Collection 43 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 43

-VB-

Janos Marik

Atreus, Free Worlds League

3004 August 9

“They what?” Janos asked incredulously. 

“A warship arrived at the edge of the system, bearing the sigil flag and IFF of the Arlaoskas Fleet, captain-general, and it seems to be broadcasting the events related to the Arlaoskas Fleet’s current invasion of the Capellan Confederation,” his aide reported. 

“They what?” 

“They invaded the Capellan Confederation, captain-general,” his aide repeated. “It seems to be a response to the Capellan invasion of a periphery state that has been enjoying an amicable relationship with the Arlaoskas Fleet.” Then he offered multiple dataslates. “And they have indicted the ComStar Order in assisting with the invasion. With attached proof.”

Janos accepted them and skimmed through the information given to him. 

There were words. Statements from periphery world leaders. Statements from this “High Lord” of the Aurigan Coalition. Video proof of CCAF navy over Aurigan worlds. Video proof of a ComStar precentor attempting sabotage. This was, of course, the opposite of what ComStar had been spreading through their ComStar News Network. But unlike CNN, the warship came bearing lots and lots of videos of what they were exactly doing. 

And as horrifying as jumpship destruction was…

They were not the League’s jumpships.

And these reports, provided by the Arlaoskas warship’s broadcast, listed exactly how many jumpships that they shot down. 

Six Merchant-class jumpships.

One Tramp-class jumpship.

Nine Invader-class jumpships. 

Two Scout-class jumpships.

A total of eighteen jumpships were either seized or destroyed. 

This was a devastating blow to the Capellan Confederation. That was enough dropship collars to transport five battlemech regiments. 

“What about the Arlaoskas warship?” 

“It isn’t the same one that reportedly left the Duchy of Andurien a year ago, sir,” he said as he produced another dataslate. This one had a large screen, perfect for viewing videos of any kind. The warship shown on screen was different from the warship Arlaoskas left the League with. It was smaller, for one, and lacked the cavernous fighter bays. It looked alien in a completely different way. Where The Maw was a giant monster of rusting plates and raw presence that demanded attention like an ancient warrior-king, the warship currently in the far outer reaches of the Atreus System was a neon aquamarine alien thing. And there were way too many guns on it. 

Naval guns.

‘Ignore it,’ he told himself. ‘Nothing good is going to come from us touching it.’ If touching an ally got Edward Arlaoskas - oh, sorry, it was “Fleetmaster” Arlaoskas now, wasn’t it? - to invade a Successor State, then touching his property was going to get the Free Worlds League destroyed. 

Instead, he thought about what he could do.

… The Capellan Confederation lost anywhere from a tenth to a quarter of their entire lift capacity. If not half. 

They were weak.

This was an opportunity.

“We must launch a new campaign into the Capellan Confederation while the iron is hot!” he announced loudly, making his aides, both close and further away, to jerk and straighten up. “Get me my generals, now!”

But even as he made this order, Janos knew that this Arlaoskas Fleet was now well and truly out of his hands. Not unreachable but the danger of reaching out had to be carefully balanced by the potential burn he might get in return. The best he could do was try to form an amiable relationship with the former Leaguers and try to keep out of the fleetmaster’s path while trying very slowly, subtly, and quietly if the League, the fleetmaster’s homeland, might be able to benefit from some of his technologies.

-VB-

Ian Davion

New Avalon, Federated Suns

3004 August 11

“What the fuck is happening in the periphery?” First Prince Ian Davion muttered as he and his inner circle members went over everything that was being transmitted on open air by a fucking warship that was blatantly ignoring their sovereign space. 

And blasting all sorts of information to whatever and whoever could receive any form of signal.

Because there was even a Morse code being transmitted.

But the warship was … not a big of a problem as it could be. For one, it parked itself in the furthest reaches of the New Avalon system. Two, it was there, its captain claimed in text, solely to distribute information that ComStar might intercept. 

Like how ComStar goaded the Capellan Confederation into attacking a periphery nation. Or how ComStar tried to sabotage the shipyard.

So on, so forth.

Ian didn’t care about ComStar. 

What he cared about was the fact that the Capellan Confederation was getting its ass whooped by a man who was, up until that point, infamous for shooting down a jumpship in self-defense and surviving a battle with ComGuard. 

But instead of weird dropships, he now had warships by the dozens. 

And were friends, if not allies, of the “Aurigan Coalition” and the Taurian Concordat. 

“Ian,” Hanse spoke up. “We should put some eyes and ears on the ground.”

He looked up from a holovid of the Capellan navy getting mauled by a dropship-thick white laser.  He looked at his brother and saw him almost trembling. 

“... Right. We need to do that. You… you still put together model warships, right, Hanse?”

“I do.”

“Then we need to talk and you need to tell me what those ships are. Or tell me just how bad this is going to get if any of our vassals decide to piss of the biggest armada in the Inner Sphere.”

-VB-

Ambassador Kuran Liao

Victoria, Capellan Confederation

3004 November 2

Kuran was a legitimized bastard of a cadet branch of House Liao. Officially, he was a Liao but within House Liao and its cadet branches, he was referred to as Liao-Com because his mother was both a commoner and a ComStar adept. She never got to live long enough to see his rise because ComStar abandoned her in her hour of need. 

For that, he hated them.

And now that he knew what the cause of his monstrous invasion was, he hated them even more for using his people and nation as a pawn. 

Then something changed. 

The entire ship went into lockdown. Alarms blared. 

“Uh… ambassador?” the voice of the ship’s commander echoed out from the nearest intercom.

He walked over to it and pressed down on the speak button. “Yes?” Kuran asked as he looked up from his dataslate that he had been documenting not just this travel but his entire life. 

“Y-You might want to come to the bridge and see this, sir.”

---

It was a giant. 

Kuran came with knowledge about this “Arlaoskas Fleet” and its warships. 

He learned from intelligence and military officers that the Arlaoskas Fleet seemed to deploy five types of warships which they mass-manufactured. The largest and most unique ship among them was The Maw. The most ubiquitous, for a given definition of the word when applied to warships, was the solar sail winged “dragonflies.” Despite the warship’s main body being twice the size of the Leopard, it moved, swerved, and pulled maneuvers more befitting an aerospace fighter. The dragonflies obliterated their enemies from up close with rapid firing autocannons, each of which were the size of an Atlas. The second most ubiquitous were the ships that came after the dragonflies destroyed the initial resistance. It was slightly bigger than the dragonflies … but carried an actual naval autocannon and multiple ship killer torpedoes. 

And both classes of ships used a different form of FTL that could be used within a star system.

But the one Kuran was staring at right now? It was not The Maw, a dragonfly, or one of those torpedo carrying aerodyne ships. 

It was massive. 

How did he know it was massive? 

The Maw, which had its image plastered across the Inner Sphere since its invasion of the Capellan Confederation, floated next to it. The Maw wasn’t even a third of the size of this new ship.

And if The Maw was an ancient warrior-king commanding an army, then the monster filling up the entirety of his vision was the monster that heralded the end times. 

It had guns that were the same size as his dropship.

It was right at this moment that whatever analysis and identification program in the ship’s computer finished whatever procedure it was on. The captain, who looked down, choked on his spit. 

Kuran looked down, too, numbly curious as to what had the captain choking when there was a giant battleship right outside his bridge window.

Then he choked, too.

The computer spat out a lot of errors. 

Unknown design. Unknown tonnage. Unknown sigil. Unknown everything. 

But it did give them the basic dimensions of what the ship’s camera could see. 

Three kilometers in length. Six hundred meters high. Roughly one and a half kilometers wide. 

The largest guns on that monser? Naval Autocannon/40+ or Heavy Naval Gauss Rifle

Estimated mass? 5.5 million tons.

‘That’s more than thrice the length of the Du Shi Wang,’ Kuran thought with a numb terror. He had brushed up on the confederation’s past naval vessels for this mission to gauge what he was dealing with. The Maw alone had already been bigger than the Du Shi Wang, the Capellan Confederation’s only battleship in the past. 

What the hell was a NAC/40+? There was nothing bigger than a NAC/40.

But apparently, there were such guns now. One of those barrels was staring him down. 

No, not even staring him down. It simply existed, and that was enough for him to be within its line of fire. Because that’s how big it was. 

Much like a planet casting a shadow that caught everything behind it, Kuran and the ship he was on were simply in the line of fire of that giant autocannon simply because it existed there. 

And that was a horrifying comparison. He was comparing the monstrous warship, which had to be the biggest ship ever created, to a literal celestial body. 

Oh. 

And apparently, according to the commander, it jumped into their view, traveling far faster than anything that size had a right to. 

As in it appeared like a star in the distance and came to a stop just in front of their ship without shredding itself apart. 

“Commander?” one of the officers on the bridge spoke up. “We’re being hailed. Text only, sir.”

“Patch it through.”

And on the commander’s computer screen was a simple sentence.

[Please join me on The Maw.] 

Kuran nearly let out a shuddering breath.