IBC Chpt 1-2

==Iron Blooded Commander - Chapter 1.2 -Copy and Paste==
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===Trying Get a Ride===
Solaris City​Solaris VII, Lyran Commonwealth
June, 3020 
It took a bit longer than an hour unfortunately. But it was done. The gangs of Solaris were everywhere, and as orphans it wasn't like some of our own hadn't joined gangs from time to time.
 
The Squatters were exactly what they sounded like, a small group of drug peddlers you could find on street corners, or near alleys squatting and waiting for a client. But I went straight to a specific alley. 
 
Smalls wasn't actually small, and nor was he actually that big. He was more average. But he was called smalls because he had been small a few years ago when he aged out of the orphanage and joined the gang. 
 
They had taken him in but he hadn't forgotten his roots. He sometimes dropped off stuff to us younger kids that had been friends with him before he left. Just candies and stuff, thankfully, he never tried to get the kids on drugs.
 
But he always hung around a specific alley, and he also had an old dirt bike that he was very proud of. We often heard him driving around even if we didn't always see him.
 
"So that's the deal. Gauge and I need transport for an hour or two, afterwards you get the entire sack of electronics, and we bring the bike back." I offered to the older boy who was chewing on an old cigarette.
 
"Hell no." 
 
"C'mon Smalls, we aren't going to damage your bike, but Gauge and I have a job and we can't do it without some wheels. No risk. I just can't talk about it."
 
"I said no Vicky, that ride is my life, and without it, I'm fucked by the first fucker who wants my stock. I can't risk it."
 
Gauge stepped in, the older boy had always been closer to Gauge than I was. "Smalls, C'mon we need this, it's perfectly safe, I promise, I'll drive not Vicky so your baby will be in safe hands, plus I fixed everything in that bag, I promise it all works, and it will sell well. If that doesn't do it, we could go hawk it ourselves and bring back just the bills, but I know you, you are better at selling shit to people than either of us."
 
I grumbled a bit as I walked away. I could drive! Sure the me of this world had crashed the last vehicle she had been in, but the damn thing's brakes went out! I survived without getting hurt even! That was good driving!
 
"You two aren't conning me are you?" Smalls finally asked quiet, the boy had a soft spot for us orphans.
 
"Not a con. We just need wheels. Just an hour or so, and it will be back in your hands."
 
"Fuck me. Fine, but I'm serious you two, you break my baby and I'll fuckin end you! You shits will pay back every scratch if I have to sell you to the squatters as ferriers, you get me?"
 
"We get it Smalls." I interrupt. "Your bike will be fine. Gauge, let's go. Time's wasting." I tell him as I let him jump on first, and then I clambered on behind him. A few moments of starting the engine and the two of us were off. 
 
We slipped it inside our secret base, settling it in an empty section as I slipped out the scanning unit from the sensor pack on my back, although I had hidden it inside an old backpack to further conceal it so I could actually walk around with it. 
 
"Well. That's step one." I tell Gauge as we are looking at a perfect copy of a dirt bike that was brand new. 
 
"Yeah. Alright I'll take this back to Smalls. Vicky, we won't have time today. That's a long trip."
 
"I know. Tomorrow morning we'll go. Get that back to Smalls before he blows a reactor, I'll put this away and meet you at the orphanage."
 
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===Arranging the Sleeping Arrangements===
 
The next morning Gauge and I went out on an adventure. I will admit traveling on the back of an old dirt bike for a long trip wasn't something I had ever done in either life. So this was a new experience. 
 
We did have an interesting experience when the bike ran low on gas and I had to figure out how to get the noteputer to actually create gasoline. But thanks to an incredibly advanced sensor and the remains of the fuel in the tank I worked it out. Whatever crazy replicator this thing used to turn one element into another let it turn the steel and iron I had gathered before into usable fuel. 
 
I decided just not to question it. Science. Ain't gotta explain shit? I think that's how the phrase went.
 
That afternoon we reached the spot. Using the Noteputer as a map to end up at the right spot. It was an old bit of woods a good few miles off the road that had left us offroading which is an uncomfortable experience to say the least.
 
The place we stopped wasn't anything special. There wasn't a large hill, or a mountain or a clearing that said "Under here is a great place for a mine!" Instead the two of us used the noteputer to reclaim the underbrush and a tree or two until we had a small clearing. 
 
Then I activated the Metal Extractor blueprint, and this time it had no problem being created. The size of the extractor was fifteen to twenty feet tall, and a good ten feet wide, which thankfully meant that it was hidden pretty well in the trees around it.
 
The problem was I hadn't expected the length of time required to build the damn thing.
 
"So it's gonna take at least ten hours." I muttered in irritation as I settled the Noteputer onto the ground where it's stream of green nanites continued to rush out of it in a green light as just the base of the metal extractor was slowly being created.
 
"I guess we are camping tonight then." Gauge muttered although I could tell he wasn't looking super happy about it.
 
Neither of us had ever been camping before."Fire first I guess." I tell him as I go to grab some gas out of the bike's tank. This was going to be a rough night.
 
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===Matter of Trust===
Alternate Perspective.
 
I couldn't sleep. I watched as Vicky kicked fitfully in her sleep as I kept the fire going by through a stick or two into it every once in a while. Ever since Vicky had shown me her secret my mind was a whirl with what she had shown me. 
 
Lostech, real honest amazing lostech, something capable of creating amazing structures out of nothing. It awed me. With that device the decline of the Inner Sphere could be turned around. I did trust Vicky, she was family but I couldn't help but want to reveal all of this to Adept Michaelson. He had always been so kind to me, teaching me the secrets of technology and of course some minor teachings of Blake.
 
But I had promised. I would keep her secret, even if the idea of giving the device to the Steiners made me uncomfortable. They weren't any better than the Combine! The great houses were the reason that so much technology was lostech, instead of something shared within humanity. 
 
I sighed. Vicky grunted in her sleep as she curled up closer to me, trying to keep warm. The green light of the device was still working even as she slept filling the clearing in glowing green.
 
My sister in everything but name had been given a gift, a blessing straight from Blake. As I slowly watched the structure she called a metal extractor take form, all I could wonder is if she was going to bring back the golden age of Star League or if her attempts would only make things worse. 
 
But as I watched a structure more complicated than anything but an HPG Array be constructed before my eyes in a glow of technology so advanced, even I was tempted to call it magic I felt a bit of hope. 
 
Vicky was family. She was my friend, and while I would definitely trust this sort of tech more in the hands of ComStar rather than an orphan girl. I couldn't deny it was gene locked to her, so she was the only one who could use it anyhow. So I leaned back and decided I would do my best to make sure Vicky helped the Inner Sphere, even if in the end that meant when she failed in making things better I could always let ComStar know to step in and fix any problems she made.
 
ComStar after all, would be more than happy to help guide her in returning technology to the Inner Sphere! It was one of the core tenets they preached!
 
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===Trying work where to go===
 
Waking up the next morning was less waking up and more deciding what poor sleep I could get was less valuable than just moving. I groaned working out the knots in my back as I looked over the completed metal extractor. It wasn't so much as shifting, but I could tell from a faint buzz in the air that it was working. I picked up the noteputer to look over and I smiled as I saw the numbers for my resources shooting up at a ludicrous rate. 
 
Unfortunately, whatever storage space my noteputer used was already almost full. It wasn't exactly a lot of space. Although it was about three times the amount needed to create a metal extractor. 
 
"That's not good." I muttered.
 
"What isn't?" The voice right at my shoulder startled me as I jerked around before sighing as I felt my chest heaving.
 
"You ninja don't sneak up on me!"
 
"I've been standing here since you woke up."
 
"Well, stop being sneaky!" I grumbled as I looked over the numbers. "The extractor is working great, but there is a limit to how much can be stored. I would assume there would be a metal storage, building, or something that fits with everything, but I don't have a blueprint for it."
 
"So what are you gonna do?" He asked and I shrugged. 
 
"It doesn't matter for now. The noteputer doesn't build very fast anyways, but it will be something I have to figure out if I can ever make a faster fabricator, or a factory."
 
"Okay. So what's next in your grand plan. You have your extractor, which is hidden, we are way out in the woods. What next?"
 
"Next I make a second bike, because I'm not gonna ride behind you all the way back to the city, then, we make some money. I need enough C-bills that I can throw around that I can at least pretend to be some young noble girl from some periphery planet and not just a random orphan. Once I have that we hire some people and create a drop ship or two."
 
"Dropships! You want to go straight to a dropship?"
 
"Not straight there, but that is the end goal. After all, I told you, didn't I? We are going Lostech hunting!"
 
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===Quietly making a move===
 
The drive back into the city was far faster with each of us having our own bike. Refueling also was easy now that I had so much spare resources. We made it back into town and after storing our new bikes away so no one would question where we got them, I picked up the sensor and dragged Gauge out into the city.
 
The one thing we needed next was money, and frankly a pair of kids wouldn't normally get access to anything mech related. Mechs were unsurprisingly expensive. When even the cheapest ones are millions of C-bills, no one wants a kid around them in case they accidentally break something.
 
Fortunately, I had Gauge with me. He was a tech head, and had been training as an astech. So he actually did have access to mech parts. Unfortunately I couldn't really do anything.
 
Old man Ulrich was a crotchety irritable old Mech Tech. Ulrich worked as a mercenary tech here at Solaris. Unlike most Mech Techs he didn't work with a single Solaris Stable, and instead tended to pick up whatever work overflowed from their own stables. 
 
Unfortunately he worked with only a few techs at any one time, and his security was way too high for us to just walk in and start scanning what we needed. That is where Gauge's new orders came in. Go in and ask to work on repairing a PPC, or a Medium Laser. Heck I would be fine if he just goes and gets scans of some standard armor.
 
Anything I can create a few pieces of and sell off. So he hoofed his way into the mech bay to get some work done wearing my secret scanner backpack.
 
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===Needing a Buyer===
 
Four days later we finally had our break. 
 
Gauge had managed a scan on a few things that were complete enough to be of use. Over four days, and it had taken almost all four days to get the scans completed. He didn't want to get yelled at, or worse kicked out of work if he was seen messing around instead of repairing what he was supposed to.
 
He was tired, as while Old Man Ulrich was happy to accept the basically free help, he still ran his AsTechs ragged whenever they showed up. There wasn't really a school, or any place to learn for free even here on Solaris after all. The old man was actually pretty kind for allowing basically anyone to come in and learn something.
 
"I got a complete Defiance B3M Medium laser scan, it was left out from a previous repair that had to be halted, so whenever I was on a break I was allowed to look it over. I also got a scan of 1 StarSlab, Armor. They were working on a locust in the bay, so there was plenty of armor around. Also… It was a Locust 1S so it had SRM launchers, I couldn't get around the launchers itself but…"
 
I nodded, pulling up the new blueprints one of which was SRM missiles. So if nothing else I could produce some boom to sell.
 
"Okay so we have armor, medium lasers, and missiles." I tap my chin going over the three pieces. I had to be very careful here. Sell too much of any one thing and people are going to wonder where I got it.
 
"Okay. Let's do the medium laser arrays. Despite being the most expensive item, they are actually the least strange. To make enough money selling armor or missiles would be way too strange, but we can sell one or two Medium lasers without as much worry."
 
"So who do we sell them to?" Came the obvious question.
 
"Honestly? We sound desperate and try to sell it to anyone. We actually want people to think the few we have fell off a truck somewhere, if we go for a big contract it will just bring attention, but even kids like us sometimes steal something big."
I took a moment to think everything through, before I sighed. "Crap. I forgot something important."
 
"What?"
 
"How the heck do we haul around a Medium laser without a vehicle? The things are over a ton!"
 
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So that was how late at night, Gauge and I were doing something I didn't really want to do. We had taken our bikes out after dark heading way out of our normal haunts. As we didn't want to be recognized when we started scanning something. Both of us were wearing dark clothes with hoods, I had even forced Gauge to switch out of his Comstar like coat. 
 
Then the two of us used our scanner and map to find what we were looking for. The truck we finally chose was thankfully parked in a quiet area. The scanner kept us aware of anyone coming by as I went over the truck piece by piece with the hand scanner until after a few hours the soft confirmation of a 100% blueprint emitted from the noteputer. 
 
The two of us immediately jumped on our bikes and got out of there. No one saw us but that doesn't mean we want to be hanging around late at night. The two of us didn't even head into the orphanage that night knowing we would just get yelled at, instead we crashed on the couches in our hideout snoring away.
 
The next morning while Gauge got us breakfast, I first made sure the old rolling doors for our base still worked, and with only a slight amount of cheating with supertech I got them rolling again. I closed them down and inside I started creating our truck.
 
It actually didn't take long. There wasn't exactly a lot of high tech equipment on what was a space pickup. When it was done I looked over the truck for a while.
 
The large "Norman." Symbol on the grill of the truck didn't mean anything to me, but it was a large pickup style truck that could definitely haul around a ton of Medium laser. That's all I cared about. I made sure the fuel tank was full and thankfully had a key for the truck as I started it up. It revved nicely, and I nodded before turning it back off. Now the interesting part.
 
I pulled out the noteputer and started creating a Medium Laser in the back of the truck. 
 
By the time it was halfway done, Gauge had my breakfast and we ate as we watched the green light create our future.
 
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===Pricing the Merchandise===
 
Learning to drive a future pickup was thankfully not too hard. 
 
It helped that it didn't matter if I scratched it up, or destroyed it. I could just create another one!
 
Pulling up to the Ulrich Mech Stable got some attention, thankfully Gauge managed to get us into the bay yard before I pulled off to the side, and Gauge went to go get the Old Man. 
 
He came sauntering out, belly preceding him, and his large white beard reminding me of Santa as he walked up. I stepped up to the back of the truck, and tugged the large tarp off the two Medium Lasers I had whipped up to sell.
 
"Two Defiance B3M Medium lasers." I offered as the man nodded looking them over. 
 
"And where did you two brats pick these up?" He asked which I simply shook my head. 
 
"Not your concern, there isn't any heat on them if that's what you are worried about, but you interested?"
 
"Interested, sure. But I don't buy stolen goods. Usually leads to trouble." He looked over at Gauge who was looking shifty. Damnit. "Don't usually have one of my more reliable astechs try to pawn off stolen goods either."
 
"Not stolen." He offered before clamping his mouth shut.
 
"Then how exactly did you get 80 grand in C-bills worth of hardware? I know it ain't from my pay. Cause I don't pay ya." He said with a chortle although his glare was firmly locked onto the two of us.
 
"It was payment for a job I did. Gauge is just the middleman in this, and again, not your concern. They aren't stolen. If you don't believe me, trust Gauge. Do you want them or not? Cause I can haul these around town to another Stable to sell off. We are only here because Gauge knows you."
 
I watched the old man stroke his beard for a while. "I'll give you 20k for both of them then."
 
I took a moment to take in his offer before spitting off the side of the truck. "If you want to barter me down for a pair of factory fresh lasers, you could have at least tried not to insult me. Two for the normal price of one, is a joke and you know it." I sighed. "35 each. You know you will need them. Mediums are always in need, and you don't have to worry about ordering them, or getting a pair of Quickscell."
 
He scoffed. "This is Solaris, they don't even bother bringing Quickscell garbage here. I'll take them for 30 each then. But if someone hotshot dealer comes up to me asking why I have his stolen goods. I know where you live boy." He growled pointing at Gauge who backed up in fear.
 
I think about the offer for a minute before smirking. "I might have other stock in the future. We make this deal now, and if no 'heat' bothers you, future purchases are made at closer to standard prices. Interested?"
 
The hold man huffed. "Let's say no one bothers me about these two, and they don't turn out to be garbage or something wrong with them. I'll consider buying from a new dealer."
 
I reach out a hand and we shook on it. A few minutes later the lasers were picked up by a few astechs. Gauge to my amusement, forced into helping. I had an electronic check for 60k C-bills. 
 
More money than I had ever had at one time.
 
Once Gauge was done we pulled back into the truck and headed off. 
 
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===Moving along building the catalog===
 
Over the next week, I actually sold two more Medium Lasers to the old man. This time at a better 35k deal. Using that money I 'rented' a much larger truck hauler for a day and copied it. While the Norman truck was good for 1 ton loads, it couldn't handle the heavy loads of some of the bigger weapons I would need to haul around. Using almost all the funds I had managed I bought a damaged Donal PPC. Normally repairs on a PPC aren't easy as they are complicated fiddly things.
 
At least that is what Gauge said. But after scanning the broken one. My Noteputer pulled through. And I had a full Donal PPC blueprint. This wasn't something that the Old Man could really just afford normally. But he did point me towards something that would help.
 
The Stables in the area all used a market to purchase what they needed to fix up broken mechs. So at my request the Old man put an offer for a few PPCs he had 'come into' For a modest fee.
 
I had agreed because honestly, it was a great deal for me. Finding buyers that won't wonder who the girl is selling expensive weapons? Priceless.
 
Well, About 20% in the end, but that's semantics. Still the Old man was getting very curious on where I was finding my hardware and it was thanks to an accidental slip by Gauge that we came up with a better cover, than "Don't ask."
 
I wasn't there for it, but the Old man was grilling Gauge on his future plans when he accidentally slipped "Lostech hunter." The soft reveal that I had in my hands an idea of a Lostech find from my dead Solaris Jock mother, gave the old man the idea I might be selling off pieces of equipment my mother had hidden away.
 
I had done my very best to confirm that fact with a heavy sigh, and a continued request not to talk about it.
 
The old bleeding heart accepted it, although I had a very strong conversation with Gauge afterwards about operational security and to keep his mouth shut.
 
Helm was going to be my cache after all. Can't let ComStar find out, I'm not Grayson Carlyle after all.
 
With the Mech Stables market contacts I was able to start taking requests from different stables without any more fear of discovery. 
 
A stable needs a few Medium Lasers? Create a few onto the back of my Little truck, and send Gauge out as a driver to complete the sale. 
 
Someone needs some PPCs? Same thing, just with the bigger rig. Gauge was getting quite a bit of experience driving.
 
The money was absolutely flowing in, and it was actually once again the old man that dropped an opportunity into my lap.
 
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===Negotiations===
 
I was waiting for Gauge to finish helping out the Old Man, despite everything he still wanted to learn to be a Mech Tech, so he spent a lot of time when he wasn't driving and selling parts in the mechbay working on repairs.
 
Of course that was when a man who could only be a mech jockey came flying out of the mech bay as if the hounds of hell were on his ass and rushed into a rickety ground car and took off in a spray of gravel.
 
"Worthless sack of Cappelan shit! Get your ass back here, and pay me what you fucking owe me!" The roar of a wild Old man echoed around the yard as he came absolutely charging out of the mech bay, a shotgun in his hand screaming and hollering after the disappearing car.
 
I waited a while for the cursing to trinkle off as I approached the old man that was red faced and breathing heavy. "You alright Old Man?"
 
"Fuck off, kid… Piece of shit was the Jockey for the locust, Didn't have the money to pay me for my repairs, and actually tried to offer to pay me after he won his next match. Can you believe that? Even a fucking Kuritan would offer a down payment or something before trying to fuck you with honor, but that sack of shit is apparently broke."
 
I whistled that was actually pretty rare. "You didn't get paid half before you started?" I asked curious, my knowledge of mech stables repair prices, not something I was familiar with.
 
"Nein. The trash worked for a stable pay should have been reliable. My fault for not getting an advance. Apparently the kid lost his money betting on the matches this month, trying to win enough to pay for the repairs and then some." He sighed as he wiped his forehead. "Well. I'll just repo the damn thing. Fuck. I hate this. Gotta call the fuckin games administration and prove that he didn't pay and then I have to sell a fucking Locust."
 
My mouth moved before my head could think about it. "How much?" He turned to me with a quirked eyebrow and I couldn't help but smile a bit. "Yeah…. How much?" I reaffirmed.
 
Then we got to haggling.
 
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===To Gain a Thing, you need to Destroy a Thing===
 
It took another week before the Solaris administration confirmed lack of payment for the repairs and turned over the ownership of the Locust to Ulrich. Then after a deal of a million and change. The mech wasn't in the best of conditions after all, even after a month of work under the MechTech.
 
I was the 'Proud' owner of a Locust-1S.
 
The week before this Gauge and I had been using my Noteputer to clean up the mechbay we had been using, and after reaching out to the Silesia housing authority I managed to officially 'purchase' the old mech bay. 
Then I had the interesting task of trying to walk the thing to the new mech bay. I mean sure. I had spent a ton of time in the simulators you could find in most shopping centers, 'learning' how to pilot a mech, but like most things it wasn't a perfect representation, especially the crappy sims that were more or less public use. 
 
So when I crawled into the Locust for the first time, the computer having been set to a factory setting thanks to the Old Man I was able to enter my basic information. After a few minutes and putting on the massive Neurohelmet which was actually incredibly difficult I was forced to sit with it resting on the back of the chair as it was so heavy it was almost impossible to keep stable.
 
But I ran through the startup sequence. Although the mech was ancient it had been factory reset so I had to go through the entire sequence of setting my vitals, and entering a lock on the system.
 
Finally after nearly half an hour of messing with the basic settings I was ready. The gantry pulled away and I willed the mech to take a step forward as I pushed the throttle.
 
It was a tottering shuddering step, but it was a step nonetheless. Before I made it out of the mech bay my movement was cleaning up although I was getting a headache from the stupid helmet.
 
The walk down the road in a Locust was an utterly new experience, and I loved it. I kept to a very slow pace, not wanting to accidentally fall, or break something. Thankfully I managed to make it to our secret base. It had been irrevocably changed over the last week. The outside looked the same, but the bay doors now worked, and so opened without even a cry of protest as I walked the locust inside. 
 
Gauge was already inside, guiding me into the once ancient gantry that had been completely 'replaced' over the week. My breath released in a heavy exhale when I felt the Gantry lock into place, and I quickly shut down the Locust and pulled the thousand pound Neurohelmet off my head with a groan already rubbing my neck.
 
I didn't even have time to pop the cockpit before Gauge was there practically fogging up the glass with his breath. Opening the cockpit I laughed at the look on his face. 
 
It was an undeniable fact that every kid in the Inner Sphere and beyond wanted to be a mechwarrior. It was the one thing that every kid no matter where they are from have in common.
 
"It's a shame we have to destroy it." I mention as I slip out of the cockpit still rubbing my neck at the pain of the neurohelmet.
 
"W-what!? Why do we have to destroy it?" Gauge quickly grabbed my army to stop me from climbing fully out of the cockpit. 
 
"You know how long it takes to scan something don't you? There is no way we can scan this locust in a reasonable amount of time using the scanner, plus we only have one mech bay available. Would you rather keep this beat up old Locust, or use the extractor to disintegrate it down, and create a factory fresh Locust?"
 
He stops talking for a moment as a disgruntled look spreads across his face. I understood his unhappiness. The idea of just destroying a Battlemech hurt me too. But the extractor could create a detailed blueprint of anything it 'consumes' and it was a lot faster than the two of us climbing over and in every inch of this mech to get a full scan. 
 
"Yeah. I guess you're right."
 
"I know it sucks, but trust me. I had to actually piloted that thing. It was amazing, but it wasn't the best maintained, even after the Old Man went through it." I grunted as I stepped out onto the gantry Gauge helping me out before I pulled out the noteputer aiming it at the Locust. The green light that burst out was bright and fierce as the Locust began slowly disintegrating.
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Chapter 2