Kick the Sphere 4 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 4

-VB-

Normal dropships and jumpships take days to cross a solar system, though the travel duration varied on the size of the system in question. This was because jumpships needed to keep out of gravitational fields lest their K-F Drive gets fucked up.

It was accepted that all dropship travel was measured in days. Some of this had to do with inertia.

If a ship accelerates or decelerates too quickly, then humans become meat pastes on walls and floors.

Thankfully for me, I had something called inertia dampened installed.

The Atlantean database had a schematic for it, I made it, used it, and knew nothing about how it worked like I still don't know how 4G worked. It worked so I used it.

With it and my hyperspace drive both not needing to care about gravitational fields like operators of K-F Drives, our travel time got measured in hours instead of days as we dropped out of hyperspace within the system itself and not at any pirate jump points (Lagrange Points) and flew up to the only habitable world in the system.

"Alan?" Janice called me over the ship-wide comm.

"Yes?"

"You never told us where we were going."

"Right, I didn't. We're currently over an abandoned habitable world."

"... but why?"

"Because I want a quiet place to build up, that's why."

"Build up for what?"

"Well, there are a lot of things to be on the lookout for if I took Cold to any world owned by any states," I explained. "Pirates, raiders, spies, thieves, and so on. You follow?"

"Yeah, but why?"

"Because my ship is one of a kind. They can get the technology inside of it and use it against the other nations."

"So you can help the League?"

Ah, right. "Janice, I have no intention of helping the League at all."

"What?! But why?"

"Because I grew up on a shit hole of a planet that was part of a state that espoused superiority through hard work and entrepreneurship yet never gave me a single chance to rise. It took a literal series of miracles for me to come to where I am."

"..."

"Look, I also don't want to fight the League and I certainly won't be helping the Capellans. What I want to do is grow big and powerful enough that I won't be insignificant again."

I waited for her answer as I got ready to scan the planet. Switches flicked on, and then I pressed a small blue button that "fired" an active scan.

What I got back from the planet was interesting.

"Okay. I want to talk later about this, though."

"Got it," I replied distractedly before turning off the comms on my end. "Let's see," I muttered as I brought the floating noteputer closer to my face. "Human compatible atmosphere, slightly brackish oceans, two distinct flora and fauna origins, ruined cities…"

I didn't have a big plan in mind. All I wanted to do was wait for the Celestial Forge to give me enough points. I would buy some crazy tech or something, build up using that, and then … then what?

Become a duke? The Chancellor? The Prince? The First Lord?

Yeah, sure. I would be remembered, but I didn't want to be a ruler. I wanted to be recognized, acknowledged, and respected, but not because I was some kind of a duke.

Spread compatible technology? I could, but considering that the Successor States are in a constant state of war, what would technology do except make those wars worse?

Help the poor? Yeah, and I would be forgotten as just another charity.

I made a spaceship and left because a spaceship was the dream of my last life and this. I left because I knew that I could not hold onto my girls and spaceship if I remained.

… I supposed that I had my first goal.

"Become powerful enough that no one can attack me on a whim," I hummed as the shop completed the scan of the planet. "I think if I can get my hands on an Atlantean Aurora-class battleship, BC-304 battlecruiser, or Yamato-class battlecruiser."

But to get any of those, I either needed to expend a lot of points for a single vessel if the option was available at all) or I would need to work to make the infrastructure necessary to maintain, fit and fix such vessels.

I needed a proper shipyard. I also needed the manpower to operate them, which I could not do in my current state as I had eleven people at max that I could trust.

I did, however, have access to the Atlantean database, and Atlanteans made their version of Replicators…

Very technically speaking, if I had enough time, then I might be able to go full Comm-.

Ping.

I paused my train of thought as the Forge gave me another one hundred points, but went back to ruminating.

It was also then that I remembered that I had a Habitat Constructor PDA! Couldn't I modify it to help me make the shipyard?

Even if it could, I still needed manpower…

I opened up the Celestial Forge Menu to see if a hundred points could get me anything that might solve the manpower issue I would face in the future.

Getting more [Supplies] would net me more T-Dolls, especially if I intentionally held back on the production coats, but I doubted that I could run a shipyard and the attached civilian infrastructures with just the T-Dolls, even if most of them were hypercompetent at what they did.

Constructor Drone and AI Kernel came very close.

Perhaps all I needed was that and a factory to make bodies for my future loyal AIs.

Hmm…

‘Purchase [Constructor Drone and AI Kernel]. Actually, I can also get another 0-pointers so …’ There weren’t a lot of 0-point options outside of the Vehicles Category. Assistants had two and Quality Appearance had two, which was a third of each of the Vehicles’ options. While five servitors would be good to have, it would also be a bad idea when I was still within the wider Free Worlds League territory, which Dansur was. Considering that fighting battlemechs was the primary concern if this world was invaded before I was ready, I needed more mechs. ‘Purchase [Knightmare Frame].’

The options I saw before came up again for me to customize the Knightmare frame, and once again, the system gave me very few options as I could not purchase the majority of the options available due to the lack of points on my part.

As such, the ship lurched as my stupid head forgot that I was still inside my spaceship.

“Alan, why did another mech that looks just like yours just pop in the cargo hold?! And what’s that IT’SFLYINGTOWARDSME!” Janice shrieked in panic through the intercom.

“Ah, my mistake. That should be a drone and another frame I ordered.”

“Old man, I know Janice here calls you old man, but please don’t become an actual old man! We are on a spaceship with limited cargo capacity!” Negev shrieked together with Janice.

I snorted as I looked back down at Dansur.

That’s where I was, by the way, Dansur. 34 lightyears from both Andurien and the FWL-Capellan Border. It was also a world that the Capellans depopulated during the initial phase of the Third Succession War. There was no one living here now.

‘Well, I say no one, but my ship’s sensors tell me otherwise,’ I thought as I looked back at my Cold’s sensor readings. The preliminary report showed that, yes, most of the grey concrete cities that even I could see from orbit were in ruins. While there were a few signs of human activities in those ruins, the farmlands in the plains and forests were more active.

There were still some people here. They just had been forgotten by the rest of the Inner Sphere.

Now, I had a choice.

Did I connect with them or ignore them? With the scrap metals and electronics I brought, I will have a base operating within the week. Within the month, I was sure to have some sort of production rolling. By that point, I would be in charge of anything meaningful as communities of people still living on Dansur would be … meaningless?

Well, their existence wasn’t meaningless but more that they would be as important as I had been as a factory worker.

… But they could also be the cause of future troubles when Dansur was reintroduced to the wider Inner Sphere and the other polities decide to use them as a point of insertion, assassination, sabotage, et cetera.

“Well, I still have a few months to decide,” I muttered to myself as I set course for an area Cold’s sensors reported as high in rare metals.

-VB-

“Mechs…!”

Jarod hissed as he stared at the two mechs that walked out of the not-so-spherical (like his grandfather told him but this one isn’t?) dropship.

More than that, the people who walked out were all armored and armed better than any of the roving bandit gangs.

Mechs no longer existed on Dansur; his grandfather once told him about them and how they were both the protectors and destroyers of the Old Dansur. He saw pieces of them once in a while, but he never thought he would see a moving and walking battlemech in his life after the rest of the Inner Sphere had forgotten about them.

And he was scared.

The sixteen-year-old shuddered from behind a bush that he had used to hide from a trideer and hadn’t been able to leave quickly enough when he spotted and gawked at the dropship (another near mystical artifact from Dansur’s past).

Like hell his bow and arrows would help! Back in his village, only Strong Dan had a gun and that was because his family was the richest family in the entire area!

So he hid behind the bush among the low-lying trees and prayed to Jod that he wouldn’t be found or that these people were pirates.

He watched as a floating machine hovered out of the spaceship’s cargo hold. Things flew, so why not hover? He continued to watch them from across the clearing…

“Whatcha doing here?”

He froze when he felt a blade across his neck and slowly peered over his shoulder.

One of the soldiers who’d walked out of the ship was behind him. How?!

Teeth clattering and fingers twitching, Jarod didn’t know what to do. Did he fight? Did he try to run? Could he move faster than a soldier could with his knife over his neck?

He did the only thing that could save his life. He dropped his bow and arrows and slowly raised his hands.

The soldier drew back his knife and laughed. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya, kid! Come on, the commander wants to see ya!”

And then kicked out of his cover and over to the other side of the bush. He screeched in surprise as he tumbled through branches and leaves before tumbling out onto the open grass field that the strangers had settled down on.

He ate a mouthful of grass as he rolled and came to a full stop when his legs and feet all thumped together on the ground.

His world spun and by the time he got himself together, he was surrounded by them. The foreigners.

"... my, what big guns you have?"

Flattery always worked, right?

Someone chuckled and the soldiers, wearing padded black armor all stepped aside.

A lanky black-haired man walked up to him and crouched down. He smiled nonchalantly.

"My name's Alan. What's your name?"

"Jarod…?"

"Good afternoon, Jarod. Are you from the farming village nearby?"

He gulped. "Y-yes…?"

"Oh, wonderful! Can you go and get your elders? Or whoever passes for your leaders? I have a proposition for them. Sew, I want to build myself a base around here, and if I don't hash out a deal before I do that, then people might get upset. If they get upset, then they get violent. If they get violent, then I am gonna have to use my ship there for pacification. That's not a good future, right Jarod?"

He nodded frantically.

"Wonderful!" "Alan" exclaimed as he stood back up and helped him up, too. "Then go and get them, please. Oh, and a gift for your leader," he said as he pulled out a gun.

Jarod knew guns. People used them, even if most people forgot how to make them.

And the gun he saw looked very new. And shiny. And valuable.

He gulped as he gingerly took the gun, made himself look submissive like dogs before their owners, and slowly backed away.

The man just kept smiling.

Creepy.

-VB-

"How do you think I did?" I asked the girls.

AK-12, the one who kicked the boy into the clearing, gave a thumbs down. "Horrible. You sounded and acted like a cartoon villain."

I blinked. "Wait, really? I gave him a gift and everything."

"Yes, a gun. Like it didn't matter to you," AK-15 sighed as she pulled her helmet off, allowing her platinum hair to cascade down. "It looked very much like a power play to me."

"Shit, really? Did I scare the kid?"

"Maybe a little," Negev chuckled from my left.

This was the plan that I managed to cobble together in atmospheric re-entry and search for a good landing spot.

I would negotiate with the locals in the immediate area around me, and would act to fill a niche they might be missing out on. I knew for a fact that they would need medical help, and buying and selling medicine was a good way to build up goodwill. They might even need basic tools, and I would happily supply them from my own factories once I built them. Oh, there are bandits? I and my girls can certainly take care of them for you, but imma need just a bit more land for compensation; you don't need to pay me in money, goods, or services, just land you weren't using anyway.

I didn't need to consider the locals as my enemies. They were just people, and people liked it when their lives got safer and more convenient.

"Alright, let's set up the base camp! I want barricades, CD!" I shouted towards the Constructor Drone, and the thing beeped at me before moving to collect the scrap metal inside the ship to use as its construction material.

I rolled up the sleeves of my neo-cotton shirt - much better than any of the worn synthread workwear I grew up with - and got to work hauling. Some of the girls groaned, including Janice, while others shrugged and wordlessly got to work. By nightfall, we had a secure perimeter, tents, and guests.

LWMMG spotted them first as they walked out of the thick woods and into the clearing.

It was a group of six, including young Jarod and two soldiers.

The one at the center of the group and the oldest of them all was an elderly woman with her hair done in a bun, eyes squinting, and almost trembling as she walked up to our camp with a cane.

"I am the elder of our village," she said before she glanced at our weapons, ship, and mechs. "And you are no ordinary people."

"We aren't," I agreed. "I am Alan Marris, the leader of this small group. I'm interested in setting up a base, and wanted to know if you were amicable enough for me to do so."

She stared at me for a moment. "Has the Inner Sphere changed?"

"No," I replied. "I only found Dansur because of a quirk in how my ship goes FTL. Inner Sphere has forgotten you and nothing has changed."

She clicked her tongue. "Pity. I will agree to you being our neighbor on the condition that we help each other."

… well, this was going far better than I had feared.

"I accept, but don't expect me to solve all of your problems."

She stared at me again. "You're not like the Inner Sphere mercenary commander I'm familiar with."

I blinked. "No, I suppose I’m not."

She grunted before just walking away. Her guards and group members all floundered before following her back to their village.

"So that happened," P38, ever the cutesy and snarky one, huh'ed.