Lancer, not a Mechwarrior 10 (Patreon)

Lancer, not a Mechwarrior

Chapter 10

-VB-

“You’re getting famous, captain!” Sasha grinned as she watched the man come out of his room for lunch.

She had just been heading toward the cafeteria as well and only heard him because he closed his door. 

“Hmm?” he uttered. 

She rolled her eyes. “You’re getting famous. Apparently, your last employer has been spreading the battleROM from your last job to try and identify what mech Rayray is. Except everyone on this ship knows that they aren’t gonna find shit.”

He hummed in agreement. 

After working on his and the other mechs for the last few months, she intimately knew that Rayray in particular was not an Inner Sphere or Periphery standard mech. Hell, it wasn’t even a Frankenmech. The chassis was too smooth for that. Too designed. It wasn’t an artist’s handcrafted or an artisan’s custom ordered one, either. As rough as it looked on the outside, it was as factory manufactured as it got. 

What did that mean? It meant that there was someone out there who made mechs like these not inside the Inner Sphere or the Periphery; if they were in either regions, then the whole human civilization would have known about it already. If not the whole human civilization, then at least mech lovers like her and the other mechtechs would have. 

Which was why there was an ongoing bet among the crew. 

Was Darius from this unknown civilization? Did he design and build this mech himself? Did he just find this from a dead civilization? Those three were the main bets. 

“Ah,” he uttered before yawning. She glared at him when his yawned infected her, too, and she began yawning. “It was bound to happen. It just means that I’ll have to start everyone’s mechs, too.”

She paused. “You mean upgrade as in replace them or do what you did to that Hunchback?”

“Yes,” he hummed as she walked next to him. There was just enough room for that in this corridor. “I’ll need a lot of scrap metals, rare earths, and maybe a few dedicated mech components to make that happen, but it’ll have to be done so that we aren’t surprised by anything that isn’t at least as numerous as a mech battalion.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re confident you can take on a full mech company by yourself?” 

“Confident?” he asked her before snorting. “I’ll have them running for the hills soon enough. Speaking of which, would you like a mech of your own?”

Sasha froze. 

“Eh?”

When he kept walking, she rushed up to catch up to him. “Wait, stop! What do you mean a mech of my own?!” 

He grinned at her. 

“Maybe if you do a very good job of fixing up all of the salvage we get our hands on, I might be able to put something together that fits you.”

“I’m not a mechwarrior!” 

“No, you aren’t. But what if I make a mech that can do repairs and salvage right there on the field? And it can protect you at the same time? That should save a lot of hassle, right? Imagine not having to fix problems after they’ve been made worse…”

She did imagine. 

It would make her job so much easier if that really were the case. 

---

John looked down at the center of the Leopard’s mech bays.

Darius was on his feet and moving about outside of his room, but it was to build… whatever this was. 

His printer was running at full time to put out every single component the commander needed, and he had Sasha next to him. The two of them didn’t quite work seamlessly but it was good enough that whatever he was building was taking shape pretty quickly. 

But there was something odd about this mech. Either it was a mech so big that building just the arm was taking up the center of the Leopard’s mech bays or it was a very … uh … timber-like.

Where was the waist? Or the arms? 

Whatever it was that would come out after his commander was done with it, it would be formidable. Why wouldn’t it be? Everything Darius touched ended up dangerous and ridiculous. 

He shuddered as he remembered what the Hunchback’s BAP (Big Ass PPC(?)) did to whatever pirates that thought it was the prime target. 

… Bah. Whatever it was that his boss and the Mech Bimbo did, he wasn’t going to care. All he cared about was about when the boss would upgrade the Leopard. 

---

Jessica, Xavier, and Michael stared at the nearly complete chassis of the new mech that their boss had worked on. Instead of fixing one of many salvaged mechs sitting in the cargo hold, he had taken half of them apart, broken them down to even more basic components, did something with that printer-forge of his, and began building this a month ago while they were on their way toward their next job site. 

And it was…

“Well, we know that it’s not a Crab,” Jessica muttered. 

“Of course, it’s not a Crab,” Xavier hummed. “No one knows how to make those anymore except Corsara, and I’m not even sure if Corsara knows it fully themselves.”

Then the corridor doors connecting the mech bays to the crew sections of the ship opened up and Darius walked in with the Mech Bimbo attached to his hips. 

Jessica raised an eyebrow. 

Ever since the girl saw what Darius did to make his mechs, she had become enamored with their commander like a schoolgirl. If Darius wasn’t so focused on his mechs and pirate hunts, then Jessica was sure that they might be holding a wedding soon. 

… It wasn’t that Darius didn’t notice. It was more that he was unsure of how to deal with it.

It was honestly a little funny. 

Making funny sounds whenever Sasha was around like “ah” and “um,” which he never made when she wasn’t around. It really didn’t help that the girl went around almost half naked with just a tank top at most times.

What was funnier was that she wasn’t sure if Sasha herself noticed. The girl was definitely the Mech Bimbo; even though it was clear to most of the crew that she liked him, her love of mechs had an obvious more conscious sway of her mind.

Truly, those two were fit for each other.

“So what’s this one named, boss?” she asked as she thumbed at the giant barrel of a mech.

Darius blinked. “It’s called a Lancaster.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very FedSuns name,” she said before turning to look at the mech again. “With none of the usual flair, though.”

“It’s a combat repair mech.”

Jessica’s head snapped toward her boss. 

“...What?”

---

Xavier now understood what his boss had meant by “combat repair mech.” 

In most circumstances, mechs needed to be walked or dragged back to operational bases to be repaired. The height, mass, and size of the replaceable components meant that there was a need for dedicated tools, structure, and, well, height that a facility needed to be before good repairs could take place. It wasn’t as if a mech was a soldier who would splint themselves and get back in the fight with just an arm to hold a rifle. 

He glanced at the boss’s Rayray firing off its main shotguns one, one in each hand, after another in a staccato of booms that kept their enemies hiding behind their covers. And when one did pop up to try to stop him from shooting either by shooting back at him or getting up and close, he shot their cockpits with pinpoint accuracy and used those giant hammers of his to crush anyone who came too close. And while all of that was happening, the Lancaster, with none other than the Mech Bimbo piloting it, latched onto his mech with a single hook and a tether and began to drag him away. 

And Jesus Christ, the Lancaster was both fast and strong. It was easily dragging his mech, a Centurion, away from the fight while Michael provided cover in his new Enforcer. 

The moment they found cover, the Mech Bimbo pushed his heavily damaged Centurion up against the closest thing to a wall, and the mandibles on the Lancaster’s front “torso” began to rip out the damaged parts while parts came out from the rear of the mech and smoothly glided into the mandibles’ hands via some sort of a pulley system.

Damaged parts disappeared into the Lancaster’s hold while new parts came out while the battle raged behind them.

And then… it was done. 

“You’re fixed, Cobra. Get going,” Mech Bimbo, because that’s the callsign the girl chose, declared over the radio before her Lancaster sprinted away. He got up and came out of cover just in time to find the four legged mech running not unlike a deer toward a downed enemy Spider, grab it, and drag it away while their teammates had to hide or die to Snake, Gunner, and Skipper’s combined firepower. 

By the time he rejoined the fight, Bimbo had dragged the downed mech all the way back to the rear and began to take the cockpit apart.

---

Another job done, another great payout. 

Michael grinned as he took a sip from his pint cup.

His Enforcer, on a loan to him by the boss until he earned it for himself, had done a spiffing good job taking out that Spider. With the electronic upgrades Darius put in it, his aiming had gotten better for long range and against fast targets. 

“Fuck.”

And just like that, his good mood came crashing down as he whirled to look at Darius. 

The same commander who had not cussed at anything while Michael had been around him for the last two months. 

“Is… something wrong?” Sasha, the Mech Bimbo, asked hesitantly while coming back from her surprised lean back away from the boss. 

“The Lancaster is not supposed to be able to connect to another mech’s systems like that,” Darius said quietly as he pulled out his noteputer and pulled up the Lancaster’s schematics. His eyes zoomed back and forth side to side and up and down as he flipped through multiple pages.

The rest of the crew had also gotten alarmed and then curious about what had gotten Darius to act so … not-Darius.

Whatever it was that had him alarmed, Darius found it. 

Then he groaned. “Nooo…. There’s a fucking Goblin part in the Lancaster…”

He didn’t understand that at all. Goblin? 

“And that’s a bad thing…?” 

Darius turned to look at John, the First Mate, who’d asked that question. 

“I don’t want a Goblin anywhere near me. Goblins are way too troublesome,” he sighed as he got up. “I’m going to have to take the Lancaster apart.”

“Wiat, what?!” Sasha shot up with a shout. “Hell no! Why would you need to do that?!” 

He looked at her with the determined grimace of a man who had to do a shit job. 

“Because there’s a Goblin in the Lancaster, and if … there is a Goblin core in the system? I need to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

Without another word, he left the cafeteria with an indignant and a slightly worried Sasha running after him. 

The rest of the crew were also a little worried. 

Darius was never worried. 

He was now worried. 

He never looked like any mission was a problem for him.

He’d just walked into the mech bays as if this was a bigger problem than anything else they had encountered, including a goddamn fortress. 

… Whatever this “Goblin” thing was, it seemed like things were going to get a little bit spicy around the ship soon.