The Dispensables continued down the riverbed, making good time to the pirate base, John opening his throttles up a bit more to give his two long range support mechs a little more breathing room in case there was another surprise waiting for them. They still hadn't heard from Jerome, leading John to believe the cliffs must be interfering with any radio transmissions. He kept trying to bring him up, but didn't get any response.

  As he started to make a turn down yet another bend in the river, John's radio crackled to life. A broken transmission from Jerome was coming through his headset.

  *SHHHICCTIK, Eng- SHHHICK, -vy Mech, SHHHHICK. -he fuck ar-, SHHHICK*

  "Shit," John said, not quite able to make out what he was saying. He thumbed his mic to transmit. "We are almost there! Disposables, I am going ahead. Jerome sounds like he is in trouble. Catch up when you can."

  John didn't wait for a response and smmed the throttle forward, Suzy Q unching into a loping run at around seventy miles an hour.

  118 km/h x 0.6 is the conversion for that, at least. Hah, I win yet again, metric system!

  He quickly left the two slower mechs in the dust; the Javelin, while fast, was still a fair bit slower than his Jenner. He wasn't even going to think about the Bckjack; that piece of junk was slower than most heavy mechs.

  John sped down the riverbank, gncing at several side passages to see if there were more ambushers lying in wait. They appeared clear, so he kept pushing forward. "Jerome, can you hear me? What is your status?" He asked as he closed in on the base.

  *SHHICTIK, John, where the hell are you guys? They got a damn Marauder setup as a turret in the ke, SHHHHHICTIK, damn PPC keeps messing with my electronics. It's immobile and beat all to hell, but whoever is operating it is good enough that I can't get into its rear arc. SHHICTICTICK. Damn it, it just took my arm off. Hurry the fuck up, I can't disengage without giving it a clear shot at my back! SHHHICTICK*

  "Be right there," John replied, now extremely concerned. He knew damn well how deadly a Marauder could be; he piloted one for nearly a decade as the Company Commander in his old unit. It was a walking nightmare for most Mechwarriors who were not piloting an Assault mech. Except this time, it wasn't walking; it was immobile.

  He would chastise Jerome for not backing the hell off and waiting for the rest of them ter. If the two of them could keep the pilot's attention while the other two stayed way the hell back, they would have a shot. In theory, the two support mechs could outrange its Partical Projection Cannons, while he and Jerome could engage it up close... this wasn't going to be pretty.

  He reyed the conversation to his ncemates, then leaned his mech into the next bend of the river, kicking up rocks as the Jenner tried to maintain its bance at high speeds. He had no choice but to go at this full tilt if he was going to close the distance on the heavy mech and get inside its optimal range for its PPCs. One hit from those had a good chance of tearing any of Suzy Q's limbs off. The 50 mm autocannon would also be a concern; the ballistic weapon was fairly accurate at long ranges.

  I shouldn't buy more trouble. This all depends on the mech’s variant and the actual condition of its armour. Guess we will see in a moment.

  As he rounded the bend, the riverbed opened up into a rge ke that was about a quarter mile wide and half a mile long. About halfway down the ke, the battle was taking pce, letting John see just how good a pilot Jerome actually was.

  Marauder in spoiler

  Spoilerspan>Marauder

  [colpse]

  As he had described, the Marauder was half submerged in the ke and rapidly turning around with its torso, trying to track the speedy Spider. Jerome was moving behind it, trying to get a shot in on its more vulnerable rear armour, but he had to keep jumping to avoid taking a bst from the arm mounted medium sers and PPCs. It looked fairly beat up, with most of its armour showing huge gaps or missing pting altogether, leading John to think the pirates found it in a scrapyard somewhere and just welded whatever they had avaible onto it.

  Its pilot didn't appear to notice him yet.

  John ran along the keside, considering his options. He could engage it as soon as he was in range, but that would be well within the PPCs' and autocannons' optimal range. He didn't have much room to maneuver between the ke and the canyon wall, almost running straight at the mech. It would be like a Sherman tank charging straight at an entrenched Tiger tank in World War II. Spoiler: it never went well for the Sherman.

  That left the ke. The ke that he had no idea how deep it was.

  "Screw it. At least I won't overheat." He said, then fired his jump jets. Suzy Q responded immediately, lifting off the ground just in time to avoid a hastily fired autocannon salvo from the Marauder. Jerome seized that opportunity to put a couple of ser bsts into the rear armour of the mech before jumping again as it swung its torso around to bring its arm in line with the Spider.

  John nded a few seconds ter, half submerged in the water and within his weapons range. He didn't waste a moment and opened up with all of them, needing to wait for a few seconds for his jump jets to recharge. Two of his sers missed, but another two caught it in the side, melting the remaining armour that was hastily welded there and doing damage to its insides. The missiles smmed into its center of mass, with one of them catching the side of the cockpit and blowing out the gss there.

  The shock of having their canopy blown open didn't seem to slow the pilot down at all. The return fire on Suzy Q was devastating, a pair of PPC bsts tearing Suzy Q's right arm clean off and damaging more of its right torso. The autocannon thankfully missed, but John was too busy listening to the warnings inside his cockpit to notice.

  "Right Arm Damage: Critical, Right Arm: Offline, Weapon System: Offline, Weapon System: Offline. Damage to Internal Structure." His new least favorite voice said, announcing what John could pinly see.

  "Oh Shaddup!" He said as he fired his Jump Jets again, closing the distance on the Marauder, needing to compensate for his now lighter right side a bit.

  Jerome was worrying its rear arc still, so the Marauder pilot split its arms and tried to shoot them both at the same time. The PPCs went wide, but both the medium sers nded strikes on their torsos, melting even more armour off.

  "Damnit, he got one of my sers. Where are the others?" Jerome said over the radio as John sprayed the heavy mech with his remaining sers and a volley of missiles. Some of the missiles went deep into its torso, but didn't seem to slow the massive machine down.

  Just then, another volley of missiles smmed into the side of the Marauder, the explosions shredding even more of its armour off, staggering it for a moment.

  "The cavalry has arrived, gentlemen!" Franky called out; his autocannons could be heard barking from the far end of the canyon. The 25 mm rounds were chipping away at the heavy mech's arms and torso, and an explosion occurred in its right torso, one of Franky’s 25mm rounds having penetrated where the rger mech's autocannon ammo was stored. Its right arm hung loosely, the weapons in it now dead. "Yeeehaww! Get'em, boys! First round is on me tonight!"

  John didn't waste a moment and smmed the throttles forward, intending to circle to its now weakened right side. However, his foot slipped in the mud underwater, and his mech tripped, submerging the Suzy Q completely.

  "Water Ingress Detected, System: Offline, System: Offline." His ever helpful computer told him, telling him two of the five jump jets were now inoperable.

  "Maggie is going to kill me," John said, standing his mech upright again, his pns now ruined.

  Coming out of the water, John could see the battle had finished. The pirate had called out on open comms that they surrendered and shut the mech turned turret down.

  "Ya looking a wee bit wet there. Did you forget to tie your shoece or something?" Frank cackled across the radio.

  "Whatever, funny guy. The pirates are down, and the base is captured." John said, looking over at the mix of prefab structures they were using as a base. A half-dozen men had come out of the buildings, unarmed and with their hands raised, signaling the end of the battle. "Looks like the mines have another group of volunteers." He said, knowing exactly what was in store for these men. Just like in Infinite Frontiers, they would be sent to the mines for a long time.

  Pirates, in every world, seem to yearn for the mines.

  "Tell me why we are doing this again?" Jerome asked John as they were cuffing the pirates. The old man was nearly as tall as John, dark-skinned, with salt and pepper hair cut in a 'Jarhead' fashion. He was a bit sour that they had to climb down off their mechs to handle their new prisoners. Franky and his Bckjack were standing nearby, providing them security, while Dar was roaming around near the base, looking for any stragglers and calling the Leopard in to nd.

  "Because the governor is too cheap to send any infantry with us to do this. So, we can either bring them in for the reward or kill them on the spot and say there are no survivors. Pirates or not, that st one leaves a sour taste in my mouth." John said, recalling what the unit's commander had told him earlier. Most of the Bckstone guards were former pilots from professional militaries, so killing people who surrendered was generally frowned upon. Plus, they got bonuses for any captured pirates who could be put to work. Honestly, that was probably the reason that most of them would bother with capturing pirates instead of having a well pced 'misfire'. John shuddered a little bit at that.

  Taking pirates as forced bour used to bother John, but now it made a lot more sense to him. These were generally not good people, and killing them felt too easy for what many of them had done over the years.

  "You trash hear that? You're lucky our commander has a heart of gold, and you get to live out the rest of your days in a mine." Jerome said, cuffing the st guy and throwing him to the side with the rest of the prisoners.

  John made his way over to the st pirate, one he didn't need to bother cuffing. The pilot of the Marauder was sitting on the ground, moaning in pain. A raven haired beauty who looked like she might have come from the Draconis Combine*, she would have stood around five-foot-four, with a fairly athletic build, with modest C-Cup breasts. Would have stood, except for her injuries.

  She was seated on a ft rock wearing only a tight fitting grey tubetop and boxer shorts, nursing a broken leg and arm, along with dozens of open wounds on the right side of her body from when her cockpit gss shattered from his missile strike. The fact that she was able to keep fighting afterwards was amazing, though the ammo explosion probably didn't do her any favors.

  John resisted the urge to heal her, not wanting to out he had magical abilities. He could tell from his status screen that this world definitely didn't have magic; his total mana pool only totaled a hundred points.

  He activated his scouter skill and began questioning her. "Is this all of you?"

  "Yes." She said in an emotionless voice.

  The boss is dead thanks to you people, and I have no idea where that fucker hid my daughter.

  John blinked.

  Maybe not all pirates were cut of the same cloth.

  *Japanese descendant, if you are unfamiliar with Battletech lore