Cp13

13

May 1, 2994

Morten Protectorate

Drymo

Oasis

Arne waved goodbye to his tech friend who he'd just talked to for half an hour and leaned back in the soft couch cushions as he looked out the very thick windows of the Sky Pub…which was a joke in itself, given that the 'bar' was non-alcoholic. He held a somewhat warm, half drank insulated cup of coffee, and sucked down another couple swigs. He'd become addicted to it ever since having to give up alcohol, and he wasn't the only one. The 'pub' served a wide range of coffees, teas, fruit drinks, and even a rare glass of milk for a week or so after a jumpship arrival from Cholis. The planets were close enough that they could get the milk here before spoiling, and without having to freeze it, which was apparently a no-no for the pub.

Arne was tired from a two hour stint in the simulators, and given he didn't have any actual patrol duties for the day, he'd come up here to relax as most of the 7,000+ denizens of Drymo did sooner or later. It almost made the planet feel comfortable, but he knew that was a matter of point of view. When they'd first arrived they were living out of the dropships, cramped and claustrophobic, with their two simulators moved to one of the old mining buildings that had been repurposed to get some of the stuff off the dropships.

Then they'd got their first 'donut' built and moved in there. That's what they called them anyway. The construction crews had dug a huge trench in the ground almost half a kilometer wide and some 8 kilometers long. Just dug right into the surface and piled up the rock in numerous mounds that had since disappeared into the 'sifters' the miners used to get valuable metals and other materials out of the jumble. The resulting left over 'sand' had been mounded up and kept nearby, for once the first trench had been dug, a large ferrocrete foundation had been put in along with numerous support pillars reinforcing an arched roof over the whole thing, making it look like a long donut half buried in the ground.

That arched roof had then been meticulously buried with all the sand. It had to be at least 20 meters deep at the top, if not more, and once the first one was complete they got all the workers out of it and had all the mechs walk up on top while the engineers tested for stability. As far as Arne knew, it was just a random hillside on a planet that had no such thing in sight. Once the green flag was given by the engineers, everyone living on the dozens of dropships moved in and that was the beginning of Oasis city.

Right now there were three long donuts completed, with a fourth under construction. Arne was looking out at the fourth right now, for the Sky Tower had been built between them all, dead center in the square the donuts were making, and high enough to see over their 7 story tall peaks and down onto the flat lands beyond. The desolate, dry flat lands were where he made his patrols once every three or four days, switching off with the other mechwarriors whether they had a recon mech or not.

Aside from some short range comm gear…which the tower was insulated against so it didn't fry the people in the pub with radiation…and some defensive LRMs in lieu of the aerospace fighters they still hadn't got yet, the tower was for civilian purposes, along with the other land space in between the donut square they had yet to build anything on except for the tower. The mounds made it feel like a fort, and Arne was up high enough to see outside the sand dune 'walls,' the last of which was still in the arched roof construction phase, with a mountain of waiting sand outside ready to cover it, with occasional large dump trucks carrying more out from the strip mining operation further to the north.

The original mine was to the east and the spaceport was to the southeast. It was fully operational now with 6 landing pads and support buildings. Both it and the city were surrounded by a series of defense towers that out-armored their mechs. Another one was under construction on the north side of the city, but there were 5 already around the spaceport plus 3 more outside the donuts, each with crews of their own inside and buried tunnels leading out to them.

That duty, he thought, had to be more boring than walking patrols. At least in a mech he got to move and occasionally shoot a pile of rocks the techs graciously piled up like snowmen on occasion. He didn't waste any missiles on them…because he didn't have any. All the mechs here had been refitted with energy weapons only. That meant lasers and PPCs. They didn't even have any autocannons on them, but there was a reason for that.

The turrets had all the missiles, plus some autocannons and lasers. They even had some extended range missiles that were half again as long as regular ones…meaning they couldn't be fit into mech firing tubes…so the turrets could reach out and hit targets before they fell into weapons range of any potential attackers. The turrets also had an enormous amount of armor on them…but that made sense, given they couldn't dodge, evade, or twist an undamaged arm around to block a shot at a vulnerable chest plate.

Still, it seemed like overkill with a full Company of heavy and assault mechs guarding it, plus two recon medium Phoenix Hawks. But as was the Morten motto…don't take something unless you can hold it…and they seemed dead serious about holding this operation, which was pumping out refined metals from a small building at the original mine site. It was newly constructed, and a refining facility to process the ore, getting rid of the unwanted material and saving precious weight on the dropships when they shipped out the finished ingots back to Cholis on a bi-monthly basis now.

They were shipments worthy of being raided, but no one had so much as ducked into the system to take a look. Arne didn't think anyone knew where they were, but eventually word would leak out to the bandit spies. Wherever they saw valuable goods moving, they'd trace them back eventually, even if they had to make guesses and explore uncharted systems to find it. That's the way they worked, he knew, for he'd been one of them. Not a spy, but one of the raiding teams.

It had been three and a half years since Arne had been in the failed raid on Cholis, but it felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened since, both to him and this planet that he was reluctantly starting to call home. All the other mechwarriors had been rotated out to other assignments, except for him. If that's what the First Lord had meant about sparing the others grunge work, then he was ok with it. This planet was on the rise, and he was content to ride that wave and see what became of it as long as he was still in the seat of a mech. And around here, those 14 men were the prima donnas, as it should be, and he didn't want to go back to being a nobody again.

Better king of an ant hill than servant in a mansion, someone has once said, and he agreed. But the way House Morten was handling its construction of the city, he might actually end up with both. The typical blocky, redundant 'squares only' architecture that almost everyone built with was absent here. Once you got inside the donuts there were huge open air spaces dotted with so many curves and alcoves and what looked like tree houses sticking out of every which space, his eyes didn't know how to define it the first time he moved in. There was even a river in one of them running half the length of it, starting at a waterfall and ending up in a pond with a walkway bridge over it…only for the water to be sucked into pipes and sent back to the waterfall.

It seemed they wanted the air in here to be quite moist to make up for what was missing outside, and the whole thing had a luxurious feel to it that was gradually filling in with more intricacy. There were even potted trees everywhere in the commons areas, though none were more than two feet tall at this point, having been grown from seed brought here. He'd asked one of the techs planting them why put them here, and the tech had responded by saying that, in addition to ambiance, they were natural carbon scrubbers that didn't need power to work, making the air fresh in here without having to switch it out with the planetary air.

Then he'd asked about the light, which the trees would obviously need, and the tech said the big 'daylight' lamps in the ceiling that were calibrated to brighten and dim according to a schedule, had backup batteries for them, so if the main power generators went down people would still be able to see in what was a completely undergound facility without a single window in it. That light would also keep the trees alive and recycling the air.

It seemed the Mortens thought strategically in everything they did, even city interior decorating, and this pub was no exception. The glass in the panoramic windows that stretched all the way around, giving it a rounded donut with a hole in the center feel, was reinforced. That 'hole' was where the well protected lifts were, as well as the pub and service areas. Everything else was tables, benches, and couches, giving people a view of the exterior that they could not get anywhere else, or view of various entertainment screens and even one local news station that had a one hour daily program looped all day long detailing news brought in by the last jumpship of events far from here. They'd shovel it out to you in pieces until the next update arrived so you'd get something new every day. Yet one more little upgrade to civilization here that House Morten kept adding at a rapid fire pace while keeping you safe from the outside environment.

The rest of the tower had windows, but not that many. There was actually supposed to be a fancy restaurant going in one level down, but aside from the 'in progress' sign on the locked doors, he hadn't seen anybody working inside yet. Likewise there was a lot of empty office space and other rooms down the length of the tower to the base, which was connected via underground tunnels to the donuts…and those donuts were connected to the spaceport by other tunnels that had no mounds on them. They'd simply dug the trenches, built the tunnels, then buried them and smoothed it all out so you wouldn't even know anything was there.

Other than the miners, nobody drove anything on the surface aside from the mechwarriors. The lack of moisture in the air was too damn problematic, so the city was being built with all its roads underground for civilian traffic…which would also protect them from weaponsfire on the surface, just like the sand-covered donuts. Dirt and rock, it seemed, provided better protection than armor plating if you got it thick enough, and once again House Morten's strategic planning was visible for all to see, but few truly understood it.

He hadn't until it had been explained to him in a briefing session on how to defend the city if it was ever attacked. If they could keep people out of the spaceport and the other few entrances to the buried structures, they could walk on top of and fight over the civilians without worrying about hurting them. It was a very defensible setup that also hid how much was underground, with the exception of this Sky Tower…which was surrounded by the 'fort' walls except for the top that was peering over them.

And even if you stood on the top of one of the donuts, you wouldn't be in firing range of the tower. You'd have to come down into the square 'bowl' inside to attack it.

But Arne didn't come here to consider all that. He just came up here to chill with the other guys and get the view. He'd been right about the mechwarrior pay being shit. He'd actually made more as a prisoner…a lot more. No self-respecting freelance mercenary would ever sign on to an outfit like this without extenuating circumstances, such as his, but he'd quickly found out the House Morten secret for holding onto their experienced personnel.

He had no expenses to drain his paycheck.

His quarters were free, the food was free, he got clothing and personal items free from the 'mech store' which wasn't even built yet and having to be run out of one of the dropships, but he got a stipend in that store for a lot of luxury stuff that would eventually end up in the mech bay living adjunct when it was built. The mech bay itself was done, for their war machines anyway, and was located right next to the spaceport, but the adjoining structures were still a work in progress. When they finished he'd be moving into quarters there, as would the mech store and an army of techs.

So aside from the coffee and other drinks he bought here, he had no expenses, and after two years on this rock his personal savings were fast catching up to what he'd left behind and had been undoubtably looted by his former associates by now. So it seemed one could get rich on such lousy pay as long as you didn't have any bills eating it up, and some of the old hands that had come here from Neubenn had told him stories of how after 20-25 years of service, there were people walking away to live the wealthy lifestyle…or semi-wealthy anyway…or go into business for themselves, or retire way early.

And that allowed House Morten to keep on a larger than normal militia back there. However, he'd heard some grumbling that the new aerojocks back on Cholis were being paid a fortune for their services, while the ones coming out of the academy were getting the bare bones treatment like the mechwarriors.

So it seemed that House Morten was willing to pay high salaries temporarily to get good people in, then grow their own batch of 'cheap' labor out of their academies…which is where all the Neubenn guys had come from. But apparently none of their aerojocks had come out here, so it left the Mortens having to hire in outsiders.

Which probably explained why there was no squadron here yet. And the turret missile launchers would provide good air cover so long as the mechs didn't stray too far from them. Still, it rankled a bit knowing those pilots were getting paid a fortune while the mechwarriors weren't. He had to remind himself how good he had it here, and then those thoughts would drift away.

He was actually content, for the love of god. That was something he'd never been able to say before in his life. He was content walking his Phoenix Hawk around in circles outside every few days and kicking his own ass in simulator training, a good part of which was what they were calling the Catalyst of Frustration. It now had 14 missions in it, and every now and then a new one would arrive. Arne was using a lot of his free time on them, as were some of the others now that they were up to 8 simulators from the original 2 that they'd brought here at the onset.

Arne had passed 9 of the 14 so far, and had gotten his first mission score up some 418 points by going back through it over and over again. Each mission had something different to it, a different skill set required, and since he hadn't gone through their academy he had been working on going through their training regimen here, starting with their recon mech program since that was what he was piloting.

He'd learned a damn lot from it since, as well as getting pointers from those who had done it more than a decade ago. He knew what his responsibilities in combat were now, and with a recon mech it was doing everything except standing toe to toe and slugging it out. A completely foreign strategy to everything he'd known as a mercenary, but when the House Morten Company worked together as a team, following their protocols, they were damn effective in the sims. It was a pity he'd never seen them fight in actual combat…and the rout on Cholis didn't count. They'd been suckered into a mismatch and fled…only he'd not been in a fast enough mech to get away back then.

He was in the fastest they had now, but he couldn't pilot it in the 'COF' missions except for one. Each mission had a specific mech and weapon loadout in it that you didn't get to customize, so you knew you were facing the exact same situation as you had before, and as had the other guys who were running it. The Legacy Board was actually being updated in 4 different star systems now, and jumpships would carry with them the most recent numbers.

In that way Arne and the other guys here were in a competition with the other mechwarriors on different planets as to who could climb the highest and fastest, though Mech Commander Grady back on Cholis still held the top slot in each mission by a huge margin. The guy was a marvel in the cockpit, though you wouldn't know it if you ever met him in person. He'd seemed to tolerate Arne more than like him, but the Company Commander here didn't hold his mercenary and pirate past against him.

It was odd how the Morten mechwarriors didn't have traditional ranks. Apparently they had them back on Neubenn, but not since coming out here. Chance Innit, their current Company Commander, had explained it to him shortly after he'd replaced the first one, Nathan Crenchaw, that Arne had arrived here with. He'd said all mechwarriors were meant to fight, not handle paperwork and administrative duties. And whether that fighting meant in the lead or as someone else's wingman, it didn't matter. They fought as a team and would have none of the stuffy rank issues that other militaries dealt with.

And the pay was all the same. Arne was getting exactly what Grady was…who refused to have anyone call him by his last name…so the focus was on building up your individual skills, and it seemed the COF was replacing the ranks. He'd passed 9 of them, while others in this Company had only passed 5. Those would be the trainees fresh out of the academy who hadn't had the chance to work on the others before, so in the skill department Arne kind of outranked them, and was proud his scores on the 'original 5' were still higher than theirs.

But that was because he'd been working on them for the past two years with a passion. It hadn't come easy, and grinding out a few more points now was a trial of frustration. He'd plateau'd on some of them, only to move on and work on others before coming back to try the ones he was stuck on. He also got advice…and gave a little…to the other mechwarriors as they all sought to climb higher rather than view each other as rivals to be kept down.

The teamwork here was beyond anything Arne had ever expected possible. But then again, he'd been working for a pirate, so he shouldn't have been too surprised a noble family's military had found a more professional way to handle things.

He'd been working on mission #7 an hour ago, getting no higher in score today, but trying out a new variation that had sort of worked, though he'd handled it sloppily. Once he got a few more runs at it and smoothed out, he thought his new 'hop and go' strategy would allow him to up his score by a chunk, but the 5 missions that he'd yet to pass were still eluding him by a kilometer. Each mission skillset was different, and he was having a damn hard time doing anything other than slugging it out or running and gunning. The stop and go combat just didn't seem to sink into his head. He felt like it should be one or the other, but the mechwarriors who had figured it out were soaring in the rankings.

Arne had learned so damn much over the past 3 years it was crazy. But how much more he had to learn was even crazier.

And the fact that he actually liked doing the COF missions was the craziest of them all. While the simulators produced heat to mimic what was in real mech combat, they couldn't cook you the same way for safety reasons. So he'd always get drenched in sweat, because his fire discipline was something else that was lacking, and #12 absolutely required it, but he wouldn't get so fatigued that he couldn't turn around and run three or four more, as he'd done today.

But after two hours of it, he was glad to come up to the Sky Pub, grab a coffee, and just sit down and relax. This was the good life, believe it or not, and the work crews out there were making it even better with every new bit of city they added to it.

Grunge work? Not anymore. He was living the life many would-be mechwarriors dreamed of, despite the lack of actual combat. Thought that didn't gnaw on him anymore. He'd seen more than most of the mechwarriors in his unit already, just not the righteous type. That still annoyed him. For he'd like to fight at least one battle for House Morten and see what this 'righteousness' that Commander Grady was always talking about felt like. Though there seemed little chance of that happening here.

A 'blip, blip, blip' news warning sounded on one of the nearby screens and Arne almost ignored it, but there was very rarely any actual fresh updates to the newsfeed that it was usually something having to do with Oasis, so he twisted around in his seat, sipping on his coffee again, and looked over at the flatscreen and the comms staff spokesperson doing the report.

"We have a new jumpship arrival," he said, which wasn't unusual and they always informed people when it happened, but the look on Trevor's face said this wasn't normal. "Two have arrived, side by side, and are deploying 4 jumpships heading towards the planet. There are no transmissions coming from any of the ships, but our jumppoint monitoring satellites were able to zoom in and pick up this image…"

The screen changed from the talking head to the side of one of the Merchant-class dropships and the cross-like logo emblazoned on it. It was hard to make out at the distance of the camera, but he had no trouble recognizing it.

The Red Baron's symbol.

He unconsciously squeezed his coffee cup so hard he crushed it, spilling what was left onto his lap and chair, but he hardly noticed. He just glared at the screen as it switched back to Trevor.

Arne knew four jumpships meant more than a standard raiding party. The Red Baron had probably pulled together every mech he could get his hands on, and was coming here to get some payback that he couldn't get on Cholis.

So much for Drymo being off the map. It looked like Arne was going to get his chance for righteous combat after all.

The comm staffer raised a hand as if to caution people. "Work details will continue as normal for the next 5 days. Based on their acceleration, we expect the dropships to get here in 6 days, at which time all work will halt and everyone will move to shelter locations while our military forces engage the attackers. Until then, it's business as usual. We'll pass on any updates we get immediately."

Trevor's head disappeared, and the image of the Red Baron's jumpship came back up as a side bar while the regular news program resumed.

Four dropships. If he was wanting to loot the place at least two of them would be empty. But if this was revenge, he could have up to 48 mechs coming down, while the expanded Company only had 14. And there was no way to know exactly what the Red Baron was bringing to the party, numbers or tonnage wise, until they landed and walked off the dropships.

But he knew the Atlas would be there, and the Red Baron would be piloting it. He couldn't hope to go up against the Morten heavies and assault mechs without it.

The First Prince had asked him what he would do if he ever had to face off against the Red Baron's forces again, and his answer still held true.

Kill them…before they killed everyone else.