MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries/Story

The following plot synopsis is what you discover in a full playthrough of the MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries main plotline.

Plot Synopsis

The player takes the role of "Commander Mason", the only son of Nikolai Mason, commanding officer of Nik's Cavaliers, a small mercenary outfit whose home base is on the Federated Suns world of De Berry Prime. In 3015, the two of them are attempting to rendezvous with a contact to collect on payment when they are interrupted by a surprise attack by a mysterious mercenary unit demanding information from Nikolai. Refusing to divulge the coordinates they seek, Nikolai orders his son to return to base and flee aboard the unit's Leopard-class DropShip, sacrificing his life to ensure their escape.

Reduced to just two 'Mechs, Mason and the survivors of the Cavaliers (Operations Officer Ryana Campbell and Chief Tech Fahad Arazad) reach out to Sebastian Spears, a high-level agent of Interstellar Expeditions and a longtime friend of his father who provides assistance in escaping the system. Armed with a reused mercenary registration number to mask their origins, Commander Mason must rebuild his command to locate and defeat his enemies and avenge his father, as well as uncover the secret his father took to his grave.

As Mason completes contracts over time, Nik's Cavaliers' reputation grows and they build up a lance of progressively stronger 'Mechs with veteran pilots. After leaving Federated Suns space for the Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League in search of leads, they discover the name of their enemy, the Black Inferno, whose strikes in the region have spawned a wave of refugee migrations. With Spears' aid Ryana deduces that Black Inferno raids are all against locations rumored to be holding undiscovered LosTech, forcibly ejecting the local inhabitants to allow them to secretly extract it.

Now taking the fight to the Black Inferno and the man who killed his father, Andreas Kane, Mason's early successes lead to overconfidence that results in the Cavaliers walking into a trap on Cavanaugh. Barely surviving the ambush, Ryana is able to intercept a transmission between Kane and his lieutenant which reveals the Black Inferno's home base is on Xinyang and that their secret benefactor is in fact Precentor Kenzo Yamata, a highly ranked member of ComStar's intelligence agency, ROM. With Interstellar Expeditions antagonistic toward ComStar, Spears' willingness to assist in defeating the Black Inferno increases.

Defeating Inferno member Zavarov to reclaim Nikolai's Victor while raiding an Inferno repair and refit base on Eaton, Fahad discovers that the sought after coordinates were hidden in Nikolai's 'Mech all along. While Ryana works on deciphering the three sets of heavily encrypted coordinates, Spears approaches Mason with an offer of partnership to assist in pushing back against the influence of ComStar, providing the Cavaliers with the location of a rogue mercenary unit sitting on a treasure trove of advanced weaponry they can take.

With assault 'Mechs, advanced weaponry, and Spears' assistance, the Cavaliers are finally ready to put an end to the Black Inferno, launching an attack against their home base on Xinyang. Razing the Inferno base to the ground, the Cavaliers confront Inferno and ComStar forces until Kane emerges with his King Crab to try and stop them. Though Mason is able to kill Kane, Yamata uses the distraction to escape. Searching through the ruins, the Cavaliers and Spears discover that ComStar has been using a Star League Defense Force map found in a flooded Castle Brian on Xinyang as a guide to recover hidden Star League caches with the Black Inferno's help, and that ComStar's interest in Nikolai's coordinates was to fill deliberately destroyed gaps in that map.

Eventually breaking the encryption on the first set of coordinates, the Cavaliers discover that they point to HD-276914, a reportedly unsettled world in the uncharted coreward Periphery on the outskirts of Draconis Combine space. Arriving there, they find an extensive ComStar stellar research facility and that even without the coordinates, Yamata and the ComStar Explorer Corps are searching the region system by system to pick up the trail. Striking a ComStar communications hub to slow down their efforts, IE assistance allows Ryana to crack the second set of coordinates, which lead to HD-389202, another supposedly uncharted system that is found to be the site of a massive and long-abandoned Star League spaceport, but that ComStar has only just beaten them there.

Personally confronted by Yamata in an Annihilator seeking to deal with the Cavaliers once and for all, Mason succeeds in defeating him; Fahad reveals that Nikolai's Victor is sending a signal to a secret 'Mech bay nearby which opens to reveal a pristine Nightstar, a 'Mech unseen in centuries. Through an audio log in the Nightstar, the Cavaliers realize that the immensely powerful 'Mech belonged to Nikolai, who hid it in 2986 after recognizing it would complicate his planned infiltration of the Inner Sphere.

Reaching the final set of coordinates, this time ahead of ComStar, Nik's Cavaliers and Interstellar Expeditions are confronted by a huge derelict Star League–era JumpShip in orbit of HD-438297. Landing to search for answers, the Cavaliers find a massive underground SLDF base emblazoned with an unknown insignia and filled with a treasure trove of LosTech 'Mechs and a memory core, just as ComStar arrives via a Pirate Point, dropping lance after lance of assault 'Mechs to destroy them. Mason and the Cavaliers successfully hold off ComStar long enough for Ryana to copy and wipe the memory core to deny ComStar its greatest prize before they flee.

Taking stock of the situation, the Cavaliers realize that Nikolai Mason was probably a descendant of General Aleksandr Kerensky's long departed Exodus fleet, who traveled to the Inner Sphere on an intelligence gathering mission ahead of their possible return, only for his arrival to be detected by ComStar despite his efforts to obscure it. With the contents of the memory core requiring many years to decipher, Mason agrees to turn it over to an eager and grateful Spears, trusting that unlike ComStar, Interstellar Expeditions will use it for the betterment of the Inner Sphere. Now that has been all sorted and noting that they are not superrich yet, Mason directs Ryana to line up new contracts for the unit while Fahad resumes his trademark grumbling as the credits begin to roll.