John found himself floating in a sea of stars for a moment, far above an unassuming looking brown and blue pnet. Somehow, despite appearing to be in outer space, he was still able to breathe.

  "Okay, what the hell was that?" He said, looking around. There was nothing nearby other than the pnet below him as far as he could tell. He was about to reach into his leathers to pull out the Pelican when a green button materialized in front of him with the word START embzoned on the top of it.

  "Easy enough." He said hitting the button. A rge window popped up in front of him, with a bck background and blocky green text that reminded him of really old computers.

  Welcome to the Bonus World!Bonuses Worlds are based on short stories built within the framework of rger worlds.

  In this instance, BattleTech and the start of Operation REVIVAL.

  You are tasked with defending this colony.

  Winning is not an option, not at this time.

  Your goal here is to survive.

  How you do that is up to you.

  "That is not ominous at all." He mused, then continued reading.

  Points will be awarded at the end for notable achievements.

  The total points gained can be further modified by difficulty adjustments.

  Different Mechs, starting C-Bills, Lance Composition, and Pnetary Support.

  Adjusting these will increase your point multiplier.

  Your reward is based on points accumuted.

  You have three minutes to decide before world information is uploaded and the tutorial mission begins.

  Good Luck, Mechwarrior!

  "The hell? What is a Mech? Oh... that is a mech." John said as a new screen popped up in front of him. A list of giant robots appeared before him, and they all looked quite different from the others. Walking on two legs for the most part, they appeared to be carrying a variety of weapons, from sers to autocannons to missiles. One even had a giant axe in its hand, aptly named a 'Hatchetman'.

  "These look like bigger versions of the mobile knights in Infinite Frontiers," he mused, flipping through the panels. C-Bills appeared to be the currency of this world, but he had no idea what things were worth here or what he would need them for if this was going to be a short story. Lance composition just consisted of light skirmish, light recon, medium assault, medium skirmish, and the like. Pnetary support was just listed as minimal, indifferent, or supportive. At the bottom of the screen were two more buttons, Random and Start.

  "Is this another video game like world? It is so weird." John said, then flipped back to the mechs. He had no idea if a mech was 'good' or not, so he started reading their descriptions. After the third description, he realized they were about as useful as a pedal-powered wheelchair.

  Who cares if it was originally made by Dipn Mechyards in 2784 and was the sole property of the Draconis Combine and a long source of their national pride? Starshield Armour? The engine is a Magna 245. Top speed of 118 km/h? It's all in that bsted metric system again. I have no bloody clue about any of this.

  Quickly realizing he was in over his head and time was running out, he just hit the random button, then hit start. His new memories started flooding in, making him ugh a bit.

  He was John Suzy Wayne, a sixty-five-year-old mechwarrior. He retired as a company commander in the Federated Commonwealth Military five years ago, and took a part time position as a Lance commander on the pnet Bckstone, way out on the edge of the periphery. Underequipped and underfunded, the Bckstone guards barely had a dozen mechs to their name, with four of them pretty much hanger queens.

  A rather unremarkable world, mostly covered in deserts and oceans, Bckstone nonetheless thrived on the mining operations centered around the small city of the same name. The climate was generally hot, though the cool breezes off the nearby ocean were quite refreshing.

  John was in command of a mixed skirmish nce of four mechs, all piloted by aging mechwarriors like himself, just trying to survive another day out here at the edge of known space.

  There were Dar and Jerome Smith, a married couple who, like him, were in their twilight years. They were piloting a pair of light, thirty-ton mechs, a Javelin and a Spider. Then there was Franky Beard, an elderly man whose face you could barely make out due to his beard and bushy eyebrows. He was riding along in the nce's only medium mech, a forty-five-ton Bckjack. He cimed he could snipe the balls off a bear a kilometer away with it, but its light autocannons would tear the rest of the animal to shreds before that was proven.

  Then there was John, operating a JR7-D Jenner, a thirty-five-ton sauna that could move fast, hit hard, and cook an egg at the same time.

  Together, they were dubbed by their company commander, 'The Dispensables'.

  Currently, they were hitching a ride on one of the ancient leopard dropships the government owned, dropping in on a pirate base that had cropped up on the far side of the pnet.

  "Hitching a ride? AH-" He said just as his vision shifted and he was inside of what he assumed was the Jenners' cockpit. He was in the pilot's seat surrounded by rather archaic looking electronics, with actual physical buttons and knobs, like it was designed back in the nineteen seventies or eighties. Even as the information was being loaded into his mind on how to operate this beast, a wide grin was forming on his face. This was a rather simple design, easy to understand, and easy to fix compared to modern electronics back on Earth. It wasn't his old tank by any means, but he felt at home amongst this type of technology.

  At least until his mind caught up with everything being uploaded to him, then he realised directly behind the forward mounted cockpit was a nuclear fusion reactor.

  "You have to be shitting me. Who in their right mind would put a nuclear reactor in a building that gets shot at regurly?" He said to himself, looking behind him like he could see the reactor through the several meters of metal protecting the cockpit from any radiation it was emitting.

  A voice came over the radio just then. "You good there, Johnny? Is there a problem with Suzy Q's engine again? Maggie said she was good to go after the st time it was acting up."

  John's new memories told him that it was Franky, and Maggie was their unit's mechanic. He looked around for the radio and found the weirdest looking helmet on the floor beside him. Looking like a cross between a motorcycle helmet and an electrical panel, the helmet had several cables attached to it, and when he looked inside, there were a bunch of little sensors pced all over the inside.

  His memories told him this was his neurohelmet, which would allow the Mech to use its pilot's sense of bance to help its gyros keep it upright when maneuvering. There were more advanced ones that did more, but this ancient model just did the basics. That, and it had the mic for the radio attached to it.

  Putting it on, he could feel it doing something, but he ignored that and replied to the other fossil in this unit. "No, just jabberin' to myself."

  "Good. Hate to see yet another mech get put into the boneyard while we wait for parts. It's a sad day when we need Suzy Q to be the front line mech instead of a harasser."

  "Yeah. I'm sure it will be fine." John replied, sifting through his memories. This mech was meant to do the battlefield equivalent of a drive by shooting, not to sit and duke it out. It didn't even have actual arms, just a pair of medium sers on each side where the arms should have been, and a bank of four short ranged missiles above the cockpit. He had a hundred rounds of ammo for it, so he didn't have to worry too much about it.

  The worst part, though, was that none of the other mechs could really get into a melee. The Javelin was a variant with a fifteen tube, long range missile uncher on it, and the spider was less armed and armoured than the Jenner was, with just a pair of medium sers. The heavier Bckjack had more armour, but it was designed for long range engagements; its arms were also repced with a pair of 25 mm autocannons and medium sers slung under each cannon.

  Yeah, according to his memories of his time in a professional military, The Disposables nce was trash.

  Fuck does my Pelican have more firepower than these massive machines?

  The comms stayed quiet for the next thirty minutes as the dropship traveled to the pirate base, giving John enough time to get accustomed to the cockpit's yout. There was an extra jump seat behind him if he had to carry a passenger, and a hatch he had to climb in and out of at the rear of the cockpit. Apparently, he would have to climb out of that and climb down a dder to get out of this thing if he didn't use a gantry back at the hangar they used to store these.

  The control yokes were simir to those of the Phoenix Hawk, along with foot pedals to control the arms and the machine's movement. The pedals also would engage this mech's jump jets, five massive thrusters on the back of the mech that could thrust it around 150 meters or so in any direction. It would have been impossible to figure all of this out if he hadn't gotten the memory upload and had his piloting skill supplement anything he didn't understand. That skill really has been the real MVP of his abilities, outside of learning healing magic, anyway.

  Finally, there was a T-handle between his legs, clearly beled ejection. If his mech was about to explode, he could pull that, and the entire head would jettison off the mech's torso, sending him flying 360 meters away. His memories told him that it would be a rough ride and not to pull it by accident.

  His radio sparked to life again, this time from the pilot of the dropship. "ETA 1 minute. I'm dropping you off two clicks south of the pirates' location. Once you clear the site, send me a dingle, and I will come pick you up. I don't see anything on my scopes, but that doesn't mean anything with this ancient clunker. Good Luck."

  "Roger," John replied, then switched to his Lances channel. "ETA 1 minute. We have a bit of a walk, but they should be to the north of us. Weapons tight until we confirm the targets.

  "Always so professional! Take it easy, John, we have done this a time or two before. We are not exactly fighting the Combine out here, just some pirates whose mechs will be in even worse shape than ours." Dar said, teasing him a bit.

  "Yeah, we will be good little soldiers until they try to target us, then we burn them down. Hey, bonus points if you can just trim their legs off. They might have some salvage Maggie can use to fix our big boys... though I doubt we will be that lucky." Jerome added.

  "Aww, that is no fun, J-Dog! It looks sooo pretty when their reactors pop. Just like one big fireworks show. Hey, did I ever tell ya about the time..." Franky said, then started into a story about when he popped three damaged mechs simultaneously when fighting against House Liao.

  John tuned them out. Apparently, they did this often, but piloting mechs for over fifty years and surviving to tell the tale just shows they were good at their jobs despite their shoddy equipment. A stray thought went through his mind just then.

  Why do these ancient clunkers have different channels to talk on, but super advanced ships in Infinite Frontiers don't? I will get that answer someday.

  He started punching some buttons on the console in front of him, putting the mech through its startup sequence. A feminine voice began speaking in his headset, the computer announcing Suzy Q's startup progress.

  Reactor: Online.

  Sensors: Online.

  Weapons: Online.

  All systems: Nominal.

  John disengaged the harness holding his mech in its bay, allowing it to move on its own now.

  He was ready for whatever the hell this was going to be.