Kick the Sphere
Chapter 3
-VB-
For all of that which made me more important than I had been before, the actual status on the ground hadn't changed.
The planet was still reeling from the pirate raid, calls were being made by people who lost their family members, and the military was still on high alert.
This meant that when my girls and Janice got hungry, I only had the black ration bars and urbie rat meat. I didn't want to feed them my shit because my shit was disgusting and I only ate them because I had been a poor fucker.
It took a few calls to the militia office, and when they told me that it would take them at least a few days to get everything settled, I told them that I didn't have several days for a pay out to pay my people so either they came to pick up the mech and pay me for them now or I will sell them to the highest bidder in the next five hours.
It took them one hour to come to S4B17.
Fucking liars.
To my surprise, I managed to negotiate with the Vakarel Militia and then the duke's household retainers with relative ease despite the earlier threats. Both were of the impression that I was a Mechwarrior hiding from one of the other polities.
They probably couldn't reconcile the fact that I was indeed a "mechwarrior" yet led a simple life of a factory worker, so they decided to toss the latter and imagined a past I never had. Normally, my past - or lack thereof in the eyes of the authorities - would mean that they might try to use it as an excuse to confiscate everything but the fact that I downed three enemy light mechs with the glasglow, or an ultralight mech colloquially speaking, gave me enough respect among the nobles and officers to not have kind of trouble come for me.
I got the following in the negotiation: 10 acres of land on the surface and adjacent to the city rented out to me, two warehouses on the aforementioned land, 100 tons of metals and parts, access to machining tools and more, jumpship map data, and finally, two point two million C-Bills, or a little over three million eagles, the currency of the Free Worlds League that Vakarel itself was part of.
How much was three million eagles worth? Well, I used to make four hundred eagles a month as a factory worker. If there were six of me, then working a hundred years would not net me that much.
Celestial Forge, I love you so much.
I used that money, transferred on the spot, and got my girls to go and buy the groceries while I prepared my house for one last meal in it.
I cried when I ate a cheap steak for the first time in this life.
-VB-
It's been three weeks since the failed pirate raid and my subsequent rise out of poverty and into the upper echelons of society. Now, I worked on my escape route from this frozen planet. I had already bought [Magos Designation: Engineering] with voidship construction specialization.
Sure, I could have bought something else like [Titan Engineering] and [Trained Technician, either of which would have earned me a spot on any mercenary company or even dropship and jumpship haulers moving between worlds. However, I did not want to leave my life and the lives of my T-Dolls in the hands of people I didn't know, and as such, I worked on my own method of leaving Vakarel.
However, it wasn't just me and the T-Dolls living on the rented land. Well, not anymore, at any rate.
Janice finally left her domicile on Sublevel 4 and joined me on my land after having received my message… Three weeks ago.
Just when I saw her arrive, the Forge pinged me about another 100 points, but I dismissed it for now.
She looked … completely out of her element. Her cheer and mischief was still there, but between my sudden change and rise in status as well as the recent raid, she remained subdued for the most part.
"Hey, old man."
But some things don't change (thankfully).
"JanJan," I grunted as I set down the metal plate that was to serve as part of the "bottom" hull of the spaceship. I wasn't going to be following the bulbous design common to this timeline, so yes, my ship did have a bottom.
"... Holy shit, you were a mechwarrior?" she finally asked as she dropped her only bag onto the floor while staring at my glasgow that stood at the corner of the warehouse for easy access.
Janice had been silent for the first two weeks, and I only really got an answer out of her just two days ago at the start of the third week since the pirate raid.
"No," I told her honestly. "I got it right before the raid."
She looked at me, unable to comprehend me.
"But … you defeated three mechs."
"Yes."
"But you only got your mech right before the raid?"
"Yes. Never piloted the mech before then."
"Huh? But how does that work?"
"... It's a secret."
"Teasing old man."
I laughed. "It's a big secret. So what do you think about this place?" I asked while gesturing.
We stood in front of the construction warehouse (the other warehouse had been converted solely to hold the materials), and she looked around with wide eyes full of awe and hope.
"What will I be doing?" she asked me quietly after she finally stopped looking while rooted in place. She looked like she was shrinking into herself? I wondered why she felt small.
"What do you want to do?" I asked her. "If you want, then you learn how to use a gun," I said while gesturing to the T-Dolls in the construction warehouse, who were all helping me with the construction of the spaceship. I didn't intend to make a large ship, so the current frame was small enough that we didn't need an industrial mech to work on it. "Or you ca-"
She looked at me for a moment as her eyes widened again.
"... You didn't call me up to sleep with me, did you?"
I sputtered and lost track of whatever else I had been about to say. "What?! No!" It took me a second to realize how she could take that kind of objection, so I hurried to say the rest. "No, I just didn't want to leave my friend in the stinking sublevel. I'm going to leave Vakarel, eventually, and want to know if you want a place next to me." I paused and frowned. "... Did you think that I just wanted to fuck you? Is that why you looked like you were about to scamper off like a urbie rat?"
She blushed and didn't say anything for a while as her eyebrows began to slowly furrow.
"Yes," she finally muttered out ashamedly. "You know how people are. They get a little big and they start making demands."
I knew that very well. The factory I worked at had a manager who used to be a factory worker like myself. All of the workers thought that he was one of us, but the moment he became a manager, he became the worst of the managers. It was a betrayal, and an all too common occurrence.
I sighed and patted her on the head.
"Stupid JanJan. If I left you alone here, then you would have done some very stupid things, weren't you?"
She squawked and batted my hand aside. "I'm not stupid!"
"Uh huh. Uh huh."
With the blush still there but slowly fading, she stared at me in the eyes for a good minute before closing her eyes and nodding to herself. I didn't know what the mischievous girl was thinking about nor did I want to. For all I knew, she could be planning on pranking me to cover up her own faux pas.
Then she glanced at the T-Dolls. She didn't know that they were gynoids. Which-.
I narrowed my eyes. "No, they are also not there to look pretty. All of them are deadly combatants, and are to be respected as such," I immediately scolded her before she said or did anything, because I knew her well enough to know that she would go and tease them.
"Nine girls to one man?" she asked as the corners of her lips curled. "Are you sure you aren't building a harem?"
"I am their captain and commander, not a fucking harem protagonist."
"Ah! You know what a harem protagonist is, though!"
I groaned. "This was a mistake."
She cackled.
I gestured dismissively over to the separate residential housing on the other side of the base. "That's where we sleep."
She paused and looked over her shoulder. She frowned, turned back to me, and asked a question. "Why is it so freaking far away? That's like … a mile away."
"Because this is a military base, stupid. What happens if someone decides to raid Vakarel again and strike here? They'll attack the warehouses for certain and if the housing is close enough, then they will strike that too just to be sure."
"Oh, right. Forgot about that."
"Besides, you need more exercise."
She kicked me in the shin for accusing her of being fat.
Ping.
-VB-
It wasn't long after Janice joined me that I decided to speed it up and purchased [Rapid Construction, a Time perk that reduced construction and crafting duration by 90%.
Unfortunately, it only applied to me.
"Captain, I think you should slow down."
I looked up from where I was taking my first break of the day on the sixth day of construction, and found Negev looking down at me. Instead of the Girl's Frontline uniform, she wore when I made her, she wore the basic cold climate construction worker outfit, complete with a neon lime jacket and helmet.
"Hmm?"
"You have been working for the last ten hours, Alan. Go get a rest or I will make you."
I blinked and then looked back to the frame of what would be classified as an aerodyne "dropship." Except it wasn't going to be because I was going to make it hyperspace or warp or whatever other FTL-capable drives I could get my hands on soon, preferably through the Forge. The frame itself neared completion, showing me the rough outline of one of my least liked spaceships from my past life: the Hound-class Combat Freighter from Starsector.
In the Starsector game (have to check Terra if they still had the game in any of their archives), the Hound was the worst combat capable ship, possessing no shield in a shield-ubiquitous space sim and weakly armored in the same game filled with armor and hull shredding weapons. Its only upside was its speed and how fucking cheap it was to make it.
It was also something that was overpowered in my current dimension. Despite being the Locust equivalent of the Starsector game, it would still be classified as an assault dropship by the standards of the Inner Sphere. It was fast, made turns on a dime (comparatively), used hyperspace technology, and possessed ship-to-ship weapons (once I built them).
Yes, a true Battletech warship would squash it flat, but it would have to catch it first.
No, it wouldn't be truly unique in its role.
It would be, however, my first ship and still one of the most powerful vessels.
If I ever lost this to the pirates, then the Inner Sphere would be… it would be hell for most people for some time.
"I want to finish the hull frame, then I'll get some sleep," I compromised as I accepted a cup of hot water from Janice, who had decided to be my helper.
Well, she helped but in a weird sibling-like way: snarky, irreverent, and teasing. I would have called her an American if she would have understood the reference, but alas, the USA wasn't important in the Inner Sphere; it was just a tiny planetary government on a world ruled by a phone company.
"Come on, old man. You need to get your beauty sleep. Think of your poor old bones~!" Janice cackled right on time.
I grunted. "Maybe I should make you start hauling some metal beams on your own-."
"Oh wow, you are making good progress!"
"Thought so."
Negev rolled her eyes at us before turning to leave. Her shift was over, so she was probably going out to do research on something like she did with most of her free time.
"Hey, Captain~, I was waiting for you! Teehee!"
And here was the troublemaker of the lot: P38.
"Ehh? No reaction? How about this?"
Then she glomped me from the back, pushing me forward and pressing herself firmly up against me.
My cheeks twitched when I felt her nipples poking my back through my sweaty shirt.
"38, you're too close to Alan. Get off of him," Janice nearly growled.
"Eeh? What's a washed-up hag telling me what to do?"
"What's this little kid thinking? Maybe she didn't get a proper education."
Soon, I found myself soon embroiled in a spat between her and P38.
P38 was the most cheerful yet aggressive of my T-Dolls. She was also the most forward with her intentions: to be my favorite.
This, however, made her at odds with Janice, who was protective of me, and AK-12, who had the same intention despite her own brand of aggressiveness that bordered on argumentative.
My thoughts temporarily halted as the Forge pinged me. Thank you for pulling me out of my internal rant, Forge.
The newest funding meant that I now had a total of 250 points. Unfortunately, the Forge didn't have a lot of 250 point purchase options in the first place. Leaving me with 50, 100, and 200 point options, the Forge, again, left me with not a lot of choices currently useful to me.
[Engineering Basics, 100] from Deadspace could be added to my current assets to fill in the holes that [Magos Designation: Engineering] has, as magos knew how to put stuff together to make them work but not necessarily the why or the how. However, it wouldn't be anything new that mahos couldn't already do with a boatload of hymns and incense on the side, and I didn't know if I would get any points soon. After all, it did take the Forge three weeks to get me the latest points.
No, as much as specializing in engineering would make spaceship construction easier for me, there was a good chance that I needed to protect myself before I could leave.
…
My eyes widened as I suddenly remembered something about warhammer spaceships. They used the Warp to travel FTL.
Was there Warp in this dimension?
Wait, didn't Warhammer 40k need psykers to pilot the ship?
Suddenly, all of the work and sense of achievement I had gotten felt like ash in my mouth.
I frantically searched through the catalog and found what could be my savior.
It was called [Atlantis Knowledge Database, and I knew Stargate's ships used different FTL from 40k. I bought it on the spot. Almost immediately, everyone still in the construction warehouse got startled by a loud CRANK as … a server farm appeared out of nowhere.
"Um. What just happened?" Janice asked me.
I sighed. "I guess the cat's out of the bag," I grumbled. "Magic."
She stared at me with dead eyes. "Magic."
"Magic," I nodded seriously.
She glared at me, and I shrugged. "Seriously?"
"I think magic is better than giving you a truthful if horrifying explanation that may cause you to have an existential crisis."
She stared at me with more concern, glancing briefly at the blinking server farm that was somehow connected to the base's power grid, and then shook her head. "No, I still want to know."
… I guessed that my little pseudo-sister was too headstrong to leave it at that.
"I have access to something called a Celestial Forge. It gives me points to purchase items from its catalog, and a few things like the server farm and the mech over there," I said while gesturing. "Are some of the things I bought."
She blinked before her eyes widened in realization. "You said you got the mech right before the battle."
"Yes."
"You bought a mech and the skill to use it."
I grinned. "Something like that."
"... Oh My God. My theory about you being a bastard child of a mechwarrior was so wrong."
"Oi, my parents were happily married!" I objected as I stood up and walked over to the server farm and found a noteputer waiting for me to access the data.
I opened it up and…
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. If this thing hadn't come with a search function, then I would have ignored it completely because 11.9 quintillion pages was not something I wanted to sit and read through it all.
A quick search on a suspiciously Google-like search box with "cheap and easy to make FTL" later, I had it.
A FTL schematic.
Yeah.
I could get off this frozen hellhole on my own power.
-VB-
It took us another week even with my Rapid Construction to finish the bare hull of the ship, never mind any of the electronics, internal rooms, and, of course, a FTL drive.
Sourcing the electronic parts was not hard. Instead of relying on them, I straight up used the last 50 points with the Celestial Forge to purchase [Electronics]. It supplied me with replacement parts directly into my inventory, unlike the server farm.
Maybe the server farm got put out in the open because its description specifically stated that it would appear in a warehouse?
Anyways, with the electronics sourced, we worked on the ship again, and after five days, we had the internals completed, including carbon dioxide filters, decarbonizer/oxygenator to turn carbon dioxide to oxygen, one bathroom with septic tank, water recycler, basic back-up fusion generator, main fusion generator, and more.
A spaceship needed a lot of things, you know? It's part of the reason why the art and science behind making spaceships have been lost in the Inner Sphere for at least a century now. Part of this lost knowledge had to do with the fact that ships weren't made in one place. The K-F drives that jumpships and warships needed in the Inner Sphere were all made in very few select locations even before the First Succession War. This didn't mean that those locations also had manufacturing capabilities to make spaceships. Because of this, K-F drives had to be, sometimes, transported to whichever factory world could use them.
This also made my current construction of the Hound not only disgustingly out-of-context but impossible. The tools needed to make the jumpdrives and the knowledge of science to make those tools no longer existed in the hands of any Inner Sphere and Periphery states.
This was not the case for me, because I used the metal, electronics, and time to tools needed. Of course, I needed to make the tools that made the tools but I could make them because the Atlantean Database had the data on them.
The hard part was the Atlantean FTL drive. Unlike this timeline's K-F Drive which only required germanium and titanium, Atlantean FTL worked with a more varied collection of materials. Some I could source from the electronics I had. Others I needed to purchase. Thank God, Vakarel was a mining world and cheap factory world. I went out personally to find the elements and got them all for cheap.
However, I got a lot of looks from people when i visited the city. Men kept pulling their wives and daughters away from me. I was super confused and the AK sisters giggling along with Negev and Jericho didn't help me at all.
I digressed.
Even after getting the necessary elements I couldn't find in my spare electronics, I needed to make the tools and I did.
Despite the fact that I knew exactly what I was doing and with [Rapid Construction] reducing any time spent constructing and crafting by 90%, it still took me three months to construct the FTL drive. If I didn't have that time perk, then there was a good chance that I might have been making just the FTL drive for full two years and it wasn't even the most advanced hyperdrive that the Alterans (the people whose knowledge of the Atlantean database came from) were capable of creating.
It was a very rudimentary hyperdrive, thoroughly tested and well-used in ancient Alteran history before their exodus from their home galaxy.
Their drive used conflicting spatial distortions to tear open a hole in subspace that led into the hyperspace. Since the hole in question was a physical thing, my ship would have to literally fly into hyperspace. But I made it! It was a heady feeling, making the dream device of any astrophysicist from my previous life.
I then spent a week making the two guns I would equip onto the ship: one 150mm Heavy Howitzer Artillery and one 50mm Autocannon.
After almost half a year of construction, I had a working spaceship!
My Hound was a massive thing at roughly four yards tall, sixty yards long, and twenty yards wide, but compared to regular dropships and jumpships, my Hound was a small thing even if each of the thrusters attached to the starboard and portside of the main body of the ship were each the size of a school bus.
As for how I was going to power this thing? Well, that's what the fusion generators were for.
I was ready to leave this frozen wasteland.
-VB-
"I am not going to miss this place."
It took us half a day to load up the Atlantean database server farm and the rest of the scrap metal onto the Hound. It had enough space for everything, especially since I converted one of the crew quarters into a new home for the server farm and because my Hound was made specifically as a freighter.
I walked over to the landline phone - yes, landline - and called up the militia office.
It took two calls before they answered.
"This is the Vakarel Militia Headquarters. To whom am I speaking to?"
"This is Captain Alan Marris… I am calling to return the rented landhold I got as part of my deal with the general."
There was a pause on the phone, and I glanced at all of my girls loading up their and my personal belongings onto the ship.
"This is General Doyam Hakkon speaking. Captain Marris, am I correct?"
"Yes, sir," I replied. "I'm leaving Vakarel, and don't plan to come back. Thought I should let you know that the base is free for you and your people to use again."
"Yes," the general sniffed on the other side of the call. "You made life a little bit more difficult than it needed to be with that stunt, though I will gladly trade it again for more mechs. You still had two more years on your rent."
"Yeah, well, I don't need it, so I am returning it. I even left a note on the front gate of the warehouse."
"I see. Where will you be going, if I may ask? An old man has his curiosity."
"... I'm not sure, actually," I hummed. "But I don't plan on doing any kind of mercenary work. I have bigger concerns and enough money to see me through."
"Ah, yes. Your harem."
I paused. "Wait, excuse me, what?"
"Whenever your girls come to the ground floor of the city for supplies, they can't seem to shut up about their 'captain.' By this point, everyone knows about their, err, let's say strong infatuation over you. Six out of ten of them."
Wut.
The old general chuckled. "Wel, it's young blood. I already have an idea. Probably looking for a temperate planet to raise kids, right?"
"Wait, no, I think you misunderstood-."
"Very well, I accept your return of land. Happy married life, Captain. Try not to let your future children overwhelm you too quickly, yes?"
And then he hung up on me!
"What?"
And I was too stunned to move for a few minutes.
Then I turned and chased after my T-Dols. "What kind of rumors have you been spreading about me?!"
They noticed me, realized I just got off the phone, and ran away giggling.
"I'm serious, what the hell did you gossip about?!"
I later learned that AK-12 and AK-15 had unwittingly suggested first that I was some kind of degenerate pervert by making them call me master, next P-38 made some insinuations about my sexual prowess, Negev got in on the fun while describing how my hands were inside her (to fix her arm!), then Jericho got in on the fun by describing the battle of Block 17 with more innuando than a fucking Canopian furry porn, and finally, the rumor mill over in Vakarel City itself milled and rolled until the public believed me to be a harem-keeping mechwarrior who liked humiliating other mechwarriors by shafting their mechs with my mech fists before dominating one of my girls on top of the corpses of my enemies.
Like. What? Huh?
… why me?
-VB-
The cargo bay ramp and door whined together as the former was pulled into the belly of the ship while the latter closed down on the edge of the cargo hold to create an airtight space.
All of my girls sat waiting in their crew quarters while I sat in the pilot's seat in the cockpit as I began flicking switches.
"Thruster fuel feed, green," I muttered to myself. "Cargo hold ramp, green. Cargo hold door, green. Maneuvering thrusters, green. Localized anti-grav, green. Inertia dampener, green. Airlock, green. Hull integrity… green. Alright, we are lifting off."
The thrusters roared to life, and my Hound, christened Cold for me to remember my homeworld, slowly got lift.
The ship flew smoothly, lifting up and up and up until…
I grinned, pointed my ship up to the sky, and stepped on the gas.
The ship blasted away, and I groaned at the G's I was pulling with this stunt despite the inertia dampener built into the ship.
We blasted into the dreary grey clouds, burst out of them on the other side, and then…
And then the atmosphere faded away slowly.
Finally, the darkness of space took over and gravity decreased noticeably but not completely. I unscripted myself and made an announcement, holding down the comm button.
"We are now officially in space! Go and have a look out of your nearest window!"
Because that's what I was doing: just staring out of my cockpits narrow reinforced window. Space.
It was the blackest black I've ever seen and filled to the brim with tiny jewels of light.
Ah, damn. I'm getting emotional.
I quickly wiped the tears forming and grinned.
"Yeah, this is it. A new and better life," I muttered to myself even as I wondered offhandedly why I packed five kilos of the damn black ration bars and half that much in butchered urbie-rat meat. Was it a habit? A reminder of the harsh life I led in Vakarel?
… whatever.
I was free!
"Alright. I'm going to activate the hyperdrive," I said as I loaded up the destination for my first hyperdrive.
And then the computer locked on.
I watched as space tore open, and I flew right on through, completely oblivious to the sudden spike in communication systems including that of the local HPG.
Ha ha! That's a joke. I was fully aware of the chatter in the air. Even as I kept most of my focus on driving my Cold into the void of space because I was actually freaking out a bit because I never flew a spaceship before and I was relying on my perk to guide me OHGODAMIGOINGTOBEABLETOLANDTHI-!?
As I flew out of Vakarel's atmosphere, I gauged the reaction of the local authorities.
And the demands for me to stop - that I ignored - and the demands for the militia to stop me sent a very clear message not just about what the Free Worlds League would do to me but what the rest of the Inner Sphere would do.
-VB-
A/N: one of the longer chapters I've written. Hope you all liked it.