OSG 26 - The Bearperor Returns

[RefSteel]

Report Part 2: 2404-2407

2404: Stralian Drop mopped his brow with the back of one enormous paw, emerging from the Bearperor's office once again. After a lifetime's struggles through the administration of the Ursine Intelligence Agency, he still couldn't quite believe he was working for a boss who didn't automatically take out everything that went wrong on him. Over the course of the past year, all his agents outside Bulrathi space had been discovered and executed by the empires in which they were working, and yet the Bearperor only ever made sympathetic noises and looked over the reports Stralian had assembled from information they had managed to send before being caught. On two different occasions, the Bearperor had even complimented him on the reports - even though they were the ones that explicitly showed Bulrathi technological progress in the most unflattering light! He still had enough of a budget to keep planting new agents in every rival empire and the Bearperor's personal approval for the technological espionage he was advocating in Psilon and Silicoid space - even though there had been no positive results to date! The Bearperor had even shared the latest top-secret reports from his other main information-gathering sources - the Cubscout 2s still fanning out across the galaxy - just in case they might prove useful to his work.



Stralian was utterly mystified - not least by the "important appointment" to which the Bearperor had hurried off after the latest meeting, carrying what appeared to be a copy of "The Aypenstein Apes Go Camping," by Jan and Stan Aypenstein - one of those children's books set in a world where, preposterously, talking apes walked around on their hind feet and lived in a modern society like Bulrathi. Returning to his office, Stralian could only shake his head - and wonder if the scientists on the Force Fields and Weapons development teams were receiving similar treatment in spite of failing to produce results; they were reporting odds of 30 and 22% of breakthroughs in the upcoming year, but would either one actually succeed in time to help protect Keeta? He shook his head. "What a way to run a government," he sighed.


2405: Rrrisha Garr rushed across the Keeta starbase tarmac, ducking under the hulls of shuttles and fightercraft, her lab coat whipping behind her, carrying a shimmering sphere of energy in her arms. The first guard at the door to the starport shield generation facility tried to stop her, and she body-checked him aside in her exictement; the rest, recognizing her, just let her through. "We've got it!" she crowed, hurling the doors open as the main facility technicians hurried down to meet her. "I've got the prototype right here! Grrarrriri's sending you the specs right now, and we'll have your shields boosted and ready for that rock fleet ASAP!" A light seemed to glow behind her eyes as she added, "And someday, we're going to design one that can shield the entire world!"



Across the galaxy, Brughy Fregraar stared at his HUD in disbelief. "A Silicoid Whale?! They built a dreadnought?! How? Where?" He jammed his engines up to full power, cutting in his hyperspace tunnel generators for emergency return. "I'm out of here, guys," he called through his transmitter. "I don't have a chance against this thing!" The hyperspace tunnel opened, and he burst through, escaping with his life and his Cubscout 2, leaving the Silicoids complete control ... of the Cygni asteroid field.

Not far away though, another Cubscout, reaching a star that had been unclaimed when it left during Bearperor Psillycyber's administration, found a Sakkra colony guarded only by a fleet of the lizards' Hydra missile boats. Thanks to the known design flaws in the Hydra targeting systems, this Cubscout had no trouble evading their fire until they had to retreat and resupply.



Reports came in from Berel as well, its endlessly-flowing magma rich with neutronium, high-density energy crystals, and rare metal ores, but the reports the Bearperor really wanted wouldn't come in until the following year. The war with the Silicoids proceeded, and the Psilons spoke words of friendship, but the war was about to reach its height - and the Psilons to show their true colors.

2406: "Primodius Command, this is Flagship Expo. We've got eyes on the Silicoid defenses."



"They've rebuilt a base - I repeat, one missile base - and I'm transmitting specs on the Mako cruiser now."

Admiral Grrunf nodded, looking over the scanner results, and forwarded the data on to Keeta to help them plan their defense; another Mako was expected to arrive there within a year. "Those Psilons really did a number on that planet once we took out their bases," he growled. "That's a lot of factories down, to say nothing of the population." He shook his head but went on, "Okay, take out those defenses. We'll just have to hope our war allies don't burn the colony down."

The battle went flawlessly: Nukers swept in and bombed the base out of existence, dodging all the missiles launched at them en route, as the Mako fled through hyperspace from the cloud of Bulrathi fighters. Then as the fleet watched, pilots and command Admiral alike gritting their teeth, Psilon and Sakkra ships swept in to bombard the colony once again, just ahead of the transports from Primodius and Porridge - with the Keeta transports still a full year behind due to nebula interference.

The colony survived; though the population was hit hard, it didn't take as much damage as it must have in the past to have fallen so low. Perhaps the Psilons had held their fire after all, seeing the state of the defenses and knowing their own transports were en route - but perhaps they simply didn't have the firepower anymore: The Bulrathi would soon discover that their cruisers in the area had all been scrapped in one of Tachaon's fits of madness, leaving only their fighters and destroyers in Cryslons' orbit.

Whatever the reason, the colony stood, with at least a few factories still intact, as General Frregrar led the first wave of transports in. As they prepared for re-entry, the General got a priority call from the Bearperor himself, and frowning grimly, prepared for a crack about Durfus, he answered the call.

It was not what he expected. The hologram of a six-year-old cub looked up at him wide-eyed from the hologram Bearperor's knee. "Hi, General!" the little girl called, waving at him shyly.

"Make me proud," said the Bearperor, with a comeradely smile.

"Yes, sir," Frregrar answered, grinning. And he left the holochamber, strapping into a gravity couch. And he did.



Four Bulrathi batallions were lost of the seventy-eight that hit the ground. The casualties among the Silicoids were higher by a ratio of more than ten to one. High-mobility ursine troops flanked Silicoid positions as heavy forces cut through the enemy's entrenched defenses with laser assault weapons pinpoint-targeting vulnerable support points identified by combat engineers. Shock troopers in heavy duralloy armor lured out Silicoid sorties into the jaws of Frrengrar's traps. Snipers with long-range laser rifles picked off Silicoid commanders and caused panic in the ranks as military hackers disrupted enemy communications, delaying reinforcements until they would no longer be supporting entrenched allies but walking into the arms and killing zones of the Bulrathi. By the time the dust cleared, no Silicoids remained on the surface of Cryslon, while all 29 of the factories the Sakkra and Psilon bombardment had left intact remained, and in spite of the massive damage on the surface of the world, combat engineers were even able to recover intact construction plans from a starship factory.



Ion Cannons were not the most useful weapons in the galaxy, but they immediately became the Bulrathi state of the art, and the Bearperor hadn't been sure the troops would recover anything at all. Frrengrar received the empire's highest commendations ... and was advised to prepare the ground in case the 50 incoming Psilon assault transports came through. They were due - like the Silicoid assault fleet at Keeta - to arrive within a year.

The Keeta defense grid had the latest shield technology installed all over the colony, including the new-fashioned missile base and the construction sites for two more. Everyone on the planet not involved with assembling the bases or supporting the working population was hard at work in the starship factories, putting together a few new neutron pellet fighters. The rest of the empire was helping as well though, pouring resources into the development of construction and especially weapons technology, bringing the chance of a breakthrough on the former to 19% and the latter - meaning scatter-pack rockets for Keeta's bases - to 40.

The bombers at Cryslon, meanwhile, departed for Incedius to perform further acts of ... diplomacy.

2407: Neither the Psilons nor the Silicoids had departed. Neither Tachaon nor Tyranid had withdrawn their attack orders when control of Cryslon passed from the Silicoids to the Bulrathi.



The Sakkra Hydrae with their known targeting flaw were no threat on their own - but the colony ship carried death spores - five racks' worth - and had to be slagged. Seven of the pellet fighters were were lost, but the colony ship went down in flames long before it could reach the planet and the Hydrae were forced to retreat when their payload ran out.



Then the Psilons took their turn.



The Psilon ships were built with more advanced technology, but the Bulrathi had numbers, neutron pellet guns, and ex-Bearperor Ianus's far-superior starship design. Only 30 Bulrathi fighters went down as they burned the Psilon fleet.

Then, just before the Silicoids hit Keeta, there was a breakthrough in a Sanders high-tech lab!



The new waste reduction technology would provide a nice, small boost to the empire's economy, and state-of-the-art improvements to Bulrathi industrial technology would be a boon when they were developed later on - but Scatter Pack rockets still weren't ready, and Keeta would have to defend itself with basic missiles and a small fighter fleet.



It didn't matter. Thanks to three bases fully equipped with their new shields, the Silicoid Mako and Colony Ship couldn't even burn through the first one's armor before both went down in flames. Then the Psilon transports hit Cryslon, unprotected by their fleet, with 130 neutron pellet fighters flying interdiction missions.



Every incoming transport was destroyed without exception - and with that, the Bulrathi bombers made their grim diplomatic overtures to everyone who wasn't a rock ... and a single Bulrathi commando division arrived at the terran world of Vulcan.



It nearly took the world on its own. The fourth and last Silicoid battallion barely held the bears off after the first three were destroyed ... and millions more Bulrathi less than a year away. So as a Moonbase colony ship set out for Simius, as still more transports departed across the Bulrathi empire, as planetology and weapons engineers reported chances of breakthroughs of 1 and 42%, the Bearperor laughed ... at a schoolteacher's joke. He was visiting a second-grade class for his daughter's Bring Your Father to School Day.

Report Part 3: 2408-2410:

2408: The last of the Psilon fleets sent piecemeal to Cryslon before General Frregrar's conquest finally arrived. Naturally, they attacked, flagrantly ignoring their long-standing non-aggression pact, but the main fighter fleet was still in orbit in anticipation of just such an event.



Six more brave Bulrathi pilots died, but they took all 45 Comets with them, and the Psilon colony ships retreated, finally forced to admit defeat. Then, since the Bearperor refused to violate the pact that Tachaon seemed bent on ignoring, it was up to Stralian Drop to get some recompense for the losses his people had suffered.



His agents on Mentar staged a raid on an older military complex - one that hadn't yet been brought up to date with the Psilons' state-of-the-art security protocols - and after passing through triple layers of laser security webs, microvibration detectors, and Psilon sentries, they penetrated to their target: The command-and-control center that housed the base's main targeting computer arrays. While one agent stood watch, the team's computer expert carefully disassembled the targeting system, photographing each component in its housing as she went, pakced the critical and unfamiliar components into the adaptive foam of her pack, carefuly sabotaged what remained so it would melt down into an unrecognizable mess in what would appear to be an accident, and hissed, "Got 'em! Let's go!"

They nearly got out undetected.

Almost at the fence, staying low for concealment, avoiding the security webs again, they heard a cry from one of the guard towers, and then alarms were sounding everywhere, banks of floodlights flashing on, and the voice from the guard tower shouting, "Bulrathi! There are Bulrathi down there!"

Stralian's agents didn't wait around. They didn't try to climb the fence, and didn't worry about the gate; they just tore through the duralloy links as if through tissue paper mesh with the laser cutters built into their gloves, running hard for freedom. Staccato bursts from assault rifles rang through the night as pursuing Psilon patrols leapt at shadows or resorted to reconaissance by fire, and parts of the forest where the Bulrathi agents took cover were set alight by explosive rounds and mortar fire. The bearhunt lasted all night, into the morning, and beyond, but Stralian's agents were long gone by then, sending detailed specs for the battle computer they'd disassembled back to the Bearperor's spymaster.

Half excited, half terrified - he had no idea what it would mean diplomatically for his agents to be caught in the act - Stralian Drop sent the specs directly to the science teams, and was still agonizing over his report when another priority transmission came in. He did a double-take when he saw the planet of origin: What were his agents doing on Vulcan?

In fact there was only one, and he'd arrived just the previous year, embedded with the commando division that had nearly taken the planet. While the rest were doing battle, selling their lives dear, taking three Silicoids for every one of them who went down, Agent Hrraf had taken advantage of the confusion of battle to conceal himself near the planet's lone, tiny research lab. He learned that, in desperation, the Silicoids of Vulcan had been trying to develop a form of shoulder-mounted rocket powerful enough to shoot down fighters and transports in space, and though their project had met with no success and no inkling of a possibility, he had noticed that they were using real Silicoid weapons specs as a basis for their hopeless research. They fully intended to wipe the records before the transports arrived ... but Hrraf moved in before they had the chance.



As weapons, Hyper-V rockets had little to recommend them. Bulrathi weapons development teams were on the verge of designing MRV missiles that could split into five separate rockets, each far more compact but with identical yield to the Silicoid model. Still, the Silicoids had approached rocket design from an entirely different angle, and lessons learned from their mistakes would help with the miniaturization of other varieties of weapons even if there were no need for the rockets themselves before the MRVs were ready to hit the assembly line. Stralian commended Hrraf gravely, then warned him, "Keep your head down. There's going to be fighting in the streets there any minute!"

"Pfah," Hrraf answered eloquently. "If you can call it fighting."



When he saw the reports, Stralian couldn't call it anything of the kind. The Bulrathi had come in with ten times the Silicoids' number, and though the rocks, surrounded and outgunned by enormous, unstoppable ursines in superior armor, refused to yield, the Bulrathi forces had claimed the colony without the loss of a single life on their own side, swatting the Silicoid resistance aside with all the effort of a professional exterminator casually swatting a fly. He assembled his annual review for the Bearperor, careful not to lay any of the blame for his spies' discovery red-handed at Mentar on the heads of the spies themselves - the Bearperor's ways were rubbing off on him - and commending them instead on their swift action to claim the computer plans in the first place, and to escape with the plans, the critical components, and their lives.

When at last he entered the Bearperor's office however, Stralian froze. Up on the main holodisplay was a recording from Tachaon the Mad.



The timing, Stralian felt, could not have been worse - except that when the display froze, the sound of giggling he'd noticed went on. "I'll bet they're just bad at translating," a cheerful young girl-cub's voice declared, the edge of the giggles still in her voice.

Stralian blinked, and saw the Bearperor's daughter, still only eight years old, grinning at the frozen display as the Bearperor himself nodded his spymaster into the room and smiled at his daughter indulgently. "Okay," he allowed, "so you try. What do you think he means by 'Hinterland snort brushes twitch the fresco limpets'?"

Waving her arms about wildly, the little girl answered, "Holy gosh, they're spying! What do I do? What do I do? They got away with stuff and everything! I'd better send a stern message! Yes! That'll take care of everything!"

"Mmmmm," the Bearperor murmured, nodding sagely. "I think you're on to something there. What do you think, Stralian?"

Chuckling to himself, the spymaster had to agree; whatever else might be said about her, the girl knew how to read between the lines.

2409: With another Moonbase colony ship already dispatched for Ajax the previous year, as well as bombers launched to cut the supply lines of the Silicoid Whale observed en route to Nyarl, it was a nervous, helpless-feeling year for the admiral of the fleet. There would certainly be plenty for him to do ere long, but for the moment, he spent a lot of time pacing his office, hoping for some kind of helpful news. When the summons had come to the local research lab to review some supposedly-exciting new discovery, he had agreed in the vague hope that it would prove a useful distraction, but it wasn't really working. All the way to the lab, all he could think about was how the weapons on his fleet - all the weapons in the empire - were so hopelessly out of date that if not for the long-term potency of neutron pellet accelerators, he might almost have despaired. If only he could field real missiles, or real bombs on his combat fleets, he might ... but his thoughts were interrupted. He had arrived in the briefing room, and some scientist or other appeared to have something to say.



It wasn't just a question of having scatter pack rockets ready to install at the empire's three missile bases - those weren't exactly in his department anyway. It wasn't just the plan to develop fusion bombs to crack enemy bases in spite of advanced shield technology. There were fusion beams in his future - actual fusion beams - and there could be no greater joy for the admiral of the fleet.

Well, maybe one.



Bombing Silicoid worlds into the - ahem - stone age was cathartic to say the least. And better still, there was a possibility that broader, steadier action around the empire might be needed.



With Tyranid's implication - in breaking his non-aggression pact - that his need for new star systems meant a need to take them by force from the Bulrathi, there was certainly plenty for the admiral to think about. He knew his Bearperor would be termed out the following year, but at least if the next Bearperor brought in someone new to take his place, the Admiral could spend his final years of command in blissful contemplation of future defense fleets.

2410: Of course, the defense fleets in question weren't yet actually in place...



...least of all at distant toxic worlds which couldn't be claimed for decades, no matter how ultra-rich. The Silicoids would have a kind of foot-hold at Tyr, for as long as the Bulrathi and Alkari permitted it to last...



...a caveat of which Geode appeared to be well aware. The Bulrathi weren't yet ready to end the war, but the Silicoids had begun to see the writing on the wall.



So had several other races. Even the Alkari, long the clear galactic leaders in every possible category, had fallen behind in population and especially in planets, and their edge in every other category was eroding. They still were threatening, dangerous, and far, far ahead in technological development ... but the Alkari were losing ground. The galaxy was beginning to look ever more friendly to the Bulrathi.



It was a good place, one couldn't help thinking, for a father and mother bear to raise their ten-year-old girl.

Bear-bones notes: 2400-2410

(Moved down from a previous post)

- There are still some transports on the way: A tiny number of the Silis' will presumably splatter against Vulcan next turn; some 53 of the Sakkra's will reach Cryslon in about 3 turns; 20 of ours are about to reach (and ~fill) Primodius; 22 of ours are 2 turns out from Beedy; and 25 (split between two groups) will reach Irving in two turns. This might (barely) overfill Irving if you do nothing, so I suggest sending whatever few transports you can from there to Rha next turn, when our colship arrives there. Sending more transports the following turn(s) is also reccomended of course....

- There are three unclaimed worlds in range that we can colonize. All are of good to decent size, and two are rich (including the aforementioned Rha). There are Moonbase Dead Colships already enroute to all three. Unfortunately, there may be Alkari ships inbound to at least one of them as well....

- We got basically nothing from invading the Silicoids because the Psilons and Sakkra had wiped out 90% of their factories by the time our 'sports arrived.

- The Sakkra broke their NAP with us just last year; I don't see any incoming fleets yet, but their diplomat is still gone.

- Even though we now have Scatters, the Alkari can build spore ships (or perhaps even worse, Heavy Blast Cannon ships) that are completely immune to our bases and about as impressed by our NPGs as class 2 shields are by lasers. Hopefully they won't, and hopefully we won't have to fight them soon even if they do, but be aware that they are still extremely scary.

- The Psilon shielding is almost as strong, and we won't crack the bases of either one with nukes. Fortunately, we're now researching Fusion Bombs.

- Most of our bombers are heading for Nyarl and Rana. My plan there was to glass both planets, hopefully before the Silicoid Whale dreadnought reaches Narl (to which it appears to be headed) so that upon arrival, it will crash due to lack of fuel bases.

- We have spy reports on (and an active spy with) everybody. I've been actively using Espionage on the Psilons and Silis.

- I haven't spent any reserves this turn (though there might be a little overflow from overspending last turn at a few planets) - you have almost 800 to play with.

- The save is posted above, attached to part 1.

Roster:

Ianus - UP! (Unless Thrawn is back and posts a "Got It" first...)
PsillyCyber - On Deck unless we hear otherwise from Thrawn
RefSteel - Just played
Thrawn - When/if you're back, please let us know!