Collection 9 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 9

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Gatchina

3001, June

I got another point after the battle, and combined with the other point I had saved before the battle, I invested both of them into Chakra.

Chakra III. 

I seriously hoped that it would let me start using sturdier clones to help me with refit and modifications of my ships, mechs, and everything else.

Anyway.

The Duke Apparent came except the Duke Apparent was now just the Duke. 

“My condolences,” I said as I bowed my head slightly. 

“Thank you,” Duke Danylo replied with only a slight tremble to his voice. He was quite young. Not even twenty. Yes, that was around my physical age, but I wasn't twenty mentally and spiritually. The guy didn't even get to mourn his dad's passing properly because he put his people and world before his mourning. “we should… get down to business.”

I nodded. “Please, follow me.”

The Duke had given us permission to use the empty land near the spaceport, and that's where we were right now. 

We had already hashed out the distribution beyond what he agreed to immediately when I proposed it at the end of the pirate raid. Instead of me keeping half of the mechs and both of the dropships, I would keep one-quarters of the mechs and both of the dropships. So out of the ten mechs we downed and the three mechs the locals killed, I would keep two. I could have pushed for four, but I was more than happy really with the two dropships. Also, the reason why I only took two was because a few of the mechs had been, eh, exploded beyond salvageable means. 

There were other mechs and equipment that the duke and his soldiers fought prior to my intervention, but most of the pirates they managed to take down weren’t half-decent quality battlemechs but converted security mechs, miners, and what not. 

Also, taking the dropships, which together was worth multiple times more than the salvaged mechs, was good enough for me.

Anyway, now, I could finally do something I had wanted to do.

But before I got there, I needed to get the duke to get his mechs.

And as we and his entourage of prepared mechtechs -there were only two of them but they were accompanied by other people - reached where I’d left the mechs, they slowed to a stop. 

“Which mech do you intend to take?” the duke asked me as he stared at the ruins visages of eight mechs standing in front of him. Or rather five mechs that were standing and three that were on the ground. And then there were two piles of what used to be mechs but were now just spare parts. If there were spare parts. The last pile was just slugged metals that were barely salvageable. 

“The Orion and one of the Wasps,” I replied while gesturing to the armor shredded heavy mech and the leglesss Wasp. 

“I see. So that would leave me with a three Wolverines, one Crusader, and two Locusts.” 

“Yes,” I confirmed. “The slags and spare parts will be mine.”

He nodded. “That’s fair enough,” he hummed before turning to his retinue. “Get ready to move all of the mechs aside from the Orion and the legless Wasp to my ducal workshop.”

“Yes, sir!” they saluted and quickly moved to bring their trucks over. 

The duke turned back to me. “So what will you do once you finish repairing those mechs?” he asked me. 

“Hmm? Oh, I’m definitely keeping the Orion but that Wasp is gonna get ripped and used for something else,” I replied. 

He looked stricken. “Really? The Wasp merely needs legs, which I assume you have some of in that pile over there.”

“Oh, I do,” I nodded. “But that’s not the point. I want to try my hand at making a new mech specifically for space combat.”

He blinked. 

“What?”

I chuckled at his reply. 

“I’m a bit of a designer and an engineer, you see,” I said as I pointed to my assault dropship, Solo Killing, in the background. “I’m the guy who took a regular Achilles dropship and converted it to that.”

He stared up at it.

“It’s … I’m sorry, but I don’t know much about dropships beyond a few ubiquitous designs like the Leopard. Speaking of which, what do you intend to do with those?”

I gave him a grin.

He shivered. 

“Play with them to my heart’s content.”

-VB-

Adept Summer Neumarianburg

Gatchina

3001, June

She sat in front of a computer as she typed away at it. As an adept of ComStar, she had various duties and responsibilities she was expected to fulfill. The first of these was to learn the technologies that the rest of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery threw away in their forever wars. To keep them safe from the marches of time but also from the hands of other people who did not have the right mindset. The kind of people who didn’t see beyond their own lifetime. 

ComStar was a place where people like her gathered for one reason or another, and made their mark through acts that, while small and insignificant in the present, would maintain a colossal giant that would withstand the tests of time. 

Her second responsibility was to ensure that what she learned was not leaked or forced out of her. While neither the Successor Houses and ComStar liked to talk about it, but she knew that there were people who would kidnap and torture ComStar acolytes and adepts in an effort to find out whatever information they could of the lost technologies. 

They were fools. 

Acolytes didn’t know enough. Precentors were too devoted to ComStar to ever divulge it. Adepts, though, laid in that grey zones of “maybe’s.” Or so they thought. Not everyone became an adept, and not all adepts advanced through the ranks equally. Someone like her, who was tasked with maintaining the space sensors within the local hyperpulse generator’s compound, was not even granted the position of her duty if her loyalty to ComStar was not assured at least seven ways to sunday. 

That’s why she always carried a cyanide pill with her. 

She was loyal to ComStar. She did not want to die. She did not want to get tortured. The third was stronger in her than the second, and both of them were weaker than the first. 

And of all of her duties, the most mindnumbing of them all was the duty of maintenance. 

Part of that duty included journaling every entry and exit in and out of the system by traders, pirates, and locals. 

She denoted that the latest visitor to the planet, a mercenary with a single dropship, had arrived on June XX of 3001, and that he did so from the edge of the system rather than at the nadir and zenith of the star. It took them three days to reach Gatchina from the edge of the system and vanquished the pirates that had been stayed long to keep raiding the planet. She did note that the jumpship that brought the mercenaries to Gatchina hadn’t even bothered to contact the planet and left. ‘It must have been one of those rare jumpships that has a large battery.’ Those jumpships didn’t need to wait for recharge between every jump. 

“... and two Leopard dropships were given to Captain Edward Arlaoskas for his part in subjugating the pirates. Precentor Gatchina noted that the dropship pilot, the aforementioned Captain Arlaoskas, was particularly reckless with his engagement, but because none of the ComStar members of Gatchina HPG Station is versed in military matters, that is the best analysis we can provide at this time,” she finished. She looked through the report once before nodding to herself and submitting it.

Though she did not know it, Adept Summer’s report would remain within Gatchina HPG Station’s archives for months until Precentor ******** would come investigating rumors of a jump-capable dropship. Precentor Gatchina would open up the archive to the visiting inquisitive precentor, who, after finding her report…

-VB-

3001 June

Repairs to the Phoenix Hawk completed. My armor modification was essentially swapping out ablative armors found in most armors in the Inner Sphere with modified silicon carbide composite armor plates designed for heat loss, shock absorption, and flexibility. With the current microforge I built into Solo Killing, it’ll take at least a month to replace the stock of armor plates I had to use to fix the Phoenix Hawk.

I used chakra in discretely. Figuring out the actual techniques was hard, but I knew how to use Shadow Clone technique because, well, Naruto crossed his fingers too much for anyone who ever saw Naruto to not recognize it. 

Using Shadow Clone technique that produced two clones left me floored and unable to do anything else until at least one of the clones popped. 

For now, I stuck to one clone and made sure to dress up to prevent recognition. It doubled my work speed, which I loved. 

The looks from my crew definitely did not sting. 

---

3001 July 

Between Spaceship Design, Starship Rigging, and Starsector Spaceship Engineering, it was not hard to make a primitive design of a mech that could arguably operate fluidly in space. It was not so easy to make it into reality even with another me to help me. 

The result was the Wasp - Giant Hornet Variant, a heavily modified Wasp that had a gyroscope connected and mini-fusion reactor powered jet pack. The missing legs were replaced and equipped with maneuvering thrusters. As for its weapons, I beefed up the arm volumes and put in four Medium Lasers, two per arm. 

Essentially, it was a non-transforming Land-Air Mech that had inferior utility in atmosphere in exchange for better armor, better maneuverability, and better armaments. 

And considering that I also took the time to make a copyable blueprint, I didn’t waste any time at all. The blueprints alone was probably worth upwards to a billion C-Bills. But without patent protection, I wasn’t going to sell it for anything less than five billion C-Bills, and whoever buys it can do the patenting on their own.

Miguel had a lot of fun test piloting the thing. 

---

3001 August

I finally started modifying the Leopard. By taking apart one of the two Leopards.

Managed to take one apart and started changing the second.

---

3001 September

The remaining Leopard’s hull was extended vertically. The once sleek and lithe Leopard … was now a humpy dumpy. I was going to call it a Beehive class because it kind of looked like one from the side. Kind of. If you squinted. 

Named it Humpty Dumpty.

---

3001 October

I modified Solo Killing, removing all things drone-related. 

Changed the lower decks into a turret socket. Made sure to make it adaptable, so it could take on anything from Small Laser to Small Naval Laser.

---

3001 November

Finally finished the modifications of the Leopard. 

Added eight bays, each capable of holding one microfabricators. Each bay could individually hold up to 6 Wasp Interceptor Drones or two to four of larger drones. Could hold ASF if need be, but servicing was gonna be hard with how cramped it was. 

I needed to let Armas name the ship. It was going to be the ship he and Amy got to captain.

-VB

Armas Arlaoskas

Gatchina

3001 November

“W-What?” Armas stuttered out as he stared across the table at Ed.

Ed looked nonchalant as ever, which was why no one in the crew trusted that poker face when he kept bringing out ridiculous stuff like this, and waited for his reply as if he was asking if he wanted cheeseburger or chicken salad. 

“I’m asking if you would like to be the captain of that drone tender over there,” Ed repeated as he pointed with a thumb at the chonky “drone tender” Leopard on the other side of their allotted dock space. Armas glanced at the ship on the other side of the room’s reinforced glass(?) window and then looked back to Ed. “It’ll have a lot of defensive drones on top of the Wasps, so it should be a pretty safe ride. It lacks a bit of the armor that Solo Killing does, though.”

“But why me?”

Ed just raised an eyebrow before leaning forward, making both him and Amy lean back at the half-lidded stare he gave them.

“Family first,” he replied with all of the seriousness of a man declaring war. 

Actually, considering that it was with that same tone that he told the pirates to get bent, it just might be that. 

“If I thought that you couldn’t do it, then I wouldn’t even ask you this. In fact, I would have asked Amy here instead of bringing you here, even if you would have been hurt by my decision to exclude you on the decision.”

Armas didn’t know whether to feel great about being considered competent or hurt that he considered Amy to be more competent than him. “... But what I make a mistake and let someone in who shouldn’t be?”

Ed just raised an eyebrow at that. “Armas, if you think I’m going to let you hire people, then you are dumb. That’s a decision that will never be in your hands.”

“Wait, what-?”

“Renold.”

“Wait-.”

“Josephine.”

“You can’t just -.”

“Vladisclaw.”

“Okay, he had -.”

“Tiffany.”

“She’s just -.”

“Thomas.”

Armas clicked his mouth shut. “... I get it. I’m generally horrible at finding friends.”

“I know. Amy here is the best you’ve ever had. Don’t waste this opportunity.”

He felt a blush creep up his neck and face, and saw the same happening with Amy. 

“Look. You’ve been studying from the materials I’ve given you, right?”

Armas nodded. There just wasn’t much things to do on the ship, so, well, there was a lot of studying if only to put off the boredom of long travels. Ed did tell him to study how to be a captain for the Solo Killing, though it wasn’t labeled as such on the computer files. 

(He also may or may not have wanted to learn how the fuck his brother made artificial gravity inside the ship. That mystery dug at everyone.)

He took a deep breath in and squared his shoulders. “What would be my responsibilities?” he asked. 

Ed grinned. “Essentially, you or Amy, whoever takes the command of the ship in battles, will act as my support. Solo Killing and that Leopard - I’m thinking about calling it a Beehive-class Drone Tender - will exchange targeting information, so all you have to do is follow my orders. It’ll also serve as the primary cargo vessel, and the drones will keep you two safe. It’ll probably be safer than Solo Killing when we’re on the ground, since the drones are capable of rapid deployment if need be.”

Armas stared at his brother. 

“... But why?” he asked again.

Ed stared at him before sighing.

“Idiot,” he grunted. “Are you so fucking convinced that there must be something that you keep questioning a blessing coming your way? I already said it, idiot. You are my brother and I love my family, including your stupid self. Family first. Family always. Never forget that.”

In the end, he and Amy accepted his brother’s offer. He may or may not have been sniffling a little. If anyone ever asked if he cried, then the answer will always be no. He only sniffled a little at his brother’s generosity and love. He did not bawl like a baby! 

He definitely did squawk in horror when Edward told him that the ship’s name was Humpty Dumpty.