Debauchery Worlds 58 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Southmonk

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 58

-VB-

Alan Marris

Cylene, Coreward Principality

2983.04.16

After nearly five months of relative peace marked only by border skirmishes and jumpship hunts, I finally had the firepower I wanted. 

My factories made seven Pilum-class Heavy Destroyers, and they were monsters.

Pilum-class Destroyer

Base Hull: 

Mass: 250,080 tons

Length: 575 meters

Width: 200 meters

Height: 70 meters

Armor: 

1,9000 tons DE-TD Plate

Armament:

10x Naval Beam Lasers

26x Large Lasers

20x Medium Lasers

20x Flare Launchers

10x Flak Launchers

Heat Sink:

1,500 Freeze-Enchanted singles

It was half the weight of most warships of its class within the Inner Sphere’s historied past, but it was so much more armored and up-gunned than the Aegis Dynamic’s Javelin its hull was based on. Together with modified Tinkertech “Beam” Lasers which shot further than Extended Range lasers and nearly fifty standard weapons dotted across its hull to support the Beam Lasers, a Pilum could kill from afar and up close. 

And how did we accomplish this? 

Magic.

Quite literally. 

Magic infused armor plates, heat sinks, and hull made everything lighter and tougher. Oh, it was exorbitantly expensive. In fact, if we had to give it a number, then each Pilum-class Heavy Destroyer was worth 5 billion C-Bills, which made them two and a half times more expensive than the last recorded public cost of any destroyer-class warship made in the Inner Sphere. This also made each destroyer as expensive as the orbital factories we were putting up in the orbit of Cylene, but we were certain they were worth it. 

And now that we had them…

We felt ready.

Symbolically ready. We were ready a long time ago for what we really wanted to do.

After all, we did make a promise, right? 

We made a promise to nuke the Coordinator in his face.

And, of course, if we were going to visit a man in his home, then we had to bring our best, right? 

Just a few dozen dropships wouldn’t be our best, right? 

Just a few dozen high yield nukes wouldn’t be our best, right?

No.

It wouldn’t be.

It had to be … loud. Spectacular. Bold. 

Strong.

After all, if it hadn’t been for him and his unwitting allies in ComStar, then we would have been content to leisurely grow our power, get many waifus, and not have to get paranoid about our homes getting nuked. 

But no.

Because of him and his people, we found ourselves constantly in a state of paranoia. 

So we wanted to thank him for it. 

We wanted him to feel as we did. 

It was time.

For Luthien to burn.

-VB-

War.

War was going terribly bad for the Draconis Combine, and everyone could see it.

Those demons that roamed the trade lanes of the Draconis Combine struck down any and all jumpships that so much as accepted a Combine-related business. It didn’t matter if that was just transport of passengers, food, raw resources, soldiers, mechs, or even just empty dropships. If it was related to the Combine, the demons struck them down.

It ground the Combine’s economy to a halt, and even in the Combine’s capital world of Luthien, people could feel the pressure as goods that used to be abundant started to be rationed… and then stopped appearing in the markets. 

For the military, the situation was definitively worse. 

While the demons could not destroy all jumpships, they destroyed enough that reinforcements of soldiers and metal to the frontlines slowed to a crawl, especially because their people could not afford to lose even more jumpships.

This meant that both the Davions and the Steiners have been using the demon’s rampage to strike at the Combine’s border worlds with impunity. 

The Steiners, in particular, relished in their misfortune and brought nearly everything they had to bear. 

Chui-i Joshua En didn’t know how much they lost, but the rumors floating in the mass halls said something around a dozen worlds fell to the merchants. It was a shameful display of their lack of preparedness, but one they had to bear with it. After all, if they were strong in the first place, then those worlds wouldn’t have fallen to the Steiners, no?

Which was exactly the case along the border with the Davions. They might have been crippled but the Davions couldn’t take too many worlds. They took a few periphery worlds but those closer towards the core? 

Not a chance. 

Then he saw something on the computer screen in front of him. 

He sat up as an emergence signature flared not in the nadir of the Luthien Star (which was where he and his posting, the Luthien Nadir Recharge Station) was nor the zenith.

But at the edge of the system near where Luthien IX was. 

And then another emergence signature flared.

Then another.

Finally, out of nowhere, almost a four dozen emergence signatures roared on his screen.

His job dropped. 

His hand quickly shot towards the emergency button.

And slammed down on it. 

Luthien was getting invaded. 

The moment the button activated, the station sent a pulse to Luthien IV, the capital world of the Draconis Combine, and also activated the defenses placed all over the recharge station. 

He was about to pick up his intercom radio to call his superior when another emergence signature popped up on screen.

It was right next to the station. 

Chu-i En immediately parsed through the external cameras before he found one looking directly at whatever had jumped in.

And his jaw dropped in horror and confusion. 

Because it hadn’t been a single ship that had jumped in but a fleet of fifteen ships. He recognized the “Stomata” ships that had been wrecking havoc on his people’s worlds. How could he not? He had those images drilled into him from officers arriving with information. 

But what horrified him wasn’t the baker’s dozen Stomatas but what sat in the heart of the formation.

A massive gray and blue warship. 

How did he know they were warships? 

Because even from a visual estimate, the warship was thrice the length of the Stomatas and carried a bone-chilling number of weapons.

And it bore the flag of the accursed demons. The Coreward Principality.

Luthien was under attack.

It and the Draconis Combine may very well fall before his eyes.