"Our opponents called in their friends. Enemy reinforcements quietly surrounded us from all sides. Once they formed a complete envelopment, they attacked us on all sides!"
The outcome was devastating. The Whalers lost eighty percent of the mechs they deployed in battle. The remnants that came back to Cloudy Curtain were diminished, dispired and utterly broken!
"Are the Whalers still around?" Ves softly asked.
"My father died. The old guard died. I managed to survive, and so did a couple of others. Upon our return, I tried to take charge as best as I could and recalled all of our remaining mech forces to Cloudy Curtain. There was no way we could hang on to our other turf at our current level of strength."
"And then?"
"And then, I got kicked out of my father's own organization!" Dietrich slammed his fist against the bar counter. "What a good leader I turned out to be! While my father and the old guard who supported me the most were still around, all of the Whalers remained honest. As soon as this changed, the disloyal bastards who joined the Whalers in the past few years since the Glowing Planet Campaign usurped control from me! Too few Whalers backed me up when the usurpers launched their coup!"
Dietrich freely explained how it all went downhill.
Ves did not look entirely surprised. Walter's Whalers used to be a small-time gang that lorded over Cloudy Curtain because they didn't have any competition. After participating in the Glowing Planet Campaign, they lost a lot of old hands but gained billions of bright credits.
The Whalers could never protect all of their wealth with the meager forces at their disposal, so they underwent an enormous hiring and procurement spree. Their strength and numbers ballooned in a matter of years, so much so that they became local hegemons that claimed other rural planets in the Bentheim region as their turf!
Yet Ves recognized the vulnerability of pursuing such rapid expansion. The Whalers were never very diligent with how they managed their organization. They recruited too many new Whalers, diluting their old culture, loyalty and identity.
While this situation wouldn't have led to any serious problems, a cancer had taken root in the gang. As long as the only deterrent in the form of Walter and his old buddies was gone, Dietrich alone did not possess enough power to retain control over the Whalers!
"...So that's how I end up here by myself in this deserted bar." Dietrich finished. "It's the only piece of real estate that I have left in my name."
"Walter's Whalers left nothing behind for you?"
"They no longer go by that name. They call themselves the Cloud Whalers by now. As for my severance fee, I'm lucky enough to retain this worthless bar and my stupid life! I wouldn't have been able to walk out from the Whalers if it hadn't been for some of the old members speaking up for me. They still turned their back to me, though."
"How come they didn't support you?"
"My father is tainted. We enjoyed a lot of success, but my father and the old guard's obsession with Bentheim threw most of it away! The old members who remained behind weren't mech pilots. They're the administrators, the business owners, the mech technicians and the like who wouldn't have been useful in our attempt to gain a footing on Bentheim. Even if they had been with Walter from the start, they don't have the power to contend against mech pilots."
"I see. The usurpers probably obtained their support before they launched their coup. Their main demand was to preserve your life, on account for the sentiment they held towards your father."
Dietrich sighed. "In hindsight, that was obvious. The usurpers couldn't have taken over the Whalers so smoothly without making a lot of deals."
The new Cloud Whalers no longer had anything to do with Dietrich and his father. If Ves wanted to be poetic about it, then he would remark that Dietrich and the Whalers had broken the bonds of karma between them. With how lifeless Dietrich looked, not even revenge was on his mind.
"Did Walter leave you a nest egg or something? Surely your father wasn't stupid enough to put all of his eggs in a single basket."
"Hahaha!" Dietrich laughed. "You're right. My father did squirrel away a couple of billion credits to a number of secret stashes and bank accounts. The problem is that my dad is really bad at all of this complicated finance stuff, so he entrusted the matter to one of his old buddies who acted as our chief accountant."
"I see."
He didn't have to ask whether this chief accountant stabbed Dietrich in the back. All of the money that Walter saved for his son had fallen into the hands of the usurpers.
The dispossessed heir to the Whalers snorted at his visitor. "You don't have to feel sorry for me, Ves. We all got what we deserved. This is how gangs are like. I'm tired of the Whalers anyway. They're all a bunch of idiots with too many mechs and not enough foresight. My dad and the old guard could have used the windfall they earned from the Glowing Planet campaign to transition the Whalers into a large mercenary corps or security company."
"It takes a lot of training and expertise to set something like that up, Dietrich!"
"We had a lot of money! We could have set up an investment fund and bought a bunch of lucrative companies to live off the profits, but no, my dad insisted on paying back his old grudges!"
Obviously, losing access to all of the wealth the Walters earned stung Dietrich deeply. Ves understood how bad it must be for Dietrich to be a billionaire for a few years before being robbed of all of the wealth that he supposedly owned!
"How about a new start?" Ves extended his hand to the other man. "You're a decent mech pilot. We shared a life-and-death experience together. I just happen to need a lot of mech pilots."
Dietrich snorted. "I know about your Avatars of Myth and Living Sentinels. Every mech pilot on Cloudy Curtain wants to work for them. It's just.. I won't fit in an elite outfit like the Avatars and I don't want to become a glorified security guard."
Ves already anticipated this answer.
"You don't have to join them. I have a third outfit under my command. Hear me out…"