One Hour Later - Surface
A few hundred meters of winding tunnels steadily rise back up toward the surface greeted the cramped possession of mechs and the skimmer. Steadily lights began to interspace in the sides and ceiling of the tunnel; Too dim to make a difference but decades past still connected to some detached power grid being a good sign as in a section where the tunneling leveled out the Strays were greeted by a horizontal break thirty meters across as though a starship-sized can opener had taken to the side and shorn it off, exposing it not to rock or glass sands but instead the half collapsed interior of an underground depot.
Long since abandoned it was a hundred meters across and twenty meters tall where large and rusted machinery and belts long since ground to a halt greeted them; Each wide enough to walk two mechs abreast over and still littered with warped pieces of scrap metal that would no doubt feed into the various ducts and chutes at various ends of the facility. There was little of actual value in the place but it was an exit that Micah led them to instead of continuing further down the network of tunnels.
Around and over belts and inert and long dead manufactorum machinery the mostly unharmed Inheritor guided them until in the dark a distant almost unnoticeable glow could be seen marking a rather simple hatch on the wall and a set of scaffolding that was clearly marked in corporation-made star paint.
"Theres an exit one level up onto the surface through there." Micah explained as he guided them up and then onto a conveyor belt which levied up towards the ceiling and through a massive hole where the ceiling had broken through and leading them up and out from the underground and onto the surface.
They did not exit into a great glass desert or wasteland. Instead the Strays exited at ground level from the side of a towering spire and were surrounded on all sides by walls and structures massive in size and scale in asymetrical designs in rust-red colors almost black in the early-morning dim sun and the shadows it cast on them.
A City. Or at least the dead husk of one spanned as far down the hundred-meter wide acessway meant for some kind of grav-train system if several massive bucket-carts on their side were any inclination. It was the corpse of one of the many factory-cities that spanned Freeholds entire surface before the genocide and had not fared any better than the planet itself as buildings seemed to lean at odd angles or had toppled into each other or simply were unrecognizable as anything other than monoliths of scrap without clear function and had only survived the glassing of the world in the barest of sense.
Things were still living her as well. Tech scum scrambled away in a motorized cart of some kind at the sight of them a kilometer down the rail while strange robotic sentinels hovered or flew about lazily like balloons or airborne junkers high in the air without purpose as one such automata twice as large as the Squid-mecha cut away at the metal plating of a structure above them where a hundred-tonne piece of metal fell off and landed with a crash into a lower section of the building only for the robot to simply burn lazily away to a higher section and begin cutting away another section.
<The Pathfinder says the kinder arent aggressive.> Chips Fairy, Snacks, translated some of the strange machine-words of the voidfolk explorer as it gestured at the machines flying about from the back of Chips mech.
<They aren't friendly either. But don't attack if you don't bother them or get too close. It says that it doesn't know their purpose but neither do they>
They saw many such sights. The occasional Voidfolk group watching from higher elevations only to retreat as soon as a mech turned their way, larger solitary Automata thrice or even five times larger than Chips Highwayman moving down the larger rail-lines collecting scrap and metal that would turn multi-faceted camera eyes on strange misshapen heads to watch them pass, Tech Scum barges either parked and deployed or travelling where their occupants would observe with guarded apprehension at the warmachines as they passed.
They went like this in a single direction for less than a kilometer roughly in a direction back the way they had come but this time above ground and by their own growing maps and the Pathfinders guesses were directly over the same tunnel network they had travelled as the small section of exposed megalopolis they had seen began to shrink and ween until it opened up again into glass desert before them and their objective.
Joining a gaggle of hundreds of others be it Voidfolk scavengers, interested Automata, or Tech Scum groups the Strays came to stop at the top of a steep drop where some shelf of city had simply collapsed in on itself and the factories and tunnels beneath as though the floor had given out and sunken in.
And the cause was what had attracted all the various scavengers, and by chance the Inheritors as they explored as, the moment they arrived another skimmer practically made a path right for them as four Inheritors joined them and had likely been the other half of Micah, Tindals, and Caelebs group who sent back word to the strays of their discovery.
"Strueth..." Chips loudly whispered not believing what he was seeing as they looked at the massive Land Ship before them.
Three hundred meters across, almost as long tall and wide it was a behemoth of metal and armor the size of a starship but bound to the surface. Covered in weapons, armor, arrays, and towers it was close in description to a tank by virtue of the found massive treads that normally pulled it along the surface; Each one with tread plating weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds and thicker than starship armor and wide enough to flatten a mech or trample a structure.
It was lazing off to one side where one of the massive treads had sank into the pit causing the massive landship to lean and slide precariously at an angle and slide into the section of ground its sheer weight rivalling a drednought had broken. Which wouldn't have been a problem otherwise had the sinking portion of city not caused a spire that likely once towered into space but now only contained the spliter of a base still half as large as the ship itself to fall over onto the leviathan and it's weigh matched with the angle it had dipped down from had pinned the nomad bastion to the ground where it was unable to pull itself out of.
Pinned and unable to escape the landship had remained until someone had found it. And it had not first been the Inheritors...
In and around the pit it had slid into lights danced. Large and almost mistakenly small lasers and weapons even now danced two and fro the vessel as almost comically small barges in the dozens and almost hundreds had set up like a macabre archaeological expedition as a warband of Tech Scum had besieged it and the likely thousands of Voidfolk inhabitants of the nomad bastion. Small barges were joined by larger machines and even a war fortress were trading uninterrupted fire from large and heavy weapons platforms against Voidfolk almost too small to make out on the land ship while a towering seventy-meter tall long-legged spider contraption of a siege mecha had attached itself to the front of the landship and while still small in comparison to it was using large spider-crab like legs and mechadendrites to lock starship-grade weaponry from traversing to point at it while acting as a ramp for streams of besieging techies to climb its surface and pour into a breach in the side of the ship by the hundreds where constant explosions and las-fire greeted them as the defenders fought desperately to keep their home from being breached as though there weren't douzens of other contested breaches just like it as thousands of tech scum still loitered and waited for their chance to breach it as well.
Deathcrawlers, barges, Large automata like warmachines the size of their mechs, and more all did the same either firing at or waiting patiently for their turn while the Tech Scums Warfortress; A much smaller but still sizeable mobile bastion of armor and weapons parked next to it's larger Voidfolk cousin like a scavenger waiting for its wounded prey to finally succumb.
"Hail, King Rogers, My lady!" One of the new Inheritors greeted them as he dismounted his skimmer in his hardsuit, the man pausing as he counted his comrades and took note of the wrapped body on Yamogs mech but did not linger long.
"Who're you?" Chips demanded, his cockpit opening as he stood up and gestured at the siege before them.
"And how long has this been going on? I thought it was just stuck?!" He waved one arm at the battle in the pit a good couple kilometers distant and then wider to encompass the variety of onlookers.
"Ser Lancel, Your grace!" The Inheritor gave a very tight bow as much as his hardsuit would allow before introducing the other two;
"And my squires Luke and Lucas. And ye, the leviathan machine was henceforth still entombed not a half day earlier when last we sent Caleb, Tindal, and Micah to make word of our discovery. The poachers arrived shortly after and have besieged it ever since and have, as is the way of things, attracted many who sympathise with the plight of the leviathans fate or as we have been able to understand from those who speak the Trade tongue are hoping for an opportunity or scraps of their own."
An explosion rumbled the ground as one of the deathcrawlers at the base of the Landship got too close and a secondary of the bastion opened up, leaving nothing but a crater to punctuate the scene before Lancel continued.
"No more of the mad ones have arrived since the second large machine. We have been eagerly awaiting your arrival and the forces you would bring but..." Lancel paused, looking across the admittedly large lance of mechs but did not need to comment considering the thousands of Tech Scum bellow and their douzens of tanks, vehicles, and the war fortress that was easily by itself a match for a single lance.
"Don't worry, kid!" Chips, while masked couldn't show his face but the clear grin in his voice was clear as he struck a pose with one leg on his cockpit and only almost slipping once put both hands on his hips before posing majestically.
"Now that we're out of those tunnels all it will take is one quick messa-"
=====
One day earlier, Ricinus Factory.
The party had been in full swing when Joe and Chips and their respective lances had slipped out barely noticed beyond a couple more tables covered in leftover plates, half eaten food, and scraps. Nearly a peak of drinking, a couple small but contained fires, and only one stabbing things had been set right up until the Fairys all stopped their games and chases in near unison.
Alarms rang, Fairys all started chittering at once to the tune of a box of bells being thrown down a flight of stone stairs, and many a drunk mutant fell off of their seat as the first to slide into a drone body burst into the barbeque and be heard over her sisters as the news spread and half-drunk mutants started scrambling about.
"I can't-" Unc' belched, throwing up slightly before wiping his chin and staggering about looking for his missing boot as he did so.
"Can't they actually thought they could pull one over on us that twerp!" He cried out half disbelief half astonishment as the fairys kept repeating the same information.
A holographic display was formed of mirage nanites depicting a man; A
Mutant strung up and crucified on a balcony while a Rixxikor in a tinpot dictator military uniform posed over the beaten and bloody pox-ridden face of
Mutant Ruth with some kind of banner draped bellow him that while illegible had the helpful cartoonish drawing of
Twerps face with big growing eyebrows drawn on him and a cartoonish rendition of the Mad Mutants face with her trademark goofy smile drawn on the other side but with a big circle with a line through it around her head in the universal sign of cancelation.
"They screwed us over!" Somone shouted.
"They beat the tar outa Ruth!" Someone else followed suit.
"And they didn't even fuggin PAY!" The incredulity came full circle as suits and armor were dawned and outside the corporations Terrene assault ship and two mecha carriers were touching down dangerously fast as the first lance out the door began loading in their mechs.
"An' where the hells Chips?!" Someone shouted.
"And joe?" Another noticed.
"Aw hell we ain't got time for this someone grab the rookie and send 'her after em they can catch up; WE GOT A SCORE TO SETTLE WITH THAT LITTLE TWERP!"
=====
City Outskirts.
"Wait... What?!" Joe shouted at the news as his fairy informed him, looking from it to Vegas mech after he had dismounted. "Why in the feck didn't you tell us
earlier?!" De kicked at some black sand and threw his hands up frustrated.
"Yeah..." Chips groaned, now sitting on the edge of his mech, one side of his masked face resting on a palm as he watched the battle defeated.
The plan, as chips had explained, would have been to be the first on the scene to
discover the landship. And, if abandoned claim it outright and become as he put it
filthy fuggin rich. And if it wasn't discover the temperament of the inhabitants and call in the cavalry of the rest of the strays to either beseige it themselves or extort the locals for everything they were worth in return for the corporation helping un-stuck their home and become slightly less filthy rich.
"But now..." He sighed dramatically. Kicking his feet in the air as down in the pit the landship was being slowly overrun by Tech Scum and they had been too late to claim a piece of the proverbial pie and lacked the firepower to take on the small army.
"Shucks." Linda harumphed as well, her Psycho Frame standing on the edge of the pit looking down on the battle.
"Aint there nothin we can do? I feel bad leaven them folks down there to fend for themselves."
"Against those numbers without an army of our own?" Joe snapped out the obvious.
"I don't want the Techies getting their grubby mits on a landship so close to home either but unless any of you got ideas we're better off risking the trip back with the junkers!" He finished.
