OSG 29B - The Socially-Awkward Diplomats

[RefSteel]

Ah - I'd forgotten I'd stolen R7 from the Meks early on. I agree with regard to Simius though. The main reason I haven't bothered trying to take it back is that it's a tiny little spored-out spud that isn't worth the opportunity cost of defending it. If anybody ever builds it up for us, we should certainly invade again.

Another note: In spite of what I queued at our rich worlds, I don't think we need any more huge ships. The Silence design was mainly meant as a placeholder. Our existing ships with a bunch of Sorry 4.0s should be enough to ... well, win the game from here probably, but we'll get better tech and design some newer, faster ships along the way.

[RefSteel]

I have to remember not to create reports with half a billion pictures if I want to get them posted in a timely fashion. Report will be up tomorrow, but in actual real life this time. In the meantime:

Roster:

- Thrawn (Out on business)
- shallow_thought (on deck unless we hear from TheArchduke)
- RefSteel (just played)
- RFS-81 (UP!)
- TheArchduke (On Deck, time permitting...)

Save: attached above!

[RFS-81]

Got it!

I'm looking around right now, I'll probably play tomorrow. Should I wait for your report, RefSteel?

Here are my plans, comments are very welcome:
- Nuke and resettle Phantos. We already have a fleet in orbit and bombers arriving next turn, so this should not take long.
- I'm not sure, but attacking Ursa after that seems like a good idea, since the bears' shield tech is very outdated. The Mrrshans seem like an easy target too, but rather far away. I think it makes sense to go after those low-hanging fruits before taking on the Meklars.
- Get some popcorn for watching the aliens fight over Simius.
- In tech, I'll focus on Terraforming +60 (30 more pop everywhere sounds good!) and the Cloaking Device (so our bombers take fewer losses while getting into position)
- We'll probably be throwing away some more population, so I'll hold off on building more factories for now.

[RefSteel]

No need to wait for my report! Although ... I mean, if you want, you can just read it. Sorry it took me so long!

Intro:

Roving Reporter OSG-29* of the GNN news staff reporting. Today in the halls of the presidential mansion on Sol, a top-level meeting of the Human military decision-makers was held when the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accidentally encountered the President in the corridor while trying to find a washroom. Upon finding they couldn't avoid an encounter, they exchanged a series of embarrassed and hesitant greetings, and had just edged around each other and started making their stumbling apologies before hurrying away on their different errands, when the President said as if in reassurance, "No, you're fine; I'm sorry; it's just ... you know ... these aliens ... all the wars ... and what if they try to talk to me..."

After apologizing again, this time for rambling on, as the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs alternately grimaced helplessly and insisted in a mumbled whisper, "No, it's okay; sorry; sorry," the President continued miserably, as if to himself, that he wished the aliens in question -- or some of them at least -- would just go away and leave him alone.

"Oh," the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs answered, in a voice that seemed on the verge of cracking, as she shuffled her feet nervously. "Oh. I mean? It's ... you know, but um, you ... er, you see, I think we can arrange that, probably?"

After the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs had completed her errand and the President had spent a few hours recovering from the encounter in the company of his chief advisor - the worn and discolored old blanket to which he referred in private as "my blankee" - they each proceeded to their command stations and began to set in motion the plan proposed by the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs. This concludes our Sol 3 political report; Roving Reporter OSG-29* signing off for GNN.

* - Its newdroid serial number. Just a coincidence. Maybe.

Report:

2420: The Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs had authorization to add just a single new ship design to the Human fleet - and after reviewing the sector holomap, she knew exactly which design it would be.



A simple improvement over the original Sorry design she had proposed at the beginning of the previous administration, the Sorry 3.2 drove spreadsheet engineers mad with what they called "wasted space" on its fighter hull, lacking any form of armor or auto-repair system at all. The Human admirals would call them "glass cannons." The Human pilots would call them "suicide ships." The aliens they target would come to know them by names that we can't print, for reasons unrelated to any language barrier. What the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs understood that none of the pilots did was that Duralloy armor on a fighter of that size was nothing but - if the President will pardon the expression - a security blanket. Anything that hit a hull that thin - especially a Meklar Merculite Missile - was going to tear through it anyway, no matter what kind of armor plating was meant to protect it, and the ship would explode long before any auto-repair nanites could start their work anyway. The purpose of the Sorry 3.2 bombers was almost the same as the 3.1's: To get as many fusion bombs as possible into space as quickly as their planets could, and carry them to their targets as soon as possible from there, with the best possible maneuverability. The one important difference had come with enormous improvements in component miniaturization since the 3.1s were designed - shortly before the turn of the century: They could mount an actual targeting computer, and thereby hope to take out non-trivial numbers of hardened Meklar missile bases. Not that the Meklar were a relevant target of course - all their worlds were out beyond the limits of the Human starships' range!



The Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs believed she could overcome that little technicality. All she needed was a hyperwave relay and fuel base on a single forward world, and Dolz - with its already-explored surface and hundred and sixty-two Meklar factories - would be ripe for invasion. Farseer had declared an ill-advised war, and Grunk had refused to recall the mass of Bulrathi combat troopers the bound for Simius when it became a Human colony, but everyone on Earth, across the whole of the Sol star system, and throughout the Human space knew that INT-986 was the real enemy. It was time to take its long-standing war back to its worlds once again.

The President of Humankind looked over her work and approved - thankfully without the grim necessity of expressing this in words for the benefit of anyone but himself - but he had his own work cut out for him too, diverting wealth to several key human colonies from the imperial treasury: Tyr, out on the frontier, to prepare new combat transports in ever greater numbers in preparation for the battles to come; Rha and Uxmai to keep their research laboratories fully staffed, and Exis because there was simply no such thing as too many resources committed to maximizing the incredible output of its unobtainium mines.



The research projects in particular were dear to the President's heart, beginning first and foremost with advanced robotic factory controls, on which his computer science teams were already reporting an imminent breakthrough. His planetology and propulsion labs too were making tremendous progress, and he felt it would be almost a crime to leave them without proper funding, or to ask the scientists of any field at that late date to operate without any budget - even if the only one he could afford for them was the slenderest shoestring. Juggling a minimum of four different invasions, at least half of them at worlds his ships and transports couldn't reach, with six different research projects - and soon, he hoped, a seventh - as well as espionage and numerous domestic responsibilities was going to be far from easy, but the President set to it with a light heart: Thanks to the automated command console in his private office, he could do it all without talking to anybody!

2421: The Bulrathi were struggling to defend their holding at Quayal from the Human fleet: They couldn't bring much to bear in the area, but the one cruiser they could was a Warbear, arguably the best design they could have come up with, given their then-current technology. Unfortunately for them, the Humans' technology was just a whole lot better - and their admiralty, worried lest their bombing runs prove insufficient to clear the bears away ahead of their colony ship and transports, had sent up almost their entire forward starfleet.



The captain of the Warbear radioed the Slowsssh flagship in its gruff and growling voice, declaring for all to hear, "Grrrr, don't mind me, you primate fiends. I was just leaving!"

The Admiral of the Human fleet whimpered slightly as the Warbear beat a hasty retreat. "I wouldn't have minded fighting him," he complained in the faintest whisper. "But why did he have to call like that? Couldn't he have just run away quietly?"

The Alkari showed at least that they could, not long thereafter, when a pair of their Foxbat fighters showed up at Simius again. Only one Human ship had been left behind when the main fleet went to Quayal, but as that one remaining ship was a GoAway cruiser, the Foxbat laser popgun fighters had nothing resembling a chance. Perhaps the name of the cruiser clued them in.

Back on Sol, in the meantime, the President of Humankind was receiving a High & Urgent Priority Holotransmission. Frantically jamming his fingers at every button on his holocontrols that might possibly be interpreted as "Do Not Disturb" or "Not at Home" or "Delay to Any Possible Time Other than Now, Although Never is Most Preferable," he finally managed to get the transmission sent to holomail, where he learned to his dismay - after a moment of mopping his brow with an enormous sigh of relief - that his caller had left a message. After three or four bracing slugs of the strongest drink in his office kitchenette - a mixture of lemon and grapefruit juice concentrate; he had found that after trying to drink that, almost anything was an improvement - the President activated the recording with no little trepidation.



He was very, very pleasantly surprised. The Uxmai Computer Science labs' breakthrough in robotic factory controls was certainly good news for the empire, and the prospect of one day scanning planetary surfaces across the depths of space was nice - a battle computer upgrade was certainly appealing, but the President was aware it wouldn't advance the state of the art, and the cost of the project was too high to justify just pursuing it on a lark - but it would be quite some time before any of this really penetrated to the President's consciousness. The main thing he noticed - the first, and the most important - was that the Uxmai laboratory's official political representative kept his mouth shut in a cordial smile throughout the entire message, merely displaying the information for the President's use without any commentary nor - critically - the slightest request, even by implication, for further conversation or indeed a return call of any kind.

Sighing heavily once more, the President told himself, "Imagine, all that terror and activity, merely from the imagined threat of a Bulrathi ambassador calling me. I can't live in fear like this! What can I possibly do to make them see that they're not wanted so they won't try to call and negotiate with me? They've still got fifty-eight million people still on their Quayal colony, not to mention the ones out at Phantos, and I'm sure..." he panned through his advisors' various helpful - and, critically, completely silent - reports for ideas until he reached one from the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs.



"Oh. Oh, actually, that should do it, yeah," he told himself happily, no longer worried in the slightest way about attention from the Bulrathi of the Quayal colony.

The Human fleet over the suddenly-glassy surface of what was once the Quayal jungle colony had nothing left to prove there, so nearly all of them headed back down to Simius instead, leaving behind only a pair of cruisers - to deal with any possible surprises. Approving, the Human President confirmed the status of his remaining fleets before again distributing the resources of the federal treasury: Even more, though only slightly, than Exis had contributed to it the year before, to help Exis and Endoria rush out their new factory infrastructure while Tyr trained yet more assault troopers - inefficiently, with so many newly-unemployed would-be warriors around the empire, but in a critical time and place: No other planet in the empire could get the necessary troops to the front with sufficient speed for the President's purposes. Besides, he needed every ounce of effort that Humankind could muster going into his technological research projects, putting the unemployed to work assisting laboratory technicians instead of operating robotic factories so that the labs and test sites around Human space were filled almost - for all intents and purposes completely - to full capacity.



The next year might be different, but for the present, everyone was waiting for the latest reports from the battle front to come in: Every Human eye was turned on Simius or Quayal, to learn what the coming year would bring.

2422: The first thing that the new year brought was another utterly inept attempt by the Alkari fleet to defend their Simius colony. This time, their two Foxbat popguns were joined by a pair of Pelican fighters as well: Armed with twice as many lasers, moving with twice the effective combat speed thanks to the inertial stabilization device the Humans coveted, and protected by duralloy armor and such obscene maneuverability that it was virtually impossible to hit the things ... they still would have had zero chance of defeating a single cruiser.

Instead, they were faced with nearly the entire Human fleet. The Alkari ships ran without - the Human pilots were relieved to note - so much as a word of greeting.

So ended the only space battle of the year: The Human colony ship at Quayal claimed the system unopposed as a GoAway cruiser watched from deep orbit, and then 25 Human combat transports landed on Simius under the protective batteries of the primary Human starfleet. Many more transports had landed some nine years before when Humankind made its first play for that world, but the situation had changed a great deal in the meantime: Humanity no longer especially cared about Simius. It was merely, with Quayal, a redundant forward base for the assaults that they, as a race, did care about. Then too, they knew they finally had enough ships in orbit to handle anything the enemy - any enemy - might send their way. They would soon discover that there were no more non-Human transports en route within seven parsecs, which most likely meant there wouldn't be ever again. And 25 Human transports were more than enough to clean up the remaining Alkari resistance below.



Between the loss of his forward base against the humans, his fleets being repeatedly forced to retreat, and his ongoing wars with basically every other non-Meklar race in the galaxy - as well perhaps as certain other considerations connected to the Humans' new Quayal colony that may have made him quake on his perch - Farseer declared he'd have enough of his fruitless Human war, and prepared to sue for peace.

This was a mistake.

Humankind, and its president back on the third planet of the Sol system, had no particular animus against the Alkari. Unlike the Meklar, they represented no actual threat to anybody. Even the minor debacle in which Simius had been lost to them several year before was blamed in most Human circles on faulty scanners or an insufficient local fleet: Humanity had come to take it for granted that aliens would attack them wherever possible, and didn't really fault the Alkari. But suddenly, in one fell swoop, when Farseer called the Human President by holophone, he changed his whole race's status from "amusing flappy nuisance on the far side of the galaxy" to "Public Enemy Number One." The Meklar would get more attention at first because of sheer proximity, but they would always be number two to the terrible, terrible birds who committed the most heinous war crime Humankind could imagine: Opening diplomatic channels with them intentionally!



Needless to say, the Human President rejected Farseer's offer of peace. If "rejected" is understood to mean, "issued a scream so loud and shrill that it was heard on the far side of the sea - any sea - and jammed buttons on his comm console until he managed to break the connection, having failed to even hear," naturally. Given Farseer's habit of trying to talk to them, and the method they thought most effective for avoiding that kind of conversation, the Humans wouldn't have wanted peace anyway.

The time for dealing with Farseer would come later though. Just at first, the Human space marines had a different target in mind.



Half the troops who had survived the conquest of Simius - a star system about which the Human brass didn't actually care even slightly - were immediately dispatched to one about which they very much did. They would be joined there by seventy-five more assault transports from the Tyr colony, already with transports incoming behind them to rebase and prepare for future invasions to come. Quayal, closer to Dolz than even Simius, was still a tiny colony, but would be able to contribute to the invasion anyway with sixty million new colonists due to arrive the following year. At the same time, hundreds of millions more Humans took to space aboard transports from every corner of the empire, moving forward toward the border worlds in preparation for future invasions. One unfortunate result was that research suffered heavily, especially with the Presidential Treasury nearing depletion as Exis - normally the source of most of the wealth in the treasury - continued the work of doubling its number of factories instead, with the help of heavy subsidies.



At the same time, Simius was struggling to become an actually-valuable planet, and receiving some token assistance from the reserve to that end, but was getting almost nowhere since half its little population was already on its way off-world and the President - along with the rest of humankind - didn't actually care about it especially. The main Human war fleet was mustering there, but that defense would be strictly temporary ... and unlike with the Humans, the place seemed incredibly popular with all the other races in the galaxy.



2423: The first sign that the Human president was slipping came at the next battle for Simius, when four Bulrathi cruisers showed up with heavy beams. Having apparently forgotten that Humans require sleep, he had been pulling repeated all-nighters, and was actually surprised when the Bulrathi ships retreated immediately. "What?" he asked himself, blinking at the screen. "But those were space superiority ships! Not a bomb or a spore on 'em! The Warbear is even pretty good, given their technology! They can't be afraid of my old 3.1 bombers when it's not their world anyway! How come..." Then he glanced at the Human fleet that was holding Simius orbit: Three GoAway cruisers ... and all three massive dreadnoughts. "Ohhhhhhhhhh," he said intelligently. "Right ... I forgot we had so many."

The Silicoid attack that followed at the same world, consisting of a single colony ship, was - needless to say - not a worry. No, the worry was caused by the news anchor for GNN.



Darrian - the star that harbored the Humans' very first extra-Solar colony - was on the brink of a cataclysmic explosion that threatened to kill every Human in the system and scatter their remains to the far corners of the galaxy. "Ulp," the Human president commented for the official record, nervously checking on his dwindling treasury. He had to support Exis, and he had to support Darrian, and that meant emptying his last reserves completely. "How close are we?" he asked nervously, checking on the Exis colony - and heaved a sigh of relief. The jewel of Humanity had nearly completed its new, advanced factory infrastructure the year before. He was about to have a source of federal funding again, finally!

With that, he approved 14 million of the requests flooding in from Earthlings eager to help travel out to Darrian and help them find a way out of the coming stellar cataclysm, and set further empire-wide production priorities. Distracted by the emergency at Darrian and the plan for Dolz however - and still falling critically short on sleep - he started issuing crazy instructions to worlds at the edges of the galaxy, putting population growth incentives into place exactly as though an extra vote or two would matter in the upcoming galactic election. The move was perplexing, but many observers were equally dismayed by the orders sent to the main battle fleet: The new bombers from Tyr were dispatched to Dolz directly, to arrive at the same time as the transports, while most of the main fleet assembled up at Quayal in preparation to join them. But with a huge Meklar fleet expected to arrive at Simius the next year, many questioned whether the old ShutUp dreadnought alone could defend it adequately - while others, recognizing that Simius was a completely insignificant little spud of a world, wanted to know why the massive ShutUp didn't go with the main assault fleet. After all, attacking Dolz wasn't going to be easy ... and might prove more important than the Human president had ever - even back in the days when he was occasionally sleeping - dreamed!



The Meklar had gotten their servo-claws on class 7 deflector shields the year before, cutting noticeably into the efficacy of the Humans' fusion bombs - but that was nothing to the latest report the Humans had received: The Meklar had learned to build Impulse Drives, which most of the Humans had been desperate to learn about for decades. As preparations were made for the invasion of Dolz with over a hundred batallions of troops supported by nearly three hundred starships, a feeling of dread pervaded Human space lest the attack should fail, curiously mixed with a sense of pure exultation merely for the hope of finally gaining the means of crossing the stars in a semi-reasonable timeframe. General research, already too slow, grew more sluggish still as Darrian turned all its efforts in that regard to the hope of a stellar rejuvenator and a number of planets began to follow their interstellar president's crazy orders, but the dream of stealing Meklar technology instead simply wouldn't die. And the worst was yet to come.

2424: There was a certain method to the Human president's madness: The ShutUp, which had come by that time to be affectionately known around the empire as the "Boat Anchor," was a very powerful combat ship, but totally unsuited to attacking an enemy planet: By the time it could get into striking range, the battle would be over for better or for worse. And the president was certainly right that the ShutUp by itself was powerful enough to take on the entire incoming Meklar fleet ... if only it was piloted correctly. Unfortunately for Simius, the night before the battle, the space-lagged captain and pilot of the ShutUp got as little sleep as their president.



First they tried to dodge incoming missiles, as though they'd forgotten that their ship had all the maneuverability of a dwarf planet that was tidally locked with its star. Then, belatedly realizing the enemy carried death spores, they proceeded to fire their huge banks of heavy weapons on the only ships in the fleet that represented no threat to them. Then, failing to track the damage they were taking correctly, or forgetting that they were flying the only dreadnought in the fleet that lacked an auto-repair system, they didn't even manage to retreat before the very last volley from the Meklar cruisers destroyed their entire ship. Moments later, the little colony below them would be destroyed as well. The epitaph on the tombstone of those two Human officers, floating at some indeterminate point in uncharted space, reads, "The autopilot could have flown their starship better."

The Human president cursed and cursed again. It barely mattered for his plans - Simius was almost useless, and the ShutUp was only a single, long-outmoded ship - but he hated losing so many billions of credits to such a series of mistakes. Again he cursed, "What a waste!"

It wouldn't be the last. That very year, with an unprecedented opportunity resulting from a computer terminal accidentally left logged in at a supposedly-secure Meklar laboratory annex, human spies had access to files associated with every field of Meklar research. Knowing automated cybersecurity systems were sure to lock them out before they could acquire a second file, the spies had to pick a single field - and for all the appeal of the hyper-advanced Meklar computer and construction technologies, they knew what the far-flung Human empire most desperately needed.



Though not exactly pointless - human war fleets and transports would be able to travel much farther afield than ever before with Dotomite fuel cell technology - the results were extremely disappointing: The only proprietary Meklar propulsion technology that Humankind didn't actually need. Inertial Stabilizers would have been a huge boon to their fighters and bombers. Impulse Drives were of course the great dream. Dotomite was pretty good for a consolation prize, but that was just about all that could be said for it.

Moments later, adding insult to injury, the latest GNN report on the situation at Darrian would confirm that Darrian had no hope of solving its star's out-of-control cascade toward a supernova without assistance from off-world. Heavy spending from the planetary treasury would need to continue to support their efforts for years to come. Still, no ill news could dissuade Humanity's Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: With over a hundred combat transports - and over a hundred modern bombers - already en route, she dispatched the fleet from Quayal: Virtually the entire surviving Human combat fleet. They set out together to meet the rest of the assault team at Dolz, leaving not even a single ship behind.

2425: The Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs had left as little as she could to chance - knowing all too well what chance liked to do to her fellow Humans - and though the asteroids in the system would provide no meaningful cover at the time of their arrival, she sent the whole fleet in, relying upon overwhelming force.



The Human gunships, keeping up with the bombers, screened off the Meklar dreadnought as best they could, and soon destroyed it, then began to focus fire on the missiles bases below alongside the bomber fleets. By the time the dust cleared on the surface, fifty bombers had been burned from the sky, but all the colony's defensive bases had been torn asunder, utterly destroyed. Then the human transport ships swept in, landing en masse on the planet's surface, disgorging Human soldiers whose personal laser assault rifles made as much of an impression on the titanium Meklar battle suits as did the Meklar slug-throwers against the padded duralloy plates of standard-issue Human field armor once the protective shield-generator units worn into battle by each soldier on either side were taken into account. The Meklar had dug in. and controlled key defensive positions, but the Humans had the numbers to carry the day - outnumbering the machine people on the planet by better than five to two.



Then, thanks to a brilliant flanking maneuver led by General Riku on the surface, the Humans were able to overrun the Meklar defensive positions with little more in the way of casualties than the Meklar were suffering themselves in spite of their entrenched defenses, and then sweep into the factory-cities: Over two hundred of them dotting the surface of the colony, holding whatever technological secrets the Meklar hadn't yet had time to destroy, dismantle, or seal behind long-distance electronic transfer barrier protocols. The room-to-room fighting at times grew intense, and the highly-automated factories themselves might have provided the Meklar with a distinct advantage had General Riku not planned ahead and arranged to cut power to each of the factory-cities as Human forces sped in. In the end, General Riku's success was so complete that fully a fourth of the Dolz invaders who ultimately would be counted as casualties of the war did so after the battle was won, mostly due to malnutrition and competition for living space, with too few hydroponic food crops and make-shift homes made mostly from pre-fab plastics, to support all the new arrivals even after the Meklar inhabitants' tenacious efforts to kill them all. General Riku hadn't needed a good plan or even good luck to prevail with the available force, and thanks to a little bit of both, there simply wasn't room enough for all ove the invaders after the battle was won.

What Riku's tactics did win for Humankind was more important though: The Human invaders overran Meklar positions so quickly that - with more than two hundred factory-cities surviving across the planet's surface - there was almost no time for the defenders to scuttle, sabotage, erase, or destroy all the blueprints and records they had created for advanced cybernetic technology.



The Humans' robotic factory controls were already more advanced than the designs they lifted from all the Meklar factory-cities, but the associated factory design specifications would help Human secret agents with their dirty work - and the Human state of the art advanced anew in some way with every other discovery the invaders made among the wreckage of what once had been a Meklar colony: A deflector shield two generations more powerful than anything the Humans had fielded previously; a Merculite missile design that hit harder, faster, and more accurately than the best in the Human empire in previous years; the most advanced weapons system yet developed in the galaxy, capable of projecting such an intense stream of ionizing radiation across a region of space that every ship caught in the zone of effect would see its armor steadily boil away into space. Even the factory construction and repair modules and inbuilt waste-scrubbers that survived the attack - old back-up systems about as far as possible from the Meklar state of the art - proved a step up for humankind, reducing factory production costs by more than 11% and simultaneously cutting their emissions by a quarter. The Meklar retained their edge in computer, construction, and propulsion technology, and the winnings from Dolz ultimately included none of the techs - from Impulse Drives to Stabilizers to advanced ECM and battle computers to battle suits and industrial technology twice as effective as what they in fact had found - Humankind had come to equal or exceed the Meklar in the fields of weapons development, force field engineering, and planetology, partly through their own research, but in significant part by reverse-engineering Meklar technology. The Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs hoped there would be even more like it as the future unfolded before her and her people.



After another essentially pointless meeting of the Galactic High Council, in which Humankind needed three Mrrshan votes even to give them a majority, though they had a clear veto on all Council proceedings thanks to the massive Human population - equal to that of all their war rivals at the time combined - the Human fleet was ready to set out on another campaign of conquest, leaving only a single Slowsssh and one of the GoAways behind. It was a risky move: The two space superiority ships had for some reason been designed without shields, and the Humans had made too many tactical mistakes in space already in recent years - but the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs had confidence in her pilots and was sure they would do better. If only the same could be said for the Human president - by this time practically sleep-walking through his presidency, though he easily won re-election in the wake of the conquest at Dolz - and if only his plans for dispatching transports had been better timed - there's no telling what the Humans could have accomplished in the '20s.

In his now almost-perpetually sleep-deprived state, the president continued to make silly and obvious errors, like forgetting to approve another request from his Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs to move the defensive ships she had left behind at Dolz down to the neighboring world of Quayal which - unlike Dolz at the time - was actually about to come under attack. With everything else going on, he wasn't even sure after the fact if he had missed it altogether, or merely forgotten to give his okay. The grim consequences of this mistake would haunt him in later years ... when he happened to think about it. So, occasionally at least.

2426: At Quayal, the arrival of a Bulrathi space-superiority cruiser - with no defenses in the system but a few of the new bombers - would have terrible consequences: Almost enough to momentarily rouse the president to wakefulness.



One million men and women died - innocent colonists on Quayal - to Bulrathi orbital bombardment. A million casualties burning in the fires of heavy blast cannons because the president had forgotten to send down the defensive fleet earmarked for the purpose. Their screams would have haunted the president's dreams at night ... if he ever actually got around to sleeping again. Perhaps it was dread of just such nightmares that kept him awake all the time - although mostly it was just being too tired to remember to actually leave off whatever he was doing and go to bed.



Among the other things he hadn't gotten around to were a series of reports from various departments of his government. The reports of the science and technology division in particular had come in long before the reports of bombardment at Quayal, and the president was still agonizing over - and doing nothing about - the additional factory construction that Exis would have to complete before it could again contribute to the Darrian Reclamation Project through the federal treasury. A new wave of immigrants, bound for Exis from Uxmai, was approved immediately as Exis - still with help as always from treasury funds it had largely supplied on its own - was transformed into a gaean paradise - a paradise covered in even more factories - and the president, funding Darrian with the last pennies in the treasury, just had to hope Exis would be contributing minerals to the interstellar reserve again by year's end.

It wasn't the only thing he was hoping for, obviously.



Considering the superiority of human computer technology, their failure to steal from their Silicoid foes had been a continuous source of frustration - the more so as the rocks came up with technology after desirable technology to steal - or fail to steal as the case may be. Still, not all the Humans' plans were so reliant on mere hope. Some relied instead on their deadly combat fleet.

2427: The Alkari defended their homeworld tenaciously, and since the SlowSssh dreadnought just arriving in the system had been built without any shields, it couldn't take the enemy on by itself. Instead, the bombers soared in - themselves far from immune to the birds' nuclear missiles and lasers though they did a decent job of dodging what did come after them - taking heavy damage en route to their targets on the surface.



The Alkari fleet of 44 ships, with the support of 34 missile bases, were able to destroy the bulk of the bombers - but more than sixty even of these survived after the battle, together with the entire fleet of Human cruisers and dreadnoughts, as the last of the Alkari defenders fled into hyperspace. It was a much more costly victory than the President had hoped for - but it was also a cost he was ready to accept, and to pay. The remnants of the fleet still in orbit there represented only the first stage of his diabolical - sleepy, of course, but diabolical - plan for Altair.

So after a single GoAway - in spite of its shieldless nature - managed to destroy the Warbear responsible for a million Human deaths the previous year, the Human president blearily prepared to execute the next stage of the plan first devised by the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs on his behalf.



There was just barely time during the sitting president's second and final term to get assault transports down to the avian homeworld from the Humans' two latest conquests, and the people of those border worlds, aware of the secrets to be gained from Alkari labs on the surface, were prepared to send literally everything they possibly could. More transports were coming up behind to replace the soldiers about to depart, and so it may have semed for a shining moment as though the Humans' elected president actually had some idea of what he was doing, since the holographic feed of the president himself in his office, alternately snoring in a puddle of drool and jerking himself awake to hurry off and take care of something whose details he only barely remembered, was never publically released. It's possible that a member of the science team responsible for developing a warp dissipator device earlier in the year had seen something in the course of calling the president to report the discovery, and leaving a message to the effect that the team would be pursuing Impulse Drives, "for lack of any other option - and because they're terrific things that we want deperately."

If the president could stay awake long enough to have his way though, that desperation was sure to decrease precipitously.

2428: With nearly a hundred million soldiers hurtling through space toward his severely under-populated homeworld, with the world's defenses ground down to nothing and the entire Alkari starfleet posing little or no threat to anything in the vast arsenal of Humanity, Farseer had to admit that he was licked. Unfortunately for him, he chose to express the idea verbally, in a direct call to the Human president.



It didn't go very well. First the president screamed. Then he wailed. Then he pulled his favorite blankee over his head. His entire response to Farseer's request was automatically transcribed as, "No!Goawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoaway!" Scholarly opinion is divided over whether he hated talking to Farseer or was just finally trying to get some sleep and counting space superiority cruisers instead of sheep. It's entirely possible that the real answer was, "Both."

2429: For those attempting to form an understanding of the character of the Human president during the 2420s, it might be useful to consider a brief anecdote: Dozens of transports had been sent to Quayal by Bulrathi military leaders back when their lone Warbear took temporary control of the planet's orbit, and when they finally arrived, the defending SlowSssh and GoAway were waiting for them in orbit, along with a small contingent of neutron blaster fighters produced within the past couple of years.



Millions upon millions of Bulrathi perished in space, their transports burning in the blaze of neutron blasters and heavy fusion beams, leaving none alive to reach the colony. These lives too - like the million Humans killed from space by the Bulrathi cruiser itself - could have been preserved if only the Human president had remembered to defend the star system three years before. So it's a curious note that - on the night following the senseless destruction of tens of millions of Bulrathi lives as their transports tried and failed to land - the president of all Humankind finally had a good night's sleep, with completely untroubled dreams.

(The senseless death of still more tens of millions of Humans who had been sent to Whynil on a speculative quest before it started crashing up a bunch of missile bases - and before the heavy losses taken by the Human bombers at Altair - was a different matter entirely.)

In any event, there were limits even to this president's inattention. For the peopld of Darrian, living for years under the thrreat of their star's explosive destruction, the president had somehow dug up reserve funding every single year. And so with perhaps two years to spare...



...the colony, its planet, and the star about which it orbited all were saved - thanks largely to the ingenuity of that colony's scientific community. The fact that those very scientists would soon be turning their efforts to forwarding the interests of Humankind as a whole in the galaxy must have pleased their president immensely, were it not for the fact he was still more or less asleep on his feet.

2430: It appears that Human espionage agents only believed in liberating alien technologies when around a hundred million hardened Human soldiers were already en route to support them - perhaps in case an emergency jailbreak was necessary. Still, with less than two hundred factories on Altair from which to reverse-engineer new technology, and several key Alkari secrets the Humans felt they needed, no one in the secret agents' chain of command was complaining - especially since the fields in which the spies found scope for theft were computer science and propulsion engineering.



There still were no complaints when the spies came back with the lesser of the two propulsion technologies they sought, especially with the transports about to come down on Altair and the spies' clever work in framing the hated Meklar for the theft!



Initially outnumbering the Alkari on the planet by nearly 3 to 2, the Human soldiers managed to capture the planet with fifteen batallions to spare, along with all 173 of its factories. There, they discovered the secrets of the latest Alkari industrial technology - reducing the costs of their future factory construction by an average of 25% - and an intermediate battle computer between the two classes already known to Humanity. None of that was particularly significant however. The Humans were looking for one set of blueprints among the Alkari factories ... and one set of blueprints only!



They found it. And with it, the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff set about designing a new, fusion-powered fleet.

In the meantime, the Mrrshans had made contact with Humankind thanks to their previous year's colonization of the Simius Spud System. The Humans had taken the opportunity of planting a spy in their space and learning the extent of feline technology, not expecting to experience anything resembling peace.



When Emperor Mirana took her first opportunity of honoring her Silicoid alliance and declaring war on Humanity, no one was surprised, although when she finally broke the connection, their lame-duck president was deeply relieved: He'd had absolutely no idea what to say to an alien leader who was declaring war on him! ... Nor to an alien leader at any other time ... nor to any other alien ... nor to anyone at all, if it came to that.

Fortunately for Humanity and their socially-awkward leaders however, one of his policies had come to true fruition: After multiple horrifying calls to attempt diplomacy in the midst of war...



Farseer was finally, finally unable to communicate with Humanity - for a little while at least.

Closing Notes:

Turns out we're winning!


We've got some planets too. I had to edit together two different screenshots to get all of 'em on one screen!


Mirana actually has some really potent weapons and if they're armed with her latest toys, her ships will basically never miss! It might be even be worth building a huge ship (with actual shields and maybe even with a Warp Dissipator) to deal with her fleets if they're actually well-designed (doubtful, admittedly) ... but more importantly, I'd like to steal a bunch of her technology, especially while also stealing a bunch of her planets!


Our galaxy. Yes, I believe that's the correct pronoun here.

Your plan sounds good! Some suggestions on specifics:

- Cloaking Device won't reduce our bomber casualties with good piloting, enough bombers, and our enemies' current missiile technology: The Sorry 4.0s will be able to outrun their missiles and take no damage at all (except possibly from fleets) as long as you bring enough to slag their bases in two volleys. This is one of the reasons Doom Drives get their very own special name. I'd concentrate on Advanced Scanner instead to allow coordination of attack fleets and invasion transports. (Though I think that's one of the few techs I seeded decently already.) Impulse Drives are also good unless we're going to focus enough on the Meklar to have a good chance of taking the things from them!

- The bears are kind of bad at everything right now (except ground combat obviously) so their worlds aren't very attractive except as population centers and fuel bases. By contrast, the Mrrshans have some lovely technology we can steal, like Battle Computer 4, Megabolt Cannons, and Anti-Matter Bombs!

- If I were playing, I'd go after the low-hanging fruit with existing ships (though some might have to stay on defensive duties at first) but build a modern fleet to take out the Meklar ASAP.

[RFS-81]

- Cloaking Device won't reduce our bomber casualties with good piloting, enough bombers, and our enemies' current missiile technology:  The Sorry 4.0s will be able to outrun their missiles and take no damage at all (except possibly from fleets) as long as you bring enough to slag their bases in two volleys.  This is one of the reasons Doom Drives get their very own special name.  I'd concentrate on Advanced Scanner instead to allow coordination of attack fleets and invasion transports.  (Though I think that's one of the few techs I seeded decently already.)  Impulse Drives are also good unless we're going to focus enough on the Meklar to have a good chance of taking the things from them!

I'm not sure if I can supply the good piloting, but I won't get to play with the Cloaking Device in this turnset anyway, so I'll pick something else. How exactly do you avoid the missiles? I remember the trick from the last succession game, to move in the bombers above the planet, but there you still take one hit.

- The bears are kind of bad at everything right now (except ground combat obviously) so their worlds aren't very attractive except as population centers and fuel bases.  By contrast, the Mrrshans have some lovely technology we can steal, like Battle Computer 4, Megabolt Cannons, and Anti-Matter Bombs!

- If I were playing, I'd go after the low-hanging fruit with existing ships (though some might have to stay on defensive duties at first) but build a modern fleet to take out the Meklar ASAP.

I checked the report screen again, and noticed that while the Meklars have very good deflector shields, they don't have any planetary shields yet. When that changes, their bases would be nearly indestructible for us, so yes, taking as much as we can from them right now should indeed be our priority.

[RefSteel]

How exactly do you avoid the missiles? I remember the trick from the last succession game, to move in the bombers above the planet, but there you still take one hit.

You go around them: First move is diagonally upward/forward to the top of the screen, then your bombers' second turn starts by moving two spaces along the top of the screen while the missiles track toward their changing position, leaving you just enough space to move diagonally downward past them to the space directly above the planet. (If I'm remembering how this works correctly.) It only works with Doom Drives (4 combat speed or better) and only against missiles slower than Stingers though.

Once you're there, you can drop your first round of bombs with the missiles right on your tail. On the planet's turn, it will launch another volley of missiles, but if your first move on your bombers' next turn is to bomb the planet, your bombs will drop - and the missiles will all disappear if the bombs slagged the last of the bases - before the missiles get another chance to actually move.

[EDIT: Also, I know I did a version of this where my bombers ended up "below" the planet instead of "above" it in an OSG a few years ago, but it's been a long time, so I'd have to do some investigating to figure out what was different from the tests Ianus showed in OSG-28.]

Good luck with the turns!

[RFS-81]

My plans for this turnset: Nuke and resettle Phantos, attack Fierias, build a modern fleet and attack the Meklars. The closest Meklar colony is at Whynil and it has 15 missile bases. How many ships will I need to destroy those? If I want to use RefSteel's tactics, I need to destroy all missile bases in two turns. The Meklars haven't researched any armor tech yet, so each base has 50hp, that means I need to do 375 damage per turn. Every fusion bomb does 12.5 points of damage on average, or 5.5 damage after taking the Meklars' shields into account. Actually, it's slightly better than that because there is no negative damage, but let's keep it simple. The Meklars have ECM5, so bases have a defense of 6. Since our bombers have level 3 computers, they have a 20% chance to hit. That means I need 341 bombers, or let's say 375-400 to compensate for bad luck.

2430: I send the SlowSsh from Altair to Phantos to have it join the attack on Fierias later. I scrap the Mumble 4.0 design for now (we don't have any ships of that class yet), so I have a slot free for a colony ship to resettle Phantos, and I order Palladia to build one. I let Endoria keep building a huge Silence ship and put Exis to work on the Sorry 4.0 bombers. I see that the Silicoids are planning to colonize the radiated planet at Crypto right in our backyard and have Artemis build another GoAway to stop that. In tech, I keep the trickle spending going for the Advanced Space Scanner, Zortium Armor and Hard Beam, and dump the rest into Terraforming +60.

2431: I destroy a Meklar ship attacking Dolz, and the Meklar try to bribe me for a peace treaty. No chance! Phantos is down to 11 pop, and I send the colony ship over from Paladia.

2432: I have an opportunity to steal from the Silicoids, but I didn't memorize their tech tree well enough to know what field to choose. Well, if I'm in doubt I usually go with the tech that makes me better at stealing, so Computer it is! Deep Space Scanner, yay! The colony at Phantos is destroyed and I'm waiting for the colony ship. The GoAway is ready to move to Crypto and Artemis switches back to tech. I switch Planetology tech to trickle spending and seed Impulse Drives. There's a chance that we'll steel it from the Meklars, but if not, we'll probably get more out of it than the cloaking device. The Meklars have destroyed Simius, but the Mrrshan reinforcements are in no danger of starving because the Silicoids are about to establish a colony there.

2433: The colony at Phantos is established. Several Meklar and Bulrathi ships are on the way there, but mostly colony ships. Also 25 Bulrathi transporst due in 4 turns. I drive the Silicoids off from Crypto and send the GoAway to Phantos. The Mrrshan Panther ships that were defending Fierias are moving to Altair, so I send the bombers from Phantos to Fierias. I'm not quite sure if that's a good move, but the space superiority ships at Phantos will be needed there. In the worst case, I have to retreat the bombers. I pump some reserve spending into Altair to bring up shields and missile bases.

2434: A quiet turn. I recreate the Mumble 4.0 fighter design and set Endoria, which has finished the Silence, to work on it. [Quasi-EDIT: I accidentally switched to GoAways.]

2435: A couple of small Alkari fighters attack Altair. Four Mrrshan Panthers are next and easily blow up the GoAway ships, but retreat from the missile base. The Meklars attack with a pretty strong design at Quayal and also destroy a GoAway. Fierias has 34 missile bases and also built a Panther in the meantime, so I turn the bombers around. Quayal builds some overdue missile bases. Exis has built all the bombers I want for now, and I switch over to fighters. I noticed that the Silicoid are sending a pretty large fleet to Crypto. Let's see if I can hold them off with the fighters from Endoria and Exis.

2436: Silicoids attack Altair. Their Shark design has Death Spores and Auto Repair, so the missile base wasn't enough to hold it off. It was only one, so it didn't do much damage, but I have Altair build more bases. In tech, the Advanced Space Scanner is in the percentages.

2437: There are now 19 bases at Whynil, but I have somewhat over-produced bombers. I have nearly 450 of them, some still en route towards Dolz. 450 bombers will do on average 495 damage. Not quite enough, and I want to have some margin for bad luck, so Endoria and Exis have to build some more. Since the only ship incoming at Phantos is a colony ship, I send a GoAway and SlowSsh together with the bombers to Fierias.

2438: I stole Controlled Inferno from the Bulrathis. There's one such planet close by, but I don't have a slot free for a colony ship right now. I'm surprised that the Silicoids haven't picked that planet up by now. Also, I decide not to wait for more bombers before attacking Whynil. I don't know if that's a good choice or not, but I want to kick some robot behind before handing over the save! A SlowSsh, Silence and 448 bombers move to Whynil.

2439: The attack on Fierias was a bad idea. I lost all bombers and a SlowSsh, because I wanted to destroy some Mrrshan ships before fleeing. Here's a screenshot of their ship designs, for future reference.

   

At least I can scrap the Sorry 3.2 design now to make room for a colony ship. The attack on Whynil on the other hand went quite well. I lost around 50 bombers and destroyed all missile bases. I tried to use RefSteel's tactics but got hit on the way to the planet. Maybe the reason was that I also sent some space superiority ships, so the bombers didn't start from the right position on the screen? Advanced Space Scanner is completed.

   

I was torn between IRC5 and BC7, but I went with the battle computer because I think we should build some more factories before we increase the price again.

Our new space scanner finds Orion:

   

A Meklar fleet is incoming at Dolz in three turns.

   

The fleet heading for Crypto has scrapped its colony ship, so I send the fighters guarding Crypto to Dolz. I send troops from Dolz to Whynil and refill it from Quayal and Tyr.

2440: 2 enemy pop survive at Whynil. Endoria completes the colony ship and I've already ordered it towards Guradas. I also noticed that the Meklars now have a faster colony ship that will be at Crypto in 3 turns. Simius has been conquered by the Meklars, but Silicoid transports are on the way to take it back.

---

Good luck to the next player, whoever that may be!

Notes:
- There's a slightly scary looking fleet en route to Dolz.
- Send some troops to Whynil, only 2 enemy pop left there!
- We're about to settle Guradas, the green star near Endoria. You should build some ships to defend it from the Silicoids.
- Also, the Silicoids are about to colonize Crypto (Radiated, ultra rich), it would be good to prevent that.
- Maybe think about building more factories? I'm not sure.

[shallow_thought]

Wow, quick turnaround. I should be able to pick this up properly tomorrow, and will post a "got-it" then if so. I may not be able to play until the start of the week though (and I must find time to hack away at the Imperium game as well...).

I get the impression that my shieldless GoAways and SlowSssh designs have had a short shelf life. The GoAways were only ever intended as in interim measure to kill transports, Alkari light stuff and smallish squadrons escorting Silicoid colony ships, so I'm not surprised they suffer against genuine war fleets.  I've been going over my notes to see why I built the SlowSssh without a shield and have found nothing  - I suspect simple designer error . I probably just carried the GoAway design over and stacked more guns on it. Sorry.

[RefSteel]

Wow - those Mrrshans aren't kidding around! The designs you showed won't do anything to our bases, but beating them over their own (or neutral) worlds will require overwhelming force. I shouldn't have suggested going after them with our then existing fleets; even hitting them where their fleets weren't, it's always a challenge to get past Mrrshan bases with an unshielded fleet that can't just dodge the missiles.

Speaking of which ... I'll have to pay more attention next time I go after missile bases; you're right that the exact mechanics of what to do will vary with the position of your bombers relative to the rest of your fleet and the locations of asteroids. I also think I misremembered the tactics I settled on ultimately: It's actually been a long time since I played out that kind of attack. Vague recollection now suggests my normal plan was to fly (diagonally forward if necessary) to the planet's row, and then jag (diagonally) upward and back down ... or something. If I get a chance to try it here when my turn rolls around again (unless shallow_thought finds something on his turns) I'll explain what I actually did!

In any case, great job bringing enough bombers to Whynil that losing a few dozen didn't matter!

[shallow_thought]

OK - official got it.

I'm going to assume that a massive ongoing offensive is what we want to be doing here. The real question is against whom?

Cats: nasty guns with good aim. Putting even our new Silence designs up against them would be a war of attrition. We'd win that, but I think there are better targets. Will look for an opportunistic bomber strike if their ships are away from their worlds, but otherwise rely on espionage. 

Bears: annoying, grunty things. They have no tech we want, and they're hard to invade. I'd like to eliminate them to reduce the number of civs with knowledge of Planetary Shield V.

Meks: Our competitors in technology. We want to cripple them and steal their tech - particularly Controlled Toxic, their advanced construction tech (wouldn't say no to simple Battle Suits either) and shiny computer stuff. The attack on Whynil is a great start - we have a window where our current bombers can break their bases, so invade Whynil and make further inroads.

Rocks: Our competitors in production (but see below...). I really want to drive them away from us. Again, our bombers should be able to get through. I'm happy to glass their radiated worlds - no-one seems to have Controlled Radiated in their tree. I'm really fed up having to waste resources keeping them away from the Radiated world in our core. If we can't get controlled Toxic soon I'd just glass Celtsi too, to push them away from us.

Birds: Happily out of contact.

So, we need enough forces for a multi-front war. In rough priority order:
- Invade the Meklar
- Hold off any attempts to re-capture those worlds (by the Meks themselves or - for example -  by the cats)
- Glass nearby rocks
- Glass bears
- Strike at cat missile bases if opportunity arises.

Sadly, our current population excess is only useful for the first these things - I'll look at doing some shuffling, but I think it's time to re-max factories across our (non-rich) backline. We have idle pop, and that's a bad thing.

I don't feel that anything in our current teching list is critical. Zortium is nice and should be in soon and I'd like to get our weapons ticking over.

Genuine question for the next weapons tier (which we saw a few turns back): Fusion Rifle or Omega-V (I'm ignoring torpedos)? The bomb upgrade would future-proof us, but we don't need it yet - I have a feeling we won't get it on smalls for a while. Also, I'm hoping that we can pick up AM-bombs from the cats as an alternative. I'm tempted to push for more gropo tech to make our lives easier invading the Meklar, and so pick up the rifle, even although it's more expensive.

It looks as if I should be able to cover both Dolz and Whynil with our new Silence - and get another one off the production lines at Exis soon. We'll also have a new batch of mumbles arriving in time. More of these fighters can take over the role of keeping the rocks away from the radiated worlds in the longer term: it's a bit of a question as to whether they'll be enough to keep the current Silicoid fleet heading for aCrypto way. I need to hunt back through the threads for info on the Silicoid ships, but their weapons tech is rubbish and shield tech unexciting. I think neutron-fighters will at least be able to badly hurt them.


We also need some defenders for our new colony on the Inferno world of Guradas. I think I'm going to have to do some ship-building at non-rich worlds.

Obviously, a lot of this repeats the points made by RFS-81 in his final summary.

In the meantime, more in-character whittering.

I was all for the occasional polite conversation between two people who had know each other for years and were, after all, planning to get married, but Agatha could sometime be uncomfortably direct. And she was not taking my latest news well.

"We're going to have to postpone the wedding? Again? Whatever do you mean?"

"Well, dear, you did say that you wanted your mother to give you away, but ..."

"What - exactly - does this have to do with my mother?"

I was stunned. She had just interrupted me. In the middle of a sentence. While I was talking. Which I didn't really want to do anyway. Agatha's relationship with her mother was complex; mine was simple - I avoided her, any mention of her and as far as possible any memory of the ghastly woman. She had been bad enough when alive: being a disembodied conciousness she had been deprived of tea (and, I privately suspected, a regular brandy habit), which had not improved her disposition. Fortunately, some of my RV's core instructions kicked in.

"I'm afraid, ma'am, that I am compelled to inform you that it is a matter of law. The senate was quite explicit - there is to be no contact, nor risk of contact".

Slightly shocked at the intervention, Agatha rallied.

"Really? I know the whole mind control thing was a bit upsetting, but she did remove her conciousness once I asked. And its not like she ever managed to take over any of the running of the Empire."

Actually, Agatha didn't know the lengths to which my RV had been forced to go to free me. It had taken an elaborately constructed pyramid of blackmail culminating in a threat of being blackballed from her bridge club to remove the harpy from my head - making some parting comments about "the accommodation being cramped" on the way out.

Agatha drew me, much against my will, back into the - ugh - discussion. "I really wish you would re-consider about Helen's procedure - you'd always be free of the threat of control after that." She looked across at the RV. "She has ironed out all the problems now - the last few test subjects are quite normal; there may even have been other improvements!"

"I'm afraid that the senate were quite clear on that as well, my lady. They are not prepared to have parts of the president's brain replaced by those from gerbils, regardless of how they were genetically enhanced, nor how high the measured compatibility."

They both turned to look at me for a moment. I got the impression I was missing something. Agatha sighed.

"Very well; we'll just have to delay until you're not president any more. It's only a few more years."

A few necessary pleasantries followed; then I was finally able, shaking, to collapse back into my chair.

"I can't do this. It's too much. A full, public ceremony, with ... well."

"I understand your concerns, sir, but feel that they may be somewhat misplaced. Unpleasant as the ceremony would undoubtably be, what is likely to follow would be far worse."

"What? - but Agatha is a lovely creature. By far the nicest person I've ever been engaged to!"

"Quite, but it is not the intentions of the Lady Agatha herself that are the problem. She is unlikely do anything to you that cannot be reversed in the medium term. Saldy, I cannnot say the same for her family and friends; increasing your exposure to them would be - unwise."

"You see me having a future as some mad scientist's puppet? One other than Agatha, I mean?"

"At best, sir. I suspect that you would end as warped abomination of science."

"Hmm. Doesn't sound good. How can we avoid this?"

"I'm afraid that I can think of only one way. The elimination of all non-solar life in the galaxy."

While perfectly sensible in itself, I couldn't quite see how this would help with my problems.

"The popularity boost would enable you to have yourself declared president for life. Your eternal preservation would be a priority - no external threat, whether mother-in-law or insane geneticist, would be allowed."

"President for life? Wouldn't that be a lot of work?"

"Not once all the aliens were dead, sir. And I would, of course, be here to advise you."

I relaxed. Of course - simplicity itself. I allowed the RV to head off and make the arrangements. While I would miss Agatha, I would be able to live on without becoming intimately mixed with rodents. Or becoming anyone's puppet, of course.