Foreign Minister's personal notes, file 3416-7721-8923, Avantador Historical Archive
In discussions outside my field of expertise - most notably, in matters of starship design, of which I know little more than what I am told by the admirals of the fleet - I came across an incomplete reference at least two years old to an
unknown ship design: Something produced just once by our tailless, featherless enemies. Not knowing how their so-called Dreadnought was built, we tried to meet it with an enormous fleet, suited to almost any possibility. Even so, I am told that the right combination of armament and defensive systems could have nullified our attack on the world it protected - should it choose to engage us there. This it did last year, living up to its name, as unlike virtually every other enemy starfleet we encountered, it did not dread the encounter sufficiently to immediately flee. And indeed its defenses were formidable. The data scan captured by our Chameleon scanners, inset in this post-battle report, was taken
after hitting it with a full volley of their phasers.
As you can see, we would have needed many more Chameleons - nearly a hundred, most likely - to destroy it instantly, and it would certainly have won
this battle had it been equiped with a repulsor beam: In spite of mounting a bunch of scatter-pack five-racks, such as those we once put aboard cruisers, well over a century ago, meant to mostly to conceal the fact that at the time we had no real combat fleet, this monster
also has anti-matter bombs in meaningful numbers
and large banks of phasers - more than we had in the battle ourselves by almost a factor of two! Admittedly, ours were better directed, aboard ships that were far harder to hit, so that if we had just perhaps
twice as many Chameleons, they could likely have won the battle alone after severe attrition, and still cost no more than say two or three of our Beamer cruisers, but the Dreadnought was certainly the most dangerous single enemy ship we had ever seen. Sadly for its crew however, since it
had no repulsor beam, and we had not two or three but
thirty-three Beamers on-hand, the Dreadnought was blasted to pieces before it could fire a single phaser. This illustrates, so our fleet admirals tell me, the power and the danger of using huge gunships. If you imagine removing all the scatter-pack filler and needlessly expensive jammers, adding a battle scanner and better computer, either replacing the stream projector with something like a repulsor or pulsar or dissipator - that, or building the ship around the projector more effectively or removing it entirely - and filling up the rest of the space with more phasers or other effective weaponry, that thing you'd be imagining would be a devastating weapon - and even as-is, the ship we were facing represented a serious threat as long as it was in play. But the swiftness with which it was
removed - a single starship, capable of defending or attacking only a single planet at a time, with a price tag up in the trillions of credits, and which may face the concentrated fire of an entire enemy fleet - speaks to the danger of relying too much on a battleship.
Which brings us up to date enough to talk about
this year, when among our attacks was a frankly casual flyby of the Adarak colony.
We didn't even bother sending a space support ship to this white-flagged system, though we obviously have Beamers to spare; the admiralty apparently figured around half a hundred Ghosts that couldn't get to any more-vital targets right away could have a look at the impoverished little colony there, on a world that had only a minimal micro-ecosystem prior to its gaia transformation, and help perpetuate the irrelevant status of our ape-like enemies. There was a broadly similar situation at the equally-poor world of Sulvin V nearby as well, though I suspect that in at least one and perhaps both of these cases, the "casualness" was a post-facto reinterpretation by the Admiralty, having probably intended to send spare Beamers to each of those worlds and then forgotten. At all events, in addition to the missile base they were designed to defeat, the Adarak fleet met a pair of Frigate bombers with no ship-to-ship combat capabilities, while the Sulvin fleet, more hilariously still, met three completely unarmed Survey scouts. This led, after lengthy stalling, to the only two events of the entire year which the Triumvirate could - and therefore naturally did - pretend were "victories."
At Sulvin, our fleet just retreated after disposing of the missile defenses, knowing the Surveys couldn't do anything about the transports coming in. At Adarak however, since the Frigates stubbornly refused to leave, our Ghosts cheerfully went right on bombing after all the bases were gone. As the surviving population and industrial base dwindled, the Ghosts made use of their precision bombing techniques, dropping one rack at a time, having been warned not to exterminate the population entirely, and finally returned to hyperspace after rendering almost 93% of the colony down to rubble and slag. I do not pretend to know the feelings of the three million who survived strictly by our mercy, incapable of working all of even the planet's 17 remaining factories, when they were told by their triumvirate of rulers, just arriving on their world to take over its direct administration, that the battle had ended in glorious "victory."
I should explain - in case you have not already noticed - that this sort of ridiculous propaganda is by no means restricted to our enemies. I believe I mentioned my suspicion that the composition of attack fleets for low-priority targets may not have been checked as rigorously as they might have been - but that appears also to be true for
transport distribution between
high priority worlds. The invasion we sent to Acamar was completely overwhelming, but the one for the enemy homeworld, right next door and
closer to most of our worlds, barely outnumbered the enemy forces we ultimately met on the ground, still with our edge in combat technology barely enough to make up for the advantage conveyed by their defensive entrenchments. Fortunately, in
that instance, our luck ran just about precisely even with expectations - but a famous poster celebrating the victory, stolen from the archives of the very planet we conquered this way, where it had appeared in a famous, ancient work of visual media, was a little bit extreme. Here's what it would look like if its
context were added, describing what actually happened, instead of just the bare fact and celebration of victory.
We
did send enough forces to take the other worlds handily - in spite of absolutely mind-bogglingly bad luck on Acamar, where freak earthquakes swallowed up whole divisions, a dust storm blew in across the battlefield whose pockets of fiercest blinding sand were all concentrated exactly where our forces were at exactly the times we arrived there, and many of our fusion blasts detonated long before reaching the enemy when - according to hyper-resolved post-mortem holography reviewed after the battle - they repeatedly struck random flying insects or drifting dust particles that the enemy's fusion fire always conspired to miss. The Acamarians led a charmed existence ever since the first battle of the war. Of course, you'll note the past tense: We sent enough to beat them anyway with troops to spare, plus even
more than that in the form of transports that should have gone to Sol. In short, we met all our remaining operational objectives for the entire war this year. Naturally then, with no more need to design new ships, this was also the year that our new, advanced battle computer is finally ready to roll off the line.
I'm told that our computer scientists spent weeks debating their upcoming choice between pursuing additional advances in ECM technology, a new jammer even better than the best version we have so far, state-of-the-art countermeasures to kinetic munitions' self-guidance systems, a cool new way of tricking missiles and smart-bombs and spore delivery systems into missing their targets, and fifteen to twenty other ways of saying exactly the same thing. Then, with that excitement out of the way, it was finally
my turn to take a role in the Conclave's future! Here's the report I was working from. It
may give you the same impression it gave me:
Friends and fellow lizards, I think it's
possible the pretty, winged Inagakians don't
like us very much! But I noticed something even more important here: The exact thing I was
looking for! The official communications channel between our peoples had been re-opened! For the first time since the war began, their diplomats were willing to
talk to me! Needless to say, I got on the line with them right away.
Before I had a chance to ask Spire King Ariel, through the proper channels naturally, if they were prepared to stop being killed to death by our fleets,
most of the bombers above Inagaki had been sent away toward the nearest star gate, ensuring that the remainder would not risk wiping out the remaining population if it went in for more orbital bombardment this year. This was fortunate for me, because it was a
very gentle and non-impactful way to discover that due to a design flaw in our automatic warp dispatch system too involved for me to understand, nevermind to explain, when a fleet in orbit over an enemy colony is automatically given the order to retreat in the face of a peace treaty, its destination not only defaults to the nearest possible friendly system, but - unlike mere retreats from battle - it
can't be changed even to a different friendly world until the ship arrives (or, presumably, is redirected via hyperspace communications). The already-dispatched bombers retained their orders perfectly, and I believe could still be redirected elsewhere had we wished, but the small fleet that without the treaty would have remained was taken out of our hands entirely.
Of course, Ariel's
allies still refused to talk to me. I wonder what they're discussing right now - what they think they're going to do
other than deal with us diplomatically. To give you a sense for what options they have - with "options" in approximately the sense that our computer scientists used the word this year - here's a slightly zoomed-out map of the relevant part of space, including a tiny corner of the edge of Silicon Imperium space, many but by no means all of our own star systems, and
all of the worlds that still belong to the Dominion, the Republic, the Sovereignty,
and the Triumvirate.
We have to group them now if we want to talk about worlds,
plural. There's something else peculiar about this image though: I don't see any red lines! I checked, and we're definitely still at war with the Triumvirs, and I could have sworn they had fleets due to arrive next year or later at planets we now control. I wonder what this can mean! It bears some investigation, I should think.
Temporary Emergency Holotransmission Facility, Adarak City
Bursts of static periodically shattered the images in the display as cables run through half a dozen step-down transformers and adapters sparked and mag systems whined plaintively. The ambassador pressed her hands together tightly, though her face showed only her habitual expression of amusement with the world. Through the static, a comfortably familiar image appeared: Ireeti Fiffee, foreign minister of what little remained of the ambassador's trusted allies, Ariel's Sovereignty. "Thank goodness you are well," she said, her tone calculated as ever to appear cheerful and polite, yet filled with hidden and deeply-wise inner meaning if only it could be teased out. "We have heard such terrible things about the Great Enemy's death fleets bombarding you from orbit - and now our people too, here on Adarak, have experienced it at first-hand."
Fiffee made a complicated noise, as though using the muscles of his throat alone to dislodge a small mouse that had gotten stuck therein. "Yes, well, thankfully," Fiffee informed her with perhaps more than a hint of nerves, "that's - ah - well, that is to say, that's over with out here. We found ... you see, we found a way to turn them away."
The ambassador's eyes lit up in spite of all her training. She couldn't help it: The dream so distant and remote that she hadn't dared to hope it might be true! "I called full in the knowledge that our peoples could always turn to one another for succor, as you turned to us when the war began and we joined you! Pray, how is it that you were able to defeat..." ...but she saw the way Fiffee's crest was drooping - ever lower as she spoke - and she whispered, "... or ... but no, it cannot be..."
"Well, yes," Fiffee said, ducking his head back and forth as if trying to evade the gaze of the holocams. "You see, there was really no choice, and ... there were no terms, just full cessation without prejudice of hostili..."
Her training, honed though it was, already riddled with cracks after the horrors of the past few years, went to pieces entirely. "You made
peace?!" she fairly shouted. "After dragging us into this war that has killed more than ninety-nine percent of our people, cost us - so far! - all our worlds but this one, to say nothing of our fleets, and ruined the friendship we had with the most-powerful faction in the entire galaxy?! After all that, without reference to us, you made
a separate peace?!"
Bridling, defensive, Fiffee answered, "Well, you wouldn't deputize us to talk to them on your behalf, and wouldn't speak to them with or without our participation in the meeting, so there was hardly an opportunity for a multilateral..."
The string of words with which the ambassador interrupted him, which could hardly have relieved her feelings under the circumstances as they were, were not in any way suitable for a family audience. It is enough to say that they did display a thoroughly comprehensive knowledge of avian anatomy, as well as a great deal of ingenuity in identifying uses to which parts of it might be put.
Rosalind Franklin Memorial Spaceport, Special Embassy Landing Bay, surface of Watson II
Ambassador Rissefor of the Conclave waited patiently while the battered old bird-winged hyperspace shuttle, clearly on its last legs, made its hesitant way into dock, politely ignoring its failings and fragility: Rissefor was well aware of what Ariel's people had been through lately, and more pleased than otherwise that they had even managed to cobble together a working starship of any kind for their diplomatic corps. A news flash came in while the ship was still in its final approach, and Rissefor glanced at it casually.
"I suppose I should have seen that coming," he murmured to himself with a private grin. Of course the apes could hardly maintain the alliance that brought them into their war, turning them from the lizards' fast friends, sharing a pact of non-aggression and even voting for the Conclave at the latest High Council meeting, to their implacable enemies - and therefore into so much smoke and ash on the wind of the planets on which they used to live.
A private grin, but not without irony: The entire reason for meeting with the avian ambassador at the first opportunity, even going so far as to meet aboard the shuttle itself, had been to urge the ambassador to speak with the Adarakans, once of Earth, as the Conclave could not, and urge them for the sake of the two million survivors of their people who once numbered in the billions to agree to meet with lizardkind again and treat for peace. Even after the peace treaty with the Inagakians had taken force, the apes had refused to so much as acknowledge the Conclave's transmissions - and lately, in the skies above their last remaining world, a Beamer had destroyed the last remaining Triumvirate Cruiser while a small wing of bombers went in for just one run, killing more than half of the five million ex-Earthlings who had been living there, together with a dozen of their remaining factories, leaving them with only five intact.
The dillapidated hypershuttle's airlock creaked open, and Ambassador Rissefor recognized his opposite number standing in the gap, having apparently taken the trouble to open it instead of leaving it to the crew. With a sweep of his tail and open claws, Rissefor invited Ariel's ambassador to his chambers at the newly-reinstated embassy.
The old bird, though slightly rumpled, retained the dignity of office, and with a slight tilt of the head, recognizing the honor - or the urgency - of being so greeted on first reaching the dock, accompanied Rissefor to the suite, politely registered approval, made a mostly-doomed effort to smooth the feathers that were still out of place, and selected a scene for the room's large viewscreen display: The capital city of Altair, not as it was under lizard rule, but as it had been for the centuries before the conquest. Diplomats that they were, neither commented on how or why the planet had changed or the events that had led to its changing hands, but Rissefor spoke of the scene's beautiful nobility, and Ariel's ambassador thanked him graciously - and then added, bright wings first spread wide then dropped to pull in close again, "But there is a more-urgent matter of which I would speak!"
Ambassador Rissefor's training was so extensive and so acute that he managed not to break up laughing even slightly - still less to comment on the cause of the "bickering" between his people and the Triumvirate which Ariel apparently wanted - or
had wanted, when the ambassador set out - to end. Instead of admitting that lizardkind probably
could no longer match the combined might of the Triumvirate and Sovereignty since it was difficult for the Conclave to even
see anything so insignificantly small, still less shrink itself to that size, Rissefor asked blandly, "Then you haven't seen the news?"
The visiting ambassador stiffened so as not to slump, putting as much weight as possible on the staff of office that was worth more than any of the Inagaki foreign service's othre remaining possessions, including what was left of the hypershuttle out in the port, and carefully asked, "What news do you mean?"
Rissefor swung his head to one side to give one eye a clear look at the bird ambassador, then swung it back the other way to give the other eye a better look. "Of course," he acknowledged, "you've been in hyperspace, and perhaps the news didn't reach you there - but surely while your crew was landing, a private dispatch from your homeworld would have..."
Still standing on what dignity the avian diplomatic corps had left, his visitor answered, "I
am the crew. I had to bring my shuttle in and land it here myself, with no particle of attention to spare. We - all of us on Inegaki - have had difficulties finding enough birdpower for all the work that needs doing of late."
Nodding, understanding, Rissefor suggested, "Perhaps it would be best to check your comm dispatches then, and we can reconvene in the embassy dining room downstairs." Of course, diplomat that he was, the suggestion was not without ulterior motives: A subtle shift in contact pressure had informed him of a dispatch from
his central headquarters: New, updated information of which
he should be aware. The avian bowed in agreement and Rissefor stepped out to a secure area before viewing the latest report.
It was well that he did: When he saw the Triumvirate ambassador's face - opening communications for the first time in years after refusing to even acknowledge Conclave transmissions - and heard what she had to say, no amount of diplomatic training was enough; he
did crack up laughing, writhing into a spinning circle of head, torso, limbs, and tail on the spot. It appeared that, at last, having demonstrated to the fullest and most horrible degree why a faction with power such as theirs had been must never, ever irritate the likes of the Conclave, the people of Adarak, formerly of Earth, were prepared at last to resume such peace as their tiny remnant population on the ruins of their lone, impoverished world could achieve. Had the three messages not come back to back to back, so nearly immediately, they might not have been
quite as funny, but it was a long time before Ambassador Rissefor could stop laughing, pick himself back up off the floor, and go to meet Ariel's ambassador again. They didn't talk business in the dining room. Ariel's lone representative in Conclave space ordered and downed three generous double shots in succession of Altairan starflower nectar, and the nearest thing to diplomacy Rissefor needed to provide was his quiet, sympathetic company.
He had received other secret dispatches too, but he felt they could wait. It was therefore only much later that he discovered that galactic scanning crews had confirmed the latest hypothesis to explain the previous year's sudden shift from widespread incoming-fleet alerts to comparative calm and silence.
With a population in single-digit millions on a lone impoverished world, the Triumvirate had simply been incapable of maintaining and providing for an entire starfleet. The Dreadnought and Cruiser the Conclave fleet had destroyed in recent years were the last armed ships to see action for the Triumvirs, as all their Frigate bombers were sent to the scrap heap to feed their desperate need for more materials to support their existence. The crews mostly deserted and disappeared - some perhaps joining the Tessith pirates to keep up the fight against lizardkind, or just for the chance to steal something of value since their government on Adarak certainly wouldn't be covering their salaries - and the only ships still flying the Triumvirate flag were harmless Survey scouts. The pirates too might well have been rounded up, tried, and executed the following year if not for a critical mistake: Instead of sending ships through gatespace to Mesarth when its star gate was completed, within a single year's hyperspace journey of Tessith itself, the Admiralty chose to leave them in place at other star gate worlds, believing Tessith's governor when he claimed his own star gate would be finished within the year. As had happened with increasing frequency as the Conclave grew however, the governor was wrong: Cost overruns delayed the project - perhaps even because the pirates were disrupting supply runs - so that it didn't complete until the following year, when the role of High Magister was passed along. It was an ignominious end to an administration that had seen unprecedented success - in spite of all the errors it had committed along the way!
A look at the full galactic map following the election could only drive home the power of the Conclave, with the galaxy split nearly in half between its worlds filling all of one side apart from the small, impoverished nature preserves in which the Conclave's former enemies were permitted to live out their lives. The other was split mostly between the warring silicon and insectile beings, with the rocks holding a clear edge, but not enough of one to push through to victory - apart from a little more than a dozen stars on the very far side of the galaxy, divided somehow between hapless cats, bears, and shapeshifters.
The Conclave's population was still recovering in the aftermath of its bloody wars, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that if nothing changed - or if they changed it still more in their favor, then all the more so - they would soon officially become the rulers of the galaxy. As a matter of practical reality of course, they had done so already.
Does anyone in this galaxy have Atmospheric Terraforming in their tree? We have enough hostile worlds to make it very valuable.
Naybe this will work?
Thanks for clearing up that diplo issue, I had not actually opened the save recently. I wonder who framed us? Is it possible to frame someone you have no contact with? (I always suspect the shape shifters when I get framed.)