Kick the Sphere 10 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 10

-VB-

Rebecca - formerly Negev - looked me up and down before scoffing. “You’re not good enough.”

Had it been said in any other situation without any context that came prior to this statement, this would have been tantamount to a betrayal and confirmation of my own treasonous thoughts that my own people could not be trusted.

However, I had asked Rebecca (Negev) whether I was ready for a real war, not this skirmish and overpowering campaign that I headed against the technologically stagnant locals. I thought that she and the rest of my T-Dolls were the people I needed to talk to as I geared myself and my people up for bigger things.

And, well, her verdict was …

“You do good work, I’ll give you that,” she said while tapping the side of my shoulder with a wooden stick she picked off the ground. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the heart of my base where there were still untrusted children/potential turncoats. Was it a terrible thing to consider children like that? Yes, but it was also necessary because I wasn’t living on a core world or 21st-century Earth where things were peaceful.

Things were not peaceful in the Inner Sphere and the Periphery, and life was simply horrible here on Dansur.

If it wasn’t the people around them who wanted you dead, then it was the regular disease, parasites, poor harvest, and tuberculosis that did you in. Yes, tuberculosis, one of the diseases humanity had defeated a literal millennium ago, still killed people in worlds like Dansur that became either unimportant or isolated from the rest of humanity. Oh, and let’s not forget malaria, because malaria was still a thing in Dansur. A thousand years since the advent of modern medicine and humanity still fought against that dipshit.

… Rant aside, I was out here to get myself evaluated.

“Your physique is good. All of that mining work you did back at your birth world and the work you did while here kept you in good shape. The problem is actual training.”

I hummed in agreement. After all, I knew how to drive my Knightmare, pilot the Cold, and every other machine because of one of the earliest Celestial Forge purchases I’ve made (“This looks like Every Other Ship I don’t know How to Fly”), but I was not trained in anyway on how to fight in them.

The Glasgow knightmares, for example, were great at fighting, but at the end of the day, I was not great with them. I could move them, I could shoot with them, and more, but there was a lot of forethought that went into each action and the next four. The shit that happened back on Vakarel raid was more luck and equipment than actual ability on my part.

Because Jesus Christ, if I didn’t have that shield and the superior mobility granted to me by the attachable wheels, then I would have died in the literal first three seconds of the fight.

“Then could you train me?”

“In infantry combat, yes, and even armored combat” she replied. “But I know nothing about the knightmares and battlemechs beyond what I have learned on my own so far and especially nothing about naval warfare, both at sea and in space. You’ll either have to make those purchases or get someone to train you.” She paused. “Or hell, you might even find them in your giant database. It’s supposed to have the data of all of those people from some alternate universe, right?”

“So if I could find them…”

“Then at the very least you can cover what I can’t help you with.” Then she grinned as she slapped the stick into the palm of her open hand. “However, there is a way for us to train you in battlemech.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

-VB-

“AHHHHH!!!!”

“He’s lively,” Turry muttered as he and half a dozen other kids from the clans watched their boss fight against the Girls.

Not girls but Girls, the super efficient, competent, and smart women that the boss surrounded himself with. That’s what the rest of the kids called them. The Girls were ruthless, stupid strong, and merciless.

Erin “mysteriously” disappeared the day after he talked to some of the guys about grabbing guns and killing the boss and his Girls while the guys he talked to earned themselves some “sweet” smiles and a talk about “how unfortunate it was that Erin ran away.”

Yeah. As if.

The rest of the kids, himself included, knew not to step out of line. Do good and get rewarded. Do nothing and eat bland shit. Do stupid and get punished. Do beyond stupid? Disappear.

Only two got disappeared before he and the rest of the kids got it.

So it was amazing to see that the Girls were as merciless to the boss as they were to the kids.

“Put your back into it!” the Big Guns Lady shouted from inside one of the mechs beating the shit out of the mech on the ground. The mech on the ground trying its best to crawl away like a pussycat was the boss himself.

“Is it me?” someone asked beside him. “Or is the boss kind of … not good at fighting?”

“He isn’t,” Turry replied in sync with two others. They glanced at each other briefly before focusing back on the training. “In my opinion, he does okay enough. Besides, our pops and moms lost to that.” He ignored the burn he gave himself and his friends. His words shut them all up as they continued to look at the boss get his teeth kicked in by three of the Girls. “He looked so … powerful,” he muttered, thinking back to when the boss took him and the others away from the dead fort. He had loomed over them.

But now… Well, the boss was the one who cooked, laughed with them, made them balls to play with, and gave out the candies. And was horrible at fighting. Maybe he just didn’t fight well because he didn’t need to? Could be.

Whatever the case, the boss looked pathetic.

“Oh!” someone yelled when the boss finally managed to roll away quickly enough that he made some distance and got back up on his mech’s two feet.

Which got promptly knocked over when one of the Girls picked up a boulder and threw it at him. The boulder hit the chest of the mech, bounced away, but the mech also keeled backward and slammed back into the ground.

“THIS IS NOT FAIR!”

“DEAL WITH IT!” Big Gun Girl cackled before her mech jogged over and kicked him while he was down.

“It’s a good thing the boss is our boss,” Turry said out loud. “If Big Gun Girl was the boss…”

All of them shivered at the thought of being worked to death. Or worse.

They all knew what kind of face she made when she thought the boss wasn’t looking. Her and the other girls from the Girls. The only one who didn’t make that face was Janice, but she was the cool, older sister to everyone but the boss and one of the white-haired Girls.

“Oi, what are you kids doing here?”

Turry looked over his shoulder and saw Jarod from the Shit-Ville. That’s what ma used to call the village in the woods. “Looking at boss get a whooping.”

Jarod, armed with a gun and armored with some kind of fabric armor, paused and looked at where they were looking at. He too watched the Girls beat the shit out of the boss. “Damn, he has it rough.” Then he turned to them. “Aight, get the hell out of here already. None of you are supposed to be here anyways.”

Turry gave him the birdie with his finger before running away with the rest.

When he gets a mech of his own, he’s not gonna be lame as the boss! He’s gonna be cool like the Girls!