Debauchery Worlds 24 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Southmonk

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 24

-VB-

Alan Marris

David II

2981.03.31

… Warships.

ComStar?

ComStar was the fucking telephone company. Warships were supposed to be extinct!

I gritted my teeth as these pieces of information danced in my mind along with the current state of the Successor States.

And then slammed my hands down onto the table.

It wasn’t enough information, but this was information that was enough to lift our self-imposed ban blatant show of advanced technology at least here in the David System.

Go all out. Activate the quantum drives on all of the dropships still in the system.

Immediately, this changed the playing field.

Return to central compound. Load up all of the dropships with unguided bombs.

Immediately, all of the dropships that should have taken days to reach David II after their battle with the raiders (which was now suspected in our mind to be colluding with ComStar or even ComStar themselves and also put into suspect who deployed the nuclear bombs) “quantumed” directly into orbit of David II, which was over 2 AUs that they crossed in fifteen seconds.

As they dropped dwon onto our spaceport, the clones still alive and in the compound began to evacuate everyone while rescuing those from buildings that were ruined from the shockwave of the nuclear blast that our shields managed to hold back.

While this happened here in David System, our dropships in Falmart began to take off with bombs already loaded.

And then we opened the portals on Falamrt to directly intercept the warships.

Yeah, we could open up portals anywhere we could look. We just never used it that way because that’s just asking for trouble before, but now, it was going to be a weapon.

-VB-

Precentor XII Joseph Quantar, ComGuard

In-Transit to David II, David System

2981.04.01

“Contact! Bringing it up on screen!”

Joseph snapped his gaze away from the odd energy readings the entire fleet noted above David II, and now looked at the star map showing the entire David System with them at the center of the map.

There were four dropships - from the size of the thruster flares - more than a thousands of kilometers. They moved on intercept course for a while … before they disappeared.

“Radar, what just happened?” he asked with a frown.

“Unknown, precentor! The radar is working properly.”

He frowned. Was that just sensor ghosts? It was one of the stranger things that happen in space that messed with communications and radars. It was … inauspicious.

“Ignore it. Our mission continues.”

---

10C4

He was the only clone who stayed behind to make sure the mission would be a success.

Ad this mission was a very simple mission as far as details were concerned.

The plan that the original thought up was inspired by a book we read when we were little kids, Empire from the Ashes. In the setting, the advanced human civilization had weapons called hypermissiles. They were missiles with hyperdrives loaded on them. So instead of traveling across space, those missiles would jump into hyperspace to cross vast distances and then drop out of hyperspace in or right in front of their targets.

We didn’t have that kind of technology. We wished we did because this attack would have been easily handled.

Initially, we wanted to use our portals to open up a path between the MACs and the warships. Of course, they’ll be able to shoot back at us, but the point was that we could hit them while they were unaware and still traveling. But there was no way it would do enough damage to make it worth it, and any portal attack we do will rob us of our advantage.

Which meant that we had to make the best use of our portals right off the bat to nearly cripple four warships, because the dropships could be hunted whenever we wanted after the warships died.

And the plan we came to found him, 10C4, flying in the middle of space in an intercept course with the warships… along with thousands of unguided bombs.

His job was simple. Once the others on the ground or in space got a visual of the warships, he would also see the image through the hive mind. Then using that, he would overload his portal maker and open up large enough portal that would appear to their side, not above or front, and bombard the shit out of them. Once he died, the rest would use the portals again to start attacking them with close-up dropship bombing runs and MAC portal shots.

It was just unfortunate that he would die doing this and that they could not open a portal in something to cut it.

But 10C4 knew that as long as the Legion lived, as long as the Original lived, none of us would die because we would be remembered. There would be gaps in the list of names of the ever growing numbers of clone legion.

He blinked as he saw the others looking at the warship fleet. Well, saw their memories of their current inspection of the warship fleet through judicial use of telescopes, dropships, and portals, but he could see them and that was point.

He held up his portal gun and smiled.

Oh.

He just realized something…

He triggered the safeties off and then charged the portal gun.

He grinned painfully as the gun ripped apart and burned his hand off. A huge ass portal opened up and he - along with the flying unguided bombs traveling at over a three thousand kilometers per second - flew right through them. He saw the warship that he was flying straight toward … with the bomb he was strapped to. He slapped the bomb with his remaining hand like a cowboy might his horse and laughed. “Goodbye, motherfuckers~! Enjoy your April Fools!”

And died via explosive disintegration as he slammed into the warship’s hull and then the bomb - along with hundreds of others - detonated.

---

Precentor XI Joseph Quantar

The video feed of a crackling ring in space was another mystery but what happened next horrified him.

Bombs.

Hundreds of bombs no more than a kilometer away from his ships.

“Bo-!”

He didn’t even get to finish a word before his shook violently from bombs exploding all across the port and stern of the ship. The ship began to spin uncontrollably and the ship’s sensors showed that that was the same for three of the four warships.

He heard screams and reports… and another report of a ring of energy that brought the bombs to them. But instead of more space, they saw a close-up of a planet.

That’s how CSV Resilience died when two trailing bolts slammed straight through its hull from starboard to stern.

And then his bridge exploded into metal shrapnels and fire.

-VB-

Alan Marris

2981.04.02

I watched through the eyes of hundreds of my clones as we made strafing runs with dropships that flew through a portal, fired as much as they could, and then ran away through another portal before the dying warships and panicking dropships could return fire.

Our eleven dropships just went through portal after portal, dropping bombs and firing missiles and guns.

We tore at them like a pack of piranhas. Like bulls trying to cross a river, they were helpless in space where they could not turn easily, had no guns that fired at their rear, and even more bombs and missiles peppered at them.

Our modular Crawdads disgorged missiles by the hundred each attack, and though the missiles were not capital-grade torpedos and just a shit ton of LRMs, they were still LRMs by the hundreds.

While four dropships attacked at any given moment, any ship that range out of missiles and bullets would portal to orbit of David II and restock from the two Crawdads that we converted to orbital supply depots.

We have been biting at them for a full day now, and they were going to drop from pure exhaustion sooner or later. We’ll have to give them compliments for staying alive for so long, mostly thanks to their biggest warship fighting to keep everyone alive despite losing their main thrusters and a third of their ship, including the bridge.

Valiant.

Admirable.

And utterly dead.

I sipped from a cup of coffee as my clones finished off the ComStar attackers and looked across the table at the highest remaining officer of the Davion force remaining on David II.

See, Colonel Lim-Reubans (God save his soul) tried to help us engage the raiders who came before ComStar by sending all of his aerospace fighters.

Which meant that when the bombs went off, only the fighters and their pilots survived.

And they may or may not have seen our portals.

Yeah, I completely forgot about them.

I set the cup down and sighed.

“Is there anyway I can ask you to forget about the portals?” I asked Major Michael. Yeah, the man was apparently a man of multiple talents. A mechwarrior, aerospace pilot, and somewhat of a decent diplomat. What was he not good at? Romance?

Major Michael Anderson looked worried. He should be, because if I had been a normal person, then I would have him and the rest of the pilots killed and their ASF destroyed to remove evidence. However, I had some leverage to use against others and Major Anderson was … a good friend.

I did not kill friends when I had other choices.

Currently, I was in a shithole.

David II’s capital city of Polis just got nuked. Radiation was everywhere outside, and it was only the still flaring energy shields that kept them away from the intact areas of the Marris Compound. The compound itself had been breached, so ground defense would get tricky with our limited numbers. Thankfully, the invasion force - sorry, the extermination force - was dealt with so I didn’t have to worry about a ground invasion.

What was more important, however, was the fact that I survived a nuclear blaster. Evidences will surely come out that one of the nuclear blast was right next to my compound yet I survived while the rest of the city didn’t.

Oh, and I ripped apart the warship fleet that the major here definitely saw through their thruster flares. Those thruster flares were something stupid bright and probably registered on any primitive tech that the rest of the planet was using.

Yeah, the rest of the planet where half of the population was at. Who had their own radios and received words of nuclear attacks.

Unlike our tinkertech, there was no escaping this. A nuclear attack was a big deal since it hasn’t been used frequently since the Second Succession War. Warships, too, would bring in attention, never mind ComStar’s part in this. Yes, we were salvaging them and using the parts to make a ship of our own with technologies we had on hand, but the construction will take three months at a minimum with our already reduced dropship fleet.

We didn’t know when the next attack was going to come or how many warships ComStar had in addition. Or even why they attacked us.

Or it could be Combine performing a false identity attack to confuse me and the Federated Suns into attacking a perfectly neutral ComStar. The resulting interdiction would be catastrophic.

“Commander… are you really from the Inner Sphere?” he suddenly asked.

I looked at him and then closed my eyes.

… Wait.

He asked if I was from the Inner Sphere.

That’s right, there were other human civilizations out there. If I masquerade as one of them…!

“No,” I replied as I took another sip.

“I see. That makes a lot of things we saw here make sense. Except for your weird tech that doesn’t make any sense.” Then he glanced out of my office window and at the flickering energy shields. In some places, the layers of shields were so thick that I could not see what was on the other side of the compound. “... This is a wonderful technology.”

“One I will never sell to the Inner Sphere,” I replied.

“... Okay,” he sighed before squaring his shoulders. “What’s happening in space right now?”

“The last of the ComStar dropships has been destroyed. We are working to stabilize the remnants and start clearing them of any survivors.”

“Christ, ComStar had warships. Once the First Prince finds out about this…”

I took in another sip of coffee and didn’t say anything about what I would be doing.

I intended to comb through the wrecks of the warships, and if I found more evidence that this was truly ComStar and not the Combine playing dress-up…

I paused as my power armored clones began to attach themselves to the hull of the largest intact warship and began to cut into their hull. I waited and waited. And finally…

The major left when he saw that I didn’t have anymore words to say but that wasn’t because I didn’t want to.

No, I was furious.

Because my clones were now shooting ComGuards who were fighting to the death. No, no, you will not die so easily.

Capture as many as possible.

I wanted them to suffer for what they tried to do here.

I wanted ComStar to burn.

So they will.