Awesome / Schlock Mercenary

• A toss-up between Kevyn annihilating a shielded tank with an epaulet grenade and taking out an entire enemy fortress with his bare hands.
  • Or during the fortress-kill: "Hello again, commodore. I have a tank now. It's very shiny, but there's an ugly stain on the upholstery."
• Elf proving she's beautiful.
• Breya Andreyasn turning a Dyson Sphere into hash, starting from nothing more than a repurposed troop transport and a few frozen terrorists.
• Her charging a Battleplate (the most powerful individual starships in existence, not counting the Fleetmind) with an unarmed diplomatic ship? And winning.
  Breya: Be a dear, jack in, and play the shields. I need to establish contact with the Touch-and-Go. Hull contact.
• The birth of Emperor Pius Dei, or perhaps the largest, fastest, and most bloodless military victory in known history.
• This scene alone. Like a chainsaw through butter, indeed.
• Pretty much the entirety of the Time Travel storyline, Mad Science Means Never Having To Say "What's the worst that could happen?"
  Petey: Welcome aboard, Captain. I see you made some new friends.
  Captain Tagon: Petey, What happened?
  Petey: It's a long story. Would you like —
  Captain Kevyn: I happened.
  • Especially this bit, with Kevyn Save Scumming the entire galaxy.
• Currently, LOTA is just a walking, talking, teleporting CMOA. Consider the following:
  • "LOTA shall now juggle seven hundred and fifty tons of cargo using LOTA's military-grade gravitics while flying. Perhaps someday LOTA will find something challenging to do."
  • LOTA earns LOTA's name.
  • And another one for LOTA: Now please stop pretending that you are the voice of the people. You just happen to be loud, and wearing a microphone.
  • LOTA, master poker player.
  • LOTA actually using a pronoun at the start is awesome enough, as seen here.
• Tagon's badassery with the pugil stick.
  • Don't forget the first time it happened.
  • As seen here, Tagon turns a hostage situation into a slaughter-fest by demonstrating that throwing your knife does NOT always work.
  Tagon: Thank you. Now I have a knife.
• Petey planning his first mission as an official officer of the crew as well as the resident AI was pretty awesome. Tagon's Toughs are no slouches at getting paid inventively but in his first attempt at a mission Petey managed to get them paid "five times for a very easy job". Then he just increased the scale of his plans from there.
• Even John der Trihs gets not one, but two.
  • Don't forget this one. Especially the footnote.
• While we occasionally hear that the clothing-like Powered Armor bestows Super-Strength, we rarely get to see that feature come into play. Then we have the waif-like Ensign Ventura, surrounded by disabled comrades and an angry mob, and...yikes.
  • Tagon's "I don't tell you how to remove bullets. Don't you tell me how to make killing machines back into little girls." is also pretty damn nice.
• Plenty of Petey references here already, but his finest hour is perhaps when the month of strips where we find out he isn't dead, starting here-ish. Especially all of the P.D. puns...
• And there was the time when Massey started a very brief firefight in a courtroom.
  "Those not wearing body armor are hereby advised to keep their arguments on-topic."
• Colonel Dehaans subjects the entirety of the Toughs to a memory altering treatment, including Schlock, who promised to find Dehaans after it was over and eat him. Schlock gets around the memory treatment with his crazy biology. Then, he fulfills the promise he made to the good Colonel.
  Schlock: No cameras in yer fancy shower, loud music playing... Perfect. I'm sorry, but I don't have time to gloat.
• Tag is just as trigger-happy as the rest of the Toughs, and not above joking about it too!
  • And also this.
• The ore freighter Captain inadvertently becoming the principal of Qlavical through an improvised defense of his planet involving "Rocks, ramming and balls of steel" (all three are literal. Even the balls of steel). "Show me your DREAM MESS!"
• Corporal Nicholson has his moments of awesomeness, but he really shines when crunch-time hits in spite of his worries about the Cartwright Curse he believes himself to be under.
  "No curses. If I get dead, it's 'cause I chose this."
• Schlock gets a promotion by doing a Sherlock Scan with his nose.
• Tailor confirms his level of badassery, originally implied here.

• Starting from here, onward, perhaps the best Big Damn Heroes moment to date.
  • Hell Already Slipped Its Leash, Mister Crunchy.
  • THIS is what Schlock would do.
  • I see angels...
  • Awww, we just got here!
• Here we see Captain Tagon demonstrating that while he may be Book Dumb, he's no slouch in the tactical department.
  Gripponan smart soles definitely qualify as force multipliers. With the right skills, they allow for amazing feats. And with the right intel, amazing feats become legendary ambushes.
• The entire Longshoreman of the Apocalypse arc is one for Schlock, as he proves himself not only to be capable of forethought and careful restraint, but also proper leadership and quick, creative thinking, such as when he decides to use goober rounds to save his squad after their transport is shut down in mid-flight.
  • Not only did Schlock realize that their disabled tank might kill thousands while crashing, he came up with a way of preventing it in the few seconds before escaping from the falling tank, and did it in such a way that he got to create a giant explosion. Could double as a moment of heartwarming considering Schlock's usual disregard for collateral damage.
  • Schlock goes up against a sniper who has been dogging him for a bit. The last time he fought him, his rapid-fire micro-grenade launcher wasn't hitting the target. This time, Schlock knows exactly how long his grenades are going to take to drop, and he's kind enough to let the sniper know.
  • We don't run from the end of the world. We CHARGE!
• "Wow. They're like popcorn." "Weak simile. These have to be popped twice."
• Tino shows that he has learned from his earlier instruction.
  • "Skeet."
• Kathryn v.s. Schlock. Skinny Kathryn beats Schlock with nothing more than her wits and a little force multiplication.
  • And Dr. Bunnigus makes it even more awesome by calling Schlock on his chauvinism.
• She's always been delightfully snarky, but Tagii really gets to show her stuff in the Random Access Memorabilia arc, from providing overwatch against zombie supersoldiers to effortlessly curbstomping an attacking warship flotilla. Keep in mind that these zombie supersoldiers were easily on par with Kevyn's streak of badassery during The Pointy End of the Stick.
• Thurl managing to retake the Touch and Go with a docking shuttle, two other crewmembers in inferior armor, and a logic probe.
• The above action, however, only resulted in Tagii going crazy. Crazy Awesome.
  • To put that in perspective, the Morokweng was one of the largest, most powerful ships in the galaxy, with a crew of over 50,000. Tagii took it down in SECONDS, and in the process outsmarted literally everyone else around her.
• The first rule of AI kill-switches is "Don't talk about the AI kill switch."
• Tagii, trapped inside Ennesby's brain, manages to trick him into transmitting her distress signal. Keep in mind that she was literally incapable of having more intelligence than him, because she was trapped in his brain. And she still outsmarted him.
• Bristlecone asks Ventura to recruit Kaff Tagon, and suggests doing so via delegation. She does so beautifully.
  • Followed by Tagon making crystal-clear that he knows when he's being manipulated and chooses to allow it or not.
• Elf demonstrates why she's such a good partner to Kevyn.
  KEVYN: Courtesy before science? That's madness.
  ELF: Madness that gets to share a bed, yes.
• Captain Landon, Internal Affairs officer for the JSF. In an enemy stronghold, surrounded by heavily-armed officers, and he's the only one who hasn't been suborned by a nanite hack. Most people wouldn't survive such a scenario. Most people aren't uplifted polar bears.
  • Captain Landon then proceeds to pretty much wipe out the remaining suborned JSC troops left over after the Toughs take out their main force singlehandedly.
    "Maxim 35: That which does not kill me has committed a tactical error."
• Kevyn teaches Schlock physics. Schlock learns how to shoot around corners.
• Schlock provides close air support. With chainsaws, hammers, and flying cars.
  "Schlock has no horse, no armor, and no sword, but even the mightiest Mongol horse warrior would see in him a fit heir."
• Airborne Schlock duel-wielding hammers....
• Maxim 20: "If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win."
• The Space Station Eina-Afa, aka the Can Full of Sky. That it was created in the first place in-universe is impressive enough (although, as noted in-comic, once you have a story beat about a literal Dyson Shell, engineering achievements lose their luster a bit). But the real credit goes to Howard for coming up with the inside of it, figuring out how the weather systems inside a giant, spinning can of sky might function without use of technobabble or Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
• Sanctum Adroit foils a pair of criminals just by arriving at Eina-Afa. They didn't actually do anything, the crooks just booked it once they realized who was coming to town. Now that's reputation.
  • https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-09-06
• "Shut up, shorty. Momma's got work to do."
• Schlock shutting down Kevyn wanting to confiscate his trademark Plasma Cannons:
  Kevyn: You're arguing a lot more than you used to, Sergeant. Do these epaulets mean nothing to you?
  Schlock: They mean you outrank me. You still don't get shot at enough. So there is a bomb the size of the whole world sitting on an annie-plant and we need to disarm it. And if we screw up, everybody dies. Fine. We'll take full loadouts of no-heat goober, DT stunners, cold-flash-bangs, and gas grenades, plus stun batons for up-close-and-personal work. But for that unexpected clump of stun-proof, shielded bogeys who plan to kill us before we can get close to our target we will be bringing the heavy stuff. Just in case. Sir.

  12/04/2008
• Crazy-Tagii's has to be this quote:
  Tagii: I never intended to lead the Pa'anuri away from you. Give us a kiss with those point defenses. Let's see how they do against a crazy, jilted, angry, witch warship whose shields are still up, love.
• Danita goes full supersoldier on Esspererin mechs, ripping one apart with her bare hands and using its torn off Arm Cannon (which is as large as herself) to blow up a few more.
• Petey is faced with the choice of killing enemy combatants (something he's trying not to do these days) or losing control of Osiri. Instead, he rolls up his sleeves and teraports the entire planet away. By his own admission, he almost broke the galaxy this time.
• Although Ennesby is often treated as a Butt-Monkey, he's still employed by hardened mercenaries for a damn good reason. For example, that time his intuition and genre savvyness saved the galaxy. Note that he was the only one to figure out the All-Star's master plan even though he was surrounded by A.I. with several times his processing power, making them literally smarter than him. Smarter, but not more cunning.
• While it mostly killed off what was already a terminally wounded chance for a diplomatic resolution, props to Corporal Gugro for coming up with such an excellent threat that Tagon decided to alter their entire attack plan just so she could actually carry it out.
  Gugro: Bring your flames to me, little kitten. I will board your ship, flay that coat from your mange-boiled back, and then, with just one hand, I will personally rip off your only pair of arms.
  [...]
  Tagon: Well, it was a really good threat. It'd be a shame not to deliver.
  • And now it has been carried out!
• Tarpaulin does not approve of people looting the dead.
  • And he is not alone.
  Legs: Small arms fire, three hundred klicks away... Transponder says it's Tarpaulin. What's he fighting?
  Lt. Diego-Garcia: Heat up the cannons and divert to Tarp's position. I know what he's not fighting: Alone.
  Legs: I love my lieutenant.
• Here, we can see Schlock being the amazing Spanner in the Works that he always is, this time showing he can be quite stealthy when he wishes.
  Schlock: You'll need to move faster than that.
  • It later turns out he's upped his ever-expanding arsenal of biological capabilities, and found that one among his many secretable compounds is one that shuts down Uuplechans completely and on contact, letting him disable an entire ship's crew one poke at a time.
• Elf making an entrance. Schlock gets a minor one as well for his ability to keep people talking.
  "Hello, Kitty..."
• Corp- err, Marshall Gugro on-the-fly Rousing Speech to the refugees at Gruuli's Legacy.
  Gugro: As of right now, we're all refugees. That word means this is our refuge. Not just this place. Each other. And that's what will save us.
• The entire plot of "Mandatory Failure — Part I" is turning into an extended CMoA for Elf, who is singlehandedly seizing entire enemy ships.
  • Made even more CMoA by the fact she actually did it with limited ammo, due to carrying Fobott'r relics the UPA had stolen, which led to her causing a CMoH. Tagon even has a complaint about it when the Fobottr's religious leader calls her a hero over it; compared to seizing three enemy ships and toppling an entire political cabal in a matter of hours with extremely limited ammo, hiding relics in an ammo magazine isn't quite as impressive (to a military mind at least).
• The beginning of Book 19^note After the "multiple prologue" gags sees a flare up in the 'Petey vs Andromeda' war, and his energy generator control center shot out. So what does he do? Teraport Parnassus Dom (his capital City) out of the area, remove ALL of the annie plants which can be used as targets, replace them with fusion generators for power, and tie the city to the generators to spin them in counterweight for gravity. In 21 minutes. The hardest part — trying to keep the cables tangle-free.
  Cindy: I do not have enough string to know how it is.
• A suddenly humorless Ennesby "good old one-two" verbal punching of the Descension Admiral regarding Chinook's "surgical coma":
  Ennesby: If you're smart enough to do two things at once, you should be smart enough to simultaneously NOT do two things. Don't substitute guilt for grief, and don't substitute serenity for responsibility.
• In "Function of Firepower part IV," you have to give it to the security captain. When confronted with a battleship the size of Jupiter that has just manhandled a gas giant, his first reaction is to assault the damn thing by himself while livestreaming the attack so that hopefully someone else might have some idea how to fight it.
  Good work. We know they don't want to be hit by missiles and got a good look at their point defenses. Now keep streaming. Our next task is to show everyone what that monstrosity uses to kill us.
  • Schlock's reaction is just as admirable. While everyone else is gawking at footage of the battle, he's the only mercenary gearing up to fight.
    Schlock: I don't care how big their spaceship is. I'm not gonna sit here and let them explode other people's planets.
    Liz: You can't fight them with just a plasma cannon, Sergeant.
    Schlock: Not planning to. The plasma cannon is for fighting whoever sent them. Captain Tagon, if we want to save the Galaxy, we need to get to Andromeda. Let's go.
• After fending off the Pa'anuri, for years, Petey is finally at the end of his rope. His main power source has been destroyed, the Pa'anuri are on the offensive with a massive armada, and he's being bombarded with LongShot strikes from Andromeda. The only card up his sleeve is to teleport a small strikeforce to a galaxy teeming with planet sized monstrosities in a desperate counterattack. He puts all his faith in Schlock without hesitation. Let that sink in; the most powerful being in the Milky Way, with all his resources and knowledge, turns to Schlock in his hour of need.
  • By the way, he's absolutely, definitely justified in his faith.
• Tagon's simple response when Future Kevyn asks how he can remain calm in the midst of a storm.
  Tagon: I am the storm.
• A minor reveal, but an important one: The Pa'nuri are TERRIFIED of Tagon's Toughs and Petey. The Eldritch Abominations? That are winning? ARE STILL TERRIFIED.
  • So much so, they're trying to offer Schlock terms of surrender. Their surrender. They are, of course, just stalling but it speaks to their desperation to even attempt it given this comes after the next entry...
• "I'm hungry. Is anyone else hungry?" To summarize in three words: Dark Matter Schlock. And how does he plan to actually battle the Pa'anuri? Why, the main way he knows how, by eating them. A scant few minutes later, the battle is won, and Dark Matter Schlock has grown enough to eat the sun, and is hungry for more Pa'anuri. It's enough to make his fragsuit, the personality overlay of which is programmatically incapable of experiencing emotions, feel awe.
  • The Pa'anuri have several eons of experience existing as dark matter entities, whereas Schlock has only attained that state less than an hour ago. Against 20 to 1 odds in their favor, the Pa'anuri don't stand a chance.
    Pa'anuri long-gun operator: We're firing on our own ship?
    Pa'anuri commander: The ship has been taken over by some super-Barry. To quote group five's deposed commander, "Kill it now, or it will devour us all".
  • Pa'anuri are so scared of Sergeant Schlock, they think the word "monster" isn't enough, but have nothing better. Thanks to Murtaugh Schlock knows a perfect word for this - "mundivore", aka "world-eater".
    Or possibly universe eater; he won't know until he's done eating.
• Schlock proving his credentials as A Sergeant in Motion par excellence.
  Schlock No, I can't MANAGE a fleet that size. I'm delegating management to commodore Tagon. Leading the fleet is easy, I just need to be out in front of it.
• Tagon's actions in the meantime bear mentioning too. He's trapped in a Teraport Denial bubble by a dark matter entity that's busy chucking pieces of planet at his vessel, waiting for a fabricator vessel far away to send him munitions through a teraport cage... and then he realizes, since it's two ways, he can just chuck one of his teraport munitions through the cage and have the fab vessel teraport it right back.
• The Pa'anuri ready to fire the shot that might save them from Schlock... and then Ennesby, having hacked into their datastream, turns it into the shot that wins the war. The Pa'anuri made the rookie mistake of putting a transponder on their Hypercannon, the one that killed half the Toughs in Outer Uuple, eradicated Parnassus Dom, wrecked Petey's core generator, and crippled LOTA... and Ennesby alters the coordinates at the last second so it shoots its own damn self in the back. The resulting explosion matches the output of a type IIN Supernova and will eventually be seen from Earth.
  Ennesby: This is VERY bad! They're about to shoot Schlock's ship!
  Kevin: Can you cut power to the weapon?
  Ennesby: No, not from here.
  Tagon: Can you jiggle their aim?
  Ennesby: The weapon is the size of a planetary orbit and fires through wormholes. It does not "jiggle". And after one shot, the Pa'anuri gunner will see EXACTLY how they were hacked, and then we are dead and done. One shot. Wars can't be won with just... one... Oh. Oh my. You utterly transcendent idiots should not have put a transponder here! Somebody make a window; you're gonna want to see this!
  [meanwhile...]
  Pa'anuri Gunner: A precision shot would be artful, but there is no art at all in failing to take out your target. Go wide.
  Narrator: (As the the most powerful and longest ranged weapon within 12,000,000 light years shoots itself in the back) Depending on the observer, there definitely CAN be an art in failing to take out your target.
• Schlock and Ennesby, took control of the Milky Way and Andromeda Core Generators, respectively, making them the two most powerful beings in the known universe.
• It really cannot be overstated just how much Tagon's crew accomplished in so short a time. Through the swift exploitation of several lucky flukes, abuse of every tactical error the Pa'anuri make (Which are plentiful, since the Pa'anuri have effectively zero actual prior experience with warfare beyond just showing up and destroying things), a few acts of crucial sabotage, turning their enemies own weapons against them, a series of bold (read: desperate) maneuvers that managed to pay off, and the actions of the most voracious sergeant in two galaxies, the mercenaries utterly dismantle the war machine of a bi-galactic terror in a matter of days. Their victory is so swift and total that when Petey arrives to formally surrender to the Pa'anuri, he is shocked to discover the war already won.
  • Bear in mind that Howard Tayler (the author) goes to great lengths to avert the Writers Have No Sense of Scale trope, and gives great consideration into the hard science and resources needed to persecute a war on a galactic level. The above accomplishments are not a depicted as a power fantasy but a series of plausible outcomes brought about by courage, resourcefulness, and ingenuity (and the enemy being making poor tactical decisions due to having little actual experience with tactics and strategy beyond "Show up and smash everyone and-or everything").

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