gc

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-

VB-

Normal dropships and jumpships take days to cross a solar system, though the travel duration varied on the size of the system in question. This was because jumpships needed to keep out of gravitational fields lest their K-F Drive gets fucked up.

It was accepted that all dropship travel was measured in days. Some of this had to do with inertia.

If a ship accelerates or decelerates too quickly, then humans become meat pastes on walls and floors.

Thankfully for me, I had something called inertia dampened installed.

The Atlantean database had a schematic for it, I made it, used it, and knew nothing about how it worked like I still don't know how 4G worked. It worked so I used it.

With it and my hyperspace drive both not needing to care about gravitational fields like operators of K-F Drives, our travel time got measured in hours instead of days as we dropped out of hyperspace within the system itself and not at any pirate jump points (Lagrange Points) and flew up to the only habitable world in the system.

"Alan?" Janice called me over the ship-wide comm.

"Yes?"

"You never told us where we were going."

"Right, I didn't. We're currently over an abandoned habitable world."

"... but why?"

"Because I want a quiet place to build up, that's why."

"Build up for what?"

"Well, there are a lot of things to be on the lookout for if I took Cold to any world owned by any states," I explained. "Pirates, raiders, spies, thieves, and so on. You follow?"

"Yeah, but why?"

"Because my ship is one of a kind. They can get the technology inside of it and use it against the other nations."

"So you can help the League?"

Ah, right. "Janice, I have no intention of helping the League at all."

"What?! But why?"

"Because I grew up on a shit hole of a planet that was part of a state that espoused superiority through hard work and entrepreneurship yet never gave me a single chance to rise. It took a literal series of miracles for me to come to where I am."

"..."

"Look, I also don't want to fight the League and I certainly won't be helping the Capellans. What I want to do is grow big and powerful enough that I won't be insignificant again."

I waited for her answer as I got ready to scan the planet. Switches flicked on, and then I pressed a small blue button that "fired" an active scan.

What I got back from the planet was interesting.

"Okay. I want to talk later about this, though."

"Got it," I replied distractedly before turning off the comms on my end. "Let's see," I muttered as I brought the floating noteputer closer to my face. "Human compatible atmosphere, slightly brackish oceans, two distinct flora and fauna origins, ruined cities…"

I didn't have a big plan in mind. All I wanted to do was wait for the Celestial Forge to give me enough points. I would buy some crazy tech or something, build up using that, and then … then what?

Become a duke? The Chancellor? The Prince? The First Lord?

Yeah, sure. I would be remembered, but I didn't want to be a ruler. I wanted to be recognized, acknowledged, and respected, but not because I was some kind of a duke.

Spread compatible technology? I could, but considering that the Successor States are in a constant state of war, what would technology do except make those wars worse?

Help the poor? Yeah, and I would be forgotten as just another charity.

I made a spaceship and left because a spaceship was the dream of my last life and this. I left because I knew that I could not hold onto my girls and spaceship if I remained.

… I supposed that I had my first goal.

"Become powerful enough that no one can attack me on a whim," I hummed as the shop completed the scan of the planet. "I think if I can get my hands on an Atlantean Aurora-class battleship, BC-304 battlecruiser, or Yamato-class battlecruiser."

But to get any of those, I either needed to expend a lot of points for a single vessel if the option was available at all) or I would need to work to make the infrastructure necessary to maintain, fit and fix such vessels.

I needed a proper shipyard. I also needed the manpower to operate them, which I could not do in my current state as I had eleven people at max that I could trust.

I did, however, have access to the Atlantean database, and Atlanteans made their version of Replicators…

Very technically speaking, if I had enough time, then I might be able to go full Comm-.

Ping.

I paused my train of thought as the Forge gave me another one hundred points, but went back to ruminating.

It was also then that I remembered that I had a Habitat Constructor PDA! Couldn't I modify it to help me make the shipyard?

Even if it could, I still needed manpower…

I opened up the Celestial Forge Menu to see if a hundred points could get me anything that might solve the manpower issue I would face in the future.

Getting more [Supplies] would net me more T-Dolls, especially if I intentionally held back on the production coats, but I doubted that I could run a shipyard and the attached civilian infrastructures with just the T-Dolls, even if most of them were hypercompetent at what they did.

Constructor Drone and AI Kernel came very close.

Perhaps all I needed was that and a factory to make bodies for my future loyal AIs.

Hmm…

'Purchase [Constructor Drone and AI Kernel]. Actually, I can also get another 0-pointers so …' There weren't a lot of 0-point options outside of the Vehicles Category. Assistants had two and Quality Appearance had two, which was a third of each of the Vehicles' options. While five servitors would be good to have, it would also be a bad idea when I was still within the wider Free Worlds League territory, which Dansur was. Considering that fighting battlemechs was the primary concern if this world was invaded before I was ready, I needed more mechs. 'Purchase [Knightmare Frame].'

The options I saw before came up again for me to customize the Knightmare frame, and once again, the system gave me very few options as I could not purchase the majority of the options available due to the lack of points on my part.

As such, the ship lurched as my stupid head forgot that I was still inside my spaceship.

"Alan, why did another mech that looks just like yours just pop in the cargo hold?! And what's that IT'SFLYINGTOWARDSME!" Janice shrieked in panic through the intercom.

"Ah, my mistake. That should be a drone and another frame I ordered."

"Old man, I know Janice here calls you old man, but please don't become an actual old man! We are on a spaceship with limited cargo capacity!" Negev shrieked together with Janice.

I snorted as I looked back down at Dansur.

That's where I was, by the way, Dansur. 34 lightyears from both Andurien and the FWL-Capellan Border. It was also a world that the Capellans depopulated during the initial phase of the Third Succession War. There was no one living here now.

'Well, I say no one, but my ship's sensors tell me otherwise,' I thought as I looked back at my Cold's sensor readings. The preliminary report showed that, yes, most of the grey concrete cities that even I could see from orbit were in ruins. While there were a few signs of human activities in those ruins, the farmlands in the plains and forests were more active.

There were still some people here. They just had been forgotten by the rest of the Inner Sphere.

Now, I had a choice.

Did I connect with them or ignore them? With the scrap metals and electronics I brought, I will have a base operating within the week. Within the month, I was sure to have some sort of production rolling. By that point, I would be in charge of anything meaningful as communities of people still living on Dansur would be … meaningless?

Well, their existence wasn't meaningless but more that they would be as important as I had been as a factory worker.

… But they could also be the cause of future troubles when Dansur was reintroduced to the wider Inner Sphere and the other polities decide to use them as a point of insertion, assassination, sabotage, et cetera.

"Well, I still have a few months to decide," I muttered to myself as I set course for an area Cold's sensors reported as high in rare metals.

-VB-

"Mechs…!"

Jarod hissed as he stared at the two mechs that walked out of the not-so-spherical (like his grandfather told him but this one isn't?) dropship.

More than that, the people who walked out were all armored and armed better than any of the roving bandit gangs.

Mechs no longer existed on Dansur; his grandfather once told him about them and how they were both the protectors and destroyers of the Old Dansur. He saw pieces of them once in a while, but he never thought he would see a moving and walking battlemech in his life after the rest of the Inner Sphere had forgotten about them.

And he was scared.

The sixteen-year-old shuddered from behind a bush that he had used to hide from a trideer and hadn't been able to leave quickly enough when he spotted and gawked at the dropship (another near mystical artifact from Dansur's past).

Like hell his bow and arrows would help! Back in his village, only Strong Dan had a gun and that was because his family was the richest family in the entire area!

So he hid behind the bush among the low-lying trees and prayed to Jod that he wouldn't be found or that these people were pirates.

He watched as a floating machine hovered out of the spaceship's cargo hold. Things flew, so why not hover? He continued to watch them from across the clearing…

"Whatcha doing here?"

He froze when he felt a blade across his neck and slowly peered over his shoulder.

One of the soldiers who'd walked out of the ship was behind him. How?!

Teeth clattering and fingers twitching, Jarod didn't know what to do. Did he fight? Did he try to run? Could he move faster than a soldier could with his knife over his neck?

He did the only thing that could save his life. He dropped his bow and arrows and slowly raised his hands.

The soldier drew back his knife and laughed. "I ain't gonna hurt ya, kid! Come on, the commander wants to see ya!"

And then kicked out of his cover and over to the other side of the bush. He screeched in surprise as he tumbled through branches and leaves before tumbling out onto the open grass field that the strangers had settled down on.

He ate a mouthful of grass as he rolled and came to a full stop when his legs and feet all thumped together on the ground.

His world spun and by the time he got himself together, he was surrounded by them. The foreigners.

"... my, what big guns you have?"

Flattery always worked, right?

Someone chuckled and the soldiers, wearing padded black armor all stepped aside.

A lanky black-haired man walked up to him and crouched down. He smiled nonchalantly.

"My name's Alan. What's your name?"

"Jarod…?"

"Good afternoon, Jarod. Are you from the farming village nearby?"

He gulped. "Y-yes…?"

"Oh, wonderful! Can you go and get your elders? Or whoever passes for your leaders? I have a proposition for them. Sew, I want to build myself a base around here, and if I don't hash out a deal before I do that, then people might get upset. If they get upset, then they get violent. If they get violent, then I am gonna have to use my ship there for pacification. That's not a good future, right Jarod?"

He nodded frantically.

"Wonderful!" "Alan" exclaimed as he stood back up and helped him up, too. "Then go and get them, please. Oh, and a gift for your leader," he said as he pulled out a gun.

Jarod knew guns. People used them, even if most people forgot how to make them.

And the gun he saw looked very new. And shiny. And valuable.

He gulped as he gingerly took the gun, made himself look submissive like dogs before their owners, and slowly backed away.

The man just kept smiling.

Creepy.

-VB-

"How do you think I did?" I asked the girls.

AK-12, the one who kicked the boy into the clearing, gave a thumbs down. "Horrible. You sounded and acted like a cartoon villain."

I blinked. "Wait, really? I gave him a gift and everything."

"Yes, a gun. Like it didn't matter to you," AK-15 sighed as she pulled her helmet off, allowing her platinum hair to cascade down. "It looked very much like a power play to me."

"Shit, really? Did I scare the kid?"

"Maybe a little," Negev chuckled from my left.

This was the plan that I managed to cobble together in atmospheric re-entry and search for a good landing spot.

I would negotiate with the locals in the immediate area around me, and would act to fill a niche they might be missing out on. I knew for a fact that they would need medical help, and buying and selling medicine was a good way to build up goodwill. They might even need basic tools, and I would happily supply them from my own factories once I built them. Oh, there are bandits? I and my girls can certainly take care of them for you, but imma need just a bit more land for compensation; you don't need to pay me in money, goods, or services, just land you weren't using anyway.

I didn't need to consider the locals as my enemies. They were just people, and people liked it when their lives got safer and more convenient.

"Alright, let's set up the base camp! I want barricades, CD!" I shouted towards the Constructor Drone, and the thing beeped at me before moving to collect the scrap metal inside the ship to use as its construction material.

I rolled up the sleeves of my neo-cotton shirt - much better than any of the worn synthread workwear I grew up with - and got to work hauling. Some of the girls groaned, including Janice, while others shrugged and wordlessly got to work. By nightfall, we had a secure perimeter, tents, and guests.

LWMMG spotted them first as they walked out of the thick woods and into the clearing.

It was a group of six, including young Jarod and two soldiers.

The one at the center of the group and the oldest of them all was an elderly woman with her hair done in a bun, eyes squinting, and almost trembling as she walked up to our camp with a cane.

"I am the elder of our village," she said before she glanced at our weapons, ship, and mechs. "And you are no ordinary people."

"We aren't," I agreed. "I am Alan Marris, the leader of this small group. I'm interested in setting up a base, and wanted to know if you were amicable enough for me to do so."

She stared at me for a moment. "Has the Inner Sphere changed?"

"No," I replied. "I only found Dansur because of a quirk in how my ship goes FTL. Inner Sphere has forgotten you and nothing has changed."

She clicked her tongue. "Pity. I will agree to you being our neighbor on the condition that we help each other."

… well, this was going far better than I had feared.

"I accept, but don't expect me to solve all of your problems."

She stared at me again. "You're not like the Inner Sphere mercenary commander I'm familiar with."

I blinked. "No, I suppose I'm not."

She grunted before just walking away. Her guards and group members all floundered before following her back to their village.

"So that happened," P38, ever the cutesy and snarky one, huh'ed.

VB-

By the end of the week, we had a hangar big enough to fit my Cold and a little more. Building the houses attached to the hangar took me and my girls no more than a day, mostly because I was the one blitzing through it all.

That's where I kind of ran into a problem.

See, I didn't have a source of materials for construction after making quadplex to house us all and the hangar itself. Oh, I still had my electronics restocking every now and then, but the actual raw material for large scale construction was all used up.

This left me in a conundrum. A lot of what I wanted to do required me to undertake large scale construction. The electronics I got from the Forge was also not geared towards middle Atlantean technology as the Alterans moved on to crystalline technologies at some point.

Yes, they used actual crystals for processing power and storage because they were better, apparently. I also couldn't buy it from the locals because they didn't make steel or concrete in large quantities or uniform quality. If that wasn't enough, then it was that I was running out of fuel for the Cold's fusion reactors.

Ping!

… Huh, sweet. Just when I needed it.

I opened up the Celestial Forge Menu and indeed saw the extra 100 points sitting in my account for a total of 200 points.

I wasted no time scouring the Forge Menu to find the solutions I was facing and found them. Each solution was priced at 100 points. Fuel Production would get me any kind of fuel I needed, which meant I could also sell it if I began running low on funds. Rsource Generator would get me a warehouse of unspecified size that would fill itself up full each day.

I purchased them both.

Ping!

Hmm? Didn't I just get-? Oh no, this was a message.

"'Thank you for your purchases. Because you are in possession of a large construction tool, your two facilities have been put on hold while you choose their placement locations. Celestial Forge will hold onto your facilities for a full week before they are automatically spawned. Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful day.'"

I opened up my inventory and pulled out the Habitat Constructor PDA, and saw the two facilities clearly on the screen when I turned it on.

I pulled it up to see if I could place them immediately but couldn't. The clearing was already crowded with the hangar, houses, and the packed landing area. Trees blocked me from building everywhere else.

"... I guess I'm chopping trees today."

I then turned to look at my Glasgow.

But uprooting them with big mech will be more entertaining, right?

-VB-

Jarod stared at the stacked lumber currently sitting just outside of his village.

It would be good to have wood ready before winter. At least no one would go cold this time.

The elder, though, looked absolutely gobsmacked.

"A mech? Uprooting trees?" she yelled in honest shock. "My, if the noble houses, other mechwarriors, and megacorps got their hands on you, there wouldn't be anything left! Your mech isn't even an industrial mech!"

Alan, the "commander" of the mercs - that's what the elder called them - in the forest, had come over with fresh lumber and asked if they would like to trade all of the lumber he had for a steady supply of food.

With the elder gobsmacked, her second eldest son agreed on behalf of the village.

She was still in shock, some ten minutes since the man and another of his team arrived, each piloting mechs.

He could see how these beasts of metal could be used to fight, especially if they could pull out the trees by their roots (or snap them at the stem in case of some).

Why did he keep staring at the mechs?

Jarod wasn't sure. At first, they terrified him. Then they made him feel small. Now? Now, he wanted to pilot one. He wanted to be a warrior who stood up to defend his people.

His bow and arrows were not even toys. They were primitive and useless, yet they were what he had learned to use for all of his life outside of the few times that he got to shoot the village's guns.

The mech… it was everything that he wasn't and more.

So he sat there and watched.

And realized.

Sitting here and watching wasn't going to get anything done. He needed to move. He needed to… do something!

"H-hey!"

Oh, he was up on his feet.

The mech closer to him turned.

"Hmm? Oh, it's you, Jarod. How are you doing, man?"

He blinked. That voice…?

"Wait, scary knife lady?"

If a mech could blush, then this one would because its pilot was vocalizing the happy complimented woman sound.

"Ah~, thank you! So what's up?"

He gulped.

"Y-you guys need someone for work? I can work for you all."

It came out quieter than he intended. Draws. Did she even hear hi-?

"Really? That's great. Alan was just looking to hire some of the locals to join us."

"Really?" he asked as his heart soared.

"Yup! Come by tomorrow. We'll have something ready."

And then they were gone in the next hour.

He also got a dressing down from the elder for his brazenness… and then she gave him am mission.

"Keep an eye on those people for us," she demanded. "If they ever turn on us…"

It was a heavy mission.

-VB-

Part of our deal with the "Village Between Three Hills" - that's what they called their village and the people who lived in it - was that I would take care of some of the local bandits.

When I talked with the elder and her people while I was over at their village to sell the lumber for food, I got a list of targets.

The Black Skull Horde in the northern plains, Five Star Bullets in the deeper forest, and the Rotgutters in the nearby city ruins. All of them were bandit clans, using whatever scraps and relearned knowledge to raid, pillage, loot, rape, and burn.

The Three Hills Village wanted the Five Star Bullets gone first, and I was inclined to agree.

But they struck first.

---

I jolted inside my Glasgow when something struck it from behind and shook its entire frame. Whirling around quickly, my Knightmare Frame's sensors quickly found three dozen people in the woods, all aiming their guns at me.

"Enemy at northeast of the clearing! I need assistance!" I called out quickly as I pulled the frame's rifle out from its holder and laid suppressing fire while I backed up towards the barricades.

Their guns pinged off against my armor, but I noticed three groups of five quickly spread out among the trees. My eyes widened when one of those groups pulled out an RPG and fired at me.

I jerked the controls as soon as I saw the RPG and was rewarded for it when the grenade missed me and struck the barricade to my right. I immediately trained my rifle on them and fired. The RPG holder died when a bullet tore through his head and turned him into a red mist.

Then my frame lurched forward as it took an RPG to its rear cockpit. Growling, I turned back to them but, this time, kept my eyes out.

I'm glad I did because that's when the third group and its RPG shot at me.

This time, I ducked and shot back.

The sensor glass cracked as one well placed shot ricocheted off of it, but the reinforced glass held as I used Glasgow's left hand to cover it from one angle of attack at least.

And that's roughly when my reinforcements arrived.

From atop the barricades, AK-12 popped out, her silver hair fluttering in the wind and laid suppressing fire with her namesake rifle. LWMMG pulled out of the compound with the other Glasgow, and fired back at the bandits. Behind LWMMG's Glasgow were the other half of my company, and the bandits ran for it.

"Secure the perimeter!" I ordered before firing off one last time. "They could be waiting to sneak into our compound."

"{Secured, chief,}" P38 responded with her light German accent. "{Jericho, Negev, Spas-12, and I are holding fort. Janice is safe inside the warehouse.}"

"{We need to push them now, captain,}" LWMMG urged. "{This had to be a sizable portion of their force, and we already have their base marked down, don't we?}"

We did, and if I let them go now, then who knows when they will be back. Maybe they might try again when I was sleeping next time.

"Keep Jarod on standby with the rest of you," I ordered. "LWMMG, Type 64, Galil, AK-12, AK-15. Grab the Cold and fly out with us. I want you to give us air support."

"{Yes, sir!"}"

While they prepped the combat freighter, I pushed my Glasgow over to the dead raiders.

Most of them were armored and armed in subpar armor and equipment by the normal Leaguer standard. Guns looked rough. Unfinished. The RPG …

Was that duct tape?

The front handle of the RPG was a shovel handle and the rear exhaust was a literal bucket.

"Jesus Christ, are you lot playing Rust or something?" I muttered to myself as I grabbed their bodies (squeezed their chest to make sure they were dead) and then set them down in a pile. "Weapons" were tossed into my compound where no one should get their hands on them.

… Actually, I might even be able to sell the weapons to the farmers. Make it cheap, you know? While they weren't decent, it was better to have some weapons than not. Especially so considering that I will be getting food in return, not money. Less guilt that way.

I paused in my work as I saw another Glasgow, one that I had purchased after purchasing [Fuel Production] from the Forge. "Who?" I asked. Many of my girls were trained to pilot Glasgows, so I was just checking to see if it wasn't Jarod or Janice.

"{AK-12, sir.}"

I hummed. "Acknowledged. I guess three frames will do better on the ground than just two."

"{Captain, this is Galil. We are ready for take-off.}"

I got a ping from the Forge at the same time, ignored it, and gave my order to my team.

"Alright, then we're moving out! I want these bandits gone before sunset!"

---

The Five Star Bullets resided on top of a cleared hill with a concrete fortress. They had rugged machine guns mounted on all sides of the wall (if only one for each side).

With the current technological parity on the planet, this should have been a very defensive position.

However, they were not prepared to defeat a spaceship armed with artillery.

Galil grinned as she punched it, and Cold's 150mm Howitzer Artillery fired. The ship lurched back a bit in the air where it was hovering, but Galil kept her eyes on the fort. The wall she was facing exploded outward as the shell exploded on it, and she fired again.

Her attack drew the attention of all of the bandits inside the fort, and they tried in vain to shoot her down.

Unfortunately for them, Cold was a nimble bitch, and she easily swerved out of the machine gun emplacement fire as she moved side to side and fired back in turn.

She watched as all four machine guns trained on her, completely unaware of the three Glasgow Knightmare Frames running up the hill. They couldn't, really, when they had gunfire turning them deaf.

And then her captain and her comrades were upon the walls.

Bandits screamed as they laid waste to everything. Some tried to focus on the Glasgows, but any stiff resistance got an artillery strike from her.

And just like her captain wanted, all occupants but those under the age of ten were killed.

As for those who were too young…

Captain gathered them up and into the Cold, and though some of the children glared at us hateful as they understood what happened, they became the first inductees to the company.