7
Chapter 6
-VB-
Alan Marris (the original)
2980.08.02
It was useless.
"The land they gave us is really shit for mining, huh?" DD-5 muttered while looking at the reports from the mining clones. "I guess it was our fault for not asking for a more rugged landscape. But prioritizing access over mineral rights was and still is not wrong."
A-2 looked at his own reports from DD-5's left and across from me on the round table.
Yes, we built a round table office.
"Feldspar, quartz, hematite, gibbsite, and … nothing really much else," A-2 noted. "Iron, maybe bits of gold, maybe bits of aluminum, a lot of silicon that's gonna need shit ton of processing to be useful… So basically nothing."
"Yes, just a regular piece of land great to build a compound on but shit for anything else," I sighed. "And our factories can't make too much stuff."
"We could still make chips," F-7 voiced optimistically. "The locals still need a lot of them, right?"
"Without better equipment and rare earth metals, the chips we make will be of the lowest quality. They will be inferior even compared to the ones we found in the technologically inferior battlemech models."
"Should we focus on refined metal export then?"
"While we don't particularly care too much about market prices, I doubt there are a lot of traders who will look to buy from a border world that gets regularly raided. We should still ask Anderson, though. Who knows, maybe the AFFS might need it? If we conform to their mech armor composition, then we can definitely sell it to them."
"What?! No! We should be keeping them for our own use! Did you forget that this world has little to no industrial output? We'll be lucky if we can buy locally made radio."
"That is true."
"Maybe we should get them to build up, too?"
"Why would they build up when the next raid is going to destroy it all?"
"... But what if we expanded our services? We're contracted with the AFFS with only one lance of battlemechs. What if we have more mechs, more infantry, and more of everything by the time the current military governorship comes to an end?"
We learned that the process of conquest for the Federated Suns went through phases: the initial conquest and establishment, military governorship, then a transitional phase, and finally the civilian governorship. Military governship was usually headed by the general who was in charge of the conquest or someone else if the needs must or the generals wants a different post. The civilian governorship was headed usually by a noble but not always. Nobles simply made up the majority of the planetary rulers across the Federated Suns but there were a few republics, just the vast majority.
This meant that during the transitional phase, offworld nobles would come in and impose their rule over the admittedly most free citizens of the newly integrated world. This meant that nobles that may or may not be grounded in reality may start to demand things from us.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay here for that long. If that was the case, then we would have to find and move our base, including our newly established factories.
It would be another matter entirely if we were to have a pre-established support base.
Goddamnit, I had to deal with politics after leaving Bet's shitfest.
This was why this verse was worse than Earth Bet! In the aftermath of the apocalypse of the First and Second Succession Wars, the people of this world was still dicking around with politics domestically and internationally!
Was I wrong because I didn't understand it as a foreigner or was I right?
Whichever the case, we were here for now and deal with it until we either won or lost. It wasn't as if they had an Entity hiding in the shadows somewhere, right?
Right.
Back to the discussion at hand…
"What if we just trade a few of the remaining broken mechs for mining rights? Also, we should go out and make surveys, too."
Everyone turned around to F-7.
"That's an actual good idea coming from you, F-7."
"Oh, thanks-. Wait, did you just insult me?"
Everyone ignored F-7.
-VB-
Captain Anderson
2980.08.07
Literal hours after he had received orders to somehow acquire Marris Mercenaries lostech that had some of the engineers and scientists frothing at their mouths, Michael got a call from the mercs in question.
"This is Captain Anderson of the AFFS. Is this Commander Marris?"
"{It is, captain. My company and I have a proposal if you are willing to hear,}" the weirdly robotic if upbeat(?) response came through.
"Alright. What is it that you want?"
"{Mining rights.}"
"... Mining rights."
"{Yes, mining rights. Is the call breaking up?}"
"No, no. I'm just … surprised." While Michael knew that there were corporations dedicated to supplying their parent mercenary or House company, those were few and far inbetween. Marris Mercenary Company was less than six months alone, and they were seeking mining rights.
Well, he did see their factory that they somehow set up in their compound.
"{We have a need for raw resources, and currently, there are no mining corporations active on David II or the David system as of the moment for us to purchase raw ores or refined metals from.}"
No, there wouldn't be. This system was a warzone two and a half months ago. Besides, the main industry on David II prior to their invasion was subsistence agriculture. In fact, this was why the 41st Avalon Hussars needed to get regular shipments of supplies via dropships each month; this world could not even support ten thousand soldiers and their fuel requirements.
Which was, again, why everyone's eyes were on the Marris Mercenaries. While they, one of the honored regiments of the Federated Suns was struggling with supplies, these mercs that didn't even exist until recently was building a goddamn fort complete with a factory!
Like… What?!
"{We are willing to trade a few of the still damaged mechs for the mining rights to the system. Currently, we have two Catapults and one Locust available to trade.}"
Michael knew very well that he could make the decision himself. However, where mechs were changing hands, he didn't want to make hasty decisions simply because mechs were involved.
"... This is kind of over my pay, so I'll patch you over to the general."
"{I am willing to wait.}"
-VB-
General Rachael Jamakawa
2980.08.07
Rachael felt a headache building.
"What is even happening?"
The confusion surrounding the mercs was reaching an all time high (and most likely to rise even higher as time marched on). Just like the captain had reported, the mercs wanted mining rights and wanted to trade away two medium mechs and a spare for the rights. Oh, she knew that they would haggle for as much as they could, but even that was a grace as far as she was concerned.
David System was not a wealthy or mineral rich system. In fact, she would go so far as to say that it was a subpar location for any kind of intense manufacturing due to the presence of Draconis Combine just across the border, which would undoubtedly see industrial buildup as a threat.
Strategically speaking, she should be telling them no if only to dissuade the snakes from getting even more interest here. They were already furious at losing this world to the Suns!
But … supplies were kind of tight. Making this worse was another mechwarrior cabal rising up in not-quite-rebellion against the Prince. Worse, this was happening along the rimward worlds along the Draconis March, which was drawing manpower and metal away from the borders, leaving just the bare minimum.
The high command considered David II "safe" because it was guarded by four battalions and a mercenary company with a history (however brief) of taking down disproportionate number of mechs. As such, supplies had been … kind of thin.
Two Catapults and a Locust would go a long way to repair some of their mechs that still needed repairs but couldn't due to the aforemetioned supply shortage.
She had to say yes if only to improve the combat readiness of the 41st Avalon Hussars.
"Alright, connect them to me, Michael."
He did, audio-only.
"Commander Marris."
"{Good morning, General Jamakawa,}" the somewhat monotone, somewhat upbeat commander replied in kind. "{Have you considered our proposal?}"
"I have," she replied. "But obviously, three mechs, especially damaged mechs, are not worth much in the grand scheme of things. Give me an offer."
"{It would have to be done in person, general. We performed a number of surveys, so you'll have to see them yourself.}"
"Surveys?"
"{Yes, for any natural resources. I have to say, the Federated Suns was wise to conquer David II before the Draconis Combine exploited these resources.}"
"... How so?"
"{You don't know?}"
She loathed to reveal any kind of weakness, especially to mercenaries, but these guys were too odd and didn't act like regular mercenaries.
"... No."
"{Ah, I see. I assume you don't know about the germanium deposit?}"
"What?"
"{I actually think these deposits may be the reason why Polis is built where it is. It is far enough away that any intensive mining won't damage the civilian population but close enough that transportation for offworld manufacturing will not be an issue at all. Of course, due to the wars…}"
She let the man ramble on.
A germanium deposit?
"And how big is it?" she asked before realizing that she cut him off.
"{Our initial survey thinks there are at least 7 million metric tons of the stuff. Of course, our surveyors are a bit on the cautious side so …}"
"And you would … export the raw ores after you dig them up?"
"{Export the raw ore?}" he sounded confused. Why did he sound confused? "{General, we intend to refine them first.}"
Noise just drowned out. Right, they had a factory. They had a factory they thought was capable of refining germanium to industry standard. A factory that got made in under a week. A factory that has already been repurposing mech parts to make new chassis and more.
And then the headache became a migraine.
She didn't have a mercenary compound on her planet.
She had a strategically viable factory on her planet.
Chapter 7
-VB-
In Chapter 5, three clones were sent through a portal into an unknown world for exploration. The purpose is simple: gather anything that helps the Legion.
While the rest of the Legion/Mercenaries on David II were giving the poor general a migraine, the clone expedition found themselves in an unfamiliar forest.
---
2-D
???
Day 1
The forest we - 2-C, 2-D, and 2-E - found ourselves in could be classified as a temperature forest. Oxygen was around 16%, carbon dioxide was around 0.4%, which was around ten times more than Earth's atmosphere while oxygen was three-fourths of Earth's.
Still, it was breathable and without much issue.
Day 3
We followed the river downstream toward the south. Our long range scans, maxing out at 5 kilometers, showed us not a lot. Just a lot of trees, useless rocks, and a river.
Day 6
We found a village filled with elves. Real life elves. They weren't the LOTR elves, WoW high or night elves, Warhammer elves, or Elder Scrolls elves. We didn't approach the village, keeping it at the edge of our scanning range while we explored around it for more clues as to what world we may be in.
Day 7
A fucking dragon attacked the village, and we couldn't get there in time. It took us five minutes to cross five kilometers thanks to our power armor, but even that was too long.
We found a single survivor, and rather than leave them here, we decided to send 2-E back to Home Base with her.
We continued on with the exploration.
Day 8
We ran into JSDF soldiers.
Considering that the Japanese Self-Defense Force ceased to exist on Earth Bet after Kyushu's fall and the subsequent collapse of the legitimate government, these people had to be from an alternate Earth with either access to technology … or due to a portal made by the locals.
Or.
Or, just maybe.
We were in the fictional universe of GATE: Thus the JSDF Fought There. Just like Worm was. A dragon hitting an elven village in the middle of a forest, Check. JSDF platoon led by Itami whatever finding themselves here, check.
… Was the verse where our Home Base was at also a fictional universe, or was our power just fucking with us and sending us specifically to fictional universes through "random" chance? Ugh, the existential crisis was rearing its ugly head again. We already went through this shit when we first landed in Worm; we don't need it anymore!
-VB-
Yoji Itamia (first last), First Lieutenant of the JSDF
When his squad found this burnt-down village, he didn't know what he was expecting. What he did find, however, made him scared to his bones.
The first, and the less important clue, was the giant lizard footprint imprinted into the ground from how heavy the owner of the footprint was. It could easily be a real dragon.
The second and the more important find was the encounter with the people in front of him. Full-face helmet, pristine white and red power armor, sci-fi rifles, and high-tech gadget that would have the Americans drooling with envy.
"Good morning."
A pause.
It was English, and despite not having had the best grade in that course, Itami understood what they were saying.
"U-Uh, hi?" he spoke up as the commander of the platoon. "You are Americans? Or English?"
The lead soldier - because that was definitely a soldier - tilted his head. "I suppose I am American by birth," he said. His voice was a little distorted. There was a double layering to his voice, probably created by the helmet. The soldier also didn't give any more information than that.
And Yoji didn't know what to do. Because it was one thing to run into science fiction people, but it was another to run into foreign science fiction people.
"... do you know what happened here?"
"Yes," the soldier replied. "A dragon wanted a snack, so it ate the elves. It's a shame," he added at the end dispassionately.
And, just like that, he lost his wonder about the encounter. The man sounded so callous about what happened. Yoji, however, decided not to comment on it. He didn't know who these people were, what they were here for … or even if they were from the same Earth as his.
After all, he was on a different world, so a parallel Earth with better tech with access to this world as well was not impossible.
"And the people? They are all…?"
"Not all. We managed to rescue one. Sent her back to where our people are for medical treatment."
"I … see." Yoji didn't know how to approach a situation like this. One, there wasn't any training for this kind of encounter even in the ranger course, and two, he did not want to find out just how powerful those futuristic rifles were when it was aimed at them. If they were American, then he knew how to act. These unknowns? Well, they were unknowns; he knew nothing so he also didn't know how to act. For all he knew, they were deranged psychopaths ready to gun him down the moment he took a step forward; their casual dismissal of the dead lent more credence to the psychopath bit than it didn't. "And may I ask what your purposes are here?"
The lead soldier - if he was a soldier - looked at him for a moment without speaking, making Yoji think that something really might happen, before responding to his question. "We are explorers."
"Ah. I see. Explorers." Explorers that were even more heavily armed and armored than soldiers? Or was the outfit they had on right now the norm for explorers where these people came from? "Would you be willing to talk to my superiors? He would be interested in meeting other humans…" The unspoken assumption was that they were humans.
The lead soldier looked at him for a bit longer, making Yoji and his squad uneasy.
And then, out of nowhere, he reached up to his helmet and pulled it off. And he was a human! Yokatta! He looked European…? No, the man didn't look particularly like he belonged to any one specific place. Yoji would know because he's met two dozen people from all over the world, and this man looked like all of them and none of them. "Sure. My name's 2-C, and I'm the head of the Marris Mercenary Exploration Team." Then he grinned. "Or you can just call us MET. Like we just MET you?"
Yoji rolled that around his head for a bit before he facepalmed. "Your organization name is a pun?!" he yelled in shocked surprise.
"Only the best!" the mercenary laughed.
And though Yoji was groaning audibly, his mind was running rather furiously.
A mercenary.
A mercenary.
A mercenary had every reason to gun them all down if it meant they could both prevent information leak and gather information on them. Yet here was this guy asking to contact the general.
"I'll… I'll call in and see. I'm not sure if our radios can reach our base," he said, trying to obscure exactly where their base w-.
"Alnus shouldn't be too far from here, right?"
Yoji looked at him in surprise.
It took a moment for the guy to realize what he said.
"Ah… I made a mistake," the mercenary replied with the same casual dismissal he used to speak about the dragon attack.
And just like that, the atmosphere that had been steadily becoming more casual suddenly spiked with tension.
Yoji felt his grip on his gun intensify, and he even heard a click of safety going off behind him.
If the mercenaries in front of him heard it, then they made no sudden moves. Did they not hear that or were they simply confident in their armors? Yoji didn't think they would have invested in bad quality armor that couldn't even hear what he did when he was standing only five meters away.
He looked over his shoulder, saw how agitated his squad was, and shook his head. Then he mouthed "safety on."
They did.
"Whew!"
He froze and turned back to look at the mercenary.
"I was afraid we were gonna get into a fight there for a second!" he said with a wide relieved smile. "It would've been awkward to get in contact with your general if we had to do that after we gunned you down!"
… Yoji had to privately admit that this man sounded very confident of his abilities to the point of sounding arrogant.
"You think the three of you can take us on?"
Yoji closed his eyes, and turned slightly - ensuring he still kept the foreigner in his line of sight - to glance at Sergeant Nishina, who looked irritated as hell. Oh, and also, Nishina apparently knew how to speak English fluently, even if his accent was heavier than a tank.
"Well, yes," the mercenary replied. "We have the experience and firepower needed to survive the apocalypse that left our Earth uninhabitable."
Bombs just kept on being dropped in this conversation, and Yoji still didn't know how to proceed from here. Apocalypse? Uninhabitable Earth?
"Yeah, right! You could be making shit up for all we know!"
Yoji was just about to yell at the sergeant to shut up, but the foreign mercenary replied first.
"I mean, I should still have the body cam footage here somewhere that's compatible with standard SD card… Here we go," the mercenary mumbled before pulling out a SD card just as he said and just flippantly tossed it at Yoji. Despite the surprise, he caught it and looked up. "Well, go on."
It was a good thing that JSDF provided soldiers in the Special Region with burner phones.
Yoji pulled his out, pulled out the sim card, and slotted the SD card in. His eyes nearly bugged out at the 2.5 terabytes of storage. Said storage was also packed to the brim. He moved his slightly shaking thumbs to the file location and … randomly picked a video. And screams immediately filled the burnt-out ruins of the elven village as Yoji saw mercenaries wearing armor just like the man in front of him going up against monsters.
The bodycam video lasted for all of three minutes before it abruptly cut off.
Yoji stood there for a few moments, trying to process what he saw. Bile threatened to crawl out and up his throat as he tried his hardest to keep himself still.
'Videos can be faked. All of this can be faked.'
But the details were too vivid. There were too many videos. They were too consistent. This wasn't an animated video, a complicated video game, or even a propaganda piece.
Just … Just to make sure, Yoji opened up another video.
When that video ended, he gave up on controlling the rest of his body and focused on keeping his stomach in check.
There was … maybe only one thing he could confirm here.
"Can you," he asked as calmly as he could, which wasn't very calm but Yoji lied to himself and said he was doing a very good job of keeping his voice very, very stable. "Shoot something? Like that tree over there with that rifle of yours?"
"Sure," the mercenary replied casually before he turned around, exposing his back to Yoji and his squad, pulled his large rifle that was as big as two arms put together, and then paused. "Laser or explosion?"
"One shot of each. Please."
A low-intensity red laser hissed out and struck the burned tree, and snapped it in half. The top half fell over backward, and the mercenary shot one grenade at it. It detonated and made a light show of luminescent light instead of an explosion of gunpowder and smoke.
There was now a crater where the grenade had gone off, and from where Yoji stood, looked like it was about half a meter deep and five meters in diameter.
Yoji took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.
"Thank you for the demonstration." He knew what he had to do now. He unhooked the SD card
(never knew what kind of virus might be in it) and tossed it back. The mercenary caught it as he turned out and smiled. He put his helmet back in. "I'll try to see if the general is willing to talk to you."
"Wonderful!"
"Please don't wiretap our communications. For the sake of a cordial relationship."
"Sure. But, ah, before we part for a moment, what's your name?"
"... First Lieutenant Itami Yoji. Yoji is my given name."
-VB-
2-C
Itami was a smart guy. He almost immediately understood the implications of what he saw. If even a tenth of whatever video he saw was true in his mind, then he knew that the JSDF in the Special Region was now sharing the world with a technologically superior force. Of course, he doesn't know that our numbers haven't even recovered back into the low hundreds, but that was the critical information I didn't share.
He also asked for evidence, of course, and I provided it. Our rifles haven't changed in design since our first year in Worm (those laser rifles Coil's mercenaries had been very good at their jobs… we just made it better), so it should match whatever happened in those videos, which was essentially a battle compilation of all of the battles we have been through during the Golden Morning.
Really, though, what did he see to make him shake so much?
I'm curious now.
I plugged the SD back into the suit's system and pulled up what he saw.
… Ah.
The Teeth's "betrayal." Both of the videos. And particularly nasty ones, too. We, well the others before this me, had been in charge of defending the rear during the initial phase of the Golden Morning. The Teeth, obviously, decided they wanted genocidal anarchy and attacked us. It wasn't out of the blue but they came at a time no one had their eyes on them: the peak of the first battle.
Despite our best efforts, we couldn't save everyone in the ruins of Boston that we were using at the rear headquarter.
Yeah, those would make someone question things. And see horrifying things.
It wasn't often that "murderfuck" happened on an ongoing battlefield, but the Teeth pulled it off before we blasted them to bits.
This left the rest of Itami's squad with us and, well, 2-D got into an argument with one of the JSDF soldiers.
"No, milfs are the way to go."
"I'm saying that college girls are the best!"
And it was about girls.
"Sorry," I apologized to the women of the squad, and they just snorted in amusement. "But you can't deny that this is amusing in an odd way." An intrusive thought nudged into my mind. 'Was I calling myself amusing? Is this a form of self-depreciation?' And then I had another thought. 'Wait, what if the general reacts aggressively to our existence?' A part of the reason why the JSDF had reacted so tamely in the Special Region was because of their technological superiority. They could afford to be more relaxed. Now that we were here? That guarantee - and with it the reduced loss of life - was gone now. The general, if he was competent, will not make the same decisions he had made in canon… But then again, Japan wasn't involved in most of the conflicts of the 21st century, so maybe their general might be less aggressive. Well, if we came to a head-to-head conflict, then we can always just go back to home base with NavGate.
So what should we do now that we knew what world this was? There's plenty of people I was interested in, not really its resources. Maybe I can even get access to magic? And -.
…!
…!
…!
2-D immediately stopped arguing, put his helmet on, and quickly came to my side. 2-E did the same.
As the JSDF soldiers quickly mobilized at our sudden actions, I nodded to them as I activated the NavGate. "Sorry. It seems that there's trouble back home."
To think that the week we spent here in this world was more than a month at the Home Base.
Fucking Draconis Combine, attacking just as my squad was getting ahead in this world.