Chapter 2: “Fight me for stakes”

The order had been an unusual one. The first thing unusual about it was what the customer wanted as their main WarMAC. Most WarMACs stood tall and proud. This one was anything but.

An Alabaster-class scout WarMAC. Six legs, low to the ground, it would scuttle over terrain, low to the ground.

It had every electronic counter measure system built in.

Even had COUNTER-counter measure systems.

Its job was to find the opponents and get away to tell others where the opponents were. If caught its job was not to defend itself but try to disengage. After all, a destroyed scout was one that couldn’t pass on its targeting data to others.

Usually, his orders dealt with creating grandiose things. He estimated at least half his orders involved building characters with Assault or even Ultra Class WarMACs like the Prometheus or the Heracles.

They were overcompensating for something, he’d snark to himself, but he understood the allure of both the heavier machines and the Alabaster he had just finished.

Working on the Alabaster meant he took a different path to the goal from that steady, well-worn path he had repeated so many times in the game.

His mind drifted to that old poet—Frost, was it? and his line about the road less traveled. Usually, Adrian’s customers wanted the well-worn highway of brute force. A scuttle-scout was a breath of fresh air.

Some problems require a hammer. Some, a scalpel

So many customers wanted the biggest hammer they could find. It was refreshing to have an order where the machine didn’t have to rely solely on overwhelming force. Force had its place, of course. There was always safety in having the biggest gun around. But just having the biggest gun itself wasn’t always a guaranteed ticket to victory.

He finished the last upgrade of the Alabaster, getting an extra two percent torque out of the engine’s linkage to the motive systems and prepared to email the customer that the job had been done two days ahead of schedule. Another satisfied customer, he thought wearily.

After that, it was just about time to log off for a few hours of rest, when his eyes wandered to the game’s chat window, spinning wildly through lines as it tended to do.

While most people whose job was to power level characters and WarMacs would mute the game’s chat, seeing it as a distraction from the job, he had enough confidence in what he did that he didn’t mute it.

He didn’t contribute much.

It was usually all political talk, memes about some overpowered character, taunts at other people’s gender or race or orientation (those usually earned a mute from Adrian).

People who had strategy questions about the game’s built-in PVE campaigns, or had the questions that new players invariably had, he would answer, to point out resources, or to suggest a different weapons configuration or the like. It was his way of still treating World of Warmachines as a game, not a job.