Collection 11 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 11

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Ildlandet System

3001 December

The warp ended right at the edge of the abandoned system I’d charted us to. 

Ildlandet was originally a Free Worlds League star with a colony. The colony’s been abandoned for some time, about fifty years or so, so there was no one in this system. 

First, I didn’t want to go through the exact routes that everyone else used. It made tracking me and my crew harder.

Second, Ildlandet was supposedly a world that had an active colony only fifty years ago, so I wanted to know what happened to it. 

Third, if the original colonists left behind a lot of metal in any shape or form, then I could scavenge that. Armor plates were expensive to purchase, so I tended to jury rig mine from scrap metal. 

Ultimately, it was an unknown place that barely anyone knew about or visited, so it was a safe place to stop by. I think.

Ping.

I blinked a few times rapidly before looking to my left.

I was the only one on the bridge because no one else was on the ship. I didn’t need a big crew, and my shadow clones sufficed. I was also getting henge down, so if I did get boarded or inspected, then I could make my clones all look like different individuals. 

As for that ping…

I slid my chair over and looked at the radar. The ship hadn’t sent out a radar ping of its own. No, my Solo Killing got pinged.

There was someone out there in the system.

“I guess it was too good to be true,” I grunted irritably. I picked up the radio transceiver, adjusted to our designated “fleet” frequency, and pressed down. “This is Solo Killing. I just got pinged by radar. That wasn’t you, right? Over.”

After a few crackling moments, I got a response. “Danielle here. Amy says we did get pinged by something. Said she hoped it was you. Over.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t me. There’s someone else in the system, and we just got pinged. And if they’re pinging us from beyond a few lightseconds, then they already got our thruster flares on their infrared. Since this system was supposed to be dead… I can only think of pirates being here. Over.”

I could almost hear the groan from the other side. “Miguel from Hum… Humpty Dumpty’s engineering. Does that mean we’re going out to fight again? Over.” He sounded dutiful, maybe even eager. 

“Hell, no,” I grunted. “We don’t even know how many of them there are, what their composition is, or if there are more of them waiting to jump in on us. No, we’re turning around and leaving the system for the next star. None of you released the connectors holding us together, right? Check it, please. Over.”

The connector in question was one of the upgrades I’ve made to Solo Killing and added to Humpty Dumpty. It was a mechanism that would connect our two ships together so that when Solo Killing jumped into warp drive, it would take Humpty Dumpty with it. Of course, the connector and the warp bubble needed to cover the drone tender dropship meant that my fusion reactor spent more power per jump and thus it took us more time to cross the void, but hey, I still made Humpty Dumpty knowing this. 

“Connector secure, over.”

“Sweet. We have an hour before we’re jumping straight towards… Canopian system of Bass. Any objections, Armas? Over.”

“None, over.”

And that was that. 

-VB-

Free Worlds League, Research World 

Ildlandnet

3001 December

ILNSensor2Net1: Uh. Did you see that?

ILNSensor2Net5: Yes, we saw that. All of you have that on record?

ILNSensor2Net3: I’ve logged mine.

ILNSensor2Net4: Those were not standard jumpship emergence signature. There was no ESig. 

ILNSensor2Net1: Yup. That looks about right. Instead of EM, I got spatial distortion.

ILNSensor2Net3: Spatial distortion? Let me check. 

ILNSensor2Net3: Yes. I have spatial distortion in my log. Weird. 

ILNSensor2NetAdmin: Submit all of your logs right now and tell no one about this. This just got classified. If you don’t have clearance level 8, you no longer know anything about this. The nerds in the labs just got their panties wet.

ILNSensor2Net1: As long as it’s something they can use to help the League, I can keep my silence. 

-Chat Log of Ildlandnet League Research Site 2 end-

-VB-

Armas Arlaoskas

In-trainsit

3002 January

He was a captain of a dropship now.

‘Never thought I would be a captain but I guess having a good brother gets you places,’ Armas thought as he leaned back into the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Humpty Dumpty. 

It was a … nice little ship. It held almost all of the drones Ed made and the mechs that Ed kept for himself and the crew. He wasn’t sure about the drones and how they matched up one-for-one against mechs and aerospace fighters, but even an agriworld hillbilly like him knew the importance of the mechs currently in his ship’s mechbays. 

Miguel’s Phoenix Hawk was a monster that, despite weighing the same as a regular Phoenix Hawk, could take on heavy mechs with ease. It had one more ton of armor, moved nearly 20 kilometers per hour faster while running, had more weapons and heat sinks, and the structure itself was more durable than the other Phoenix Hawks out there. It was powerful even for a custom mech, and Miguel loved it. Everyone could tell from how he spent half of his free time shining it up. 

And then there was the Orion heavy mech.

He knew from school that General Kerensky also piloted an Orion mech, and there were a lot of mechwarriors who swore by it. But Ed had done something to his Orion mech, and if Miguel’s Phoenix Hawk was any indication, then that Orion in Humpty Dumpty’s mechbay was powerful beyond measure. It could probably take on assault mechs without a problem. 

And knowing the values of those mechs, Armas knew that his brother put a lot of trust into him by handing him the captaincy of the ship. 

He still felt immensely grateful, but it came with a weight of guilt. His brother gave so much to him and yet Armas didn’t know how to pay it back. Oh, sure, he could do the job that Ed gave him, but Armas felt that was the minimum he needed to do. 

The door to the bridge slid open with a hiss of air. 

“Arm?” 

He looked over his shoulder. Only Amy called him that, and she stood there in the doorway. 

“Hi, Amy,” he greeted back. “What’s up?” he asked her as he looked to stare back out into the void of space and the space distortions caused by the warp bubble surrounding Solo Killing and Humpty Dumpty. 

“It’s time for dinner.”

“Got it,” he said as he got up. 

Time was a fickle thing in space, but Ed had a solution to that. 

Light. 

The lights that lit the corridors could not be turned off, and they were glaringly harsh. It ran on a 24-hour cycle that would see the light intensity follow the day-night cycle of Earth. He said the reason why he set the day-night cycle to Earth’s cycle was because he felt like it, even though the difference between Earth’s day-night cycle was only one hour longer than Kendall’s cycle.

This was also apparently how other dropships and jumpships kept people sane, because people did go insane if they spent too long in a place where there were either too much or too little light for a long time. 

And Armas was not keen on finding out how freakier Amy would get in bed to blow off her stress because Ed and he decided to skimp on lighting. 

He loved Amy and sex was great, but there was a point when sex became a little demented. 

He did not want know to if Amy was serious about that candle wax on dick thing. No, he did not. 

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Bass System, Magistratcy of Canopus

3001 December

We arrived in Bass days before Christmas, and I got another point in transit from Ildlandnet to Bass. Maybe I got that point for dodging a potentially risky fight or something like that? 

Whatever the case, I now had another point, and I found myself asking what I would spend it in. 

And then I had an idea. 

Battletech was not the only mech-centric universe. It would only benefit me if I had perspectives, ideas, knowledge, and maybe even blueprints of other mech-centric verses. 

So I invested my new point into perhaps the most iconic of the mech verses.

Gundam Engineering I. 

Even if it didn’t work out well, I could use its knowledge to build space maneuvering mechs at the very least once I got to working again. 

Speaking of which…

I picked up the radio. 

“Armas. How does your crew feel about stopping on Bass III?”