Mech Pilot who has to tell the new pilot that they can't salvage and refit enemy weapons to their own mech.
Working for a BSW outfit mostly beats the hell out of a pure-ordnance merc company, but sometimes Broad Spectrum Warfare means a campaign like this one: where nearly all the salvos fired are by the company's legal team, immobilising any corporation that tries to sell fuel to the opposition in elegant regulatory shibari.
Nine months planetside without a shot fired, while the oppo's tanks run inexorably dry and they fall back and back and back.
This had been a major staging post at one point, but even the "we can't hold this and we can't take it with us" fires have been ash for weeks by the time Dingo Unit go in for the initial IED sweep with the minesweeper drone rollers and the SIGINT walkers.
"Oh. Oh man," Beeper says. "Look at 'em," and Fletch can only hum agreement. Two brand-fucking-new Heron-K mechs in Land Theatre 02 camo pattern, with the ultralong-range main gun. "I want one," Beeper sighs.
"Don't think you've got space to stash it under your bunk," Fletch says wryly. Everybody wants one. Even the Cap has made wistful noises about offering to take one off the provisional government's hands, when they're done securing the planet for them. The Heron is a goddamn pretty machine. It's not gonna happen; same reason these beautiful factory-fresh mechs are sitting here like this. It's just too damn expensive to run them.
"Even just the railgun." Beeper's gone full-on gearhead longing.
The gun's purpose-built for a machine five times as tall as their walkers, about twenty times as heavy, with state-of-the-art postural bracing designed-in for the recoil. And you'd have to strap on a second reactor almost the size again of the walker itself.
"It'd cost more than your salary every time you fired a round," Fletch says, and Beeper sighs tragically.
"I know. But look at 'em."
