Collection 42 (Patreon)

If you get confused on any terms, I’ve provided definitions for some at the bottom of the chapter.

-VB-

Collection

Chapter 42

-VB-

Edward Arlaoskas

Segerica

3004 July 19

I already got my family’s reluctant approval. Those who couldn’t stomach it decided to stay at either the Corlaos Shipyard or the Jamestown Shipyard. 

Which no one did. 

They all stood by me.

“But we have … demands.”

I looked at mom, dad, and the rest of the family, including Armas and Amy.

“Alright, hit me,” I said from the captain’s seat at The Maw’s bridge where they came to talk to me. 

“Promise us that you won’t orbitally bomb any civilian targets or use nukes.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And antimatter, I assume.”

“Yes, that, too,” dad, who’d become the spokesperson for the rest of the family, grimaced. “I still can’t believe you are manufacturing antimatter en masse.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Oh.

Well, that was a very reasonable demand. 

“Alright. I promise to not randomly bomb cities from orbit and not use nukes or antimatter against such targets. I have my own conditions, though.”

“Yes…?”

“If any city fires upon my ships from the ground within the city, then they are not a city anymore. They are a military target.”

Dad grimaced. “But you can ignore them. You have shields.”

I frowned. “So? If I let them do that, then they will use cities as body shields against me.”

“... What if we limit ourselves to retaliating against nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction?” mom chimed in. 

I thought about it. 

That was acceptable. Dad was right that a few shells and lasers wouldn’t hurt me, my ships, or the AIs. Considering how easily I lost nothing in the previous battle, this was a fact, not a possibility. After all, I hadn’t activated any energy shields in the last battle. 

“Okay. Let’s go with that. As long as we are not fired up by nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.” Then I paused. “But I will not limit my attacks on jumpships.”

“That … I guess we’ll have to accept it.”

I nodded. 

The ship pinged me as it finished the docking procedures up against the Segerica Outer Station, something which had grown in our absence.

Spanning some fifty kilometers across, forty kilometers in width, and at least eight kilometers high, the flat-ish diamond-shaped structure looked imposing while in orbit of the local gas giant. And The Maw fit right into one of its capital ship hangars with room to spare. 

I connected myself into the station’s network (through the physical capsuleer connection I already had to my ship) and began to assemble the fleet that had been building during my months of absence. 

Most of the ships produced here were Kite-class ships. It was the closest thing to an aerodyne civilian dropship that the Inner Sphere would recognize, and could fit in roughly thirty freight container boxes with ease with a maximum of 2,000 tons for those thirty freight containers. 

I could modify their hulls to become a proper gunship, but that would put a halt to my current plans. 

No. 

For what I intended to do, The Maw, the two Mules I brought with me, and the eighty Gamma Core operated Slashers, the warship-sized X-wings with solar sails and rust bucket aesthetic frigates that carried powerful autocannons. Where did these Slasher interceptor-frigates come from? 

I put in the order for their production a few hours after I first heard about the Aurigans being under Capellan attack.

And from the data I’ve managed to put together along with the AIs aboard The Maw, a trio of Slashers could lock down any system without a heavily defended space station. 

The only reason I docked here was to physically transfer the Gamma Core droids over to their ships.

I spoke from my mind to the intercom directly. 

“The ship has docked successfully. Go out and get your ships.”

And the Gamma Core droids who’d been waiting rushed out to claim their ships. 

---

One week later, all of us jumped out of the Segerica System.

-VB-

The first system they appeared in wasn’t any of the border worlds close to the Aurigan Coalition or the Taurian Concordat but in the opposite direction in the antispinward border. 

And when they did, everyone knew that the Capellan Confederation was doomed. 

-an account of a former Capellan Confederation Armed Forces mechwarrior

-VB-

Armas Arlaoskas

Victoria, Capellan Confederation

3004 August 4

They didn’t stop at any single system for long. 

New Roland.

Andarmax.

Jacomarie.

Repulse. 

Renown.

Gunthar.

Borden.

Cavalor. 

Egress. 

Quimberton.

Vard.

Columbine.

In each of those systems, from the antispinward (or “west”) of the border straight across toward the spinward border (or “east”), Edward left behind a squad of five Slashers. 

Was it an overkill? It was. 

But five Slashers meant that they could cover most of the jump points, points of interested (like colonies), and have one or two left over to reinforce anyone else who might want the fun. Because none of the artificial intelligences needed help when they fought against the local defenders. 

Even after leaving behind sixty Slashers, the Arlaoskas Fleet still had twenty Slashers and two Mules to support The Maw.

And now, they flew within the Victoria System, one of the core worlds of the Capellan Confederation’s Sian Commonality. With a population of close to a billion and a half people, it was one of the most populated worlds in the rimward Inner Sphere, barring worlds like Andurien and Tauros. 

It was a heavily industrialized, well-protected, and … cold world. 

From what public information they gathered, Victoria did not and could not sustain itself from its own agriculture. With an average temperature of 2 degrees Celsius at the equator and less than 10 percent of the world’s surface being water, of which most was salt water, Victoria was the definition of a boreal world. 

Except there was over a billion people living on it, importing food from elsewhere.

In fact, it was already experiencing food shortage if the civilian radio chatter was any indication. 

Edward had briefed them all on what he was going to do here. 

Victoria was not only a regional powerhouse but the center of Sian Commonality’s rimward military manufacturing and resupply. It needed to be neutralized to prevent Capellan Confederation from being able to effectively arm their troops and dropships. 

There was a thoom as the ship completed the jump into the system right over the nadir of the local star. 

There were half a dozen jumpships in their sensors. One half of AI-piloted Slashers immediately sped off to destroy them while the other half turned their prow towards the star and jumped to the other side of the star to reach the zenith jump point. 

Electromagnetic and thermal blooms blossomed in the distance as some of the jumpships tried to run while others signaled their surrender immediately. 

“We have a few civilian jumpships signaling their surrender, Ed,” Amy spoke up.

“Accept the surrenders and tell them that if they jump out before getting boarded, then we will jump after them to destroy them,” Edward replied callously. 

“Understood, fleetmaster.”

The two Mules split from the fleet along with four Slashers, two for each Mule. They moved toward the jumpships to secure them.

Armas glanced at his brother from the corner of his eyes. 

Edward looked … bored. He was dismantling one of the Successor States, a rival to the Free Worlds League, if in name only, and looked bored while doing it. 

“I’m moving The Maw in orbit of Victoria II,” he said while moving his hands but the ship moved on its own. “Armas, I want you to double check every target as they come up. You’re going to be the check to my decision on what I bomb from orbit.”

“G-Got it.”

No pressure, right? Just gonna be the person who decides whether or not thousands of people die from bombardment. If he makes a mistake, then thousands of innocents will die. 

No pressure. 

The view of the bridge windows changed as stars zipped past them as The Maw and the rest of the fleet entered warp drive. The space shimmered, stretched, squeezed, and glittered before they all dropped out of the warp bubble without even feeling any more movement than what one might feel inside of a car stopping at a traffic stop.

Then Amy’s sensors blared. 

“Unknowns detected. Cataloging them now.” A pause. “The sensors report that they are military dropships.”

Without even a word, the biggest guns on The Maw rumbled and began shooting. Almost silent whirrs echoed across the hull - telltale signs of siege missile launcher bays opening. Then a rumble followed all forty missile launchers let loose shielded cruise missiles. 

The Capellans tried to shoot it down with their meager non-NAC and non-NL weapons, but having been stationary as they were when we arrived, they couldn’t move quickly enough before the cruise missiles came slamming down upon their positions. Dropships, dozens of them, exploded apart as the cruise missiles designed to kill battleships slammed into them and detonated. 

The aerospace fighters that were too small to be targets tried to flee down to the planet.

The Slashers moved in then. Far faster than the cruise missiles, they sped from just three hundred meters per second to three thousand meters per second as they activated their microwarpdrives.

Throughout it all, Edward watched impassively before he paused. Yes, even that impassiveness and boredom paused before he turned to Armas. “Armas, don’t forget to put in orders for the Mules to set up FTL comm buoys in this system, too.”

“Got it.”

-VB-

In the months to come, dozens of jumpships and scores of dropships would be captured and destroyed as they tried to reclaim Victoria System and Victoria II as well all other systems that the Arlaoskas Fleet had occupied, but The Maw would patrol over it and the other systems that the fleet had left Slashers behind. 

With its mere presence spelling doom, most civilian jumpships would refuse adamantly to take any and all contracts to bring dropships to those systems. In fact, they began to move away from those systems and from the Capellan Confederation, causing an additional shortage of jumpships. 

By 3004 November 1st, the Capellan Confederation gave up on military action and sent a diplomat.

What greeted him was not The Maw but something greater and far more terrifying.

-VB-

Terms:

Capsuleers (EVE Online): quasi-immortal infomorphs that physically connect their brain to their ship’s computers via implants at the base of the head. 

Gamma Core (Starsector): human-equivalent artificial intelligence

Microwarpdrive (EVE Online): a module equipped to a ship to give significant boost to its speed. Eats up so much power that most ships cannot use this for a long period of time.