Debauchery Worlds 10 (Patreon)

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 10

-VB-

General Rachael Jamakawa

2980.09.23

The enemy could not have landed anywhere but the southwest; David II might be relatively flat, but flat did not equate to dropship-compatible landing zones. Between the rolling hills, swamps, marshes, and sandy desert, the southwest was the only real clear landing zone with its forests, river valleys, and overall flatter terrain.

She’d know. That’s where she landed, too. Unlike her, the Combine general had made good time, crossing a distance that took her half a week to cross. Well, knowing where the enemy would have to go if they didn’t want their mechs to sink up and over their ankles in a terrain that would kill their speed, defending had been easy. That easy defense was now a salvage site.

The salvage operations rumbled on. Marris Mercenaries, in particular, went at it with gusto, dragging all salvage entitled to them back to their compound where they gleefully hacked it apart with complete disregard for the history and respect that mechwarriors held for the battlemechs.

Just as her soldiers and technicians were, so were the mercenaries. Or as her footsoldiers liked to call them, gaussers. Why? Because they lived inside a huge honking compound with a huge honking gate with huge honking naval gauss rifles that they made two more of after selling the two they used to help defend the planet.

She didn’t understand.

And speaking of which, they had three naval gauss cannons now, which was one more than the entire Federated Suns after they sold their initial pair at an astronomically cheap price.

“I really don’t understand you, commander,” she sighed after she let out a stream of cigarette smoke. Standing next to her was the commander himself, overseeing his mercenaries and their local helpers salvage ruined wrecks of the Combine battlemechs that made it into the Haugar Valley.

The poor fools didn’t know that the valleys did not exit out toward Polis but turned away to the northeast further down the slopes. They would have had to brave the peaks to cross over, which would have put them right in the crosshairs of the naval gauss guns.

The commander just hummed cheerfully. “Well, I’m not actually a normal person, am I?”

“No, you are not,” she replied quietly. “And that is something I want to ask you and have been ordered to question.”

“About?”

“... Are you and your mercenaries SLDF?”

The commander glanced at her.

“No. Why would I be?” he replied. And then paused. “And even if I was, why would I come back to the Inner Sphere with the rest of the galaxy out there? If I was SLDF who left the Inner Sphere in disgust, then I wouldn’t ever come back.”

“... Because this is where everything is,” she replied. “Why do people want to live in the city? It’s the same question. Besides, then why are you here?”

“You speak as if I’m not from around here, general.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“...”

“Do you want to know what I think about you?”

“Sure.”

“You’re an abnormality. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that you sold us a number of lostech that are still operational and for which we found no sabotage of any kind, I would have thought that you were some kind of Combine sleeper cell. No, lostech means nothing to you because you build them. No one in the Inner Sphere knows how to build them anymore,” she turned to face him fully. “And that cavalier attitude toward lostech is why I think you aren’t from around here.”

“... Fair,” he sighed. But he didn’t say anything after that.

She snorted. “Keep your secrets. As long as you don’t endanger my command and the Federated Suns, I don’t want to know.”

“As long as the Federated Suns and your command don’t pull a trick on me, then it’ll remain that way.”

“Good.”

-VB-

Tuka Luna Marceau

2980.09.24

It was easy to believe this place wasn’t her home. That this world wasn’t her home.

There was not a single spirit in the air for her to see and caress.

This world was barren of magic.

And yet…

She watched from her new “home,” leaning upon a railing of steel, as a giant bulb-like structure of steel and other metals let out a plume of smoke and fire underneath and rise high into the sky.

Within five minutes, that building of steel was out of her sight and flying among the stars.

Yes, it was easy to believe and know that this wasn’t her home.

And … And that also meant that her village was gone.

“You should be in bed.”

She looked to her left and saw the doppelganger of the man who saved her, a human who called himself “Alan” of the Marris family. She wasn’t sure what to think of him. It was clear that he wasn’t someone who was kind like he appeared to her. She saw the giant ruined armors and the callous ways he and his doppelgangers removed the dead and tossed them aside. He was a mercenary. A powerful mercenary if his wealth, influence, and power allowed him to build a castle like this for everything inside those high gray walls was his.

She was … nothing.

Yet he fed her, made sure she drank even on days she couldn’t eat in her mood, and checked up on her every single day if not personally then at least with one of her doppelgangers.

“Just came to tell you the news that we’re going back to Falmart,” he said out of the blue, and she … didn’t know what to say.

She still remembered demanding to see evidence for her village’s destruction, and after some hesitation, he did. The “video” of what was left of her village … it sent her mad with grief.

“Okay,” she mumbled as she turned around to walk back into her “hospital” room. He sighed and walked in with her. “Yes?”

“I’m making sure you eat. You’ve been starving yourself,” he said as he pulled out that “meal pack” of his.

She glared at him but lost the glare only moments later. She didn’t have the energy to be angry at him.

Besides, could she get angry at a man who saved her? Father would have wanted her to live so could she get angry at the man who made sure her father’s last wish was upheld?

With a sigh of her own, she took the meal pack. It was warm.

She held and stared at it before looking back up at him.

“Would… would you like to stay and eat together?”

He seemed surprised by her offer. After a moment, he smiled.

“Sure.”

She smiled, too.

-VB-

2-U

2980.09.26

(Battletech x Worm x GATE: thus the JSDF fought there)

All but one of the original members of the Falmart expedition - the exploration expedition that found the world of GATE: Thus the JSDF Fought There - died in the Second Battle of David II. As such, I and 2-L were asked to join and agreed to join 2-C to return to Falmart.

And … our intentions were not great.

When we found ourselves in the Inner Sphere, we were lost, tired, and just wanted to set up a home. And hey, if that meant we got to do what we were good at, then we would. Access to that many worlds and their resources would only accelerate our ability to make tinkertech. On top of that, it was easier to “hide” as one mercenary group among many in a human space filled with trillions of people.

And finally, we were safe. The initial invasion came to an end quickly, we got to set up our base of operation safely, and worked together with our new boss(?) to beat back the counter-invasion just as quickly as the initial invasion.

Things were looking up!

And … that’s when we started to get antsy.

There were now more than eighty of us. Each of us was a man with our own needs and wants, even if we were all ruled by a hive mind.

And some of us decided that a waifu from a fictional world was … something right up their alley. Oh, and look what we have, a fictional world turned real just one NavGate jump away!

Yeah.

Our intention here was to acquire waifu. If they say no, then that’s a no, but just how many girls and women from Falmart would say yes to being our call girl if we offered the luxuries of modernity and safety away from the tyrannical regimes of the Saderan Empire?

That’s why we were no longer just the exploration expedition squad but the vanguard.

Our trio’s mission was to find a location between Alnus and Sadera.

The three of us stood waiting in the “Lobby” before the Lobby Curator, Clone 1-B, opened up the Lobby’s NavGate for us.

“Good hunting,” he said through the mic, and the three of us stepped on through.

---

2-L

We found ourselves back in the elven village we rescued Tuka from. Unlike last time, there was only ash and not a single ember of the fiery devastation that saw her village burned to the ground.

But there was something else to note.

When 2-C initially explored Falmart, we noticed a time differential between our two universes. This time, however, we saw a lack of one. Roughly four weeks had passed since we left this world, and when we came back, roughly four weeks had passed on Falmart. We learned about this by just asking a nearby village.

Four weeks was a lot of time and in the original timeline of Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There, this was enough time for the JSDF’s fortifications of Alnus to be completed and for Itami to fight and defend Italica against the bandit army.

And that meant that the point of the “plot” had progressed to Itami’s group visiting Japan. Or around that time period. For all we know, the exclusion of Tuka might have changed their timing.

… Actually, wasn’t Tuka the one who pointed out to Itami to aim for the red dragon’s eyes in the earlier chapters?

Shit, what if he’s dead? That would derail the entire story. Hell, the JSDF -.

The JSDF might not even stay.

No, no, no. I’m thinking about it way too much without any information.

“Time to investigate.”

“Yes,” 2-C hummed. “We’ll go straight for Sadera.” He then turned to me. “You go for Alnus.”

“To spy on them?”

“No,” my other self grinned. “You’re going to be a diplomat.”

“Wait, what? That wasn’t part of the original plan.”

“Yes, well, the Legion changed its mind,” he shrugged and I looked into the gestalt consciousness of ourselves. I found myself surprised that he wasn’t wrong; I’d been just too preoccupied to notice.

“I guess I’m now a diplomat,” I mumbled. I quickly activated the long-range range scan. The sensor actually screeched the moment it found the Alnus Gate… which peaked all of our interest.

Suddenly, it looked like I had a more interesting and fun operation.

I grinned at my clone-mates.

“Well, I guess we just get to find cute girls to fuck while you get to nerd over the gate,” 2-C said as he turned away. 2-U shrugged before following him.

I turned to the west and started making my way over.

-VB-

Yanagaida Akira

“Then what happened?” he asked Itami.

Itami, laying on his hospital cot with burns all along the left side of his body, grimaced.

“We … ran into a dragon. It was on our trip back after encountering the high-tech soldiers.”

Yanagaida paused in writing the report. High-tech soldiers were the center of JSDF’s internal discussions. As the only group to possess technology better than the JSDF (and anyone else on Earth) on this side of the gate, there was a great emphasis on finding more information about them. The locals, for one, didn’t recognize anything about them that their video cameras captured.

“An hour after we left the high-tech soldiers behind, we found a local town. There, we met refugees fleeing the dragon, and though we didn’t believe in the dragon itself, I got my men to help out with the situation.”

“And then?”

“Three hours after we left the town, the dragon found the refugee convoy we were traveling with and attacked. It swooped down almost like a bird but breathed fire.”

Itami grimaced as he stilled his body, and Yanagaida stopped as well. There was no doubt in his mind that Itami was in a lot of pain.

“Okay, I can continue.”

“The reports say that you engaged the dragon,” he led on.

“Yes, I gave the order. I wanted to give the refugees time to scatter as best as they can.”

“... They were not your responsibility.” Itami was going to get a lot of flak once he was out of this bed. His order to fight the dragon ended with three dead, three injured, and one of the jeeps ruined beyond repair. The upside to that was the “recruitment” of the two local magic users, Lelei La Lalena and Cato El Altestan. In Cato’s own words, “we would not have even considered working with you if it was not for the heroics of that young man.” This was on top of the girl the two magicians referred to as “Rory Mercury,” an “Apostle of Emroy.”

“I know.” Left unsaid was his willingness to take on the full responsibility. “I … am sorry.”

Yanagaida took off his glasses and wiped his face with his hand in exasperation.

He put his glasses back on before looking down at the report. This report was only now being filled out, by him and not Itami, because the other first lieutenant had been in a medically induced coma. Hell, moving him beyond the Alnus Gate wasn’t even an option right now because of how badly damaged his body had been.

Yanagaida wondered whether the Japanese public would decry the man who took a dragon claw to his side to save one of his own men while half of his body had been burned with fabric and plastic digging into his skin.

He sure fucking hoped not.

“Okay. Let’s continue.”

---

“How is he?”

Yanagaida looked up after he closed the door and saw the general. He quickly and quietly saluted but the general, equally quietly, motioned at him to be at ease and to follow him. He did as ordered. Once both of them got far away from Itami’s room, the general spoke up.

“Well?” General Hazama asked.

“His account lines up with that of others, general,” he reported.

The general sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was … it wasn’t the biggest loss JSDF suffered so far but it was one of the bigger ones. They did, however, gain credible evidence of threats that JSDF may need to fight: an intact arm of a dragon. Yanagaida knew that the preliminary report sent back to the general from Japan, where they transported the arm to, was that the dragon truly was a flying fortress like the Third Recon Team reported.

In fact, they knew now just how reckless it had been to engage the dragon.

But it was a morale victory that boosted the moral of the troops. To see and hear that one of their own nearly slew a mythological dragon for the sake of refugees boosted their moral and the purpose of this deployment. Japan, after all, did not deploy troops overseas.