Lancer, not a Mechwarrior
Chapter 5
-VB-
John stared at the noble and his entourage.
And he noticed something after calming down.
First of all, the mechs he saw with the noble weren’t… the best. He saw that all three of the medium battlemechs were Trebuchets, and none of them were in a good condition. In fact, he would go out of his way to say that they were in bad conditions. Most of the armor platings looked scoffed or too thin, there were parts of the mech that looked rusted, and the left most Trebuchet didn’t have any lasers on its right arm. The only heavy mech in the lance was a Crusader. It looked to be the most taken care of.
Second, the noble wasn’t making any demands right now. Or shooting at the dropship, which was the most important bit, because he had no doubt in his mind that Darius would turn those mechs and the noble standing between them into burning wrecks and meat pastes should they choose violence.
So he walked up to the ship.
Which got the noble’s security to turn to him.
Which was the third thing. The noble came with a full security team on top of a medium ‘mech lance.
“Halt!” one of the security agents demanded as he fully turned toward him and lightly raised his rifle.
“I’m the first mate of that ship!” he immediately shouted back and didn’t stop walking. “Now, can someone tell me why Darius closed the hangar bay and all of the doors and you lot are all standing outside?!”
The noble finally turned around.
“I am here to look at your crew’s Frankenmech but your captain refuses to open the bay doors or even acknowledge my request!”
‘It’s not a request if you bring a gun,’ John thought even as he gulped. He took a deep breath as he brought himself to stop at a respectable distance some two meters from the closest security guard. “I had no idea that the Federated Suns allowed nobles to walk up to a mercenary company’s dropship with a threatening amount of firepower just to see a Frankenmech. Should I call the planetary administration’s office or the local MRB office to see what they say about this?”
He didn’t know what they would say. For all he knew, this noble might be the planetary duke and he could have come here with shitty intent. The shit ton of firepower, no matter how shittily maintained, was still a shit ton of firepower.
Shit.
He was thinking too much shit. Was he panicking? Why did his brain have to go to the worst kind of noun/adjective/adverb when he was faced with a possibly hostile situation?
But he still stood there because what else was he supposed to do? It wasn’t like he could walk through the noble and his entourage and ask Darius to let him in.
“Who do you think I am?!”
“... Usually, someone who is low on the totem pole says something like that,” John said after hearing the response of a bad Combine antagonist coming out of a Fedrat noble. “Like the son of a baron or count. Or the fourth grandson of a well-to-do cooperative executive.”
One of the security agents nearly snorted, and John only caught it because the man was facing him directly.
The noble’s face was starting to redden.
Not good. Shit.
Stop thinking shit.
“Did you put in a call about getting a look before you came?” he asked instead when the other side didn’t say anything.
“Why would I need to -?”
“So you didn’t,” John drawled. “It’s like you think you can just walk up to someone and tell them what to do.”
“You-!”
“Did you think it was a good idea to walk up to a dropship clearly well-armed with a medium mech lance and not come off as threatening? Out there in the periphery, which I will remind you Kilbourne is awfully close to, that kind of entourage only comes out during planetary negotiation or right before a fight. Are you here for a battle? Because let me tell you, my boss and I just came back from wrecking a pirate lance of mediums. And their mechs were heavier than yours on average.”
“Are you threatening me?!”
John blinked slowly before turning to look up at the Crusader, which had turned to look at him during the “conversation.” “Is this man your boss? Have you been hired by him?”
“No,” the Crusader mechwarrior replied to John’s own surprise, and he found himself even more surprised to hear a high pitch and young voice from the other side of that cockpit glass. “I am merely here to guard him as I have been told to do by the Count of Colorado.”
“... Sorry, I don’t know who that is.”
“Count Jason Eurania of Colorado is one of the five counts of Kilbourne, all of whom have sworn their fealty to the Duke of Kilbourne.”
“Oh. So he’s your boss’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Euphemia, shut up and get the mercenaries to open this door!” the kid - even if he looked older than John, if you acted like a petulant kid, then you were still a kid - screeched.
“... Man, I pity you lot if this is what you have to deal with on a daily basis,” John said out loud. He couldn’t help himself. He really did feel pity.
The noble kid’s reddening face reached a crescendo.
And then he reached into his fine jacket to pull out a pistol.
John’s eyes widened.
But before anyone could say anything, everyone heard a whirling.
Everyone froze and looked up.
Because they had only now realized that one of the rotary machineguns on the Leopard was whirling its barrels and pointed itself at the noble.
“{If you shoot that gun,}” Darius’s voice snarled from inside the Leopard. “{I will paint the floor beneath you with your blood, you spoiled fuck.}” Then a moment later, he continued. “{In fact, once I found out who you were, I called up your father and the planetary government about the harassment and threats you were making. You should be getting a call very soon from both of them.}”
The noble looked horrified.
The security details, including the mechwarriors in their mechs, looked relieved.
John let out a sigh of relief, too, because he - just like the security agents, apparently - did not want this situation to deteriorate any further.
-VB-
Jasmine Reutherson watched from afar as the situation wound down.
She did not click her tongue in irritation.
Doing so would make her irritation very clear, and she was too trained to do something so childish and undisciplined.
She had tried to get data by getting the mercenary to fight the Fedrat noble, someone who had so easily fallen for her beauty and tried to “appease her” by showing off his “manly self” against the mercenary company she “fawned” over.
But her mission ended up being a failure because, to her surprise, the mercenary captain in possession of the unique dropship weapon and the rumored mech knew better than to accept a random challenge from a random noble, which wasn’t what normally happened with new mercenary captains who had no history for her to follow.
It was unfortunate, but sometimes, plans didn’t work out as she wanted to.
Admittedly, she didn’t expect the noble brat to grab his father’s house guards. In fact, she expected him to grab his personal mech, a Firestarter, and use that to challenge the mercenary.
… She was actually confused as to how he managed to get his father’s house guard to obey him. Did he have dirt on the security captain or something?
She was nominally curious, though she wouldn’t follow up on that curiosity for some time.
She hummed as she folded her rifle and its scope back up into its case. She picked the case up and walked out of the building like the businesswoman she was, and stepped into her private limousine.
“Back to the business tower, please,” she ordered politely and the driver was quick to step up. The limo sped off, smoothly yet urgently as it should.
Once she was sure that she was secure, she closed the window between the seats and the driver and pulled out her phone.
Her real phone, not the one she used publicly in her businesswoman persona. She called the fourth contact listed on it and waited.
“{... Yao Ming’s Noodles. How can I help you?}”
“Hi. I’m calling to complain about my last order. It was too bland.”
“{I … see. And may I have your order number?}”
“88272.”
“{I see. Thank you. We will make sure to do better next time.}” Click.
She hummed.
She’ll have to try something else next time before the mercenary company took off. Maybe… she should send her daughter in? The useless girl was completely unaware of her true purpose. She was a Fedrat through and through, unfortunately.
… Yes. Why not? She might be able to gleam more into the inner workings of the mercenary company, and where the mercenary captain might have come from, by sending her daughter in.
And should her daughter even provide one useful intel, well, the last sixteen years of raising her might have been worth it.
It was all for the Dragon, after all.