Debauchery BioTech 5 (Patreon)

Debauchery BioTech

Chapter 5

-VB-

Frederick Steiner. 

A fool.

He knew he was a fool after everything he’s gone through.

But at the same time, it could not be denied that the blasted cultists kept their promises of power. 

He looked down at his right arm.

As part of his initiation, he was taught how to wield his own flesh.

And the result was …

“You need more imagination,” Volutaar Orianna tutted. 

Frederick Steiner did not need to be tutted at like he was a child. 

“And I don’t mean the wild things. You need to imagine each system of your body. The skeletal system, the circulatory system, the muscular system, the endocrine system, and so much more. You need to be able to weave all of those together. Your mind is but the tool you use to tell your flesh how to shape itself. Are you not educated? Where is your knowledge of fundamental anatomy?”

“I was trained as a mechwarrior,” he did his best and succeeded in not gritting the answer out, merely sounding exasperated. 

“So you are telling me that Steiner royalty does not receive a well-rounded education but a lop-sided one?”

“Can you stop insulting my family?”

“Can you start imagining better? A leader who cannot imagine the future beyond themselves is a leader not worthy of the nation.”

“Who are you to say who rules and who doesn’t?” he finally couldn’t keep himself from talking.

The zend tilted her head. 

He shivered as his mind flashed back to that nightmarish hallucination. 

“There is no such thing as the right to rule, orin. It is merely chance and effort. After all, did you bid to be born to the Steiner family?”

“... No, but it is a nation that we have built.”

“Hmm. You’ve become a lot more eloquent over the last month you’ve been here with us. Good. A leader must be eloquent but they must also be wise, ready to look generations beyond theirs. After all, it took the karicst ten years just to start the cult!” 

Frederick listened to that bit. “Why didn’t he just start earlier? He certainly has the power.”

“If he did that, then all he would have done is expose himself to manipulators. Is that what you do?”

Frederick gritted his teeth at the dig. 

“Having power is not enough. Knowing how to use it is, because even if you are powerless, you can still use what little morsel of it you get immediately if you know how to use it. Look at yourself now. You came asking for power. You have it. Yet you have neither the imagination nor the inner strength to use it. If you suddenly became the archon, then would this be you on that throne? Struggling and powerless even though you have all the power in the world?”

He froze.

They knew.

Of course, they fucking knew. 

“You know, Karicst Croy met Archon Alessandro.”

… He never heard about that before. 

“In fact, the karicst went to the former archon first before he was dethroned. And do you know what he saw?” Volutaar Orianna asked mockingly, and Frederick felt … curious. 

“No.”

“He saw a self-absorbed man. A Steiner Hohiro. A man who thought so highly of himself that … he couldn’t imagine that his position was vulnerable. But he isn’t Claudius. No, Alessandro was a man drunk on power. Probably a bit of an ADHD, too. The Archon didn’t let the karicst touch him to confirm that, so we’ll never know.”

“What does that have to do with the karcist and the cu- priesthood?” 

“It doesn’t. It has to do with you. What do you think would happen if you were to just leave this place with your newfound power, never having properly learned it to use it for yourself? You would be no different than Alessandro. Wholly unaware of the macro and micropolitics, ignorant of what truly kept the Commonwealth strong, and self-absorbed and blinded by your personal advances before you inevitably make a mistake that gets you and everyone around you killed.”

He didn’t say anything. What did she know about him?

She leaned down. “Waltzing in here like you did with your position is the exact kind of thing Alessandro would have done. What does that say about your chances at being the Archon?”

“And the karicst was so sure of himself back then?” he drawled. 

“Of course! After all, even lowly Zends like myself can kill everyone on this planet.”

It took him a moment before his mind processed what he heard. It was only then that cold sweat broke out. 

She spoke of causing a disaster like most mechwarriors talked about fighting on the battlefield. Surety. Certainty. 

A foregone conclusion. 

He swallowed. 

“You make it sound so easy.”

“But it is.” Her voice was no longer mocking like it had been since she talked about Alessandro. “You have no idea how fragile humans are. That’s one of the things Zends are taught, you see. If we so much as lose our divine power just a little around our loved ones, then do you know what happens? What kind of twisted flesh your children and parents can become? How easy it is to wipe memories? How quickly humans will kill each other over missing a few memories? Who is that child in my house? Who is that man living in my house? I don’t recognize any of them. Who are you? Why are you here?!” she spoke towards the end not with her voice but a masculine voice of a horrified, terrified, and utterly lonely man Frederick didn’t recognize.

But the emotion was real and Frederick knew… that wasn’t some made up scenario.

Then Volutaar Orianna stopped herself off before slowly kneeling down. 

Frederick couldn’t look up at her because her words - the fresh and confused horror of a man he’d never met - rang inside his head like a light bulb that shined upon a peculiar report he read years ago.

Of a Draconis Combine world that had seemingly … vanished. 

Everyone dead. 

Because they killed each other. 

From the eldest to the youngest. 

The only ones spared that horror had been children under ten. 

“Look up at me, Orin Steiner.”

He did. Slowly. Woodenly. Fearfully. 

When he did, he saw the veiled visage of the volutaar who claimed to be the karcist’s longest companion. 

“Power must be handled firmly yet gently. We police ourselves. Do you understand what I am saying?”

He nodded. 

“Good. Now, I want you to make another arm for yourself so you have three arms.”

He obediently got to work mastering his new power. 

-VB-

Andrew took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. 

His big sis was working with the Steiner colonel to get him to understand his place or something. He didn’t care about that. Big House people did what Big House people did all of the time, and a few words here and there with a gift of power to go with it wasn’t going to change them.

Politicians and rulers… they just weren’t like the regular people.

But the karcist understood. 

He was the one of the regular people, even if he came from some periphery snake world. Both the karcist and the volutaar didn’t like to talk about what they did there or why they left the snake world, but he could guess. Those snakes probably saw how good the Real Yellow was like and started shooting at him because he wasn’t a snake like them.

That’s the great thing about being a Lyran. As long as you paid your tax, the Archon and her people left you alone. Even if that much freedom was sometimes stupid too much for certain folks out there who still think skin color meant anything. 

Idiots. 

Being a Luran was why big sis and the Real Yellow got to do their jobs helping people like him. If he went to the Leaguers, they would shoot him up so other Leaguers can’t get him. If he went the Cappies, then the Mad Liao would hog him for himself. If he went to the Feddies… Feddies were alright.

Andrew was just happy he did what he did. 

Andrew knew important people. Being a street rat meant that not knowing who to pick on was a c… c… crit-thing he needed to survive. 

So when he saw the two people in yellow robes walking out of the big city building, he knew they were important. 

But they looked like the church folks. The guys who actually cared but didn’t have the money to help because they chose to be pastor, priest, or whatever other job that starts with P. 

But these guys… they came out of the big city building. No P-job ever came out of that building. 

So… if church people cared but didn’t have money and these people had money and were church people…

Gritting his teeth and preparing himself to be kicked out of the way, he dove out of the alley and ran across the street. 

Some of the people who saw him sneered and got out of the way. 

But they weren’t his target. 

The yellow robes were. 

He finally reached them and -.

Andrew found himself on his back, looking up at the lightly snowing gray sky. 

“Desperate one, aren’t you?” the man who he’d come to know as Karcist Croy asked him.

“... Yeah. I’ll do whatever you ask. Just take me with you.”

The woman he’d come to know as Big Sis Orianna laughed. “He’s got spunk. I like that.” Then she paused. “We have room, right?”

“We do,” Karicst Croy looked down at him unblinkingly. Observing him. Cr… crit-thing-ing him. “I’ll take you, son. But only if you show me your resolve.”

Andrew quickly rolled off of his back and got up.

“I’m a street brat. Guts is the only thing I have on me.”

Karcist Croy smiled. 

Andrew would come to learn that Karcist Croy’s slightly upturned corner smile was one he needed to avoid at all cost. 

But he got here and became … a mechwarrior? 

Actually, he wasn’t sure about that. Sure, he piloted a Eradi, the Phoenix Hawk equivalent of the Priesthood’s biomech stable, but did it make him a mechwarrior? His Eradi, who did not like being called by its “species” name and liked his more masculine name of Sigfried, was less of a tool and more of a partner. It was supposedly made based on a supposedly smaller biomech called Tarshish. Whatever it was, the karcist downsized it to the Eradi after taking out its previous main weapon and adding bioguns. 

Eradis, standing at twelve meters tall and just as wide, was the standard biomech all new “meldpilots” got. Andrew and other mechwarriors piloting biomechs got called “meldpilots” by the zends and the karcist because that’s what they did. They melded with their biomech … partners. When they were on the battlefield, they were one. They shared pain. They shared enthusiasm. They shared the grim understanding of duty and family. 

Outsiders just called the meldpilots “zealots” because, well, a regular orin wasn’t given the option of becoming a “zealot” unless they were one for the Priesthood. The nickname got started after a pair of orin meldpilots got into some pretty bad bar fight over the Priesthood’s authenticity. And it wasn’t the local churches who questioned it but atheists of all people. 

Technically, all zealots were orins but to be a zealot was to be an “upper” orin in the unofficial hierarchy within the Priesthood. 

Speaking of which, he had been promoted recently. Not enough to become a zend. No, that title was reserved for the truly devoted of the Priesthood, but he was offered two choices from a body mod, a biomech mod, or an “enlightenment.” He chose the latter two. 

An enlightenment was, within the Priesthood, a sort of a point system where an orin gets an audience with the karicst and receive a direct enlightenment. If the orin proved ready, then they gained both knowledge and deeper control over their body. The orins closest to becoming zends all received multiple enlightenments and was, on the surface, on par with the zends on their ability to control their own body. 

What set an orin apart from the zend, though, was the latter’s ability to control their environment. 

And having received both a successful enlightenment and a biomech mod to make his Eradi Siegfried tougher and faster without any visual or density change, he felt like he was on top of the world. 

Why wouldn’t he be?

Instead of being encased in a potential metal tomb, he got to work in tandem with his partner. He got to run around the woods. To smell. To feel. To soar high above the forest canopies whenever they jumped! 

How many humans could claim to know the exhilaration of running over a hundred kilometers per hour? 

How many humans could claim to know the feeling of mech frame crushing under their fists?

Andrew may not have become a mechwarrior, but by God, has he come further than he ever imagined himself to be. 

He took a deep breath in and let it out, and the amniotic fluids within the melding egg flowed in and out of his lungs. 

Within Siegfried’s melding egg, he felt safe. 

He felt wanted. 

And if some raiders or invaders came to ruin that, then he would be out there cracking their feeble mechs open with Siegfried’s hands and drag them to the karcist to pay for their sins.

Like everyone else who wronged them.