Debauchery Worlds 65 (Patreon)

Commissioned by michael stitcher

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 65

-VB-

Alan Marris (clone)

Tyran, Imperium of Mankind

726.M41

I ran through the streets as the entire planet devolved into orderly chaos. Everyone was running toward the armory or the shelter, but everyone knew what they were supposed to do. The Mechanicus, the ones who wore red robes or have high tech gear on them, also moved in unison. 

I knew that I couldn’t get the vast majority of the people here to come with me. There was a certain set of rules ingrained into the people from their lifetime of brainwashing, and even the most deviant thinkers tended to stick within a certain set of rules. Advanced technology that didn’t come with human, skulls, cogs, or Adeptus Mechanicus logos were “xeno” technology that were to be shunned and destroyed at the earliest possible moment. And technology that went into “magic” territory like my portals were outright heretical and thus must be destroyed. 

So I have to trick the few people I can maybe save and force the rest. 

My feet took me to the evacuation shelter furthest from the city center. This was where the most undesirables of the city were, if they could find a place inside at all. And just as I expected, there were plenty of people who weren’t let in. 

“I know a place to get to safety!” I shouted, and a lot of the people turned toward me. “Hurry up! We won’t be able to get there in time if you loiter!” 

A sense of urgency to push them forward in the middle of a crisis. A pressure on their survival and self-preservation instincts. 

---

Across dimensions, our armored and armed troops opened a portal and jumped on through.

Instead of the open street, it opened up right behind the doorframe of a staircase leading down into the basement. 

We quickly cleared everything in the way and made it look like it was the entrance to an underground bunker.

Then we stood guard as if we were meant to be there. 

We waited as the expedition clones began to herd the unfortunate souls who were kept out of the evacuation shelters to our “shelter under construction.” What began with just a group of three dozen soon became a stream of a hundred. The stream then became a river. 

And then the river became a flood. 

We distributed them as quickly as we could across multiple sites out in the open in Cylene, and the clones that were there explained loudly - from atop battlemechs - about how they were on a safe world through the usage of an ancient human technology. But because the technology had been on its last legs, we could no longer go back. 

And we repeated this at every site that filled up to the brim and had their portals shunted to the next site. 

However, it had to stop eventually. 

Three hours after we took to the field, they arrived. 

And it was hell.

---

“Fuck,” I hissed as I watched the tallest Mechanicus spire of the city get swallowed up by the literal swarm descending down from the sky. Lasers shot out from the spire and the surrounding city by the thousands. No, tens of thousands of laser beams streaked up towards the sky, and they struck the space swarm. 

What was a few tens of thousands against an enemy numbering in the millions? In the billions? 

Worse, some of those lasers weren’t even aiming at the space swarm but from within and at the spire itself. 

Saboteurs. 

That alone told me that defense here was untenable. If the most secure location on the entire planet had descended into infighting just as a mass of most likely carnivorous space aliens were crashing down on them, then there was no hope at coordinating defense, never mind actually winning it.

Fuck, there were some bastards up there that probably weighed as much as the city itself!

I looked up and saw too many of them descending down on my own position.

With a grimace, all of us clones still on Tyran gathered up in one spot and opened one final gate. We quickly jumped through and dozens of people jumped in after us as the literal and probably the worst sort of apocalypse fell upon them. 

People who were late to get in screamed as the insects fell on them and the city. 

We saw the insects. 

Big insects. As big as my own torso with the power armor I had on. Worse, half of their body was a mouth. 

There were bigger alien insects. Those towered over normal humans and had… guns?!

I didn’t need to know more to shoot. 

But even as I shot, I knew that I had to cut off the portal soon. There was just too many of them coming in from all location, and there was no way I could save everyone. 

My eyes met one of the survivors. One who was the furthest from us and close enough to the insects that …

Our eyes met. 

“I’m sorry,” I grimaced as I stepped back into the portal and shut it off. 

That’s when we were stabbed in the back. 

“DOWN WITH THE HERETICS!” someone shouted. No, screeched. 

Soon, lasers were bursting out from all of the encampments not just at us clones but also the evacuees. 

We quickly turned around and narrowed down the perpetrators. We nearly recoiled when we saw misshapen heads and arms. 

We wasted no time and fired back. 

We grimaced as people from all walks of life died between our two sides. The better alarmed ones ran away while others hunkered down, unable to flee in the middle of the firefighter. 

The evacuation zones became a bloody nightmare as civilians died from mutant treachery.

And when the brief battle ended across multiple sites across the entire planet, we found ourselves with more corpses than survivors.

-VB-

Alan Marris

Cylene, Coreward Principality

2983.08.07

It took me and my clones a whole week just to sort through the people to make sure that the … mutants … weren’t among them. 

We even made and popped out human-specific scanners and scanned every single person we rescued. We found two dozen hiding among the people thanks to those scanners. As for the survivors…

We saved a little over ten thousand people. The mutant rebellion killed half of the survivors. Even with our Rust medical syringe, another thousand died before we got to them from their injuries in less than an hour. 

We … I also lost fifty-five clones, the highest ever loss we’ve had in any one battle or event.

It was the worst experience I’ve yet had with any universe, and I was loathed to go back there for a second bite.

But there was a silver lining to this. We got a bunch of the weapons used in that verse, which we were certain we could replicate with ease, though they would need their own dedicated factory lines. We also salvaged a bunch of cybernetics, which would need much more time to analyze, reverse engineer, and standardize to our liking. 

It wasn’t a complete loss but it still felt like one.