The Wolverine Industry 1 - Gorilla i (3007) (Patreon)

Commissioned

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The commissioner wanted to take the “make new mechs” idea to the extremes in a more “neutral” and less hammy area. With a twist of my own.

So I welcome you to…

-VB-

The Wolverine Industry

Chapter 1 - Gorilla i (3007)

-VB-

3007

As sweat dripped down her forehead and neck, Jennifer grunted. She pushed her Wasp to its jogging limit to try and check out the enemy formation before her company clashed with them. 

When she first got word from her commander that their company was going on a raid as per their contract with the Commonwealth, she thought that it was going to be a routine thing. It wouldn’t be the first time that she raided a League world. Wouldn’t be the last time, either. 

But there was something strange about Danais. She’s been here before. On her second ever job as a mechwarrior of Johanson’s Raiders, actually. They thrashed the 21st Marik Militia who had been guarding the planet at the time. They left before they were able to do significant damage, but, well, it made it clear that Danais was poorly defended. 

And now, some years after, she and her company was back along with the LCAF to trash the place. 

But something was off. 

The 21st Marik Militia, apparently, wasn’t the only OpFor. 

Because there was also a new mech factory here (not repair facilities but actual mech making factory) and the company that owned the factory had its own security. 

And according to the reports, the security force wasn’t just some Urbanmechs, Firestarters, or Locusts for “crowd control” but actual mechs. 

Heavy mechs, even. 

The problem was that no one knew what those mechs were, so it was her job to find out. 

The factory sat some distance away from the capital city, Breckenridge, in a very thickly forested part of the continent. It made scouting with anything bigger than a light mech a struggle in vain, so here she was instead of the company’s usual scout. She was usually the company’s flanker, and this Wasp wasn’t even her mech.

But needs must and thus she was jogging through a forest that towered over even mechs with trunks so big that even a mech jumped onto it won’t break it. Probably. 

“Be careful, Jen. Mission objective is only ten clicks north of you now.”

“I know, Sam,” she drawled out. She knew she had to be careful. In a forest like this, an ambush was an ever present threat.

But her sensors weren’t doing so hot. The thick forest just made sensing anything beyond a kilometer an exercise in futility. If she remembered her schooling properly, then it was that moisture and humidity in a forest like this one sucked up microwave, Lidar couldn’t see through due to visual blocking of leaves, and higher frequency radar got cucked, too. The only one that was really working was the lower frequency radar range, but even then, this shitty world had so much metal shit in the soil that there was a constant noise clicking and clacking in her ears. 

Ping.

She skidded to a stop, kicking up wet dirt and shrubs. 

Ping.

Her sensors picked something, but it was hazy. It was… pretty small, too. A vehicle? 

“... Command, I may have eyes on an enemy scout. Doesn’t seem to be a mech.”

“Copy that, Shark,” Sam replied back with her actual callsign this time. “Marking your location.”

Even though she knew that spooling up her weapons right now would give away thermal sig, she would rather be prepared for a fight than not, so let her medium laser heat up while the SRMs got ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Her jump jets warmed up, too.

She stalked forward, keeping her mech crouched down to reduce her profile. 

As she went closer to the signature, it grew bigger. 

“It’s not a vehicle,” she cursed. 

And as she grew even closer, the radar sig got even bigger. 

She stopped. 

That… That went from a small vehicle sig to a medium sig. And she wasn’t even close to seeing it. 

“Command, I might have run into an enemy scout mech. I can’t see him but his signature got bigger the closer I got to him.”

And then.

Rustle.

Her head snapped to the left and she froze. Her radar screamed as something appeared right on top of her. 

Because there was a mech right next to her, covered in foliage.

For a split second, neither moved. 

And then she did. 

“Command, I have sight on the enemy scout! It’s a heavy!” she screamed as she tore her mech away from its position with her jump jets. She was so thankful that she had warmed them up, or she would have been -.

The enemy mech moved.

It jumped out from its foliage covers and screamed.

She winced and nearly screamed herself as her mech’s sensors, UIs, and everything else glitched and fizzed along with that scream. 

“What the fuck?!” she shouted as she finally got a good look at the enemy mech.

It … was unlike anything she’d seen before. The most prominent parts of its body were its arms. They were massive, easily bigger than its own torso, each. They were blocky, made more like a dropship’s bulkhead than a mech’s arms. 

Her computer also got a good look, and the BattleComp cycled through a number of designs before failing. But it told her a few things. 

One, weight. It was seventy tons. A heavy mech.

Two, it couldn’t find any weapon on it. 

She landed her Wasp and jumped away again, and that mech ran after her on all four limbs. How the fuck was a heavy mech matching her jump jet speed?!

She landed back down and started running. It had no weapon, so why did it matter -? 

Holy fucking shit it was as fast as her Wasp!

And then it grabbed a rock in the middle of running on all fours and hurled it at her. 

With her back turned, she did not see it flying. 

She only realized what it was after her mech took the boulder to the back and crashed into the ground. 

And when she got up and turned her mech around, she realized that the mech had jumped with both of its arms raised over its head. 

She screamed as those arms - arms that were each bigger than her Wasp - came down on her. 

-VB-

Gorilla GOL-1C

85 tons, Assault

Chassis Weight: 13 tons (including sensors, comms, TTS, chassis, lower arms, etc)

Cockpit: “THK Head” Cockpit (1 ton, increased protection)

Armor: 15 tons, Wolverine Special Slab (1.25x standard durability, 0.75x weight)

Engine: 360 (33 tons)

Heatsink: 15 heat sinks 

Armaments: GOL Arms x2 (10 tons each), 2x Medium Lasers

Description: The first Gorilla to hit the market is not, in fact, the first iteration of its line but rather the third. The first iteration, GOL-1A, exists as its creator’s personal heavy mech with actual armaments and was the mech used to help defend Danais on 3007. The creator of the Gorilla heavy mech, the Wolverine Industry, waged a private war alongside the 21st Marik Militia in driving out the Lyran raiders. And despite the original assumption among investors and onlookers, the Gorilla performed admirably against enemy mechs. Despite the fact that it only had two Medium Lasers for range weapons, the Gorilla proved that with enough speed and durability, raw tonnage was enough to overwhelm most enemies. Because not even an Atlas could remain standing when a ninety ton assault mech goes apeshit on it. Or throw a multi-ton boulder at it. Or grab a nearby light mech by the leg and smash it into the Atlas. All of which has happened and have been documented. As a result of this great first impression, Danais Province (one of the members of the Silver Hawk Alliance) offered the Wolverine Industry subsidies to set up more Gorilla factories on Danais itself. The CEO of the Wolverine Industry thanked them for the offer but refused. But by the end of the year, they will have made ten Gorilla mechs and sold a lance of them to the local militia and two to House Villanueva, one of the more prominent noble houses on Danais.