Novels2Search
Mech Destroyer System: Throne of Destruction
Chapter 26 - Bad Penny Station

Chapter 26 - Bad Penny Station

In the command center of Bad Penny Station, Assistant Operations Director Emir Quan smiled gleefully as he read the latest message from cluster headquarters. “Ha ha, ha ha! Major Braxis, I have excellent news,” he said with a cackle of glee. “They didn’t believe me but when I called my great-uncle Alshir, he did exactly what I said he would! Cluster headquarters is sending five light freighters to retrieve us and everything we’ve been able to refine along with two light carriers and two frigates to cover our evacuation and retake the planet! If we’re able to capture the alien ship intact when our reinforcements arrive, we’ll both be due significant enough promotions to leave this backwater behind and transfer to a colonized star system!”

“I’ll believe that when I see it, sir,” Major Kal Braxis said, looking down his thin nose at the rotund Assistant Operations Director whose negligence was responsible for many of the disasters they’d suffered since the aliens arrived. Unlike Emir Quan who had built his career in Mineral Extraction, Major Kal Braxis had been on the fast track in a mercenary unit until his ex-wife hooked up with his commanding officer and had him quietly reassigned somewhere she didn’t have to be reminded of her ‘greatest mistake.’

At least his former commander had been kind enough to reassign his entire unit out here so he had a core of capable pilots and technicians to rebuild around but with only three months since his arrival, he hadn’t gotten very far in reversing the negligence of his predecessor. Many of the mech pilots working for him were barely qualified for combat operations, particularly the Stevedore pilots who most frequently used their mechs as industrial loaders. Getting them into shape to fight common raiders would take several more months, much less fighting these aliens!

“Personally, I don’t think they’d let us out of LZ-Wolf unless we captured the alien ship ourselves,” the major mused. It would be just like senior management to mention generous rewards without explaining that those rewards would go to the people who actually made the achievement. The men of Bad Penny station would toil like demons believing they’d be rewarded when rescue arrived only to find that the rewards were intended for their rescuers. Or they could be even more foolish, attempting to attack the aliens, weakening them for the ‘rescue fleet’ and saving the fleet the trouble of having to ensure their survival.

“Hmm,” the portly manager mused, tugging at the scraggly beard on his chin. “I don’t doubt my great-uncle’s promise but you might be right. We should seize the alien craft ourselves!” Emir Quan said, jumping immediately to the idea Major Braxis felt was certain suicide.

“Didn’t your report say that they never deployed any mechs against us?” Emir asked eagerly. “We could charge their ship with twenty, thirty, even fifty mechs,” he said, excitement growing in his voice. “We could be sitting on top of our prize when our reinforcements arrive. Your men can do it, can’t they?”

“Impossible,” the major said. “If you read my report, I also mentioned that their powered armor suits approach the power of a light mech. Just because they're wolves and we’re bears doesn’t mean they can’t kill us. They still have claws and fangs. Besides, I don’t have any combat carriers to bring our mechs into battle on the planet. The most we have at our disposal are ore hauling transports. If they see us coming, they’ll shoot us out of the sky on approach before we can even land,” he said with a shake of his head.

“I don’t believe it’s impossible,” Assistant Manager Quan said. “Tell your officers to prepare an analysis for me with possible methods of delivering troops to the surface of LZ-Wolf VIII. I want a detailed report on my desk by end of day tomorrow with at least three different options to secure victory. Once I’ve reviewed your proposal….”

As the portly manager droned on, Major Braxis did his best to tune out the fool’s increasingly deluded ‘strategy’ for planning an assault. By the time they were finished with his ‘project plan’, it would only be a few days before the arrival of the relief fleet. All he really had to do at that point was to stall for someone more senior to show up and put an end to this foolery. He only hoped that he could keep things mired in administrivia long enough to run out the clock.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

----------------------------------------

Elsewhere on the massive orbital station, Second Lieutenant Zaysell floated at the shoulder of his assigned Subjugator with a deeply satisfied smile. Closing the service hatch, he collected his tools before hitting the descent button on his zero-g harness and dropping slowly to the bare metal deck. “Okay Mik, I’m done up here, power it up and run the motion check again.”

“Copy, boss,” the technician said, powering up the mech and running a series of scripts that moved the mech’s shield arm and claw through a series of motions without the need of a pilot. “Base range of motion verified. All movements within spec. You want me to push it, boss?”

“Push it,” Zaysell said, setting his tools aside and joining the technician supervising his mech. “Let’s see what she’s got.”

After a few commands, the mech moved through the same series of movements again, this time, noticeably faster and with greater force than it had demonstrated previously. “What the hell boss?” Mik asked, staring at the data reports on his console. “It’s not supposed to be that quick!”

“Sure it is,” Zaysell said with a smile. “You just have to know how to disable the safety limiters and bypass the regulators that keep it from wearing itself out faster than the bean counters want it to. It wouldn’t have been so hard to get this poor girl in shape if her last pilot had kept up on the required maintenance but now that she’s back to factory spec, we can overdrive her by a good ten percent across the board. Come on, let’s get to the other arm. I think we can get through the complete system in another two hours if we work fast.”

“Sir, should we tell the Major about this? If we can apply this upgrade to every mech in the unit it could do a lot of good,” the technician asked.

“Wouldn’t help,” Zaysell said with a shake of his head. “Most people aren’t trained to use a mech in overdrive. It’s something I learned with my siblings when I was growing up. We had to be able to do this with any piece of equipment we used, even training mechs on the old Manual Control System.”

“The hell kind of family did you come from, boss?”

“Project Zed-Alpha, Batch Yankee,” Zaysell said with a hint of pride in his voice. “There were a thousand of us at the start. In the end, less than two hundred of us made it to the end of the program. I missed the top fifty by a hair or they’d have jumped me straight to Captain.”

“Shit, no wonder the Major gives you so much free reign,” the technician said with a low whistle. People like Second Lieutenant Zaysell who hadn’t been given a surname tended to be from contractor families or worse, but Zaysell had received the same treatment that was given to members of the most prominent families. Now he understood why. “You think we’re actually going to see action against these aliens, sir?”

“I hope so, Mik,” Zaysell said with a look of hunger on his face. “If we don’t, there’s no way we’re getting off this punishment detail anytime soon. Now come on, the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get a real meal.”

----------------------------------------

Meanwhile, outside the station, the pilots of the two Fae assault shuttles started bringing targeting systems online one at a time. The long, steady approach had given them plenty of time to refine their data. After slipping into a shallow slingshot around one of the large moons of LZ-Wolf III, the two ships emerged from the sensor shadow of the moon with perfect firing plans targeting the fixed defenses of Bad Penny Station.

Dark Energy crackled along the guns of the assault shuttles before exploding in a torrent of brilliant energy. The distance between the shuttles had fallen to a handful of light seconds and moments after the pilots triggered their weapons, bolts of cohesive energy slammed into the weapon arrays and tracking sensors of the human station. Ten seconds after the first wave of explosions ripped through the station, another set of explosions shook the station, followed eight seconds later by a third wave of detonations.

Alarms wailed throughout the station as hundreds of employees and contractors of Braxis-Quan Holding Company tumbled from their bunks, abandoned their meals and rushed toward their action stations. In the command center of the station, Major Braxis looked at Assistant Operations Director Emir Quan and let out a grim chuckle. “Well boss, you wanted to fight aliens,” he said. “Looks like you get your chance.”