Debauchery Worlds 28 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Southmonk

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 28

-VB-

6A2

Proserpina IV

2981.04.06

6A2 stared at the multiple screens in front of him as he lowered the Stomata nose first into the Proserpina’s atmosphere from the night side while Crawdads stuck with the AFFS dropships. 

With the orbit clear of enemy hostiles, his job now was to ensure air superiority while the AFFS landed their dropships and deployed their mechs to contest one of the three targets. The mechs of our mercenary company would land on a different continent altogether. The AFFS intended to hit the capital city and the military academy while we were ordered to hit the factory of the Bulldog Enterprise, the manufacturing company here on Proserpina that was responsible for everything from targeting systems and battlemech armor to SRMs and large lasers. 

Was dividing our already outnumbered force into two smaller forces wise? 

If we didn’t have the Stomata, then it would have been stupid. But we did. 

His first target: the Goddard Dropport. 

The reason for this was very simple. Destruction of the Goddard Dropport would reduce Combine strategic maneuverability because, according to the AFFS, this was the main location that the Combine repaired their ships. Unfortunately, the dropport was in the Orleans Province, which was not on the most populated of the continents but close enough to civilian population that made nukes and orbital bombardments illegal under the Ares Convention. 

Not that the Combine cared about that kind of stuff but the Marris Mercenary’s current employer did because they feared nuclear retaliation. Whether that was true or not was irrelevant because it was why 6A2 hadn’t bombed it from orbit before entering atmosphere. 

But now that his Stomata was within the atmosphere, attacking the site with its MACs was all too legal.

The clone acting as comms operator - 15V3 - spoke into the comms channel. “General Jamakawa asking for To to assault.”

“Lazy ass, bitch,” 6A2 snapped at 15V3, who just gave him the bird. “You’re me! You can just telepath to me and I can telepath to you and you can report!” 

“Yeah, well, I’m the comms operator, idiot. It ain’t gonna look right if we report within a second of them asking the question.”

Grumbling, 6A2 changed the channel to command. “This is Eve to FCS Albert Davion. Eve is … 37 minutes to destination, over.”

There was a pause before he got a response. “Albert Davion to Eve, copy that, over.”

After that, he settled in as the other clones inside Eve did the final check on the ship’s systems. 

Then the radar pinged. 

The radar operator clone was quick to report. Unlike the comms clone, he reported to all on the shared hive mind. ‘Four boogies to our stern. Angle-off 60 degrees, intercept time 50 seconds.’

‘Bastards were hiding in the valleys,’ 6A2 realized, which was where his ship just passed by. ‘Are they fighters or LAMs?’

‘Irrel-. Boogies just launched missiles!’

The radar screamed, and the clones operating the point defense guns opened fire. 

Multiple explosions lit up the night sky and their (barely) supersonic dropship continued onward without being affected. More missiles and rockets came at them and Eve’s guns, laser and projectile, fired back as the fighters grew closer. Unfortunately, Eve’s rear was the most unprotected, so if this chase continued, then they might have real problem sooner or later, especially since the hive mind had already established that they would not reveal any more technology or abilities than they already have so far, especially in light of what happened on David II. 

But maneuverability of a aerodyne ship wasn’t that big of a deal.

‘Turning 360! BRACE!’

All of the clones tensed as 6A2 gave everyone a single second to comply, and then he steered the behemoth around as quickly as it could turn.

But just turning it to show its portside to the chasing fighters gave more firepower for the gunnery crew to fire back.

Or more specifically, the missile crews finally got their chance. 

All twenty LRM ports shot open (some tore away from the force of the wind) and launched their payloads. 

The Combine fighters quickly broke away, launching their own flares.

Unfortunately for them, not all of the LRMs were made with thermal targeting systems. Even as half a dozen LRMs chased after the flares and exploded in the air, the rest of the LRMs chased after the fighters and detonated on their armored hulls. 

They now saw that the Combine fighters were mostly Shilone-class medium aerospace fighters with a trio of Stinger LAMs. The lighter and faster Stingers quickly barrelrolled and launched even more flares as they safely dodged out of the way, but around five Shilones took fire directly. There was a big explosion as one Shilone went down on the spot while two began to uncontrollably spin downward to their deaths. 

By now, Eve had turned a 180 degrees, and many of its front weapons except for the MACs opened fire. Then as it came around to show its starboard, even more LRMs shot out and chased the damaged Combine fighters. 

And finally as it came toward 360, 6A2 fired the maneuvering thrusters to the max to bring it to a stable stop and then blasted forward before the fighters could regroup.

‘Damage report.’

‘Fucking dipshit, you tore at the structure!’

‘Fire in the LRM bays!’

‘7U9 is stuck under a box!’

‘The only reason we aren’t a flaming ball falling out of the sky is the tinkertech metallurgy holding it all together! Don’t you dare do this to any of the Crawdads! They are only refits, not full on Marris make!’

Yeah… yeah, he was going to get a lot of flak for this, but at hte very least, they managed to take down a lance of fighters. That was something.