It's (way too) late at night here, so I'll just post this as-is, with spoilers as always just because there's so much!
Introduction:
Report:
Notes for the next leader are mostly contained in the last few pictures and paragraphs (the shortest, generally) of the report (sorry - I'm tired!) - the save is attached to this post! And of course:
Roster:
- RefSteel (just played)
- shallow_thought (UP!)
- haphazard1 (on deck! - I hope the screenshot and/or forum problems have improved!)
- DaveV (back up after that!)
Introduction:
My people long for peace always, seeking to research quietly in our labs and develop the infrastructure of our worlds uninterrupted even when we are invaded from afar. When the Human Warship arrived at our Paradise world, we responded in the manner even they must have understood: Taking a cue from a famous figure in their own history, we met them with the doctrine of Satyagraha: Passive resistance to their military force. Their ship soared overhead, and we refused to fight it directly: The ships we had in the system or about to arrive both retreated as soon as fired upon, back to Stepstone where they would be safe for the present, trusting to the Humans' good intent since they surely launched their colony fleet before our colony was ever established there, and surely would not leave it in place once they saw they faced peaceful civilians and no warlike enemies. Then in case that might not be so, we prepared not a military answer but a peaceful, blissful civilian one, breeding ever faster to ensure that our people were too numerous to be simply murdered or quelled, awaiting the Human Warship's departure confidently. Their colony ships departed, seeking new worlds yet unclaimed. Their lone fighter is gone as well - perhaps sent away as an escort, perhaps rendered down for scrap, outdated ship that it is; I did not attend and do not care to know - but the Warship remained, hulking and implacable, firing on any transport that approaches the colony, warning the ever-more-numerous people of Paradise to surrender or die. We kept to Satyagraha, refusing to surrender, refusing violence, simply living, all in our way, in spite of them.
Their response was nearly fifty million troops, dressed in titanium-alloy battle armor and armed to the teeth with automatic assault rifles, shrapnel grenades, and portable LMGs. At first, as their transports landed, we met these as we had met the Warship: Living, standing together in protest, keeping to the principles of Satyagraha, letting them gun us down if they would, but never taking up arms against them. There were massacres in our streets, and the images were broadcast across the Human empire and all our worlds: Thousands of Psilons dead, unresisting, posing no threat, but gunned down where they stood. But these were not the British people of whom we learned in Human history; this was the imperial culture of Human supremacy, and they laughed to see us dying in our thousands - and then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions - and it became agonizingly clear that our Satyagraha meant nothing to a people who were perfectly content to kill us all. More and ever more of our people died as the Paradisian survivors scrambled to regroup, to reorganize, to prepare themselves - and arm themselves - to fight back. The invaders fought mercilessly, tirelessly, to the death, and forced the choice upon us: To kill or to be killed. In the end, nearly one hundred million lay dead on the surface of Paradise, almost exactly half Humans, almost exactly half ours - including several million who perished before they realized there was no way to stop the invaders without taking up arms.
The Warship still cruises our skies unopposed, and the Humans are readying another wave of transports, another invasion that if it lands will claim tens of millions more lives. We have met them in peace and suffered massacres with no sign of end; they have forced their ways upon us: The ways of war. Their merchants exchange their goods for ours and chuckle over their profits and make tutting noises about the fighting and the killing and ask, half incredulous, half patronizing, why we didn't defend ourselves, as though we could have done so, as though their way is the only way, as though we understood how. Their diplomats smile and offer to trade a type of fuel that won't let us reach their worlds for technology that would increase their wartime production massively, and offer a non-aggression treaty which they carefully word to exclude cases where one side's ship is over the other's world. We reject both; we reject them, but cannot reject their ways - not wholly, not now. The Humans, by force, have taught us their violence. Let us see if we can learn it well enough to teach our peace to them.
Their response was nearly fifty million troops, dressed in titanium-alloy battle armor and armed to the teeth with automatic assault rifles, shrapnel grenades, and portable LMGs. At first, as their transports landed, we met these as we had met the Warship: Living, standing together in protest, keeping to the principles of Satyagraha, letting them gun us down if they would, but never taking up arms against them. There were massacres in our streets, and the images were broadcast across the Human empire and all our worlds: Thousands of Psilons dead, unresisting, posing no threat, but gunned down where they stood. But these were not the British people of whom we learned in Human history; this was the imperial culture of Human supremacy, and they laughed to see us dying in our thousands - and then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions - and it became agonizingly clear that our Satyagraha meant nothing to a people who were perfectly content to kill us all. More and ever more of our people died as the Paradisian survivors scrambled to regroup, to reorganize, to prepare themselves - and arm themselves - to fight back. The invaders fought mercilessly, tirelessly, to the death, and forced the choice upon us: To kill or to be killed. In the end, nearly one hundred million lay dead on the surface of Paradise, almost exactly half Humans, almost exactly half ours - including several million who perished before they realized there was no way to stop the invaders without taking up arms.
The Warship still cruises our skies unopposed, and the Humans are readying another wave of transports, another invasion that if it lands will claim tens of millions more lives. We have met them in peace and suffered massacres with no sign of end; they have forced their ways upon us: The ways of war. Their merchants exchange their goods for ours and chuckle over their profits and make tutting noises about the fighting and the killing and ask, half incredulous, half patronizing, why we didn't defend ourselves, as though we could have done so, as though their way is the only way, as though we understood how. Their diplomats smile and offer to trade a type of fuel that won't let us reach their worlds for technology that would increase their wartime production massively, and offer a non-aggression treaty which they carefully word to exclude cases where one side's ship is over the other's world. We reject both; we reject them, but cannot reject their ways - not wholly, not now. The Humans, by force, have taught us their violence. Let us see if we can learn it well enough to teach our peace to them.
Report:
If we are going to fight the Humans, we are going to do it our way: We may not be able to achieve peace, but our victory will lie - at first at least, as long as we can - less in fighting than in learning what we face.
The first destroyer-class ship in our fleet will exist first and foremost to carry a battle scanner into space, to provide detailed readings on enemy fleet composition so we can identify their likely targets and their strengths and weaknesses and plan accordingly. It goes without saying that the Learn 2.0 will mount nuclear engines, our state of the art, like every ship we build until we can develop something even better: No matter what a ship does, we need it to get where it's going to do it fast! The only serious question about the design was whether it should carry weapons and other combat systems into space, and since a few extra maneuvering thrusters would be easy to include and would make a lot of difference in a fight for tactical options and survivability, and any lasers we put on would get the benefit of the battle scanner, both in combat and when helping to shoot down attack transports coming in, we're going with a triple-laser setup with maximum maneuverability. I would have liked to see it built up at our Backwards colony or someplace, but the fastest way to get it a look at the Warship is to put Stepstone on the job and help it out with resources from the emergency reserves, with Mentar helping out by providing more. If that's not enough to finish it within two years, we can always downgrade its armament and just make it a flying battle scanner in space, but if the spaceyards' calculations are right, it won't come to that, and the Learn 2.0 should be good to fly at the earliest opportunity. Another advantage of this is that our world in the Backwards system can put some more time into factory infrastructure and Mentar can put most of its energies into research, helping to get laboratory equipment built for future work in planetology and propulsion while it helps Nature fund experiments in the other fields with our copious existing equipment. If all goes well, then next year the Backwards colony will be able to contribute something that way too while we await definite information on the nature of the threat to Paradise.
We just got the report from the skies of Paradise, and the bad news is, our new Learn 1.0 dedicated scanner ship and the lone, obsolete Popgun1 fighter we sent along to keep it company just so it would have something to do are not going to have enough between them to take out the Human Warship. I don't think anybody was expecting anything different, so when that's the bad news, you can probably already infer the general flavor of the news that came in! Eight nuclear missiles that launch in volleys of four are probably more dangerous than (say) ten nuclear missiles that fly more slowly in volleys of two, but that's pretty much just splitting hairs: Neither one is going to scare anybody. The ship does have three heavy lasers, and the best targeting systems and shields we or the Humans could build, oh, sixty years ago, but that's very little total firepower they can bring to bear - especially on fighters - all at once, especially since their cowardly pilots are sure to want to always engage from their maximum range. Before we had nuclear engines, this thing would have been a tougher nut to crack, but now that we have a good idea of what it's bringing, and that idea is "nothing much good," I'm confident we can handle it, even with a pretty small fleet. The hard part is going to be shooting down the transports once it's gone so they can't all land and slaughter more millions on the ground. That, and dealing with the news that's not from Paradise.
The bad news from Proteus is that the Silicoids have started arming their colony ships, and though their weapon systems are worthless - no scan, but it looks from following the combat like a five-rack of nuclear missiles and a single heavy laser weapon with no computer or scanner or shield - the fact that they have a beam weapon at all meant they wouldn't retreat. I actually think with a more-aggressive stance, even our little squadron of eight fighters could have taken that thing out, though only once, and at the cost of most of the squadron itself, but that doesn't matter since they didn't try, hiding behind asteroids and taking only occasional attacks of opportunity until it was too late. Not for the fighters themselves - even after the battle exhausted both sides' emergency energy reserves, a few of them still survived intact! - but for keeping the Silicoids away from Proteus for even a few years more. When everyone's exhausted capacitors forced a mutual retreat, our fighters had to return to their nearest fuel base, three parsecs away - and the limping remnants of the heavily-damaged Silicoid ship, because it carried a colony, was able to turn into a fuel base on the ice world we discovered in the system long ago. We're steadily losing ground to the Silicoids here, so it's a good thing we've been able to hold off the Humans! We just have to keep doing that - so here's the next piece of the plan to defeat them:
Maintaining healthy doubts about our beliefs and everyone's claims is an important part of Psilon culture, so it's appropriate in a way to name a new fighter design after them, but I wouldn't blame the defense administration for also acknowledging that they have their doubts about this design itself: We certainly need something to fight the Humans off above Paradise, but lasers are just so ineffective as weapons, there's very good reason to wonder how long these are going to be relevant in the galaxy. We can get some down to Paradise in time from Mentar and our Backwards colony, and then send more at the last moment from Stepstone while Paradise builds its own, and we'll certainly do all of that - perhaps like me, the ruling administration just couldn't bear to let any more civilians die on the ground who we could have saved, even inefficiently, by throwing already-obsolete ships into space - but the costs are high and the expected useful lifetime of these ships is a short one. It won't be the only measure we take of course: Stepstone will be sending population over in transports to reinforce Paradise as well, due to arrive at the same time as our Warship-busting fleet so the Humans be able to shoot them down. No matter how many assault transports we manage to shoot down, some are likely to get through, and we'll want as many people as we can to overwhelm them on the ground - and as many people as possible to finally start building up our beautiful colony there once the threat is gone!
I'm in no mood for celebrating, though the Human invaders are finally gone from Paradise. The Warship wasn't even an anticlimax: Even Alexander himself realized the thing was so out of date, he actually scrapped it as soon as our fighters were en route. The transports were a different story: In spite of the fighter screen we put in place, Doubts and the lone local Popgun and the Learn 2.0 all helping out, some twenty-two million Human soldiers dropped out of the sky of Paradise and came in firing as soon as they hit the ground. Worse, they came better prepared for armed resistance this time, each firing from behind a personal deflector shield that more than made up for all the advantages of our dug-in defensive positions protecting our homes from their charge. Our people fought bravely, knowing this time all too well that the invaders wouldn't rest until they or we all died, and in spite of their advantage, losses were again - like in the first battle - nearly equal on both sides, leaving us with fifty million survivors to hold our world, in peace at last with no further transports coming and no attack cruiser in our skies. We have won; we have our Paradise, and no one disputes that now - but some hundred and forty million sentient beings had to die to decide that outcome, almost exactly half of them ours, and the only thing that can reconcile me to that loss is the knowledge, proven on the bodies of the first millions who faced the Human threat, that if we surrender or withdraw, the death toll will be higher still: To retreat is to give them a new world from which to launch a new attack, forcing another withdrawal until we have nowhere to withdraw to but the killing vacuum of space; to submit is to be drafted into the ranks of their soldiers as cannon fodder to be thrown against their next victim, to die in service of their ambitions instead of our own defense. I still long for an answer - if not Satyagraha than something else - but there seems to be no answer to those willing to use violence to achieve their ends but the will and the strength to successfully fight back.
I hope at least we can find something before the Silicoids run out of hostile worlds to expand to and try to start expanding over our corpses instead. Sending ships to stop the Human transports meant leaving nothing armed to stop the Silicoid colony ship at Tao, which turns out to be the twelfth world in their rocky grasp as they spread like grit in a sandstorm over entire galaxy. The once-fearsome Mrrshans have been left in these Silicoids' dust - and their latest colony has other consequences too: The dozen star systems they control, with our five, the Humans' three, and another dozen divided among the Mrrshans, Klackons, and Meklar in some combination, represent two thirds of our entire galaxy, leading GNN after its announcement about the Silicoids running away to add another: That a High Council will meet to elect a single ruler for the galaxy! Could this be the way forward that we seek? The candidates announced are neither Humans nor Silicoids, but a Mrrshan named Mirana and our own 38th Order of Scientific Genius! I hoped to hear Mirana speak, to witness whatever moving address the OSG-38 could prepare together in the brief time they had before their first opportunity, and to watch the discussion of the merits of each case, but it was not to be: The High Council was not a summit for hashing out differences and coming to a decision together, but the culmination of such discussions as the peoples of the galaxy might have had already: An election-by-holoscreen, in which the votes of the galactic leader were weighted by the number of sentients represented by each, and perhaps because no such discussion had happened as yet - or none to which one of the nominees had been privvy at least - or perhaps because only the galaxy-spanning Silicoids, not even yet elected, had actually met everybody, the vote mostly consisted of abtentions, with only the Mrrshans and Klackons supporting Mirana, perhaps because of close relations already established, or perhaps merely in a fit of Klackon caprice - it's difficult to know for sure from this side of the galaxy - and no one at all backing our OSG.
Of course we could have cast our votes for Mirana ourselves, likely winning her good will in spite of the fact that it would still leave her two votes shy of the victory margin she would need. There were several in the OSG who advocated in favor of the policy, as a symbol of trust and cooperation we could offer to the favorite of the most-populous empire in the galaxy, but in the end the prevailing sentiment was one of presenting ourselves honestly: Having never met Mirana except at this very Council by holo-image and screen, knowing nothing of her credentials or policies, we could hardly judge of her fitness for the throne of the galaxy, and to pretend otherwise merely to win her good opinion, safe in the knowledge that the gesture would be symbolic only, did not seem to our leadership to be in keeping with our attachment to evidence and rigorous honesty. Perhaps at another Council more than a decade hence, the OSG will decide differently - much can change in such a period, including the composition of the OSG itself - but for now, we are content with our decision, and will stand by it.
Finally, with our Paradise colony at last secure, another huge fleet of transports set out from Nature to help build its future, and our starfleet in orbit there began transitioning to other potentially-threatened worlds, hoping to prevent invaders and further Silicoid incursions into our part of space. In the meantime, our homeworld, Nature, and the Backwards colony all contribute to our research efforts, while both of our newest worlds race against our technological progress, trying to complete as many factories as they can before new robotic control protocols force them to slow down the work. In spite of the inefficiency, Mentar even funds a certain amount of reserve spending to help get Paradise's new factories ready, since ultimately a larger industrial base will make it easier to build the rest when needed.
We've had a little time to build our strength again in peace, but no time is ever truly quiet in the galaxy. Beginning the year after the High Council meeting, we've been tracking another Cruiser - this one a Meklar Tornado - making its way across space on our long-range scanners. As this view with after-images of its position from 2365 and 2366 will show, it seems clearly to be headed - slowly - for the Tao system and its Silicoid colony. This must mean they had an alliance in effect at some point in the past, when the Meklar were permitted to take advantage of Silicoid fuel bases, but repeated checks of our reports have indicated no such alliance in recent years: Only one between the Silicoids and Klackons that has lasted at least since 2359. Apart from that though, these years have been peaceful, just waiting to see what wonders our scientists can achieve! I know perfectly well that it won't last long, but still I can hope it goes on a little longer at least....
Our materials engineers came through in a big way, with duralloy armor ready to deploy to anyone defending our homes against a future invasion or aboard larger combat ships if needed, already being installed on the one missile base built a decade or more ago here at Mentar, and most importantly, enabling component miniaturization thanks to thinner and sturdier support structures for everything we build. The 38th Order held long debates about the next path to pursue: Battle suits would rapidly advance the state of the art and convey a decided advantage in case of any future invasions. Improving the efficiency of our factory construction even further than before would be perfect if we could have it done today, but by the time research completes, we'll probably have no more space to industrialize for some time to come anyway. Automated repair for our ships will be nice to have eventually when we can - and if we must - make combat ships that rival the size of what we've seen from more-violent races thus far, but comes at great expense and is never strictly needed. Nevertheless, believing that the sentiment of the population at large will favor auto-repair - and knowing that it may reduce the number of lives lost in space should battle again prove necessary - the Order chose the repair system ahead of everything else, with ever-greater chances of new breakthroughs in other fields in the coming years.
This isn't the kind of breakthrough our scientists had in mind. Just one more year to go until the next reorganization of the OSG-38, and a Silicoid Colony Ship - armed, as by now we know - arrived at the Firma system, where most of our remaining Scouts were trying to converge. Two more of them are due to arrive in the next few years, but even were they there, together with the one that was already present, no number of unarmed ships could have held off the colony. It's looking like we'll soon be surrounded by Silicoids on all sides except toward the nearest galactic rim! Recognizing the danger, the OSG has dispatched the interdiction fleet back to Mentar from Laan, partly just as a more-central location, but also in the hope that it can move on to guard Zoctan in time instead.
Here's a look at some of our fleets en route as we reach 2370 and the 38th Order of Scientific Genius prepares for another change: The 41 transports due to arrive at Paradise next year should be helpful as it keeps building up its factories and everything else it needs, and the ships due at Mentar the year after that represent nearly our entire armed combat fleet! They aren't actually needed at Mentar; the plan was for the Order to decide what best to do with them after they arrived. You can also barely see the trailing Scout of the pair that were being sent to Firma in the hopeful years when we thought we might one day be able to scout beyond it, before it turned into a Silicoid colony...
...like thirteen - and counting - other stars across the galaxy. At this point, it's going to be a challenge to keep them from overrunning everything - especially since we're still a long way away from being able to survive on any of the hostile worlds in our space ourselves. The good news is, we aren't actually all that far behind, and we'll soon have the tools we need to develop even further econominally. The bad news is, the Silicoids already have the tools - or rather the planets - they need to grow into a gigantic powerhouse if they're given time. We'll just have to hope - and try to arrange - that our time advantages are more important than theirs!
Five years from now, the Galactic Council is scheduled to meet again; it may go the same way as before, but there's no telling what may change. The Silicoids might even surpass us in population by then - or even the Mrrshans! It's going to be an up-hill struggle to make our place in this galaxy, but at least we've begun.
Research is maturing in nearly every field, the chief exceptions being Construction, since we just started our latest project last year, and to a lesser extent Propulsion, which when our research completes will likely become our most-advanced field of technology. We'll need wise minds to guide us through the coming years - so I'm glad we have the OSG-38 to lead the way!
The first destroyer-class ship in our fleet will exist first and foremost to carry a battle scanner into space, to provide detailed readings on enemy fleet composition so we can identify their likely targets and their strengths and weaknesses and plan accordingly. It goes without saying that the Learn 2.0 will mount nuclear engines, our state of the art, like every ship we build until we can develop something even better: No matter what a ship does, we need it to get where it's going to do it fast! The only serious question about the design was whether it should carry weapons and other combat systems into space, and since a few extra maneuvering thrusters would be easy to include and would make a lot of difference in a fight for tactical options and survivability, and any lasers we put on would get the benefit of the battle scanner, both in combat and when helping to shoot down attack transports coming in, we're going with a triple-laser setup with maximum maneuverability. I would have liked to see it built up at our Backwards colony or someplace, but the fastest way to get it a look at the Warship is to put Stepstone on the job and help it out with resources from the emergency reserves, with Mentar helping out by providing more. If that's not enough to finish it within two years, we can always downgrade its armament and just make it a flying battle scanner in space, but if the spaceyards' calculations are right, it won't come to that, and the Learn 2.0 should be good to fly at the earliest opportunity. Another advantage of this is that our world in the Backwards system can put some more time into factory infrastructure and Mentar can put most of its energies into research, helping to get laboratory equipment built for future work in planetology and propulsion while it helps Nature fund experiments in the other fields with our copious existing equipment. If all goes well, then next year the Backwards colony will be able to contribute something that way too while we await definite information on the nature of the threat to Paradise.
We just got the report from the skies of Paradise, and the bad news is, our new Learn 1.0 dedicated scanner ship and the lone, obsolete Popgun1 fighter we sent along to keep it company just so it would have something to do are not going to have enough between them to take out the Human Warship. I don't think anybody was expecting anything different, so when that's the bad news, you can probably already infer the general flavor of the news that came in! Eight nuclear missiles that launch in volleys of four are probably more dangerous than (say) ten nuclear missiles that fly more slowly in volleys of two, but that's pretty much just splitting hairs: Neither one is going to scare anybody. The ship does have three heavy lasers, and the best targeting systems and shields we or the Humans could build, oh, sixty years ago, but that's very little total firepower they can bring to bear - especially on fighters - all at once, especially since their cowardly pilots are sure to want to always engage from their maximum range. Before we had nuclear engines, this thing would have been a tougher nut to crack, but now that we have a good idea of what it's bringing, and that idea is "nothing much good," I'm confident we can handle it, even with a pretty small fleet. The hard part is going to be shooting down the transports once it's gone so they can't all land and slaughter more millions on the ground. That, and dealing with the news that's not from Paradise.
The bad news from Proteus is that the Silicoids have started arming their colony ships, and though their weapon systems are worthless - no scan, but it looks from following the combat like a five-rack of nuclear missiles and a single heavy laser weapon with no computer or scanner or shield - the fact that they have a beam weapon at all meant they wouldn't retreat. I actually think with a more-aggressive stance, even our little squadron of eight fighters could have taken that thing out, though only once, and at the cost of most of the squadron itself, but that doesn't matter since they didn't try, hiding behind asteroids and taking only occasional attacks of opportunity until it was too late. Not for the fighters themselves - even after the battle exhausted both sides' emergency energy reserves, a few of them still survived intact! - but for keeping the Silicoids away from Proteus for even a few years more. When everyone's exhausted capacitors forced a mutual retreat, our fighters had to return to their nearest fuel base, three parsecs away - and the limping remnants of the heavily-damaged Silicoid ship, because it carried a colony, was able to turn into a fuel base on the ice world we discovered in the system long ago. We're steadily losing ground to the Silicoids here, so it's a good thing we've been able to hold off the Humans! We just have to keep doing that - so here's the next piece of the plan to defeat them:
Maintaining healthy doubts about our beliefs and everyone's claims is an important part of Psilon culture, so it's appropriate in a way to name a new fighter design after them, but I wouldn't blame the defense administration for also acknowledging that they have their doubts about this design itself: We certainly need something to fight the Humans off above Paradise, but lasers are just so ineffective as weapons, there's very good reason to wonder how long these are going to be relevant in the galaxy. We can get some down to Paradise in time from Mentar and our Backwards colony, and then send more at the last moment from Stepstone while Paradise builds its own, and we'll certainly do all of that - perhaps like me, the ruling administration just couldn't bear to let any more civilians die on the ground who we could have saved, even inefficiently, by throwing already-obsolete ships into space - but the costs are high and the expected useful lifetime of these ships is a short one. It won't be the only measure we take of course: Stepstone will be sending population over in transports to reinforce Paradise as well, due to arrive at the same time as our Warship-busting fleet so the Humans be able to shoot them down. No matter how many assault transports we manage to shoot down, some are likely to get through, and we'll want as many people as we can to overwhelm them on the ground - and as many people as possible to finally start building up our beautiful colony there once the threat is gone!
I'm in no mood for celebrating, though the Human invaders are finally gone from Paradise. The Warship wasn't even an anticlimax: Even Alexander himself realized the thing was so out of date, he actually scrapped it as soon as our fighters were en route. The transports were a different story: In spite of the fighter screen we put in place, Doubts and the lone local Popgun and the Learn 2.0 all helping out, some twenty-two million Human soldiers dropped out of the sky of Paradise and came in firing as soon as they hit the ground. Worse, they came better prepared for armed resistance this time, each firing from behind a personal deflector shield that more than made up for all the advantages of our dug-in defensive positions protecting our homes from their charge. Our people fought bravely, knowing this time all too well that the invaders wouldn't rest until they or we all died, and in spite of their advantage, losses were again - like in the first battle - nearly equal on both sides, leaving us with fifty million survivors to hold our world, in peace at last with no further transports coming and no attack cruiser in our skies. We have won; we have our Paradise, and no one disputes that now - but some hundred and forty million sentient beings had to die to decide that outcome, almost exactly half of them ours, and the only thing that can reconcile me to that loss is the knowledge, proven on the bodies of the first millions who faced the Human threat, that if we surrender or withdraw, the death toll will be higher still: To retreat is to give them a new world from which to launch a new attack, forcing another withdrawal until we have nowhere to withdraw to but the killing vacuum of space; to submit is to be drafted into the ranks of their soldiers as cannon fodder to be thrown against their next victim, to die in service of their ambitions instead of our own defense. I still long for an answer - if not Satyagraha than something else - but there seems to be no answer to those willing to use violence to achieve their ends but the will and the strength to successfully fight back.
I hope at least we can find something before the Silicoids run out of hostile worlds to expand to and try to start expanding over our corpses instead. Sending ships to stop the Human transports meant leaving nothing armed to stop the Silicoid colony ship at Tao, which turns out to be the twelfth world in their rocky grasp as they spread like grit in a sandstorm over entire galaxy. The once-fearsome Mrrshans have been left in these Silicoids' dust - and their latest colony has other consequences too: The dozen star systems they control, with our five, the Humans' three, and another dozen divided among the Mrrshans, Klackons, and Meklar in some combination, represent two thirds of our entire galaxy, leading GNN after its announcement about the Silicoids running away to add another: That a High Council will meet to elect a single ruler for the galaxy! Could this be the way forward that we seek? The candidates announced are neither Humans nor Silicoids, but a Mrrshan named Mirana and our own 38th Order of Scientific Genius! I hoped to hear Mirana speak, to witness whatever moving address the OSG-38 could prepare together in the brief time they had before their first opportunity, and to watch the discussion of the merits of each case, but it was not to be: The High Council was not a summit for hashing out differences and coming to a decision together, but the culmination of such discussions as the peoples of the galaxy might have had already: An election-by-holoscreen, in which the votes of the galactic leader were weighted by the number of sentients represented by each, and perhaps because no such discussion had happened as yet - or none to which one of the nominees had been privvy at least - or perhaps because only the galaxy-spanning Silicoids, not even yet elected, had actually met everybody, the vote mostly consisted of abtentions, with only the Mrrshans and Klackons supporting Mirana, perhaps because of close relations already established, or perhaps merely in a fit of Klackon caprice - it's difficult to know for sure from this side of the galaxy - and no one at all backing our OSG.
Of course we could have cast our votes for Mirana ourselves, likely winning her good will in spite of the fact that it would still leave her two votes shy of the victory margin she would need. There were several in the OSG who advocated in favor of the policy, as a symbol of trust and cooperation we could offer to the favorite of the most-populous empire in the galaxy, but in the end the prevailing sentiment was one of presenting ourselves honestly: Having never met Mirana except at this very Council by holo-image and screen, knowing nothing of her credentials or policies, we could hardly judge of her fitness for the throne of the galaxy, and to pretend otherwise merely to win her good opinion, safe in the knowledge that the gesture would be symbolic only, did not seem to our leadership to be in keeping with our attachment to evidence and rigorous honesty. Perhaps at another Council more than a decade hence, the OSG will decide differently - much can change in such a period, including the composition of the OSG itself - but for now, we are content with our decision, and will stand by it.
Finally, with our Paradise colony at last secure, another huge fleet of transports set out from Nature to help build its future, and our starfleet in orbit there began transitioning to other potentially-threatened worlds, hoping to prevent invaders and further Silicoid incursions into our part of space. In the meantime, our homeworld, Nature, and the Backwards colony all contribute to our research efforts, while both of our newest worlds race against our technological progress, trying to complete as many factories as they can before new robotic control protocols force them to slow down the work. In spite of the inefficiency, Mentar even funds a certain amount of reserve spending to help get Paradise's new factories ready, since ultimately a larger industrial base will make it easier to build the rest when needed.
We've had a little time to build our strength again in peace, but no time is ever truly quiet in the galaxy. Beginning the year after the High Council meeting, we've been tracking another Cruiser - this one a Meklar Tornado - making its way across space on our long-range scanners. As this view with after-images of its position from 2365 and 2366 will show, it seems clearly to be headed - slowly - for the Tao system and its Silicoid colony. This must mean they had an alliance in effect at some point in the past, when the Meklar were permitted to take advantage of Silicoid fuel bases, but repeated checks of our reports have indicated no such alliance in recent years: Only one between the Silicoids and Klackons that has lasted at least since 2359. Apart from that though, these years have been peaceful, just waiting to see what wonders our scientists can achieve! I know perfectly well that it won't last long, but still I can hope it goes on a little longer at least....
Our materials engineers came through in a big way, with duralloy armor ready to deploy to anyone defending our homes against a future invasion or aboard larger combat ships if needed, already being installed on the one missile base built a decade or more ago here at Mentar, and most importantly, enabling component miniaturization thanks to thinner and sturdier support structures for everything we build. The 38th Order held long debates about the next path to pursue: Battle suits would rapidly advance the state of the art and convey a decided advantage in case of any future invasions. Improving the efficiency of our factory construction even further than before would be perfect if we could have it done today, but by the time research completes, we'll probably have no more space to industrialize for some time to come anyway. Automated repair for our ships will be nice to have eventually when we can - and if we must - make combat ships that rival the size of what we've seen from more-violent races thus far, but comes at great expense and is never strictly needed. Nevertheless, believing that the sentiment of the population at large will favor auto-repair - and knowing that it may reduce the number of lives lost in space should battle again prove necessary - the Order chose the repair system ahead of everything else, with ever-greater chances of new breakthroughs in other fields in the coming years.
This isn't the kind of breakthrough our scientists had in mind. Just one more year to go until the next reorganization of the OSG-38, and a Silicoid Colony Ship - armed, as by now we know - arrived at the Firma system, where most of our remaining Scouts were trying to converge. Two more of them are due to arrive in the next few years, but even were they there, together with the one that was already present, no number of unarmed ships could have held off the colony. It's looking like we'll soon be surrounded by Silicoids on all sides except toward the nearest galactic rim! Recognizing the danger, the OSG has dispatched the interdiction fleet back to Mentar from Laan, partly just as a more-central location, but also in the hope that it can move on to guard Zoctan in time instead.
Here's a look at some of our fleets en route as we reach 2370 and the 38th Order of Scientific Genius prepares for another change: The 41 transports due to arrive at Paradise next year should be helpful as it keeps building up its factories and everything else it needs, and the ships due at Mentar the year after that represent nearly our entire armed combat fleet! They aren't actually needed at Mentar; the plan was for the Order to decide what best to do with them after they arrived. You can also barely see the trailing Scout of the pair that were being sent to Firma in the hopeful years when we thought we might one day be able to scout beyond it, before it turned into a Silicoid colony...
...like thirteen - and counting - other stars across the galaxy. At this point, it's going to be a challenge to keep them from overrunning everything - especially since we're still a long way away from being able to survive on any of the hostile worlds in our space ourselves. The good news is, we aren't actually all that far behind, and we'll soon have the tools we need to develop even further econominally. The bad news is, the Silicoids already have the tools - or rather the planets - they need to grow into a gigantic powerhouse if they're given time. We'll just have to hope - and try to arrange - that our time advantages are more important than theirs!
Five years from now, the Galactic Council is scheduled to meet again; it may go the same way as before, but there's no telling what may change. The Silicoids might even surpass us in population by then - or even the Mrrshans! It's going to be an up-hill struggle to make our place in this galaxy, but at least we've begun.
Research is maturing in nearly every field, the chief exceptions being Construction, since we just started our latest project last year, and to a lesser extent Propulsion, which when our research completes will likely become our most-advanced field of technology. We'll need wise minds to guide us through the coming years - so I'm glad we have the OSG-38 to lead the way!
Notes for the next leader are mostly contained in the last few pictures and paragraphs (the shortest, generally) of the report (sorry - I'm tired!) - the save is attached to this post! And of course:
Roster:
- RefSteel (just played)
- shallow_thought (UP!)
- haphazard1 (on deck! - I hope the screenshot and/or forum problems have improved!)
- DaveV (back up after that!)
Their pop growth rates are very slow, but given time they will become extremely powerful. Hopefully we can advance fast enough to avoid getting left behind as their planets mature.
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17 planets is ridiculous.