The Third Book of the Alienbutt saga. Emperor of the Universe. Part 83.

Emperor Fluffy stood in the ruins of what had been the central market of Spaceport Maxwell. Around him, fires raged and the people who had lived on the station lay dead. After his defeat at Heeter, he headed straight to the Sloopystool sector and while his droid ships destroyed everything on the planet, he had come aboard the space station and killed anything that moved.
The rage he felt at his defeat needed to be released and he chose the planet because of its connection to Alienbutt. Somehow he knew that he had to kill Alienbutt in order to rule the universe and until he did, he would never be safe. The war with the Federation was just the start; it was Alienbutt who was his real enemy.
After a year of victories, he had suffered three setbacks within days and those setbacks needed to be washed away in blood. He had suffered defeat in front of the entire Inner Systems. They had watched the live news reports from Heeter. During the battle, his ship suffered damage from an attack he had never considered when designing it. The Fo’c’sle and the Heeter fighter ship had attacked the rear of his ship, causing far more serious damage than expected. The ship had been designed to go head-on with Federation battle cruisers and in the victory at Earth, much of the damage to the front had been superficial; apart from the shielded gun batteries, the front was basically just an enormous sponge designed to soak up any attacker’s firepower.
To add to that damage, and with the fallout from his defeat, a far worse effect was that he had lost a large portion of his droid ship while many of the old Federation forces that had defected to him over the year had been scattered or had deserted.

He learned of a second setback as he retreated from Heeter. Alienbutt personally led a raid that destroyed his cyborg production plant. Luckily, a number of the scientists and more than eight thousand partly-converted cyborgs managed to escape at the start of the raid and were safe. Still, the loss of the production plant and the remaining prisoners taken after the Battle of Hunter’s Rest was another setback to his plans to rule the universe.
His third setback was that his pet assassin, Guerick Tackful had disappeared. He followed the energy trail of an unknown ship into the Zachia asteroid field and had not returned. It had been more than a week and the droid fleet he sent out with him had made little progress in entering the asteroids, but had suffered heavy losses. Mr Fluffy had to face the fact that Tackful had failed to overcome Blackarachnia and the prisoners at the prison had been destroyed.
Emperor Fluffy didn’t like setbacks. In the year since he destroyed both the Ick and the bulk of the Federation Navies, his aim to control the universe had all gone to plan. Now he suffered his first obstacles and they had all come at the same time. As a result, his hold on the Inner Systems slipped and with those losses he sustained in the Earth and Heeter campaigns, he didn’t have the powers left to force their obedience. If people rose up against him, he would have to depend on the Volunteers of Fluffy to try and keep the peace; the murder of the news crews live, while the universe watched, had already led to violent protests all across the Inner Systems. His dreams of ruling the universe hung in the balance. If Alienbutt pressed the advantage, Fluffy would be in trouble and the arrival of the Fo’c’sle hinted that maybe he was ready to act. Fluffy need time to rebuild his strength and ordered all droid production facilities to work at full capacity while ordering an extension on the volunteers of Fluffy Air Corps.

To be continued.
All images are mine.