Kick the Sphere 26 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 26

-VB-

Alan Marris

Dansur, “Free Worlds League”

With the test of the replicator troops completed and shoring up the weaknesses replicators had, I knew that I was finally in a stable and strong position. Sure, I may have only one planet, but defense production and placement moved along apace and the locals accepted me as their de facto ruler.

It wasn’t an empire when there was only one inhabited planet nor did I want to crown myself an emperor.

I did, however, own my things, and everything I did so far have been preemptive measures to ensure that my things remained my things. The grubby hands of the Great Houses and lessers, the greedy mercenaries, and the gungho “blow everything up” ComStar needed to be kept away from my things!

And now that I knew for certain that nothing short of any of the Great Houses or ComStar sending an unacceptable contingent of force that will allow their rivals or unaware parties take advantage of their unacceptable levels of missing troops. Because, according to my calculations, even ComStar will need at least ten divisions, including at least four dozen warships, just to take me out. If ComStar moved that many troops, their facade would be discovered in full public by the rest of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery States. It would be the start of their end.

If either the Capellans or the Free Worlds League moved, then they would open themselves up to attacks from their rivals in the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, respectively. What’s best was that even in the wost case scenario, I would come out on top.

Why?

The current state of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery States was worse off than they were at the start of the Third Succession War, even though all they did throughout this war was intermittently raid each other with no campaigns on par with either the First or the Second Succession War. They had factories than before, less skilled laborers than before, and had less planets than before. With their insistence on planetary mining as well, this meant that they also had fewer resource deposits than before. Even if ComStar decided to release all of their tech in an all-out war against us, it will take time for the rest of the Inner Sphere and the Periphery to build up their forces to fight against us.

Unfortunately for them, I now had with me two of the most time-efficient forces out there in the multiverse: the replicators and the zerg swarm. The replicators would undo whatever technological progression a world manages while the zerg could grow anywhere a human can and even in places where they can’t. My force projection, should a war break out immediately, showed that I would have at least a trillion “foot soldiers” by the end of the decade while the rest of the Inner Sphere would lose a tenth of what they had so far.

Of course, this was assuming that I was an idiot.

Why would the Taurians help the Fed Suns? Why should the remnants of the Outworlds Alliance help the oppressive Draconis Combine? Why would the pirates of the Circinus Federation and the decadents of the Magistracy help the Free Worlds League or the Lyran Commonwealth? Would the mercantile houses of the Aurigan Coalition bother to help the Capellans when they will be busy buying outdated military hardware from me? Why would I not talk with the Taurians and the Magistracy about them staying out of the way while I weakened the Inner Sphere?

The board was already set in my favor, and as I continued to build up, it would remain so if not more overwhelmingly in my favor.

This projection, on top of assuming that ComStar would cooperate with the rest of the Inner Sphere, assumed that all of my production and expansion would involve only one planet.

Just one.

If I opened up all of the worlds in this system to my expansion…

If I opened up all of the worlds in reach for exploitation…

For the Inner Sphere, they have been stewing helplessly in the end game as they lost more and more of their capabilities.

I was just starting.

Speaking of which…

“Ares?” I spoke into my smartphone, which was connected to the interplanetary communication network set up using satellites. Kind of like the internet of old.

“{Yes, father?}”

“You have my permission to turn Dansur IV into a replicator world,” I said as I knelt down and dropped three zerg larvas onto the forest floor of a continent with minimal human presence because of its thick jungles.

“{Thank you, father! Does this also mean…?}”

“Yup. You can take the necessary resources from the Manufactory or the Supplies.”

As the larvas munched away at the tree roots to build up biomass, I hummed happily.

-VB-

Janos Marik

Atreus, Free Worlds League

It’s been… a rough year.

Life was rough and hard. Everyone who wasn’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth will agree to this. For him and his children, they lost his wife last year. She had arguably been the center of their family in private, and he knew that he had become lethargic since.

The governance of an interstellar empire was not the job of a grieving man, but the duty called and he answered.

And that duty today saw him sitting in a meeting with the SAFE director because of a new intel that they managed to acquire from the Capellans.

Because according to the Capellans, the Free Worlds League was in possession of a black-ops research facility hidden in a system and planet that wasn’t listed on any of the star charts that he remembered from the League’s rimward possessions.

“Well, do we?”

“Sir?”

“Do we have a secret black-op research facility looking into highly dangerous technology that is in a system that has been absent on star maps for the better part of a hundred years?” he asked the director again, and the man shook his head.

“If there is, then it isn’t one of ours. And if it is any one of the other services, then it isn’t one of theirs, either.”

“And the other directors told you this?”

“Yes, sir.”

Janos placed a hand on his forehead and its receding hairline as he wondered about what this could be.

“It couldn’t be a Star League depot, could it?”

“It could potentially be one, sir, but regardless of what it is, the Capellans are gathering for one of the biggest offensive campaigns that’s been seen along our shared border since the start of the Third Succession War,” the director, an aging woman with gray hair, reported. “We can’t afford to not respond.”

“And what exactly prompted this attack?”

“... That would be this, sir.”

He accepted the datapad that she had been holding so far, and he turned its screen on. On its screen was a video ready for him to play, and he hit play.

And he watched with growing apprehension as he watched one of the heavily fortified Capellan worlds was reduced to nothing by a gray tide of skittering, screeching, and shudder-inducing nightmare.

This was nothing like the vaunted Space Defense System employed by the Hegemony and then the Rimworlds Alliance after they took over the systems that bled Kerensky’s Star League Defense Force. This was something new. Something dangerous. Something clearly out of this world.

If the League had something like this, then they wouldn’t be struggling to win these everlasting wars.

If the League had this technology…

“Only one world?”

“Yes, sir. No other world in the vicinity of Dansur has seen activity. It is only Dansur.”

“... It is possible that the locals have found a Star League depot on their own and are using it for revenge?”

There had been no other attack so far and the target had been in the Capellan Confederation.

“Find out what led to Dansur disappearing from the star maps and call upon all available regiments in the area. Capellans aren’t going to half-ass this attack. I know I wouldn’t.”

If the Free Worlds League still had secret warships, then they would have been fielded for this. But they don’t and that was a true shame.

But what he and the League could do was ensure that this new technology wouldn’t fall into the hands of the mad Liaos.

And if it meant ensuring that a world that fell off the star maps remained that way permanently, then so be it.