Debauchery Worlds 31 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Southmonk

-VB-

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 31

-VB-

Alan Marris

Proserpina IV

2981.04.25

Draconis Combine was losing on Proserpina and they were losing hard.

The University of Proserpina was a crater on the ground, they lost control of all major civilian centers outside of the planetary capital, and we have been shooting down any reinforcements that have been trying to resupply the locals. 

More than a few Combine mechwarriors have already thrown themselves for the sake of their world and burned for it. Even those that hesitated died when we shot our MACs into the center of their formation or camp. 

Wonderful thing about MACs was that it was not hard to adjust the projectile speed as all we had to do was adjust the strength of the electrical currents across the gun which moved the slug. This made attacking military installations even within civilian centers valid because our MAC slugs won’t explode an entire building or courtyard and send debris all over the city.

Mech exploding after taking a hit was a different story, though not one we relied on or even cared about. 

As it was, the capital city was surrounded. The local garrison was cut off from the wider Combine, their numbers were quickly dwindling as any mech that stepped out of the city got dogpiled, and any clusters of mech resting even for a bit on the surface got shot by our MACs.

But the Combine… they do not surrender. It was a good thing that they were confined to the capital city, because if they were still out on the rest of the country, then they would be waging guerrilla warfare. 

However, the Combine militia and garrison were holding out rather well. This invasion was taking far longer than the Battle of David II that we first showed up in. 

Why?

Because unlike on David II, the Proserpina militia and garrison used civilian residents as their primary means of defense and the good general was loathed to order us to bomb the city. 

Personally?

Personally, I would have bombed them with MAC rounds. Allowing Combine citizens to remain as they did on David II had been a mistake, and resulted in deaths of millions. Allowing the Combine citizens here to remain without uprooting them and scattering them across the rest of the Federated Suns to prevent them from organizing or contacting the Combine in any fashion would result in problems in the future.

Like a nuke to the face. 

But things were going to change.

As far as both our and the AFFS scouting could determine, the 9th Benjamin Regulars only had one and a half battalion left. The Tears of Proserpina, the famed local ASF, no longer existed. The armored battalion got pummeled out in the field. The Third Battalion tried but ultimately retreated after losing almost all of their mechs, and the First and Second Battalions got whittled down to half of their original strength while trying to defend the capital city. 

At the same time, AFFS lost only one battalion’s worth of strength across their four battalions. 

And us? We lost only one mech but we recovered it and all of the mechs it took down. What was more damaging was the death of the clone piloting the mech.

Which was why when we and the AFFS attacked the city in a final push to destroy the last of the 9th Benjamin Regulars, 6A2 opened the attack with a double MAC salvo on the largest concentration of mechs, completely disregarding the civilians they were using to shield themselves. 

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2J5

2J5 raised the mech-sized warhammer and brought it down on the Panther that failed to put enough distance between them. The warhammer, which weighed fifth as much as the entire Panther mech, smashed down onto the Panther’s head. The swing carried on, and the entire street beheld the screeching squelch of a light mech getting its head and torso flatten in one-go.

His mech shook and lurched forward a bit when something struck its back, and 2J5 immediately whirled his Knight (name pending) around and held up its shield against the AC/20 Urbanmech. The trashcan fired again, but it exploded harmlessly on the shield. 

2J5 slammed down on the jump jet booster, and his mech soared forward. The Urbanmech tried to retreat, but he was there before it could take four steps. He shieldbashed the light mech, and the unstable mech toppled over. With the same movement that had him draw the shield back, he swung his warhammer down onto the front of the Urbanmech, and flattened its front with a earth shaking boom.

Then, just to make sure, he drew his warhammer back and slammed it down one more time.

The Urbanmech’s fusion reactor exploded under the impact, and the street turned briefly white from the force of the explosion. Smoke went up from where the Urbanmech was felled … but 2J5 nonchalantly piloted his Knight out of the explosion zone with only its surface singed of paint. 

Across the city, similar scenes took place as 1st and 2nd Marris Mech Lances moved in with their Knights as the vanguard. The Combine mechs, most of which were light and medium mechs, didn’t have the firepower necessary to take down the Knights’ shields in the confined streets of the city. 

While Combine mechs died to warhammers, 1st Marris Support Company, a mostly infantry and some artillery company, moved throughout the city as they used gathered intel to hunt down the leaders of the city, both civilian and military. 

The first one caught was Duchess of Proserpina Amelia Rosanquet and her family. The first one executed was the planetary governor, who resisted to the end. We gave him the gift of death via laser.

The AFFS progressed slowly from the other side of the city, but with a larger force, they managed the same pace as we did in pacification of the city. They managed to kill the general of the 9th Benjamin Regulars along with most of the senior commanders, and captured the commanding officer, a colonel, of the Proserpina IV militia.

By the dawn of April 26, 2981, the city had fallen, and Prosperina IV came under the rule of the Federated Suns.