Chapter Text
Tags: technically a Gamer, battletech, Lancer TTRPG, self-insert, no beta,
-VB-
Lancer, not a Mechwarrior
Chapter 1
-VB-
Baron Zachary Timms knew that any mechwarrior he managed to hire would not be a good one.
Why would they be?
He offered a measly 20,000 C-Bill bounty for the pirates haunting his continent because he didn’t have the money to hire a proper mercenary company, and his militia had already been wiped out by the pirates. It was only a lucky stray RPG shot that took out one of the pirates’ technicals…
“My lord?”
The thin noble looked up from where he sat behind his desk. “What is it, Jake?”
“We have a mercenary who’s here to meet you.”
Zachary’s eyes widened. “Truly?!”
“Yes, sir. Should I-?”
“Guide him to the meeting room. I’ll be there shortly.”
He quickly picked up his silk jacket - one of just three he had - and walked at a fast pace out of the office and down the corridor. The rustic manor had been in his family for six generations, but it had been four generations since it’s been touched up meaningfully. The marble tiles were stained from years of use, cracked from the incidents that he couldn’t even remember, and kept up only by the dedicated cleaning of a few servants. The once white but now gray plaster ceiling and walls were equally in disrepair.
After walking halfway across the manor, Zachary walked into the meeting room, the only meeting room in the manor, and saw the mercenary.
The mercenary was … tall. He stood by the window, looking out into the lush forests that covered the entirety of Zachary’s personal fief. He was also dressed in some kind of a dark blue bodysuit that covered him from head to toe.
When the door clicked shut behind him, the mercenary tilted his up slightly and turned around to look at him.
“Lord Timms.”
Zachary cleared his throat and straightened his suit. “Yes. I am Baron Timms, lord of the White Mahogany continent of Waitur III.”
Waitur… was not in a good position. Their former overlord, the Outworlds Alliance, basically abandoned them twenty years ago - even the tax collectors from the Alliance didn’t show up. And this was the case despite the fact that there were close to a million people still living on this mostly arid and very much habitable world. It’s just that this world didn’t have much to offer. Even calling himself a baron felt… weird.
He was. It was the title used by his family for generations, even if the title actually came with a mandate to field at least a lance of light mechs. Which he did not have.
“I heard that you had a job for me.”
“Yes… Yes, I do,” he nodded and then cleared his throat. This was the only mechwarrior with a battlemech who responded to his offer, as paltry as the offer was, so he wouldn’t regale him with things he didn’t need to know. “There is a pirate hideout on the other end of the continent. We have their exact location and know that they currently have three battlemechs: a Locust, a Spider, and a Centurion. They also have a very badly beat-up but still functional Leopard dropship.”
“A classic set for a light raid but why only three instead of four?”
“Who knows?” the baron shrugged helplessly. “I’m just thankful that this pirate crew is small enough that my militia can threaten them, albeit not much. I want you to take them out and make sure they can’t be a threat anymore.”
“Understood. And salvage rights?”
Here, Zachary almost hesitated. He knew that he wasn’t offering much, and in such situations, the mercenary would take the larger share of the salvage, if not all. “70-30 in my favor.”
“Outrageous,” the mercenary replied immediately but calmly. “I will be taking 80-20 in my favor. 20,000 C-Bills you are offering is barely enough to afford a few system jumps, and I burned that much just to get here.”
Zachary grimaced. “And my world has a very strong need for mechs.”
“You can keep the Locust, even if it is the only mech that survives the fight.”
“... Truly?”
“Yes. I am not in need of any scout mechs, but a Spider is useful enough that if I can salvage it, then I will be taking it.”
“And the dropship?”
“Obviously, if I can capture it for myself, then I keep it and you can keep any salvageable mechs.”
Zachary thought about it.
In this situation, it was better for the mercenary to get his hands on the Leopard, wasn’t it? If he did, then he would get all of the mechs, or what’s left of them, and if even one mech could be salvaged, then that was a security improvement of his barony that it hasn’t seen in over a generation.
“Fine.”
“Then do we have a deal?”
“We do.”
“Wonderful,” the mercenary said before he grabbed his helmet and pulled it off. “My name’s Darius von Hohenheim. It’s a pleasure to meet you, baron. It’s been a while since I’ve met a reasonable noble.”
The man - the boy, really - looked no more than sixteen years old. There was still some of that baby fat on his cheeks, and he barely looked like he'd seen battles. With short, stiff black hair that easily bounced with each movement the boy made and wide amber eyes, he looked more like one of those boy band singers from the Federated Suns than an actual mechwarrior.
“Baron Zachary Timms,” he repeated his name from his earlier introduction. “Von Hohenheim? That sounds like a Lyran name.”
“Well, that’s because it is.”
Zachary blinked. “You’re far from home, Mister von Hohenheim.”
Darius shrugged. “I go where the work and opportunity is, and you’d be surprised by how many opportunities there are in the Outworlds Alliance if I’m willing to skimp out on C-Bills rewards,” he replied.
“And where is your mech?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen it in the front yard or the back…”
“Would you like to see my mech?”
“... I would.”
It didn’t take them long to leave his manor (with a few of his bodyguards) and to the place where the mechwarrior had left his mech.
He did not recognize the mech.
No mech looked like that.
What mech had an armored sombrero? Or a cape? It barely looked armored! It looked like someone took the idea of a cowboy and turned it into a mech while disregarding everything! It had the size of a medium mech but it had way too many weapons.
Was this one of those horrid Frankenmechs?
Was that a mech-sized revolver?!
“Here he is,” Darius said as he walked up to the foot of the mech and tapped it. “Raleigh. Or Rayray as I like to call mine.”
At his words, the mech raised a hand and waved.
Zachary blinked. “Is there someone inside the mech?” he asked.
Darius shrugged as he climbed up the side of the mech with surprising dexterity and got into the back. Something opened and the mechwarrior climbed in. The hatch, if that was what it was, closed, and the mech paused for a second before it rolled its head and shrugged its shoulders.
“Now that you’ve seen me and my mech, does that satisfy your curiosity? And that I have the equipment to carry out my mission?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, you definitely do have the mech for it.” Because even he couldn’t deny that some of the weapons the “Raleigh” was carrying looked heavy enough to put a hole through a Locust.
… He wasn’t going to get a Spider or Locust, was he? Because just a single tap for that MECH SIZED REVOLVER looked like it could and would punch a hole through a Locust’s main body.
“Good. Then I’ll be going out there and taking the fight to those pirates. Assuming they are still there.”
-VB-
Far away from the baron’s home along the southern coast of the continent, the pirates loitered about in their hideout among the snowy crags of the northern mountains.
Jack knew that a dropship had landed in that bitch baron’s spaceport a week ago, and his spy in the bitch baron’s basic bitch boondog of a bitch basic burgh told him that the dropship came with a mech who didn’t leave with the dropship.
In other words, a mercenary.
“The fuck is this?” he muttered as he stared at the picture of the mech that his spy managed to smuggle to him.
It was a black and white photo. Sharp, not quite grainy, and usable.
And it showed him something he hadn’t expected at all.
A cobbled-up Frankenmech.
And this bastard was supposed to have left the shit port at least a week ago, which should have been enough time for him to show up and give them a fight. In fact, the merc should have shown up at least two days ago; this continent wasn’t exactly that big and mechs were known to be faster than the local transportation that wasn’t in the air or floating in the water, mostly because this was a piss poor rimworld with barely any roads, nevermind noteworthy infrastructure.
… but he wasn’t here.
“Did the bastard run?” he muttered to himself.
But where would he have gone? He and his crew had a Leopard dropship and no other dropship supposedly came.
He paused and looked out of the cockpit of the dropship, wondering if his thoughts and words might have summoned the bastard merc. He looked around, checked the radar, and waited for a bit.
Nope.
He hadn’t shown up yet.
But just in case…
He picked up the radio.
“Sora. Mara. We’re not doing patrols today or tonight. Got intel that some hero wannabe lone merc is on the prowl looking to skin us.”
“Shit~,” Mara drawled, her high pitch voice not doing her any favor when she attempted a deeper voice. Because even her deepest voice was still a squeak for the rest of them. “I was getting bored out here!” she hummed as if she wasn’t going to turn off the radio on her end and cackle about torturing the poor schmuck. Because Mara was like that, putting up a front when she was with anyone but her brother. She was also mad as a hatter in that Locust of hers.
“Yeah,” Sora, Mara’s twin brother, grunted. He was the exact opposite of his sister: big, deep voiced, and utterly indifferent to how he was perceived. “What mech?”
“Some fucked up frankenmech.”
“Aww, that’s no fun. Those always blow up too quickly,” Mara pouted over the radio. “Tonnage?”
“40 tonner, max.”
“Boo! That’s no fun. You could probably take them on by yourself.”
“I could,” Jack replied with a sneer. “But why take the chance? Besides, ganging up on any mech makes it easier to salvage it.”
“True,” Sora replied.
Because when they ganged up on a mech, they could go for the legs and cripple the mech, which made it easier to salvage. It was how they got their hands on Sora’s current Spider; the poor Combine fucker raged about the “dishonorable conduct of rabid Lyran dogs.”
But they were alive because of it and the samurai wasn’t.
Ping.
He paused and looked down at the radar
“Well, speak of the devil,” he muttered. He brought his radio back up. “Looks like our vagabond merc is here, boys! Let’s give him Jumping Jack’s warm welcome…”
---
Mara hummed as she piloted her Locust forward. Behind her was her brother in his Spider and their boss/friend was following up.
What they planned was simple. There was only one way into their hideout location, and that path in was through a very narrow and craggy ravine.
They weren’t going to attack the merc when he was in the ravine but they were instead going to let him come into the valley their hideout was in. And once inside, she’ll cut him off from his escape and her brother and boss will beat him to death.
Because, frankly, they didn’t want a Frankenmech. Maybe its parts but not the entire mech because those things were walking caskets.
And then she saw it.
On the far end of the craggy ravine was what she’s been waiting for: the Frankenmech.
“The merc’s here!” she shouted over the radio. She fired off a pair of SRMs before retreating back out into the wide valley of their hideout.
The Frankenmech - which had a fucking cloak and a metal hat - ducked underneath her SRMs.
And then it pulled out -.
Was that a freaking revolver?
And then the entire ravine rang out with a boom when the shit fired the revolver.
The bullet struck her, far faster than she expected it to be, and her mech screamed at her. She looked down at her mech’s sensors just as she rounded the corner and her eyes bulged from the now completely missing left torso armor.
“Boss, the enemy has a revolver that sheared off all of my left torso armor in one hit!”
“The fuck?! Double check!”
“I AM LOOKING AT MY DAMAGE REPORT RIGHT NOW!” She ran all the way around the edge of the valley as she fell back. Whatever the plan had been before this, it didn’t matter anymore. If she took three hits from that revolver, then her Locust was going to go down with her as a chunky salsa inside of it. There was no way she was going to try to block the narrow ravine. “I can’t cut him off! You’ll have to do it yourself, boss!”
“Wha-? Stick to the plan!”
“Fuck the plan! That bastard will two-shot my center torso!” Nevermind her cockpit! If that shell had landed on her cockpit, then she would’ve died right there and then.
And then the Frankenmech walked out of the steep-walled craggy ravine into the wide valley.
Her boss immediately opened fire with his mech’s AC/10 from no more than two hundred meters.
The Frankenmech… rolled away.
She watched as her jaws dropped as the merc brought his mech’s roll to a stop like how a human fighter would and faced her boss’s Centurion.
And that’s when she realized that the mech had a built-in weapon in the toros.
Far faster than mech weapons should be firing, the merc’s center torso weapon fired a burst of six shots.
And six explosions rocked the Centurion across the battlefield.
There wasn’t even a scream from the boss as his cockpit disintegrated.
The Centurion fell down, and her brother tried to do a Death from Above on the merc.
The merc spun around faster than it had rolled, pulled out two revolvers, and opened up on her brother.
“NOOO!!!” she screamed as her brother’s Spider tore apart in the air and came crashing down onto the cliff face.
She whirled around.
But what was she going to do? Fight something she couldn’t even hit? She was faster but not faster than whatever had taken out her boss. Those mech revolvers alone would shred her.
She had to run.
So she did.
Only for her Locust’s leg to give away.
She came crashing down to the ground.
Stomp stomp stomp stomp…
She blearily looked up from her cockpit and saw the baleful orange eye of the merc’s Frankenmech.
It slowly pointed the barrel of its revolver at her.
“... Go to hell,” she slurred out.
The barrel let out a bark and she felt a sharp …
Nothingness.
-VB-
Baron Zachary Timms stared at the salvages laid out before him.
The mercenary, Darius, actually did it. He went in by himself and took out all three pirates and their mechs. He also captured the Leopard.
Zachary stared at the salvages.
The Spider was … useless. It had been torn apart so thoroughly that he would be surprised if they could salvage anything critical. The Locust had its cockpit and one of its legs shot, but that was still salvagable, especially with some parts from the Spider’s spiders to repair the Locust’s broken leg. And the Centurion… it was going to take a lot of work. Whatever Darius had done to it, the cockpit was gone along with most of the right torso’s armor and structure.
Which also highlighted the fact that if Zachary tried to do something unwise, then the mercenary before him had the firepower to put an end to it.
“This is where we part ways, baron,” Darius said after confirming that he had received all twenty thousand C-Bills.
“I suppose it is,” Zachary replied with a hum. “And you wouldn’t be interested in staying? I can offer land and titles. It would be great to have a mechwarrior of your caliber around.”
“Nah,” Darius grinned. “I’m not ready to settle down yet. Besides, I have a whole lotta time and a lot of places to explore.”
“Ah. Is that so?” Zachary sighed. “... Thank you for your work.”
“No problem,” he grinned.
“But if you won’t stay, where will you be going?”
Darius hummed. “I’ve heard a few good things about the Federated Suns.”
“Oh?”
Of course, the mercenary was going to go sign up with one of the Great Houses.
“For all of their self-righteousness, they really suck at actual governance. Shit ton of pirates constantly on their borders, businesses waging shadow war with each other, and whole lotta civil conflict that flares and dies. Doesn’t that sound like a great place for a mercenary to make money?”
The baron stared at Darius before scoffing. “It sure does, mechwarrior.”
“Lancer.”
Blink. “Pardon?”
Darius grinned. “I’m a lancer, not a mechwarrior.”
-VB-
A/N: so that was the intro chapter to the Lancer in Battletech idea. Our character started his career in the Outworlds Alliance and is now heading into the Federated Suns with a new dropship as his loot.
-VB-
Lancer and Mech details (Comp.Con, you make my life easy)
» Darius von Hohenheim // Callsign: AXE «
Colonist, LL3
[ SKILL TRIGGERS ]
Assault (+2), Get a Hold of Something (+2),
Hack or Fix (+2), Invent or Create (+2),
Investigate (+2), Patch (+2),
Survive (+2)
[ GEAR ]
***
[ TALENTS ]
Gunslinger 3, Grease Monkey 1,
Skirmisher 1, Technophile 1
[ LICENSES ]
IPS-N Raleigh 3
[ CORE BONUSES ]
Overpower Caliber
[ MECH ]
« RAYRAY »
IPS-N Raleigh
H:1 A:4 S:0 E:0 SIZE:1
STRUCTURE:4 HP:14 ARMOR:1
STRESS:4 HEAT:0 REPAIR:5
ATK BONUS:2 TECH ATK:-1 LTD BONUS:0
SPD:6 EVA:12 EDEF:7 SENS:10 SAVE:12
[ WEAPONS ]
INTEGRATED MOUNT: M35 Mjolnir
AUX/AUX MOUNT: Missile Rack / Hand Cannon
FLEX MOUNT: Missile Rack / Segment Knife
HEAVY MOUNT: Bolt Thrower // Overpower Caliber
[ SYSTEMS ]
Smoke Grenade/Smoke Mine, “Roland” Chamber,
BB Breach/Blast Charges