Debauchery Worlds 29 (Patreon)

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-VB-

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 29

-VB-

General Rachael Jamakawa

Proserpina IV

2981.04.06

Most importantly to the campaign, her regiment landed safely.

More importantly to her, she got to see Marris’s capabilities in both coordination and capabilities.

The one-sided slaughter in orbit didn’t prove anything so much as confirm what the AFFS and she knew: Marris was bullshit and MACs were wonderful.

And then Marris soldiers - one called “6A2” - reported taking down LAM and ASF lances with his Stomata and finished bombing the strategic targets across the planet. Normally, a dropship can’t excel in more than one area. A good example of this general rule was the Achilles-class Assault Dropships. 

Achilleses were wonderful combat ships that, just like the Stomata, were capable of spaceborne combat against ASF and dropships alike on its own. Its combat capability was also why it couldn’t carry any battlemechs. It did, however, carry fighters. 

Stomata, on the other hand, could do what Achilles does, carry battlemechs and fighters at the same time, and also be orbital/aerial superiority platform. Sure, it wasn’t as fast as the Achilles in atmosphere, but when its MACs could burn through all of the air and hit something faster than any man-made manned object, it didn’t really matter. 

“General.”

The call pulled her off of her train of thoughts. She turned around and spotted a lieutenant. “What is it, lieutenant?”

“Beta Lance has encountered an enemy mech lance,” he reported.

She frowned. 

Her regiment was currently en route to attack the Conqueror’s Pride City, the planetary capital of Proserpina IV, which sat with a steep mountain to its back. The first phase of the attack would be probing maneuvers to see how the snakes would respond from within the city and what forces they may have outside of it. The second phase of the attack would be determined how the snake’s response, but it would most likely begin with artillery barrage of any location with the highest battlemech concentration on top of ordering the Marris Mercenaries to use their Stomata to specifically destroy the military academy of Univerity of Proserpina. The third phase would be bait and switch; she would send two companies into the capital city to engage the Combine mechwarriors, then fake a retreat to draw them out of the city, and then finish them off with ease once they are outside and thus easier for her to reduce civilian casualties. 

However.

The Beta Lance was nowhere near the planetary capital. In fact, by her estimate, they should be some one-hundred fifty kilometers outside of it. On top of that, their role was to investigate the Combine’s east flank -.

“And the direction of their enemies came from?”

“The east, ma’am.”

The east? There was nothing there. Like literally, there was a small stretch of farmland and then the coast -.

Her eyes widened. 

“They are pulling all of their mechs to the capital,” she muttered to herself in realization. With the systematic destruction of all other targets aside from the capital city and the university, there was nothing for the mechwarriors to defend!

Or was she mixing effect for cause? It could be that the Combine saw the power of the Stomata and decided to gather their forces in the city with the highest civilian population density, which would prevent the mercenaries from shooting at the snakes with their MACs and thus safeguarding the bulk of their numbers. 

But there was no report of any dropships activity. 

“Are they using surface vessels…?” she asked herself before turning to her aide. “I need reconnaissance on all bodies of water. Specifically, we’re looking for water ships. Got it?”

“Understood, general.”

“Good. Now, someone get me the mercs! I need to talk to them about using their big honking guns on some legitimate military targets!”

With the current changes as a result of her own plans, she needed to act now. 

Another aide saluted. 

Within minutes, she had a comm line to the merc.

“I need you to destroy the University of Proserpina. Yes, it is a legitimate military target because it is the military academy of this world. Good. I’ll be -.” Boom. She paused. That had been a distant rumble. “Was that you?” she asked into the radio. “... Alright. Unfortunately, that’s the only semi-isolated target, so I’m not going to order you to shoot other bases. And I am specifically ordering you to not shoot at them because of potential civilian casualties, no matter how bitter you are about the Dracs nuking David II.” 

She set the radio down and looked back over to the tactical map of Prosperina IV where her people were moving the pieces to show where all of their movements and the enemies movements were like.

The snakes were jittery, weakened, and probably angry as hell. 

And an angry snake was more likely to attack boldly without any plan.

She wanted to trigger that response.

So the question was how would she go about doing that? 

-VB-

Alan Marris

New Marris Mercenary Compound (under construction), David III

2981.04.06

Speaking of being a nuke survivor…

At the same time that the Proserpina IV invasion was smoothly underway, my clones and I immersed ourselves in our own project. 

Effectively speaking, we were now the government of the David System until Major Anderson got one of the Federated Suns’ rep over here. This meant that we were free to do as we wished in regards to the “civilians” and our compound’s expansion.

What was the Federated Suns going to do when we sold unowned lands to ourselves on the cheap? Those lands were next to irradiated zones, so their price went down! How did it go down? Because we said so.

We got to rebuilding our compound where Polis used to be to create a bigger and grander home, but we also started building things that would drive the locals insane from how impossible it was. 

As we saw it, we currently had two major enemies. The Draconis Combine wanted us dead for the sheer fact that we weren’t theirs. The ComStar wanted us dead because our existence went against their aims of a technologically regressive humanity. Both of them wanted us so badly that they resorted to using nukes and pulling out hidden caches of advanced technology to put an end to us. 

So we intended to return the favor.

The warships in space provided us with a very nice shell to work with, and so we brought it into orbit of David II and began to build a makeshift scaffolding around it so that we can begin to build our own warship from it. 

And we were definitely not going to erase the ComStar logo when we attaked Kurita with it.