Collection 12 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 12

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Bass, Magistracy of Canopus

3002 February

Bass was a quaint world without the opulence of Canopus IV. It was better off than half of the League worlds I visited, but the difference was small. Like the difference between 1930’s technology and 1960’s technology. Vast from 21st century perspective but insignificant from that of the 31st century lens. 

For example, farmers on Lesnovo still used horse-drawn harvesters. Many used mechanical harvesters running on local fossil fuel, and the richest farmers used industrialmechs for their harvests. However, the number of industrialmechs on Lesnovo could be counted on two hands for the entire planet. It wasn’t the Kendall equivalent of Rim Commonality.

Bass was not as far behind as Lesnovo but they weren’t also as advanced as Kendall, which boasted hundreds of industrialmechs working in everything from resource exploitation sites like mining and forestry to local heavy industries like refineries and spaceports. 

However, Bass lacked a high tech industry of its own. They depended on factories from Canopus to provide them microelectronics to replace the aging parts inside their electronics. 

This surprised me because I found Bass to be a decent planet for developing heavy industries. It had the population, mineral resources, and peace that was lacking in most Inner Sphere worlds. What it did lack, however, was education. I had intellectually understood that Magistracy of Canopus suffered an education crisis worse than the Federated Suns’ in their Outbacks. Their own universities were second rate, and most of the professors there weren’t local Canopians but rather academics, mostly men, drawn in from the rest of the Inner Sphere, especially Lyran Commonwealth and Free Worlds League, both of which had extremely well-funded education systems. 

Bass, not being Canopus or an industrialized world (by the standards of the periphery and the Inner Sphere), didn’t have the luxury of expat academics. It didn’t even have “regional” universities, this era’s equivalent of American state-level universities like Ohio University and the University of California, Davis. 

If there had been one, then its staff would have been pulled back to Canopus long ago even before the start of the Succession Wars. 

Overall, this made Bass not a good place to settle down. 

See, part of my plan had been to set up a company in the periphery, hand over some minor patented blueprints for small ships (not even dropships), and start manufacturing them to sell to whomever would buy them. I actually thought up the idea while in slow transit within Bass System. Instead of staying permanently to oversee the new factory (if there would be one), I would hand over the general management to the local government, giving them a share of the pie and an incentive to make sure its managers and workers worked while the owner was not in the state. 

As for what I wanted to make… 

Well, it didn’t quite matter. 

Not when there was no chance of it taking off here in Bass and while the government started to question how I came into the system.

Even if they were economically and technologically doing poorly in the civilian sector, the Magistracy still defended their worlds, and that included long range sensors. 

“We have determined that you are a legitimate mercenary company from the MRB, but their records of your whereabouts doesn’t line up with what we see,” the Bass government representative, a dark skinned and smartly dressed lady, asked me as she slid a small stack of papers from the other side of the small metal table within my ship inside my office room, which used to be a crew living space. 

MRB had been keeping track of me apparently. Or rather they kept track of all mercenaries, and military head of Bass militia, whoever it was, was smart to look me up when I entered the Bass System from the opposite side of their closest neighbors when we dropped out of warp at the edge of the system instead of the nadir or zenith of the Bass Star.

I thought I was being careful by avoiding as many systems as I could, but no, I wasn’t being as careful as I thought. I was starting to leave behind concerning information. 

I glanced at the woman and then picked up the paper. 

It was a list of feats and the assets listed under me as far as the MRB knew. 

Including the autonomous combat drones.

I knew that it was at that point that it would be just a matter of time before ComStar’s First Circuit knew about me. 

And the troubles would start. 

This was one of the reasons why I wasn’t settling down on Bass. 

“And that matters?” I asked her. 

The representative looked at me without so much as breaking that fake-ass smile. “Of course not, but since Bass has an interest in hiring you for garrison duty…”

“Then I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. I have no interest in garrison contract here.”

“I’m sure we can sweeten the deal for you. The Countess of Bass is willing to offer you much for a five year contract. Just name your price.”

Five year contract? 

No, that was too long.

“I’m alright, thanks,” I replied. “One year contract would have been too long. Five years is too much. And Bass has nothing I want. A landhold would be the minimum I would start negotiating with if you want me to stay here.”

The representative finally twitched. 

A landhold might not sound like a lot, but it was, in essence, giving a non-citizen/resident of the planet an indefinite lease to a piece of land, assuming that the mercenary company didn’t attack the nation that owns the land. 

And from the way the representative showed emotion, she thought my demand was ridiculous. 

“Let me remind you that my company has taken out more dropships and mechs in the first year of existence than most mercenaries companies encounter in the same time period. I wonder what the count was again? Five dropships and nearly forty mechs?” I listed off casually. “I am serious about the landhold. So unless the countess has allowed you to sign off on that…?”

“... She has not, because a landhold is generally not an offer given to green companies.”

“Then what has she authorized to offer?” 

She handed me a contract. 

I read through it and nearly laughed. 

So.

The garrison contract was pretty generic. In fact, it was so generic that it may as well have been printed out of the local network or something. 

The contract was very simple. 

One, the garrison pay was 1,000 C-Bills per month per mechwarrior. 

Two, we would be renting one of the local defunct military bases at a flat 5,000 C-Bills per year unless we want some other location. 

Three, there was not a single mention of the dropships being used for defense. 

Four, there was no mention of maintenance pay.

I shrugged. “The countess has no eyes to see with, obviously. You’ve gathered information on us during the month we’ve been staying here on Bass, and this is the best you’ve come up with?” I asked dismissively. “You can leave the ship. I don’t think I’ll be signing up with the countess with how little she thinks of us.” The rep opened her lips to talk with a slight frown but I raised my hand to stop her. “I’m serious. I will not be negotiating with the countess. Not after this insult,” I added as I shook the contract.

There was a moment of silence as the representative, whose name I didn’t even get because she got straight into the discussion without even introducing herself, finally frowned. 

“It seems you have made up your mind. Very well. Enjoy your stay. However long that may be.” She stood up and left. 

It was only after I saw her leave my ship through the ship’s security cameras which fed into my office room’s computer that I allowed myself to relax a little. 

“{Well, she’s a rude bitch, ain’t she?}” Miguel grunted through the networked intercom between Solo Killing and Humpty Dumpty. “{But you were too pushy, too, captain.}”

“I did it on purpose,” I replied easily. And then I forgot that they couldn’t hear me if I didn’t press down on the radio. I sighed, reached over to my left, pressed down on the intercom button, and then spoke. “I did it on purpose,” I repeated. I continued without letting go of the button. “I thought Bass might be a decent place for us to temporarily stick around, but after my assessment of the planet and its people, I decided against it.”

“{Bass is nice!}” Riley crowed with a laugh.

I rolled my eyes. “You mean you enjoy the beach and the sun too much?” 

“{Exactly.}” 

“{Bass is … nice,}” Amy chimed in. “{But I agree with the captain. It’s not a place for us. Aside from garrison work, there’s nothing else to do here.}”

“Exactly. That’s part of the reason why we’re not staying,” I told them. “Because part of the reason why I came to the magistracy in the first place is because I want to set up a factory out here away from the wear and tear of the succession wars.”

“{A factory for what, captain?}” Danille, the normally quiet one, asked. 

“Aerodyne ships for interplanetary travel and asteroid mining. Something half the size of your regular Leopard.”

“{Asteroid mining, huh. I don’t think anyone does that.}”

“Their loss, then. There’s a lot of germanium up in those space rocks, you know?” Then I paused. “Anyway, some of the other things were like for microelectronic components, consumer electronics, and even something called a graviton pulse generator. The last one is actually what I’m using in both of our ships for artificial gravity.”

“{... Huh?}”

-VB-

Armas Arlaoskas

En route to Afarsin

3002 February

In the end, they didn’t stay at Bass. Armas agreed with Ed’s decision to not stay there after he and everyone else aboard the ships got to see the offered contract. 

He knew enough about mechwarrior and mercenary company contracts because he learned about them from retired mechwarriors on Campoleone (those old bastards really liked to chatter). 

A green mechwarrior was expected to be paid around 1,200 C-Bills per month while on garrison duty, but that was not including the equipment and maintenance costs. Such costs were added to the mechwarrior’s pay and got calculated at around 4~6% of their personal mech’s price. That cost included pay for astech, mechtechs, mech hangars, and everything else. 

So even a green mechwarrior with an Urbanmech 60,000 C-Bills a month just to maintain their mech. 

But instead of paying for even 30,000 C-Bills, the countess wanted them to pay to use a defunct base? 

Yeah, no. The countess obviously didn’t care about hiring a mercenary company right now. This was either her wanting to play games or looking to see how desperate they were. 

And desperate, they were not. 

In fact, Ed talked about how he intended to take the copy of the contract to other Canopian worlds to talk about how batshit stupid the Countess of Bass was. That’ll certainly rile up her enemies within the magistracy. 

“So where are we going now?” Miguel asked him from behind the captain’s seat. 

Armas didn’t look over his shoulder to reply, because he didn’t want to look away from the batshit insane FTL lightshow in front of him. He didn’t get tired of watching it. He still did reply, though. “Ed said he’s going to head straight to Canopus. We’re not stopping by any systems on the way, so it’s something like sixty-three light years of constant travel.”

“... So about two weeks aboard the ship?”

“Roughly.”

He hummed. “Still better than any wait time I’ve had before for the distance traveled. After that?”

“He wants to see whether or not he could set up a company there. You saw some of the things he wanted to make.”

It was Amy who hummed from the assistant pilot’s seat. “I knew that we were walking around instead of floating because of some artificial gravity, but I didn’t expect him to just … bring it out like that.”

“It’ll change everything,” Miguel remarked. “The shape of the dropships, the mech hangars, everything.”

Armas didn’t know much about that. 

What he did know, however, was that he was excited for the future. 

Whether that excitement would be tinged by exasperation, terror, or exhilaration, he didn’t know yet, but he expected Ed to keep them all safe. 

---

Edward Arlaoskas

I thought.

I pondered. 

I ruminated. 

I thought about my assumptions, knowledge, and everything else. 

And came to a conclusion. 

‘If settling down on a planet to make manufacturing factories is not possible… why settle down at all?’ I thought as I looked at the nanofabricators that I had previously used to fix the drones. Four of the seven nanofabs had been moved aboard the Humpty-Dumpty, but I still had two aboard my ship, making everything from spare parts to bullets. 

Why couldn’t I build more nanofabs, grab another dropship (or make one, if painstakingly), and just … be a roaming factory?