Collection 17 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 17

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Claybrooke VI, Free Worlds League

3002 September

After two months, I finished printing out two Phoenix Hawk PHX-1D parts. Once that was done, I landed on Claybrooke to deliver the mechs. 

The Humpty Dumpty and Solo Killing landed separately, and I had my masked and helmeted shadow clones (ninjutsu for the win!) haul out the boxed up Phoenix Hawks with a frankenmech “industrialmech” I slapdashed together. 

From the uniform and the multiple awards and tassels the guy wore, I assumed the ducal representative they sent me was at least up there in the middle ranks; they didn’t send some low rank logistics sergeant to take care of the transaction. 

“Why in a box?” he asked me. 

“Hmm?” I uttered as I turned around. I’ve been marshallering, wearing the appropriate reflective, neon yellow and orange safety jacket and waving the dimly lit red batons. “Oh, that’s because that’s just how we deliver the mechs. It’s not like every planet will have a mechwarrior or someone who can operate a mech every time we land there, so we decided to just box them up. Makes it easier to move them around in most places.”

I didn’t mention that there was no “we” here, just me who decided that on a whim because I wanted to ship them like an IKEA product.

“I will be having my mechtechs checking the products.”

“Go right ahead,” I said as I instructed my clones to set the freight boxes down. There were eight boxes in total, four boxes for each mech. 

The guy gestured for his people to go and start checking. 

And while that happened, he decided to strike up a conversation with me. 

“So you’re the owner of the … ships.”

“Yes,” I hummed. 

“Who did you go to to get that Leopard modified like that for ASF?” he asked me. 

I decided to not correct him on his assumption. “I did it myself.”

He blinked and turned to look at me fully. “You?”

“Yup,” I replied. It wasn’t like people weren’t going to find out if they decided to look into me. And besides, Claybrooke was not a particularly important place with important people. “It took me several months with appropriate help.”

“Hmm. That’s a shame. Putting a dropship out of commission for that long just for aerospace fighters isn’t good enough of a reason in my opinion. I certainly can’t afford to do that.”

Nobody asked for your opinion. 

“It’s also expensive. You essentially need at least one and a half Leopards to do it. And even then, if you don’t have the right components and hull parts, then you’ll need to get parts elsewhere.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“It was.”

Strictly speaking, I could have earned tens of millions of C-Bills from fixing and selling the dropship that went into renovating Humpty Dumpty, so the opportunity cost of making the Beehive-class dropship was ten million C-Bills at the minimum as well as my time spent making it. 

Yeah, expensive was right. 

“But you are selling the Phoenix Hawks for so cheap?”

“Like I told the guy I negotiated with,” I drawled. “When you signed the contract, you didn’t just pay me with C-Bills. You also paid me with a lifetime mining rights in the entire system, perpetual and inheritable but with limited yearly tonnage mineables.”

He looked surprised. “Ah. I admit… I didn’t read the contract in full.”

I blinked. “Why would you read the contract? Aren’t you the count’s majordomo or something?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No. I am the count. John de Claybrooke. Welcome to my world,” he said as he extended a hand toward me.

“Oh. Well. A pleasure to meet you, count,” I shook his hand. Then I sniffed. “You didn’t read the contract?”

He sighed.

-VB-

John de Claybrooke, Count of Claybrooke VI

Claybrooke VI, Free Worlds League

3002 September

Even without a report from the mechtechs and the mechwarriors, John knew that the two Phoenix Hawks currently being tested were worth far more than what he paid for.

And that was with him considering the value of a thirty year long mining right to the entire system except for Claybrooke VI itself. 

Because those Phoenix Hawks were new. Like new new. New in a way that most people just didn’t see mechs. 

And he got his hands on two factory new medium mechs for the price of one light mech.

Hell, he could sell just one to pay off half of his debt! And he just might. 

‘A mobile factory, huh,’ he pondered. 

He wanted to know how something like that existed. He was ready to declare it a Star League era LosTech, but one look at the jumpship that had landed on his spaceport showed him plenty enough that, no, it was not a LosTech.

It was a new technology.

It was something that could change a lot of things. A factory that could be on the move was a factory that wasn’t under attack by either the Lyrans or the Capellans. There was a strategic value to that that the Captain-General might sacrifice multiple worlds like Claybrooke to get his hands on. 

Which was obviously why he wouldn’t do it. 

Aside from the fact that Claybrooke was closer to the Duchy of Andurien - geographically, politically, financially, economically, and personally (because goddamn that night was a good young night) - and the fact that he was currently benefiting from allowing the man and his strange mobile factory to sell his goods on his world, he would get nothing from reporting this or trying to take the factory for himself.

Oh, the thought did come up for a second. Who wouldn’t after he realized just how valuable a mobile factory was? Hell, it might even be as important as his world, if not more. 

But there was a problem with that. 

One, he didn’t know how to operate the factory. For all he knew, it was black boxed to hell and back, and the only thing he would gain from killing the owner and taking it for himself would be a loss of reputation and even censure from above. 

Two, he saw big guns on that ship, and not knowing how fatalistic, loyal, or cowardly the owner and his crew could be, gambling against big guns like that was just a fancier way of courting death via suicide. Thanks. But no thanks. 

Three, keeping a good relationship with this “Edward Arlaoskas” would mean that when someone inevitably tries to be greedy and Edward beats the shit out of them with those big honking guns, then he’ll remember that there was an honorable noble who he had a lasting agreement with already. 

The problem was how the Duchy of Andurien would see this. 

Duchess Catherine Humphreys would do her utmost to try to get her hands on the mobile factory, and she wasn’t above the cloak and dagger subtlety. And she was stubborn as fuck, too, so if she ever decided that she wants the factory, then she’ll do everything in her power to get it. 

This was the “No” Woman of the League’s Parliament, after all. If anything ever even looked like it might disadvantage her duchy, then she automatically said no.

What people forgot was that her one track mind applied inversely as well. If anyone looked like it might given even an iota of advantage for her duchy, then she also automatically said yes. 

He could respect that obstinate bullheadedness… if he wasn’t in her path as well. 

One of the ways she expanded her influence and that of her duchy was by reeling back in worlds that broke away from the duchy after the Second Succession War. See, after the Second Succession War, the Duchy of Andurien lost a lot of power that it used to have as worlds broke away from their larger polities, which was allowed thanks to how … decentralized the League was.

Yes, decentralized was a good word. Better than irredeemably clusterfuck.

Claybrooke had been one of those worlds, and the duchess would be irate when she finds out that he grew its power.

Oh, he was dancing inside. 

He knew who had been behind the increasing debtors and interests hounding after him. He knew whose shell corporation owned his debtors. 

He fucking knew.

He wasn’t going to get folded in so silently, not when God just dropped this blessing right into his lap.

So. Arlaoskas was leaving already, he had two pristine medium mechs, and gave out a perpetual mining right. 

How was he going to leverage this to improve his position? 

-VB-

Miguel Nohara, mechwarrior of Arlaoskas Brothers

Claybrooke VI orbit, Free Worlds League

3002 September

His Phoenix Hawk was his Phoenix Hawk.

He even had the paperworks to prove it since the captain signed it to him. 

But this didn’t mean that he only piloted his mech, and Edward wanted him to test out the “Wasp” against the local ASF. 

There was a reason for this and that reason was more modifications that Edward made to it. He also changed the class of the mech into “Bee-class Void Interceptor Battlemech.” 

Beehive and Bee. There was a theme there that Edward was silently pushing. 

Anyway, the local garrison’s commander and the count both agreed to the joint exercise, and so he was in orbit of the planet along with Humpty Dumpty and the Little Arlaoskas. 

His mission was simple: defend Humpty Dumpty by himself.

He lazily spun the Bee around, and it and the dropship kind of did look like their namesakes. Between the enlarged legs with their built-in thrusters and a pair of large primary thrusters attached to its back, the Bee did look kind of like an insect. The soft yellow glow of the drone bays of the Humpty Dumpty also gave off the bee aesthetic. 

Now, if he could only convince Edward, Armas, and Amy to change the front orange paint to something else. 

“Dumpty to Bee1. I have the enemy on radar. Feeding you the data.”

Within seconds, the left console beeped as he saw a slowly rotating 3D view of his current situation. There were a few debris that Humpty Dumpty’s powerful sensors caught; some wheezed by while others stuck around like eye floaters. 

And he also saw the quickly approaching ASF lance. He didn’t know what their specs were, but that didn’t matter. 

He waited until they came within thirty kilometers and sprung into action. 

The Bee buzzed within his cockpit as it rocketed forward to meet his temporary enemies. 

Half of the lance broke off at twenty kilometer mark to deal with him while the other half tried to bank around. He immediately … opened fire. 

The side panels along his legs slid open and “smart” rockets spewed out like an LRM. These were warhead-less rockets for training.

At fifteen kilometers, the ASF opened fire on him. He didn’t even bother to duck and weave. He just pushed the Bee even faster, and just outsped his own trajectory. 

As silent as the combat was, he felt exhilarated at the speeds he was moving around in. As his speedometer went up and felt the G’s pushing up on him, he gritted his teeth as he shot past the two attacking ASF, who had to deal with the rockets he left behind, and turned on a time. 

Then he raised his arms up and fired. 

Not really. 

Currently, it was in safety training mode, so all it did was tell his mech to fire directed radar towards the ASF. 

Their ASF had to make a much wider turn to get at him, but he was already using his thrusters to making a tighter “turn” while still facing them. And then he shot past them as he built acceleration faster than they bled it off to face him. 

Now, he was after the two who went after the dropship.

And -! 

---

“What did we learn?” Edward asked him some three hours later.

“Not to pull too many G’s.”

“Good.”

He still won. 

-VB-

Allen Rusenstein

Hilton Head, ComStar

3002 September

“... A mobile factory?” he asked incredulously. 

“Yes, Primus,” Precentor Mu, Ellison Terans, replied promptly. “The owner and operator of this mobile factory, Edward Arlaoskas, is also the head of his mercenary company and innovator behind new designs that he has been keeping to himself. If you can turn to page 4 of the report, then you can see that he converted an Achilles-class assault dropship into a slightly smaller but much deadlier anti-dropship assault dropship. It was with this dropship, the same dropship that now must have a KF Drive installed and enlarged to allow for jumps independent of dedicated jumpships, that he took out multiple Union-class dropships at the start of his journey from Kendall.”

Allen flipped to the aforementioned page and read what the ROM Precentor (not Precentor ROM but a precentor within ROM) found.

A seemingly normal man raised in the rural periphery of the Free Worlds League got booted out of his college after accidentally manslaughtering his classmates that attacked him. 

Boarded a dropship but got attacked by pirates.

Killed all of the said pirates in their dropship and took it over, which was allowed in the League’s laws as he was the sole combatant. 

Took that dropship back to Kendall, his homeworld, renovated it to an “anti-dropship assault dropship” as Precentor MU XII put it, and started a mercenary company… with only that dropship.

Destroyed a Marian Hegemony raid. 

Annihilated the pirates and their mechs on Gatchina.

Disappeared for half a year within the Magistracy of Canopus and then came back to the League with further modified dropship-turned-jumpship as well as another dropship, this one which he earned on Gatchina as part of his salvage. 

Oh, and that jumpship was also a mobile factory. 

This young man’s life was something out of a Mary Sue fiction. 

“... And what else have you found?”

“Please refer to page 8. It has a list of technological improvements that he has shown off.”

Allen did.

After ten minutes, he closed the report, set his glasses down, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

“This is troubling.”

“It is, Primus, which is why I am here to ask you to consider hiring mercenaries or pirates to remove the man from the Inner Sphere.”

He put his hand down and stared at Precentor Mu. “... You believe it warrants such a response.”

“I believe it does.”

“But his ship can take out dropships.”

“We will simply have to hire mercenary companies that have Achilles dropships of their own. Or alerting the Capellan Confederation to a potential strategically valuable asset in League space that they cannot allow to go uncontested and that at least half a dozen Achilles dropships will be needed to take this space threat out.”

He thought about it. 

Was it necessary? While he was not a believer in the Holy Shroud and its necessity, he was someone who knew that the Scavenger Lords needed to be managed. Allowing the League to gain a technological upper hand wouldn’t matter if they were weak like the Capellan Confederation, but right now, they weren’t weak. They were strong, having taken many worlds from the latter. While the mobile factory itself probably wasn’t a problem, a man capable of combining a factory and jumpship together into what was essentially a mini-yardship was a problem for the balance of power. 

If that young man ever decided to fully support the League…

“Do you think you can do it?” 

“I can make the arrangement, Primus.”

After a long contemplation period, he finally nodded. 

“Do it.”