Collection 10 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 10

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

3001 November

By the time I was ready to leave Gatchina, I got another point. I dropped that into Chakra, making it Chakra III, and tested that out in the hidden safety of my ship. I could now use six Shadow Clones with some difficulty. It was much better than what I experienced with only Chakra II and confirmed once more that each point I invested into a skill was not a linear progression. 

Unlike with engineering skills, the difference between a 2 and a 3 on an actual combat skill was noticeably significant. 

This also meant that I could more or less operate Solo Killing by myself if I wanted to.

But why would I want to do that? Being by myself was maddening. 

The radio crackled, and I stopped tinkering with the electronics on the workbench and pressed on the radio button on the wall with the tip of my screwdriver. 

“This is Ed speaking, over.”

“Ed, we have a familiar face on the ground, over.”

I frowned. A familiar face? 

“Just tell me who it is, over.”

“It’s Captain Wendy with the Hau Brand, over.”

My eyes widened.

Oh shit. 

I completely forgot. 

Jack Wendy and the Hau Brand was the captain and the ship transporting grain along the periphery edge of the Free Worlds League who we temporarily signed up with as an escort. After I took down the Marian Hegemony pirates above Lesnovo, we parted ways because I wanted to keep modifying Solo Killing, but the merchant continued on. 

He should have been the faster one to cross the periphery but instead, we were here first. Or was I just thinking too hard? He could have already passed through Gatchina and could be on the return path toward Kendall.

“I’ll be right out there, over.”

I made sure to return all of the tools to their boxes and the spare electronics to “work” boxes. Then I walked out of the tinker room, through the narrow corridors, and finally out of the Solo Killing via the cargo hold bay underneath the front half of the ship. 

I squinted as Gatchina’s horrifyingly bright sunlight reflected off of the arid landscape and the bone drying heat pressed on me from all angles. 

I looked around and found Riley, our janitor, standing to the ship’s starboard side underneath the Solo Killing’s shade along with a pair of strangers.

Well, not quite strangers, actually. 

“Jack!” I called out as I walked over to them.

Jack, a clean shaven man (hair and facial), looked up from whatever conversation he was having with Riley, and grinned when he saw me. “Edward! The hero of Lesnovo and Gatchina!” 

I grunted. “Do you have to call me that?” 

“I don’t know. Are you going to stop shooting down pirates wherever and whenever you encounter them?” he asked me with a grin.

I sniffed. “They’re just salvage and scraps I can use to modify my ship.”

He laughed before looking up at the Solo Killing. “And what a fine she is,” he hummed. “I heard from the locals you used its guns to take out pirate mechs.”

“Yeah?” 

He gave me his business stare. “I’d like one such turret on my own dropship, the Hau Brand.”

My eyes widened. “... I mean … I’m not against it,” I told him. “But that’s a lot of bullets you’ll have to keep in your hold. Isn’t that something merchants don’t like? Gotta have more hold for goods and whatever.”

He snorted. “If I use your guns to take down a mech, then that’ll net me more profit than anything I’ll make in a year. So how about it? How much would it be to have one installed on my beaute?” 

I scratched my stubbles. 

“... Do you have the materials?” I asked. 

He blinked. 

“Ah. No, not quite.”

“Yeah, just had to ask. Gatchina isn’t exactly somewhere that’s good for buying stuff like that,” I hummed. “And I used up most of what I got from my most recent salvage into making that,” I said while pointing to my new ship.

“Making what?” he turned around to look and then paused. “That … is not a Leopard.”

“It was a Leopard-class dropship,” I grinned. “Now, it’s a Beehive-class Drone Tender Dropship, maximizing ASF bays compatible with automated fighters and cargo hold.”

Captain Wendy turned back to me with a gaping mouth and wide eyes. “You … made your own dropship design?” he asked me haltingly, still shocked by what he was looking at. 

A Leopard-class dropship was the most ubiquitous dropship for mercenaries in the entire Inner Sphere. I had taken it and changed it so much. While its length and width hadn’t changed, its height had, nearly doubling its main body’s height to accommodate the increased number of bays. It made it look boxy and unwieldy but it didn’t need to be maneuverable when it was supposed to stay out of the fight. Even then, I still gave it two naval grade mounts while maintaining all of its medium laser and LRM mounts. I had to exchange the PPC and large laser mounts and space for the naval mounts, though. 

Not that anyone would know because I didn’t put any naval grade weapon (or the equivalent of Starsector Large weapons) on it. No, I just gave it two large autocannon equivalents. Starsector lovers would appreciate the thought of Devastator Cannon on a Mudskipper. 

I wasn’t against letting people know I could design new dropships. Dropships weren’t uncommon, even if their numbers were woefully low compared to what their numbers were like in the Star League era. 

“I guess,” I grinned. “But essentially, what I’m trying to get at, is that I’m out of scrap, weapons, and other materials for upgrading, and Gatchina’s self-sufficient subsistence agriculture and a lack of any other industry means we can’t get anymore while still on Gatchina.”

As if to punctuate that point, we watched a man and a cow pull a cart to deliver woven bags of grains. 

Jack sniffed. “Right. Maybe at our next destination?”

“Our?”

“Yes. I want to hire you again,” he grinned. “You were the most dependable escort I’ve had in years, and what you did here just proved that point. What do you say?” he asked. 

I crossed my arms and thought about it. 

It wasn’t like the crew and I had another job lined up. Technically speaking, we didn’t need money right now; we had too much of it after I sold some of the mech parts that I didn’t need over to the duke. So even after spending so much time on the ground doing nothing but tinkering and modifying the ships, I had nothing but time and money, which was not a state of affairs I was used to.

I wanted to be on the move. To find new places. To see more things. To scrap and salvage. To test myself.

To fight. 

… Okay, maybe not fight as much as tinkering, salvaging, and techifying my stuff. An occasional scrap here and there would satisfy me.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I’ve got my own set-up now, and can’t afford to break it up to be an escort. 

Jack looked disappointed by my rejection. “That’s a shame. It would have been good to have you escorting me into Magistratcy.”

I blinked. “Isn’t Canopian space one of the safest places to be?” I asked him incredulously. 

“Well, yes, but I also planned on going around the rimward edge of the Capellan Confederation to visit the Federated Suns.”

My eyebrows rose up.

This wasn’t like back on 21st century Earth when someone took a flight from New York City to Los Angelos. This was closer to 17th century Earth when someone took a gamble from Acre to sail to London. Capellan didn’t have a reason to allow a Free World League merchant to pass through their territory. Hell, they might even seize both the dropship and whatever jumpship for their own use, if they could with the latter. It was obviously why Jack wanted to go around the rimward periphery of the Confederation, but that had its own challenges. 

I’ve spent a lot of time here and on Campoleone researching about the periphery, mostly because even if I had already decided that ComStar wasn’t after me, I didn’t want to go near their outposts and centers of power and bring myself to their attention. This left the periphery for me to travel around and I made sure to research the periphery regions immediately bordering the League and some beyond it. 

The region that Jack wanted to cross? That was the New Colony Region, or the Capellan March if you talked to Capellans. That area of space wasn’t unsafe but it wasn’t exactly safe, either. Between the Magistratcy of Canopus, recently established Aurigan Coalition, and the Capellan Confederation, it existed in a state of political limbo where everyone had a claim to it but no one moved to consolidate the independent worlds there. 

And it was crawling with pirates and “pirates.” 

‘I could get a lot of salvage and impressionable recruits there without having to fear ComStar…’ I thought to myself. 

It sounded really good to me. 

Hell, maybe I’ll even go and get myself a contract with the Magistratcy. They give me a piece of land to rent, I go and kill pirates, and I sell whatever salvage I don’t want to them.

“... How about an escort mission up to the border of Canopus with the New Colony Region?” I asked. 

He frowned. “I was hoping you’d follow me all the way into the Federated Suns.”

My eyebrows that had fallen back to their normal levels after the last surprise rose back up.

“All the way into the Fed -. Jack, we’re talking about half year  journey. Do you even have the goods they want?” I asked him incredulously. “Is there even a trade happening?”

Assuming that he had the perfect route to go around the Capellan Confederation, each jump had a recharge time of around four to five days. I didn’t know the jump numbers needed to reach the Fed Suns through the New Colony Region, then that would take at least thirty jumps, if not more. 

“Ah, well,” he grimaced. “Not quite?”

“... Well, I suppose if you don’t want to tell me, then that’s your business, but I am not going to make a journey that long, especially since there is a chance that we’ll be stranded in the New Colony Region.” 

Jack sighed. “I guess that’s it then, huh?” he asked and I nodded. “Well, I tried. Good luck on your journey out there, captain.”

“You, too.”

Not all meetings have a productive end. Sometimes, nothing coming out of a meeting was the best outcome. 

As for my future, I wanted to get myself a brief mercenary commission with the Magistratcy of Canopus. It wasn’t because I wanted Canopian woman to fuck in my bed in a now much more sparsely populated ship but because Canopus was the most technologically advanced nation outside of ComStar itself and would have parts, equipments, and components that would be easier to buy than to make myself. 

Because everything I have done so far was me pushing my abilities to their limits with the subpar materials I had on hand. 

If I had better materials and tools, then I could make better ships, weapons, and systems.

I wanted to see enemy mechwarriors and ship captains gawking when I used plasma jets to maneuver my mechs and ships. 

-VB-

Arlaoskas Squad

Commander: Edward Arlaoskas

Solo Killing, a heavily modified Achilles-class Assault Dropship

-Captain: Edward Arlaoskas

-First Mate: N/A

-Crew: N/A

-Cargo: 225 tons

Humpty Dumpty, a heavily modified Leopard Dropship, reclassified as “Beehive” “Drone Tender” Ship

-Captain: Armas Arlaoskas

-First Mate: Amy Arlaoskas nee Karmi

-Crew: Miguel Nohara, mechwarrior; Sato Marahadi, mechanic/cook (mean curry); Riley Do, janitor/gunner; Danielle, mechanic/gunner

-Cargo: 200 tons

-VB-

A/N: in my mind, SS’s light autocannon is the BT equivalent of small AC, SS.arbalest autocannon is the equivalent of medium ac, and SS.hypervelocity driver is the equivalent of large AC/PPC. SS.Hephaestus Cannon is small naval AC and SS.Gauss Cannon is medium naval PPC. In my mind. In my opinion.