Debauchery Worlds 4 (Patreon)

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 4

-VB-

Captain Anderson

2980.06.15

He stared at what used to be a junkyard disguised as a mercenary base. Back then, there wasn’t even a fence or markers denoting the property lines. There wasn’t even a guard watching the edge of the property to watch out for potential mech part thieves.

Now, there was a ten feet tall and four feet thick ceramic wall all neatly within the property and surrounding itself. Behind that were railings meant to be used for construction but with how they were reinforced and held in place by cement blocks, they could serve as catwalks for troops manning the walls. As if summoned on demand, there were now a dozen more of them, with the exact same gears including the lostech infantry laser rifle, manning those walls.

This was impossible.

For one, AFFS, MIIO, and DMI kept extreme surveillance of the “Marris Mercenary Compound.” Second, none of the departments reported anyone new showing up. Third, there were no dropships that came in and out of the system that wasn’t recorded by the departments. Fourth, the land Marris Mercenary received used to be a flat piece of land that no one else had a use for; even the Kuritan’s own surveyors had labeled it as “potential for future development but useless right now” in the local archives. Fifth, the gate was a massive, thick steel gate. Thick enough that Anderson wasn’t sure if a small machinegun would be able to penetrate it. Sixth and lastly…

Why were there factory plumes?

“Ah, captain!”

He blinked and looked around. There was no one around. He looked up and saw no one on the “battlements,” too. He looked back down and … he did notice something. It was a screen. Built into the wall?

He got closer. It was! It was a computer screen built into the wall, and it was on and showing the helmet of the Marris Mercenaries.

“You found the screen, good. How can we help you today, captain?” Alan asked him.

“I’m here to talk to you about a garrison contract.”

“Oh. Come right in, then.”

The gates opened on their own.

He gulped. Glancing once more at the screen, now black, he moved in.

What he saw was on par with New Avalon. It wasn’t that there was a screen but the clarity, lack of statics, and the clear audio were all too smooth to have been repurposed from damaged mech parts. Audio, especially, was not a priority part when it came to mech manufacturing. If a mechwarrior could send information, receive orders, and hear the enemy mechwarriors scream in impotent fury, then that was good enough. There was no need for clarity for a simple … talk.

Yet there was.

Now that he was inside the compound…

He looked around. First thing first: the road. There was a road now, which extended out toward the city and looked freshly laid. But it was not a simple asphalt road but … metal? Metal wasn’t a good material to use in roads. It expanded and contracted too much. Actually…

He tapped his boots on the floor and it didn’t sound like metal.

What was this?

He looked up and saw rows and rows of organized and rather well-kept if badly damaged battlemechs. Many of them were covered up, too. Good thing, as David II had frequent though light rain.

Beyond those were residential buildings. Most of them looked like three-story multi-unit prefabs that most poor-end worlds sold. Beyond that was a training ground clearly marked by chain fences.

And finally, on the other side of the training grounds was the giant building with plumes of smoke gushing out of the two smoke towers.

“Captain, here you are.”

He looked back down and saw one of the Marris Mercenaries. Since they always had a helmet on and used voice modulators, he could never tell one apart from another except for their commander.

“Good morning…?”

“Call me A-2, captain.”

“And is there a rank?”

“None that will make sense to you, captain. Please, this way.”

He followed the soldier around the compound, around the packed training grounds, around the factory, and into a prefab residential building converted into an office building.

The commander looked up from his TriPad when the door opened. “Ah, captain. Welcome. Please, take a seat. I’m currently in the middle of organizing a few documents. It won’t take long.”

“Of course.” Anderson sat down as asked and …

There were only low “balls” surrounding even lower-level coffee tables(?).

He took a try and sa-.

“Wow!”

He sank right into what he’d assumed were solid if soft seats. Instead, he found himself halfway closer than expected to the floor and … oh, that was rather comfortable.

The commander looked up. “Ah, sorry about that, captain. Unfamiliar with bean bag chairs?”

“No…”

Commander Marris grinned. “I guess it is kind of a luxury, but it’s a good thing that I can have them produced at my factory here,” he said as he put down the TriPad and walked over. He sat on a “bean bag chair” across from him.

Oh, now it made sense why the coffee tables were this low.

One of the mercenaries entered the room with a plate of two cups of coffee… while still wearing that armor. He set the cups down and left.

Anderson turned to the commander. “Aren’t your armors hot?”

“Hmm?”

“Polis’s average temperature is 34 degrees Celcius. Isn’t it hot in those armors?”

“We don’t know. It’s climate controlled.” Huh? “So what’s this about a garrison contract?”

“Ah, right. Here,” he said as he reached into his suitcase and pulled out a centimeter-thick set of documents. “Peruse it however you want, but essentially, you would help out with training of the local militia - infantry only since you are an infantry mercenary company - and help defend Polis and its starport when there are raids or invasions. The contract would last for a full year.”

“A full year, huh?” Marris hummed while taking a sip of his coffee. He set the cup down and took up the contract. He flipped through it before frowning. “I don’t see any clauses for our mechwarriors.”

Anderson blinked. “You already got your hands on mechwarriors?”

“Among our own numbers, yes,” he replied.

“... I would like to see how well they perform in their mechs.” Were they hiring dispossessed Combine mechwarriors? If that was true, then the Marris Company could no longer be trusted with security. “And what mech -”

---

“ -is that?” he asked with a gaping mouth.

“We made do with the parts from a few of the mechs, but the chassis and other crucial parts were manufactured at our factory.”

What? How?

Because what he saw was not a battlemech he was familiar with. On top of that, the specs he had in front of him were ridiculous.

He looked back down to make sure he was reading it correctly.

Locust (MM-M1)

22 Tons

LTV 160 (M)

Heat Sinks 12 singles

Lexington Limited (M) Armor

[Classified] Tracking system

Gregarious Chassis

[Classified] Comm Systems

125 km/h Speed

2x PPC

2x Machine Gun

This was an impossible spec. Exchanging a medium laser for a PPC was possible. Changing it for two PPC with only two-ton increase in weight? That wasn’t counting the other parts like 2 more singles heat sinks, changing out StarSlab/1 armor for Lexington Limited and adding what had to be a heavier chassis.

And what were all of these (M)s?

“Do you mind if I inspect it personally?” he asked. If there was one thing that wasn’t egregious on this spec list, then it was the speed. Sure, it was a little slower than the regular Locust but it seemed more or less fine when he was currently looking at the thing keeping up with a Locust.

“Sure.”

Without any verbal or physical signal, the two Locusts came to a stop and walked over to them. The pilot got out and turned off the engine, allowing Anderson to look it over.

He recognized the armor plates. They were legitimate. He recognized the skeletal structure. They were real alloys used in battlemech construction. He looked it all over…

It was legitimate. A modified Locust with more armor, more heat sink, more weapons, and more everything was running on par with an unmodified Locust.

Utterly impossible.

“How…?”

The commander smiled. “That is our secret, captain. Nothing less than a planet will get you that information.”

Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on here?

“And how good are your mechwarriors…?”

Marris grinned maliciously. “Would you like to test them yourself? We unfortunately do not have any simulators, so it will have to be live. But don’t worry, we have rubber bullets!”

He couldn’t say no, not when he had his own curiosity as a mechwarrior bubbling up and raring at him to take a shot at these upstarts.

---

“FUCK!” Anderson hissed as giant rubber bullets rammed his Locust’s left thigh. There was no armor there anymore from a glancing shot from a medium PPC, according to the simulator software. He was already missing armor in most other places, too!

It was almost as if they were toying with him. Him! A veteran of over a decade as a mechwarrior in the service of AFFS and House Davion!

He wove and dove around the rocky mounds as best as he could, but the rain of fire just did not end. No, the Marris mechwarrior did not continuously fire, but he fired every so often, making any attempt to turn around and fight back a moot point as he would be struck at least twice over for that to happen.

And he refused to lose to a greenhorn mechwarrior!

He came around another rock, ran around it, and waited in ambush.

Instead, he heard rock scrapping against metal above him.

Whirling around and up, Anderson gawked at the sight of the modified Locust, painted in violet blue with two white thin strips, standing on top of the rock with its PPCs aimed right at him.

“Bam, captain.”

… Shit. He lost to a greenhorn.

---

In the end, the day ended with him getting the Marris Mercenaries to sign up for a garrison contract as a mech mercenary company with a lance of mechs rather than an infantry mercenary company with three mechs. He couldn’t not, especially so after he lost a match to the greenhorn mechwarrior.

Worse, he had to show the Battle ROM to the general as a way of explanation.

His reputation as a mechwarrior was going to hit rock bottom.

-VB-

General Rachel Jamakawa

2980.06.15

She stared intensely at the screen as she watched the third point of view of the spar.

It was a pretty close call, though a Locust wasn’t Captain Anderson’s best nor favored mech to use. The Marris greenhorn mechwarrior favored a more aggressive approach - “His callsign was F-7” - while Anderson, whose one-and-a-half decade of experience out in the field as a mechwarrior gave him an advantage, liked hit-and-run attacks.

The problem, however, was the small difference in armor and the speed of the modified Marris Locust. The difference in armor was … honestly negligible. The quality of the armor plates used in light mechs are more or less the same. The problem was the speed.

A Locust was versatile in its ability to pick fights it can win and run away all thanks to its speed. A modified Locust with double the weapons matching it nearly one for one gave Anderson’s Locust no room to maneuver. He succeeded in his attacks only in the beginning, because as soon as the Marris mechwarrior realized this, he gunned for Anderson without pause. Greenhorn, the mechwarrior may be, but he wasn’t dumb. He cycled through his PPCs, ensuring that they would not be overheated while making sure to give them some time to cool down.

If this was the skill of a greenie…

“If they train all of their mechwarriors up to this F-7’s level, then I have no objections to their contract being upgraded. Of course, I hope you added in that if they fail…”

“Of course. The commander was very cooperative in that regard. He stated on record that if his company failed to score at minimum one-to-one kill-death ratio, then he would return all of the money he received up to that point.”

Rachel looked at Michael. “Really.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She hummed.

Nothing made sense. A merc group with no obvious supply line but growing in size and number. Revolutionary advances in battlemech technology that they refuse to disclose unless for “a planet.”

‘I need both MIIO and DMI on these mercs.’