First op, first part.

With bags under her eyes, Uria kept looking at the papers in her hands. Having gone to the Armor Issuing station and having spent 15 minutes fighting against the most hated enemy of civilization, bureaucracy, she finally had a suit of armor to her name.

Well, she had proof she could pick an armor of the most basic variety or buy a slightly more advanced one and keep it for herself. Going to the storage unit where the new armors were stored, she started looking at the available models. 

The storage unit was one of the 3 biggest buildings in the last bastion. Only dwarfed by the academy itself in height and the administrative building in width, the cube shaped fortress housed countless armors in it, having 5 floors aboveground and more than a dozen underneath. Keeping in mind its purpose the stairs were 5 meters in width and could allow armors to comfortably walk up or down a floor while still having space for another next to it. 

Soon after she started looking at the armors, a technician wearing a blue military uniform came up to her and threw a small barrage of questions at her: "What are you looking for? Firepower? Armor? Speed? Which role will you fill?"

Recalling that the main four roles are command, recon, assault, and artillery, she replied after a moment, "Heavy armor with decent firepower."

"Eh," with a slightly disappointed expression he continued "the usual. Alright, follow me." 

While walking to one side of the warehouse and down the stairs, he asked, "Want a used one or completely new? Used is cheaper, you know?"

"Completely new," she replied without hesitation.

"Gotcha."

After passing four rows of different armors, he pointed at a heavy armor from the series called "Undead Steel 2."

Taking a glance at the armor, she quickly understood why it's called that. It was simply a walking fortress compared to the academy armors she had tried.

At nearly 2.3 meters, it beat out the size of the previous one by a decent bit, to the point where it could be called the big brother of the two. A plate of armor that was 4 centimeters thick made a C shape around the neck, only not covering the front so you could see. The rest of the armoring ranged anywhere from a centimeter on the joints to 5 centimeters on the torso and head, making it truly seem like an indestructible bulwark. For comparison, the original armor Asa used only had 1 cm of armoring at most, being a recon-speed type mech after all.

With excitement in her eyes, she asked if she could try it. After the technician opened the back and nodded, she let her Quietus flow through it. The first thing she noticed is that it was much heavier than the previous one. More than twice as heavy, in fact. Yet it didn't feel sluggish to move in at all, meaning that she could control an armor of this weight comfortably without it increasing the drain on her reserve.

Additionally, in comparison, while the previous armor shrunk around if the pilot was slightly smaller than it or expanded if it was bigger, this one didn't. For example, her hands were just short of fitting perfectly into the gloves on the previous one. But when she took control of it using her Quietus, it slightly contracted and fit her perfectly. This one instead didn't budge a tiny bit. It was designed so your hands would simply go up to the armor's hand. The hand of the armor, being made from incredibly tough materials, was simply controlled by the pilot's Quietus, not their own hand.

This simply meant that it was much harder for someone to get injured while controlling this armor, due to the armoring everywhere you could be attacked from being much thicker. Satisfied, she got out of it and asked to know how much it costs.

"350 credits. No bargaining."

Seeing that she barely had enough at 368, she bought it without hesitation. Leaving the storage unit with an additional staff that cost a mere 10 credits, she headed to the mission station.

Passing countless technicians and armored soldiers, and many other kinds of personel, she finally got to one of the mission stations. The station was just a dome-like structure with multiple terminals to issue out aforementioned missions. Most of those come from rich civilians or corporations in certain sectors. Only some of them were issued by the military, and those were nearly always taken instantly.

Seeing that the station instructed her to let it scan her watch, she did as told and noticed the watch now had an extra icon that looked like crossed swords. "You're successfully re-synchronized, welcome back, soldier Asa." 

Not listening to what it was saying, she kept scrolling through the requests while walking towards the entrance tunnel. One of them finally caught her eye.

Type: Corporate. 

Posted: 2 hours ago. 

Provider: RivTech Unlimited. 

Description: Form a guard team for one of the small RivTech mining teams while they extract vibranium from the lower tunnels. 

Note: Expected low resistance with Stalkers being the highest threat. 

Reward: 40 creds. 

Currently 17/20 participants. All roles covered. Minimum some combat experience required.

After thinking for a moment, she signed up for the mission and kept scrolling. That way, if the mission filled, she would be alerted to head to the gathering point. Accepting a few others, she suddenly got alerted that the RivTech mission had filled up and was told to gather at a specific spot near the great gate.

Looking around after she arrived at the designated gathering spot, she noticed a convoy of four vehicles parked. Three of those vehicles were personnel carriers, used for transporting armors, while the last one seemed like a bulky truck with some mining equipment on it. Seeing that she wasn't the last to arrive, she looked around and tried to find the leader of the operation. After asking around, she was pointed towards a black-haired middle-aged man with a goatee and an impressive mustache that curled upwards.

Checking her out with one glance, then proceeding to look at his watch to check her information. Seeing she has previously completed a few missions, he nodded. "Welcome aboard the team," came the simple reply.

"Thanks, I look forward to working with you," she replied courteously.

When the last of the soldiers arrived, the man with the impressive mustache climbed on top of the truck and started briefing them properly while twirling the majestic curl. "Alright, since everyone here is ready for combat and has some prior experience, I'll keep it short. While the main tunnel is a very long single road directly to the surface, there are many smaller branches off it. The one we'll be digging for vibranium in is the 3B tunnel, 6 kilometers from here. It descends quite deeply into the earth and is one of the main mining tunnels we at RivTech have ownership of." 

Getting up to this point, the man smiled with pride at having multiple tunnel systems exclusively to themselves. "... And one small thing, we're looking for competent people to fill out some of our teams. If anyone shows excellent performance, you'll be offered an exclusive contract with us. Now then, since I believe everyone is ready, let us set off. Go get into the two APCs, please."

After leaving that line behind, he got into the truck, not giving any time to the people underneath to process what was said. Hearing the constant murmuring from the people around her as they got into the APCs, she listened in after sitting down.

"A RivTech contract! A RIVTECH CONTRACT!!!" and "I will try my hardest!" were the main words thrown around. RivTech was the market leader for laser weaponry of all kinds after all. Their mech and armor designs were considered the cream of the crop by everyone as well, and even competitors had to acknowledge they were an unshakeable behemoth. Having had ties to the military since before the Great Upheaval, they were also one of the first ones to start producing power armors.

After listening to people talking about how they will definitely be the ones to contract with such a massive company for 10 minutes, she noticed the vehicle transporting the 10 armors slowed down and finally stopped. Getting off the APC, she noticed a glaring difference compared to before. The truck was gone, replaced by a mining mech, and there were three jet black armors with heavy weaponry, handheld gatling laser level of heavy, standing next to the guy with the mustache, which had probably gotten off of the third apc. 

As the others also noticed that, they started talking about it, yet even that was cut short. The reason for it was both of the APCs, that had each carried 10 armors, turned into two mechs that were slightly bigger than even the mining mech, yet equipped with an impressive arsenal of weaponry. Only the last apc didnt transform into a mech and seemed to be... Just a normal vehicle. 

Noticing the silence, Mr. Twirling Mustache simply replied, "Ah, they're insurance that even if something goes wrong, we can handle it." Stopping here, he thought for a moment then kept going, "In truth, your task isn't just to help protect us; it's also to fetch the vibranium that was mined here by the previous group. And no, they weren't annihilated. The transport mech that was supposed to carry back everything was sabotaged. It blew up, and we had to leave behind the precious vibranium there. Oh and, needless to say, we won't abandon you if it gets dangerous!" 

...They'd totally abandon them, was what everyone thought.