Debauchery Worlds 63 (Patreon)

Commissioned by michael stitcher

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 63

-VB-

Ronanine Avellar (continued)

The members of the parliament turned to look at her after her question.

Were they prepared to fight the Federated Suns? 

“Why would they attack us? We would be attacking their rival!” someone shouted. Ronanine recognized the representative. It was the representative of the Duke of Dneiper, a world that she and the Outworlds Alliance have failed way too often. Their coreward-most world was close to both the Draconis Combine and periphery pirate worlds beyond either of their borders, and it got raided by both often, even when the Outworlds Alliance was at peace with the Combine. 

Because that’s just how the Combine was. A bully. 

And like when bullies went down, Outworlds Alliance wanted its fair share of the pie after centuries of oppression.

But it was not ready. 

“Because the moment we step into the Inner Sphere proper is the moment we declare ourselves open for their Great Game,” she spat back. “We will stop being a Periphery nation and become an interloper. Even if the Federated Suns ignore us for a few years, the more we take, the more we will start to factor into their Great Game. And that is what I am asking. The Federated Suns is no ally of ours. Even if the Draconis Combine has always been the greater threat, the Federated Suns was right along side them when the Star League came to subjugate us! Do you think we are even half prepared to fight them?” 

Her words made the representatives wither.

Because that was the truth of the matter. 

They, the Outworlds Alliance, could not fight. They couldn’t even hold onto half of their territory. The Traders Domain, Blommestein Province, and Onverwacht Province were their spinward-most provinces. Yet those provinces were now defunct with the alliance itself having no control over with how many of those worlds had either starved to death of ceded out of frustration at the lack of help from the central government. 

Only the antispinward four provinces remained, and even some of their spinward worlds were dead or dying. 

They weren’t in any position to fight, and the fucking retards swept up by stupid desire for conquest were screaming at the top of their lungs to lash out. 

What use was declaring war when they couldn’t even feed their people? When they didn’t have enough jumpships and dropships to keep their worlds together? 

“Face it,” she snapped at them. “We are weak. And until we gather strength to reintegrate our spinward worlds, I do not want to hear about any talks of conquest! Is that clear?!” 

Some of the representatives looked defiant but eventually they all conceded, because at the end of the day, House Avellar was the most powerful house and no one else in the Outworlds Alliance had even half of her house’s capability to make shit happen.

So if she didn’t want an invasion, then there would be no invasion, whether or not her faction was the most powerful within the alliance. And it was the most powerful. 

As the parliament session came to an end and all of the representatives left, Ronanine let out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t used to asserting her will upon her people. Her title was president, not coordinator or the first prince. 

But needs must and she forced the parliament to go her way. She also probably burned a lof political credit and goodwill for it. 

… The next few years were going to suck from all of the politicking. At the very least, she could be happy knowing that she wasn’t sending the young and bright next generation to die for these old fuck’s ambitions.

-VB-

Michael Anderson

Cylene, Coreward Principality

2983.07.01

Michael stared up at the freshly constructed palace now sitting far - but within visual range - from the largest city on Cylene. It was not quite a gargantuan structure but it was one that was majestic in its own right.

Because it was plastered with gold. 

Lots and lots of gold. 

It also looked a lot like a bunker, but when Michael remembered that Prince Marris had a thing about not wanting to get nuked in the face…

Yeah, it made sense.

He took a deep breath in and let it out before adjusting his tie. He was not used to wearing business formals. 

He had been promoted from being a major to a diplomat on the order of the First Prince, which included a lot of vetted staffers and teachers working along with him to teach him all of the details of what being a diplomat was like, including things like not making promises, understanding the limits of his role, diplomatic immunity, and ec cetera.

Michael doubted that Prince Marris cared about things like diplomatic immunity. The man did blast Luthien and back just a few months ago.

So! As his new job dictated, he moved from David II to Cylene, the new heart of the Marrisian empire. And it was an empire. Between the Fall of Luthien (as most were calling it) and now, the Coreward Principality struck out and swallowed up a few more worlds: Sadachbia, Ancha, Biham, and Halstead Station. This effectively doubled the principality’s territory and added another half a billion to its population. 

But both of those were small matters compared to why he was visiting the Prince’s Palace today. 

The guards standing outside - those odd folks with varying appearances, heights, and features - looked at him, saluted stiffly, and let him enter. 

The halls of the palace was rather barren. 

It made sense to Michael. The prince he knew wasn’t someone who liked having gaudy decorations. After all, he had made bank selling high tech to the Federated Suns but his office had been prefab container box. What he expected more of, however, were sexy women in sexy outfits. 

Because women was the prince’s vice.

Hell, he’d met at least a dozen women who’d slept with the prince when he was a commander! And more than a few had babies, too, and the prince made sure to visit and play with the babies. 

And woe be to anyone who tried anything with the mothers and the kids. A guerilla fighter on Cylene almost succeeded in doing just that but was stopped at the last moment. 

The prince made an example out of the perpetrators and associates. While making sure everyone who got killed and watched knew why it was happening. While streaming it live on all public and private news and holovid outlets for everyone to see. Blood eagles weren’t meant to be streamed.

He still had nightmares about it. 

He could still hear their screams in his head, probably because they were most likely still alive and screaming in pain in some dungeon below the palace. Those bastards got their flesh flayed but whatever voodoo magic stuff that helped Marris make his ships also let him keep a man alive well past the point of no return.

Marris was like that. You leave him alone and he’ll just ignore you. Touch him and you’ll wish you died instead. 

Whether or not someone understood the message was an altogether a different question. A lot of people would just look at the atrocities (because that’s what they were) and decry, not thinking about how many more people wouldn’t die because someone above them might just stop to think about what might happen to them if Marris got their hands on them.

He walked down the high corridors until he found himself looking at one of the iconic members of Marris’s original mercenary band: the white on red armored uniform and black opaque visored white helmet. There was now a new addition, though. On the forearm of the power armor, there was a bulkier forearm “guard” that the DMI and MIIO identified as “energy field projectors,” the energy shields that Marris’s soldiers used against the Dracs. The soldier also had a one-sided white cape that covered their shoulders, chest, arms, and left side of their body down to the ankle. 

“Mister Anderson,” the soldier greeted him. “Are you here to talk with the Prince?”

“I am.”

“Then please follow me.”

The soldier turned around without another word and walked. Michael followed. 

And he frowned. Instead of a wide and spacious room, they came to a stop in front of a small room away from the main corridor. 

“The Prince is inside.”

Michael glanced at the door and then at the soldier before opening it up himself and walking in. They weren’t even checking him for weapons? 

Or did it not matter because Marris had a “energy shield” of his own that was much more powerful than the ones his soldiers and mechs carried? 

Whatever the case, Michael found himself …

Staring not at a small office but an open field with a mountain for a background. It was sunny. Bright. Free of the atmospheric taint that dominated most Combine worlds. 

“What-?” he muttered before stepping back.

The door was still there. The wall around the door was still there. The soldier still stood waiting. 

He looked over his back. The window outside showed what he expected. A flat yellowy grassy plain that surrounded Cylene’s capital city as well as the slightly yellowish clouds of the industrial chemical tainted sky. 

He whirled back around.

Through the doorway, he saw a mountain, a plain of green grass, a blue sky with white clouds, and a man working underneath a large tent while many women with babies in their hands or in the hands of servants had a picnic beside the tent. 

His jaws fell, closed, and fell again.

What?

Huh?

The man looked up.

Prince Alan Marris. 

“Ah, Michael,” he said out loud for the voice to carry. 

And the voice carried as if he was outside, not inside a room with a very convincing holographic projector. 

“Come out.”

Out. Not in.

With his heart pounding in his chest, he swallowed dryly and stepped on through. 

The door quietly closed behind him with a click, and he turned around. 

No door. 

He whirled back around. 

Prince Alan had his head leaning on an elbow, smirking at him.

“What brought you to see me today?” he asked as he gestured for him to take a seat in front of him.

Michael … didn’t know what to do.

What the hell happened?

What was he seeing?

Huh?

What?

None of the women - concubines - said anything, though a few giggled and chuckled. Most of them were too focused on talking with each other and taking care of their babies. 

Michael, after a moment or two, finally moved. 

He walked over, came under the tent, and sat down in the offered wooden chair. It was a sturdy thing. And the ground… this was actual dirt with grass. 

Alan smiled at him knowingly, and Michael knew just how out of depth he was. 

“I… I’m here on behalf of the First Prince,” he began. 

“Okay. Go on.”

“He wants to know what price he needs to pay for the warship and energy shield technologies.”

“Took him long enough. I expected you here last month.”

Michael laughed nervously. “I would have if …”

The First Prince had made very clear directions on how to approach … this. 

Because even if First Prince Andrew Davion had been the man who broke the Warrior’s Cabals and thus showed just how powerful of a man he was, people started opposing him on his “leniency” toward the Principality.

None of those people understood what angering Marris meant. 

“There has been trouble within the Federated Suns.” Normally, he or any diplomat would never be this frank about their state’s internal matters. But the First Prince demanded that he engaged the Prince of the Coreward Principality the best way he saw fit. And being frank and honest was the best way to approach the man who hated politics. “It took time to settle it.”

“I see,” he replied. “And what price? I’m not sure if the First Prince can pay.”

“Is it worlds that you want?” 

“Pfft. As if.” A pause. “No, I want a guarantee. A treaty, if you will.”

“A treaty…?”

“Yes. Warship technology is one that can unmake entire worlds in a heartbeat. Giving it to the now biggest state next to me when they lost it means giving them a means to effectively threaten my new holdings. You see where I am going with this, yes?”

“Yes…?”

“Good. This treaty is a simple one. It is a treaty of understanding.”

…?

“I will gift you the technology to create warships, including the automation necessary, as a gesture of friendship to the Federated Suns.”

?!

The Prince of the Coreward Principality smiled. 

“But the moment the Federated Suns make any threatening move against me is the day you will find my warships above New Avalon, ready to crack that planet open.” Then he smiled as if he hadn’t just threatened that. “I think antimatter warheads would do the job nicely if the Federated Suns stop being amicable, yes?”