Debauchery Worlds 57 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Southmonk

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 57

-VB-

Andrew Davion

New Avalon, Federated Suns

2983.02.22

It was easy to recall the leftenant colonel who tried to piss off Marris. He did that months ago after he received the news from the liaison. The major. What was his name…? 

Right, Michael Anderson.

It was much harder to take advantage of the opportunity that Marris gave him.

See, the Draconis Combine saw the Coreward Principality as nothing but an upstart that stained their Coordinator’s honor. It didn’t help that the current Coordinator was exactly the kind of person who took an attack staged by Marris as a personal attack on honor and not a national crisis.

Because even to Andrew Davion, this was a national crisis. 

The technological disparity displayed by Marris’s Coreward Principality and the rest of the Inner Sphere was dangerously large. He knew for a fact that he would have lost a dozen worlds easily if he were to face the same attack. However, it was not an attack he needed to ready himself for because of his good relation with Alan Marris. 

However, a good relation between the new “Prince” and the First Prince was not “good enough” of a reason for the rest of the Federated Suns to not try to get their hands on the advanced technologies displaced by Marris’s soldiers and ships. 

While they hadn’t recognized it before, he now had to acknowledge that each Stomata-class assault dropship, one of which he owned, was a miniature Soyal-class heavy cruiser in terms of firepower. While the Stomata might not have the naval grade weaponry, the Magnetically Accelerated Cannon was, through videos captured by Marris’s own soldiers and ships, similar enough to the Mass Drivers the Soyal heavy cruisers wielded. And since there were no more Soyal heavy cruisers, the Stomatas were the most powerful ships in the Inner Sphere. 

Did it unnerve him even a little that his neighbor had a fleet of them while he only had one of them?

Yes.

Yes, it unnerved him, especially because the future - and his country’s cordial relationship with Marris’s Coreward Principality - was never guaranteed. 

However, the most he could do was push his own people into research and development… except doing so would take away resources he needed to take advantage of the openings created by the birth of Coreward Principality. The aforementioned focus of the Draconis Combine on the Coreward Principality left quite the number of systems open for invasion. 

He had already launched one such campaign, but the haste he’d needed to organize it left it less effective than he had hoped for. He was going to launch a new invasion soon, this time against Kaznejoy, a minor capital in the Galedon Military District. Military intelligence gathered from the planet and surrounding worlds showed that it had half of its usual garrison and reserve. 

Andrew was sure that he could take those periphery-ward worlds.

The question was whether his current luck in diplomacy and military would continue in the same vein.

It certainly wouldn’t if his own men and women in the AFFS kept screwing the pooch like that leftenant colonel did.

Speaking of her, did he send the order to have her demoted yet? 

Oh, and did Major Anderson relay his request for purchasing more Stomata-class dropships? 

-VB-

Michael Anderson, Major of AFFS

David II, Federated Suns

2983.02.17

“The First Prince asked for more Stomata?” Prince Alan Marris - or one of his bodies - hummed as he looked over the letter. 

“Yes… Alan,” he relented in the end. 

Marris smiled up at him. “Well, I am more than happy to sell him some new Stomata.”

Michael blinked. “Really? You were so reluctant to sell them before.”

Marris hummed. “Let’s just say that I’ve had some new breakthroughs that will necessitate shifting production from ships to infantry,” he replied with a grin but didn’t expand on it. 

The major wondered just what kind breakthrough would have the prince change his entire country’s industry on a dime like that. Especially for infantry.

“Which means that one of my orbital ship factories will be open for business, which is why I am willing to sell.”

“The First Prince will appreciate the sale regardless.”

The prince waved his hand dismissively. “But I’m more interested in confirming if he really wants the Stomata.”

“Whatever could you mean?”

“Well, I have been wanting to talk to you so that you can tell the First Prince that I intend to start production of a real warship.”

Michael stood fixed to the spot for a moment.

And then the words registered with his brain, and his world started to spin a bit.

“... Pardon me?”

Prince Alan Marris, the new warlord rampaging across Draconis Combine and plunging that state into a state of national crisis not seen since ever, grinned. 

It was a malicious grin.

“I’m already producing a warship. It should be ready by the June this year.” 

Oh.

A warship.

“Not a large jumpship…?”

“Would you consider a jumpship with more than a dozen naval lasers to be a jumpship…?”

“Oh. So. A warship.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like some time to…?”

“No. I… I will be fine, Alan.” Then he couldn’t help himself because the question did pop up almost immediately into his mind. “And you’ll use this warship against the Combine…?”

“Of course.”

“And you were … alluding to selling one?”

“I did. After I make three, I’m willing to make another and sell that to First Prince Andrew.” 

-VB-

Alan Marris

Cylene, Coreward Principality

2982.12.30

“Right. So,” I said to myself as I looked at the unlocked blueprints of the Javelin, Hammerhead, Idris-M, and Idris-P, the four capital ships produced by Aegis Dynamics, whose research and development headquarters we raided just last week. 

The operation was a success; that security guard giving away the location of their servers helped to wrap up the raid far sooner than we expected. We got away with portals soon after securing the research servers in full view of security cameras, and lost only three clones, whose body armors we collected before disappearing.

Of course, the use of portals was going to make UEE go crazy trying to determine just who might have that kind of technology. Hell, they might even think that the facility’s security cameras got hacked and had nonsensical digitally generated footage downloaded to throw off the pursuers or something. 

But whatever the case, we got the blueprints. 

And now, we just needed to make the ships…

But we didn’t just want any of these ships.

We wanted something special.

And so we argued.

Every clone was the devil’s advocate. Every clone was their own flagbearer for a special idea. 

For a full day and night, the entire hive mind raged against itself. 

And finally, today, we came to a conclusion. 

“Pilum,” we named it. Because a pilum was a type of spear like a javelin was. 

“Destroyer.” Because we wanted a ship that was imposing and scarily good at knocking down targets smaller than it. It wouldn’t have MACs. It would instead of a lot of lasers and guns. It would be the Star War’s Lancer-class frigate equivalent of our fleet. 

“Heavy.” Because nukes will be thrown our way, mark our goddamn words. We needed our ships to be stuffed with enchanted armor plates to the gills. 

And thus, the Pilum-class Heavy Destroyer was born from the blueprints of all that we had. With a lot of adjustments.