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[NSFW] The Picker [Battletech, Superpower/SI]
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
Going to sleep one night with a faulty furnace when the temperature outside was below zero Fahrenheit and the temperature inside was below freezing... not such a good idea. Apparently, I had ether died or had pissed off a ROB in my sleep because I woke up in a ten-year-old boy's body. In my previous life, English was my first language. Being an American, it was my only language despite trying to learn German for four years of high school. All I had retained was a smattering of words in German, Spanish, and Japanese. So, when I heard who was presumably my mother talking to me in Japanese, and my father in German, I was mightily confused when I understood what both of them were saying to me.
More was the fact that I didn't struggle to reply to both in the language that was spoken. My day was a daze of watching morning holovision cartoons. Normally, I had the impression I would have been in school on a Monday, but for one small fact. That being that I had been sick with a fever for a week. Bedridden for the last three days, my fever had broken in my sleep the night before. All of which was odd as I felt fine, physically. Mentally was another matter.
Mentally, I was distracted by little motes of light smattered over a large radius around me. I had a sense of color and size about each one, All shades of the rainbow and more besides rested in my awareness in what had to be measured in kilometers. Many were in buildings, Others had to have been underground, and a few were actually moving in and out of my awareness. The biggest one so far had to have been a vehicle of some type that measured itself in the tens of tons. To say I was baffled was an understatement.
After lunch, I wandered the house looking for clues about the glows and my life here. My parental units were older, perhaps mid thirties to mid forties. My father, Caucasian, blonde hair cut short had gone off to work. My mother looked like an odd mix of Japanese and Caucasian with red hair and blue, slanted eyes. Myself, looking in a mirror had the green eyes of my local father. I looked more White than Japanese, but there were hints of the heritage. My hair was a light red almost pink color. I think the color might have been referred to as a strawberry blonde.
Pictures on the walls indicated a family unit of five. My father, and evidently middle sister were dressed in a military style uniform in the ones that looked most recent. My eldest sister was dressed in a uniform that I recognized from a distant memory as a Lyran Military Cadet. Her pictures seemed older in my hazy memories. Presumable memories of the body I now inhabited recalled that she had left for Tharkad over a year previous to today. My estimation of my parents' age ticked up a few years at the revelations.
Names eluded me until I looked at the placards on the pictures. The Von Waldeck family, Father: Leutnant-Kommodore Markus Elmo Von Waldeck, Mother: Hiname Von Waldeck-Ibutsu, Elder Sister: Cadet Akii Gertrude Von Waldeck, Middle Sister: Cadet Sana Susanna Von Waldeck, and Son, Me: Ernest Sue Kotsu Kariudo Von Waldeck-Ibutsu. Wow, what a mouthful of gobbledygook.
Memories of the boy I had replaced were hazy, indistinct in my mind. I couldn't tell which branch of the military my family served in exactly. I got the impression that my Father and middle sister served in the planetary militia, but which planet eluded me other than it wasn't Tharkad. Akii had gone to a military academy on the Capital World which likely meant that she was off to officer school. My local friends were a blur of silhouettes. Shadows in my mind.
I tried to think of something else as I wandered into what looked to be a sitting room. My mother was setting up a table with a tea set that caught my attention as most of the pieces glowed in different colors. Mostly green glows about the objects now that I was paying attention. Some of the metal spoons had colors shifting to yellow, and one of the cups had a bluish tint to it.
My musings were interrupted by my mother, "Kotsu-chan, you shouldn't be up. Go back to bed. You need your rest."
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
A week of sickly observation, stuck in a strange house was not any sort of fun. The Doctors that my parents had hired to look after me were as baffled as I was about why my memory was spotty. Secretly, I had the thought that the boy I was inhabiting was meant to have died. I didn't recognize the name as being canonically important. Nor did I know anything about the planet I found myself residing on, Ender 09, other than that it was a part of the Ender's Cluster. That and that it was in the Timbuktu Theater of the Lyran Commonwealth.
The Lyran Commonwealth, now that I recognized from years of playing the Battletech game. Both tabletop and roleplaying versions had little tidbits of the lore rattling around in my head. The Ender's Cluster wasn't noteworthy enough to be mentioned other than a cluster of blank canvas worlds for a GM to have their players visit. Literally just about anything could be lurking around the corner, and I would be as surprised as the next bloke about it. Having metaknowledge of the setting was more than useless if I couldn't use it until much later in life. Setting those memories aside would be difficult.
I was thankful that I whatever had happened didn't stop my new brain from making new memories. More that my near eidetic memory seemed to have improved. I started by reading what books I could find in my room. Elementary grade level math, science, and local history were what I was mostly interested in as I read. My reading speed had also increased which let me retain much more than I thought I could have in just such a short time.
I hit a small snag in my reading to catch up plan when I discovered that there were no books above about a fourth or fifth grade level in my room. Going from advanced calculus to long division was more than a little boring. My Father, here, had a study, but the door into it was locked. More, I hadn't yet found a written book in English in the house in which I had access. My middle Sister, Sana, kept her door locked while she was at the local military high school. Akii's room had been turned into my Mother's new office. Akii's things had either gone with her or were in storage. I wasn't allowed to go into the basement in the week of exploration that I had had.
On the glowing objects, I had discovered very little. Other than the tea set and parts of my father's wristwatch there was very little in the house that was apparently old. I had a feeling that there were glows in our basement. And, I had a going theory that metal stuff would glow in warm colors while non-metals would glow in cool colors. Only time would see if my theory was correct. So far, my only two samples had the benefit of being worked by people, and being older than anyone in the house. Family heirlooms, both would be passed down to one of their children in time.
Of my family, I had discovered that the Von Waldecks were Nobility in the Ender's Cluster. I was something like 81st in line for the Lordship over the entire cluster. My Father was grooming my sister, Sana, to take over his position as the lord of the Andrew Continent of Ender 09. The smallest of four continents. He was also the second in command of the planetary militia. My Mother, Hiname, had in recent years been getting more involved with managing Andrew's civilian Spaceport services. It meant that she was often on her communicator when a dropship was in the Port. Presumably coordinating what was available for export at that moment in time.
There had been some speculation that one or both of my Parents' activities was responsible for my illness. Sana had been confined to her school's barracks in the off chance that it had been an attack. My illness was so unusual that the thought of a rare poison had been floated in hushed tones. In any case I was well enough to go back to school by the following Monday. Another week of being followed around by bodyguards before I could go back to "School".
I was dreading going "back to school" because of the very fact that I was going to be stuck in grade school all over again. I expected to be so very, very bored. In the meantime I was going to ask for permission to go exploring the local town in the morning. I hoped that I could learn more about what the glows were about while I was out.
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
Walking around town, I got the impression that we were located next to a suburb type of place. There was only one main street of low rise buildings on both sides. A sort of walking outdoor mall that had only maybe a block of businesses. The businesses stretched out around two side streets, but these seemed to be lesser somehow. A small courthouse sat at the head of the street with a small jail across one of the side streets. The police department had a small outpost about a mile down one of the side streets. A local bank sat in the other end of the main drag.
All of the buildings glowed in various spots. The roofs most notably did not glow even though the courthouse had a roof made of slate tiles. The most glowy shop had to be one of the antique stores. There were three such stores it town, but 'Asader's Curios' had the most of any of the stores. Naturally it was here that I went into to explore.
Walking the aisles, most things seemed to be various knick knacks that one would find in any home. Old furniture, tools, books, and technology. I paid attention to the books, but mostly it was what looked to be fiction. One book caught my eye, a treatise on assaying various ores containing the palladium group of metals. It was written in English and was over a hundred years old. It glowed in my vision, so I picked it up. Near it were two other books related to prospecting written in English. I picked those up too even though they didn't glow. Looking in the front, I learned that they were both less than fifty years old.
I had a bodyguard with me which was nice as there were other books written in English in this little nook of the store. Putting my three finds down on a shelf, I asked him to go get me a cart while I looked. Instead of going himself, he radioed to the guard we had left at the entrance to do it for him. I only had four guards out with me. One was guarding the car, one with me, one at the front door, and the last had disappeared when we got into the store. It was this last one that showed up with a cart within five minutes. There were a few baubles in the cart that looked old. One glowed, but I got the sense that it was on its last legs as a complete object.
I looked up into the man's face to ask, "Have you been shopping all this time?"
"It's my job to protect you, so I've been wandering the store looking for threats. I might've picked up a few things that caught my eye on the way."
I studied his face for a moment before I realized that he had a great poker face, "Well, if you're going to spend my father's money on your own stuff, you won't be getting that," I pointed to the suspect object, "unless you know how to repair it. It's on its last legs, and I don't want you wasting money on junk."
"Junk? I'll have you know that that's a stator coupling for a 2897 GM Ferraro. Those are notoriously hard to find, especially out here in the sticks. Last legs my ass, kid, you don't know what you're talking about. I can use it in my classic 2923 GM Ferraro when I get home. Only a few more parts and I can have it up and running again."
I quirked an eyebrow at him, "Well you'll be spending your own money on it, and you'll never get me to ride in your penis mobile if you're willing to use suspect parts."
"Penis mobile? Hey! I'll have you know that the GM Ferraro series are almost all classics for the entire sector. Just about everybody that has one is always looking for parts wherever they can find them. This is a lucky find, and I'll be taking it. Thank you very much!"
"Frank," my other bodyguard spoke to the man behind the cart, "You're causing a scene. Do the kid a solid, and spend your own money on that. Besides, that looks expensive and we only have a limited budget. A budget that might have to be amended if the kid tears through the bookshelves like mad if I'm right about the look in his eye."
"Alright, fine. But you'll be eating Batcsof when I prove that I can get Olga up and running again with this, Serg."
I looked up at Serg, "He named it? Doesn't that make it worse?"
Serg sighed, "You'll understand when you're older, kid. We've got that cart you were wanting. Have at it, kid."
I smiled, put my three books into the cart, and went back to looking through the shelves. A particularly heavy tome on the maintenance of Patron Loader Mechs was on the bottom shelf. I recognized that the book was in very good shape for something that was both hundreds of years old and produced in another Successor State. It was also written in English which combined that it was for an extinct design was probably led it to being in an antique store in a German predominant small town. Again I looked at the little sign proclaiming that all hardcover books cost only 3 Kroner. With difficulty, I put it in the cart.
Frank looked askance at me after he read the title, "You know that that's for something way older than my Olga, don't you?"
"Sure, I do. I also know I'm not likely to run across one. But it's about a mech. Civilian, sure, but it should be a good source to introduce me to the topic. My parental units will likely be wanting me to go off into the military when I'm older. There's no shame in wanting to get a head start on my education..." I trailed off because I noticed that a glowing book was hidden behind what looked to be a secret compartment in the bookshelf. I likely wouldn't have noticed it unless I either knew a lot about woodworking, or I wasn't cheating shamelessly with my powers. Looking up, I found a tag that listed that the shelves were not for sale. Internally I cursed as I moved the entire bottom shelf onto the floor.
Pressing the back wall in until I heard a faint click, I opened up the secret compartment. Inside were four books. Books that I knew had to be on some watchlist somewhere. Maintenance guides for the Rampage 2G, Rampage 4G, Whitworth WTH-0, and Rifleman III. The last one threw me for a loop. Only one had ever been made. What was a maintenance guide for it doing way out here in the middle of nowhere? Hell, only 24 of the WTH-0's had been produced. I snagged all four books and stuffed a loose sheet of paper into the WTH book without looking at it. I took the time to look more carefully at the books on the floor. Picking out a few more books on mech maintenance and geology. I put my four finds in the cart with my other random purchases. Before doing the same thing to the other four shelves. I looked up to see that Serg had at the least realized that something was amiss as he was standing between me and the camera into this little alcove. Going through the other shelves like this was exhausting, but I found that each of the four shelves had secret compartments in the back. I found more hidden books that I dutifully put in the cart. Mech maintenance guides, one on factory equipment maintenance for Ferro-Fibrous armor, another on factory equipment for CASE and another for Double Heat sinks.
It was the find of a lifetime. I really wondered now if those books were ever meant to be found. There was nothing in the lore that I knew about them. And that little fact scared me. What if they had been found in the future by someone. Someone that had quietly been disappeared via ROM's machinations?
We were over budget by the time I got done. Frank grumbled as he had to shell out the cash for his own stuff. And I insisted that we use cash to pay for the books even though the teller was some young zit encrusted young girl that looked bored out of her mind. We told her where the books had come from. She just counted them up without really looking at the titles which was all to the good as far as I was concerned.
Getting them home, I immediately demanded that we take all my books to my room. I wanted to look through my finds. Serg helped me move everything to my room which was nice. I was really tired after all and the box the sales girl had provided for us was way too heavy for me to carry by myself. I leafed through the WTH book first until I found the loose sheet of paper. Looking at it, it appeared to be a map to something located in the Petra Mountains near the East Coast of Andrew.
My Father came into my room an hour after dinner. I was in the middle of trying to read one of the books about mech maintenance. It was slow going mostly because of all the technical jargon being used that the book assumed you knew what it was talking about. It was fascinating and incredibly dull at the same time. My map was safely hidden away under a loose floorboard that I'd found in my closet. From the hidden sweets, it looked like the previous me had used it often.
I looked up when he softly knocked on the door, "Serg told me you had an interesting day today, Earnest. Would you like to talk about it?"
I stared at him for a minute before talking, "Serg was nice helping me take my books up to my room. Which is a shame since you'll have to kill all my bodyguards that were out with me today."
He quirked an eyebrow at me, "I will? Why ever would I need to do that?"
"So they don't talk to the wrong people. An offhand comment to the wrong person could get us all killed. I'm still debating if we should make copies or not to send to the Archon. Depends really if you're willing to shell out on the shipping costs or not."
"Shipping costs? Son, if it's just paper, then I can use the HPG to get it to the Archon. Serg told me you found a hidden stash of books. That's something that's easy enough to send to the Archon on Tharkad. Cheaper than sending it by freight all the way there."
I, myself, sighed, "Then you would get us all very dead, Father. They'd likely kill Akii and Sana too in the off chance that you had sent them a message another way. It's more expensive to send it by dropship, but it is safer to send it that way. I'd suggest sending it to Akii first, but honestly I can't remember if she has a good head on her shoulders about subterfuge. Sending it directly to the Archon would very likely get it intercepted by Loki or Hemdial. There's no telling what they might do with it. Getting it to the Ender 09 Estates General might be best. I don't know, really. But I do know that if Comstar, Wolf's Dragoons, or Cranston Snord get any sort of hint that we've found something significant from Amaris's reign then we'll all be very dead within a year."
"What are you on about, Earnest? Why would those groups care? Comstar is neutral and the Wolf's Dragoons are a mercenary force. I've never even heard of the last one, how in the world did you hear about him?"
I was silent, thinking for a minute. I had likely just shown a little bit of my hand to the man, but I liked living. And I didn't want some ROB's machinations to get me killed as fast as IT could, "Father, there is no good way to answer that, but I'll try. Do you know how the HPG system works to send a message to someone else on another planet? You might think that the HPG just sends the message on to the nearest hub where it is then sent on down the line until it gets to the receiving station that it is marked for. That station then sends a call to the person or entity that needs to know that they have a message waiting for them if they are important enough. Or, a person checks in at the HPG regularly to see if they have any messages waiting on them."
"Yes, that's generally how it works, Earnest. Why, do you think it's done differently?"
"I know that it is. What I just described is how most people think that it is done. Actually doing that for over a thousand stations is more complicated than the system can handle. We are talking hardware and programming limitations here. Instead of that, what happens is that the entire database of messages in the HPG is sent out to the next station. The data packet gets to a hub and its sent to all the nearby HPG stations. A message will travel the breadth of the entire network waiting for the recipient to pick it up. The system is then updated that the message has been received and in due course is deleted from the messages on the network. Or at least it is almost everywhere. Comstar's facilities at the Successor State Capitols and on Terra likely keep a copy of everything so that their agents can read through the mail. Messages to and from important people can then be read, and changed if need be, before they are sent out. Part of the reason direct face to face messages are so expensive is that Comstar doesn't get a chance to intercept the mail. Important movements could take place that might upset the balance of power that Comstar has manipulated to be in place.
"Worse are all the times that Comstar directly interferes with scientific progress. You're old enough to have heard of the strange accidents that happen to scientists that work on re-inventing lost technologies. There's a conspiracy theory that there is a group, or groups, out there that are killing people that work on such things. Making the human race stagnate scientifically for its own good. I'd say that maybe ninety percent of those killings are the work of Comstar. They read the mail enough and they'll eventually find out where those labs are located."
"Assuming that all that garbage that you just said is true, son, why would Comstar even bother? What's in it for them?"
"Comstar is based on Terra. Old Terra, where the Hegemony was formed. They're just following the example set for them by their predecessors in the Star League. Keeping the Successor Lords focused on each other so that they don't come a knocking on their own doorstep. Also, there is a pervasive theory that if they limit technological growth that they can keep humanity from killing itself. They looked in at the horrors of the first and second Succession Wars in the fear that we'd eventually kill ourselves over wartime Star League tech. Nevermind that their own actions have likely killed billions with all the worlds that have failed because their terraforming failed. Scientific progress that might have helped solve that problem before it destroyed living conditions.
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
"Comstar, like many in the past thousand years have fallen into the false idea that weapons kill people. Weapons don't kill people, Father. People kill people. Whether with a rock, stick, sword, gun, knife, etcetera, it doesn't matter because people will find a way to do so. They're blaming the tools in a logical fallacy. Not the people behind the tools where the blame should lie.
"About a thousand years ago there used to be laws specifically designed to punish people for mass murder. Or for things like Crimes Against Humanity. All those generals and soldiers that carried out mass killings of entire populations were never punished. Instead, Comstar has chosen that their weapons needed to be punished."
"And how, son, would Comstar enforce such punishments? When what you describe goes against the adage that 'Might make Right'?"
"An easy thing for them to do would be for them to turn their assassin squads loose of the offending generals. Hmm, they run the MRB, so they could put bounties in the system easily enough. If a crime edged itself into crimes against humanity, then they could issue death warrants. They'd probably have to have a trial in absentia for those, though to make them seem legitimate. Lastly, in extreme cases they could Interdict worlds or entire nations. An economic death might spur the citizens to do something about their leaders."
"I see, and what of the Ares Convention? How would that fit into your idea, son?"
"Well, how are they enforced now? Because I hear about all the battles that take place inside cities, but I never hear anything about those generals or mercenaries being punished for breaking the rule about no fighting in population centers. Stray shots don't just disappear, Father. They end up going places like into buildings. How many people, civilians, are killed every time one of the Successor Lords decide that they want a planet for themselves? There's very little in the way of casualty reports on the news about such things. Or, when there are and the numbers are in the high thousands, there's no mention of how they got that way."
"Oh, Earnest," My father finally came into the room and sat down on the bed to give me a half hug, "You're much too young to be worrying about such things. Your mother and I decided to put your holovision on age restriction for a reason. And..." He trailed off likely because he had seen what it was that I was reading, "Do you even understand what it is that you're looking at?"
"Sprechen sie English?," I switched to English before he could get any words out to the contrary. "This page is talking about keeping sure that your mass to surface area locations don't become too stressed via lack of proper lubrication. Specifically I'm in the section about maintaining leg actuators. It goes on to give examples of common battle damage and how that might be repaired. Why, did you want to read it?"
I looked up at his gaping face. He looked shocked so I blithely went on as if he wasn't sitting in shock, "Some of the technical jargon is hard to parse out because the book is written like the reader should already know all that stuff before picking it up. But I think I'm getting the gist of things. There's some calculus in here that'd I'd really rather try to work out with a calculator than try to see what's going on via wrapping my brain around the equations. There's more of that sort of stuff where it talks about maintaining the laser weaponry. I haven't opened the book on the 4G up yet. That variant is supposed to have a Gauss Rifle in it as standard equipment. I should think that that should be easy enough to understand since it's just a maglev on steroids."
I stopped because my father's hug had gotten tighter. I looked up into his eyes. They looked stony and his mouth was set in a grimace before he spoke back to me in German, "If you didn't have my son's face... If I was more important in the Lyran government... If I didn't know that my son had had a very bad fever... I'd think that my son had been replaced with an imposter. Your accent is atrocious, but I did understand what you were saying. The question remains about what has happened to you, Earnest.
"My son was such a simple boy. He didn't talk like you do in seriousness. I feared that I'd not have a son in the military at all even after he was born since he had such a gentle soul. You however talk as if you have an old soul. Who are you?"
I quirked an eyebrow at him, "I don't know. Am I Earnest? I have some vague memories from before the fever. Am I a personality shift set about by brain damage caused by a high fever? Am I an old soul reincarnated into your son who touched the face of Death? I have no idea. I do know that the Capelins either are, or will be, working on cloning tech in the next few years. Maximilien will be wanting to replace Hans Davion so that he can get passed his brilliant strategic mind. But that won't take place until sometime in the 3020's. I think Max tries to do something similar with the Free Worlds League but both plans are doomed to failure.
"Hmm, my knowledge of that is also likely why I know that the Wolf's Dragoons, and Cranston Snord, are members of a spies-in-force group sent by the descendants of Kerensky's Exodus. Here to scout the Inner Sphere for an invasion by the Clans. I could launch myself into a big gripe about them, but I don't really want to put you and me into any more danger. Hmm, perhaps something more tangible. Something that's easier to prove?"
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
"Prove it? How, Earnest?"
"Well there's two forgotten factory complexes that I know will be discovered in the future if fate is left to play out. The one on Loxley will be discovered in 3034 by a Mercenary. It is an old Star League factory, so without the Helm Memory core discovery it would only be a curiosity in today's knowledge base. I know roughly where it is located. A few years of searching and I could find it, I think. The Other factory is a secret Amaris facility that made the Rampage mech. I know roughly where that one is too, but getting to it would be a problem. If Fate plays its hand it will be found and retooled in the late 3060's or early 3070's."
"Wait, you know where the Helm Memory Core is located?"
"Yes, and roughly how to get in without the failsafe being triggered. It's a bitch and a half that honestly I'm not sure could be replicated by someone else. It is set to be discovered in 3028 and distributed to the five major Successor states. The Periphery get copies of the core too, but Comstar is successful in destroying their copies before they can get much use out of them.
"There are two other forgotten cores, but I only remember where the one on New Dallas is located. Getting to that one is fairly easy except for Comstar having monitoring in the system. There to protect the planet from gave robbers and Lostech prospectors, even they don't know that the New Dallas warehouse bunkers are there and intact."
"Son, Earnest, my history of the downfall of the Star League is a little spotty, but wasn't New Dallas lost in Amaris's war?"
"It was, yes. New Dallas was a marginal world that was colonized when terraforming tech became better in the early days of the Star League. Amaris tried to get the population on New Dallas to comply with his rule, and when that didn't work Amaris's troops used nuclear weaponry. Enough nukes were used that it destabilized the Terraforming. The planet reverted back to its natural state, and the survivors of Amaris's terror campaign fled the dying world. It has been roughly 250 years since all that happened. Because there were survivors left to flee, we can infer that no cobalt laced nukes were used. So, there is likely little radiation to worry over. Only the harshness of New Dallas's original atmospheric conditions would need to be contended with by any explorers."
"Those two sound like major operations to get at them. Can you think of anything simpler that might be used, Earnest?"
"Umm, there are two Colossus Dropships that you might be able to find. One is on Epsilon Eridani in a secret Star League Depot in, or near, the Shamus Mountains. The Dropship is supposed to be in pristine condition and full of Star League era Mechs. It's set to be discovered in 3067 during a battle between two mercenary groups.
"The other Colossus on Phecda is crashed and located under the ice near where they are set to build a water purification plant. It will be discovered by mech sensors in 3024 by Cranston Snord's Irregulars. They end up salvaging several functional mechs from the wreck. And the Lyran Commonwealth cannibalizes the dropship later. Being as it is 3010 you might be able to find out if they are planning the water treatment plant yet, and if so, where they intend to put it. The crash should be within a few kilometers of that site."
"Earnest, all of that requires that I either go places, or send someone in my stead. Can you think of anything that can be confirmed over the HPG?"
"Well, um, Oh! You could inquire about the XNT-3O Xanthos from the Capellan firm of Hollis Incorporated. They don't make it anymore, so they might be amiable to either selling the line, if it still exists, or the license to produce the mech to the Ender's Cluster. There's a forty-five ton Capellan tank called the Predator Tank Destroyer that was produced by Ceres Metals Industries. Again, an extinct design, but they should still have the schematics of the tank in their files. It went extinct for a fairly good reason, but I remember it was easy to repair and had a low profile. Stick some heavy ferro-fibrous armor on it, replace the AC20 with a LB20-X, and replace the ICE engine with a 270 rated Fuel Cell engine, and you'll actually have a worthwhile tank.
"In the mean time before all that is invented, there's the Thumper Artillery Cannon that's supposed to be put into production on Hesperus in 3012. The Thumper Cannon weighs in at ten tons with twenty rounds per ton of ammo. So, replace the AC-20 with a Thumper Cannon, maybe add another ton of ammo to it, and add three tons or so of armor to the tank on the sides and rear. Maybe get Vicore Industries, if they exist yet, on Demeter to do a design workup of the new tank. Maybe five years of prototyping could get a product ready for production.
"Closer to home in Lyran space there's the abandoned factories on Arcturus that are owned by an unknown entity. They used to belong to the Arcturan Arms company, but they were bought out by MacEnroe Motors. Bad business decisions led to MacEnroe Motors going bankrupt in 2551, so I've no idea who owns their property now. There should be factories there for the Marsden II Main Battle Tank, the Büffel VII Engineering Support Vehicle, and the sixty ton CRS-6B Crossbow mech."
"Hmm, keep your books to yourself, son. I suppose I can send an encrypted message to the Ender's Cluster Estates Generals asking about if we want to get into the production of war materials. Maybe have them inquire about the MacEnroe Motors facilities on Arcturus with the Arcturus Estates General. This Thumper Cannon, do you remember what it's supposed to do, or its ranges?"
"Um, Ranges are the exact same as either an Autocannon five or a Large Laser, I think. No, that can't be right. I'd ask after that as well. Say you heard a rumor in passing about the weapon, or something. It should be in the prototype stages at the moment, anyway. I do remember that it will hit everything within thirty meters with the equivalent damage of an AC-5 and splash damage for another thirty meters of slightly less than half of that. They're good for firing on infantry, close packed tanks and mechs, and for minefield removal. Though like with regular artillery there is a grenade factor if you should miss your target."
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
--------
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
School no matter the century was by turns interesting and boring as hell. Former Earnest had really been a simple boy. Middling grades, I learned were common for him. Now, after the fever, there was talk of splitting my day between advanced math and just about everything else. The teachers were more than a little surprised when I tested out of elementary math. Heck, I'd probably forgotten more math than they had at the middle or high school levels, here on Ender 09. Instead they took my suggestion that all of my math be moved to private tutors on Saturdays at the start.
I should probably talk a little about how time was calculated. If you needed to use the HPG, or anything for off-world standard, then one had to be aware of the Terra Standard Time. Which oddly enough was set to Eastern Standard Time without the annoyance of Daylight Savings to worry over. Which meant 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 325 days in a year except on leap years. Terra itself, I understood was still adjusting their local time reference by leap seconds which meant that they were off of Terra Standard as well.
Then there was local planetary time to worry about. Ender 09 for example had a long day at 27 and a half hours. It's year was longer still at 428 local days. We still had 12 months, but each month was 35 days long with eight of the months having an extra day. Which meant that our weeks were eight days long with 53.5 weeks in a year. Most people had to keep track of this time scale too since Ender 09's primary industry was farming. A longer year meant a longer growing season. It also meant a longer winter, but the axial tilt was only 15 degrees so unless you were very near the poles the winter wasn't very harsh.
Ender 09's Planetary primary export was food. Usually sent to either Ender 03 or Ender 07. Our primary import was radiated excrement. The Continent of Andrew mostly dealt with livestock. Which meant meat, wool, skins, and various leathers. We had our own looms which churned out tons of clothing that we shipped out all over the Ender's Cluster. We had a huge population of Angola rabbits that produced a large quantity of wool per year. There was a local beast that we had somewhat domesticated that produced wool silkier than anything else in the sector. It was this product that was our primary luxury good.
Ender 09 did have a local industry to worry over as well. We produced our own munitions for the weapons used principally by our Militia. Granted that changed in quantity as we lost or gained equipment, so we kept the excess for up to five years before it was exported. Storage was the only limiting factor there. Various small arms munitions, all four of the Auto Cannon rounds, Mech grade Machine Gun rounds, LRM and SRM rounds, the works, if it was ammunition that you needed then chances are that we produced it in some capacity. It was a little known fact, but we were also one of the few places that still produced Gauss Rifle shots which were almost universally sold to the Lyran Military. Also granted that our production output on those was limited to less than a hundred tons per local year.
Andrew produced the tracked APC for most of the Ender's Cluster. The Continent of Wiggin produced the wheeled APC. And, we ordered our hover APC's from Ender 01. Just about everything else, military, was either ordered from off world, or came here as salvage. Not much really happened in the Cluster via Pirate activity. The last small raid had been seen in the cluster, on Ender 05, some three standard years ago. The last major raid had happened, here on Ender 09, twenty standard years ago.
I studied the battles of that fight in the local library on my days off. Asking my father about if everything had been gathered up in the time since. I asked for a metal detector and was told that if I wanted one then I'd have to pay for it myself. I did have a small allowance. I used some of that to buy a decent steel shovel. I then started hunting underground glows, shovel in hand. I probably looked demented, addled by my fever as I wandered around town with a shovel over one shoulder and a sack in the other.
Most of what I dug up was junk. Only really useful for the scrap heap. I kept track of where I found clusters of stuff. One farmer's field had quite a lot of old shell casings in it. It was the steel and brass from that field that put me over my goal for the detector that I wanted. Only trouble was, was that it wasn't locally produced. I had to have my father order it for me which introduced me to the bane of interplanetary trade that was shipping costs. What I wanted was relatively small, but it had to travel through three jumps to get here. Space on a transport was at a premium.
My father was nice enough to spot me the shipping, but now I owed him just over a thousand Kroner. I continued to hunt for items exclusively using my glow sight until a month later when my detector arrived at the local spaceport. I had thought that I had managed to whittle down my debt to about half that when I was hit with local shipping fees which put me over two thousand Kroner owed to my parents. I wasn't amused that they had made me pay for what a typical civilian might pay for a special shipment when I knew for a fact that they had used both the Militia and shipping magnate discounts to get it to me cheaper.
But I'd show them... I was reading the instructions as soon as it was out of the box. It took me a little time to get up to speed on using the detector, but I was out and practicing in that farmer's field in seemingly no time. I was digging up casings for two months before I hit a big payday. The slagged remains of an exploded tank of some sort. Enough scrap that I was able to purchase a small beaten up flatbed tow truck. It had a good engine in it and a decent winch on the back.
I was out and getting the bigger pieces in the time it took me to cobble together a way for me to reach the pedals reliably. Then, then I started to really rake in the profits when I found exploded things. I searched through the local Library hunting for past local battle locations. Turned out that I had been pilfering scrap from a battle that had happened 187 years before I was born. The range of the thing would likely keep me busy for a year if I were to try searching the whole thing. I had my parental "loan" paid off less than a month after I had gotten the truck. After that it was just the cuts that I owed to the Farmers for borrowing their tractors to dig up the big pieces. I really needed my own if I was going to keep doing this for money.
I kept track of how much of each type of metal I was pulling out of the ground. Near enough to winter to stop and think about it, I had pulled over ten tons of lead out of that one farmer's field alone. That much lead in the ground had me worried, so I endeavored to run some environmental tests at the earliest opportunity. I started, before I went off half cocked to test groundwater, at the water treatment facility to ask how much lead they pulled out of the water supply on any average day. Their reply seemed large, so I asked to see their yearly records. They, in turn, wanted to know why I wanted to know that. I explained that I wanted to see if there was a correlation between battles fought and an uptick in lead groundwater levels.
A month or so later I determined that there was an uptick in lead levels after battles. I wrote out a report on it as well as a report on how much lead I had pulled from the ground in the span of a few months. Included in my appendices I noted the equipment that I had been using and a request for an Engineering vehicle be assigned to my company from the Militia stores on detached duty. I signed and dated the report. With a backup in a secure location, I asked my father if he could review my work after dinner one night.
When he was done reading through the report he just put it down on his lap before saying anything, "Earnest, why did you bring this report to me? Your mother could have helped you with a report to send up the line to the Planetary Government."
"Ah, but then I'd have to explain the thing twice. Better to skip ahead to the top of the local Militia. As far as I can tell, nobody has been cleaning up the old battlefields of the harder to remove contaminants. I mean sure, I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life, but eventually I will need to learn how to order men about. It's probably better to start out small with people that you can vet for me. And if I can get enough money together, I'd like to order my own Engineering Vehicles so that I'm not dependent on the Militia. Maybe get a government contract to remove battle scrap for the Company. See if I can't sell the business to someone before I have to go off world for school... "
"Earnest, you're rambling. Those are all very decent points which tell me that you are thinking about your future, but they don't really tell me why you skipped several points of protocol to bring the report directly to ME."
He had stressed the last word, so I gave him a reasonable answer, "Barring the fact that you are my father, and have at least been trying to teach me lessons about life as a Lyran citizen? You are also the head of the local Militia. Shouldn't you be concerned about attacks on the citizenry and livelihoods of the people that you are sworn to protect?"
I watched him raise his right hand to his temple to rub his head, "Yes, Earnest, that is in my general job description. All this report is saying to me is that you want to have access to borrow, at the Militia's expense mind, Militia equipment and troops to help you dig in the dirt. It doesn't say anything about an attack on the people nor their businesses. If you were in my command, I'd have had you up on charges for saying something like that to a superior officer. Now, are you going to explain yourself about why you are testing my patience?"
"Oh, um, I knew that the technological regression was bad, but, hmm... Okay, I thought you would have known. I'm rambling again. Starting over... Lead is a toxic element. It basically acts as a neurological inhibitor in the brain after it gets into the bloodstream. There's all sorts of physical symptoms of lead poisoning as well. Even with medical treatments the results of what lead can do to the body are permanent. The Water Treatment Plant filters out the lead from people's drinking water which is likely why there haven't been any noticeable symptoms in people. But the animals? There would need to be tests run to see if dangerous levels of lead were building up in the meat supply. That said, it would be easier to just nip that future problem in the bud by having at least someone out cleaning up all the lead laying in the ground."
"So, in essence, Earnest, what I'm hearing is that if you had written this report properly you were aiming for this problem to be taken over from you by the government?"
"Which is why I had just provided a possible solution to a centuries long problem. I don't really want to have to search for another hobby-like business to earn money. I was writing that with the assumption that officials would know how dangerous lead poisoning was. Maybe get a chance to learn something of vehicle maintenance from people that actually knew what they were doing. I can clearly see that I'll have to re-write it if I want to get a contract out of it, if you don't know just how dangerous that it is to have lead in the drinking water."
He was still rubbing his head, "Earnest, you're only eleven years old. You don't know all the things that you should know about how the government actually works which is why I'm going to give this back to you without doing anything about it. One of the reasons that you've been making any money at all in your venture is that there is already a bounty on found lead. That farmer whose fields you've been digging up probably only let you do that because there's quite a stiff fine for knowing that there was lead in the ground. After this, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to write off an imaginary expense of having his fields cleaned of contaminants. I'll let the tax office know that you pulled over ten tons of lead from his fields. You'll likely get that tax bounty instead of the Farmer, but I see that I'm going to have you sit down with someone to make sure that you are keeping accurate records. If for nothing else than to make sure that you are aware of the tax code and it's loopholes. Also, that you're going to need a protocol teacher if you want to deal with the government in a sneaky way like that."
"Oh, um, have you heard anything back about questions you may have sent up the line at my insistence?"
"Only that my idea to produce an Ender's Cluster Militia tank has some merit. There are apparently talks taking place to determine how much national support we might receive to build such a factory. At a guess, they're probably in talks with the Archon about obtaining copies of the Arcturan Arms cores if not for moving the factories here, wholesale. As with any business, Earnest, it is often better to start small and grow it as the demand supports."
I took the report back, "Thanks Father, you've given me much to think on and learn."
I turned to go back to my room in defeat. I heard him clear his throat, so I started to turn back, "Earnest, you've been focusing on duty and schooling. Do you not have any friends?"
It was my turn to sigh, "I get along well enough with the kids in my classes, but... Well, since the fever I'm having to get to know people all over again. Some of the boys that claimed that they were my friends seem off to me. Like they're only saying that so that they can get close to me in the hope that I'll be an important friend to have later in life. Others that claimed to be my friend and I've gotten to know better are bullies. I don't know what I was like before, but I'd have hoped that I wasn't a switch like one of my nieces was in my past life."
"A switch? What do you mean?"
"Someone that's mean in one setting and an angel in the other. She was the near perfect angel at school, but she was terrible with her mother and her little sister. From the impression that I've gotten, the pre-fever me might have been something like that. A gentle boy at home and a bully at school. I've been trying to make inroads into learning what the other non-bullies are like, but there is resistance. A mistrust either in my motives or in the Class divide."
"And any girls you might be interested in, Earnest?"
"You do realize that they're my age? Imagine how you would feel if you got regressed into a ten year old. Looking at them sexually is probably more creepy for me than it would be for a normal boy my physical age. Beyond being friendly in classes, I've not really had the chance to get to know any of them beyond observed behaviors."
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Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
I really needed a drive. In my past life only two things could calm me down from the stress that I was feeling now other than sex and playing games with friends. Since I had no friends, and sex was out of the picture that meant going for a drive or starting a fire. Winter was on the horizon but it would still be uncomfortable to just start a campfire for no reason. Hell, the plants necessary to make chocolate couldn't even grow on the world I found myself on for some reason that escaped me. That put smores out of the question. And I didn't even know where I might be able to find the other two ingredients since I was pretty sure that sugarcane couldn't be grown here either. Sugar just wasn't a part of the local diet like it was in Old America.
So a drive it was...
My extra workload was getting to be a bit too much as I tried not to think too much on things that didn't involve driving the truck. The roads were at least well maintained I noted as I drove further into the countryside than I had ever been. The leaves on the local trees here didn't change colors like they did at my old home. Here, they grew a protective sheathing that fell off with coming of warmer weather.
I was contemplating my life as I drove in a structured meditation. The glows out here were few and far between. Often they corresponded with the location of a house or a barn. I wasn't really looking for anything of note as I had picked a random direction and let whimsy take me where it may. Sometimes I'd turn this way or that to look at an interesting piece of architecture or maybe to look at a plant that I'd never seen before...
My three kilometer radius meant that I had to slam on the brakes when I saw a large, underground glow flash into and out of my peripheral vision. Backing up on the deserted road I found the spot again and turned so I could get a better look at what I had seen. It was large and roughly mech shaped. I could tell that at least part of it was missing. It was also surrounded by tiny motes which likely meant that it might be worthwhile to find out who owned said land. See if they might be amiable to letting a detectorist clean their property.
First though, I looked at my noteputer to see that, Yes, the local version of the GPS knew where I was. I marked my position as a waypoint and looked for side streets that could take me closer to my goal.
It took me two hours to find the general location of the properties that needed to be searched. In that time I had had to stop at a local fuel station to fill up. I was tempted to go ask if the locals knew who owned what properties, but my recent lessons in protocol stayed my hand. Instead I headed back to town to try looking up which farmers owned what properties. A targeted mailing campaign might work better to drum up business, and from what I could tell the idea of a contract might better protect both of our interests.
Trouble reared its head when I found out just who owned the properties that I wanted to search. Two of the three properties were owned by small, Mom & Pop type family farms. The last was owned by the local Andrew APC manufacturer. Presumably they would have people that could scan their own fields for heavy metals. Worse, they'd have their own mercenary units that might interfere if I were to find something... provocative on their land. Or even, perhaps, nearby... This called for some protocol advice from a Master.
I went to see about making a formal appointment with my mother.
---------------
Sitting down across from my mother as I did my best to get through a formal tea sitting was straining all of my protocol education to the limit. I could tell just by looking at her stoic face that I had a long way to go if I wanted to try this again with someone that wouldn't give me the slack of being both family and technically still a child. We were talking over the lull in my business when I mentioned that I had found a new, potentially target rich area.
"I sense that we've gotten to the crux of you asking to meet with me, Yes?"
"Yes, Mother," I tried to keep my back straight as I looked her in the eyes. Mouth held so that I showed as little of my teeth as possible, I went on, "There is a decent chance that I can get two of the three properties to agree to a surface scan. The third however concerns me."
She took a sip of her tea, "How so, Son?"
I in turn took a small sip of my own tea, "The third property belongs to the Andrew Love Incorporated company. I am suitably concerned about third party interference."
"Let alone getting a contract in the first place, No?"
"Yes," I suppressed my natural inclination to sigh, "There is that wrinkle as well. Which,"
"Which," my mother interrupted me out of turn, "Is why you've scheduled this meeting to ask for my help. Son," she placed her teacup down delicately on its saucer, "I can see that you are at least trying to be formal, but you're still too young yet to try to manipulate a protocol master through their chosen Art." She laced her fingers together in her lap before she went on, "Why is it so important that you would want to search near or on the ALI grounds?"
I looked at her, really looked as I kept my back straight. She may have dropped the pretense of formality, but I took another small sip of tea before I went on with my reason, "Because I think there may be the remains of at least one old mech somewhere in the vicinity of the boundary lines of all three properties.
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Xixtosovix, Mar 31, 2022Report
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Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
My plan to send an unsolicited mail advertisement of my business was scrapped over the ensuing conversation. Now, a month and a whole lot of extra studying later I was the brand new Fifth Rate, Tax Code Inspector for the Continent of Andrew. Since I was still in school, I got to choose my assignments. Naturally I chose the Heavy Metal Bounty Enforcement taxes to inspect on properties of my designation. Ideally, a Third Rate Inspector would take a Mech out to scan the terrain, but the Tax enforcement division was fresh out of available Mechs for such a task. Usually the Tax office only did spot checks with confiscated Mechs while the owners straightened out their tax problems.
It was starting to get cold when I rolled up in my salvage truck to the front office of ALI. A child walking in to their office asking to see the grounds manager was scoffed at. Security even had the gall to show me out even after I told them that I was there on official business. What they didn't know was that I really did have the backing of the Continental Government on my side. I called my boss since it was my first day to ask for permission to escalate my case based on the lack of respect shown to a tax official trying to do their due diligence in upholding the tax code.
I came back three hours later being escorted by the police and with a warrant to search through their environmental mitigation records. The Manager, when I finally got in to see him did not look pleased. I had had to go through three secretaries, numerous calls into the Tax Office, and a great number of delays by Security to see the man in question.
I was not feeling charitable before the screaming started, "What's the meaning of this! We pay our taxes! Do our due diligence to clean up the grounds every five years as per the matter of the Law!"
I stood there stoical as spit nearly hit me from the screaming manager. Calmly, I replied, "Herr Hickleston, I came out here to perform a spot inspection on a portion of the land owned by Andrew Love Incorporated. There's been an an increased level of heavy metals being filtered out of the drinking water. Some members of the government want to be seen as doing something proactive to curb the levels. I'm sure that after reviewing your paperwork, and performing the spot inspection that nothing will be found that is remiss. I have every confidence that you are doing your job responsibly. However, I will likely be needing the use of of one of your engineering vehicles should I need to remove any evidence of maleficence. Moreover, should I find that you have been negligent, then we can discuss whether we use a metric to determine the Fine levied against ALI. Or, if we can come to some other mutually beneficial arrangement."
I paused to let my words sink into his brain. I could see his facial muscles tick as he thought of an obvious solution to the problem of dealing with me in a timely manner, "I should also warn you now, Herr Hickleson, that should Andrew Love Incorporated, or one of its sub-contractors interfere in my inspection either on or near your property, then the fine will be... substantial.. ALI is not the only party whose land will be searched in this inspection, and I would hate to have to fine you for something that should happen on their land..."
"But you will. How much were you thinking the fine might be if there is interference?"
"Just, so we're clear, Herr Hickleson, it will be in the tens of millions."
"Over twenty million Kroner!," he growled. "Have you lost your mind!"
"You misunderstood me, Herr Hickleson. The fine would be somewhere over fifty million C-Bills." I watched the blood drain from his face briefly before going on, "I will notify you when I am finished with my inspection, Herr Hickleson, but unless I get help, I expect that I'll be out there for the entirety of the winter."
"Help?," I was inwardly pleased that he latched onto the hook that I had sent his way. "What sort of help?"
"Access to a mech's deep scan results would likely speed the process along, barring any interference with local metal deposits. I will be out here at first light tomorrow morning to tell you where I will be searching based on a review of your records. I still have several surrounding property owners to inform of my Inspection today, Herr Hickleson. If I may have those files downloaded into my noteputer and on the reusable drive that I have provided, then I will take my leave."
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Comparatively speaking, dealing with the two other land owners that I needed to see was rather mundane. I informed them what sort of equipment they might see me using, and that if they saw me digging then to steer well clear of the equipment. I also informed them about the fines levied should they or anyone else be proven to have interfered with my inspection. That anything that I found in the ground would be carted off at the government's expense. And that should any profit be made from carting off metals would be available to defer any of their taxes unless that I could prove that they knew about the contamination in the first place.
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
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I was hard at work the next day in laying out grid coordinates over the forty-eight acres of the battlefield that I had "discovered". My special sight could only see the really old stuff as I looked at my readings again on my noteputer. The region I was in had at one point been a mud-prone field with rocky outcroppings. Now, it wasn't much better as I dug through the muck to find my first bit of lost treasure. A spent AC/10 casing came out of the ground near good as new because of the Nickle content in the Bronze shell casing. Normally the casings would be made of Brass, or so I thought, until the mech pilot assigned to watch over me informed me that some worlds didn't have ready access to large quantities of Zinc. So, there were a more than a few manufacturers that used bronze instead of brass for their Casings. The ones one had to watch out for were the steel Casings because they tended to go bad faster, relatively speaking.
After that, I spent days just collecting bits of spent armor, ammo casings, and bullet/rounds fragments. The battle, such that it was had ranged all over, and it was my job to clean the soil of the metal bits. Much of this scrap, I just sold directly to ALI in a bid to save the coin necessary to haul it off to the scrapyard in the city. We both saved a few Kroner here and there in the arrangement, so I didn't get much flack from my bosses about the change in operating procedures. On the fifth day, I spent a fair amount of time digging out the warped remains of what had once been a twenty ton vehicle or tank of some quality. The thing was waterlogged so badly that even if it had had value at one point, it was so much twisted, eroded metal, now, that it was no better than a twenty-ton piece of scrap. It too was sold to ALI with my compliments for the saved drivetime. I wound up pulling two more twisted scrap piles out of the dirt over the next two weeks. Weighing in at a total of fifty-three tons, their value as metal put a pretty penny into my bank account even as expenses were drawing down the figure slowly.
For the next few weeks, I dug up bits and bobs. Little pieces of metal that seemed to be leading my bosses and ALI to wonder at why I had been so insistent about cleaning up the entire site. I claimed a duty to the people. They needed someone to be thorough for the benefit of their continued good health if for nothing else. My arguments were wearing thin on the day that I started to uncover the large bulk of an Assault tank out of the ground. The tank, an Alacorn Mk IV, was built during the First Succession War which was why I couldn't see it. It also turned out that two of the three Gauss Rifles were salvageable as viable weapons. The tank itself was trashed though so my payday was diminished somewhat. But still, seventy- eight-ish tons of scrap is nothing to laugh over.
With the chance to study Lostech at their fingertips, ALI snapped up the tank at a premium price. I didn't mind so much that they were buying everything that I had found so far, but it did worry me for when I started digging up the mechs. There were at least three in the ground that I was aware were individual mechs. There was also a jumbled pile of stuff that had discernable shape. It was almost as if someone had tried to push a bunch of stuff together for salvage purposes, only to abandon the idea later. Over the years the pile of stuff had then sank into the soft ground, here, never to be seen again. Or at least never until I came along. ALI had only bought this field as a buffer property. It had never done a survey scan on it because it was never meant to be used as a testing ground for their tanks.
Now here I was, digging up what they should have done properly years ago. And getting paid for it. I had another tank shaped object to get out of the ground before I moved on. By my reckoning it would be in the middle of the next week before I got to uncovering the massive pile of stuff. In the meantime, I uncovered a waterlogged Devastator Heavy Tank. All of which was of scrap quality except, surprisingly, for the Type 240 fusion engine as its power source. It had been hit, once, but it was in salvageable condition. I even heard it running as I gave the mercenaries the chance to earn some coin by removing it and fixing it to running condition. Quite a lot of stuff used the 240 engine since it was mounted in 20, 30, 40, 60, and 80 ton machines. The Engine sold for slightly less than the markup for retail to the Ender 9 Militia. It was a good sale that was making me rich.
What I didn't know, though was that higher government officials were taking some, small, notice of what was going on at my cleanup site. I didn't know the man that had shown up a few days later as I was repositioning my equipment to dig around the pile. He came wearing a hardhat and safety clothing at the least, so I let him be as the shovel got to work on its excavation. I planned to dig a trench around the detected metal jumble looking for outlier pieces of metal. Then I'd carefully work my way inwards. Some of the returns were a few feet below the surface where even my handheld rig would have detected a metallic return. As I worked, dirt crumbled and washed off of the pile to reveal mech hands, and feet.
The crowd had grown by the next day as I saw a few reporters in the group asking questions about what was going on here. I saw my nominal 'boss' there answering questions after lunch. I probably should have stopped for protocol reasons, but I too was getting excited about what might be in the pile.
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XixtosovixNot too sore, are you?
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Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
Battletech - Self Insert - Meta Knowledge - Teen - Lostech - Antiquing for Money - Scrapping for Money - 3010 AD - Lyran
I stopped digging about a third of the way down the pile of mechs. I didn't really have much in the way of trench supports and I was starting to see wall crumbling from the relatively soft soils around the mech pile. Another consideration to note as I pulled up the scan on my noteputer was that the mechs were all jumbled together like a complicated Jenga pile or worse, more like a game of pick-up-sticks. Carefully, after waiting for the dirt to settle for a few minutes, dirt was moved from atop the pile and into the freshly dug hole.
I was in the middle of consulting my noteputer again when the mysterious man from before was suddenly standing at my elbow, "Excuse me, Tax Adjuster Von Waldeck-Ibutsu?" I flinched a little as I hadn't seen the man approach as I'd been so focused on trying to determine hardpoints for the various mechs on top of the pile. I half turned and nodded as I punched in a few more calculations before looking up at his face, "I'm Hauptman Dietric from the Ender 09 Militia. The General Von Waldeck assigned me to oversee your operations after you sold the engine to our reserves. I've some experience with salvage operations and was wondering if you'd like some advice."
I looked more fully into his face before answering, "I saw you observing from a safe distance earlier, but I'll need to see some identification before I let you involve yourself in this." The ID he showed me looked authentic enough to my young eyes but making sure was part and parcel of my protocol lessons. Thirty minutes later, after receiving confirmation from the local Militia base that Hauptman Dietric was who he said he was, and was supposed to be here, I asked him for that advice, "What did you have to say, Hauptman Dietric?"
"I was only going to say that you could have the option of sub-contracting out this pile to the militia to sort out. Before you've only delt with things lying about by themselves. You don't need the headache of having an accident report to fill out when this pile eventually tumbles because the wrong thing was pulled out to get at the salvage that's in there."
"Oh? I think you have the wrong idea about my methodology in this operation. The useable salvage is a secondary consideration. I'm just here to clean this all up. Here, look at the scan of this mound," I partitioned the scan to just the mound of stuff and transferred the file over to his noteputer, "I think, no, I'm fairly sure that when this stuff sank into the ground that the lighter stuff folded itself over the heavier items. I might be digging out an old sinkhole that's filled itself in, or the soft mud just wasn't solid enough to hold all the weight when the rainy seasons hit in the spring and fall. See how some of the returns are as if a mech was sitting on its side, or sitting atop another mech?"
"Yes, I can see that. Why did you show me this if you aren't interested in the salvage?"
"Like I said, I intend to remove the entire pile to another location to either be melted down as scrap or sold as salvage. The trouble is that this thing is so deep that it has impacted other nearby items that need to be recovered. I was trying to determine what needed to be removed first so as to prevent any accidents and to determine hardpoints for said removal. I think I want to start with this return, here," I said pointing at a leg sticking up at a thirty-degree angle up from the pile, "It looks like a Light mech leg, but I'm concerned the rest of the mech is wedged into this portion here, between two other mechs. I may need to sever the limb from the torso, but if the hip is viable, then the leg would need to be detached first. Likewise, I could try to start with this other more intact looking mech that is positioned on the outside of the pile and sitting at a funny face-in angle on the pile though removing it might be problematic because it looks like the left arm is jammed into the pile."
"Oh, hmm, in that case," he too got a faraway look on his face as he considered the problem of untangling the pile of mechs.
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We eventually decided to take out the leg first. With all the mud still clinging to it, it wasn't readily identifiable when we had a closer look at where the other two mechs were in relation to the trapped mech that the leg was still attached. I made a fiat decision based on safety reasons to cut the leg off at the upper actuator. It helped that it looked like the actuator in question was already destroyed as cranes stood by while the cutting commenced. I had employed the local mercenary techs to evaluate any mech scrap for salvage purposes. So, when the leg finally came off and was moved to a nearby empty ground location for evaluation, I was off and trying to determine what should be moved next.
A Jenner foot actuator and a jump jet had been pulled from the severed leg by the time the crew was lifting a half-crushed Hunchback from off of the top of the pile. The impacted mud made the mech nearly five tons heavier than its scheduled weight, but the cables held as it was lifted and moved to sit face down where it could be hosed off for inspection. The body of the Jenner was still being held down by another mech, so we repositioned the equipment and got to work on digging out what looked to be a heavy mech that had lost both arms and the left side torso. I had no idea what it was supposed to have been as it was moved to lye next to the Hunchback. I just knew that it weighed in at somewhere less than fifty tons.
The hole that I had previously dug out was full of loose dirt now that excavations had started on the pile. The mech that had been previously considered as a first choice was now buried chest deep in fresh dirt, but the trapped arm had been freed. To prevent a further fall, I determined that it should be the next to be removed. The cables straining in the Heavy Recovery Vehicle let us all know that under all the caked dirt we had hooked a big one. The high-pressure spray from a locally sourced firetruck quickly let us know that we were dealing with an assault class mech.
Pulling out an 85-ton Crockett that was nearly complete was amazing in and of itself. I hadn't seen the thing in the ground, so I wasn't that surprised when it was determined to be a CRK-5003-0 Variant with an inner center torso stamp date of 2890. What did surprise me was that the engine and Gyro were destroyed by either battle damage or time in the ground, but other than the semi-crushed left arm, the thing was intact. Pop an appropriate engine and a gyro in there and the thing would be operational once again, or so the techs were saying. Unfortunately, the militia was fresh out of the appropriate 255 rated fusion engine. It did have a spare gyro in assault size, so it was semi interested in obtaining the mech. I put off selling it until I was finished with my digging for the day. Technically it was now the property of my business, and I had the notion of keeping it for survey work if I could source parts for its repair.
Digging continued for the day until we pulled out a loose 50-ton Enforcer arm. The shoulder was heavily impacted with dirt and mud, but there was hope that a thorough cleaning might return functionality to the otherwise nearly intact arm. I sold the arm to the militia for the price of the AC/10 plus one of the known intact actuators. It was a hell of a deal since it had been in the ground for so long.
I ended up sleeping in the on-base housing for the night so-as to get an early start in the morning. The militia had sent a lance of mechs and tanks to protect the site of the dig as I had worked out was something that they were doing to protect what was becoming the find of the century on Ender 09 and the continent of Andrew. When I woke up in the morning, I had a meeting with my boss in the tax office to discuss my work. I was congratulated on my find, and I got the notion that the man was trying to undermine me of the ownership of the things found at the site. Or at least he was until I pointed out that tax fines were still being assessed for one of Andrew's top manufacturers. Taken to the full extent of the law, the fines already had the potential to cripple the company. I played the underhanded deal I had set up with the management if I was allowed ownership through my scrapping company of anything that I found in the ground. The political and financial fallout to find out that the tax office had broken a contract to willingly destroy one of Ender 09's few defense manufacturers. Andrew Love Incorporated was still going to be fined, but it was a pittance for not surveying their land properly upon acquisition and not for all the stuff that was being pulled from the ground. It was a win-win contract that avoided financial ruin and also accomplished the task of cleaning up potential groundwater contaminants which was in the spirit of the law. That and the casual mention that I had the notion of leasing out the mechs I had the intention of keeping to the Tax office when I went off planet for school had the man stopping his intended action.
I felt the eyes of my boss on me as I got to work that morning. I could tell that the man would likely be trouble from then on as he was starting to regret doing a favor for my mother. Conveniently forgetting that without my due diligence that this find would have been lost for years if not decades as it sat here being unsurveyed by the landowner. All the while the mechs and scrap eroding further into the local groundwater table.
Only the head of the next mech we pulled out of the ground was still worth anything. I had the techs start removing the BNC-3E Banshee head so that the 38 tons of remaining scrap could be sold off and removed from the field. Another day started with a find that would make the company, and me by extension, money. Money that hopefully could be used to further the purchasing power of the company once this dig was done.
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