Crowbars and Mechs: A Futuristic Guide to Romance

Charlie had never seen a real wolf before. She imagined they looked nothing like the pompous males who paraded around under the Iron Wolf banner. Several of them were grunting and carrying on, unloading crate upon crate of MREs and other supplies from the back of the skimmer that was prancing merrily against its bonds at the edge of the docks. These skimmers were very slight, agile ships that slipped in and out of the atmosphere like wanton butterflies drunk on an evening’s breeze. It was hard for her to tell which of them was really in charge, all of them were fooling around, punching each other on the shoulder, telling raucous jokes that made Charlie roll her eyes with disdain. She watched them from her unseen vantage point, which happened to be her perched precariously on a steepled, slippery rooftop. Her chosen spot was actually quite a distance away from her targets, as she had once gotten into an unfortunately close situation when one them spotted her leering at them from on high. Luckily it was easy to lose oneself in the maze of tents and makeshift shacks that made up Caildun 4 while the Wolves growled hungrily from the cores of their clunky mechs.

Something about her prey struck her as.. different this week. They seemed to be the same goofy, ill-mannered, self-confident assholes that she watched every week and yet.. ‘Awww. Shit!’ Charlie suddenly realized that today must be a shifting. A shifting happened every two years or so. Generally, the Wolves in one area of the planet would become too well known and their influence and ability to scare the living shit out of people would stagnate. When the time came, each batch would rotate to a new area so they could begin a new reign of terror with different patrons who perhaps hadn’t been exposed to their particular brand of assholery. Cursing, she beat her gloved fist against the flimsy tin roof, causing it to wobble uneasily and its owner to scream indignantly. The girl ignored whoever was inside and refocused her goggles on the Wolves.

If one were to take a step back for a moment and observe Charlie carefully, one might notice several at least semi-interesting things. Firstly, the thick, almost burlap like material of her pants seemed to be splotched, patched, and stained, more recently with neon green which obviously came from the bright lichen which covered the roof she had scrabbled upon. Secondly, despite the heavy sort of humidity, she wore a permanently starched, long-sleeved buttondown shirt made of some durable alien cloth that could have at one time been mistaken for a cream color. Now it was a dingy blackish-brown, caused by the soot of the mines she and many others of her kind worked in daily. A belt that acted more like a tool belt than an item of clothing held several small bags and assorted tinkering tools, and sat now in the small of her back so that she could lie comfortably flat at her vantage point. She would look like any other slum miner, grimy but normal enough to not be memorable. Or at least until one caught sight of the contraption on her face. It was a shiny bit of engineering that at this moment enhanced her eyesight a hundred fold so that she could peer searchingly across the half-mile or so that spanned between her and the new batch of Wolves. Two circular lenses in guilt gold settings rested over her eyes, while several other, thinner lenses clicked down in front of them to further amplify their effect. The result was like looking through the bottom of a bottle but it surely worked and that was all Charlie needed. The glass and gold was attached to a section of sturdy cloth, much like whatever made up the pants she wore, which tied around her head in a jaunty fashion and covered nearly all of her forehead and nose. Messy, soot-blackened hair was caught up beneath a newsboy cap that currently sat back on her head so as not to obstruct her view.

She cursed still, all her carefully laid plans and months of close observation were about to go to waste. Unless.. It was almost too dangerous, being bright bloody daylight with not one but two Wolf divisions present. Almost. Consideration began to weave its way through her brain, while her thoughts turned to desperation. ‘With two of them here, they’ll be too cocky to think for one second that someone would have the balls to steal right from under their noses, right? If I go grab Jasper now and manage to pull it off before they notice.. But how could they not notice, it’s bright fucking daylight! ..If I don’t do it now then all my preparation will have been for nothing. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s waste’. Charlie couldn’t tell if it was the adrenaline or the dread of being caught coursing through her that made her so giddy as she scooted down the slant of the roof and into the street.


Hughes and Thomas were busy arm wrestling. The basic principle of brute strength that seems to be the whole point of such a brutish show was sort of ruined by the fact that both of them were covered head to toe in blue and silver power armor. They engaged hands over a box of Lasdaarii manufactured medpacks and began to go at it, spewing curses and insults meant to discourage the other while several other lesser members of the platoon watched from nearby. This group seemed a bit unruly, despite being the closest thing to order this planet would probably ever see. All of this came to a halt however as an imposing shadow was cast over the group.

Lieutenant Jacob Theogrin could cause a group of newborn babies to stand straight and salute. He strode down the gangplank from the skimmer, followed closely by his second in command Quinn, and immediately the surly group snapped to attention like a bunch of toy soldiers. He stood at an almost unnatural 6’9” and was generally a veritable wall of man. By the looks of his heavy, fully decorated overcoat, he had just done his yearly check-in with the Lasdaarii record keepers. He was dressed to the nines for a military man, ‘like the good old days’ one might say, without having ever actually seen any such days. For a tall man, he was wide as well and heavy with muscle, as though he were trying to emulate the Grizzly he piloted. His hair was blonde, but not bright, a muddier blonde, and tied back in a low ponytail. His facial hair was also this dingy gold, right down to the clean cut goatee that curled almost delicately around his block of a chin. It could strike one’s mind that if he were to release his hair he would look far more like a lion than a Grizzly. Aloof as always, he came around to his saluting troops and arched a brow to accompany the line of questioning he was about to launch.

“ Staff Sergeant Quinn, why is it my troopers are sporting about like boys in the schoolyard when clearly their work is far from done?” Deep tones spoke lightly of lineage from the southern hemisphere that had nearly evaporated, a vast country with British roots, and held a slight twang that had been known to send many a soldier into the fetal position and many a lady swooning.

“It is unclear even to me, Lieutenant.” Spoke Quinn, who despite his straight back and bootlicking ways was actually quite the regal figure himself.

“They should probably return themselves to their work before I personally strap them to the soles of my Grizzly and have a frolic in the glassfields, wouldn’t you say Quinn?” Hughes gulped, his adam’s apple bobbing as a visible testament to Theogrin’s sincerity.

“Yes sir, Lieutenant Theogrin. I would say exactly that.” Quinn smirked as he watched the soldier mentally crumble before his superior. The man had that sort of affect on people.

Theogrin nodded and moved off down the dock, leaving his men to recover and breathe sighs of relief.

Jacob Theogrin alone, as a man away from his station, was sort of a noble. While he wasn’t stomping, killing, and burning among other things, he would often sit alone and read the various texts that had been recovered over the years, as well as newer alien texts on war and things. He was an intelligent man, both inside and outside of his mech and anyone who would mistake him for otherwise would be a fool. Now, that’s not to say that he couldn’t be a downright brute when it came to it. In fact he was well known in his previous stations and his comrades had affectionately scrawled a crazy sort of grin across the face of his mech suit in bright red paint as a testament to the atrocity against humanity that Jacob Theogrin could be.

Speaking of his famous mech suit, that was what he was sauntering out to oversee right now. As he walked, Quinn faithfully a few yards behind him as always, the huge metal suit was being unloaded from the heavy barge-like freighter that had been chartered to move their equipment from one spot on the planet’s face to another. There were six others, all numbered in orderly fashion, a few of those being auxiliary. Jacob loved mechs. When man’s body could not possibly inflict the necessary amount of pain and suffering and death that was required, there was metal and robotics to assist. There was nothing to be done that one could not find a mech for. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head.. It brought a sinister sort of smile to the big man’s face as he oversaw the rest of the unloading of his precious cargo.


Something shot out from the line of slanting old buildings, something big and fast. It made straight for the piles and piles of supply crates the Wolves had been stacking at the mouth of the docks all morning. They had strategically set the boxes of food at the very top of the stacks, far out of reach of a normal human or machine. The first soldier who noticed could see that this mass was a good thirty feet tall. It stood besides the crates for a moment, as though it couldn’t decide, even as the soldier called out an alert to his fellows. Jacob was closer to it, but had his back to it before Quinn had grabbed his shoulder and whirled it around. What he saw was a smaller mech, much sleeker and slimmer than his Grizzly, hoisting several crates into a bracket on its back.

“OY, WHAT THE BLOODY HELL-.“ Theogrin was immediately frothing mad as he strode toward the offending machine, waving his thick arms furiously in the air. He could see that the ‘head’ of it was sunken into its ‘shoulders’ and therefore it couldn’t really turn to look at him without turning the entire machine. It was also belching steam and screaming some grinding gear noise. Finally, when the pilot seemed to have decided that it had taken enough and that with thirty odd men in armor barreling down the planks toward him it was time to get the hell out. Clutching several additional crates to its body with its abnormally long arms, the mech took off toward the shacks at a blinding speed. Once it had cleared the building line, the –rest- of the supplies exploded in a fiery mess. MREs rained from the sky, some of them now in free-falling powder form. By the time the Iron Wolf regiment had picked themselves up off the deck, all of them with ringing ears and a dazed look on their faces, the steam mech was long gone.

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Theogrin was standing next to a stack of boxes as the bomb went off, and was covered in them as the pallet lost its integri ty and collapsed sideways in the blast. It was mostly medical supplies in small boxes so the hulking great brute of a man wasn't badly hurt, just scratched and bruised and incredibly angry. He fought his way out of the pile and hurled one of the boxes as hard as he could against the side of the skimmer that he'd just arrived on and stalked back down towards the docks. The explosive didn't seem to have been placed with any sort of demolitions knowlage, just tossed on the ground for maximum 'bang', which it had done perfectly. Admittedly, most of the MRE's that they'd brought with them were doing their best impression of snow at the moment and it was only when a freeze dried steak slapped against the concrete in front of him that he really lost his temper.

He turned and addressed the thirty or so men of both sections that lay about in various states of dissarray, some helping others and others just looking shell shocked. “What the BLOODY HELL DO YOU BASTARDS THINK YOU'RE DOING! GET OFF YOUR ARSES YOU LAZY -FUCKS-! WE JUST HAD OUR PERIMETER INVADED AND NONE OF YOU WERE WATCHING THE FUCKING LINE!” He gestured towards the sound of the mech in the distance as it made a clean getaway . “ WE WON'T EVEN BE ABLE TO CATCH IT BECAUSE YOU FUCKING MORONS WERE TO BUSY ARSING ABOUT!” He seethed at them... Most of his normal unit had picked themselves up and were looking suitably abashed, but then most of his detatchment had been busy inside the skimmer and unloading mechs and pallets of food. The detachment that had been there was looking at him with openmouthed horror as he chewed them out. Apparently they didn't have anything like the discipline he demanded of his unit... or at least they didn't have a Lieutenant that would happily rip them to shreds on his own. At the sight of the gaping faces he lost it even more. “ LOOK YOU DOE-EYED FUCKS, GET OFF YOUR ARSES! YOU LOT, GET THE FIRES OUT. YOU FOUR!” He gestured to four men in power armour. “GET BACK ON THE PICKET DUTY YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE ON AND IF YOU SO MUCH AS FUCKING BLINK I WILL END YOU! THE REST OF YOU CAN SORT THIS CLUSTERFUCK OUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!” He paused and turned back to the skimmer and roared, “QUINN!” The staff sergeant in question stepped out neatly from behind a pallet of toilet paper and saluted, neat as you please and entirely calm it seemed. Theogrin just -glared- at him for a second or two before he growled at his second in command. He wasn't angry with him, but sometimes the man could be fastidiously clean and prompt. It was probably what made him such an efficient guy. “Quinn, find me any camera recordings of the attack, and I want to know everything there is to know about that bloody mech, because I'm going to rip off its arms myself. You've got an hour. And let the other fucking lieutenant know exactly what has happened, and that I'd like a word.” The Staff Sergeant nodded with a slight smile and saluted with a prompt 'Yessir' and Theo knew that half of what he'd said had probably already put in motion. “Oh.. and get two mechs out and put them on picket duty as well. That is the -last- time anyone makes a fool out of my section.” He growled and seemed to calm himself somewhat, although he still did his best impression of a angry bear just woken up. He saluted and stalked off into the skimmer, his greatcoat billowing and anger just oozing out of him.