- Reactor Orbital Shipyard, 2426 -
I just heard the grim news from the Furnace colony. That fleet showed up
fast - as fast as we feared, and it only had five missile bases!
Our defensive fleet there looks better than it is: With no computers on those fighters, up against Alkari, they're little more than a distraction - and since the Warbirds were known to mount Pulsars, they were barely even that. We could have built a
better one, that could
handle those ships and then go help protect our counter-attack fleet, but I guess we got a little cocky.
(Ahehehehahahaha - get it? Cause it's birds attacking? Right? Did you get it?)
Aheheh right, so anyway
one base is enough to keep them from ever taking orbit with those things, and a real ship with shields could ignore their Sparrowhawks completely and their Foxbats and Space Gulls
almost completely since their targeting's no better than
our little fighters' but they've got Death Spores sticking out all over the place. It's like when 74MP-P057 stole the tech for those, the birds were like, "Oh, you want to know about Death Spores, do you?
Here!"
That's old 74MP-P057 every time though, robbin' them of the wrong thing we don't want and can't use. (Ahehehaheh robbin' them! Did you get it? Did you?)
Funny thing is, their colony ships are the most dangerous ships in that fleet - to our planet, I mean - so we should have tried to hit them first, but the defenders thought maybe the fighters could handle those since they didn't have pulsars, and forgot or didn't realize how long it would take to wear them down that way. Anyway, it went pretty badly. By the time we blew up all their colony ships and Warbirds and the rest of their ships retreated, they'd worse than cut the planet's population in half! So we'll fix that over the next few years as far as the colony, but
think of all those
lives lost forever to horrible choking, toxic spores! Think of the pain and misery they caused! Why it makes
me sick just thinking about them crowing to their buddies about how they killed so many of us. (Gnnnrxhahahaheheheh, crowing!)
Well, it cost them the most-dangerous fleet they had though - the most-dangerous they had
yet - so maybe the joke's gonna be on
them.
They do have some missile bases on Escalon -
almost as many as RGP-151 advocates putting on every planet in sight - so maybe later we can show off why relying on one-dimensional defenses is a bad idea. Or maybe not. Because if it's the
right dimension, relying can be a
fine thing! You see, we just got ourselves a new shield, hot off the design floor at the Friction field dynamics laboratory!
Now, you might be saying to yourself, what good is this? Shields don't stop death spores, and that's not a planetary, and anyway if the birds build something with Omega bombs, one more layer of shielding - or fifteen for that matter - will hardly make a difference! Well, you'd be right about all those things. But I'm not
talking about planetary shielding!
This here is the ship we're building right here and now, rerouting down to Friction to join the anti-matter bomber fleet we're already gathering. Just one of it, you understand: That's all we need. Oh, we can make more later if we want so they can be in a few places at once; that's up to someone else. But this'll be the first, and I'm proud of her, believe me! That laser may seem gratuitous, but one more little beam weapon can make a difference in a long fight against little fighters, and as for missiles to help with maneuvering ... well, that's fine for those who like it, but I don't intend on this ship needing anything like that anytime soon. It can take care of itself, if you ask me. I said about one-dimensional defenses, right? Well, this is a dimension I can
get behind: The dimension of
really huge autorepairing gunship! And no, I did not leave out an s at the end there, thank you anyway for asking.
You can see what happened to sad little Furnace here, and how Poverty's sending some people over to fix that. A few others are going to help out too from closer by, but not many. In the grand scheme of things, like I said, the loss wasn't that big a deal - it's the personal tragedy. Well, the thirty-one million personal tragedies. All I have to say about that is, these Alkari - these Alkari are for ... gznnnxsszheheheh - these Alkari war criminals with their death spores everywhere are
for the birds!
- Growth Colonial Planetology Lab, 2427 -
Before I start, I just want to express my congratulations, condolences, and armchair-admiral censure to the Nordia Bomber Fleet.
They were facing twenty-four missile bases with scatter packs loaded instead of stingers, and destroyed them all, leaving the Alkari fleet to flee in terror, at the cost of about sixty more ships than they needed to lose, trying to get fancy with asteroids and enemy ships instead of just taking the known path to safe and total victory. Many brave crews were lost to the completely unforced piloting error that allowed a volley of scatter pack missiles to hit the out-of-position bombers, and for their lives, we grieve. Also, Nordia is now defenseless, and the ARS dreadnought is on its way to make sure it stays that way. We're going to want to take charge of the colony for ourselves, and we need people with whom to repopulate it, and that, friends and fellow Meklar, is where my lab team comes in.
We have finally successfully isolated the soil elements responsible for our world's immense fertility, and devised means of introducing them to the soil of every habitable world in our control - soon to include Nordia, we hope! - thereby, among other valuable things, increasing its population capacity. Moreover, we believe that in the right atmospheric conditions, this project can be performed on
any world - even at the shieldless colony - and we're going to work right away to work out means of introducing exactly those conditions and turning otherwise-hostile worlds to fertile paradises like our own. I won't say this year is a turning point for our already-accelerating people - but it's a point of
acceleration!
- Zortium Armor Foundry, Meklon, 2428 -
From what I hear over the network, the Alkari are trying to take the skies at Nordia again. Mostly I think it's the fleet retreating from our Furnace, but they sent more to help them along.
It didn't matter. They'd need well over a thousand of their Foxbat fighters and Space Gull destroyers to eventually force our ARS-47-4 to retreat. It doesn't have the firepower to wipe out this entire starfleet in one engagement, but it could have pasted the Foxbats - it
did get a
bunch of them before they gave up and fled - and then made a decent start on the Space Gulls if they'd stuck around too, because
they don't have the firepower to meaningfully hurt
it in an
infinite number of engagements. So that was really of pretty small importance compared to my actual
work!
We just got the order finalized today: All the components of the new Zortium Battle Suits are designed, specced out, and being built en masse, and we're supplying all the material for them we can. Later on, we'll be able to improve our industrial technology, but nobody's likely to work on that too soon: These battle suits are going out to everybody because lots of us have more-urgent things to do than build or prepare for yet more factories:
Here, and at Canopy, and of course down at Poverty, transports are loading up for Nordia. We're none too pleased with the way the Alkari went after Furnace, and the best way we can think of to stop them from doing it again is to take away the forward bases they use to reach the place!
- Nordia Colonial Spaceport, 2429 -
Begin burst transmission from Special Agent 1NF0-106.
No luck penetrating the labs here; the recent security upgrade was comprehensive, with advanced battle-hardened computer encryption and intruder detection subsystems.
Also detected a new pulsar, based on high-powered ionic transduction from engine systems, not yet installed on active ships; no chance to get a closer look. Now departing Nordia, stowed away aboard an Alkari Birdseed Freighter; ETA to Escalon, one year. No sign yet that the Alkari are aware of our attack timing, but they can probably infer it - and we've got other issues too.
It looks like the Klackons have spotted this planet's vulnerability, and have a fleet of their own incoming - we'll have to face that too. Can't tell yet if we'll be fighting them before or after our transports arrive. Hope for the first if those Pegasus destroyers have bombs or spores, but the die is cast either way. Advise more fighter cover, just in case.
Klackon designs are believed to be at least a decade old, maybe much older, but current Klackon technology could make highly dangerous fleets, fortunately moving slower than congealed motor oil.
End Burst Transmission.
- Nordia Orbit, 2430 -
This is Captain XTR-5706 reporting. We have another Alkari fleet on the board.
Nothing too scary: Slagged both Warbirds and as many of the Foxbats as I could before they fled. A third attack reached our Furnace again this year too apparently, with two more of each of their spore cruisers - the Warbirds and Colony Ships - but we're up to seven bases there now apparently, and it was more than enough; they never reached spore range. As ordered, I've been destroying every Warbird I see, but leaving Colony Ships alone since they'll just get more for free. I'm ready for the bugs to come in on us too; some are on their way, maybe, but I'm not worried. And it's looking like they've got problems of their own lately.
Hard to know for sure, but that makes it sound to me like the Esperites are dead bugs walking, what with their star about to blow.
So maybe when you check this map, figure without one of those green flags, yeah? There might be a colony left when the star goes, but not much of one. And figure with another white one and one less blue while you're at it. We've
got this world. And I heard a rumor of plans to build more bombers and take on Escalon too ... and see if we can go on from there!