Scavenged Restoration 1 (Patreon)

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 1

-VB-

I was … satisfied with my life. 

I took a deep sip of the tea in front of me like a man accepting hemlock, because it very well could be. My dad was insane, my littlest sister wanted me dead, and the nation I’ve been born into was a horrifying police state that reduces most people into numbers on a spreadsheet. 

I only escaped that fate because my dad was the most powerful man of the nation. 

Too bad that I, despite the hereditary system of my country, will probably die before that happens. 

My littlest sister will, at the very least, have me killed before dad dies. She will not accept anything less than her becoming the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. Candance … she just wanted to be out of dad’s control. 

It wasn’t like I was helpless. I may not have been an avid confederation enjoyer, but I knew of its history and future. It was my people. It was my nation. 

And if it wasn’t for fucking Romano, then my useless ass would have left something the confederation might have used to protect itself from the Federated Commonwealth’s future invasion.

But no.

The bitch would rather destroy something that would benefit the nation if she couldn’t take the credit for it. 

A whole factory’s worth of Lostech knowledge, ready to be distributed to improve the lives of the Confederation citizens and residents, burned because Romano couldn’t let it be her factory. 

Such was the day and life of a Capellan power struggle, and a power struggle doesn’t need two participants in Capellan Confederation. 

I set the tea cup down and let out a sigh. I was doing that a lot lately. Sighing. There was no hope for the confederation, and all of my efforts have been brushed aside, sabotaged, and squashed by my own family. Well, just dad and Rom-bitch. 

Oh yeah, even dad went out of his way to screw me over. Oh, what’s that? I was trying to improve a planet’s agricultural productivity by providing better tools at cost to the citizen farmers? Yeah, no. That was obviously a ploy to increase my popularity so that I may supplant him in the future and not a desperate attempt to ensure that three billion people on that world wouldn’t starve. 

Just … 

Just a cursed family. 

I looked up and stared at Tormano’s godmother, who was also my godmother. 

The slightly wrinkled face of Chandra Ling - the Duchess of Sarna, Prefecturess of Sarna, and the Director of Maskirovka - looked back at me impassively. 

“And why are you visiting me today?” I asked her. 

She took a sip of the tea that I prepared for her, and wasn’t that a statement in and of itself? The eldest son of Chancellor Maximillian Liao preparing tea wit his own hands … because he didn’t even have a servant for that in his own home. 

That’s how powerless I’ve become because my own family backstabbed me. I just hoped that wherever Candace and Tormano were, they were doing better than I was. 

Because right now… 

I don’t think I was getting a visit from my godmother. 

I think I was getting a visit from the Director of Maskirovka. 

That tea I just sipped (a very cheap common green tea that could be found any world) might just be my last sip before I move on to my next life. If that was the case, then I just prayed to God that I wouldn’t end up in a dysfunctional family again. There was nothing worse than a family going out of their way to sabotage you.

And even if she was my godmother, Chandra Ling was Maskirovka agent first and foremost. 

If dad finally went insane enough to order my death or Romano got Maskirovka’s allegiance, then … then this was it. 

Another life of a failure. 

“So what brings you here today, auntie?” I asked her with a grin.

It didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to try my best to live.

Chandra gave me a glare before huffing. “You don’t need to be tense, William,” she replied tersely. “I am only here to talk to you.”

“Auntie, you don’t just talk to someone,” I drawled. “Last time you did that, you were warning Tormano about his … entire him.”

She hummed and then took another sip of her tea. She was obviously using the tea as an excuse to give herself more time. It must be serious if she needed to take time to say her piece because she normally didn’t need to do anything like that. She was good with words; she wouldn’t have become the Maskirovka director if she wasn’t. 

This, more than anything, told me that something serious was about to happen.

I picked up my own cup of tea, waiting for whatever she was about to say.

“Your sister Romano and your father, Chancellor Liao, died in a jumpship accident.”

I nearly choked on the tea.

I coughed and gasped as I nearly slammed the cup down. When I finally got the leaf juice out of my airway, I glared at her. “Is this another one of your tests, auntie?” I asked her with a hoarse voice. “To see if I am actually loyal to my father and the state?”

Such tests were normal, especially for the direct family of the Chancellor. Part of the reason why Tormano wasn’t hanging around Sian anymore was because he had exiled himself after dad forcefully ended his marriage with his wife via decree. 

An asshole move of the highest order but also kind of understandable. 

As much as the woman in question was a nice woman and all, she did not have the experience, guts, demeanor, education, or even the mindset needed for the consort of the confederation’s heir. 

Personally, I would not have gone as far as dad did and just name Candace as the heir.

Why not me? 

Because I was popular enough that my two insane family members felt threatened by my mere existence. Or, to say it objectively, I was well known, not batshit crazy, not megalomaniacal, and tried to focus on improving the people’s lives. I also had my own share of detractors who disliked me for not carrying out the promises I’ve made. 

I didn’t quite blame them as much as I could have. I just blamed my dad and littlest sister.

“Yeah, well, Candace is the heir anyway, right?” 

“She cannot be the heir or the Chancellor. Not when she is married to her current husband.”

I paused. “Justin… Xiang, right?” I knew that he was Allard, not a Xiang.

“Yes. It turns out, he was a double agent of the Federated Suns. He escaped our attempts to capture him.”

“And Candace?” I asked with a grimace. 

“Under house arrest.”

I nodded slowly. “Well…” I paused and looked at her a bit longer. I felt my stomach drop and blood drain from my face. “Wait, dad and Rom-Bitch are actually dead?” I asked in horror. 

“They are,” Auntie Chandra - no, Director Ling of the Maskirovka - spoke solemnly. “It has been confirmed and the incident has been kept confidential for now. But before we go on, I must ask if you had a hand in this incident.”

I deadpanned. “Woman, I can’t even go out to get groceries without half a dozen of your own agents standing around me at all times with another three dozen watching me from afar like hawks. You probably even have a list of when and how many times I masturbated a day to what picture, and probably have a platoon of some poor schmucks analyzing my psych profile from it.”

“I only have three analysts assigned to you.”

“So you do have such a list! Where’s the hidden camera in my bedroom?!” 

She remained stoic. “Many men have preference for blon-”

“LA LA LA LAH I DON’T HEAR ANYTHING -!” I shrieked as I looked up at the ceiling with fingers jammed into my ears. I did not want to hear my aunt talk about my spank sessions! 

She huffed. “Sit and calm down, William,” she grunted. “I am serious. With your father and Romano dead and Tormano and Candace not eligible, you are the only choice the confederation has for the Chancellorship,” she spoke. “This is not a loyalty test. I promise you on that,” she said the last part softly. 

I looked at her and did sit down. “... Huh.”

I didn’t think I would be the last one left, so to speak. I always expected to die first.

I blinked. 

“... Huh.”

“Stop making that foolish sound and listen up,” she snapped, and I instinctively froze into CCAF attention posture, something the woman in front of me drilled into my head when I was but a little kid. “... You are now the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, William. You must act like it.”

Despite the years of military upbringing clawing at me, I couldn’t help but let my mouth flap.

I just went from house arrest to chancelloership! Give me a break! 

I stopped and took a fortifying breath in, allowing myself to ease out of my habits and into a serious mode that also had been drilled into me as the first initial heir of the Capellan Confederation. 

“So,” I began. “They are really dead, huh?”

“Yes, they are. My condolensces.”

“I didn’t know how to feel about that,” I mumbled. Romano and dad were … probably my biggest tormentors across two different lives. They sabotaged me at every turn, made me feel like a failure after the fact, and then made me an irrelevant person.

But I still remembered when dad was Dad and Romano wasn’t a bitch. Selfish, prickly, and greedy girl I doted on and not a sabotaging and murderous bitch who sabotaged me over and over again. 

I took a deep breath in and let it out. 

“... God, I am not prepared for this,” I muttered and let my head drop down into my hands. 

“We do what we must, regardless of what we feel about the situation.”

“Right, right,” I said before looking back up. 

If I had watery spots on my hands or my eyes looked a little redder than usual, then Auntie Ling didn’t comment. Director Ling, though, powered through the emotional turmoil I felt with cold and calculated words.

“You must undergo the ascension ceremony, and become the Chancellor,” she told me with utmost seriousness. 

I nodded without answering for a while before I finally steeled myself and looked at my sixty year old aunt and director of the Maskirovka in the eyes.

“Tell me what I need to do.”

She looked at me for a moment before giving me one of her rare smiles. 

“Good. You have steeled yourself. The very first thing you need to do is steeling your heart for the sake of the Confederation. The very next thing you must do is to purge those who are working against its interests who may take advantage of your ascension.” She brought out a stack of paper from her bag and slid it over the table. 

I looked down.

It had Candace’s face on it. I flipped through the second page. It had her husband’s face on it.

“Either eliminate her for the danger she possesses to the confederation or have her give up all claims for herself and her children at the very least,” she said softly. 

“... This is Candace, we’re talking about,” I almost growled. I just learned that dad and Rom-bitch died. And now she was here to tell me to kill my last sister? More than that … Aunt Ling liked her the most out of all four siblings.

“And yet she remains a threat to the confederation,” she replied quietly. “My feelings … my desires come after my work as the Director of the Maskirovka ends. And just as I do my job, you must do yours, William. What will you do?”

I stared down at Candace’s face on the paper, and knew that she wanted to change the Capellan Confederation so radically and deeply that it would end the confederation by the end of it, even if she would surrender pieces of it to the Federated Suns.

I remembered from my past life that I had less than two years before the Fourth Succession War broke out. 

It would be within my life time that the Kerensky’s Clans will come to invade the Inner Sphere. 

I knew that the Capellan Confederation was ready for none of it.

I, who’d given up on everything before and had patiently waited for my meaningless death, wasn’t ready for any of it.

-VB-

3026 September: a jumpship accident ends the lives of Chancellor Maximillian Liao and his daughter Romano Liao above the world of Sarna.

3026 October: William Liao, eldest son of Maximillian Liao, rises to the Chancellorship with the help of Director Chandra Ling of Maskirovka.