023. It would be something I would probably want to time skip, and with this having its own thread not something I'd want to skip. 3023 would also mark the Epsinosa coup d'etat in the Aurgian Coalition, which I may or may not focus on. Then of course there is also an SB SI that I vaguely remember had a stint at Nagelring, but I honestly can't remember the details right now. [I might very well be misremembering]

So that's one idea that I've considered but have pretty much definitively scrapped.

As has been something has been reminded to me, the Centurion is not actually a Star League era mech. Its from the first succession war so technically Gene's computer shouldn't have identified it, but thats fine, oops. The Lone Star exodus, and general flight of persons from the Terran Hegemony due to the First succession war is something to talk about later, but didn't occur all at one time.

Yeah, thats going to be important. We will get to that. We are going to be mucking all around the periphery if my current outline holds, but for now, its time to go to Detroit.

... and kill Pirates. We might go on to other things, Alexandrian Covenant for example might make an appearance during the Pirate hunt. There is also the other option of going into the Inner Sphere and getting involved in the Fed Suns land. Lots of branches.

An alternate idea I had was since I'll be using stuff from HBS, and the Aurigan source book, would be starting out at Castle Outpost Nautilus instead of Aquagea. This was an alternate idea to my Detroit start, which at least is a location on the CYOA. Speaking of I need to go reread my copy of the Aurigan codex, but we are officially through what is 'Arc 1'.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

Thought his would have been a more like a prologue.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Thought his would have been a more like a prologue.

Click to shrink...

I generally consider prologues to be shorter than this has turned out to be.

and technically, this was really Two Parts

The actual dancing with Zathras segment, and then everything after. We're sitting at twenty thousand words for just this first planet segment basically.

 

[stads]

good to see the mc planning to learn more
still taking all the education matirials and loading it up a personal comp and taking copy with him should not be a problem
as for what to do becoming a famed pirate hunter could be fun
while keeping tech hidden away for him self and dropping info on it in a way to phone lovers cant stop it

 

[Silverbullet]

I forgot the Centurion was 1st War. I love that mech Fills most roles decently, easy to produce, I just wish MW5 would let me put Jump jets on it.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Journey Continues​

JumpShips were even more scarce than DropShips. Scarce enough that some people even thought that there might be only several thousand JumpShips in the entire Inner Sphere. Gene had come to understand that this was misleading for a number of reasons. JumpShips were undoubtedly precious resources, as a result due to their expense and rarity most people who owned them didn't want to take risks with them and more importantly even at the height of the Star League JumpShip registration had never been universal. Plenty of JumpShips did nothing more than ply a single route back and forth for their owners. They would trace the same route over and over a gain year in year out for literal centuries and never had a reason to register with some central bureaucracy, or had let that registration lapse. With the downfall of the Star League there was less reason to register with Terra if you weren't going to leave your local sector of space, you might register with your homeport but otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, and the money involved in registration.

Not that there weren't benefits to ship registry. Insurance for something as important as a JumpShip was the big one, especially for legal reasons, after all a duly registered and insured JumpShip was a lot harder for someone to make off with. JumpShips were supposed to be inviolable, or as near as you could really get to it in the mess that was the succession wars.

The venerable Merchant-class JumpShip in theory should have retailed for about 400 Million C-Bills. Or at least that was about what they should have cost in Star League terms, because back then had been before the first and second succession wars had wrecked all of those shipyards that had never gotten rebuilt. So demand was high, and supply was low, and there were never enough JumpShips on the market, and never enough in circulation either.

Given those factors he didn't even want to thing what something like a Monolith might cost in modern money if it came up for sale. Probably billions of C-Bills, maybe tens of depending on who all was trying to get ahold of such a monstrosity. With all the misinformation, or misunderstanding bout JumpShips he still doubted he would see a Monolith out in the periphery, certainly not with where they were going. Detroit was supposed to be a pretty big center of industry as far as the Periphery went, but he would have been surprised if the Taurians or the Canopians had any Monoliths in service. If he was going to see one it would meant taking a trip to the Inner Sphere, which he might do at some point down the road.

Looking at the star field outside and then to the nearer other DropShips and the JumpShips that they had separated from he knew he wouldn't be doing that anytime soon. He had spent a month just travelling to get here, and they weren't even on the ground yet... and there was no telling how many months he might spend here on Detroit.

The planet was a distant crescent from the view. They were a week out according to his computer still, but the planet looked a lot like earth in terms of general characteristics, except for having two moons. Two billion people lived on the planet, and there was even an HPG station. Those were rarities in the periphery. It was really the industry though that made Detroit stand out. It was an independent world with industry in the periphery.

It even had a recharge station from the star league era that was still intact despite the planet being under regular pirate attacks. The pirate threat was one reason to come here, there would hopefully be a job here that would be simple and pay regular. Truthfully even without access to the planetary datanets or whatever passed for one on even an industrialized periphery world he suspected that just starting out he wouldn't be making that much. He needed something though, and he felt cooped up in this dropship. It would be good to be back on terra firma.

--
The following week plus under thrust gravity had been mind numbing in boredom as the Mule had streaked towards Ann Arbor's spaceport, but they had finally gotten from the jump point down to the space port and been able to disembark. Thankfully Detroit honored k-bills or he really might have been in trouble. He had needed to swing by the ComStar bureau anyway to start the paper work rolling for mercenary registration (for the MRB) anyway and had converted some of his K-Bills to C-Bills just to diversify.

It didn't seem like there would be a problem with K-Bills but he had not idea if that would hold, and the C Bill seemed easier to pay with. He was taking a chance putting some of converted currency into a digital format since he'd have less physical access to it, but that had benefits as well. Lodgings had been a lot easier to do through ComStar's bureau office using nothing but electronic C-Bills in order to rent a warehouse for six months to hold his Marauder, and Hover Truck. The problem after that though had been searching out employment in the mercenary field in or around Ann Arbor. Oh certainly Merchant Houses were hiring but most of what they were looking to hire were armed security, infantry, to patrol and guard their warehouses from more common thieves than anything else.

One Heavy BattleMech wasn't very useful to a group of tradesmen in the city. The MRB didn't really have anything strictly local either, and Gene didn't plan to try and relocate somewhere else this soon. He had tapped into the plaentary data networks to track and see how much the Germanium haul would sell for, but that also was something that might take months. There was no assurances he'd find a job offworld, and for right now he had reasons to stay put. Six month lease of the warehouse was non refundable anyway.

The newsfeeds were a mix of text articles as well as various channels with newscasters. The tv side of things were a mix of local, regional (that was Periphery news), and then the Comstar Bureau talking about news from the Inner Sphere... probably a couple weeks after it had happened depending on how far away they were talking. There wasn't really anything on though. Detroit was a pretty nice planet, and been even during the Star League era. Unfortunately as was especially true for the periphery that made it especially rife for pirates to come for a smash and grab.

The Mercenary Review Board, run by ComStar, had put information about various pirates, and more important details about the bounties. Until however such period that pirates actually showed up to make for a smash and grab he had very little to do but sit here and read. He told himself that that could be any time. Technically Detroit was 'on the fringes' being independent of both the Magistracy as well as the Taurians and surely was a tempting target for pirates... but he'd probably be waiting here a while.

Hurry up and Wait the constants of a soldiers life. The norm for a mercenary.

Gene stood up and walked across the hard metal deck flooring of the loft housing. The warehouse was in access distance of the starport on paper. In practice he'd already noticed that traffic meant two hours wait time. Before leaving Aquagea, but after the refits had been completed and tested for functionality, he had the Outpost Castle repaint the Marauder in darker tones. The grey green mottled shapes of paint along the hull made the Marauder's shut down form look more crab like.

--
The sudden alarm of klaxons through him out of the loft's single bed that he put and onto the hard floor. For a moment he had thought it was his perimeter alarm, but it was too far out, instead it was Ann Arbor's civil defense sirens going off, and it was too damn early on a Saturday morning for this to be some prick's idea of a drill. Gene picked himself up and limped over to the desk and plugged into the data network where Comstar's News Bureau was announcing an emergency warning about a jumpship appearing at the pirate's point... and was surprise surprise pirates.

He was actually surprised that the City's phone network, of sorts, actually could manage to get a signal through, but it wasn't really a cellular network as he had expected it to be. Darryl didn't really know anything more about than what had been on the news. The Aquagea teenager did a lot of bitching about wishing he'd brought his Centurion, but other than that hadn't had all that much to say before getting off the phone.

Not that Darryl's refit Centurion would have done much good. The Aquagea native had no real experience piloting the mech never mind in combat and it would have been an extra expense trying to bring it along with them. Still the country boy must have felt useless in this situation, and that was something Gene could relate too. On Aquagea though he had acted initially out of the concern that they were pirates, and even so the later knowledge that the ner'do'wels were simply ambitious neighbors didn't really change the calculus too much, but he had basically done that pro bono... or out of his own self interest.

Here on Detroit though...

... he logged into the MRB remotely...

Here on Detroit he was a mercenary, and he wasn't going to do anything for free... and as he expected to find one of the Robes was already harried trying to distribute the sudden surge of of contracts looking for any and all possible defenders for the planet. That happened to include anyone and everyone with a functional BattleMech... or one that might be able to be made functional.

Gene zipped his jacket up, and snapped the cobra style buckles on his belt, and switched the feeds from the data network to the cockpit of his marauder as the fusion reactor ran through its start up checks. The three dropships burning hard for the surface of the planet from the pirate point kind of had already hinted they were looking at an Invader-class JumpShip being up there, but he kept his mouth shut as the Comstar Adjutant? ... no adept, that was the right word, from the MRB ran over what they 'knew' about the situation. "MechWarrior, please hold for Colonel Khan."

Khan was an older gray haired with a well trimmed beard and pronounced crow's feet. His uniform if not for being powder blue reminded him of the British officer's dress uniform. The British stylings might well have been intentional. He was wearing a single large gem studded cross of war at his throat and some smaller medals and ribbons on his breast, but hardly the officer's salad that Gene had been expecting. Hopefully that was a good sign. "We have three dropships coming." He said without preamble. "What is worse is that we have potential reports of pirates potentially be already on the ground. Probably just infantry, but the troublemakers are making a mess of traffic and could complicate our defense." That sounded like an understatement.

Colonel Khan's briefing was short, and to the point. He was getting paid to shore up defenses around the Star Port and the government center. The idea was that the Planetary Militia needed time to actually get to their garrison and prepare to fight, and then potentially move elsewhere. Ann Arbor was the planetary capital and the center of its militia... and they were not ready to fight three DropShips worth of pirates.

So with forward warning that the pirates had air lances escorting their dropships down Gene took his Heavy BattleMech outside the warehouse and moved to the navpoint he had entered into his computer.

--
Commentary: So against my better judgement I'm updating this. This opens the ~10k word Detroit I arc.... so yeah next segment.

As for other updates, we're approaching the end of June, I will probably update Stargate Jumpchain once more before the end of the month, the MCU jumpchain, might also get updated, but Wednesday will probably be the standard Jumpchain update (in this case GenHPFanfic). Very few days left in the month, and we'll go from there.

 

[stads]

ah pirate's coming to town
wonder what loot the mc can get out of this fight

 

[Imperator Pax]

Detroit is on fire
...well it is a pirate attack...​

He peered out the front armored cockpit even though his neuro helmet gave him crisp views through the cameras. Using the cockpit 'glass' to look meant no computer trying to correct for the smoke on the horizon.

This was probably just intended to be a smash and grab. Detroit was known for having a fairly sub par defense, and probably had too many tempting targets to defend everything. That was actually part of the problem If the signals he was reading were anything close to accurate, and given it was being supplemented by feeds from the MRB office, whoever had money was snapping up whoever they could afford and hoarding them to defend their own assets. There were little dots all over the city, there were mechs, combat vehicles, and tons of infantry and nothing approaching a coherent defense.

The pirates of course weren't going to try and land at the star port that would have been insane. The view on his scopes suggested, though it would be impossible to prove until they were dirt side at which point he wouldn't have telemetry, that the Pirates were bluffing about their numbers. At least one of the DropShips was probably a cargo hauler not a MechCarrier. That didn't mean what his computer was identifying as a Danais-class DropShip was unarmed, or not dangerous. Being a design the Star League had proliferated it should have been unarmed, but it certainly appeared that this one had been refit with weapons.... given the missiles streaking out from it.

Gene would have liked to punch up Highway One from the starport to the government center, but there was no way to do that without just flat out trampling a bunch of civilian ground cars that were stalled on the road. He had no idea why they were, since there didn't seem to be any serious wrecks, and no signs of weapons fire just that somewhere up ahead there a break in people moving, and that was holding everything else up. That left him picking around carefully moving five and ten miles an hour.

The planet of Detroit had two major landmasses. The oh so creatively named continents of North, and South. Ann Arbor was a coastal town on South, well city, that had started life as a small farming community and had since grown up into the planetary capital and center of commerce.

With advanced navigation guide beacons, multipe control centers, and a wide range of pads, the capital's modern starport was just that modern.

... modern-ish?

It was from the late Star League, but before the Amaris Coup but it had been built to the standards of the Star League before the New Vandenburg revolts.

That was the advantage of having a planet that was an Earth-type world in terms of things like arable land, atmosphere and supporting life. The abundance of natural water helped make the planet easily capable of sustaining a human population, and the agriculture necessary to keep them fed, but it also divided the sprawling metropolitan area.

Gene flipped through the channels. It would have been an advantage in a conventional defense, but all of this chaos was causing traffic jams throughout the city. That was probably the point. No body could get anywhere fast. Further consideration ceased as his air trip went off warning him of the rapidly descending Air Lance moving at high thrust.

Lances, he amended mentally.

The Dalban identified the Fusion signatures as Shinobi, and the manufacturer of the ASF as Wakizashi Enterprises... and eye rolling aside the Shilone and Slayer Lances coming in and were coming hot. With seemingly all traffic in the city in total gridlock the roadways were a perfect target for strafing and any such attack would just add to the confusion.

"... and I still don't have a good answer to fucking enemy air." He grunted pitching his mech's torso up just to see if he could get lucky. He was already regretting going for the most armor instead of trying to get the automated systems of the Outpost Castle to fit LRM's into his Marauder's shoulders. A pseudo mad cat would have been really helpful in this. Fuck having an actual MadCat would have been nice.

He didn't have that option, and there was a bigger problem besides just the Combine built pirate ASF coming in. The Danais should have been unarmed, but the reason for the greater scramble to bid piecemeal for any two bit untested mercenary made sense, and it wasn't the Danais. It was the ninety seven hundred ton Overlord class dropship that was coming in. The last of the three DropShips was an Aerodyne, a Leopard, and it seemed to have the rest of the Pirate Air with it going along Highway 2 to stir up chaos as it search for a place to land somewhere outside the city center.

He suspected that Overlord might need to land somewhere in the city given ground conditions. Ann Arbor had built originally as a... well pre industrial farming community along a river delta that flowed down into the ocean. It reminded him of Charleston in terms of general geography and the Overlord's mass was too much likely for the soggy farmland to support it off loading battlemechs, but the Leopard probably could drop off its mechs in a field somewhere.

Nothing he could do about that though. He could keep an eye on his scopes, but with as many fusion signatures as there were in Ann Arbor currently lit up there was little chance he'd be able to view anything in the outer metro... and there was the Overlord to contend with.

The Dalban HiRez turned its spectrographics on the Overlord. While less common than the Union it was still a design that had proliferated well enough to be considered common in terms of mech carriers. All the same he had to wonder where, or how common it was for Pirates to get their hands on one, though they had probably had it a while given it looked like it had been refit at some point as well. Though those shifts could have just been repairs rather than proper refits.

Unlike on Aquagea though he had no interest in getting close. As much as he wanted to say it had just been adrenaline he had really needed the Zathras dropship gone. There was no such pressing need to warrant jumping on another DropShip. That DropShip was going to be offloading mechs, and at least some of those were going to be his problem.

The ASF strafing runs... well there was nothing he could do about them, and they only made getting from where he was to where he needed to be harder. Not because they were attacking him, most likely the ASF's had preselected targets designated to make any response harder and trying to cut overpasses or other road junctions. Whether they were succeeding in that Gene didn't know.

There was nothing once the air cleared for him to shoot at though, only to slowly navigate the streets. The ASF's flew off probably to wherever their dropships had landed, and then it was a waiting game standing just off the highway looking for a needle in a haystack. A really big haystack... Ann Arbor had started as a farming community and that meant that after several hundred years it had a lot of urban sprawl and multi storey but not more than a few really true skyscrapers across the urban area. By the standards of the periphery even with this threat flying overhead Detroit was a nice place to live.

Electricity wasn't magic here. It was as ubiquitous as it would have been in the American Heyday of post world war 2. It even sort of resembled such with its architecture. People didn't really understand the holographic communications technology any more than they did the much simpler land line phones that were much less expensive they just knew that they worked, so watching the power fail to a portion of the city told him something had happened.

Flipping through the returns on his sensors the Dalban HiRez isolated the probable cause, an explosion that was probably a transformer. The problem was the explosion was internal, not say mech or vehicle based weapons fire. Gene glanced through the haze of the sky and shook his head, with the ole mk 1 he couldn't see it but his cameras, and more specifically thermals, told him there was plume of smoke starting. Deciding to cover his bases he relayed that to the militia post.

"What about near the spaceport?"

"Traffic is ground to a halt here, and I don't see any militia anywhere on highway one." Even though it was muffled he could hear cursing on the other end, but it was the warning of inbound missiles of his mech that told him the problem. That shouldn't have been possible. Even if the Overlord had been a variant to carry a company of vehicles there was no way they should have been unloaded.

He watched as LRMs streaked towards the Militia headquarters at the other end of the strip. The HiRez back traced to internal combustion signatures, and a vehicle that his Star League era warbook didn't identify. The vehicles were 25 ton hovers with LRM 10. He was Internal Combustion Engines, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. They were firing from inside the star port, which no surprise they were pirates so why would they care about safety rules, or gentlemanly agreements regarding conduct.

Then again all of those missiles had been pointed at government infrastructure.

The order to destroy them wasn't one he needed to be told twice. Gene eased the throttle up and moved towards the spaceport proper that no DropShip captain got panicky and tried to take off in this mess. He started looking for something that could carry vehicles but there was no giant neon sign lit up pointing to something so obvious as say a Triumph. The offending vessel turned out to be a Leopard, which indicted itself by adding its LRM 20s to the hovercraft firing. The ship, ComStar quickly informed him on query had a falsified registry and who's JumpShip had left and since returned without the berth being occupied, which suspicious in the periphery. Not unheard of, but definitely odd behavior.

He all but ran over the first 'Harrasser' LRM platform by accident, but didn't stop as he pushed across the tarmac pivoting his mech's torso to come on target for the ones out in the open. Gene glanced around and relatively sure he was the only BattleMech in the area pushed into the middle of the formation to where he was close enough he could at least bring his medium lasers in onto one of the crudely painted crossed scimitar missile carriers.

Gene punched past the last vestiges of smoking vehicles two minutes later and levelled his mech's gauntlets into the interior bay of the leopard, but it was already trying to lift off so he proceeded to start firing into the interior as he backed off. He wasn't convinced he had managed to do anything serious because they did manage to get the bay door closed and seemed to be making a break for it so he banked back around leaving the burning vehicles in his wake.

Colonel Khan wasn't responding to his hails, which wasn't a good thing. He checked his corners, and then his rear flank, but neither visuals nor sensors showed anything left to shoot at, at least nothing in range, never mind close by. Without a link to the militia he reported the findings to the ComStar Adept on the other end, "I have no further hostiles visible in the starport,"

"Understood MechWarrior." The MRB adept paused, presumably to confer with her superiors, "We advise you to move to reconnoiter the following points, and attempt to link up with any militia units."

He liked the near miss of almost saying 'surviving' there, and he didn't have time to ask if they had any more information about who these guys were.
--
Commentary: And we now begin the somewhat longer plot thread that will take a while to resolve, and last well beyond this first trip to Detroit, which again is about ten thousand words. The next segment, not telling where it is, will be the beginning of building a Merc Unit. I say beginning because there some jobs between then and actually putting a company together.

 

[stads]

wel now the question is does comstar want the mc out of the star port or not ? or are they being truthfull
so does he stay or leave ?

 

[Imperator Pax]

31st Century Detroit​

With little better option, and being under contract with the planetary government it made sense to go check on his point of contact... the problem was getting there in this cluster fuck. It took five whole minutes to cross a mile with the speed his had to move to navigate the increasing number of abandoned ground cars or civilians standing around in the road near their vehicles. He adjust his position, and shook his head lightly straining against the cockpit's straps.

It seemed like forever taking the twelve meter tall war machine tip toeing along the highway. The first sign of friendly militia were what looked like enlarged humvees or maybe the offspring of a deuce and a half and a humvee with a bunch of machine guns stuck on it carrying infantry.

Gene didn't originally think they were going to be any use at all, but then they started making people move their cars out of the way, or moving them out of the way themselves. Unfortunately they didn't have any more connection with their officers than anyone else... leaving him to wonder how effective the last LRM volley had been.

He blinked at the computer as his SLDF comms received a query, "What the," He looked around for a friendly BattleMech, but was distracted as the ComStar's MRB liaison popped up on the holographic projector to his left. "MechWarrior we've reestablished contact with the contracting party," The robe lady went on to basically spew a bunch of gobbleygook about the MRB's position and that given the danger and this and that that they wanted the planetary government to fork over some C-Bills first. To put some money up front in escrow since this was beyond the usual scope of a such a contract's stated value.

Apparently the MRB must have been doing this kind of thing all over town because there was a lot of stuff on fire. It was money he was theoretically going to get paid for but it didn't tell him anything about who he was shooting at. That question was answered by a portly Japanese man in a red jacket... and if that wasn't indication enough he was wearing a giant black dragon emblazoned on it. "These outlaws are enemies of the Coordinator. Bandits and rebels fleeing for their worthless lives, from justice." Yamaguchi carried on like that for a while, a good couple minutes, but the general gist was that yes they were pirates (and traitors to the Combine) and all that. The only other news was he wanted ComStar to send an HPG message to the Combine about these assholes, which was interesting but not helpful in the here and now.

What Yamaguchi didn't have was an idea of what these guys might prioritize as most important to steal.

They definitely had legit military equipment though. They might have looked ugly but this equipment had been built to Inner Sphere military standards, and probably was worth hundreds of millions of C Bills.

The slapdash tan and green paint and crude emblems aside these were at least semi professional troops with real hardware. The Panthers, and Pheonix Hawks weren't unique to the Combine but they were common in the Dragon's stable of Mechs. As far away from Combine space as they were it wasn't something that really mattered... these were definitely pirates regardless of who they had used to been.

"We have hostile BattleMechs in the urban center, MechWarrior."

...As if his Dalban HiRez hadn't already pinged the flaring jumpjets of the Pheonix Hawks, but he didn't respond like that even as his gunsight magnified from four power all the way up to ten, which was only really practical because the optic was stabilized and he was basically looking a mile down a mostly straight highway overpass. "I see them."

Yamaguchi immediately started squawking over ComStar's line, which was a little ridiculous if Gene was being honest and did his best to not be distracted by the Samurai's strident histrionics about dishonorable rogues.

The reticle clarified into a positive return as the Pheonix Hawk in the lead landed having bounded forward in a series of jumps. Twin electric blue streaks of ball lightning converged into the center torso of the mech and when that didn't cause any satisfying explosions he fired a second volley ten seconds later. Didn't get an explosion that time either even though the mech crumpled into the middle of the freeway.

"MechWarrior?"

"Think these guys are out of Machine Gun ammo already." Gene remarked matter of factly as he flipped through the scopes, cycling left, right and then rear before moving on to the next medium in the hostile lance.

If the computer was right the pheonix hawk looked to be the heaviest enemy mech. There were Spiders and Panthers but if there was anything heavier than lights and mediums he wasn't seeing it. It didn't mean they weren't there. There were other mercs, and it was a full on city.

With no other options the light and mediums pushed into a full on charge up the crowded up by abandoned vehicles of the highway. One of the panthers was a bit stupidly firing his PPC, while the other Pheonix Hawk was using its jump jets leaping up presenting a harder target.

Gene breathed, and reduced magnification on his Star League era controls and fired. It was probably a good thing that this one wasn't using its jump jets that would have presented a harder target. The seventy five ton marauder shifted moving up and to the right of the advancing enemy mechs.


They slowed only briefly as they took note of his mech, rather than freezing at the site of the Heavy BattleMech.

He wasn't seeing a lot of indirect fire, and really the bigger trend was that all their mechs actually had hands... which he supposed might have been useful for pirate mechs to grab up loot with.

The second Pheonix Hawk landed within range of its large laser even as Gene tossed his mech into a forward push. The flash of excitement from the Harmon's beam hit a brick facade building a hundred plus meters behind and left of his position. All that did was earn him Gene's attention as the Marauder raised both armored gauntlets locking on to the rapidly overheating medium mech's signature and shattered the mech's pistol armed side with his standard double PPC discharge converging on the limb. The eleven meter mech, slightly shorter than his marauder, wobbled as its Gyro struggled to compensate for both electrical damage and loss of mass at the Hellstar's work. It had eight tons of armor spread over a forty five ton frame, two PPCs was enough to delete more than a ton of standard armor in a single shot, which had meant nothing good for the tender myomer underneath.

He turned to the other light just as it fired its JumpJets throwing it high into the air in a ballistic arc forward as it tried to close the distance. They were all surging to close they knew they didn't have a choice. That included the maimed light mech as well... leaving Gene to wonder if the fucker had ammo for his SRM, well he'd find out in a minute. The computer tracked the whole Panther as it came down, and he lit it up as soon as he had lock. The Pheonix hawk had used it to start firing its medium lasers now that it was within range, which was a mistake since that meant the Marauder could do the same. It did force him to come off target, and change to the medium.

Gene could have really done without having the merc liaison from the MRB, the Kurita rep (who wasn't even paying him for this shit), and like ten different planetary militia people talking on a single open channel as he levelled off. "Catapult, I understand." He replied keying his throat mike finally able to get a word in edgewise as the shot hole punched through the Pheonix Hawk's armor and took aim for the bounding armless Panther.

The computer apprised him he going to start risking problematic levels of heat within the next minute if he didn't finish this. He'd find the heavy mech they were talking about after his heat sinks had time to work their magic. Gene pivoted the mech to the side as it landed on an unfortunate ground car and put the light mech out of its misery.

That left him facing the last light mech both of them running relatively hot, and both still in PPC range of the other. He leaned into his harness and grabbed the left stick to switch to the weapons on that side only to fire into the mech. Already weakened armor gave way dropping it over the overpass and to the crossing road underneath.

The ongoing radio conference had other mercs chattering away now. There were apparently at least two catapults one in the normal configuration and another in the Drac special with PPCs. "Is there a priority on which?"

"The LRM." Colonel Khan declared very quickly before another torrent of side chatter drowned everything out.

He checked to make sure he hadn't been hit, and pushed the mech forward still trying to avoid crushing anything underfoot, but driving carefully was less important now than it had been at the start of the morning. It took him seventy plus seconds to realize he had a trail of those weird humvee deuce and a half militia ground cars following him like ducklings. Gene keyed his mike as the Dalban lased the lead vehicle. "What are you doing Captain Fields?"

"Following you, sir."

"No. Hold here." He ordered... hoping that the Militia Captain was not going to ignore being told to stay put by a thirteen year even if the merc was in a seventy five ton war machine. Sensing that that wasn't going to work as the captain did in fact start to protest, "Secure the downed hostile mechs, I didn't see anyone punch out."

... which might have been because Combine mechs might not actually have ejection seats... or was that just an urban legend.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

Well now the MC can get his wish of a 4 ML with 2 LRM 20s be getting a Catapult.

 

[stads]

nice chapter thx for writing it
ah the securing of loot always important

 

[Imperator Pax]

A wonderful day in the neighborhood​

It was well into the afternoon now. His digital clock set for local time slowly ticking towards four.

It was getting hot, and he was presently hunting the second of the two Catapults. This was the one with the PPCs. His warbook identified it as a CPLT K2 introduced in the year 2603. It was proving the easier of the two mechs of the Catapult line to chase as this one didn't have the Anderson Propulsion JumpJets. The first one had insisted on trying to hopscotch over a bunch of buildings, and that had lead him on an annoying chase over the river that divided the old city.

By the time he had gotten back over the river the General in charge of the planetary militia... or a general had finally gotten around to 'assuming command' and trying to bully together an adhoc company of mercenaries from the various private security of various industrial concerns. It wasn't really going well, either. Actually if anything it made having the problem of having multiple people on the same radio running off at the mouth worse. The day had also not seen any change to having the MRB frequency trying to hold the same sort of conversations. Then as if that wasn't bad enough the general throwing his weight around had resulted in various Corporate Security or Corporate Liasions getting into what amounted to a bidding war making everything even more confusing as to which mercs were or should have been where.

Particularly information that might be relevant. There was apparently a firestarter that had gotten loose in the farmer's district on the outskirts of the city... presumably that had been a pirate mech, but you never knew. Gene would have really have liked more information on that as firestarter in area with grain silos sounded bad.

"He is behind a building. I don't have a shot." Gene repeated resisting the urge to wipe his head. His heatsinks were working fine... but he'd been sitting here for literally hours... well he'd been driving the mech for hours now, and the jostling and maneuvering including deploying his jumpjets involved physical exertion... so he was sweaty. He was presently coaxing his Marauder easily around the road hoping to get to where he could come in at an angle, but the confines of the street were making that a problem. He needed to get around to the next street without the mech moving to another avenue.

It had already jinked a couple of times, and its pilot was a lot more willing to firing into civilian structures than he was. Annoyingly the K2 had the same amount of cooling potential as his own mech. There was a thermal bloom at the edge of the city that must have been the other leopard taking off. It was a distraction, because he couldn't' do anything about that.

The catapult was moving and flat out. The sensors clocked him as moving up to his top speed along the highway. Was he running? He had to be.

Gene fired his jumpjets and hopped the intersection and laid in what he hoped was a course that would give him a shot down the road. Unfortunately his Dalban started screaming about incoming LRMs as the Overlord that the Catapult was presumably making a run for with the other pirates just started blasting.

Missiles rained down forcing him to break, and jump back. The salvo was contact break. Pure doctrine to force a disengagement with the enemy. The LRM 20s were all firing into separate grids without actually intended for a specific enemy unit just that there were enemies in the vicinity. The sort of thing that if you were in an open field or a desert, or a forest made plenty of sense.

It was over. Detroit could do little but watch as the heaviest of the pirate dropships flew away. It was the last one and probably had a hull of booty even if the pirates had taken losses. He watched the thrusting skyward column of flame and smoke and wondered if they considered it worth it before he turned and withdrew back.
--
Yamaguchi Reynauld dabbed at his sweat layered forehead with handkerchief. The perspiration mussing his carefully managed pompadour, but it wasn't because of the heat. He was merely a low level functionary in service to the dragon, and he was on the spot after all. That was what he was telling himself over and over again anyway. The posting to the rimward periphery was not a punishment per se, but it was a distant posting far from the comforts of civilizations, and one where he could in theory cause no incidental harm.

It was true that the Rimward Periphery was of some meager interest to the Combine, but his duties were small and not even really day to day in scope. That had changed this morning, and not for the better. The Azami were a collection of worlds within the Dragon's embrace colonized during the twenty fifth century and who had become apart of the combine in the century following. This had come with various privileges, and benefits unusual for servants of the Dragon.

The context of whatever dishonor was beyond his station... only that a unit of the Arkab Legion had rebelled and fired upon both regular soldiers of the dragon and their own Arkab fellows. The ISF report had absolved their fellow unit only because they had suffered significant casualties during the attack by the rebels.

They were however rebels who had fled from the combine with vital military equipment, and something more. Whatever duty they had failed at had been such that they had fled with it. That was why it was so imperative to recover it, regardless of expense. He didn't need to know what it was, as his ISF contact had made abundantly clear, but whatever it was even beyond the sheer dishonor of their thievery warranted to the expense of a live HPG transmission back to civilization.

It had taken him entirely too long to be able to convince the usurious monks to actually do their jobs. Many thousands of C-Bills to deliver the word never mind the cost on the other end to relay back here all the while the barbarians were rampaging in the city outside.

... and really for what? To be told something he already knew. To observe the course of battle, and to take all steps possible to recover the property of the dragon if any could be recovered? The prospect of actually stopping the rogues here was ridiculous. These bandits had escaped combine space, and avoided the Dragon's Navy how could a poor divided periphery world like Detroit possibly hope to stymie their escape beyond mere inches?

The logic of such knowledge did nothing to assuage his nerves though. The battle was over, and now there was the waiting game. His legal attaché and the Combine's ambassador were hard at work with their arguments, but it was the waiting that was wearing on Reynauld. His final response message had been delivered by the monks of Comstar and the word from the order of the five pillars that appropriate help would be dispatched soon.

Soon was probably relative of course. If the Abbess's message meant aid from the combine, even Dieron then it would been many months, but it was not his place to question. Only to be grateful that he had not been asked to serve more directly in hunting down these rascals. That didn't mean he could do nothing, that he could afford to do nothing. He was going to have to look into things he'd need to mingle with the people of status here, and ...

The door banged open admitting his ISF point of contact locally. Kaedehara reminded him of an owl, which wasn't a compliment per se the terran native avian creeped Yamaguchi out truth be told, but it was mostly the man's spectacles that gave him the appearance. "I have compiled recordings of the battle," The spy remarked with a sniff of disdain. In a more proper organization the role of defacto XO would have made Kaedehara his unquestioning subordinate to go and handle such errands, but this was the periphery. "It should be a much more objective view of events." The ISF major continued snidely, highlighting that Yamaguchi had been at the ComStar annex during the battle.

He had personally considered it the height of strategic acumen as it had put him at the most advantageous of position to observe as the MRB had strived to communicate with the teeming multitude of ronin as they were hired to to defend the merchants. Still it wouldn't hurt to sit down and have a drink and watch the battle play out from another angle.

--
Commentary: Update information: I will probably be watching Stargate this weekend, so the Curse Part 1 will probably be revamped and go up Sunday. (This is in reference to my SG 1 Jumpchain story.) I will probably in the following week try and update my HSoD fic. I know I keep saying that, but the problem with my writing style is this, this particular BattleTech Fic? Its sitting at about forty four thousand words not including stuff that is just outline segments. Then on top of that there are scrap ideas that will probably end up in the misc thread of ideas I had BattleTech wise, that just don't fic this fic's outline. Moving on...

On HPGs, canon basically we know HPGs can broadcast live streams and relay those broadcasts across multiple worlds. (Some lag occurs but it allows with a network transmitting from the front to someone at the capital or what have you) Its not a capacity that ComStar likes to advertise, but they will work on it, just for exorbitant amounts of money...

...hence Yamaguchi bitching about them charging stupid money... also spoiler yes Yamaguchi you were sent to the periphery as basically punishment. You can't embarrass anyone important back home by being stuck here in bumfuck.

In any event, two more things to cover, s of the current draft of the Detroit arc, I have removed two Kuritan scenes from the latter half of this arc. I'm loath to call it a chapter, I'm also running into the problem of header-ing each snippet. Detroit will still sit at about ten thousand words, which is not the important thing, but is what the current file sits at.

Secondly the Detroit Arc here is quest flag material for later content, which I will address later, but you will notice in story there are some loot shenanigans going on. We'll get to that next segment. Again I am mainly using Drak's lootboxing roll, but for post battle salvage loot its not the only thing, and one of the latter options, well dice shenanigans. (In this case, House Kurita is coming in going 'No all of it is mine,'). That's just how dice roll some times.

 

[Silverbullet]

The other courtiers were clearly envious of his pompadour, and conspired to remove him from court out of base envy.

 

[stads]

ah loot rolles the bane of all game missing out on the good stuff bloody kurita
think that poor person from the combine is going to have a bad day

 

[Imperator Pax]

Detroit
Part 4
The Aftermath​

There wasn't much to say, or do, after the pirates had lifted off. Never mind after they had burned hard for the jump point, and there had been no one to chase them. There was money in the bank, which was ultimately the important thing. He had gotten paid at least. He was sore. Jittery. The MRB had given him a favorable review and now he had job prospects for however long the fear that the pirates would come back soon would last. It was something at least. He was pretty sure the fighting was done for the time being though, and he wasn't really expecting the pirates to come back.

Now that he thought about it, as he wiped the grease off his hands, he was surprised he hadn't seen a Dragon. He had gotten an idea though of why somewhere like Detroit was as prone to such attacks as it was. He's seen some of the problem on Aquagea, and on an academic level he understood there were plenty of worlds that just weren't as suited for colonization yet had been otherwise. Stealing resources, even just stealing whatever machinery or equipment some place had was a pirate past time, but unlike most places Detroit could manufacture ammo, and complex spare parts. Having seen the state of what passed for education he half wondered if most machining just followed a pattern of rote reproduction in order to keep up with demand.

Detroit was a developed enough world, and fertile enough that it could easily support its two billion people and ship food off world to sell. That was no small feat, and the development, the industrial level of the planet supported an overwhelmingly mechanized agriculture base. By the standards of periphery worlds Detroit was rich which of course meant there were people with disposable incomes expected of an industrialized country. People, common people, spent money on things like jewelry, wine, and other luxuries. Detroit was a pretty nice place to live even though it was also a kind of corporate dystopian mess.

The planetary government had very little in real military power. Merchant concerns, 'Trading Houses' in some insistent cases, had more money to hire security and provide for their protection and everyone else was a distant concern unless you were an employee or a consumer. Detroit's planetary government didn't usually care, and didn't have the ability to force the issue so they only really grumbled about life.

He was glad he had paid the six months rent on the warehouse in full. ComStar's MRB had paid out in cash, but there was some quibbling over salvage rights... not he had the manpower to do anything with the mechs... but he was letting the Merc Rep hold out in hopes of getting a buy out offer. If in six months he was still here he'd need to renew the lease, but if he left well he'd have to take the stuff with him and that would be an expense. The MRB had other things on their plate as well, and Gene would have been lying to say he didn't want more information on the pirates.

He wanted the information, but the he could really do without the Combine throwing their neo bushido diatribes into the fray in along with it.

They had two freaking JumpShips and he honestly didn't know how big of a deal that was, but it seemed like that should have been a big freaking deal. Later on, it would become more apparent, months later, that there had been a third that had probably also been an Azami JumpShip.

The result though was a much more notable security presence. Or the presence of armed people for a greater feeling of security. Mech mounted machine guns tended to make short work of infantry and even ground cars that didn't carry modern armor protection... well modern in the sense of 'Standard Armor'. That was best illustrated by all the funeral pyres still being burned for local dead who had gotten caught out in the open in the first few hours of the pirate attack. That was where the Canopian Corps were doing their usual song and dance to spread goodwill by providing if not free medical care substantially reduced cost care to the desperate.

That they were doing under the watchful guns of their own hired mercs was telling. The whole throbbing neon lights that were possible by restored electricity only really added to the dinginess of the commercial sector. It would be a stark contrast to the masonic lodge looking merc hall managed by the MRB. Of course its outside exterior wouldn't be matched by all the mix and match of peoples loitering on the ground floor waiting.

It was really the defining factor that told him that they were still on the same planet. The streets crowded with a garish, eye bleeding mixture of brightly colored clothes of different styles and colors was no less represented by the time he got through the big brass embossed glass doors of the hall. It was packed. People were waiting in the queues, sitting on benches, being seen to at desks or loitering around the elevators.

He ignored the giant screens, and tri-vid projections. Most of it was just adverts after all. Not all of it was junk though. He wasn't the only Marauder pilot on the planet, and the combat feed from the roms of Militia Observers really highlighted the more crab like armor profile of his BattleMech given its lack of a shoulder autocannon compared to the other guy's more standard mech. They were among the handful all the same of people with actual Heavy BattleMechs though, and it was no surprise really that the other guy had his own Merc Company, regardless of how small the outfit was. They still had their own DropShip... and techs....

His MRB rep was busy stuffing down a chicken swarma by the time he got through the crowd, and into her ... not quite a cubicle but not quite its own entire office either. She was early twenties, brunette normal. It was really the ComStar robes that messed with the MRB look, some people wore actual business attire ... well everyone wore business attire of some sort, but ComStar counted Robes as the same as a suit and tie. "You smell like gun cleaner." She managed in between bites before putting the plate to the side.

"Yeah its called Wild Geese." He took the seat in front of the cheap office desk, "Reminds me of Hoppes." He added.

"What, that's a cologne you're wearing?"

"No the gun cleaner is called Wild Geese," It sounded like booze, but it smelled like hoppes number 9. "So yes I smell like gun cleaner."

After another mouthful of food, she got to the point, "Salvage court is tied up." The planetary militia hadn't had anything suitable to fight of mechs... maybe one mech if Detroit's ... frankly decrepit armor squadron had been able to back it into a canyon and shoot it, but even then he was skeptical. That was why he was getting a couple hundred C-Bill retainer a day to stay around just in case something else went wrong, but it wasn't like he was the only one... and it would probably be till the end of the month. A C-Bill was roughly equivalent in value to the big house currencies, a periphery world like Detroit's currency wasn't anywhere close to that in value. That was another reason Merchants had cash to spend on Mercs and at least the relatively weak planetary government didn't.

The truth was the corps ran the show mostly. The Merchant Houses, the families who controlled the corps, had pull but they were concerned about the bottom line. They didn't own the whole planet just small bits of it, and that left most of the mess to someone else.

He leaned back, but he wasn't really surprised. He paused having stopped before really starting, "Do you have any idea?"

"No. Its not just the planetary government, and with so many separate contracts and individuals working there is going to need be a fact finding mission to properly assign credit. The MRB provisional assignments and payments will remain. Then on top of that," The adept trailed off, "Well besides the planetary government there are the other contracting parties." The various corporations, and whoever else could afford to hire MechWarriors during the attack, "And also the Draconis Combine representative has filed a legal challenge with the Mercenary Review Board's Mercenary Court and that will require a hearing, and a panel."

"So several months?"

"At least." She agreed.

He could guess how this was going to go. Some of the corps were probably angling to get bought out by others or the government. The 'oh we will take x number of C-Bills and drop our case', and some were probably prepared to offer money to get the others. Some were probably hoping that they could offer pennies on the dollar on salvage to down on their luck mercs... "What's the combine's argument?"

She didn't look comfortable at the question. "They're arguing that the property is stolen DCMS hardware and shouldn't be considered salvage." And Yamaguchi wasn't exactly being forthcoming with regards to documents... he might have had more of a chance if the Overlord had surrendered, or a JumpShip, but individual downed Mechs was going to be difficult for the Merc Court to side with the Combine's claims, especially without proof.

All of that was well beyond his pay grade, especially right now. Maybe if he ended up down the road in a Merc Company that kind of lawfare might be relevant, but he was just going to leave it alone.

 

[stads]

ah the salvage war even more danger then fighting pirate's
still think the mc get off getting hard cash offer since he does not have the assets to move allot around