Collection 8 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 8

-VB-

Edward Arlaokas

Gatchina

3001, June

“Found them,” I hummed as my sensors locked onto the massive thermal signatures of walking machines. 

Fun fact: thermal sensors provided perhaps one of the best method of detecting active mechs in combat, because even a little bit of heat generated from autocannon and laser fire will light up on thermal sensors like dropship exhaust plumes do.

Also, lasers. Those just screamed on thermals, especially when they were shooting at other things. 

I watched on my LR thermals as what looked like even more pirate Wolverines and a pair of bug mechs fought in a skirmish against a retreating heavy and a light mech along with a gaggle of infantry. The heavy was extremely damaged. That and the other retreating mech and troops had to be the local duke’s personal guards. Or what remained of them. 

Those were most of the pirate mechs, too. 

Where were their dropships and their last heavy? 

“[Captain! Enemy encounter! My mech’s saying Crusader!]” 

My eyebrows rose up before quickly switching over to my Wasp cameras. I quickly cycled through them until I had all camera views of the Wasp drones escorting Miguel on my screen. 

“Engage to kill. I’m sending the rest of the drones your way.”

“[Order received, captain. And thanks.]”

I turned my attention back to the fighting happening some four kilometers away. 

Well. 

“Getting a firing solution,” I said out loud. The autoloader for the main cannon clunked dully as it reloaded to my command. I pressed down on the intercom button. “Sato, Daniel, Riley! We’re going into battle in approximately one minute. Are the turrets ready?”

Instead of verbal replies, I got green lights on my screen from all three of them. Good. 

Then I targeted the pirate mechs closest to the militia.

“Set.”

The reload completed.

My computer gave me the green light.

“FIRE!” 

My ship rumbled with a bang as it fired the Siege Cannon for the first time in atmosphere. 

Amy and I watched on the thermal view as the dropship killing and self-guided RPG shrieked across the four kilometers faster than sound could travel. 

Less than five seconds after I fired it, the smartbomb struck the largest pirate mech and detonated.

It literally ripped apart the heavy mech and sent its parts flying everywhere. 

“Fullspeed ahead!” I grinned as I grabbed the thruster lever and punched it forward. Solo Killing rumbled as iit blast off from its hovering position toward the fight up ahead.

-VB-

“What the fuck are those?” Varnama muttered as he stared at the four floating three floating balls with knives. 

But he quickly focused back on the Phoenix Hawk that was standing underneath those three weird-things and had scorch marks here and there from laser hits. 

He turned on the radio. “You’re the one who took out my men,” he hissed. 

“Yeah, I may have helped,” the hawk pilot said unsurely. And then immediately opened fire.

Varnama growled as he quickly brought up his own weapons to fire on the medium mech as he got peppered but then one of those things rushed him.

He backpedalled to keep himself out of that thing’s reach, but all of those hovering turrets all immediately opened fire on him with medium lasers, if the size of the laser guns on the pods were any indication.

But his mech began to scream at him. 

He glanced down at his hologram of his mech once and then twice. His mech’s armor was being burned away so quickly that his left arm armor was almost gone only after five seconds of continual attacks! 

His eyes widened.

“Those aren’t medium lasers!” he hissed as he backed away even more from the hovering turret pods and focused his attacks on them instead of the Phoenix Hawk, whose mere two weapons did far less damage than the rest of the pods individually. “Those are large lasers!” Only four large lasers firing and hitting one spot consitently could have reduced his armor down that much in that short period of a time. 

The Phoenix Hawk he was fighting sped up and tried to get behind him.

Varnama wanted to punish him for that, but he was currently doing his utmost -.

He staggered forward as something exploded at his back. His mech creaked and groaned as he tried to keep it upright.

But none of the controls responded. 

“No, no, no no -!” he shouted as his Crusader keeled forward and crashed.

-VB-

The attack came out of nowhere. 

One moment, the pirates were closing in on them and trying to kill his friend’s Warhammer. In the next moment, the closer enemy Wolverine got hit by something and died in a near comical limb-flying explosion.

Danylo stared out from his Wasp at the scene before he quickly zero’ed in on the next closest mech, a Locust, and opened fire with his Wasp’s SRM-4 and medium laser. 

The Locust mechwarrior, stunned, didn’t dodge quickly enough. The four SRM rockets smashed into its torso and leg, and ripped it apart before the medium laser finished it off. 

And then he heard it. 

A rumble in the air. 

Even as he continued to retreat with Joseph and his infantry, he kept a wary lookout at the skies just like the pirates did as they faltered in their chase after what happened to one of their Wolverine. 

And then it appeared. 

It sailed over a hill and then flew overhead no more than half a kilometer above the ground. Its sleek blue hull rumbled above them as it came to circle the air above them. 

And then its turrets, each bigger than the Wasp he was piloting, opened fire. They fired like mech machineguns, and the gun turrets probably were machineguns… meant to shred dropships.

Because the pirate mechs got hit by the rapid fire bullet hailstorm and broke apart just like infantry did against regular machinegun. Their armor didn’t hold up against whatever the caliber w-.

He froze when something struck his cockpit. His eyes widened when he saw that it was a ricocheted bullet that had struck his cockpit armored window and got stuck in the glass. 

And that bullet couldn’t be anything less than a 50 mm solid projectile.

His eyes snapped back to the “machine gun” fire from the turrets. 

Those weren’t shooting shells.

They were shooting armor penetrating solid bullets meant for dropship armors! 

And then the ship turned its nose to face the lone Wolverine standing. And there was a big fuck-off cannon underneath the nose.

“Wait, I surrender, I surrender!” the Wolverine piloting pirate screamed across all radio frequencies. 

Danylo was about to accept when the assault dropship captain answered first. 

“No.”

And fired.

The Wolverine didn’t so much as get destroyed as it explosively disintegrated from whatever anti-dropship shell that cannon fired. 

“This is Captain Edward Arlaoskas. It seems that my only mechwarrior also ended the last pirate heavy.” 

Danylo slumped in the pilot seat. 

I-It was over? 

The pirates were gone?

“Well, since we got rid of most of the pirates, you’ll hand over the pirate dropships and half of the mechs over to us, yes, uh, duke apparent Danylo?”

Oh, the scary dropship captain remembered his name. 

Half of the mechs and both of the dropships…? 

He was …

Then he remembered to look up at the giant fuck off assault dropship with “fuck you, mechs” gun turrets and “fuck you, dropships” cannon.

Perhaps not pissing off the mercenary who came to his and his planet’s rescue was a good idea. Also, he still got half of the mechs. Whatever remained of them. That would replace any mechs he lost in this attack and get him one or two more. Assuming most of the mechs weren’t disintegrated like that Wolverine.

“This … this is Duke Apparent Danylo Renomena. I accept.”

“Cool.”

Yeah, it was over.

-VB-

Final Count:

Edward Arlaoskas’s Crew

-1x “heavy” assault dropship

-1x Phoenix Hawk PHX-1

-7x Wasp drones

Gatchina Militia + Duke’s Guards:

-1x Thunderbolt (heavily damaged)

-1x Wasp (damaged)

-1x infantry squad

-2x Leopard dropships (captured)

-1x Crusader (damaged, captured)

-2x Wolverines (ruined)

-1x Orion (damaged, captured)

-1x Wasp (damaged, captured)

-1x Locust (severely damaged, captured)

VS 

Varnama’s Pirates

Nil

End Result: End of Varnama’s Pirate Crew