Collection 3 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 3

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Lesnovo System, FWL

3001 January

Starship Rigging VI.

As I gained more skills and knowledge, the Inspired Inventor grew slow to give me more chance to improve upon them. Did this mean that there was a soft limit to what I could have from the Inspirted Inventor? It would have been nice to know in advance if that was the case. 

Moving on.

Finding a job had turned out to be very easy. After registering with the Mercenary Review Board with my “Achilles,” I was able to find another grain merchant who wanted an escort through the FWL border system. Their primary reason for this was because they wanted to sell grain along the border worlds that were hit heavily by recent pirate raids, reach Canopus and the Thraxus system, buy their wool on the cheap, and sell those wool back in the FWL.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of trade most independent FWL merchant would try (according to the MRB receptionist who was happy to gossip), but the pay would be substantial at 30,000 C-Bills for each jump and stay, excluding the jumpship fee as the merchant who owned the cargo dropship also owned the jumpship. I would also retain full salvage rights.

So we -.

Thunk thunk thunk -!

I rolled my eyes as I pushed myself off of the captain’s chair and walked - yes, walked, not floated - out of the bridge of Solo Killing and into the main corridor of the dropship. Me walking was possible because I made an anti-gravity platform that ran underneath most of the walkable areas but not in the drone bays or the small cargo hold. As for how I explained that to my crew?

I didn’t. I told them that it was how my ship ran and they were going to just deal with it. 

Thunk THUNK THUNK-! 

As I walked closer and closer to my little brother’s room, the sounds grew louder until it was obnoxiously loud. 

Until I slammed my fist on his door. 

“If you’re going to fuck, then at least fuck on the bed!” I shouted. “I don’t want to hear you fucking on the bulkhead! It is goddamn loud!” 

Yeah, as it turned out, there was a second reason as to why Armas wanted to follow me to the stars.

I heard a lot of shuffling inside before Armas came out with his pants on, blushing with more than a few hickies on his neck and shoulder. “S-Sorry, Ed.”

I rolled my eyes. “I get it. You’re horny. Amy is horny. But not everyone wants to hear you two get it on every hour of the day you two have time off,” I grunted. Then I flicked him on the forehead. He yelped cutely. I snorted. “Got it?”

“G-Got it,” he responded sheepishly. 

Then he closed the door and I walked back to the bridge.

The second reason turned out to be a girl. A Jewish girl to be precise. Yeah, she looked pretty. She was diligent and kind. But she stowed away on my ship because both of them knew that their parents would never agree to them being together.

I didn’t care too much, though, and ended up officiating their marriage.

It was a happy start to my journey into the stars as my own boss. 

Amy, however, took the “live prosperously and multiply” bit of the Torah very seriously and made baby-making eyes at her husband every day. And yes, they fucked every day. It was something that irritated the rest of the crew a bit. 

On a personal level, I was happy my little brother found someone to love and be loved by.

Even if I was jealous of the fact that he got more pussy than I did. Where were all of the muscle-loving girls when I was on Kendall, huh?! 

---

During “lunch,” all of my crew came to the small cafeteria to eat. 

Aside from myself, Armas, and Amy, there were three other people, all of whom were Kendall natives and people that my parents or I knew. 

The youngest of them was Riley, a short blonde man with black eyes. He was an orphan that everyone in the village took care of after his parents died. He came along because he was Armas’s friend.

The oldest of the crew was Miguel Nohara, a dispossessed mech jockey from some independent mercenary company who lost it all fighting the Lyrans. Grungy in appearance because he walked around with his wild hair and beard with only a wife beater and nylon basketball shorts, he was actually someone who took great care to keep the ship clean. He was the unofficial janitor but officially his job was gunner for some of the non-automated guns. 

The odd one out was Danielle, no surname. At thirty-two, she was a decade younger than Miguel and a decade or more older than the rest of us. She was also the tallest and thinnest of us. 

And then there was Amy. She was a little short, slim, and on the pretty side, and utterly out of sync with manual labor or hands-on skill. I helped her with learning how to manage communication systems and electronics. Look, she was my sister-in-law, so I couldn’t not help her.

And of course, Miguel and I taught everyone about what they should expect during combat and similar high intensity situations. 

Krrk.

I sighed as I walked over to the wall where the internal comm panel was and picked up the radio.

“This is Captain Arlaoskas of Solo Killing speaking, over.”

“This is the sensor officer of the Hau Brand. We’re picking up a thrust flare from one-seventy by negative twenty. Can you confirm, over?”

What? So to our rear to a little below the system plane? That was toward the south pole of the local star.

“Hold on, I need to go to my bridge. I’ll confirm in five minutes, over.”

I turned to the rest of the crew. “Seems like we might have a newcomer to the system. Finish your food and get to your stations.” Without receiving their reply, I left the cafeteria and walked toward the bridge. Once I got there, I quickly plopped down on the captain’s seat and turned on the screen of my console. With but a few turns of a 2D representation of the 3D space, I aimed my ship’s primary sensor toward the aforementioned direction and fired off a ping. 

Now, the sensor was a mixture of number of long distance detection systems, including radar, LADAR, magnetometers, infrared, visual, and more, but they were all limited by the speed of light. Depending on how far the signature was, it would take anywhere from an instant to fourteen minutes (because the distance from the star to Lesnovo III that we were currently in orbit of was around 0.88 AU so it would take around that much for light to bounce off an object and come back to my sensors if the signature was right around the star). Once I sent that, I turned to turn on the radio again to talk to Hau Brand when my computer pinged at me.

I froze.

It’s been less than ten seconds since I fired off the ping. I looked down at my terminal.

[Unknown signature: ~900,000 kilometers away. Thermal flare consistent with reverse thrust.] And seconds later, it spat out a rough trajectory. [Three signatures. Intercept course with Solo Killing and Hau Brand.]

“Shit.”

Three signatures moving in coordination silently to intercept us and not land on the planet? 

Raiders. Or pirates.

The difference didn’t matter. 

I quickly contacted Hau Brand. “This is Solo Killing to Hau Brand. I am detecting three signatures deccelerating and moving in an intercept course with us. They haven’t announced themselves, so there is a very high chance that they are raiders or pirates. I will be contacting Lesnovo Ground Control, over.”

Then I did just that. 

“This is Solo Killing to Lesnovo Ground Control. I have three deccelerating signatures moving in intercept course with us and Hau Brand, over.”

But before I could get a response back from, I got a response from Hau Brand.

“Hau to Solo. We’re going to take us down to Lesnovo. You know your job if they’re hostile, right? Over.”

“I copy that and I do, over.”

“Godspeed then, captain, over.”

Hau’s thrusters flared, and the Mule-class dropship burned down to Lesnovo.

Then I got response from Lesnovo Ground Control. 

“Ground Control to Solo Killing. We are not getting any response from any of the incoming dropships. You are clear for engagement, over.”

Well, that was quick and clear. 

I cracked my neck.

Alright.

Time to test out the cannon. 

I pressed down on the comms button. “This is your captain speaking. We have three hostile dropships intercepting us. Everyone to your stations!” 

---

Patrician-Centurion Tatianus Eruntiana

MHAF Torados

“The Mule is landing, centurion,” the captain of the Torados remarked. 

Sitting behind him in a separate chair of the bridge of the Excalibur-class military dropship, Tatianus waited for an elaboration of the situation. There were two dropships in orbit of Lesnovo when they entered the system.

“And the other dropship remains in orbit,” the captain spoke up after confirming. “It appears to be an Achilles-class assault dropship.”

He frowned. Achilles dropships were dangerous, but if it was by itself…

“Launch all available aerospace fighters. I want that Achilles disabled and boarded.”

“Vero domine, patrician.”

The Torados shuddered as fighters launched. With only two fighters, this was insufficient, but that’s why he also brought his house’s two Union CVs. With their fighters, there were enough out there to destroy the Achilles if need be. 

“Distance?” 

“400 clicks, pat-.” He froze as some of the screens flared up in red. 

“Report,” he snarled. 

“... MHAF Sons of Eruntiana’s main thrusters has been destroyed in total,” the captain reported only after a moment. 

“... What?!” 

---

Edward

I whistled as the Siege Cannon absolutely obliterated the Union on the right (from my viewpoint). 

But that was actually pretty fair result for guided shell with explosives worth 600 pounds of TNT in explosive firepower. 

Then I pressed a button and launched the drones. My angry little buzzards snapped out of their bays and sped off to the closest targets. 

While they sped to gnaw at the fighters…

Cha-chunk!

Crroom!

Solo Killing shuddered as another guided shell screamed into the void. 

---

“Sons of Erutiana has been destroyed!” 

“Send out the fighters, now! Destroy that Achilles!” 

---

I watched on screen as my drones engaged the aerospace fighters that vastly outnumbered them, but my small drones weaved around the fighters and burned away at their thrusters and cockpits with precision only computer-guided attacks could deliver.

The wonderful thing about this kind of long range combat was that because of how quickly I can reload and how slow travel was, they were sitting ducks aside from whatever their fighters could do.

Then the Siege Cannon finished reloading and fired again.

---

Tatianus gripped the arms of his chair as the Torados shook terribly and lights flickered. 

“We’ve been hit! No response from engineering and thrusters!” 

“Aft armor is gone! Lower levels are unresponsive!”

He felt himself pale. 

What the hell was happening…?! Did he stumble upon a secret Leaguer project?! 

“Get the dropship to turn around now! We won’t survive another hit on our aft!” he shouted. The dumb captain should have ordered that before he did!

---

My drones made turns and maneuvers that would have killed conventional pilots in their cockpits, but because they were drones, they did it with only minimal stress to the structural integrity of the hull. 

The aerospace fighters were trying their best, though.

The drones didn’t care and cut specifically into the cockpits. One by one, the fighters began to drift away from the skirmish lifelessly until the rest of the fighters quickly turned and gunned for me. 

I was fine with that. 

I reached up from my seat and pulled down a radio. “Alright, boys and girls. We’ve got fighters coming after us! There’s … seven of them, and all of them are heavily damaged. You know the drill and we’ve practiced for this. Keep calm and keep shooting, you got me? You let me deal with the dropships.”

Which was just about when the Siege Cannon reloaded. And I fired.

---

Torados shook terribly and sparks flew everywhere as some of the electronics popped out of their places. One unlucky crewwoman got hit in her neck and floated away with a gushing neck that sent blood flying everywhere as the ship turned to face the ship’s undamaged fore toward the -.

“Caeser’s Rampage reports damage to their aft!”

“Tell them to fucking turn!”

---

I raised an eyebrow before flinching when one of my external camera screens lit up with the explosion of a fighter that Miguel shot down.

“Good one! That’s a 50 CB extra for you!” Considering that a dropship pilot earned around 550 C-Bills a month while the average crew earned less than half that, that was a very good incentive, and I could hear a very faint cheer even through the loud reload and fire of the Siege Cannon.

I watched as a brief explosion lit up the void far in the distance. 

… And then I quickly got a radio message as the fighters peeled off of me. 

“This is Captain Faduromias Belle of the MHAF Caeser’s Rampage to the dropship in orbit of Lesnovo,” the radio crackled. “We wish to surrender. What are your terms?”

I raised my eyebrow. 

On one hand, having a semi-intact dropship for me to tear apart would be great.

On the other hand, dealing with pirates who might try to backstab me…

“Power down your weapons and all of you get into as few escape pods as you can. Then launch that escape pod. I will hand you over to the authorities on Lesnovo.”

For a moment, there was no response. In fact, I expected them to not follow through because I was essentially asking them to put a noose on their own neck. Part of the reason why the grain merchant had come through here was because Lesnovo often got raided by pirates from the Margian Hegemony. 

I knew that the higher-ups over there might accept because they can ransom themselves. But the average crew? Oh, they were going to get shafted hard. Literally if Lesnovons felt vindicative. 

I waited as the ship continued to slow down.

And then finally, powered down their weapons and all of the remaining fighters piled into its ASF bays. 

“I surrender to your demands.”

Oh, good. 

More stuff to play with.

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Lesnovo System

3001 January

The captain of the Hau Brand and I met not in space but on the ground after I managed to salvage the remains of the two destroyed dropships and fixed the thrusters of the second Union enough to have it land safely on Lesnovo. 

Lesnovons, for their part, cheered for me when I landed and tried to give me all sorts of medals for fighting back the pirates. I … happily told them that I was only doing my job as the merchant’s escort.

Which was something that may be coming to an end. 

One of the provisions of our contract was that I would have full salvage rights to anything that I killed or got the surrender of. This meant I now had more stuff in salvage than I had in dropship tonnage and carrying capacity. And the other provision of the contract was that if my employer (the grain merchant) could not carry my salvage, then we could seek to terminate the contract amicably.

And even after I sold all of the intact, if damaged, aerospace fighters, all of the battlemechs the Marian pirates had in the Union, and the dropship scraps from the destroyed dropships, there was a Union dropship and other salvage that I didn’t sell, and the grain merchant didn’t want to carry that. 

And so we were here putting the final touches to the amicable contract termination that would be going to the MRB. 

“It’ll be a shame to not have you,” Jack Wendy (yes, really) sighed as he put in his electronic signature. “But you’ve already done much for us by taking out those three dropships. I doubt they would have let me and my crew go even if we tried to run.”

I shrugged and then shook hands with the walrus-moustached and big bellied merchant. “It is what it is,” I replied. “And in honesty, it was a pleasure working with you, too, for my first contract.”

He looked surprised. “Really? I was your first job?”

“Yes,” I replied with a grin. “I just happen to have … vision about how dropship warfare should be conducted.”

“Yes, whatever it was that you did, you scared the shit out of my family’s security head.”

With a shrug and no explanation, we parted ways. I watched the Hau Brand take off and returned back to my Solo Killing and the salvaged dropship. My crew was waiting for me outside the ship with half a dozen hired hands.

“Alright, people!” I yelled with a big grin as I approached them. “Let’s tear these ships apart!” 

---

3001 February

Caeser’s Rampage successfully dismantled. Spaceship Design I and II gained. 

I noticed that the Inspired Inventor really slowed down by this point. 

Makeshift drydock constructed. Solo Killing drydocked, stripped port and starboard to the hull frame. 

---

3001 March

Solo Killing expanded sidways to accomodate more drone bays and weapon turrets for more Siege Cannons. It was now in a cross-like shape with the fore facing arm tapering off into the original Achilles bridge that my ship grew out of. 

Spaceship Design III gained. 

Ion thrusters designed, made on-site, and installed eight thrusters at the center corners of the cross-shape on Solo Killing to provide full 3D movement, not just turning maneuverability. 

Drone bays completed and operational. All drones remodeled into interceptor role, armed with modified large lasers on a turret mount. I called these “Wasp”-class interceptor drones after the Wasp drones from Starsector, which were shield-less energy

Completed a New Eden warp drive. Finished installing it.