Lancer, not a Mechwarrior 2 (Patreon)

Lancer, not a Mechwarrior

Chapter 2

-VB-

“Hey, I heard that you were hiring dropship technicians.”

John waited for Mechwarrior Darius to respond. 

The two of them were in the jumpship Morrowbound’s cafeteria. 

Darius finally looked up. “And you are?” the tall teenager asked after swallowing a bite of the cheapest MRE that was on offer from the cafeteria. 

“John Verkan. I’m the youngest son of the Morrowbound Clan’s patriarch.”

The mechwarrior chewed on that. “Ah, your family runs the jumpship as a clan?” 

He nodded. “We do. And I heard that you were looking for someone to help you run your dropship.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m a mercenary, and while I do know some basic machining, welding, and repairs, I haven’t been educated on proper jumpship and dropship repairs.”

“Yeah, I guessed that from seeing your dropship,” he hummed. He remembered it well. Supposedly, a single man manning a very badly damaged dropship managed to connect with the Morrowbound. “But you know how to pilot one.”

“After a fashion, yes.”

John snorted. “You’re not being generous enough for yourself. A mechwarrior who knows how to pilot a dropship? Those are rarer than a goddamn Atlas mech.”

“... And you think you can handle being a technician, mechtech, and dropship repairman on my crew?” 

“Yes,” he told the younger man. “Let me introduce myself properly. My name is John Jurger Junior of Jumpship Clan Morrowbound. I have been a jumpship crew for two decades. I have completed more repairs on jumpships and dropships than most would ever see in their lives. And frankly, from what I am seeing of your dropship, you need me and at least another pair of technicians and mechtechs to keep that thing afloat.”

Darius looked at him. “And if I hire you?”

“I would expect a share of your bounty, not a weekly or monthly pay.”

“Really now?”

“Yes, really. As a veteran technician and engineer, I should be worth around half of your shares.”

“... You think that you are worth half a share of an elite mechwarrior.”

“Elite?” John asked with a raised eyebrow. “If you were elite, then you wouldn’t have a beat-up Leopard.”

That’s when Darius smiled. “I earned that by killing all of a pirate crew’s mechwarriors.”

John froze for a moment. “Oh,” he muttered. “... At least a veteran then.”

Darius nodded casually as if he didn’t just say that he killed four mechwarriors by himself. 

“I assume you had help?”

“Nope.”

Oh.

An actual elite mechwarrior. 

“... Maybe one share to your three.”

“... Okay, we’ll do that,” he replied. “Subject to change … a year from now?”

“I’m fine with that.”

“Sweet. Welcome to the crew, First Mate John.”

“... Wait, what?”

And that’s how I became the First Mate of Hohenheim’s Rangers. Not a mechwarrior. Or an ASF pilot. But as a technician and engineer because I got in on the ground floor of Darius’s adventures. Well, less adventure and more pest control, but what’s the difference around here? 

Because the first contract they took after John joined up?

He had to take the Leopard for a spin in the atmosphere against a pirate crew with a company of mechs.

-VB-

Inner End, despite its name, was a common point of entrance into the Federated Suns from the spinward periphery. 

Inner End’s Federated Suns colony, Inner End III (or My End, according to the locals) possessed a mild climate and a modicum of industry that was lacking for an Inner Sphere world but more than enough to serve as a trading hub for an Inner Sphere-Periphery junction. 

While there were no Star League-era factories on Inner End III, its industry gave rise to a decent manufacturing and refining industry. 

And that’s what the latest periphery pirate raid came down for. 

“So you will fight?” Baron Shasana asked frantically while gesturing to the pirate dropships and aerospace fighters burning down through the atmosphere. 

The mercenary in front of her looked up briefly, making his blackish-blue bodysuit and armor glimmer in the dusk sunlight. If she had time, then she might asked about who made such a bodysuit, but right now, she was too distracted. As the Baron of Gagarin Continent, she was in charge of the defense of its industries, mainly its refineries, most of which were situated around the continent’s capital city. 

And those pirates were coming straight for her city. 

“I will fight, but I want full salvage rights.”

She nodded hastily. “Then don’t expect any other payment from this except the bare minimum!”

“Then one hundred thousand C-Bills sound about right.”

She nearly did a spittake in surprise at the generosity before she went back to nodding rapidly. “You’ve got it! One hundred thousand C-Bills, full salvage rights!” 

He pulled out a noteputer from somewhere… wait, that wasn’t a noteputer. It was like a plastic-glass screen. That was … fancy. Really fancy. He tapped away and then showed it to her. “Sign at the bottom.”

She quickly skimmed over the words on the screen, and they matched what they discussed right now. She signed it quickly.

He hummed, signed, and then did something. “I sent a copy to the local HPG station for verification.”

A minute later, there was a ring. 

He looked down. “The local HPG precentor has signed the contract as a third party witness.”

“Then please make sure my refineries don’t get destroyed!”

He nodded. “I’ll make sure of that.”

And then he was off, leaving her manor and walking into his beat-up dropship.

Less than a minute later, he flew off. 

-VB-

“{We’ve got an inbound Leopard, boss!}” Camilla radioed in from their Union dropship. 

“Shit,” Captain Daniel Neutza of the Neutza’s Crew grumbled as he turned his Flashman around. “Everyone, forget the attack on the militia! Gather up on me!” 

Camilla quickly linked everyone’s screens to what the Union was pinging on its radar, but Daniel also saw the Leopard landing somewhere in the dense pine forest, far away from the reach of the Union’s missiles. 

“{I thought this place was supposed to be defenseless!}” Tyler, the asshole piloting a Phoenix Hawk, shouted over the comms. 

“{It was supposed to be},” Camilla growled out. “{It’s probably a mercenary who just happened to be in the city.}”

“Then we’ll just go and beat them up,” Daniel grunted. “A Leopard has at most four mechs. Eight if every single one of them are Locusts. That’s only half the size of our company! Ron and Jake, go scout ‘em out!” 

The two aerospace pilots in their Centurions (the ASF, not the mech) blasted forward from the initial orbit they were doing around their landing zone. 

“The rest of us are gonna engage them as a group! Y’all pieces of shits hear me?! As a group!” he barked out as the twelve mechs in his crew came together. “Except the Locusts. All of you are gonna go out and tell me where our enemies are.”

His Flashman was the heaviest mech. His second in command piloted a Catapult. There were three Hunchbacks. Seven Locusts served as scouts and flankers. Two Phoenix Hawks made up the bodyguards for the heavier mechs. And then there was a single Dervish that rounded it all out. 

Against this set-up, most militia and garrison could not win against them.

So what if the locals got a mercenary lance to help them? Unless it was an assault lance, they weren’t going to be able to do shit against his crew. 

As they turned to enter the woods, there was a flash in the air. 

“{Fuck, they got Jake!}”

Soon after, there was another flash.

Daniel stared at the sky for a moment in silence as two explosions left behind two black plumes in the air with two wrecks that were quickly falling out of the sky while leaving behind trails of smoke.

Not too long after, they crashed into the forest, causing two more explosions to ring out. 

“What the fuck hit ‘em, Cam?” he asked calmly. 

“Don’t know, captain. Their sensors didn’t even manage to get a good look -.”

“Gauss, then,” he grunted, already dismissing the two dead crews, but filing the possibility that both of them were struck by gauss rifles under “important” information to know. “Looks like the buggers might have some lostechs on ‘em, boys and girls!”

That got the crew to finally chuckle and laugh.

Lostech meant a huge payout most of the time.

This was gonna be good. And since Jake and Ron died, that’s two less people he had to pay out, too!

---

John gulped after seeing the cowboy-like mech shoot down two aerospace fighters with one shot each. 

It was a mech unlike any he’d seen before, and he’d seen in his life.

Most importantly, it was deadly. 

He’d never heard of a mech one-shotting a fighter! 

“{John,}” he heard Darius through the comms. 

“Y-Ye?” he replied from the seat of the Leopard’s piloting seat, but turned to look at the screen showing one of the external cameras of the dropship, which showed his new boss’s mech standing just outside of the ship’s only one mech bay. 

“{All of the guns on the Leopard are automated. You don’t have to aim any of them. The ship recognizes me. So what you need to do, First Mate, is to fly up and fly around in circles around the enemy’s main force after I draw them out. Alright?}”

“Yeah, I-I can do that.” John did not expect himself to participate in a goddamn fight right off the bat on his job! He was a jumpship crew! A dropship technician! He wasn’t trained at all for this! 

“{Good. Join only when I contact you, alright? And make sure to close the bay door.}”

---

Locusts were not made for a heavily forested area, but they found their way through what paths they managed to find closer and closer towards what they all assumed was the enemy location. 

And then…

They began to wink out, one by one. 

“{Boss, there’s a fucking cowboy in the forest!}” one of the Locust mechwarriors, Yuri, screamed before there was a shatter of glasses, a scream, and then a staticky silence. 

“A cowboy?” Daniel frowned. “Anyone know a mech that looks like a cowboy?”

“{Maybe a Jaegermech?}” 

“Maybe, but then Yuri wouldn’t have screamed like she was getting fucked in the ass if it was just a Jaegermech, ya dingus!” 

He thought about what he should do, and realized that ignoring whoever this was that wiped out half of his Locusts - another Locust blinked out - …more than half of his Locusts wouldn’t be a smart idea. No, he needed to crush them before he went back to stealing from the refineries. 

“We’re all moving in at once. Go!” 

---

John watched the radar like a hawk as he saw the pirates moving in.

There were more than a dozen of them! How the hell Darius thought he was going to win this was … a mystery. 

And if he died, then John would just have to fly out of here with the Leopard. 

But he hoped he didn’t have to run.

Darius seemed like a good teenager, and John would certainly join the fight to try to take out as many mechs as possible with whatever this Leopard was equipped with. Because instead of the usual weapons like LRMs, lasers, and PPCs, there were new weapons he didn’t recognize at all. 

---

Daniel growled as the forest only seemed to grow thicker. 

“Where the fuck are they?!” he hissed out as his crew cut through the forest, breaking trees and crushing them as they moved ever deeper towards the Leopard.

“{Captain, I have something on my radar},” Tyler noted from his Phoenix Hawk at the front. His PH was the one with the best sensors, mostly because it was the least damaged sensor in the crew’s hangars. 

“What is it?”

“{... it’s just one mech.}”

“Then its friends has got to be around here. Everyone keep your eyes peeled!” 

Click.

His head snapped towards Tyler.

Tyler looked down at his Phoenix Hawk’s feet. 

Instead of a boom, everything exploded into a thick smoke that made his sensors fizz out. 

Thump thump thump thump -!

“Tyler! I need updates -!”

BOOM!

He froze.

That sound came from where Tyler was just a second ago.

CRASH.

That … felt like a medium battlemech crashing into the ground. 

He quickly looked down at his radar and saw a bunch of random noise. This damn smoke was obscuring everything! 

And then he saw it. 

A hammer. 

It came swinging down hard on his cockpit. 

He tried to move his Flashman as quickly as he could…

But he couldn’t stop it in time. 

He saw the ceiling of his cockpit bulge down, and then everything crashed on him.

---

John didn’t know what was going on, but smoke popped and covered enough of the forest that there was basically a short wall. His radar and other sensors couldn’t penetrate through clearly. 

But as the smoke dissipated, he heard it.

“{John, now! Circle around where the smoke popped! Half click radius!}” 

He forced the Leopard to take off, and it lifted off with a loud roar.

And as the smoke dissipated, his radar began to work properly again.

“{Open fire on everything.}”

“Darius, you’re still in there-!”

“{Trust me, John. Open fire!}”

Gritting his teeth, he did as he was ordered to. 

And his ears decided to scream at him as he heard a mindnumbing roar of rotary autocannon fire from the turrets on the Leopard’s hull.

Everything got shredded down below. 

The trees. The mechs.

There was so much bullet raining down on the place that it was making a dust cloud.

John gulped as he let the Leopard pour it all out and …

“{Stop.}”

He punched the firing to stop and let out a sigh of relief. When the dust cloud made by bullet hell finally dissipated, John saw what the destruction he’d wrought.

A whole clearing of dead mechs and destroyed trees.

And standing in the middle of it was Darius in his weird cowboy mech, its cape fluttering behind it with only a few bullet holes and cuts as if it hadn’t just survived hell. The only thing that stood out was how the air around it seemed to blur and dance from how hot the mech was. 

John stared at Darius and his mech with an open gape. 

How the fuck…?

“{Come down now, John. We’ve got mechs to salvage. Rayray’s had enough fighting today.}”

Shakily, he brought the Leopard down at the center of the clearing right next to Darius’s mech.

As he parked the dropship, John realized that Darius was far more competent than John initially thought. And that there was a lot of stuff John didn’t know about him.