Debauchery Worlds 66 (Patreon)

Commissioned by michael stitcher

Debauchery Worlds

Chapter 66

-VB-

Alan Marris

Cylene, Coreward Principality

2983.11.01

For the first time since we began traveling and exploring the multiverse, we encountered something that we couldn’t overcome. Whatever fantastical technology I might make meant jack and shit in the face of … that, a literal nebula of monsters.

Tyran was dead. I knew it in my heart. I didn’t even bother to go back, and even if I did, then I was going to go around in a warp or hyperjump capable warship that can survive and run. I needed to be a lot more than a few destroyers to survive that. 

And it kind of put a damper on my exploratory mood. 

So I went back to doing what I did well.

Punching the Draconis Combine. 

By now, the Draconis Combine had been thoroughly chewed up from within and without. I personally managed to take more of Dieron Military District’s spinward worlds coreward of my Coreward Principality while the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns began to get bloated with three dozen worlds each. They were actually getting to a point where they simply didn’t have the numbers of garrison and conquer new worlds at the same time. 

Well, the Lyrans did, but they also had the least strategic military competence out of all involved. 

In the Galedon Military District’s most spinward and coreward worlds, independent warlords began popping up with each of them holding about five worlds each. Free Rasalhague was also a thing with thirteen worlds, centering on their namesake system.

To everyone’s surprise, the Draconis Combine did not completely shatter from this onslaught. Instead, they turtled and held onto dear life, and I may have been the one to give them a bit of breathing they needed. 

See, after I killed Hohiro Kurita and destroyed the entire Unity Palace along with him, I backed off on destroying Combine jumpships. I took my fair share of the snake meat and I wasn’t up for more deaths by collapsing civilization. Didn’t want to be responsible for mass starvation because I felt satisfied with the damages I inflicted. 

Maybe it was cowardly of me to stop and not see through the end of it all, but the ones responsible had been taken out. Why should I hurt civilians who had zero input in the decisions of their higher ups? 

Though if the Draconis Combine had been a democracy and the Coordinator an elected leader, then this thought process would have gone a very different direction.

So I stopped attacking jumpships.

And I transitioned to outright conquering the Combine, one world at a time. 

---

Wande Kelani (chapter 52 previous appearance)

Al Na’ir, Draconis Combine

2983.11.05

The fuckers were back.

Last time they came, they shot up the only mech factory on his world and left. 

And sure, even if Wande was just another common worker, there was such a thing as feeling indignation on behalf of someone or something else. 

And to be on the receiving end of an interstellar hit and run which wasn’t even a proper on-ground mech-to-mech fight left him feeling miffed. 

That’s why when an actual ground offensive came for his homeworld, he quickly joined up with the militia to fight them off. 

He didn’t care that Luthien got bombed by the same people. 

This was Al Na’ir, the home of the Azami Brotherhood, the only nation that joined the Draconis Combine after beating the shit out of their soldiers, and nobody was going to leave this place without the people giving them a pounding.

He saw the news just like everyone else had on the planet. This was where the Azami Brotherhood ruled, not the Draconis Combine’s puppets; they had access to more of the Inner Sphere’s happenings than most other Combine worlds. 

Wande knew that they were going to lose; he saw Luthien get bombed to oblivion.

But just because Luthien got bombed didn’t mean that his people were going to -.

“We’re surrendering.”

Wande stared up at the commander-in-chief of the planet’s defense. 

“Wut?” he muttered. The other militia around him also voiced some concerns. Some. Not all. Everyone else looked relieved. 

“It would be waste of good people to fight a foe we know we cannot win against. As such, the duke and the general in charge of the overall defense both agreed to surrender to the Coreward Principality in exchange for limited autonomy. This means that none of you sons of bitches have to die today.”

That brought out sighs of reliefs from most but a few like Wande felt … empty. 

There were a few more words the militia commander said, something about half of the Azami Brotherhood words opting to join the Coreward Principality peacefully rather than fight to the death, but that just meant Wande had nothing to do.

Nothing to look forward to.

So he turned around tiredly and left to drop off his equipment at the militia armory. 

-VB-

Alan Marris 

Hagiwawa, Coreward Principality

2983.12.03

In the span of a few months, I expanded the principality’s total system count. 

From Cylene to Athenry along the Federated Suns border and from Athenry to Algedi and from Cylene to Hagiwawa. 

From four to thirty-four. 

Most of those worlds fell after a pair of destroyers or a flotilla of smaller warships showed up and pounded the defenders.

But a significant number of those worlds joined me peacefully, namely worlds that the Azami Brotherhood had a significant influence and presence over. They essentially wanted the same thing they had under the Draconis Combine: limited autonomy and freedom to worship as they saw fit. 

I granted them. As long as they paid their taxes and kept to the rule of law, I left them to their worlds. 

Not so much for the rest of the planets in their systems. Those came under my possession. It was why I was here in Hagiwawa, my now coreward-most system. 

Hagiwawa was a single jump away from Benjamin, which remained firmly within Draconis Combine and the other systems that had remained with the Draconis Combine, which now had less systems under its rule than the Capellan Confederation; between my Coreward Principality and the Lyran Commonwealth devouring the Combine’s most dense star clusters in the former Hegemony worlds and the Rasalhague-Benjamin military district border region, the Combine lost over a hundred worlds to either outright conquest or the Combine’s own pre-emptive abandonment.

Because they did that. 

They preemptively pulled out of all Hegemony worlds except Dieron, and even the coreward Benjamin Military District wasn’t under their full control. Benjamin system itself was under constant attack from me and the Federated Suns, though neither of us tried to outright conquer it. 

Unlike Al Nai’ir, Algedi, and Ashio, all of which were important for being prefecture capitals and industrial hubs, military district capitals like Benjamin and Dieron were on a whole different scale, comparable to Luthien in how defensible they were. 

And despite how I utterly broke Luthien, Benjamin wasn’t willing to surrender. 

So I just occasionally visited the system and destroyed any and all space-capable ships but didn’t touch the planet itself. 

My hope was that by leaving the HPG alive and active while Benjamin itself was kept physically isolated, the people down there would change and pull away from the Draconis Combine over time. 

Assuming, of course, that the Federated Suns didn’t stretch themselves even further to try their hand at conquering Benjamin.

But knowing their First Prince as I did, I doubted he would go for it. They were overextended as much as they could afford to be without exposing themselves to the Capellan Confederation. 

‘If I remember, then the FedSuns had something like thirty regiments in their newly conquered worlds now?’ I thought as I oversaw my clones building the first of three space stations I intended to build in Hagiwawa system. 

Unlike the factory or citadel space stations, I intended to build this station to be something closer to a civilian port. 

Why? 

Because I wanted to build Hagiwawa into a trade hub between the soon to be Lyran-Coreward-Draconis-FedSun quad-border region. I certainly didn’t intend to expand that way. The FedSuns wouldn’t be able to expand much further. The Lyrans had some more left in them, and the Combine would sooner or later have a revanchist sentiments running feverish through their leadership and people soon enough for them to solidity their current holdings at the very least. 

Which meant that Benjamin(Draconis)-Hagiwawa(Coreward)-Sutama(Lyran soon, probably), and Monistrol(FedSuns soon) will be a new place of trade… or war. 

And having a trade hub here will grant me easier access to future opportunities. 

Also, if war became the theme of the region rather than trade, then I could easily convert the station into a citadel, though it wouldn’t be as tough or strong as one built from the ground-up to be a fortress like most citadel stations were. 

But that’s fine.

I didn’t need to push myself to do some stupid theatrical move like Alessandro Steiner. I could move at my own pace. More than that, I had more than enough bodies to do whatever it was that I wanted. 

Then I frowned as one of my clones made a report about my newest family member. Or rather one of my wives who was giving birth to the newest family member. 

‘Well then, don’t just stand there! Go be there!’ half of the hive mind shouted at the idiot.

‘I’m the fleetmaster of the Expedition Fleet, dumbasses!’

‘Fuck the expedition!’

I rolled my eyes.

Yes, all of my clones were me and I was them, but each “body” had a preference and partners that we kept close. 

It was why the “me” who was in “charge” of the Coreward Principality had five concubines specifically tied to him. The “me” who was still in charge of the Marris Mercenaries had no one. The “me” who was in charge of the expedition fleet had one. 

And I? The original? I also had none. 

Maybe it was the stress or just the workload, but I guessed that I was living vicariously through enough of my clones that I didn’t feel the need to go out and find a girl of my own.

It was what it was.

Now. 

What was I going to do?

Should I explore more or continue to expand…? Both had their up’s and down’s. 

Exploration pro: find more stuff. If it wasn’t entire worlds to exploit, then it was people and their technologies to study.

Exploration con: find more stuff. I knew better than most that there were horrors out there in the universe. I came from Earth Bet; I knew more than most for a good reason. But after seeing those monsters, I wasn’t so sure if I had seen everything. What else was I going to encounter next, a parasite that takes control of the body from the inside? I needed to be more careful, but more careful also meant standing out more. 

Expansion pro: more resources and manpower. At the end of the day, even with my clones, I was nothing compared to an actual state. I was a force multiplier, not a force in and of itself. I was able to grow with a state protecting me, after all. I doubted that I would have grown this big this quickly had the Draconis Combine took an exception to me and chose to eliminate me at all cost at the starting stages of my mercenary company. After all, if they popped a nuke in those first six months of my stay here in the Inner Sphere? I would have been gone except for the few clones who were exploring. 

Expansion con: more enemies. While I was cordial with the Federated Suns for now and would remain so until they changed, I had no reason to be friendly with the Lyran Commonwealth. They acted and behaved like any other state in the Inner Sphere, and in regards to me, I have had to root out more than a few LIC spies after I refused to sell to them. The Combine was already my enemy, and a lot of the peoples that I conquered definitely hated my guts, which meant that I was, in essence, ruling over a people who would never except me this generation or the next. 

… Once I laid it out like that, I could also rank the four options.

Exploration was the most nebulous, most risky, but also the one with the most guaranteed return. The technologies I’ve reverse-engineered, stolen, and traded for paid dividends. 

Expansion was stable with less growth potential, but it laid the foundation from which I could force multiply with the gains from my exploration. 

But that’s the thing. I already expanded a lot, and I was actually have trouble keeping it all together. 

Yes, I controlled the space lanes. Yes, I controlled all of the trade (because after destroying all of the local jumpships, only my ships were capable of jumping around my space because aside from a few enterprising FedSuns companies, no one else wanted to risk their jumpships, and thus I provided all of the ships needed for interstellar trade). Yes, I was powerful beyond every other state. 

But I had enemies, limited number of trusted people (my clone selves included), and even my technologies could only boost me so far. The thirty-four worlds I had, in grand strategy game terms, put my overextension over a hundred percent, gave me maxed out aggressive expansion, used up all administrative resources, edged my diplomacy to the brink, and strained my military coverage to the minimum density. 

That last part was important because I had limited number of clones to use as elite troops or ship crews. So unless I -.

…

…

Wait a minute.

What stopped me from cloning myself. Sure, those clones wouldn’t be part of the hive mind and would need clone minders but I trusted myself. 

What stopped me from making a cloning facilities on stations?

-VB-

A/N: Wande wanted to die when Alan first came by but got no death. Wande wanted to fight when Alan came by now but got no fight. Wande gets nothing he wants, huh?