Lancer, not a Mechwarrior 11 (Patreon)

Lancer, not a Mechwarrior

Chapter 11

-VB-

“Why did you become a mechwarrior?” 

Jessica looked up and found Darius looking at her. 

Unlike how he looked at Sasha, he was much more professional with her. It wasn’t that he kept a distance with him, just that he knew where to draw the line, which was a good thing and expected in this line of work. 

“Well…” she muttered. It wouldn’t matter if he knew about it, would it? “What do you know about me?” 

“Only so much as what you told John,” Darius replied. 

“So you know I left the AFFS because of an asshole noble officer.”

“Yes.”

“Well, before I was in the AFFS, I was the second daughter, the third out of seven children, of a knight house.”

“A knight house…?” he repeated before he paused. “Ah, I see. A house that retains rights for providing mechwarriors and battlemechs.”

“Yes. My house is House Hermen and we’re a knight house from Euclid II. And as for why…” she paused. “Someone had to from my family, and all of my siblings were doing things that were also needed.”

“Including your older siblings?”

“Especially my older siblings. My parents were alive but effectively gone, so my older brother, James, was the one running our barony. My older sister Catherine was the one who took care of my young siblings. I was just becoming an adult when we got the notice that our uncle had died in the line of duty. While the FedSuns give their grieving nobles some years to replace their lost knights, there have been cases before where a knight house came to pick up their mech and found it gone, either used for an offensive or lost in a defense. Either way, they lost their status because of actions someone else took with their mech. So I stepped up… and then lost the family mech in that raid the noble fob intentionally botched.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing more to it.”

“That sounds like someone who’s willing to go through a lot for her family,” he replied and she looked away with a huff. “But why not go back home then? Wouldn’t the honorable discharge given your family the reprieve they need?”

“It did. But as much as I love my brothers and sisters, I hate my parents,” she scowled. “Bastards didn’t even show up to uncle’s funeral.”

Darius nodded slowly. “And what made you throw your lot in with me?”

She grimaced. 

“I was running out of money, and not a lot of mercenary companies affiliated with the AFFS like to hire mechwarriors without their own mechs. You were offering… and you were the only one offering.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I get desperate.”

“... Do you?”

He raised an eyebrow, and Jessica scolded herself internally for saying that. 

“I do,” he replied. “Probably more than you think.”

-VB-

“What made you want to join me?” 

Sasha looked up.

She caught him looking and nearly grinned. 

“Well, you mean aside from the fact that you have such weird mechs I could tinker with?” 

“Yeah, aside from those.”

She looked around. There was no one else in the Leopard’s hangars right now. 

Hmm. This was as good a chance as any. 

She oof’ed as she got up; she’d been crouching for the last hour or so. When she approached him, he didn’t pull away just because she was a little sweaty or dirty with grease. 

“Well, it really was just the mechs at first,” she drawled as she took a few more steps until she was right up against him. And then she smirked. “And then I liked the cute commander who couldn’t keep his eyes off of me.”

Darius … blushed and looked away briefly. 

Like she said. 

Cute. 

But then…

“... But you also know that I have other reasons, right?” she asked him quietly. 

Darius looked at her. Really looked. And then nodded. She hadn’t made it a secret that she was not in a good relationship with her mother. Not a terrible one. Not a bad one. Just not great or good. Her mother had wanted her to be something more than a mechtech but being a mechtech had been Sasha’s passion. 

She also knew some of her mother’s secrets, but never revealed them to anyone. And she didn’t intend to either. Because love - romantic or familial - can be stupid like that. 

“So a part of it was about me getting away from home. A part of it was about your mechs. But a part of it now is about you, Da. Ri. Us. Can you accept that?” 

He nodded again, if a bit slowly. 

She grinned, back to being her cheerful self.

“Good!” 

Then she pecked him on the cheek with her lips and ran away from him.

Because that was corny and embarrassing as hell, and there was no way she was going to admit that, even if only they were in the hangar bay at the moment. 

-VB-

“What made you start this company?” 

Darius looked up, and John looked down at him. 

It’s been months since he joined this mercenary company when it had just been Darius at the helm and no one else. He was made the First Mate and he remained that to this day months later.

But he never got a good answer. 

The answers so far have been “money.” But no one who wanted money went mostly for pirates. That took time and effort; simple garrison duty wouldn’t have required for just a little less money. From an efficiency standpoint, just being a garrison force would have paid more because it would have required less upkeep and maintenance for the mechs.

Not that such a thing was a problem for Darius and his bullshit “printer” tech but it was about the principle of the matter, yeah? 

“... Because pirates make everyone’s life miserable,” Darius replied as if that was the most obvious thing. 

“Yeah, but why did you decide that you need to be the one to do it? Because if you haven’t noticed, pirate hunting is basically the only job we’re taking.”

“Yes?”

“It can’t just be because you want to keep people away from your stuff, right?” 

Darius hummed. 

John came to know about Darius more, and one of the things he learned was that Darius was paranoid. About who, he didn’t -.

“ComStar will come after us.”

John stopped his thoughts.

“What?”

“ComStar has an operation that is aimed at suppressing the technological progression of the Inner Sphere. I present a threat to their operations, so they will eventually come after me.”

He stared at his commander. 

The man was definitely paranoid.

“More than the snakes or the Feddies?”

“More than them. By chasing pirates, I keep moving while gathering reputation and money. It prevents them from hunting us down.”

Holy hell, he was paranoid. Their entire operation was based on his paranoia! 

“Besides,” Darius sniffed. “Hunting down pirates is good for everyone but pirates. And I enjoy the… challenge.”

“The challenge of finding pirates in every hidey hole from here to the Alliance?” John raised an eyebrow. “You realize it’s less a challenge and more of a money drain, right? We don’t have our own jumpship so we have to pay to jump systems, and even then, some of the pirates weren’t on charted stars, which costs us more to jump to.”

“I know, but we’re in the black, aren’t we?” 

John sighed. “If you want to keep hunting pirates, then fine. But if we start going into the red for months at a time, you know we’ll have to try something else, right?”

“We’ll discuss it then.”