Kick the Sphere 24 (Patreon)

A/N: just gonna update both this and Lewd Cultivator this week instead of run off vote.

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 24

-VB-

Chancellor Tormax Liao

Capellan Confederation

When he inherited the Chancellorship from his aunt, Tormax had grand ideas about how he was going to bring up the confederation from its current dilemma of a two-front war.

That dream of a grand Capellan future … came crumbling down in front of him.

He watched another video from Betelgeuse of these alien weapons swarming and devouring the very infrastructure of the planet. Devouring, not destroying. From each ton of metal devoured, the aliens spawned more of their kith and kin.

Betelgeuse, one of the main industrial worlds that supported the battlemech production, was lost. Worse, the casualties of the invasion was minimal, meaning that there were going to be many dispossessed mechwarriors, ruined nobles, and hungry civilians who will be either stuck on Betelgeuse, and thus serving as a rallying point against his fledgling rule, or be introduced to other parts of the confederation and spread their story of how the chancellor was unable to protect them.

Fucking hell, how was he supposed to predict and counter an alien invasion that no one else expected?!

Worse, the enemy was working with other humans, which meant that they also most likely had access to the Inner Sphere’s own information and industrial knowledge! The alien enemies must know a lot about them to strike Betelgeuse directly and nowhere else before it. They also arrived silently, jumping directly into Betelgeuse and not crossing any other systems surrounding it. This meant that they either had KF Drive that was vastly superior to theirs to jump great distances… or they had an alternate form of interstellar travel and thus could not be tracked in the traditional manner.

What was he supposed to do?

“... I must contact the League and the Suns.”

The confederation already suffered irrecoverable damage from the alien attack, and no one knew where they would strike again. If he shared all of the information he had on them, then the Suns and the League will surely want to hold a ceasefire just to secure their own border worlds against similar attacks.

But the idea of having to ask for a ceasefire in the first place grated on his nerve.

Instead of the glorious reformation of the Capellan Confederation, he realized that he would have to pick up the pieces of whatever crisis was going to strike the Inner Sphere.

… If he survived long enough to fix the confederation, that was.

He was about to rise up from his desk when there was a knock on the door.

“... Enter.”

A servant entered, and she bowed to him. She was a messenger.

“What is it?” he demanded while holding the bridge of his nose.

“A message from ComStar itself, Chancellor Liao. They claim that their message is of great importance.”

“How great?”

“Highest priority, paid for by ComStar itself.”

First, the alien invasion.

Now, ComStar itself contacting him.

Something smelled … fishy.

---

Something was definitely fishy.

It was a message from ComStar itself, and it spoke of a Free Worlds League black site.

A black site that those aliens originated from.

What had struck Betelgeuse had not been an alien invasion. No, it was a Free Worlds operation disguised as an alien invasion to fool them all.

Blood dripped from his lips and chin as he bit down to scream out like a mad lunatic.

Had it not been for ComStar, the Free Worlds League, a state of perpetually fractured people incapable of a single rational thought, would have fooled him. The sheer humiliation. The dishonor. The wrath that bubbled up.

They drowned him. He suffocated as his own mind struggled to cope with what could have happened, and the rage … it burned. It burned so hard. His young heart pumped and would have burst had he been an old man.

So he bit down on his anger! He put a lid on his reaction!

He was the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation! He was above such childish tantrums! He was the Chancellor of the greatest Inner Sphere House!

No.

The Capellan Chancellor did not throw a temper tantrum inside his own palace. They would instead show the wrath of the confederation against its enemies.

And ComStar… They would be forgiven for this breach of neutrality. Their stated reason for helping was to prevent the development of another form of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He could get behind that. It was a righteous justification.

“Heed to my order!” he yelled, and a pair of servants quickly entered the throne room.

“We hear and obey the Great Chancellor,” they intoned together.

“Call upon the warrior houses…!”

If the Free Worlds League wanted to tickle the sleeping giant, then they would get it. There would be no mercy for this black site and anyone working in it. The confederation would burn everything along their border.